Here’s a salad I thought was worth sharing. The base is radicchio, with its bitterness offset by a dressing of tahini, lime juice, olive brine, and chili paste (very inspired by Anna Ladd’s “tahini and pungent liquid” formula). For toppings I used onions, cheddar, pepitas, chickpeas, sliced cornichons/gherkins, and a piece of salmon that I broiled with mustard.
I made some yogurt using Daniel Gritzer’s recipe at Serious Eats. It worked very well, in the sense that three days after I started, I had homemade yogurt that tasted about the same as the yogurt I started with.
I inoculated half a quart of milk with some Fage and incubated it in a cheap styrofoam cooler with a heating pad inside, which was able to maintain a temperature slightly over 100 °F for the few hours it took the yogurt to set. I strained the yogurt down by about half using cheesecloth, but a large coffee filter probably would have been easier.
The process was interesting but not really practical at such a small scale. It might be fun to try out some of the starter cultures that are available online.
I found some frozen sliced beef liver and decided to give it a try. First I tried thawing the slices and frying them, but they were too delicate and floppy to handle easily, and the liver wound up overcooked and gross. I threw it in the food processor with fried onions and a boiled egg to make chopped liver, which was actually quite tasty.
Recipe by Just One Cookbook.
Recipe by Elise Bauer at Simple Recipes.
A curry with locally grown oyster mushrooms, homemade paneer, and chickpeas. The paneer added a needed creaminess that balanced out the spice of the curry sauce.
I found out that the white part of a watermelon is a decent filler vegetable.
I mostly followed Chef John’s recipe, except the greens I had happened to be kale. I also spiced it up with some Calabrian chili paste.
New and Improved Baked Feta Pasta by Chef John.
This was unsurprisingly delicious. It also turned out to be a good use for the underripe cherry tomatoes plaguing my grocery store lately.