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in a 2 quart saucier, cook

2.5 oz finely diced yellow onion
in as little oil as you can get away with for 5 minutes. Add

6 oz chopped maitake
and cook for another 10 minutes, which is about as long as it will keep expressing liquid to deglaze the pan with.

Remove from heat and add

2-3 tsp fresh thyme

1/4 tsp ground green peppercorn

1 tsp dark soy sauce (I use Lee Kum Kee), or 2 tsp low sodium Japanese / American style (ie, Kikkoman) soy sauce if you don't have dark (but be careful, the soy has a lot of work to do and not much sodium budget to do it with)

enough, but not more than 1/3, of the broth below that it'll go through a blender. (I use a stick blender, for which this is about 3 oz, but some stick blenders splash a lot with that little material to work with.)

Once it's nice and smooth, set aside (if you used a stick blender, you don't have to worry about getting the pot super clean) and melt

1/4 c Earth Balance
Slowly add in

1/4 c flour

1 Tbsp Better than Bouillon veggie base
and cook until toasted, but don't overdo it.
Slowly add in

1/4 c white wine
and the rest of

3 cups mushroom broth, heated (or you can get away with just water but it won't be as rich)
Somewhere around 1.5 or 2 cups in it will start behaving like a Newtonian fluid again and you can stop being slow about it.
Combine with the reserved mushroom blend. Check for saltiness; you may want to add a little bit more soy sauce.

Yields 3 cups.

My previous recipe results in a Panera style soup (with carrots and onions) and also leaned harder on the quality of the dairy and stock than was suitable for the quality of those ingredients I usually keep around. Recently I had occasion to make it for someone who avoids onion, which was a chance to rethink and simplify the recipe and also move it more towards the Au Bon Pain experience that inspired me to make this soup in the first place.

Make a roux with 1/4c each butter and flour.
Add in 1T of Better than Bouillon chicken base. Cook for a bit to brown the roux a little.
Slowly add in 3c milk, stirring to keep the roux from sticking to the pot. About half way through, the soup will start behaving like a Newtonian fluid again.
Add 8oz chopped broccoli and simmer for 20-25 minutes.
At the end, add 4oz shredded cheese. This can be all cheddar if it's a mild cheddar, but if it's a sharp cheddar then like 1/3 of it should be something else (I used a Petit Basque which is a Manchego style and that worked nicely).

Boil half an ounce of dried hibiscus flowers in 5 oz of water, covered, for 45 minutes. This will seem like way too long but it's not.

Strain, yielding about 4 oz of infused water.

Mix with 1/2 cup sugar and chill.

Resulting syrup is amazing in yogurt or margaritas or in savory recipes that call for plum sauce. Or probably other uses I haven't thought of yet.

In the before times, I had some favorite restaurants near my office, and favorite dishes at each. Recreating them was one of the first things I did when I couldn't go eat there in person any more. I never wrote them up because I didn't consider them to be original recipes. But recently I went back and had one of them again -- and I find that not only was the recreation not perfect, but I prefer my version. So:

Toast a couple of small slices or one large slice of sourdough bread (I get mine from When Pigs Fly).

Scramble two eggs with a bit of milk, and cook on medium heat in a 6" ceramic surface skillet with some butter, starting once the butter has melted but before it gets too bubbly. When the eggs are coherent but still a little runny, turn the skillet off and flip, if necessary, so that the runny bits are down.

Plate and lightly butter the toast. Cut the scrambled eggs into two semicircles with your spatula and put one on each toast (or one on top of the other if it's a single bigger slice). Layer with smoked salmon so that the eggs are all covered. Garnish with a bit of finely chopped fresh chive, or scallion if you don't have chives. Finish with semi-coarse (1-1.5mm crystal) salt -- I find that Morton's kosher salt has crystals the right size, and some medium-coarse sea salts are also good. Too small and the salt entirely dissolves; too large and it doesn't stick to the salmon.

A while ago I had a dish at Soul of India in Sudbury which they called Goa Chicken. This was entirely unlike any recipe I've found on the Internet with that title, but the flavor notes were all ones that I've seen in South Indian recipes. It took me a while to put together a recipe I liked, and I drifted a little from the original inspiration as I did so. So it seemed appropriate to name this dish after the next state south from Goa.

marinate:
3 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite size pieces
in
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons turmeric

for 15 minutes. While this is marinating, stew
1 oz fresh curry leaves, stem on (available from Market Basket in Somerville)
in
14 oz (1 can) coconut milk.

