Frittata and A Recipe Using Better Than Boullion

Always in my refrigerator!
I use this chicken base for everything.
It was a great addition to curry-roasted vegetables.

This frittata with the leftover vegetables was quite delicious!

Usually I do not copy other people’s work, but I recently found a recipe for curry-roasted vegetables and liked it. Since this recipe was in an advertisement for the ingredient Better Than Bouillon, I thought the owner would even appreciate it if I reproduced it! I am very fond of Better Than Bouillon products (and they don’t reward me in any way for saying so). 

The original recipe calls for potatoes, but I added onions, bell peppers, carrots, and one hot pepper, all in good-sized chunks. And then I used the leftovers to make my very nice frittata, topped with cheddar and Panko bread crumbs.

Curry Roasted Potatoes

Ingredients

2 tbsp	Better Than Bouillon®Sautéed Onion Base [OR Chicken Base]
¼ cup	olive oil
1 tbsp	curry powder
1 tbsp	tomato paste
1 tsp	paprika
2 cloves	garlic, minced
2 lb	potatoes, chopped

Directions

• 1

  Preheat oven to 425˚F. In large bowl, stir together Roasted Onion [or chicken] Base, vegetable oil, curry powder, tomato paste, paprika and garlic until blended. Toss with potatoes until well coated.

• 2

  Transfer to 2 large parchment paper–lined baking sheets. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown and tender. [I used Silpat sheet liners.]

Tip: Serve with a dollop of yogurt or tzatziki sauce if desired. My tip: serve with chutney!

Source: https://www.betterthanbouillon.com/recipes/curry-roasted-potatoes/

Cooking Every Meal at Home

While we've thus far been fortunate during this challenging pandemic and lockdown, we are very concerned about people throughout the world who are less fortunate in any number of ways. We are very grateful to all the workers who produce and package our food and work in all the essential shops.

Question: where do we get food to cook our kitchen?
Answer: We do curbside pick up at a small local market called The Produce Station. They have been great!
We also rely on friends and relatives, other curbside pickup places, and amazon.com

In my kitchen this month, we have prepared every meal, three per day. We have obtained our food without entering any market or other public space since March 13. It's now the end of April and time for a backward look at what's been going on here, to share with a group of food bloggers from many places throughout the world who document what's happening in their kitchens each month. These posts documenting the past month should be very interesting, as everyone has the same challenges in avoiding infection and dealing with erratic shortages during the pandemic.

You can find links to this collection of posts here:

http://sherryspickings.blogspot.com/

Nothing much is new in my kitchen this month -- only one water pitcher, ordered online.

Food is our focus! We've received several grocery orders by doing curbside pickup from The Produce Station. as in the photo, as well as from a bulk food store called By The Pound. Wonderful friends and relatives have bought us needed items while shopping for themselves, as they were already committed to stand in the long lines at big supermarkets. A few amazon orders have supplemented our larder contents.

During this time of isolation, I've been especially grateful to fellow bloggers who described their own challenges and documented the foods they made to cope with one or another of the inconveniences of the lockdown. As I collected images of the foods that I've made in my kitchen this month, I have tried to give a shout-out to bloggers that inspired me, entertained me, comforted me, or that featured similar recipes.

Passover: A Family Holiday without Family 

In mid-April, we managed to celebrate Passover, as I wrote a few weeks ago. Passover is a family holiday, celebrated at home with a ritual meal. For most families, it's a communal celebration, often with one's dining table extended to the max, and maybe another table in the living room. This year throughout the world, many families had to celebrate with only a few or even one person present, though there were large numbers of electronic gatherings. Here are a couple of photos of our Passover food.

Our Seder Plate for Passover.

Matzo ball soup -- extreme close up!

For the Seder plate, we had most of the symbolic items on hand: salt water, horseradish, a bone, fresh green herbs, an egg, and apples for charoset. We had no matzo, but we received one in the mail just as we were about to celebrate. Matzo balls are made from matzo meal, which we did have in the pantry. Matzo ball soup is not part of the ancient ritual (as written down around 1000 years ago), but has become an expected part of the celebration, almost as much as the ritual items.

Many bloggers described how they celebrated Easter during lockdown. Blogger Johanna in Melbourne described her Easter cake that she shared with her daughter, unable to join her extended family as usual. Jeanie from Lansing, Michigan, blogging at The Marmelade Gypsy described her imaginative Easter decorations as well as how she celebrated; see the post Easter Week.

Baking

To continue with a description of our kitchen activities this month -- Len has been baking twice a week. Originally this "In My Kitchen" blog post included photos of a number of his bakes, but the result was too long, and has now been published as a separate post. Read it here: Baking Bread in April.

Kaiser rolls, a real treat!

New Recipes for Curry

The taste of curry powder, hot pepper, cardamom, coriander, cilantro, cumin, fennel seeds, and more appeal to me enormously, and I've been trying new recipes with this array of flavors. 

