There is wind, drying brown leaves blowing, that kind of bright yellow sunshine that only comes on the chilly perfect days of autumn.  I could and should be outside for hours every day.  Instead we are all on Facebook and Huffington Post and 538.com.  Last days.  For the moment, reality-based democracy seems to have it in the bag, but we are looking for constant confirmation.  And what about the Senate?  And the House?  I found myself calmed somewhat yesterday-- oddly-- by politely conversing a while with someone who holds diametrically-opposed opinions to mine.  We were civil.  The world did not come to an end.  Let's not let this Trump campaign be the end of civility.

Emotionally, too, I've been blown by gusty winds this week: full of grievances and questioning the motives of everyone.  Food, as always, is my touchstone.  This week in recipes:

Mridula Baljekar:

• Spicy Grilled Chicken, served with Saffron Rice and salad.  As always, I am having trouble finding links to Baljekar's dishes online.  "Spicy Grilled Chicken" is a terribly generic name and there are a million kinds of saffron rice and Baljekar seems to have published several different versions of all her dishes in various cookbooks which all bear similar names.  The one I own (Best-Ever Curry Cookbook) seems to be one of the less common ones.  So, I shall describe these dishes to you.  The Spicy Grilled Chicken consisted of chicken thighs marinated in lemon, ginger, garlic, chilis, sugar and honey, treated with cilantro and more chilis, and then broiled, or in my case baked at a high temperature, because my broiler is unusable.  It was perfectly fine-- flavorful enough chicken pieces, without sauce, but that was OK because a) the chicken was thighs and wouldn't dry out, and b) the saffron rice had its own flavor.  The saffron rice, which was simple basmati rice cooked with cardamom, cloves, and saffron, and a little milk, was also fine.  I felt that it had more saffron than it needed (1/2 tsp.), and would have been fine with less, which is an important point given that saffron is sometimes said to be more expensive than gold (my research suggests that this is not currently true.  But still).  I am a much bigger fan of Baljekar's cookbook now than I was a month ago, but-- while both of these dishes were solid enough-- neither one was anything special.

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Madhur Jaffrey:

• Peas with Ginger and Sesame Oil, served with bulgogi-and-sweet-potato omelets and toast.  Because it is October, and because it is difficult to find shelled fresh peas in any season, I used frozen peas for this recipe and the next.  These peas were extremely simple: basically stir-fried with ginger, sugar, sesame oil, and toasted sesame seeds.  I felt that the result, given recipe instructions, was too heavy: too much salt, too much ginger, too much sesame.  You don't normally hear me complain about "too much ginger."  An easy but not particularly well-balanced recipe.

The week in cooking featured a series of uninspiring vegetable dishes, one utilitarian but oh-so-necessary french chocolate cake, and a kick-ass delicious Indian meal from Mridula Baljekar, who is swiftly redeeming herself.

​Mridula Baljekar:

​Chicken in Green Masala Sauce, with Nut Pulao (also from the same cookbook, but no link available).  Gradually I am becoming sold on Mridula Baljekar.  These were both amazing recipes, and I'd be happy to make them again and again.  (In fact, I have already made a pared-down version of the Nut Pulao again this week.)  The sauce for the chicken, made from blended yogurt, ricotta, spring onions, coriander, mint, green chilis, garlic, ginger, and (surprisingly) green apple, was both easy and incredibly flavorful.  Then the chicken was basically just cooked in the sauce, no weird parboiling necessary.  The rice for the pulao was fried with onion, carrot, and garlic, and then cooked with vegetable broth and spices.  Walnuts and cashews were added at the end.  It was sweet and fragrant and delicious, although I felt it stood on its own so well that it did not need to be swamped in green masala sauce.  In the future I'd make the chicken with plain white rice, and the pulao with something simpler.  I'd make both for company, happily.

