Monday: Summer squash for a summer night

Yogurt with cousa squash.

In this World of the East recipe, Madhur Jaffrey directs you to cook shredded summer squash with onion and mustard seeds, and then stir the mixture into yogurt.  It's a bit like a large raita or a yogurt and cucumber soup - appropriate for a very hot day.

Friday: Cold cuke salad

Cucumber-dill-yogurt salad.

This was our improvised cool dinner for a rather hot evening.  We ate it with some crusty bread and Pawlet cheese, and followed up with strawberries.  It's quite similar to this soup, except we didn't bother with marination and didn't add quite as much liquid.

These "burpless" cucumbers had a funny gradient-like coloration.

Friday: Springtime feast

Sauteed pom pom mushroom and roasted asparagus over couscous.

"Pom pom" mushrooms, technically the hericium species, are a cultivated variety also known as bear's head or Pompon Blanc. These little creatures are truly bizarre: instead of having gills like many other mushrooms, they are spongy globes covered all over with a layer of downy "fingers," giving them a texture (and capacity for absorption) reminiscent of terrycloth:


Roving herd of pom poms

The mushroom man advised us that the pom pom's flavor is similar to that of lobster or other shellfish, and that they're substitutable for the fish in seafood recipes. We elected to do a simple sautee in butter for our first try. Our only advice after our first pom pom experience: don't rinse them first. We did, and they seemed to remain a little waterlogged even after we tried to drain them.

We'd be remiss if we didn't also mention that this was our first asparagus of the year! One of our favorite treatments for asparagus is a simple roasting in the oven at 450F with a little olive oil and salt. If they're good quality and fresh, that's really all they need.

For dessert, in keeping with the springtime theme we cooked up a little stewed rhubarb:


I'm melting! What a world, what a world...

We just sliced it thinly and then simmered with a very small amount of water and a good amount of sugar. It was tasty on yogurt, though some worthy alternate serving suggestions are to use it as a topping for pancakes, crepes or ice cream...

Monday: Squash quesadillas, take two

Butternut squash-black bean-goat feta quesadillas with yogurt-lime-cumin sauce.

These were a snap since we could start from our frozen butternut squash puree - and the goat's milk feta provided just the right bite. We liked the idea of making a simple yogurt-based sauce, because we never have pre-made salsa in the house, and it's a bit of a fuss to make on a weeknight (especially when it's not even tomato season).

Tuesday: Aloo gobi chaat

Aloo gobi chaat.

We've already blogged about chaat - an Indian snack food that can serve as a quick weeknight dinner. This was more or less a reprise of our previous chaat, but with the substitution of a small head of purple cauliflower for the tomatoes (no longer in season, sadly).

To save time, we once again used pre-cooked canned chickpeas instead of dried black or green chickpeas. Since the taste of canned chickpeas leaves something to be desired, we followed Madhur Jaffrey's method for quickly improving their flavor: drain and rise the chickpeas, then simmer for five to ten minutes in water to cover with whole spices (a bay leaf, cumin, coriander, cloves, or whatever you like) in a tea strainer or tied up in a little cheesecloth sachet. Although we don't use this technique every single time that we use canned chickpeas, it can really make a difference for dishes like chaat where the chickpeas are to be eaten whole without any additional cooking.

D4SA Dhaba

Sunday night dinner: Aloo chaat.

Chaat is a category of Indian "snack" food that has many different variations. It typically includes cooked potato and chickpea (usually black or green chickpea, though we used normal ones today), a yogurt sauce, a tamarind sauce, cilantro, and various spices which generally include cayenne and black salt. In India, it's a street food - but here you can find it at some small Indian sweet shops. If you're in Boston, we recommend the chaat at the cafe in the back of Shalimar in Central Square; in New York, Rajbhog Sweets in Jackson Heights is a good bet.

The chaat we made basically followed the above formula, though we also threw in some chopped heirloom tomatoes for seasonal flavor. Yummmm.

Tuesday: Yogurt with chickpeas and tomato

A quick-and-easy weeknight meal: Madhur Jaffrey's yogurt with chickpea and tomato.

This dish reminded us of chaat - in particular, the chaat made at Punjabi Dhaba in Cambridge, MA. What is chaat, you ask? Stay tuned...

Wednesday: A Summery Chilled Soup

Chilled cucumber-dill-yogurt soup.

Although we're not opposed to making hot soups in summer, there's a certain logic to a chilled soup on a hot day. This is a quick and easy recipe that I got from my parents, and something that Giselle and I managed to cook when we were first starting out.

Good ingredients are always important, but this is the kind of dish where quality really matters, because it's so simple. We used heirloom Kirby cucumbers, Rocambole garlic, and fresh yogurt from our local dairy, Milk Thistle Farm.

CHILLED CUCUMBER SOUP

1 1/2 cups cucumber, peeled, seeded, then diced
2 tbsp chopped fresh dill
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 - 1/2 cup walnut, chopped (optional)
1 - 1 1/2 cups plain yogurt

Mix all but yogurt and refrigerate, letting it marinate, 5 hours or more (overnight is fine). When ready to serve, add the yogurt and stir to mix. Serves 2.

Wednesday: Okra in Yogurt Sauce

Okra in yogurt sauce with whole-wheat pita. The recipe (bendakaya-perugu kura) is from one of our favorite food bloggers, Indira of Mahanandi.

Apparently, there are many people who don't like okra. Those people are crazy. Just saying.

How could you not like this precious little vegetable?



The common objection to okra is that it's rather slimy. In some recipes, that's actually desirable, but there are techniques to minimize the slime. The trick in this dish is to let the okra slices cook undisturbed instead of stirring them frequently - that allows a nice crust to form.