Mmm ... bowl of spicy soup

After the long, tiring week that was, I felt like starting this week's cooking adventures off with a soup. So, we started perusing one of my favorite soup books Best-ever Soups by Anne Sheasby. We landed upon this spicy moroccan lentil soup - actually an old-time favorite, but I figured we'd make it a little differently this time using some of the ideas from Anne's recipe. We chose to skip the garbanzo since it often tends to overwhelm the flavors and I really enjoy the dominant flavor of puy lentils in a spicy soup. The whole process took us only about 30 minutes, cooking the lentils (20 minutes) just happened in parallel with the cooking of the veggies.

Simple, straightforward, stellar flavor!

Spicy Moroccan Lentil Soup

Servings: 3 giant bowls


1.5 cups of dried puy lentils
1/2 red onion - sliced
1 carrot - diced
2 medium tomatoes - chopped
1" ginger
4 garlic cloves
1 jalapeno
1 t olive oil
1 t cinnamon powder
1 t fennel seeds
1/2 t turmeric powder
1 t lemon juice
2 T chopped fennel
kosher salt

Cook the lentils in 3 cups of water in a pressure cooker. If cooking them on the stove, use about 3.5 cups of water.
Grind the ginger, garlic and jalapeno into a fine paste, adding water if needed.
In a large saucepan, saute the fennel seeds and onions in the olive oil for about 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes, carrots, ginger+garlic+jalapenos. After about 2 minutes, add the turmerc, cinnamon and salt. Stir occasionally and simmer covered - for about 15 minutes.
Once the lentils are done, throw them in, stir for a couple of minutes before taking off the stove. Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle with the chopped fennel and a few drops of lemon juice.

And if you love the spice (like I do!), maybe you'll add a dash or two of hot sauce! :) We had some onion pita bread from Trader Joe's on hand - we toasted these for dipping in the lentil soup. Got to love that TJs!


With all the fennel that this soup has plus the fact that it came from my veggie patch, it has got to be a Weekend Herb Blogging entry! (WHB #103)

Roasted vegetables + Spicy polenta = close to perfect meal

I could term this a perfect meal, but nothing's perfect, right? :) Wait, the last post was about a perfect seafood meal ... hmm, guess that was just marred by the totally imperfect picture!

I've kind of rediscovered The Complete Cookbook in the last few weeks - this is one of my oldest cookbooks and I've used several recipes from it, but it seems like I've also skimmed through a lot of other truly mouthwatering recipes. As I was flipping through the pages yesterday, this roasted vegetable salad totally caught my eye - it seemed like another of those "let's get into Fall" recipes and we had most of the workings for it :) Turned a few more pages and we stumbled upon a polenta recipe that seemed like a good match.

The veggie salad called for parsnips along with dutch potatoes, onions and carrots - Hmm ... no parnsips! We just went with a bell pepper and some pearl onions instead. Worked pretty well, especially with the killer dressing we made for it!

Roasted Vegetable Salad

5 baby dutch potatoes - halved
20-25 pearl onions - soaked in hot water and peeled
4 carrots - cut into 4" long strips
1 green bell pepper - quartered
2 t poppy seeds
1 T olive oil
a few pieces of brie

Toss the vegetables in the olive oil and bake uncovered in a greased pan at 400 F for 50 minutes. Once the veggies are done, toss them with the poppy seeds and set back in the oven for 5-7 minutes. This browns the poppy seeds a bit and makes them even crunchier.

Dressing:
========
1/3 cup orange juice (the pulpier the better)
1 T horseradish paste (dijon mustard would work too, but we liked this flavor better)
1/4 t thai red chilli paste
1 t sesame oil
kosher salt

Whisk all the ingredients together and toss with the vegetables. Top with the brie once these are laden onto the plates.


We started working on the polenta as the veggies were being roasted. Again, the original recipe called for leeks, but we didn't have any on hand. So, we went with a bunch of green onions instead - a worthy substitute!

Spicy polenta with green onion topping

1.5 cup of cornmeal
6 cups of water
1 t garam masala
1/2 t chilli powder
1 t cumin seeds salt
3-4 oz fontina cheese - finely cubed
7-8 green onions - chopped

Saute the green onions in about 1/4 t of butter and set aside.

