And the nominees are...

I am pleased to report that we have been nominated, and when I say nominated, I mean that I submitted us, for a Best of Blogs award in the food category, which is meant to recognize blogs with smaller readerships. So when the time comes, get your voting clicker ready!

Devilishly good

The best part of Easter, as far as I am concerned, is turning the dyed Easter eggs into devilled eggs. Last year I had the brilliant idea of making half the batch a little new wave by adding this yuzu-chili paste I bought at the local Japanese market thinking it looked interesting, and it packs quite a kick. So I did that again this year, and dusted those with some green tea powder to distinguish them from the traditional ones, which I dusted with smoked paprika. See before and after pictures above.

Queen of Tarts

As part of my "actually try the cookbooks teetering on the shelves" project, I made this Three Onion and Feta Tart last night. It's very easy to do, because instead of a crust you just spray the pan with cooking spray and lay down a thick layer of breadcrumbs. You could easily try various vegetable-cheese-herb combinations and I think it would work beautifully. For a 10" tart pan, it was 3 eggs and about 4 oz. of cheese. Of course, it would be even better if studded liberally with pork products.

My excuse

I know I haven't been posting lately, but I have an excuse. I am in the middle of a miserable root canal, which hopefully, when completed, will relieve me of the unremitting dental discomfort I've been in for months. I haven't been able to eat anything too hot, too cold, or too crunchy, which lets out most of what I like to eat. On the plus side: I've lost 5 lbs. and gained a new understanding of portion control and eating just as much as you need to not feel hungry any more. But it's pretty much been a diet of soft foods -- soup, pudding, yogurt, pasta. If anyone has tips on how to make a soft diet interesting, by all means, lay it on me.

Rice is nice

I suddenly became consumed by a craving for rice pudding last night, which I adore, but had never actually made. So I browsed through a bunch of cookbooks and online recipes until I found one that called for a reasonable amount of milk and other ingredients I already had in the house. I ended up adapting a recipe from the giant Gourmet cookbook, and just did a simple, basic vanilla rice pudding, which Young Master Gateau and I ate warm with plenty of cinnamon. Then, because a cup of rice makes A LOT of rice pudding, I had a bowl of it for breakfast with coffee.

The Gateau Kitchen: Before and After

All hail Mr. Gateau! Without going too crazy with the budget, we wanted to perk up our existing kitchen to make it more pleasant until we fill the coffers enough to to a real reno. From craptastic 60s Formica to new butcher block with a nice white sink and brushed stainless faucet. It all looks nice, but my favorite part is that I finally have a garbage disposal of my very own.

By the book

Like many people who like food and cooking, I have way too many cookbooks, a large number of which I've never/barely cooked from. So my chow friends and I decided to take on a little project -- we're going to take a book a week off the shelf, in whatever order we keep them, and cook one thing from it (something we've never made), then post about the results. So far what this has taught me is (a) we have too many vegetarian cookbooks from Mr. Gateau's vegetarian years, and (b) some of these are not very good.

In Week 1 I cooked from The Vegetarian Epicure, which is a classic, in part due to its very 70s entertaining advice about how nice it is to cook an extra post-dessert course "if grass is smoked socially in your home." I made the Blonde Lentil Soup, which is a little unusual for lentil soup, in that it is flavored with lemon and basil. I think it would be nice in early spring, but it needs some tarting up to be more flavorful.

In Week 2, I was faced with a horror -- the Meatless Gourmet Low-Fat Vegetarian Cookbook. Even finding an appealing recipe was difficult, as much of it was recipes like "Easy Mexican Cheesy Bean Bake" and so forth. I finally tried a strawberry jam-oatmeal cereal bar recipe, which looked OK in concept (and looked nice in the pan) but which tasted like overly sweet clumps of newspaper. I plan to give this book the old heave-ho.

Because I was so dispirited about the whole thing, I decided to make another recipe from The Vegetarian Epicure. I picked a curried lentil salad that was strange but oddly appealing -- the lentils are tossed with a spice mixture (cumin seed, mustard seed, turmeric, cayenne, coriander, salt) cooked in butter, and then mixed with cubed pineapple and tomato, and the whole thing tossed in a mustard-garlic-white wine vinaigrette. You're supposed to serve it in a hollowed-out pineapple shell, but the hell with that. It's got a really nice and unusual tangy-spicy-sweet blend of flavors, and I think it would be nice over greens as an entree salad. I picture this as the kind of thing a French lady would make for a picnic.

Oh, and for dinner I also made that lemony red lentil soup I posted about before. I'm on the verge of a root canal, and soup is pretty much the only thing I'm comfortable eating right now. Pray for me.