​The Internet:​

Valerie's French Chocolate Cake, from Smitten Kitchen.  I made this on Wednesday night, so that we could eat it while we watched the third presidential debate.  The idea is to ward off evil influences per Lupin's wise advice.  To this end, while I only made a single layer of this rather simple cake-- full of butter and chocolate but with a mere 1/3 c. flour-- I also made a great deal of chocolate whipped cream (who knew you could make chocolate whipped cream?  A revelation) and dolloped it heavily on top of our plain bittersweet cake slices.  The dementors certainly did their best, but we and Hillary Clinton prevailed.  How was the cake?  Fine.  Nothing special.  My kid, who had bizarrely decided to drink a double espresso at 5:30 that evening, was not able to fall asleep after the debate until 1 am, and so spent the next day shoveling slices of chocolate cake into their mouth to try and keep their energy up.  So it served its medicinal purpose twice.
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Bon Appetit:

• Cauliflower with Pumpkin Seeds, Brown Butter, and Lime, served with marinated grilled tofu, plain quinoa, and cooked turnips.  I like roasted cauliflower, as I like most roasted vegetables.  Did I find roasted cauliflower to be markedly superior when dressed with pumpkin seeds, red pepper flakes, cilantro, and lime juice?  Not really.  Enough said.  The turnips were better and I just cooked them with salt, pepper, and butter.

Like everybody else, I need wholesome distractions from the fascinating, disgusting, outrageous, wanton nonstop train wreck that is Donald Trump.  Cooking is one of them.  Others include mystery novels and going to my day job.  Also, like Hillary Clinton, I spend a lot of time watching cats (in my case, I have one in the house who does very well).  This week in cooking:

The Internet

• Sunken Apple and Honey Cake (Smitten Kitchen).  When I find a really simple, delicious, visually-amazing dessert that comes out perfectly, I immediately begin to fantasize about making it for company.  Deb Perelman's Sunken Apple and Honey Cake is company cake.  (Or, it could be company breakfast cake, served with brunch.)  The crumb is somehow dense and light at the same time, while the apples and honey syrup give it a beautiful moistness.  I found some tiny Lady apples at the Whole Foods, and these were ideal to quarter (the apples were too small to core whole and then halve, as per the recipe instructions) and slice thin into the decorative apple fans you see in the photos.  They also had great flavor.  We ate two slices of cake each upon its debut, leaving only a quarter of the cake for lunchboxes the next day.  It was so, so good.  If you want to dress it up for company, I bet a bit of whipped cream wouldn't go amiss.

​Bon Appetit

• Classic Potato Gratin (Nov. 2015).  This was a time-consuming recipe-- between making the garlicky sauce, slicing 4 lbs. of potatoes very thinly, and a long baking time-- that was not really worth the result.  (I did not use a mandolin to slice the potatoes, as history suggests I will merely slice the end of my finger off and any time "saved" will be squandered in bandaging.)  The flavor of the potatoes was good-- garlic, butter, thyme, cream, cheese!-- but, even with a longer browning time than called for, they were only barely crispy on top, and quite mushy on the inside.  I could make creamy garlic potatoes a lot more easily by, say, mashing them.  If you do make this recipe, I would recommend removing the foil from the pan earlier in the baking process, in order to let the potatoes dry out and crisp better.  We ate them with brussels sprouts and salmon filet (my kid) or sausages (my husband) or both (me).

​Madhur Jaffrey:

• Fried Okra with Fresh Curry or Basil Leaves, served on the side with slices of parmesan-covered toast, pears and raspberries.  A strange recipe: the okra (I bought fresh this time) was sliced very thin, fried without breading in a lot of oil along with basil leaves, and then blotted, spiced and salted.  It did not become crunchy, although it seemed to me that would have been the only point of such a procedure.  Instead, the okra darkened, shrunk to a tiny wizened size, and tasted salty/spicy.  Once it had shrunk, there was not a lot of it left, rather like cooking a bunch of spinach.  It was not bad, neither was it good.  As a treatment of okra, it left me somewhat mystified.
• Okra with Tomatoes, served over toast with scrambled eggs on top (my kid had cooked mustard and turnip greens in place of okra).  This was basically cooked okra with some tomatoes, garlic and spices added.  A good shot of lime juice gave it a pleasant bite as well.  While not earth-shattering, this was a more logical way to serve okra than the above method.  I would skip the eggs and toast next time and simply serve it as a regular vegetable side dish.