Once the water boiled, we poured the polenta in a fine stream, stirring constantly to avoid lumping. Well, we didn't avoid it - but we worked at it with a vengeance till it got smooth again. Phew! Stirring polenta is such a pain! But this was worth the effort. We tossed in the spices and kept stirring - about 20 minutes till it was finally done. I doled it out on a plate - kind of like a mound and topped it with the green onions and a few cubes of fontina. After the stirring workout, it tasted delicious! :)

Halibut meets grape leaves

This was one of those perfect seafood meals. It was also one of those "Damn! The camera is on the fritz!" meals! :)

While poking around for interesting fish recipes, I came across JenBlossom's post about halibut with lemon butter. Soon, I was trolling the Food&Wine recipe collection looking for other halibut recipes. This one about halibut roasted in grape leaves caught my eye. We haven't had grape leaves in a long while, and this recipe sounded really simple and quick. In one of those rare instances, we pretty much followed the recipe, except for using halibut fillets with the skin on - not a problem since it peeled off real easily once they were baked.

We really wanted to get all pieces of our meal ready at the same time, it truly sucks when an entree sits around getting cold while the sides are still being worked on! After a little juggling, we figured out how to create a packet of grape leaves, drizzle it with olive oil and chopped thyme and seasoning and wrap the halibut in it. Soon, 4 pretty pouches went into the oven :) In the meantime, we chopped up some yukon gold potatoes and sauteed those with vidalia onions - seasoning was a dash of cayenne, some cumin powder and rock salt. And this time, we seasoned it with a bunch of italian parsley instead of the usual cilantro. It worked really well!

The other side was an old favorite - fresh green beans sauteed in a soy sauce+rice vinegar+grapeseed oil+sesame seeds reduction. Tasty, like always!

Once the fish was out, we unwrapped the grape leaves and drizzled the lemon-mustard dressing over the halibut - it was so yummy, can't wait to try it on some veggies next time!

It was a fabulous meal, but the camera was out to lunch, so all we have is this one sad picture!


End result: Autumn was happy! Very happy! :)

Pooch Treats!

After everything that Vodka has been through over the last few days, he deserves loads of treats and many swims in the lake! The latter is yet to come, but we figured we'd get started on the yummy treats part :)


Pretty amazing how a bunch of fruits and some oatmeals makes for fabulous doggy cookies. Actually, they're pretty appealing to the human palate too, I snuck one when Vodka wasn't looking!

Apple'n'Pear cookies

2 honey crisp apples - diced
1 pear - diced
1/3 stick of butter
2 cups of oatmeal - softened in warm water
1/2 cup of milk

Melt the butter, mix in the fruit chunks, add the oatmeal and milk, mix it all up. Drop spoons of it onto a greased baking tray. Bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes.


Vodka says *drool*!

Rice Mixup, mon?!

Indian rice dishes are among the best out there, what with pulao and biriyani and bisibela and vangi bath, the list just goes on! But then there are the fiery latin and caribbean flavors that arouse all the senses - the paellas and beans'n'rice and arroz con something or the other!

Last night was definitely a rice night, after poking around Didi Emmons' book, we stumbled upon this yummy looking Jamaican rice mixup recipe that we morphed to work with what we had. Instead of using regular long-grain rice, we use this nutty rice and lentils mix that I found at PCC a few weeks ago. With 3 kinds of wild and brown rice as well as red lentils, it ends up bursting with flavor and blends really well with strong spices like cumin and coriander. All the stores seem to be teeming with squashes right now, so we settled for this Delicata squash - even as I cut it, it seemed to be redolent of sweet potato rather than squash. Well, wikipedia seems to think the same! :) We went with onions and spinach, but skipped the usual black beans since our rice mix already had lentils.

Jamaican Rice Mixup

1/2 large red onion - minced
5 cloves garlic
1" ginger
1 jalapeno
1 delicata squash - peeled and diced
20-25 leaves of baby spinach - cut into long shreds
1.5 cups of wild/brown rice + red lentils
chives for seasoning
salt'n'pepper

Spices:
1 t coriander powder
1 t allspice powder
1 t saffron

Cook the rice in 2.5 cups of water. In the meantime, saute the onions in 1 T of olive oil. Grind up the ginger, garlic and green chillies and throw them in. Once the onions are translucent, add the squash along with 1/2 cup of water. Add the spices and simmer covered till the squash is cooked. Add the cooked rice along with the spinach. Stir in the salt and pepper and cook for 1-2 minutes longer.

