We had good friends over for this one -- Vij's lamb curry. It was really tasty and we will definitely be making it again.

I first wrote about Vij’s cookbook — Vij’s Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine — here in late December. At that point I’d cooked a few tasty dishes from it (love their Vancouver, B.C. restaurant so much) and just about licked the plate clean with every one. Since then I’ve cooked some more from it and I’m sharing some of that here with you.

I don’t often cook so much from any one cookbook in such a short amount of time but this one never lets you down and I’ve learned so much. I also happen to love Indian cuisine and haven’t found too much of it in Portland to be honest that hits the spot. (Although I’m really looking forward to checking out the newly opened Bollywood Theater.) If you love Indian food as much as I do I recommend checking out this book.

We served the Vij lamb curry with this quick cabbage curry with mustard seeds that still had a lot of crunch and flavor to it and was really tasty.

I went ahead and bought a twenty pound sack of basmati from Fiji Emporium on North Interstate Ave. since I cooked a lot of Indian food over the winter and early spring.

I've been bulking up on my Indian spices as well...

This simple vegetable curry was really tasty with raita and black chickpea curry.

We make a lot of the Vij chai now too. It's a simple one with green cardamom and fennel.

Vij’s Cookbook Pt. 1

Vij’s Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine
www.vijs.ca

Tyler packed me lunch the other day and it made me very happy...

Things are starting to get going in the garden — right now I have tah-tsai (which I thought was a new green for me but it’s actually another way to say tatsoi — funny), flashy trout’s back lettuce and borage are all sprouting and we’ve been eating some volunteer arugula as well. The rhubarb is getting very big and leafy and the snap peas have finally sprouted! The garlic is looking great although it still has a few months of growing — I usually pick it in June or July. And I have all the vegetable seeds I’m going to plant this spring and summer and will probably start my indoor seed trays in a week or so to be transplanted out in several weeks.

That’s all just a long-winded way of saying happy spring! Although not very much of the food photographed in this post came from the garden I still call it Yard Fresh as a catch-all for good things that I’ve been cooking and eating lately. Hope you are doing well. Growing anything interesting this season? Eat anything tasty lately?

Loved the art on the bag and the sandwich inside it. Simple ham sammy with seeded wheat hit the spot.

The only thing really going in the yard right now that's ready to eat is the arugula that volunteered so we've been having a lot of salads with it and throwing it in scrambles and sandwiches.

I love Edelweiss Sausage & Delicatessen and their oregano-coated Nuremberger is one of my favorites. I sauteed it and served it with potatoes and kale with lemon butter. Really good.

And I can't make a trip to Edelweiss without getting some of their paprika loaf thinly sliced. If you haven't had it then please do yourself a favor and go buy some. You won't be disappointed.

My favorite way to eat it is stacked on lightly toasted bread with mayonnaise and sometimes slivered onion. That's it -- keep it simple.

Simple broiled cheese bread with egg. Mixed mozzarella, onion and mayonnaise for the cheese sauce.

Another tasty, savory breakfast -- this time with leftover spaghetti in red sauce.

John and Tyler recipe testing the chicken with jamon and manchego for the Toro Bravo Cookbook, due out fall 2013 from McSweeney's.

Every once in awhile I get too busy work-wise to put together a blog post so I throw up a photo and call it a day. We’ve been busy working on the Toro Bravo Cookbook so that means a lot of recipe testing and essay writing. I love it all — having so much fun with this project. I’m also doing all my other usual work and then some — all of it involving words, food, or words + food. Good stuff. I hope that you’re doing well and enjoying spring. Happy late April Fools’ Day! Hope someone got you good this year. I fooled a few…

www.torobravopdx.com

For Your Viewing Pleasure Pt. 1

I decided to cook up this blackened bluefish recipe in the second issue of Lucky Peach...

I’ve been pretty loud and clear about my love of Lucky Peach magazine published by McSweeney’s. I wrote about it here in late November but at that point I had yet to cook from it. (We also hadn’t sealed the deal for the Toro Bravo Cookbook with McSweeney’s, fall 2013, at that point…) Now that I’ve cooked from it — and now that issue number three has hit the shelves — I’m putting photos of a couple of the things I’ve made here. That’s it. Oh, and go get yourself a copy if you don’t have it already. It really just keeps getting better and better.

I got the fixings together -- homemade miso mayo made with my year-plus old homemade miso, pickles, spicy chips and thinly sliced iceberg.

I blackened dover because that was what looked best at the market...

And then I put it all together in between buttered and broiled ciabatta. So fucking delicious. Cook this!

I made a custardy breakfast sandwich with the leftover blackening spices, miso mayo, iceberg and some cheddar on ciabatta.

The third and latest issue of Lucky Peach, on shelves now, has this story by Rachel Khong...

Including a recipe for this Two Minute Chocolate Mug Cake that I've made a couple times now. It's not so pretty but it is fun, quick and tasty.

LUCKY PEACH
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I've had this Nigel Slater's cookbook Tender for about a year now and I'm really looking forward to cooking more from it this summer.

A peek inside...

When I first started writing about food professionally in 2003 I turned to Nigel Slater and his writing in The Observer and I loved his voice. A lot of food writing can wax poetic and favor form over the content but Nigel Slater’s writing never does. It’s honest and I’ve really enjoyed reading him over the years. If you haven’t read his memoir Toast I recommend it. It’s a wonderful book and I had fun reviewing it for Culinate way back when. (While putting this post together I learned that a film based on it starring Freddie Highmore and Helena Bonham Carter aired this past Christmas on BBC1 and at the Berlin, Taipei and Warsaw Film Festivals. Can’t wait to see it!)

I purchased one of Nigel Slater’s newest cookbooks — Tender — pretty soon after it hit shelves last spring in America and I’ve enjoyed cooking from it ever since. (It was published in two volumes in the UK in 2009; in the US by Ten Speed Press in 2011, the second US volume Ripe comes out this April.) The book is part recipe and part narrative — giving you background into Slater’s London home garden that he broke ground for in early 2000 and maintains with his partner.

Chapters are based on ingredients sourced from Slater’s garden and cooked in his kitchen so it’s homespun and inspiring and feeds right into my Yard Fresh ways. I love this book and I hope that you will too. Here are some of the tasty foods that I’ve cooked from it lately…

Thinly sliced roasted potatoes with butter and thyme.

Beer braised beef stew with homemade applesauce and roasted potatoes.

Stew and potato leftovers with one over-easy for breakfast.

This cauliflour cheese mustard soup is so good that I got a few friends to make it in the same week. Really.

Cabbage sausage soup with a few other bites on the side.

Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch
by Nigel Slater
pub. date April, 2011
620 pages
$40, Ten Speed Press
www.nigelslater.com