Samosas are very time consuming.

Samosas are not worth my time, or yours, during the work week. Letting the dough sit, prepping, cooking and cooling down the vegetables, rolling the dough out, cutting, stuffing and baking (or frying) = too much time, especially when you have to make the rest of the meal and have to do laundry.

I used a recipe from the Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook, which is probably my favorite and most used cookbook, and omitted the peas because I hate them (that texture? bursting in my mouth? gross). They also suggest cutting the dough into squares, which I did and will not do again. They turn out looking like dumplings, as they did the last time I made them, and it leaves you confused as to why you are eating samosas shaped like dumplings when they should be like big, fluffy clouds.

For the main dish, I made a curried lentil soup and was able to christen my most beloved 2010 Christmas present: the 14-cup Cuisinart food processor. I had to double the recipe and did not use a large enough pot, so it was filled to the brim, which makes it difficult to stir and adjust with more water when needed.

Aside from being inaccurately shaped and a bit too spicy, the samosas and soup were delicious. Brown and ugly, but nutritious and hearty.

Also, Meredith and I made dinner tonight! A pretty simple stir-fry with tofu, onions, kale and white button mushrooms and brown basmati rice on the side. I made a sauce with gochuchang, a Korean hot pepper paste, sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic and ginger. I've used a similar sauce for a pork dish, and it came out more flavorful - maybe next time we will let some of the flavors marinate more, but still a proud accomplishment for a joint dinner venture.

Giant artichokes with handmade linguine and steamed clams

Artichokes and steamed clams, especially littlenecks, are two of my favorite late spring/early summer foods. I find giant artichokes to be meatier than the regular sized variety.

The first thing I did was de-choke and trim the choke. All that means is getting rid of all of the things that will prick your fingers or the inside of your mouth when you're trying to eat the thing, like the spines at the tips of the leaves and the little needley things on the inside.

















I braised the halves with some basil, salt, lemon, and a couple of dried porcini mushrooms so that the liquid would be all delicious and usable in the rest of the elements of the dish. When the artichokes were halfway done, I stole some of the braising liquid for the pasta dough instead of just using straight-up water. I usually like to do a combination of semolina and all-purpose (unbleached or whole wheat) flour for the dough.


The pasta dough gets rolled out nice and thin and then rolled up, sliced, unrolled, and laid out to dry. You need to be careful to flour the surface of the rolled out dough well enough so that unrolling it isn't too difficult. When the strands get a little dry they get tossed into salted, oiled up, boiling water.

Last step! Scrub the shit out of those clams so no sand in the teeth. I got some white wine, olive oil, a little reserved braising liquid, and a couple of crunched down garlic cloves going in a lidded pan and tossed the clams in. Let those suckers steam until they pop open, making sure to agitate here and there to help them along the way. Then I plated up with a little clam broth poured over the pasta and clams and served the artichoke with some home-made aioli for dipping.