Order up!

Another fun evening with Dan and Daniel--they came over for dinner tonight, and we celebrated some of Dan's recent good news. I realized I had not gotten to put together a nice dinner for company for a while; it was really enjoyable to cook for more than one person for a change.

I made several Madhur Jaffrey recipes: two old standards (red split lentils with cumin seed, and Gujerati-style green beans--black mustard seeds, red pepper flakes, and garlic), and a new one (Malai wali murghi, chicken with cream). I was very happy with the chicken recipe--definitely a keeper, even if it takes multiple steps and a chunk of time. I bought a mini-food processor, because I have gotten tired of "make 4 cloves of garlic and a one-inch piece of ginger into a paste" using my mad knife skillz.

Whenever I make apple pie using Chris Kimball's recipe, I end up with extra pie crust. Usual side effect: time to make my favorite single-crust pie--pecan!


I often make bourbon pecan pie, but all of my nice bourbon is packed up in New York at my parents' place: Maker's Mark, Knob Creek, and Jack Daniels' Single Barrel. I didn't want to buy a full 750 ml of the fancy stuff for use in the next two months, and the store only had small bottles of regular Jack. I figured that using JD as a flavorant was like with making tiramisu with Sanka, so this pie was straight up.