Sunday, July 6, 2008

sixxxxxxx

So my camera? That's right. Toast. Still taking pictures of black screens with horizontal lines, even when I turned off the digital display. Sad. But I'm happy to announce that Austin, in all of his infinite kindness and generosity, let me order a new one today on Amazon, featuring an upgrade from my measly 3.2 megapixels to a whopping 7.1! Whoop whoop! Thanks, my Boo. I'm so excited. Of course once I accepted the death of the SD110, I spent all day seeing things I wanted to take pictures of. Like three sweet and funny dogs passed out on the floor, or Charlie Murphy and Corvinius hanging out on the treat table like best friends, or Mackenzie giving herself a very ungraceful bath in the brown chair. What a champ.

I also really wanted to photograph the (slightly elaborate) process of assembling Curried Couscous with Roasted Vegetables, Cilantro Yogurt and Peach Chutney. It's an interesting recipe and one of our favorites, really extra great for summertime. Let's see if I can sum it up for you:

We chopped a whole bunch of farmer's market zucchini up and tossed them with cumin, crushed red pepper, chili powder, curry powder, olive oil, lots of salt and pepper. We roasted them at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes, tossing occasionally, then left them out to cool. Then we sauteed some chopped onion in my biggest heaviest Le Creuset saucepan (oh, the beauty) in some olive oil, then stirred in two big tablespoons of curry powder, and let that get toasty for a second. Added three cups of water and simmered for ten minutes (hot curry water! not to be confused with hot ham water). Then toasted two cups of couscous in one tablespoon of olive oil until it was browned, then poured the curry/onion water over. Put the lid on and took it off the heat for ten minutes for the couscous to fluff up. Then stirred in a half cup of dried currants so they would plump up by the time it cooled.

Then I pureed two big bunches of cilantro with the juice of two limes and a half a lemon, plus some salt, and stirred that into a combination of plain yogurt and sour cream. In a different bowl I combined some hot mango chutney, some peach preserves, a little sriracha, a little hot chili oil, some rice vinegar and rice wine. This is my sub for peach chutney as the recipe calls for it.

So we ate the couscous with some roasted, salted cashews and the good, spicy roasted zucchini, all piled into warmed up pita with the cilantro yogurt and the spicy peach mixture. It's a super recipe because you can make everything ahead of time and it's all perfectly good at room temperature. The leftovers are great too, and trust me, it makes a vat. The whole recipe is here but I clearly made a lot of adjustments. We decided this time that eggplant is just not for us, and I eschewed the roasted red peppers too, I just never *get* them. I think by spicing up the roasted zucchini it adds a great depth of heat to the whole thing, and I'm sure I almost double all the flavorings in the cilantro yogurt, which is by far the best part.

I'm telling you, this would have made a great photo essay.

Badness, I'm going to crib a cue from you and start working on my own Moments in Food, since I'm sure tomorrow no one is going to want to hear about Poppyseed Chicken. I'm positive I am the only person on the planet who gets so excited about a canned-soup based casserole, but I am. really. excited.

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