This will seem like way too much curry leaf and not nearly enough coconut milk until it suddenly doesn't. It'll cook down some but don't boil too much of the water off or it'll be hard to get the curry leaves out later without losing all of their infused flavor.

Strain out and discard the curry leaves, and add to the coconut milk:
1/4 cup (no, really) green peppercorns, crushed in a mortar and pestle rather than ground
1/4 teaspoon (no, really) ground cumin
2 cups diced tomato (ideally skins off, which is an advantage of canned), with its juice

Set this to a vigorous simmer. Meanwhile in another pan, cook up:
2 cups onions, cut into 1" pieces
for a few minutes, with maybe a little bit of butter to keep them from burning.
Add the chicken mixture and cook until it's just browned enough that no pink is showing.
Toss this in with the coconut milk mixture (or the other way round) and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the liquid has thickened to a nice gravy consistency.

Serve over basmati rice.

second of a planned trio of ceviches.

1# trimmed haddock or similar white fish (if the skin has to be trimmed this will require about 1.25# to start), cut into 1/2" pieces
4oz lemon juice
2oz orange juice
1t salt
3/4t honey or agave
3-4 oz red onion, chopped very fine
3/4 oz jalapeno, about 1 small or 1/2 large pepper, chopped fine
6 oz tomatoes, cut into 3/8" pieces
1 avocado, cut in 3/8" pieces, about 4.5 oz

add items in order without pre-prepping, so that onions cook a little less than the fish and avocados cook a lot less.

30 minutes after adding the lemon juice to the fish, pour off excess liquid (probably about 3 oz) and serve with corn chips.

I had cilantro to add to this but I forgot, and I don't think that was a problem.

I've been asked for this recipe, so:

In a small or medium saucepan, muddle

1 oz fresh mint, stems on, in
1/2 cup sugar

for quite a while, so that the sugar starts to turn green, the stems are flattened, and the mint leaves have started to form into a mat. Add

1/2 cup hot water

and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for three minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat. Spoon most of the mint into a strainer and force the syrup out into the pan. Discard strained mint and strain remaining syrup into a small bottle.

Makes about 3/4 of a cup (but don't count on a double batch of it necessarily fitting into a 12oz bottle, especially if you want to leave room for a speed pour).

This recipe now reflects non-zero actual understanding of the dish (unlike the first time I made it) and has been edited accordingly. Like the other Indian recipes here it is not in final form and I will continue to tweak it, especially for spicing.

Rinse and soak 1 cup of lentils in 2-3 cups of water until they have expanded to about 2.5x volume, which will take 6 hours or so (it's OK to leave them longer). When you're ready to start the rest of the recipe, strain and rinse well.

Put up a kettle for the 1 cup of hot water below.

In a saucepan or maybe on saute mode in an instant pot, cook

1t cumin seeds in
a little bit of avocado oil, until they sizzle. Add

1c diced onion

and saute for 3 minutes. Add

3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped fine
1T grated fresh ginger

and cook for another 2 minutes. Add

1/2t salt
1/2t turmeric
2t garam masala
2t ground coriander
1t paprika

The recipe can be held here, and the resulting base is similar enough to other recipes up to this point that you can make a big batch for multiple dishes.

Put the mixture into the instant pot, if it's not already, along with the lentils and

1 cup diced tomatoes, plus their juice (2/3 of a can, if using canned tomatoes)
1 cup hot water

and cook on high pressure for 35-40 minutes. Add

1/2 cup canned kidney beans (1/3 of a can)
1/2t garam masala
1t butter
2T heavy whipping cream
2T chopped fresh fenugreek (every recipe I've seen says you can't sub for this, but actually you could totally sub cilantro here and it'd be different but tasty)

Simmer for at least 15 minutes (more is better) and serve.

Makes a little more than 2 pints.

This recipe is a work in progress and will likely change unannounced. Note that most small amounts are in *tablespoons* not teaspoons -- I make this recipe with the half-tablespoon measure, half filling it where a quarter tablespoon is called for.

In a heavy 4-5 quart saucepan or dutch oven, heat

1/2 gallon whole, non-UHT milk

to almost boiling. Add approximately

1/4 cup white vinegar

stopping when the milk begins to curdle. Stir until curds and whey are completely separated and strain through cheesecloth in a colander. Stir curds to let the whey escape, then gather the curds in the cheesecloth, squeeze, and press in a box press or under a heavy weight for at least an hour. Cut resulting cheese into 1/2" cubes.