​Mridula Baljekar:

• Chicken Saag, served with packaged naan and topped with plain yogurt and chili powder.  A mixed review for the Chicken Saag.  It tasted wonderful and my husband loved it.  But, as may be seen from the photos, my sauce ended up as thin as a soup, not the thick spinachy paste pictured in the cookbook or familiar from Indian restaurants.  Now, in retrospect, this is not surprising, since 8 oz. of spinach, 4 tomatoes, and 1 cup of water (plus seasonings and chicken), cooked with the cover on as directed for about 30 minutes, are unlikely to produce a thick sauce.  Why all that water?  Is that an error?  But we ate it anyway, enthusiastically, with spoons to consume all the tasty broth and naan for dipping.  The leftovers were even better the next day.  Even now that all the chicken is gone, I still have about 2 cups of leftover sauce in the refrigerator.  I guess we'll just have it as a soup.

Maybe it's something about fall.  There is so much pleasure in stocking one pantry and refrigerator, looking over the stores of apples and onions and sweet potatoes and jars of grain, the cheeses and eggs in their dozens.  I want abundance and then I want to use those things so neatly and sparingly, feeding us delicious food now but yet also preserving that sense of abundance for the colder weeks ahead.  Such a squirrel instinct.  

​Madhur Jaffrey:

• Okra with Potatoes, served with whole urad beans and white rice.  I am the only person in my household who likes okra, and we have three weeks' worth of okra recipes from Jaffrey ahead.  More for me!  But it turned out my husband consented to try this dish, a heavily-spiced Indian stewed version of okra which was highly flavorful, except that I forgot to add the salt until the last minute and so it did not have a chance to infiltrate the potatoes.  I also used frozen okra, but, surprisingly, this seemed to work out fine.  Recommended-- if you like okra.
• Okra Cooked in an Australian Manner (how's that for a recipe title?), served atop quinoa in a bowl which also included cooked sweet potato, with a dish of Sweet-and-Spicy Mixed Nuts (see below) on the side.  This okra is basically stir-fried with chile, garlic, soy sauce and sesame oil; my handwritten cookbook note reads "Okra cooked in a boring manner."  I mean, who needs a recipe for that, right?  All the same, as I single-handedly consumed the rest of this okra over the next few days, it grew on me each time.  The slices of gently-cooked garlic that still retained lots of garlic flavor were the best part.  Once again, I used frozen okra, and once again it was fine.  Easy, albeit intuitive, preparation.

Bon Appetit:

• Sweet-and-Spicy Mixed Nuts, served with the meal described above.  I kept having to stop myself from referring to the flavor combinations in this recipe as "nuts."  Maple syrup, rosemary, red pepper flakes, and smoked paprika?  Really?  And you know what?  The first nut or two struck me as "weird."  After that I was totally hooked.  These are so, so addictive, sweet and savory and spicy and beautifully glazed so that sometimes they even form delicious  crunchy clusters (!).  You should make these for your family, or maybe for holiday gifts.  Wait, I should make these for holiday gifts.

​Mridula Baljekar:

• Chicken Tikka (this recipe is almost but not quite identical), served with lettuce, raw rings of onion, lime, cilantro, and white rice.  Next time I would serve it with naan instead, as the chunks of chicken are flavorful enough to make an excellent sort of sandwich, but not very saucy.  This recipe is obviously a cousin to last week's Chicken Tikka Masala, but did not call for a "boughten" (as my Midwest relatives say) spice packet.  It still came out good.  That's two winners in a row for this cookbook, after several initial failures.  I am heartened, though in a way also disappointed that I can't just write it off and move on-- I have so many cookbooks and my life is, optimistically-speaking, about half over!  I won't get to them all!

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• Mushrooms with Coriander and Cumin , served with pita bread, cheese, and spinach salad. My family loves mushrooms, and these were both easy and flavorful.  I used white mushrooms.  As usual with Indian vegetable recipes, there is no skimping on the aromatics and spices.  A very satisfying meal.

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• Pork Sausage with Coconut-Chile Sauce and Lychees from Epicurious (although apparently this also derives from Bon Appetit, September 2014).  This dish was... interesting.  The recipe doesn't call for any kind of starch base, even though you'd think it might be served with rice, so I cooked some more of my fresh Korean noodles from the refrigerator to create a noodle bowl.  On top were spicy ground pork, fresh herbs from the Thai palette, roasted peanuts, onion, lime, and... canned lychee fruit?  All served with a really delicious spicy coconut sauce.  Oddly, like the reviewers on Epicurious, I found that I liked this dish but would not necessarily make it again.  The lychees in it were good, but strange.  The pork sausage was tasty, but did not seem to belong in the Thai-ish dish-- chicken or shrimp would have clashed less with the other flavors, I think.  I do love a noodle bowl, though.

