May 23, 2011
It's only been half a year since
my last "best-of" post, but I feel the chaos of this blog at every turn; it's a cumulative thing. So... if you just got here and you want to know what's really delicious, here is the second installment.
Soups! Both the
green curry noodle soup (left) and the
pho rely on lots of fresh herbs for their ridiculously delicious aromaticness. The
spicy harissa spit pea soup is an amazing vehicle for
harissa itself.
The PPK's
tempeh crab cakes are incredible, in terms of taste and texture. I have no idea what a crab cake actually tastes like, but I hope it's like these.
Stews! This complicated
vegan bouillabaisse is totally worth the extra work. The flavors and textures are complex and beautiful. On a different note, this
dhansak (left) is fantastic comfort. Squash, lentils, and lots of spices all work together.
Vegetable dishes: try
hyderabadi bagara baingan (stuffed with poppy seeds!), or ye old
roasted brussels sprouts with fennel and mushrooms, of which I can't eat enough.
Legume-focused dishes: this
warm chickpea and artichoke salad is awesome, and so is the
spanish lentil and mushroom warm salad (at left), especially with fresh little tomatoes.
Main dishes that I'd recommend (though I have
a bit of a problem with the very idea of a main dish) include
general tso's tofu, which is a delicious rendition of the least authentic Chinese food you ever had as a child, and
lemon garlic chickpeas and mushrooms, which is hearty yet sophisticated.
Georgian cilantro sauce is very simple, but it tastes great on a huge variety of things and makes you view them in a different light.
I
highly recommend the following three cookie recipes.
Amazing almond cookies (right) get their stupendous texture from almond meal and brown rice syrup, and their amazing aromatickness from almond extract.
Mamoul is a buttery, nut-filled shortbread, haunted by lots of orange blossom water. And these
orange blossom anzac cookies continue my orange blossom craze, but in a very different textural direction, with oatmeal and coconut!
I'd always been afraid to make a vegan pie, since so many of the recipes out there seemed to imply that you had to use tofu or vegan cream cheese in order to get that thick creamy texture. But it turns out that all you need is a little cornstarch. This
pumpkin pie with coconut cream is delicious! Another textural success is the
coconut cardamom panna cotta, which uses agar flakes.
