foodiefanatics

This has been a busy couple of weeks.  I've made spicy carrots with parsley and cilantro from food and wine (march, 2005) with my CSA veggies. I actually added broccoli and it was really tasty. I'll make that again. We served it both warm and cold and liked it better cold. 
I made a pea shoot stir fry which was kind of just like green things with garlic. I still haven't found a pea shoot recipe I really like.
Traditional hashbrowns "21" club from gourmet Nov. 1995. These were very yummy. You boil potatoes then fry them with onions, butter and oil. 
German Apple Pancake from Cooks Illustrated (Jan/Feb 2003) which actually wasn't very good. It didn't puff but instead was kind of like a firm custard (sort of). Didn't have a lot of flavor.
Pasta with vodka and cream.  The kids liked this but I found it a bit too mild.  Plus my Parmesan cheese didn't really melt which was strange. 
I made my own Caesar dressing (well, I don't think it's really Caesar) but it works and it uses what's in the fridge. I took mayo, dijon, worcestershire a bit of olive oil, garlic and bal vinegar and whipped it up.  It needed to be thinned with a bit of fresh lime (lemon would probably work too). Very flavorful and everyone loved it.

The menu: tomato soup, Chicken Tikki Masala, spicy broccoli, eggplant and canned dal (which, by the way, is quite good).
The reviews:  Tomato soup was excellent, with the dominant taste that of fresh tomato (so the tomatoes have to be good) (from The ARt of Indian Vegetarian Cooking)
Broccoli was quite simple and incredibly easy to make (Madhur Jaffrey's World VEg) but quite tasty, just garlic, ginger, salt and sesame oil.  The kids loved it.
Eggplant was fantastic, almost like caramelized eggplant (the kids wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole), but I wished we had tons more. It was called Char-flavored eggplant with green peas (also from Art of Indian Veg). You cook the eggplant with spices without stirring until all the liquid evaporates and it starts to caramelize and literally melts in your mouth.
Chicken Tikka Masala was also excellent.  I used the Chicken tandoori recipe from Cooking Light which uses thighs marinated in a tandoori paste and then cooked on the grill. The key to the cooking is not drying the meat out. I cooked it barely 6 minutes a side, checking often, at about 400 degrees. I then used the Tikka masala sauce from 1,000 Indian recipes which was fantastic but I did not have fenugreek leaves and I think it really could have used that. This is close to the sauce from a restaurant (although the chicken itself does not have the charred flavor from a restaurant).
Great Meal.