​I cooked a small flurry of recipes over these few days, during which I also waitressed at the restaurant a lot, attended the wedding of an ex-waitress with a number of my current and former colleagues, and finally collapsed in a heap with a $5 download of Civilization V (2010). 

The nice thing about cooking is that it is a constant, a daily reference point even in a whirlwind of other business, work, events, errands, moods, and crises.  I may not always cook something elaborate, but I usually cook something.
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So.  Friday night, after a hard day at work, I made the Korean Barbecue from last November's Bon Appetit, using thinly sliced pork loin, lettuce leaves, and some store-bought kimchi, with brown rice and farm tomatoes on the side.  Neither of my other family members like kimchi, so I put out some sriracha too.   Oh, plus frozen crabcakes for my child who does not eat pork.  The food was fine, nothing to get excited about.  I eat better Korean marinated beef (though not pork) regularly at work.  That said, spicy pork in a lettuce wrap with kimchi and rice is just inherently nice.  An everyday-dinner idea to keep in mind.

Saturday night, the wedding, featuring some delicious catered barbecue (American-style this time).

Sunday night, Madhur Jaffrey's Spicy Kohlrabi with Corn, served over white rice, with fried eggs on top to provide some protein.  With fresh August sweet corn cut from the cob and ripe farm tomatoes, this spicy-sweet kohlrabi was really flavorful, and the rice balanced the spiciness nicely.  We inhaled this.  I also made a side salad of romaine lettuce, carrot, green pepper, and mango.  The mango was an inspired touch, with dressing made from the white balsamic vinegar left over from the strawberry cake.

​Monday, Mridula Baljekar's Karahi Chicken with Mint, served with brown rice and a side of roasted vegetables (cauliflower, eggplant, peppers, carrot, onion).  While the chicken dish had a really nice flavor-- lots of scallions and cilantro, mint, lemon, ginger, tomatoes, dried chiles-- the cooking instructions called for it to be boiled first in plain water-- for 10 minutes!-- before being stir-fried with the other ingredients.  This led to the chicken pieces themselves being dry and bland.  While I know that some cuisines do use this boil-then-fry technique more frequently, I was not a fan of the results in this case.  That's three recipes so far in this cookbook (Best-Ever Curry Cookbook) that I would consider unsuccessful.  I'll try two or three more, but if I don't hit a winner by then, I'm giving up on it..

Tuesday night, I took a break from recipes to use up some other supplies around the house.  We had corn on the cob, chocolate-cherry-coconut muffins (also featuring weird-tasting instant oatmeal packets left over from our hike!), and an egg scramble with cheese, cilantro, and jalapeno pepper.  The muffins were popular.  The corn is coming to the end of its useful life for this season, I think; it tasted old.  Alas.  Though I won't be sorry to see this hot, hot summer go.

Wednesday night, the second of Jaffrey's kohlrabi recipes, Spicy Kohlrabi Stew with Tomatoes.  This was sort of an odd dish, with large, 3-bite-sized chunks of kohlrabi boiled together with a lot of tomato and modest seasoning (it was distinctly less spicy than the Spicy Kohlrabi with Corn), becoming a bowl of big-veggies-sitting-in-broth that required both a spoon and a fork to eat.  The idea was to serve it with a lot of fresh flatbread and some store-bought hummus, but the flatbreads I bought that afternoon were already moldy inside (thanks, Community Food Co-op!  I would not call you out except that this happens all the time), so I had to improvise.  We had multigrain English muffins, hard-boiled eggs, and celery sticks, with some hummus to add to any or all of these.  It was a weird meal. 

​And that is the story of our week in dinners.

On a Tuesday evening, my husband and I went out to Capital Fringe to see my stepson's girlfriend perform in Over Her Dead Body, an 80-minute theater piece composed of bluegrass murder ballads, with full bluegrass band and five top-notch singers (including my stepson's girlfriend, who has a beautiful, deep, North Carolina voice-- and somewhat macabre sensibility-- perfectly suited for the material).  I would have loved this even if a family member were not performing.  I would have seen it again.  (But it is sold out.)  I hope they are able to take this show further than Capital Fringe, because it is wonderful.  Review here.  (Update: Over Her Dead Body won Best Overall show according to the audience awards, and is moving on to the Millenium Stage at the Kennedy Center!  See video here.)