Put up a pot of rice, and heat up a kettle to use where water is called for in the next few steps. In a saucepan, cook

1/2T cumin seeds in
a little bit of avocado oil, until they sizzle. Add

1-1/3c diced yellow onion
1/2 head garlic, crushed
1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped fine
1T grated fresh ginger

Cook for another minute or two, then add

1/2T salt
1/4T turmeric
1T garam masala
1T coriander
1/4T paprika
1/2T ground cardamom seed
1/3c raw (unroasted) cashews
3/4c hot water
a little bit more than 2T lemon juice

cover and cook for 5-7 minutes on medium heat. Add

8 oz chopped collard greens, stems on (this pretty much fills my 3 quart saucepan to the top). Or some other mix of dark greens; radish greens, chard, dandelion greens, various kinds of mustard greens, spinach, or even some kinds of choy work great. Malabar spinach does not work so well. If you use spinach, use grown-up spinach, not baby spinach. Pick fractions so that the overall level of flavor works out similarly to a collards/mustard greens mix.

Cook for 2 minutes to wilt (longer for a double batch), then add

8 oz chopped mustard greens, stems on

and cook for another 2 minutes. Turn off heat and blend with a stick blender, heaping sauce on the blender to keep it from splashing, until the pieces are about 1/4" long. Add cheese and

1/2T butter (optional)

and cook on medium for another minute or two. Add up to another

1/4c hot water

stirring until mixture will pour from a spoon, but not so much that the water separates from the curry.

Serve over rice.

Makes a little more than 2 pints.

I've been making scallion pancakes regularly for a while now and feel like I have got the recipe dialed in. The style of this recipe is pretty similar to the one I started with, but the process has gotten pretty different as I've made many tweaks and explored the space of flour types, ratios, rollouts, fats mixed into the dough or for rolling or for frying, frying temperature, and the precise maximum amount of scallions that a pancake can hold before they escape.

330g (2.5 to 2.75 cups) pastry flour, or a mix of pastry and AP (but use pastry flour, not AP, for dusting your work surfaces if you can, since the dusting flour doesn't get denatured by the hot water). Pastry flour makes the dough more difficult to work with and it will be tricky to get the final rollout to stay in one piece long enough to fry, but I find it's worth it for the flaky goodness. The more AP you add to the mix, the chewier, less flaky, and easier to work it will be.

1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt, if I remember which a lot of the time I don't

1 cup not quite boiling water -- I boil this in my kettle and then the thermal mass of my glass measuring cup lowers the temp to where I want it

You will need small amounts of flour for each following step, especially if it is humid, but not nearly as much as if you start with a 2:1 by volume ratio of flour to water as some recipes do.

Mix together in a medium sized bowl with a wooden spoon until it forms a shaggy dough. Knead until it is nice and smooth -- five minutes for AP flour, less for pastry flour. Rest in the fridge, covered, for at least an hour and usually overnight.

Chop small:
2 cups of scallions (erring on the side of too many).

You will also need at this point:
2 tablespoons duck fat (if you don't have duck fat or want to be vegan, sesame oil also works well)

Divide into six pieces by weight (usually each piece is about 3.25 oz). Roll out each piece (size of the rollout is not critical at this step but I usually aim for 7-8 inches) and brush with 1/2 teaspoon duck fat, leaving the fat off the inch of dough furthest away from you. Roll up and coil each piece, form into a patty, and go on to the next piece before doing the next step (for me, this results in each piece getting a 10-15 minute rest at room temperature).

Re-roll, brush with another 1/2 teaspoon duck fat, and add 1/3 cup scallions, also leaving scallions off the inch of dough furthest from you. Roll up, coil, form into a patty, and refrigerate in a small bag or plastic wrap to rest for another hour or more (but try to use them all up within a day or two, they don't last forever.)

Roll out a final time to a diameter of about 8 inches and fry in canola oil, flipping several times (at the oil temps i like, every 45 seconds) rather than waiting for each side to be done. The hotter the oil, the chewier the pancakes will be. 410F / 210C is not too hot.

I don't like my sauce sweet, so I make a dipping sauce of 1 part sesame oil, 4 parts white rice vinegar, 10 parts tamari, dash of hot mustard powder, and a bit of grated fresh ginger. This is easiest if you do the oil first, so that you can pour some back in the bottle if you overdo it.