It was a chain reaction. I picked up a copy of Tamasin Day-Lewis’ book Supper for a Song at the library, and while finding it attractive but irritating (does she really think that scallops and pheasant are budget ingredients?) also noticed that she included a lot of Afghan-inspired recipes from the book Noshe Djan by Helen Saberi. I adore Central Asian food, especially Afghan, but have very few recipes to work from, so I was happy to get the recommendation. I returned Day-Lewis to the library and went looking for Saberi instead.

I managed to find the book shortly afterwards while browsing at Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks in Vancouver (always a good place to look for obscure cookbooks), republished under the title Afghan Food & Cookery. It’s definitely no-frills, but there are some really intriguing dishes in here, including several versions of ash and a hell of a lot of kebabs. I finally tried some recipes out of it last week, and was pleased with the amount of detail in the cooking instructions. The spinach with rhubarb was very successful, the mastawa (sticky rice with lamb and yogurt) more  of a mixed result. I want to make both of them again, but possibly with some adjustments.

The spinach dish is a wonderful thing to make at this season, when greens and rhubarb are both at their best. I sliced some leeks, sauteed them in olive oil, then added spinach to the pan and cooked it down. A stalk of rhubarb, cut into pieces, was fried in a little oil and tossed in along with some dried dill. The whole thing cooks down to a rather unappetizing-looking mess, but it’s delicious, the rhubarb adding a quiet tart note that balances the sweetness of the leeks. It reminded me of the Kurdish Rhubarb Braise that we often make in early summer, but it’s much simpler.

Mastawa was much more complicated and time-consuming. I simmered whole lamb shoulder chops with water and onions until the meat fell off the bones, then shredded it by hand. I added washed short-grain rice to the lamb and broth and let it cook, then added soaked orange peel, a can of chickpeas, two whole cups of yogurt and dried dill. It smelled wonderful, but the result was strangely like orange rice pudding – the lamb and onions nearly vanished, and the orange flavor was overwhelming against the blandness of the rice and yogurt. It was very soothing, like congee, and we found a good splash of Sriracha helped a lot to perk it up. I would make this again if I wanted something soft and comforting to eat from a deep bowl in an armchair during the winter, otherwise I would maybe add less rice and a lot more herbs.

I do think it was a successful venture into Afghan cookery. Looking forward to grilling some kebabs and naan!

Last week we went down to Gretchen’s to help with Knut Christiansen’s latest cooking class. Once again the theme was tapas and paella, but he mixed it up with some different dishes and approaches this time. Sadly for me, a lot of this meant almonds, but I was hardly in danger of starving.

As usual, Knut did his shopping on the way down to the class and arranged his ingredients as beautifully as possible. It almost seems a shame to chop the things up to cook them.

He began putting together tapas while starting the paella, which takes time to build. The first tapa was a fresh fig stuffed with lemon-scented almonds and incredible Cabrales cheese, broiled just long enough to make the cheese bubble and soften the fig slightly. I had one minus the almonds, and it was very good, even coming from a non-fig fan like me.

Tapa number two was a skewer of olives and almond-encrusted cheese, served with a slice of hard chorizo and a piece of grilled olive baguette slathered with goat cheese butter. The butter is one of Knut’s specialties, and this batch was made by whipping butter with Drunken Goat cheese for an incredibly long time until it became rich and silken. Dangerously good.

Then we built a little salad of boiled potato rounds, boiled egg rounds, cucumber slices, vinaigrette, aioli, and a small octopus. A little tricky to eat, but great flavors. And the octopi were, frankly, adorable.

At last, the paella. Usually Knut’s paellas are focused on Northwest specialties and are not particularly traditional, but he was practicing for a competition in Austin the following day (which he ended up winning!) and took a slightly different approach than usual. This paella featured the usual peppers, olives, mussels, clams and lemon, but he used hard chorizo instead of loose, and made roulades of fresh rockfish wrapped around a piquillo-chanterelle filling.