After the show (which, due to tight Fringe scheduling, was at 6:30 pm), husband and I were trudging back up Florida Ave., to the nearest Metro station which is over a mile away, and wishing we would encounter something for dinner.  It was still light, the most amazing huge orange sun setting over the city street.  Only a single restaurant offered itself, but its board outside proclaimed $2.75 tacos, so I convinced my husband it was a good idea.  It was.  The Far East Taco Grille.  Far East?  Tacos?  Maybe just because it was on the east side of the city?

Nope.  In some ways these are conventional tacos: you choose flour or corn tortilla, several types of salsa are available.  But the fillings are things like Korean short rib, spicy pork, tofu.  Topping styles include a kimchi version.  Clearly this is a Korean-fusion joint, just like where I work, only so different.  Better.   Though the menu is more limited and it is just counter service.  I order two tacos: flour tortilla, short rib, "#15 sauce," banh mi-style toppings.  Short ribs cost $0.25 more each for tacos, so this meal cost $6 altogether, and it is perfect.  So, so good.  The short ribs are tender and delicious (better than those at our restaurant, maybe even better than the ones Scarlet made for me), the #15 sauce (whatever the hell that means) is a sweet and spicy Asian-influenced sauce, I suspect involving gochujang, and the banh mi toppings are pickly, spicy, sweet.  Total flavor bomb.  I think it would be overwhelming to eat more than two.  My husband ordered more conservatively, as he always does: spicy pork in a rice bowl with their simplest topping option of lettuce, cheese, and lime crema.  He said it was very good too.  In total we paid $20 (including a tip, which would be optional here) for one of the best meals I've had in a while.  I have no idea how they can make any money at all, charging $3 for tacos containing a substantial amount of expensive short rib, but GO THERE while it lasts.

Next day.  I've finally had time to organize my recipes and do a more extensive shopping trip at the Whole Foods, so (after a long, busy day at work) I have three dishes planned to cook this evening.  One is my second effort from Mridula Baljekar's Best-Ever Curry Cookbook, the Tandoori Chicken.  This time I buy the appropriate amount of chicken, and actually look up the spices involved in tandoori masala.  So I believe myself to have followed the directions fairly well.  I did blend my own tandoori masala out of spices I already possessed, instead of buying a prefab paste, so it's possible I missed out on some ingredients that might have been present in the paste... sugar, perhaps?  Because my chicken tasted nothing like what you get in an Indian restaurant.  (Perhaps it is just more authentically North Indian, as it appears in that section of the book.)

​Anyway, I managed to skin my whole chicken myself (with painful slowness, using kitchen scissors), a feat that used to be quite ordinary for home cooks, but of which I now feel inordinately proud.  It marinated for two hours in yogurt mixed with the tandoori spices, then roasted at a high temperature (475 degrees) for about 30 minutes.  Simple enough, except the chicken was not done after 30 minutes.  It looked  quite done on the outside, but close to the bone it was still soft and pink.  Returned to the oven and eaten after 15 more minutes, the cook on the chicken was still only barely adequate.  Another 10 minutes would have been better.

While the chicken was marinating, I made the Buttery Cayenne Pecans from the October 2015 issue of Bon Appetit.  These were a simple matter of melting butter, stirring in Worcestershire sauce and spices, tossing with the pecans, and roasting.  Kind of like the chicken, actually.  But more successful.  The one problem did not lie with the recipe: the pecans themselves were not very good.  I bought them in a package from Whole Foods, and they had the bitter aftertaste and discomfiting mouthfeel of unripe fruit.  The flavor was worse when raw, but they retained some of their bitterness even after roasting. 