Garnish? Chives fresh from the veggie patch :)


I was hankering for a side for this and wasn't quite sure what would go with it. We finally settled on a raita. Since this rice had strong flavors like indian food, the raita ended up being the perfect complement. And it took all of 5 minutes! One grated carrot and a spoon of mango pickle stirred into 2 cups of buttermilk. Done! :)

Fusilli e Bean Casserole

Today felt like a non-desi comfort food day. Hmm ... mac'n'cheese? No, I was craving something more nutritious than that! :)

After poking around several cookbooks, I finally embarked on making a veggie-filled pasta bake. As the fusilli cooked, I started gathering the makings for the base. A bunch of green beans were on hand, a ripe'n'ready-to-burst tomato was waiting too. And maybe some olives?

Fusilli e Bean Casserole

3 cups fusilli - cooked al dente
1 large ripe vine tomato
1/3 lb green beans - parboiled
10 green olives
1/2 cup nonfat milk
2 T all purpose flour
1/3 cup light havarti cheese - grated
2-3 t chopped chives
1/2 cup of breadcrumbs (or) crumbled flatbread, which was all I had on hand
red pepper flakes
salt to taste

After pureeing the peeled tomato, I added the minced olives in. The next step was to make a nonfat white sauce by roasting the flour in a dry pan over heat and adding the milk, constantly stirring to avoid clumping. I figured chives might give the sauce a good flavor - especially since I was skipping onions and garlic this time! It only took about 2-3 minutes to get a sauce consistency - I mixed this into the tomato puree, added the pasta, beans and cheese. The last step was to toss the mixture with salt and red pepper flakes before pouring into a baking pan and sprinkling with the flatbread crumbs.

It only took 15 minutes of baking at 375 F to finish cooking the pasta goodness!

Spicy eggplant!

Eggplant is one of those weird vegetables - it seems to take a lot of thinking to find the "right" recipe for it. And it either turns out fabulous or really crappy, no in between!

I was looking for a side to go with some dosas a few days ago, and realized I had some really fresh indian eggplant waiting to be cooked up. After much dithering, I decided to go with a simple, straightforward recipe - stuffed & baked. After slicing off the tops of the little eggplants, I made a cross cut lengthwise in each of those - for filling with the stuffing. I had some sambar powder that I'd made a few days ago - seemed like the perfect filling. I loaded up the eggplants with the powder+salt, spritzed them with some oil spray and baked them for about 15 minutes at 400 F. For the first time ever, I garnished these with some chopped fennel - the combination of flavors was awesome!


Hmm ... this is an odd picture, these look more like dates than eggplants!!! :)

Chowder?

What could be better than a bowl chowder to welcome fall? Though I'm not quite ready to admit that summer is over as yet (I'm still hitting the farmers' markets seeking out summer vegetables!), nothing quite like a chunky corn'n'leek chowder to embrace autumn!

Seriously, this is one of my best soup recipes *ever*. I pored over my Soups book hoping to find the perfect chowder recipe that I could use with the leeks and tomato from my veggie patch. Hmm ... couldn't quite find the right recipe, so I morphed several ideas together and came up with this:

Fiery Leek and Corn Chowder

6 leeks (small)
corn kernels scraped off from 2 ears of shucked corn
3-4 cloves of garlic
1/2 green bell pepper - finely chopped
1 medium ripe tomato - peeled and chopped
3-4 thai chillies - sliced lengthwise
1/3 cup of nonfat milk
some chives

Chop off the greens from the leeks and cooked them for 3-4 minutes in 1/2 cup of water. Once wilted, puree these along with the tomato pieces and half of the corn kernels. Chop the rest of the leeks and saute in 1/4 T of butter - I've noticed that just a teeny bit of butter brings out the smell and flavor of leeks so much better than oil! Throw in the garlic, thai chillies, bell pepper and the rest of the corn. Cook for about 4-5 minutes before adding the leek-tomato-corn puree. Cook covered on low for about 10 minutes after seasoning with salt. Finally, simmer the chowder for 1-2 minutes after throwing in about 1/3 cup of milk.


Hmm ... seasoning? Snipped chives from my veggie patch :) And a few gratings of oaxacan skim cheese. *wow*! Seriously, this was the perfect way to welcome fall! The chowder was warm and comforting, yet had a zing to it courtesy of the thai chillies!

