Another dish i make quite often. Terrific as a warming comfort food.

Steam 1.25 cup of Lundberg jasmine rice. The recipe for perfect setamed rice comes from Kasma Loha-Unchit. 1:1 rinsed rice/cold water ratio, put into a steamer for 25 mins and then fluffed. For gratin i steamed it for 20mins to leave a bit underdone as it cooks further in the oven. Season the rice.
In the meantime slice and brown a large white onion. Shred a neck of a small butternut squash (the one that has a long neck), add to the onion and cook more until lightly brown. Toward the end add some chopped sage crushed garlic and good red chile powder (like pasilla or ancho). Remove from the pan and swirl a bit of butter. Shred about 4oz of good smoked cheese. Put aside some rice enough to cover the bottom of the pan with a relatively thin layer, mix in a bit of cheese, and spread in the pan. Mix the rest of the rice and cheese with the roasted squash and add to the pan on top of the rice layer. Sprinkle with some grated grana and bake in 400F for 200mins or so.

The Inspiration… It comes from all the strange places. And limitations… Like you want to bake the Diana Kennedy’s mushroom pudding but you won’t dare to start the oven – it’s damn hot and AC is still broken… Or your friend comments on somebody’s pic on FB, you click out of curiosity, and start looking at other pix and then this somebody mentions a russian resto in Mexico, only because he happens to live on the opposite side of the street… And to add to your curiosity the place is called Kolobok. And conveniently there is even a link to their site. The Kolobok web page takes a special care to explain all those exotic russian dishes to an uninitiated mexican public but you’re of course painfully familiar with every each of the items on the menu. Now Blancanieve - Snow White? What the hell is this? Oh that’s my favorite – cheese garlic salad, though i never knew it under the name of Snegurochka!..
So what’s for dinner?
I’ll cook mushrooms stove top, and serve them with tortilla chips, and russian cheese salad. And for the salad i won’t use loads of raw garlic and mayonnaise but olive oil and steamed garlic instead. And a splash of good vinegar! But with manchego cheese like they use in Kolobok

Fantastic dish i just learned from my friend, Rancho Gordo. He made it already twice in the last three days and i’m planning to do the same.

RG made it with watercress as the original idea suggested – i went with chard. There was not watercress in the store and in hindsight chard was no less appropriate anyway.

Slice the corn off the cob and cook it with a bit of water. Char sliced onion (or fat scallions – this is what i used), chiles (like jalapeno) and unpeeled garlic cloves. Peel the char off and whizz vegetables with half corn and some cream. Large bunch of chard, leaves only finely chopped, salt rubbed itm left for a min, rinsed and squeezed dry. Cook corn sauce for 10mins until reduced. Cook chard for about 9mins, add corn kernels and the sauce. I’m yet to get the ratio right but in this first version there was too much corn (4cobs)

After a hearty lunch that included tacos de lengua and carnitas, meat was out of the question for dinner. I got mushrooms and potatoes. And dill. Scallions were already in the fridge.

Should i mention that our AC has been broken for several days already and i started to master the art of stovetop cooking?
Luckily i have this 14″ skillet, a plancha practically, and my workhorse.
1lb of small oyster mushrooms, stems cut off. 1.5lb large fingerlings sliced 1/4″ thick crosswise, tossed with 3tbs olive oil, mushroom caps added and everything mixed gently but thoroughly.
On heated skillet the mixture goes. Med heat, covered. Stir every 10mins to brown evenly. In the meantime slice a bunch of scallions, and whatever herbs you fancy – i used dill but cilantro would be cool or, now i see it – tarragon! When potatoes are ready add a splash of posh white wine vinegar, and herbs. A vegetarian heaven.

Wegmans started to carry nice organic legumes – got some split peas and chickpeas to try. Decided to make the chickpeas/spinach dish one can find in every spanish cookbook. My version came from Jose Andres. I made some changes in spicing – braised chickpeas with cloves and cinnamon. Didn’t use saffron, and forgot paprika (stupidly). But it was picada that made this simple dish into something interesting and damn tasty.

Mediterranean dishes are funny this way. You look at the recipe for water borek (turkish) and then for achma (georgian) and you coudn’t tell one from the other…

Tonight i was trying to recreate a dish i had many many years ago in Moscow: i didn’t remember the name but from my memory it resembled both borek and achma…

I started with a recipe for a turkish water borek, by the esteemed Binnur and streamlined, streamlined, streamlined… Used a small pyrex dish the size of an eggroll sheet. Didn’t boil the sheets, and used 2 instead of 4 for dough layers. Same amount of filling, in 3 layers though. Halved the amount of topping. Kept int he fridge for an hour only.
Baked as per the original recipe.
Came out nice and indeed reminded a borek very much though not the dish from my memory…

Oh and btw – have you noticed the Valentine theme?