🎶Time keeps on slipping… into the future…!🎶 #DaylightSaving #MyHappyPlace #FuckStandardTime

Last week in our neck of the woods, we beat cold temperatures of the North Pole. This week, the blizzard of the century promises 2 ft (more than half a meter) of snow and 50 mph (about 80 kmh) winds. New York mayor issued a travel ban on city streets tonight into tomorrow — no cars, no trucks, no e-bikes.

Meanwhile, warm and sunny Panama is on our table.

The Center of the Americas, the Crossroads of the World, Panama appropriately soaked up and adapted culinary influences of all the peoples surrounding it.

Choosing between hearty soups and stews, fried and roasted meats, rice and beans, we zeroed on fish ceviche. In Panamanian version, along with lime, fish was flavored with grapefruit and habanero. This added some softening sweetness to the dish without making it sharp.

Paired with green plantain patacones it made a nice light dinner.

#food #cooking #panamanian #ceviche #corvina #fishceviche #inmykitchen #myhappyplace #latinocuisine #patacones

For saucy recipes, I do love Chinese cauliflower. Its moppy florets — they look like someone stuck cauliflower into an elect outlet — catch sauces so much better than tightly packed ordinary ones. At the store, I always try to get the biggest head — I can live on cauliflower.

This is Cauliflower Manchurian from Hetty McKinnon’s Tenderheart. This recipe is perfect for a complete dinner entree. It satisfies even a die hard carnivore like me.

Battered in a mix of cornstarch and rice flour that is spiced with Kashmiri powder, light soy sauce, and black pepper, cauliflower florets are fried in a neutral oil sort of shallow deep fry style.

And once they are done, then there is a sauce to toss them with that has strong Asian flavors: ginger-garlic-Thai dragon-scallion whites sautéed with chopped red pepper, celery, and dressed with a mix of soy sauce, rice vinegar, ketchup, and white pepper.

We did not have any rice or roti as the recipe advises. It was perfectly fine and filling as is.

#food #cooking #cauliflower #vegetarian #asianflavors #homefood #inmykitchen #myhappyplace

Old school New York winter. Colder than Alaska. And I want to cook more than I want to eat. Looking for long slow recipes and lots of prep.

This aloo gosht from Zareen’s Pakistani Kitchen saved me on the coldest day of the winter when, as good luck would have it, our house lost heat.

Made with goat meat, lots of onions, garlic, ginger, and potatoes, spiced with cumin, coriander, garam masala, and Kashmiri chilies it raised the heat inside and outside.

#food #cooking #curry #pakistanifood #coldweather #inmykitchen #myhappyplace

I’ve never made Julia Child’s beef bourguignon and I’ve always wanted to make Julia Child’s beef bourguignon. And now I think I will never make Julia Child’s beef bourguignon.

It was a perfect day for a long slow cooking venture. Day off from work. Cold and snow outside. Nagging to-do list was more or less completed. All the ingredients were on hand. But some of the directions in the recipe were dragging me down. And some of the ingredients — like pearl onions.

And then Ruth Reichl’s newsletter dropped in. It contained a couple of suggestions to see us through the stormy weather. Beef, Wine, Onion stew was one of them.

The description — it was not a recipe — was a definite variation on the famous beef bourguignon but so liberating. No timing, no quantities — just a splash, a squirt, a pat, and as many as you feel like. And whatever. And no pearl onions.

I jotted down the plan on a sticky note and put a movie on my iPad.

Here’s what was on my note (sans the stuff in brackets):

STEP 1 — TO BROWN
— pat of butter
— lots of onions (I had 5 large ones)
— good bacon, lardons (there was a 7 oz chunk)
— carrots (I had 3)
— lots of garlic (I used 10 cloves)
— thyme (huge 5-finger pinch of dried)
— squirt of tomato paste at the end

STEP 2 — TO BROWN
— oil & butter
— beef: salt, pepper, flour (I had 3,5 lb chuck, 2”-cubed)
— deglaze with brandy

STEP 3 — 300°F, 3 HOURS
— good red wine (whole bottle)
— celery stalk
— bay leaf

STEP 4
— brown mushrooms in butter, mix in at the end (2,5 lb, quartered)
— boil potatoes to serve
— parsley to garnish

Amazing, amazing, amazing result!

For the movie — HBO put Mad Men back on. I’ve never seen it but read about it and wanted to give it a shot. Honestly, it watches like horror series.

#food #cooking #beefstew #beefbourguignon #inmykitchen #stormyweatherdinner #myhappyplace

Garden cleanup in progress.

The weather allowed not only to do some work in the garden but to light up the grill one more time.

Everything here is home grown — squash, shishitos, beans, okra, chilies — besides the chicken.

Beans and shishitos did really good this year. Beans probably because they were high up on poles. Chilies are still going strong. Planted right under the dryer vent, they built up some nice heat. Squash we evenly split with the resident groundhog — sharing is caring.

There’s still amaranth we need to collect for my stinky tofu project before deer gets it all.

Lots of okra this year. Last time we had only vigorous plants and no fruit which made me nervous. Our garden is highly visible from the street and okra leaves look suspicious if you’ve ever seen them.🤫🚬🪴

#food #cooking #gardening #homegrown #homemade #grilled #myhappyplace

The weather is changing. Garden cleanup is in progress. I am picking it up in the kitchen.

Our resident groundhog did not seem to favor poblano peppers and left us a good amount for a few dinners.

Here we got chiles relenos stuffed with a mix of chorizo, rice, and queso Oaxaca. Acidity of red onion and carrot escabeche offset the richness of the stuffing beautifully.

For the borracho beans, instead of traditional pinto, I used black ones. Refried with smoked bacon, white onion, and garlic, the beans were spiced with toasted and crushed cumin, coriander, and fennel seeds. Instead of beer, the broth had a touch of tequila.

All of the above was my interpretation of the ideas from the second oldest and best book in my collection — Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen. Probably in hopes I’d learn something about cooking, my husband gave me this book thirty years ago shorty after he came home from work on a 106°F July afternoon to be greeted by multiple fire alarms. Unfazed, I was roasting potatoes in the kitchen of our second floor apartment that did not have air conditioning. That was the only thing I knew how to cook.

I took note of the book.

#food #cooking #kitchen #mexicanfood #homemade #onmyplate #myhappyplace