Noodlin' time!

Every once in a while, I get this intense craving for indo-chinese food, good stuff like what we get at Cascade in Madras, not like what one finds at Bamboo Garden in Redmond!

In honor of those good times, I embarked on making hakka noodles a couple of nights ago. I was a little apprehensive about how it would turn out, nostalgic flavors sometimes lead to disappointment! But this one turned out ok :) Obviously, I'll still take Cascade's noodles over mine, but this was good enough to keep me going till the next visit to Madras happens!


I started off cooking a bag of hakka noodles (flat noodles found at indian and chinese stores) in boiling water for about 10 -12 minutes. In the meantime, the veggies got prepped: 1 red onion, 5-6 cloves of garlic, 2" ginger (finely chopped), 4-5 thai red chillies, a handful of peanuts sauteed in 1 T of sesame oil. I added julienned carrots and red bell peppers and sauteed till they were cooked. The seasoning was pretty simple - a few spoons of soy sauce, some sweet and sour sauce, a few spoons of rice vinegar and a dash of green chilli sauce. *smile*!

Good old upma

One of my ultimate comfort foods - upma - rava, rice, vermicelli, whatever. And I had a serious yen for rava upma last night. Apna Bazar now carries the real upma rava, not the super fine cream of wheat which makes for a poor, often lumpy, substitute! After dithering between using bansi rava or upma rava, I finally settled on trying the upma rava.


Most folks reading this blog probably know an upma recipe by heart, but for those who don't, I'll put down my recipe anyway. This upma was replete with a ton of veggies - colorful goodness, especially tomatoes from my patch! :)

Rava Upma

2 cups of rava (roasted)
3-4 green chillies
1" ginger - minced
1 medium red onion - chopped
2 medium tomatoes - chopped
12-15 roasted peanuts
a pinch of turmeric
salt to taste
cilantro

Seasoning:
1 t black mustard seeds
1 t urad dal
1 t channa dal
1 t sesame oil
8-10 curry leaves


Heat the oil and cook the seasoning. Throw in the ginger, green chillies and onions and saute till the onions are translucent. Add the tomatoes, peanuts and turmeric, cook for about a minute and then add 4.5 cups of water and salt. Cook covered till the water starts boiling. Now throw in the rava, lower the heat to simmer covered till the rava absorbs the water and is cooked.

Garnish with lots of chopped cilantro :)

Upma goes great with sambar, chutney and most south indian sides. I ended up eating this with some left over mor kozhambu and my mum's mango pickle *yum*!

Eating my way through a Tortilla Stack :)

My sis made this fabulous mango-pineapple salsa over the weekend, and (like always!) had a ton left over. So, I inherited a box of it *drool*! I was wondering if I should save it for dipping into over a few days or just use it all up. Well, given that I was staring at a little pile of corn tortillas, I couldn't help but use it!

I poked around my Didi Emmons' Vegetarian Planet book, trying to find some recipe that I could work the salsa into. Tortilla Stacks! Sounded real simple and quick to make. The salsa seemed to have gotten a bit runny with the juices of the mango, pineapple and tomatoes. I drained out the liquid from the salsa and saved for possible use later.


The first step was to bake a bunch of tortillas till they got crisp. Then I placed 2 tortillas side by side in a loaf pan and added layers of salsa, grated oaxacan string cheese, pinto beans and tortillas. Four more layers went on, following by drizzling the salsa liquid over the tortillas. I baked the stacks for 10 minutes at 375 F. They came out looking quite happy.

The final seasoning for the stacks was a drizzle of diluted light sour cream mixed with some gongura pickle.


Muy yummy!

Plantain curry becomes vadais!

I felt like more kozhambu the other day. And I had some yellow squash for it - perfect! And some vazhakai (green plantains) curry, maybe?

I didn't feel like doing the usual cook/dice/saute with the plantains, so I opted for something different. Grated plantains - almost like a podimaas, but not that granular. So, I grated the plantains and threw them into a pan with a seasoning of a tsp of sesame oil, mustard seeds, urad dal, asafoetida, turmeric and some red chillies.

Just as I threw in a cup of water, I went "Ooops! Too much water!" Hmm, I let it cook for a bit, but soon realized I needed to salvage this differently. Bake it, maybe? Well, that worked fabulously! I made the grated plantain mixture into vadais, doused them with some oil spray and baked at 400 for about 15 minutes.


