Pumpkin dal

I have always been the one (shamelessly so you might add!) who sneaks in a new untested recipe on unsuspecting guests. It always scares my Mom whenever I tell her I am 'experimenting' on a new recipe when there are guests in-house. But really, for me, trying out a new recipe is like a cook's reward, something that keeps me going. Sure, there have been a few mishaps and last minute runs to Safeway to activate backups, but more than often the new dish has been a great hit and has kept the fun going for me in entertaining!

So we had an unplanned visit from a few close friends last night. As luck would have it all I had on hand was pumpkins - two small sugar pie pumpkins which I had picked up on my morning TJ's visit. Together we brain-stormed a lot about what to cook and finally decided to be brave enough to make it a pumpkin night.. afterall isn't Halloween just around the corner! I made the traditional Marathi lal-bhoplyachi bhaji (red pumpkin sabji) with some left-over butternut squash soup from a day before. Our sweet ending was the pumpkin kheer which I was fairly confident would turn out well considering I had just made it the week before... and now my experimentation began! I have been itching to try my hands on this pumpkin dal recipe for quite some time now and what better company to try this on than a few unsuspecting close friends who are always game to be the perfect guinea-pigs :)

On a stormy cold evening we gathered together in the dining room overlooking the pouring rain with a scrumptious meal of rice, pumpkin dal and lemon pickle with a side of a bold merlot and needless to say the freshest batch of gossip and a whole lot of giggling over nothing!

Pumpkin kheer/pumpkin pudding

Nothing screams fall like the rows and rows of neatly arranged pumpkins and squashes! The pumpkin display in front of our local Trader Joe's stores is so adorable that no visit to the groceries is complete for me now a days without picking up a new squash to try.

Last weekend I bought a small sugar pie pumpkin for a pumpkin pie. I halved the pumpkin and roasted it for an hour and half until sweet and moist. Just when I was mashing up the pumpkin I realized I had no eggs at hand. A last minute change of plans and some scavenger hunt later, I thought why not try some pumpkin kheer instead...

All I had was non-fat milk at hand but the kheer was still extremely creamy and wonderful tasting due to the freshly roasted and mashed pumpkins. Trust me, I am not a person with much sweet tooth, but this kheer was so simple and tasty that I gobbled half of it myself for dinner and next day breakfast!

Afterall it is the festivities and what better way to celebrate than some sweet pumpkin pudding. Happy Dasara to all!

Roasted butternut squash soup

Fall has finally arrived! Leaves are turning red, evenings are just a tiny bit chilly, Starbucks is serving its pumpkin latte and what all that means for me is one things.. time to make lots and lots of soups again!

I bought a butternut squash on sale at Trade Joe's. I was thinking of making the curried butternut squash soup I had made earlier but feeling a bit adventurous with extra extra pumpkin caffeine, this time I decided to try a long lost Cooking Light recipe that I vaguely remembered reading a few years back at a dentist's office (have you noticed how you never forget a recipe that you read at dentists's office, guess its the pain of whats coming ahead or something...)

The recipe is very simple. Original one called for chopping the squash into cubes and then cooking with stock and then slightly spicing it up with nutmeg. When it comes to butternut squash I always prefer roasting rather than chopping (the squash is way too tough to cut using any of the knives I have in my repertoire! Once its roasted though then its really easy to scoop up the cooked squash out.

This turned out to be a simple and yet extremely flavorful soup. Its best served on a cold night as an appetizer with some garlic bread (regular whole wheat or sourdough bread toasted with a bit of olive oil and then rubbed with some fresh garlic for a light garlicky flavor)

A Mexican fair.. tacos with sun sugar tomatoes and peach salsa

What do you do when life showers you with cherry tomatoes? Experiment with different versions of salsas of-course!

Last spring a very dear friend of mine gifted us this tiny sun sugar tomato plant which to my utter amazement has grown over 5' tall (yes, thats 5 feet!) and is bearing fruits like crazy! When I planted it I expected a regular sized tomato plant only to realize within a month or so that the plant is growing frantically crazy. I had to quickly research my caging options. A trip to Home Depot later, I managed to cage the plant but two months later is looks like we should have bought the larger cage. Who knew a tomato plant could grow that tall! 

A fun aspect of being a first-time gardener is you learn through mistakes. Now I know that there is something like an indeterminate tomato plant and the sun sugar variety falls into that - what it means is the plant will grow indeterminate only capped by the length of the season. In the world of indeterminate tomato plants, >5' tall plants are not that uncommon actually!

Sun sugar is a very sweet small tomato variety with a slight orangy flavor. Due to its sweetness and fruits tones its great for snacking as is or in salsas or salads. I made a roasted tomato pasta sauce, tossed it in salads here and there, snacked a lot on them and still the plant is laden with fruit! Got any cherry tomato recipes up your sleeve :) 

Today's recipe is a simple peach and sweet tomato salsa. I made this quick throw together Mexican meal recently with a spicy black bean filling and a tangy tomatillo salsa (both recipes upcoming soon) and this slightly sweet, slightly sour salsa was perfect with the meal. If you don't have sun sugar tomatoes, feel free to use any cherry tomatoes.

