Nice recipe for meatballs in tomatillo (with some chipotle) sauce. Couple problems – the color of cooked sauce – on the pic it was pretty and clear. In reality it came out grayish, apparently from the juice leaking from meat. Possible remedy? Cook meatballs in stock and add the sauce at the end. Or even bake them?
Zucchini/corn/mushrooms side was ont he otehr hand excellent (Kennedy’s blue book). The only thing i’ll change for the next time is to start with mushrooms – i used tiny oysters when hers was an huilacoche dish.

The original recipe came from Ezard, and called for roasting duck legs, shredding the meat for filling etc.
I didn’t have much time or duck legs but i had a freezer full of chicken meaty bones waiting there to be used in stock. So the solution was obvious – roast the chicken, pull the meat off and use it instead of duck.
The recipe for filling was promising – hand shredded roasted meat, tiny dice of shiitakes and scallion whites, bound by the paste of raw chicken breast, egg white and heavy cream.
Making a filling was a bit time consuming especially shredding the meat into small pieces. But it once again proved the point that a great dim sum can’t be cheap.
The dish in the Ezard’s book call for steaming dumplings and serving them in a light asian broth.
My easy way was to cook them as potstickers serving with kimchi, radishes, watercress and an excellent tofu tamari dip.
A perfect end of the week dinner. And the funny thing that when i asked Alex what’s is the filling he said duck and simply couldn’t believe it’s a roasted chicken!

I was dying to reorganize my cookbook library. Almost a year passed since the last revamp – about 120 (according to The LibraryThing) more books got acquired, and my interests changed.
The plan was to keep the same layout – main storage in bedroom and spill over in my office, but to move the books around to suit my needs both for better access and comfortable reading.
Now the main section in the bedroom carries chefs, italian, spanish, mexican, japanese, french and vegetarian cookbooks as well as the reference books and assorted food and drink magazines. There is also a small shelf with beer and cocktails books (not shown).

All baking, asian, wine and the rest cookbooks i don’t use got relegated to the auxiliary shelves in my office.
The new organization makes me happy.

Consider me an eternal Wolfert’s junkie. Her Mediterranean Grains and Greens was the main reason i got into cooking, about ten years ago.
And it felt nice when inspired by a recent tasting menu in Zahav restaurant i googled “green tahini” and the link to Paula’s Med Grains was one of the top hits.
Here is a dinner based on couple of recipes from this book:
Boiled umbrian chickpeas tossed with green tahini – parsley, garlic, lemon juice, jalapeno and sesame paste whizzed in a food processor.
A salad of smoked whitefish, ribbons of radicchio, and shaved fennel lightly coated with a dressing of creme fraiche, lemon juice, olive oil and a hint of mayo. Lot of coarse black pepper. Very nice.