Food in Asheville

Here's some stuff I made with my mom while in Asheville, NC.  They had just moved in, and the challenge was to make a meal using what was already in the cupboards.  I tend to find cooking in other people's kitchens a little stressful--it takes so much more effort to find things, and there might not be the staple ingredients or the knives or the other tools you expect.  The upside, though, is discovering new foods.  For example, we found some awesome dried mushrooms in the pantry and use them to make a soup that was slightly inspired by Green Curry Broth: I used toasted cumin, fennel, coriander, and lots of ginger, garlic, and onion in the broth; then I strained those out and added other ingredients.

We also had a carrot Salad sort of like this one, but with a more Asian flavor palette--rice vinegar, ginger, etc.  Not too exciting.

The most thrilling accomplishment, I think, was remaking fat mints in multicolor!  We left the cocoa out of part of the dough and added green food coloring.  The food coloring rather scared me (even before we realized it was from 1978!!), but I figure if you only do this once every several years, how much harm can it do?  Or, if you're really into green food, you could go buy some natural food coloring at Whole Foods.

 

We also ate a lot of great meals at restaurants, my favorite of which by far was Plant (we went back a second time!).