Great Eats: Tomato & Herb Risotto

Tomato & Herb Risotto

Mmm, risotto. This easy and endlessly adaptable dish has such a poor reputation. There is this image of toil and endless stirring, that is very far from the truth - this is a great grab-and-go dish that can be ready in less than 30 minutes, with hardly any prep-work or thought. It, of course, requires an iota of attention - like anything, but so long as you don't let it burn, you are guaranteed a hearty, flavorful side dish that's filling to be it's own meal.

Vegetarian and vegan too!

Inspired and adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Great Eats: An Everyday Masoor Dal (Simple, Quick, Curried Red Lentil)

Even as I found much success in cooking Thai, and as fluent as I am becoming in all things curried and spicy, Indian food, as a whole, is still a daunting concept to me. Sure, I've dappled with it, but my experience and repertoire is limited to a handful of tasty, mushy curries that a authentic, but simplified for an American palette. 

All this didn't stop me from picking up a 5 pound bag of Masoor Dal at my local awesome Indian grocer. Sure, I hardly eat lentils and am still struggling to add them to my diet, but I just had to have them. So I hauled them home along with a 10 pound bag of Basmati rice, some naan, roti, canned sweetened mango deliciousness, yogurt and other goods (not having a car is great when I go wild in an import store), put them away and proceeded to do nothing with them for months. I've actually almost eaten through the bag of rice before I decided to finally do something about them and realized: I've no clue what to do!

Off to the Googles. 30 or so minutes later I had a plan. A delicious plan.

Great Eats: A Perfect Egg

With fresh thyme

When it comes to eggs, less is not only best, it's a requisite. And I've ruined many-an-omelette with a dash of this and a dash of that and suddenly, there was a pungent and tasteless mass of egg in front of me that obviously had missed the mark.

So keep it simple. Eggs are best with just a dash of pink or sea salt, with just a small sprig of something or a hint of spice. Pick one spice - sage, thyme, or dill - or any of a slew - using any more clutters that delicate eggy flavor of eggs.

With fresh sage

Using fresh spices also helps tremendously. If you're bored with whatever's in your pantry - source it fresh. The fresh spices a touch of luxury and also an immense improvement in flavor to any dish, but especially here.

But if you're looking to really switch it up, mix equal parts ketchup and sweet chili sauce and eat your eggs with it. And before you judge me, just try it! The sauce is tasty, sweet and a slightly spicy mixture and I'll take any chance to add it to my diet. Just be sure to use the ketchup with no high fructose corn syrup.

Great Eats: Rice Noodle Massaman Curry

What absolutely kills me when it comes to any kind of Ethnic market is seeing things on their shelves which are obviously a staple in the diets of millions of people, of entire ethnicities, countries and continents but that are nonetheless completely alien to me.

Like fresh rice noodles. A simple thing, for sure, but not anything I've ever bought or cooked; I don't think I've ever eaten them and in fact, it wasn't even apparent to me they could be had, "fresh."

How silly of me. After a few trips to the Thai market, I picked up a package, intending to make them that very day, but then - well, life happened, and a month later they were the last thing at the bottom of my refrigerator. In that month, however, curries have taken over as a thing I do all the time and when I found myself again craving that familiar warmth and aroma, and pressed for time and indridients, I threw caution to the wind and decided to experiment.

The results were delicious.

Great Eats: Fresh Herb Overload; a Pasta Sauce

Despite appearances, I don't eat Thai every night. There are days when I don't want my sinuses cleaned with chili, when I don't want to add another root vegetable to my palate. And as much as I enjoy curries of every color, sauerkraut remains a separate food group. Also, there are days when all I want is to sit back, throw some ingredients together and get back to a book, or a drawing, or some dumb online distraction.

Pasta is perfect for those days. My sauces are lazy, half-assed, a perfect thing to let sit and bubble away while I work on another illustration. The trouble is in getting a right mixture of flavors without overcrowding the best part - the pasta. In this, I don't always succeed, but this time I decided to take on a more academic approach to the sauce.

Simple but refined, it relies on the pungent flavors of fresh herbs that add so much life to any dish.