A Brownian Walk Through Life...

(recipe enhanced from this original post back in 2010!) Do you cook with a celery root (also called celeriac)? It's in season right about now.. along with other root vegetables like parsnip and rutbaga and it's divine! It has a unique mild lemony celery-ish taste. I find it to be an amazing starch to be working with in fall and quite fancy compared to the same old potatoes or parsnips. It can be quite daunting, and to be frank - unappealing, the very first time you are faced with picking one up... in it's unprocessed form it resembles a misshapen turnip with beards growing here and there. But once you get past the unfamiliarity of a new intimidating vegetable, it's actually quite a pleasure to cook with and very easy!  Just peel the outer skin using a knife and chop into bite sized pieces and then you can use it wherever you would use a potato or parsnip. I like this soup in particular because it let's the subtle taste of celery…

In the world of weeknight dinners, when you are trying to balance speed, healthy meal and fresh home cooked one, nothing takes the prize like the stir-frys! They are fast, healthy and are ready within a jiffy if you have all the ingredients at hand. This is one of our house favorite stir-fry version. Most of the ingredients can be scavenged from the fridge and the recipe is very amenable to any seasonal veggies and proteins. The one thing I wouldn't swap out, as much as possible, is the Thai basil - which really brings out a fresh vibrant and slightly lemony basily taste to it. But if you don't have handy, you can try Italian basil or just sprinkle dried basil. Every Saturday we shop for vegetables and fruits at our local farmer's market. Summer is a special treat because there is an abundance of choices, so feel free to mix it up a bit! Thai Vegetable Stir-Fry: Ingredients: 1 small packet of extra firm tofu - cubed 4 button mushroo…

If you need a fresh hot home-made snack for those last minute guests, neighborhood get-together or playdates, look no further than these puff pastry rolls with pesto. They are super tasty and every single time I whipped up a plate, not a single one was left behind! You can whip them out of oven and serve on a platter with a side of chopped fruits and tea/coffee, and it seems a mid-day meal fit for a king! No-one needs to know that all it took was 15 minutes of assembly, prep and bake time :) Trader Joe's carries these amazing frozen puff pasty rolls . Each packet contains 2 sheets for $3.99. One sheet makes 18 puff pasty rolls (shown in the picture below) which is plenty to snack on for 4 people (or 2 very hungry folks!). Our nearby store does not carry puff pasty the whole year but only in the fall during holidays - so I always make it a point to stock up a few when I see them in the frozen aisle. Other than frozen puff pasty sheets, the only oth…

When life gives you lemons.... and I mean, a tree loaded with high quality juicy and orangy Meyer lemons.... the kind which sell for $1 each at farmer's markets... you got to be more creative than making lemonades! We use these Meyer lemons in everyday cooking, we freeze the juice in as many ice-boxes as we can, gift them to neighbors and still be leftover with a large bunch to use.  We don't enjoy lemon curd as much and while we devour lemon bars, it seems more butter and sugar than lemons - and predictably guilt ensues :)  So this year I decided to try preserving some lemons and wow, am I glad we tried that! Preserving is very simple. All it takes is 15-20mins of prep time and then a few seconds of work each for next 5-6 days and that's that! You put the container in fridge and enjoy homemade preserved lemons for a few months to come!  My favorite way to use preserved lemons is to rinse them (to get rid of excess salt) and chop them fine…

They say every recipe has a story to tell. The older the recipe, the better is that story as generations of home cooks give a part of their times and lives to that story; making the story more and more richer, along with the recipe. This is one such recipe. It's a well loved recipe native to the vast farmlands of central India - close to my homeland. Farmer's life is a hard life in that region subjected to the many whims of weather and landlords. This recipe originated in one such farmland out of necessity.  As the story goes, a poor farmer's wife was looking to put together a lunch for her family working in the unusually strong heat of the mid-day farmland. The crop that year had been ruined and all she had to go with were onions - green onions.  She was driven by the necessities but was very creative, so she picked up few large bunches of green onions, separated the whites from greens and chopped both very very fine. Then she made a simp…

Just as the weather starts warming up, our local California farmer's market welcomes the onset of spring with baskets and baskets full of broccolini.  For a long time I thought broccolini was the young broccoli, just as spring onions are the young onions. Turns out not so per our farmer's market vendor lady who is as knowledgeable about her vegetables as wikipedia, truly, and on top will be more than happy to give you tried and tasted recipes from her kitchen - just in case you need that extra push trying out something unfamiliar. And she is quite right of-course; broccolini is similar to broccoli but with smaller florets and very thin and long stocks. Wiki pronounces it as a hybrid. It also has a slightly stronger punch than regular broccoli so you may find it slightly bitter if you cook it without steaming first. Steaming takes the edge off of it and it's just delightful steamed and sauteed and finished with a good quality finishing salt. …

It was one of those perfect Saturday mornings when you wake up to the pounding of an unceasing rain on the window panes and you silently say a prayer for the little pleasures of life: for this day being a weekend - to be able to sleep in late and to avoid a rainy messy bay area commute that otherwise would have been the morning. Instead I woke up to a steamy hot cup of coffee and spent the next hour enjoying an elaborate breakfast flipping through the news and recipes on nytimes - my favorite weekend boot me ups. As one thing leads to other, daughter and I decided that this morning called for baking! I truly find baking therapeutic - there is something about the act of mixing the dough and then waiting for the baked goodies to be ready while your entire kitchen wafts with an aroma that is so reminiscent of your favorite bakery or your coffee shop - just acts as a very positive, rejuvenating force for me, signalling the start of the weekend, the start of …