Naan bread, served with the red lentils, and cucumber in yogurt.

A different red lentil curry, with eggplant and coconut milk.

Hard boiled eggs with curry sauce. Yes, I have been
experimenting with curry flavors a lot! I've also made
a couple of curried chicken dishes.

At the blog Almost Italian, blogger Francesca, who lives in Australia, has been posting about her curry recipes throughout April. In the post Muttar Paneer, My Favorite Curry, she discussed the meaning of the word curry, which she begins by defining as: "the anglicised form of the Tamil word kaṟi meaning ‘sauce’ or ‘relish for rice.'" Very interesting reading!

Chutney from By The Pound, to go with the curries.

Many More Flavors!

All through the lockdown, we have been cooking new things for fun, trying different spices and recipes, and in some ways forming new eating habits -- never going out to a restaurant, obviously! I made several of my standard Mexican-flavored dishes, which I've featured before, as well as some new ones.

Carrot soup in a tureen; apple slices for dessert.
Inspired by Shaheen at A2K blog (link).

My carrot soup contained orange juice, chicken broth, and dried tomato.
It was garnished with raw tomato and parsley. 

Soup is great for times like these, especially as our weather in April was often cold and dreary. At the blog Kahakai Kitchen, blogger Deb in Hawaii hosts a blog event called Souper Sunday. See this post on her Hungarian Mushroom Soup with links to other bloggers' soup adventures. Another blogger, Judee at Gluten Free A-Z has many interesting posts on vegetarian cooking; see her tempting recipe for Carrot Cumin Soup. Tandy Sinclair's Lavender and Lime from South Africa and Iris Flavia's oddly named blog Double-Half or One Ten without Ham from Germany are also among my go-to blogs. And each Saturday, I enjoy following a number of bloggers who link up at Weekend Cooking on the blog Beth Fish Reads.

Ready to roast: a chicken. I spatchcock the chicken and use the backbone for stock along
with celery tops, parsley stems, etc. Stock from one such chicken went into the carrot soup.

Sesame noodles with tuna and all the vegetables in the crisper drawer.
This was a makeshift lunch the day before one of our orders was ready.

Red cabbage and carrot salad: a recipe that I make often. These ingredients
keep well, so they're good for this time of limited food shopping.
I used up the red cabbage and bought a huge head of green cabbage!

Mushrooms, sautéed and seasoned with ras el hanout,
a Moroccan spice blend.

Mushroom omelet with the ras-el-hanount mushrooms.
Dessert: tangerine and avocado salad with rose water
and a touch of cinnamon.

Well, even after breaking this into two posts, I did write a lot this month, didn't I? I hope you don't mind! Next month, besides cooking, we hope to order take-out from some of the interesting restaurants in our town, which will give us some new flavors. So I'll have some new foods to write about.

Sherry's New In My Kitchen Logo.

Blog post and all photos © 2020 mae sander. 
This is published at mae food dot blog spot dot com. If you read it elsewhere it's been pirated.

Lunch With Jeanie and Rick!

Here we are in my living room: me and Jeanie, blogger of The Marmelade Gypsy!

We had a fun afternoon together -- including Rick and Len. At lunch we tasted sesame-semolina bread made by Rick, pain de campagne by Len, and a miche (large sourdough loaf) from Zingerman's bakehouse. They were all fabulous. To go with the bread, we had cheese, chutney, butter, jam, salads, and madeleines that Jeanie made.

Jeanie's Madeleines were delicious.

Ready for lunch: chicken salad, cheese platter, and more on a sunny Sunday.

Grated carrot salad with lemon, cilantro, cumin.

Somehow I didn't get photos of the three lovely breads, which we all found just delicious! After lunch we sat around and talked and listened to CDs and LPs. We all have so much to discuss! Len and I were delighted that Jeanie and Rick could come from Lansing to visit us.

The New and the Old in my Kitchen in May

New in May: our second Dutch oven for baking bread. Now two round loaves can bake at the same time.
The cast iron frying pan on the lower oven rack helps to keep the oven temperature even when the door is opened.

In my kitchen this month: Len is the bread baker here, and has been experimenting mainly with rye bread. While the Dutch oven is new, the frying pan is very old -- it belonged to my grandmother and then to my mother. It's been out of service since I bought a smooth-top range, and has now found a new use. Although the blogger event "In My Kitchen" is normally about what's new in peoples' kitchens, I'm also going to talk about some old and repurposed items.

Old and new: a large glass bowl in use for folding bread dough.

Originally this was a punch bowl, but we haven't used it for many years. If we ever have a large party again, no punch will be served.

The bowl has now been repurposed as a dough tub; the dimensions are exactly the recommended size for use in baking. The straight sides enable the baker to measure just how much the dough has risen. In the photo is the newly-made dough, which rose to more than 3 times the original volume.

