Cooking in My Kitchen

The cookbook Marcella Cucina has been this month's source of new recipes for both of us.
I bought this book fairly recently, though it was published in 1997.

In the kitchen in February not many items are new, but we've been enjoying a number of dishes that we haven't tried before or that we haven't had for a long time. I'm sharing, as usual, with the blogger event "In My Kitchen This Month," hosted by the blog Sherry's Pickings -- link here.

In the skillet: Marcella's "Fricasseed Chicken Abruzzi-Style with Rosemary,
White Wine, Cherry Tomatoes, and Olives."

The finished dish after the tomatoes and olives are added.

"Pork Strips with Broccoli and Carrots" made by Len.

The pork dish was quite delicious. Surprisingly, it uses only the stems of the broccoli.
We've also tried some pasta from this interesting and unusual cookbook. Its recipes
are quite different from American Italian restaurant and prepared food.

An old favorite of ours is steak with wine and green peppercorns.
These are pepper berries picked green instead of ripe (black).
They are usually sold in cans, pickled in brine.

The steak: sautéed, sliced and served with tomatoes and cucumbers.
This recipe is not from the cookbook, but as I say, an old favorite.

Using Sourdough Starter

Leftover sourdough starter makes good pancakes! These are savory,
made to serve with sautéed salmon as shown.

We ate the pancakes and fish with Ikea's mustard-dill sauce and veggies.

Another sourdough pancake preparation: sweet ones with fruit in & on them.

The starter was leftover from Len's beautiful loaves.

A few more items in & around the kitchen in February:

Mangos in a custom-moulded plastic container from Costco. They taste very good but I feel guilty about the plastic.

In the display cabinet in the dining room: a new storyteller figurine. 

My new figurine is by a Hopi ceramics maker named Tony Dallas. The faces on these figures are the faces of the mudheads, a type of clown that appears in Hopi ceremonial dances, and which are sometimes depicted in Kachina figures (see below). The small child on the storyteller's right is holding a special type of Indian doll that's flat and made of wood. I photographed my new storyteller with a tumbler figurine by the same artist.

I have a few other storytellers and various southwest Indian figures, which I find very appealing. Storytellers were first made by Helen Cordero of the Cochiti Pueblo in the mid-20th century. They became very popular and are now made by potters from many Pueblos.

A mudhead, or clown, Kachina from the Detroit Institute
of Arts.