Monkfish tagine with couscous

"Tagine" refers both to a Moroccan cooking vessel and to stews traditionally made in that vesel.  I cooked the fish dish in a nice tagine I bought online.

The stew is very complex.  It has a base of sauteed onions, carrots, and celery; a braising liquid of fish stock, wine, preserved lemons, and tomatoes; and a "chermoula" marinade for the fish consisting of lemon juice, olive oil, cilantro, garlic, red chiles, saffron, cumin, and sea salt.  Shredded mint leaves and freshly ground black pepper add to the complexity.

I made my own preserved lemons two months ago using this method.

Currant scones

Five-spice chicken and mustard greens

Gambas al ajillo

Corn cherry scones

Berkeley is my favorite city in the U.S.  My favorite thing about Berkeley is the Cheese Board Collective.  They put out a terrific book called The Cheese Board Collective Works with most of their recipes and much of their wisdom.

I used to eat these corn cherry scones once a week or so.  My home version was pretty darn close to the original, especially considering that I have little baking experience.  I'd rank these the second best scones I've eaten in LA, with Gjelina Take Away being tops.

Hunan food

This is an unusual dish, which follows a recipe in Fuchsia Dunlop's book on Hunan cuisine "Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook."  Ms. Dunlop says that the dish was a favorite of Chairman Mao.  The recipe calls for stir-frying pieces of smoked trout, seasoning them with fermented black beans and chili oil, and then steaming them until tender.

This is sauteed snow pea leaves with garlic

This is a humble bowl of jasmine rice.

Vietnamese rice noodle salad with shrimp and fish balls

Sichuan dan dan noodles with tofu

Trenne with cauliflower-anchovy sauce

Indian food

Poached orange roughy in cilantro cream sauce with mint and nut pilaf

Braised okra

Risotto with wild mushrooms and gorgonzola

Spaghettini with tomatoes and bacalao

I had some incredibly tasty heirloom tomatoes that were getting old and a pot of soaking bacalao (salt cod) that I didn't know what to do with, so I made this.  Really good.  Just pasta, tomatoes, olive oil and salt is enough to make a winning meal if the quality of the ingredients is good.

Pasta in sage cream sauce with sauteed morels

Heirloom tomatoes with marinated buffalo mozzarella

Chicken, peas, and mashed potatoes

Mom is great.  She sent me some fresh shelled conch peas, my favorite kind of peas.  So far as I know, they're only found in Florida.  I cooked them in duck fat and some turkey ham from Whole Foods.  Delicious, but not as good as back home.

 












I had this with some Argentian white wine from a varietal called torrontes.  I've been blown away by my last two bottles of torrontes.  This bottle was Camino del Inca 2010.

Sichuan food

I made this a while ago.

Mung beans in coconut curry

Greek braised octopus and eggplant

with roasted cashew pilaf

Lotus root in roasted-cumin yogurt sauce

The diversity of Raghavan Iyer's cookbook 660 Curries is extraordinary.  The book has no fewer than three recipes for lotus root--a vegetable I have not encountered at any Indian restaurant.  This excellent recipe calls for simmering chopped lotus root on a base of sauteed garlic, ginger, and green Thai chilis and then bathing it in a sauce of yogurt, heavy cream, ground roasted cumin, and chopped cilantro.

Noodles with shredded chicken in sichuan sesame sauce