Finally, while the guests were working through enormous portions of paella, Knut threw together a simple apple salad with almonds and tarragon. Raw apples and almonds are a double mouth-hive whammy for me, so I didn’t try it, but it seemed to go over well.

It was a late night, but very fine food.

In the annals of putting fried eggs on top of things, this breakfast came very close to perfection. Here’s how to make it.

Take one Dungeness crab, cooked and cleaned.

Pick the meat out and set aside. Put the shell into a saucepan, cover with water, and simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Strain and keep warm.

Make risotto. A little onion in the base is nice, with a splash of white wine. Use the crab stock you just made, and stir in plenty of butter at the end. No cheese.

Stir in the crab at the very end.

Roast some asparagus with olive oil and salt. Not for too long, just until done but still crispy.

Serve the risotto and asparagus for dinner, with a good sprinkle of fresh chives.

The next morning, melt a little butter in a nonstick skillet and scrape the leftover risotto into it (you do have leftovers, don’t you?), chop up the leftover asparagus and press it into the risotto. Cook until you get a good golden crust.

Fry an egg, keeping the yolk good and runny, and serve over the crusty risotto with a sprinkle of coarse salt. Feel happy.

Think about buying another crab.

A while back I wrote about tofu with broccoli and peanut sauce. One of our favorite easy weeknight meals, it has evolved through various permutations, and I really like where it is right now. We’ve actually eaten it twice in the last two weeks – partly because Jon is still on meds that don’t allow alcohol, so we’ve been having a lot of things that go with Oolong tea, but also because it’s really, really good.

My current approach is to sear cubes of silken tofu in peanut oil until hot and crispy on the outside, piling it onto bowls of brown rice with steamed broccoli (we do still make it with buckwheat soba occasionally, but it gets extra gooey – brown rice is easier to mix). Over this goes my new favorite peanut sauce, which I found in Deborah Madison’s book on tofu. It’s easy to mix up from pantry ingredients (as long as you keep Chinese black vinegar in your pantry), which makes it a great emergency recipe. We always have a few boxes of silken tofu on hand these days for just these occasions.

I can’t really explain why this combination of flavors is so good, but you’ll have to take my word for it. Everything gets combined in the bowl, creating a rich, salty-sour-hot amalgam of good things. Try  it!

Peanut Sauce

adapted from This Can’t Be Tofu! by Deborah Madison

• 1/2 cup creamy unsweetened peanut butter (I use Adams)
• 1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
• 3 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp Chinkiang vinegar
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1-2 Tbsp Sambal Oelek or other hot chili sauce
• hot water

Mix together the peanut butter, garlic, soy, vinegar, sugar and hot sauce until combined. Add hot water until it reaches the consistency you want. Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary.

I wasn’t sure there was any higher calling for alder-smoked salmon than a bagel and cream cheese, but this risotto may have changed my mind.

Some friends brought this salmon to a party at our house (very good friends, indeed). It was from Pure Food in the Pike Place Market, according to the bag, and it was the best smoked salmon I have ever eaten, juicy and tender with just the right amount of smoke and sweet. I was trying to think of some way to use a bunch of it at once, and Jon said, “What about in that risotto we’re having on Thursday?” Hmmm.

I’d never used smoked salmon in a risotto before, so I kept it simple. Shallots cooked in butter, then the Arborio, then white wine, then light homemade chicken stock until the rice was almost done. I stirred in a bowlful of frozen peas, then added the shredded salmon at the very end with some cream and parmigiano. A green salad on the side. Perfect.

And the leftovers, fried until crusty, with an egg on the side. You could make this specifically for breakfast, for a brunch party. I think it would be a hit.

Now what shall we do with the rest of the salmon?