Vegetarian tacos with sweet tomato and peach salsa

Yes, I'm here...

I know this space has been a bit quiet recently so I thought I'll stop by and say a quick hi.

Incidentally, this is my favorite time of the year! Summer is slowly turning into fall. There is a slight welcoming chill in the air (or may be that's because the summer never really came to the bay this year). I have been working a lot, weekdays and weekend, and cooking whenever I get a chance. Largely though I have been surviving on 20-min dinners and batch-cooked Sunday meals. I haven't been cooking anything fancy or new, just the everyday food that we somehow take for granted and never photograph :)

On the outdoorsy side, the garden is in full-bloom. My tomato plants are thriving; guavas are maturing, squirrels are devouring the figs and basil never looked any better. After a long struggles even the baby hummingbird who had nested nearby learnt to fly!

I know the recipes are missing recently but I am planning to be back very very soon. Yes, I promise :) Till then, leaving you with some of the garden macro shots that my husband recently took.

The garden weeds:

A photo journey through Seattle's Pike Place market

This year summer never came to the bay. It rained a lot till April and somehow we slipped into a late-winter/fall like weather, skipping the summer entirely. Not that I am complaining. I am one of those people who are perfectly happy spending my weekends cuddled on sofa reading a good book with a cup of coffee instead of sun-bathing on beaches. This weekend we were in store for another such chilly trend. Having put off my plans of an outdoor lunch for a more warmer day, I was resigned to stare into the foggy day sitting on my porch and what better past-time to engage in than mind-lessly browsing through pictures of some old happy chilly days, spent with family, laughing and having fun. That was exactly our last Thanksgiving's Seattle trip!

Visiting Seattle's famous foodie-hangout Pike place market was definitely on top of my list. Seeing those old photos rekindled the memory of that market so much, that I thought I will share a small photo journey with you all.

Pike place market is an old marketplace founded in 1907 near the heart of downtown Seattle. It is a wonderful collection of shops overlooking the bay. It proudly boasts of an exhaustive fish market, a permanent farmers market and various specialty food stores. This market is also home to the original relocated Starbucks store (hence their house blend name 'Pike Place Roast'). Being a bay area resident I thought pike place in nutshell is a San Francisco fisherman's wharf on steroids :-)

We started off with a shop with the most unique dipping oils I have ever seen! It had varieties like this 18-year old aged balsamic, fig balsamic, roasted garlic-rosemary cabernet, truffle oil blends, sesame-ginger and many more! I so much enjoyed tasting these dipping oils with their crusty house-bread and an equally engaging  chat with the hostess. After I long tasting deliberation I finally decided to go with the roasted garlic and rosemary cabernet.

Poached fish tacos (with a vegetarian alternative)

At our house we love our Mexican food. Of-course staying at San Diego for years didn't hurt either ;) If you visit San Diego, I definitely recommend visiting an area called Old Town which is famous for its spectacular Mexican restaurants and fresh produce and pottery markets. Whether you are in mood for some fine dining or merely a roadside devouring of tortilla wraps, Old Town is the place for you! For me the best part of Old Town are the fresh tortilla stalls. There are restaurants on the strip which have an extension overlooking the street where a lady makes fresh corn and flour tortillas. For about 50cents a piece you can enjoy a tortilla hot off the gridle lightly brushed with butter and seasoned with home-made hot salsa! Heaven wrapped in a foil indeed! The only thing is now you can't be skimpy about eating on the roadside ;)

Anyway, I digress. Looking at some of our old SD photos, I got nostalgic for some Mexican today. Fish tacos can be quite greasy with fried fish and a mayo leaden dressing so I tried poaching the fish instead and made a lemon-vinegar based coleslaw dressing. I must say I was impressed by the poaching technique! The fish cooks very quickly and absorbs all the deliciousness of the poaching liquid. To top it all its even an oil-free way to cook the fish. Overall, the fish tacos were absolutely delicious! The recipe is very adaptive so feel free to add your favorite Mexican condiments: spanish rice, tomato salsas, mango salsa, guacamole, sour cream.. all good :) Now really, if you needed a reason to make a margarita night, this is the one ;)

Zucchini soup

My work weeks have been so hectic now-a-days that every Saturday morning's farmer's market has become sort of like an unwinding kick-start-into-the-weekend ritual. Sipping a hot cuppa coffee and idly strolling through the stalls overflowing with fresh produce, fruits and flowers is meditating and exactly what I need to melt away the stresses of the week to get into my lazy relaxing weekend mode!  Have you seen how all the markets now a days are overflowing with summer squashes and zucchinis? I can never resist staring at those mounds and mounds of neatly arranged zucchinis and colorful squashes. This weekend I couldn't resist but buy a few fresh zucchinis, some leeks and a nice fresh celery.

Once I reached home I googled for zucchini recipes and finally settled on this zucchini soup from Kalyn. This soup had one more thing going for itself, it used rosemary; ever since I saw that bushel of rosemary growing in the backyard I have been itching to try it out in as many recipes as I can and this looked like a perfect one!