​The third recipe was intended as the final Pie-of-the-Month for my husband, and was from this month's Bon Appetit via The Bitten Word.  The Bitten Word guys had made this Blueberry and Corn Crisp, and concluded that it had potential, even though it seemed not to have enough corn in it, and the topping did not brown well.  They discussed the desirability of trying it again with double the corn, and a blast of higher-temperature baking in hopes of achieving a true "crisp."  So I made the recipe myself, incorporating these tweaks.  Nope.  Before baking, I had a full 1-inch (or deeper!) layer of corn-y crumbs on top of the blueberries.  During baking, almost this entire layer sank into the bubbling berries, leaving only a little topping peeking out.  Even that didn't brown much.  So, to the extent that there was any perceptible crumb topping at all, it was mushy and dissolved in your mouth (and not in a good way).  Definitely not "crisp."  The corn kernels (whose quantity I had doubled) simply dropped out of the topping and mixed with the blueberries, creating a somewhat odd fruit filling instead of a cornbread-y crumb.  Your experience will probably not differ, as other Bitten Word commenters seemed unhappy too.  It was not inedible, but I can confidently fail to recommend this recipe.

​All in all, it was a disappointing dinner.  The pecans were all right.

Still feeling allergic in the morning, also just Not Good.  Hard to say why.  Breakfast as usual, even while mind does not feel as usual, rebels silently against having breakfast as usual while reading internet news as usual, sitting in the dining room as usual.  Lemon water, coffee with half and half, smoothie made from sour cherry juice, plain Greek yogurt, hemp protein powder, almond butter, farm strawberries, mango, and farm lettuce.  I wonder how ricotta cheese would go in a smoothie?  I have some left over.  (Well, whaddya know-- check out "Bone Builder" in this article.  Although none of the smoothies here sound particularly inspired.)  Cup of decaf with half and half while finishing news, etc., before shower.

At noontime, after yoga class, another cup of coffee while settling down with my computer to write.  I don't feel like working.  I feel like maybe reading and taking a nap.  We'll see.  Meanwhile, I have some lunch: leftover lasagna (half the size of last night's portion, so 1/8 lasagna), and some salted cashews.  End up kind-of-working: doing research for a fairly lightweight blog post.  Have another cup of decaf with half and half.

​A little after four, I turn my efforts to dinner: I'm starting a new cookbook!: Best-ever Curry Cookbook (2001) from Mridula Baljekar.  So I need to marinate the chicken for the first recipe: the Kashmiri Chicken Curry.  Right away there are a couple of issues.  First, as I mentioned, I was unable to find any kashmiri spice paste at the grocery.  So I just substitute some good old garam masala.  That is probably wrong and I probably should have looked up what kashmiri spice paste might consist of, tried to cobble some ingredients together to approximate it.  (Belatedly, here it is: it is different from garam masala in including fennel, fenugreek, red chilis, turmeric, and bay leaves, while it does not contain cardamom or cloves, at least according to the recipes I looked at.  Sounds a bit more savory, less with the "sweet" spices.)   Also, I thought for sure I had 5-spice powder-- for years and years I had a big bag of it that I never, ever used, because I don't really like 5-spice powder.  Now it seems to be gone.  I may have thrown it out.  What is 5-spice powder doing in an Indian recipe, anyway??  In any case, I don't have any.  I skip it.  (Belated answer: they probably meant this, which is actually Indian, not this, the Chinese kind.  Who knew?) Third, the recipe calls for 8 "joints" of chicken.  For some reason, when I went grocery shopping, I did not look up what might be meant by this, but instead assumed it meant 8 whole chicken legs (including thigh and drumstick).  Today, looking at my mountain of meat, it occurred to me that 8 joints probably just means 8 pieces.  And actually, I had bought 10 whole chicken legs, forgotten that I meant to keep 2 of them back for another weekend dinner, and put all 10 into the marinade.  I have not nearly enough marinade, and enough chicken to feed an army.  I do not know what I was thinking.  About any of it.

​While the chicken marinates in its measly quantity of all-wrong spice paste, I start on a glass of white wine left over from last night's mushroom-glazing.  The rest of the meal consists of plain white rice, and some vegetables I have lying around (young onions, peas and beet greens from the CSA, sauteed with just some turmeric, salt and cayenne pepper).  Cooking the mountain of chicken proves a time-consuming chore, because I cannot brown it all at once in my wok, and then it takes extra simmering time due to the multiple layers.  It tastes OK, not exciting. Next time, I won't make so many stupid mistakes.

Later in the evening, we finish off the last two portions of the rhubarb "cheesecake" I made last night.  Strangely, it has improved in flavor and texture from the previous night.  Well, I guess cheesecake generally does.  But nobody ever indicates this in their recipes.  I need the reminder.