I had assumed that we would be eating all kinds of leftovers for days after our end-of-summer party. We did have huevos rancheros for breakfast (with drunken pinto beans and cotija cheese), and chips and guacamole for lunch, but then I realized there wasn’t really much else left except for a large pile of poblano and jalapeño chiles that somehow never got used, plus some leftover grilled corn. I really didn’t want to go to the store again, so I needed to think of something for dinner based on what was on hand. In a fit of fusiony madness, I came up with a sort of Tex-Mex risotto.

I chopped two poblanos and sauteed them in salted butter (I should have added onions, which would have given even more sweetness and depth), then added Arborio rice, followed by a glassful of white wine. I brought a quart of garlic-scented chicken stock to a boil and began adding it to the rice.

Near the end of the cooking time I took several pieces of cooked corn, cut the kernels off the cob and stirred them into the risotto, along with a pile of grated Parmesan.

To top the risotto for dinner, I roughly chopped a few cloves of garlic and sauteed them in olive oil with a handful of peeled shrimp (which I quick-thawed under running water), and seasoned it with salt, cumin and paprika. The garlicky shrimp juices were just what the risotto needed to perk it up. We drank a chardonnay-albariño blend that had a nice amount of both body and acidity.

The leftover risotto was wonderful for lunch the next day, reheated in a nonstick pan until lightly browned. And no, I did NOT top it with a fried egg! I don’t always do that. This time I used a poached egg.

The fish guy at the supermarket had arctic char (one of our very favorite fishes) a couple of weeks ago, but we had other plans for dinner that night. I asked him if he thought it would keep until Friday if I bought some that day, and he gave me a firm “nope.” Sigh.

But char doesn’t come around every day. Feeling uncharacteristically optimistic, I bought a filet anyway and stuck it directly into the freezer when I got home. The following week, I thawed it out and improvised a meal to go with it. And it worked, hurrah!

The char behaved perfectly, I’m happy to say, just panfried with a knob of butter and drizzled with a bit of pesto from the freezer. Then I made a very simple risotto with lots of fresh leeks, which I expected to be the star of the evening. It was, in fact, extremely nice, but then I hadn’t thought to be so taken by the roasted parsnips.

I don’t normally buy parsnips, since Jon doesn’t care for them much, but I had just read the Parsnips for Epiphany recipe in A Platter of Figs and then I saw the most gorgeous, huge pile of parsnips at Haggen. It seemed fated, and I bought a few roots.

I cooked them as David Tanis recommends, cut into long quarters, cored and tossed with plenty of olive oil and salt, then roasted a good long time. The result was astounding: the parsnips were ethereally crisp on the outside, especially the tips, but the innards were buttery and sweet. Jon willingly ate a couple, but I inhaled the rest of the pan all by myself.

It almost makes me sad that parsnip season is nearly over. Almost.

A holiday that we like to celebrate in this household is the festival of Brigid, otherwise known as Imbolc, Candlemas or Groundhog Day. To us, it marks the break between the dark days of winter and the rise of spring, as the days get longer and the garden begins to bloom again. Even though we know it’s going to keep raining until July, just the fact of being able to walk home in daylight is pretty exciting.

Earlier in the day, I celebrated by going out and doing battle with blackberry vines and cutting back the hellebore leaves. We have hellebore flowers coming up, as well as the first glimpses of snowdrops and violets. Hurray, flowers!

Afterwards, we had a little cocktail hour. Jon has been trying to recreate a drink he had in Seattle a while back, the Dragon’s Toe – a mix of bourbon, cucumber, ginger juice and ginger ale. This batch came a little closer, I think. We finished off the last of our Mount Townsend Trailhead cheese – that stuff is good.

Dinner was as springlike as I could manage. I wanted bright flavors and lots of green, so I roasted a chicken with lots of lemon and garlic and butter, then made a risotto with fresh asparagus tips (imported from Mexico, unfortunately, but I was desperate) and a big handful of chopped parsley. We lit all the candles we could find, opened a bottle of bright, fresh sauvignon blanc from Santa Cruz, and felt that spring might actually come.

