Food and Recipes

A fresh, green element on the dinner plate. 1 medium onion, minced 1 tsp black mustard seed 1/4 rounded tsp turmeric 1-3 dry red chilies, broken into pieces (optional) 1 lb green beans, chopped finely (in a food processor is fine) 1/4 rounded tsp fresh ground black pepper 1 rounded tsp salt 1/2 cup shredded […]

One consequence of writing a cookbook is that now when I eat out, I find myself taking mental notes and/or critiquing the food. These are two dishes from the Marriott I was staying at in Walnut Creek. The clam chowder was delicious, but the best part was how they served it in a little individual

Note to self — on a day when you had a fair bit of blood drawn (routine check-up stuff, not to worry), maybe it’s not the brightest choice to a) eat lightly and then b) go workout with the trainer at the gym. I had to sit down partway through because I got light-headed! It’s

Short-grain rice, Sri Lankan beef curry, Thai carrot salad, my friend Kat’s watermelon radish quick pickle, and some sliced bell pepper. Yummy — I especially like how the pickle enhances the spiciness of the beef curry. Also, it’s ridiculously pretty.

Thai Carrot Salad   1 T ginger & 3 cloves peeled garlic, grated very fine 2 T fresh lime juice & zest of 1 lime 1-2 T soy sauce 1 T fish sauce (optional; vegetarians can skip it) 2-3 T brown sugar 1-2 green chilies, minced (optional) 1 carrot, shredded   Combine all ingredients and

No real recipe — I just follow the instructions on the Maesri red curry paste can, combining the paste with coconut milk and a bit of brown sugar and fish sauce and simmering the salmon and bamboo shoots in that. But I had fun building the tower for my dinner.

(Lunch today: cauliflower poriyal with a little beef curry on top. Yum. Smells so good when frying the onions in ghee…) Cauliflower Poriyal (25 minutes, serves 4) The key to this dish is sautéing the cauliflower until it’s browned—the browned bits will be the tastiest. I generally like to serve this dish with beef or

I was excited to hear that you can buy fresh curry leaves by mail on Amazon now — I had to try it because even though I have a little curry tree at home that I pick from, I’m constantly hearing from people who want to make my recipes and can’t find curry leaves locally.

Okay, this is slightly tricky, since you need to cook it in two batches, but a) tasty, b) nutritious, and c) pretty! I cooked a mix of red rice and quinoa in the rice cooker (on the brown rice setting, which is very slow, so allow extra time). And then cooked some short-grain white rice

This was a fun one for me — an entirely vegan dinner, that I did for last week’s board game night. Pretty easy with Sri Lankan food. Going around clockwise: lentils in coconut milk (tons of protein), carrot in coconut milk, kale sambol, coconut sambol (spicy), seeni sambol (spicy and sweet), eggplant curried in coconut