Len is using several books as a source of recipes, ideas, and methods. Above: The Breads of France by Bernard Clayton, Jr., a 1978 compendium of bread recipes from many bakeries in France which has been on our shelves for many years. We're newly interested because of the bread-baking project.

Two newly-purchased baking books: Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish and The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.

The internet is another source of recipes. However, Len's most successful breads so
far have come from recipes in Flour Water Salt Yeast.
Also repurposed: plastic flour storage box originally from Costco biscotti.

A small rye loaf was the first attempt, but the rise was not satisfactory.

This not-so-successful bread, from an online King Arthur Flour recipe, was baked on a pizza stone that my sister gave us as a gift last winter. More repurposing: a wooden place mat becomes a peel for the loaf. After this first attempt, Len soon chose a different recipe from Flour Water Salt Yeast -- it was beautiful:

Len's successful rye loaves, baked in the new and old Dutch ovens, were delicious, with a perfect crumb and crust.

Another success: overnight wheat bread, same source. 

Also in the Kitchen in May: A Low-key Celebration of the Royal Wedding

We didn't eat much while watching the wedding since it started at breakfast time. But the day before the wedding, I tried an appropriate recipe for lunch: Coronation Chicken. This dish was served at the coronation of Elizabeth II. Basically it's chicken with fruit, usually mango and apricots, in a curry mayonnaise. Shown here: the fruit mixture and the sautéed and spiced chicken breast cubes, ready to be tossed together.

OK, a wedding is not a coronation, but I thought it was in the spirit of the celebration. I know some people baked elderflower-flavored cake to be like the royal wedding cake, but that's not my kind of thing.

Coronation chicken, garnished with parsley.

On the plate with plum chutney and mango chutney.

I'm really not much of a collector of memorabilia, but here are a few choice items commemorating British royalty that happen to be in my kitchen:

Wrong wedding! I didn't have any souvenirs of the current one.
This tea cannister was a gift from Evelyn.

Among my many British tea towels, I thought this was a very appropriate one.
I don't iron my tea towels. Sorry. Please don't judge me.

The Royal Yacht Britannia on another tea towel, also a gift from my
wonderful friend Sheila. The yacht was in service from 1954-1997,
and was used for four royal honeymoons including Charles' and Diana's.

One more royal souvenir: a Wedgwood sugar bowl commemorating a 1939 visit to Canada of King George and Queen Mary, the great-grandparents of the current royal bridegroom. This was originally a wedding gift to Elaine's mother-in-law. Elaine gave it to me a few years ago because I have a tea pot in the deep-blue Wedgwood pattern, though not a commemorative item.

"In My Kitchen" is brought to the blogging community by Sherry, who blogs from Australia at Sherry's Pickings. WHY "SHERRY'S PICKINGS"? she asks. Her reason: "I am Picking out all the best things in life." To see the best things that Sherry and other bloggers throughout the world have in their kitchens this month, link here: http://sherryspickings.blogspot.com/

Janet's Passover Kitchen

Last night there was a wonderful confluence of aromas here in Janet's house in Kiryat Ono, a suburb of Tel Aviv, where we are spending the week preparing for Passover. From her kitchen came the aroma of chicken fat -- the traditional schmaltz -- being rendered for one of the many dishes for the Seder tomorrow night. From the garden came the amazing perfume of a citrus tree, the pomelo, blooming in this mild climate. A very unexpected combination.

Right now, the aromas from the kitchen dominate: an enormous pot of chicken soup is bubbling on one burner, as you can see in the photo.

A pot of kumquat chutney is simmering on the other burner. Janet harvested the kumquats this morning from another tree in the garden, and I spent at least an hour cutting them up and taking out their seeds. We both worked on the other ingredients. Janet loves to make chutney from the produce of her own tree.

Who would have guessed that such tiny fruits nevertheless have seeds the same size as those in an orange or a tangerine!

Kumquats, garlic, and ginger being prepped for chutney.

Hot peppers for chutney -- other ingredients include onion, orange juice,
sugar, vinegar, star anise, pepper, and salt.

Chutney simmering in a big pot, which is used only for Passover food.

Janet has lots more plans for our seder dinner tomorrow night. She's been shopping and cleaning for days. All the year-round dishes have been stored away, all the normal food is eaten up or will be discarded, and fresh Passover food and one-week-a-year dishes have replaced everything in the newly-cleaned shelves and drawers of her kitchen.  As I said before, it's quite a production!


Now for some photos of the wonderful greengrocer where Janet bought many of the ingredients for the soup and many other planned dishes. She has other sources for meat, fish, and so on.

Years ago, she says, this small but amazingly stocked store sold fruit and vegetables grown nearby, but the city has overwhelmed the farms that used to occupy land in this area, and now the owners bring in produce from other places. Beautiful produce!

So many colors of little tomatoes!

Quite a big selection of spices. I bought a few to take home.

I was amused to see the same brand of olive oil that I buy at home at Whole Foods.