After a successful food safari out on the Skagit Flats on Saturday (including a truly amazing brunch at the Rhody - I mean, seriously, potato pancakes with sausages, poached eggs and hollandaise sauce!?! Not to mention those little cranberry walnut things – yum) we came home prepared for a cozy November evening inside.

We brought home bread and strawberry jam from the Breadfarm (we bought fresh macaroons, too, but somehow they never made it home), fresh leeks, celeriac, broccoli, shelling beans and chioggia beets from Dunbar Gardens, and a nice bag of groceries from Slough Food: multicolored eggs from Osprey Hill Farm, farro from the Methow Valley, guanciale (cured pork jowl) from Salumi, Humboldt Fog and Petit Basque cheeses, and a bag of fresh chanterelles. Dinner almost cooked itself!

We started off with bread and cheese. We hadn’t had Petit Basque for ages, and I had forgotten how much I love its mild, nutty flavor. And Humboldt Fog is always amazing, especially if you can stand to let it warm up a bit and get runny around the edges. And a Bow Hill baguette to go with it? Beautiful.

Then, for dinner, I roasted a chicken (I had plans for the leftover meat – first chicken pot pie of the season!) and made a risotto. I cut up the guanciale into small dice – far more difficult than I had expected, that stuff is tough – and sauteed it with a sliced leek. Then I added all the chanterelles and let it all cook down, then put in the rice, a glass of Tamarack Cellars chardonnay, and plenty of chicken-leek stock. The guanciale gave the risotto a fascinating barnyardy pork edge, which I decided I liked.

We finished off with a couple of our homemade caramels and a glass of red wine. We live in a good place.

Well, this was the big birthday weekend, and I do believe we did it up right. In honor of my birthday, my aunt’s birthday, my father’s 60th birthday and my parents’ upcoming 40th anniversary, we hired our friend Knut Christiansen of Paellaworks catering to come out and cook up a paella for us and about thirty friends and neighbors. Despite the annoyingly autumnal weather (wind AND rain, sheesh), everything went beautifully.

My parents put together this contraption for the paella pan – Knut said it was the best fire setup he’d ever used. The great thing about the metal rails was the way the pan could be slid onto the fire and off again. There was plenty of good fruitwood to burn, too.

The paella was built up gradually over the course of the afternoon. We all stood around and watched and got in the way while eating olive bread from the Anjou Bakery (thanks, Heather & Kevin!) and a wonderful goat cheese/pear/butter mixture that Knut had brought.

The first thing to go in was the chorizo, to render all that good pork fat into the pan. Hempler’s, of course – our personal favorite.

Next went in many, many chicken legs into the pan, to fry in the sausage fat.

Then some peppers…

Once the chicken was cooked, Knut arranged the pieces around the edge of the pan (although there were too many to fit, so some were set aside until later).

This is the rice going into the pan. Knut uses arborio, rather than bomba – it sounds like it’s very similar in its ability to soak up broth while maintaining its form and texture.

The rice was stirred up thoroughly and sauteed in all the good stuff in the pan, before the addition of stock, which was a mixture of chicken and smoked duck. Saffron went in at some point here, but I missed it.

Once the stock is in, all stirring stops, to let a good crust develop on the bottom. From this point, things were added to the top of the paella: lemon slices, olives, crushed tomatoes, cherry tomatoes…and finally shellfish.

Knut had stopped at Taylor Shellfish on his way down, and had some beautiful prawns, clams and mussels, as well as these incredibly gorgeous singing scallops. I don’t think I had ever eaten scallops from the shell before – they were delicious.

Some fresh basil…

Also wax beans, sliced zucchini, grated zucchini…eventually, the paella was declared done!

It was served with a fresh green salad with raspberries and blueberries, and a pear vinaigrette…

and we had a few bottles of wine on hand, as well.

The empty paella pan was shoved to the side and left til morning, while we built up the fire and relaxed. The rain even let up a bit! Now that’s a birthday party.