Yum!

========

Seems like this is going to be my submission for JFI: Banana, it is my only plantain recipe for all of september!

Ridge Gourd mojo!

I finally figured out the english name for one of my fave indian vegetables - peerkangai (tamil), turia (hindi) is ridge gourd in english - which makes perfect sense: it does have ridges, and it is a gourd :)

Whoa! Wikipedia says that this ridge gourd is of the same species as a loofah. Crazy!

I snapped up some really fresh looking ridge gourd from Apna Bazar in Bellevue (they've opened in the old home of the much hated Regal Foods). I often think of trying something different with it, but I always end up making the masiyal that we ate so often growing up - *so* good!

Peerkangai Masiyal

Couple of ridge gourds - peeled, cored and diced
1 cup of tuar dal
a pinch of turmeric salt
2 T lemon juice

Seasoning:
1 t sesame oil
1 t mustard
1 t urad dal
3 green chillies - chopped
1" ginger - minced 8-10 curry leaves
a pinch of asafoetida

While the tuar dal is cooking, roast these spices in the oil and then toss in the gourd pieces. Add the turmeric and about 1/2 cup of water and cook on medium till the veggies are done. Throw in the cooked tuar dal, salt and stir for about a minute before taking it off the stove. Add the lemon juice and garnish with cilantro.

Happy!

Random pic: First tomato I plucked from my veggie patch :)

Quinoa and other great flavors

Peru is chockful of good things - Macchu Picchu, Cuzco, Nazca, pisco ... and quinoa! And tonight was time for a quinoa pilaf - simple, yet delectable.

After the usual ritual of rinsing the quinoa several times in cold water (the grains have a bitter coating called saponin that can often irritate the stomach lining and needs to be washed off), I cooked it in a pot of water with some salt and a few drops of olive oil. As I poked around trying to find some veggies to go with it, I found this jar of pickled asparagus. Hmm ... and a bag of frozen shelled edamame - sounds weird, but it tastes pretty good. Seems like I had the makings for a green pilaf!


The base was a bunch of chopped scallions and yellow wax beans sauteed with a spoon of olive oil and some garlic. I then threw in the asparagus spears bits and a couple of cups of boiled edamame. Once the quinoa was cooked, I tossed it with the veggies and threw in some of that fabulous Melinda's habanero sauce and a spoon of lemon-ginger juice. And garnished it with some toasted cashews.


Simple, yet delectable. Did I already say that? :)

Yay! Dosas!

Dosas always make me happy. Very happy! And this time, they made Stephanie & Shawn super happy too! They were long overdue for a south indian food tasting, so the makings were pretty traditional. Figured I'd go with a chutney, sambar and some veggies.

The chutney was super simple, and turned out awesome! I just blended a bunch of cilantro, bengal gram, couple of green chillies and seasoned it with lemon-ginger juice and salt. Yummy!

The sambar was a little different - no coconut this time since Stephanie is not a fan of it. No onions either. So, it was a simple broccoli sambar. I love the earthy texture and flavor that coconut lends to the sambar spices, so I figured I needed some other flavor to compensate for it - I went with some pureed tomatoes instead. It turned out pretty good!

The highlight though was the grilled sunburst squash. I just chopped up the squash and marinated it for about 15 minutes in a lemon-ginger-garlic-olive oil marinade before grilling the bits. The flavors were fabulous! The Ballard and Redmond farmers markets have been carrying some awesome squashes this summer - am truly going to miss the sunbursts (along with the sunshine!) when summer is gone :(

Rajmah Anardhana ... sort of! :)

Every once in a while, I get a craving for a different kind of lentils - not the usual tuar dhal with some veggies. So, I poked around my books until I found this recipe for rajmah (who wouldn't love that?!) flavored with pomegranate seeds. Rock! I got all excited about this! Wait ... no rajmah - canned or raw! And I don't feel like running to the store. Hmm ... how about white kidney beans instead? A lot softer, but it might work. And it did! The next time around, I might go a little easier on the masala, seems like the red beans absorb a lot more of the spices than the cannellini beans.


The original recipe that I based off of (someday, I'll try to follow a recipe all the way instead of improvising along the way :)) is from Art of Indian Cuisine - I bought this book at Landmark last year.

