Impromptu Indian Dinner

Before doing the grocery shopping on Sunday I always plan a full set of menus for the week. I find the discipline helpful; it certainly cuts down on wasted food, and it eliminates nightly dithering about what's for dinner. And yet it is still important to be flexible and willing to deviate from the plan. Tonight was supposed to be a porcini and cremini mushroom pasta, which is one of my old standard recipes, but somehow that just did not appeal. So instead I improvised some miscellaneous veggies (part of a head of cauliflower, a lone potato, some frozen peas, a carrot, an onion and garlic) along with some spices into a curry, and a quick consultation with 660 Curries gave me a vague roadmap to do something else with the mushrooms. A little adaptation yielded a very passable mushroom curry, fragrant with garlic, whole cumin, black cardamom seeds, a cinnamon stick, a bay leaf, the very last ripe tomato from the garden, some Punjabi garam masala, and a dash of Vulcan salt from the Spice House in Chicago. Some toasted papadum, yogurt, and chutney made the dinner complete. My only regret was that we didn't have any ginger on hand, but I still called dibs on the leftovers for lunch.

I'll figure something else out to do with the porcinis.

Sunday Night Roasted Chicken

For Sunday dinner we had pollo al mattone, also known as "chicken under a brick." This is the cover recipe from a recent Bon Appetit issue, and it deviates slightly from the traditional method that involves grilling. Instead, the marinated and butterflied chicken is cooked in a skillet, pressed down by the foil wrapped brick. I used my black cast-iron skillet, which I had recently used to roast some chicken leg quarters and wings that turned out very nice. Tonight the chicken's skin was almost sinfully delicious. I am sure that most nutrition obsessives would frown on eating it, but it would be a crime to waste something that tastes so good. I am willing to lose a few months at the end of my life, or even a few years, to be able to eat such things.

Along with the chicken we had some standard smashed red potatoes and roasted cauliflower. Everyone should discover the joys of roasting the cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, caulifower, Brussels sprouts, etc.). Toss them with some olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe a sprinkling of the roasted garlic and red pepper sprinkles I get at Planter's Seed Co. in Kansas City, finished with a squeeze of lemon or some scattered parsley after they have roasted long enough to get a little browned and tender. There's no comparison between this and the steamed version.