Rajmah Anardhana
(my morphed version!)

2 C of cannellini beans
1T butter
1 onion - minced
2t ginger paste
2t garlic paste
1/2 C tomato puree
1t turmeric

2T pomegranate seeds

For the masala
===========
2t dhania seeds
3 red chillies
2t jeera seeds
4 cloves
1" cinnamon
rock salt

Dry roast and grind the spices for the masala.

How to:
======
Cook the beans (if using raw beans) in about 6 cups of water till tender, mash some of the beans against the side of the pan
Heat the butter and add the onions, ginger and garlic. I massively cut down on the butter needed, so this step took quite a while!
Add the tomato puree and cook for another minute
Throw in the masala and turmeric along with the salt and cook for 2-3 minutes
Add the beans to this and bring to a boil - takes about 5-7 minutes

Dry roast and grind the pomegranate seeds to a fine powder before adding it to the beans. Garnish with a ton of cilantro :)

I felt the craving for salad, indian style, to go with this. So, I chopped up a bunch of veggies and drizzled them with lemon-ginger juice. It made for a much prettier picture than most other dishes! :)

Pasta makes me happy!

I found this new sprouted wheat papardelle at Trader Joe's (not a day goes by without my revelling in the glory of that store!) the other day - and it looked curious enough to try out. Hmm ... hearty pasta with a nutty flavor ... I wasn't quite sure what kind of sauce that warranted - I finally just tossed the pasta with some extra virgin olive oil and added a simple artichoke garlic sauce seasoned with a generous helping of red pepper flakes. The artichoke tasted pretty good with the pasta, but I think I can do better here. The nuttiness warrants a tarter sauce - maybe a spicy marinara or even just a balsamic vinegar reduction.

The pasta ended up looking pretty boring, resulting in this almost monochromatic picture!


The pasta was decent, but the tomato salad that went with it was mucho fabuloso! I can't wait to make this again :)

Tomato Bread Salad

1 lb of sugar plum tomatoes - halved (it doesn't take that long :))
10-12 basil leaves - shredded
1/2 red onion - sliced thin
2 olive rolls (from the amazing Trader Joe's)

Cut the olive rolls into this slices and soak them in a shallow bowl of water for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, lightly saute the onions and toss them with the tomatoes and basil. Squeeze most of the water out of the rolls and shred the slices into bite size pieces. Toss these along with the tomato mix in 1 T olive oil + moscato vinegar + kosher salt + pepper. Love it!

Broiled Salmon in Citrus-Cilantro Pesto

We stumbled across an old edition of Cook's Illustrated that had a pretty interesting article about broiling salmon in a variety of sauces. Having never broiled salmon before, we jumped on this article and proceeded to dissect it :) We quickly discovered that this "How to Broil Salmon" article was incredibly confusing - every sauce recipe (there were 5 of them) refers to a part of one of the other recipes! *grr*

We finally figured it out and went with the cilantro pesto sauce - a very refreshing flavor for a hot summer evening. But we soon ran into bigger problems - the broiler didn't quite seem to be working! So, we had to stick with using the oven instead - the flavors were great, but we didn't quite get the crispy crust we wanted. I think we're going to try the crushed potato chips + bread crumbs for the crust the next time around.

We seasoned the salmon fillets (about 1 lb) with some olive oil, kosher salt and pepper and let it sit under the broiler for about 7-9 minutes. In the meantime, we made up the sauce by blending these:

1 bunch cilantro
5-6 cloves of garlic
1 bunch scallions
1 jalapeno
juice of 1 lemon

We went back and forth on whether we wanted shallots or onions or scallions. And the scallions were perfect - not overwhelming, just a little pungent, quite yummy!

Hmm ... broiler disaster! So, we upped the oven temperature to about 475, let the salmon bake for a couple more minutes and then coated it with the pesto, rolled it in panko and stuck it back in the oven for another 7-9 minutes. Hmm ... still not browned! Another 7 minutes? That helped some, but this crispy crust needs some work!

Well, the sauce perfectly complemented the salmon, so no complaints there! And our sides were perfect - roast potatoes with onions, cumin and a dash of cayenne and green beans cooked in a soy-rice vinegar reduction with sesame seeds. The green beans side was the star of the night, I'll need to cook that again soon!

The picture I took was way too lame to post, I'll just have to cook this again for a good picture :)