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Recipe: indian garlic naan

It’s October, but we’re still wrangling with Indian Summer over here. Well, we were. The forecast has some storms brewing on the horizon which could be a blessing… or a curse… or both for this week’s shoot. If you are in Colorado, now is a GOOD TIME to get out and capture those fall colors (and say hi if you see me!).

one of our best local stands

With only a few days between road trips, my time at home is more like a pit stop than being home. I’ve shot some of our local colors (which are also very good this year), but I need a little time away from the leaves or else I won’t have good leaf brain this week. There are always interesting distractions…

my favorite graffiti in boulder canyon

a surprise bloom of my queen of the night (night-blooming cereus)

All of the action in the kitchen of late has been “cooking to clean out the refrigerator”. I wanted to leave Jeremy with plenty of food while I was gone. Unfortunately, I have a terrible habit of overestimating how much food he’ll need and I pretty much prepared enough food for him to survive a zombie apocalypse. [Side note: I really am convinced that a mountain bike is an excellent way to escape the zombies – if you’re in good shape.] I guess that means I won’t need to cook when I get home.

But I must tell you that in addition to the arrival of fall colors, the anticipation of big dump snow days, and my absolute love of Halloween, the cool down in temperatures means I can get roasting, baking, stewing, and pressure cooking again. A few weeks ago I made my own garlic naan and in addition to filling my house with smoke, it also filled my head with visions of fresh naan this winter.

flour, milk, egg, garlic, ghee, greek yogurt, salt, baking powder, sugar, yeast

combine the flour, salt, and baking powder

sugar, yeast, and warm water – getting puffy

I’ve had unyeasted naan and yeasted naan. I like both. I imagine the unyeasted version must be pretty simple (another recipe to try later), but who doesn’t love a challenge, right?! I chose to go with the garlic naan over plain naan because I’m a total sucker for garlic and I always have some on hand.

add garlic, yeast mixture, milk, yogurt, egg, oil, and water into the dry mix

after kneading the dough, let it rise

punch it down

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: tonkatsu (japanese pork cutlet)

The fall shoot is yellow-overload for me. I tend to go where the aspens are and that means gold against dark pine green here in Colorado. It took some getting used to since I grew up on the East Coast and spent many a graduate school year in the northeast where maples are ablazing in glorious reds, oranges, yellows. That’s not to say that we don’t have our share of the reds here. We do! Those plants that gave us glorious wildflowers in summer do double duty and provide striking splashes of red in the backcountry as evidenced on a recent hike.

sticky geranium leaves turning red

more sticky geranium

columbine leaves growing in a rock crevice

fireweed

king’s (or rose?) crown

September has always been my favorite month because it is my birthday month and my birthday usually coincided with the first day of fall. The first day of fall is an abstract concept in places like southern Virginia. But in Colorado’s high country, fall plays for reals and I love it. Jeremy and I got to the trailhead in the dark and hiked via headlamps for the first hour in sub-freezing temperatures. When the sun made her intentions known, we shut off the lamps and admired sunrise from a high vantage point. We continued on and marveled at the frost that encrusted the ground, the plants, even the tiny late season wildflowers. Alpine plants are tough. Coming around a bend in the trail, I looked up and gasped, silently grabbing Jeremy’s arm as he walked up behind me. In the bluish light of dawn under the forest canopy stood an enormous bull moose. He was massive and towered above us even 20 feet away. At once, the moose reared its head up and back, the entirety of its enormous body flowing fluidly behind the head and diving into the woods, silently and effortlessly.

sunrise on the valley

the frost

jeremy walks ahead of the sun

We heard bull elk bugling in the distance and saw a handful of mule deer feeding in the meadows. It’s a busy time of year for everyone. While we are secretly doing our snow dances every day, this is our favorite weather for hiking when you can see your breath on the air into mid-morning and the sun is regarded as a welcome friend rather than an oppressive tyrant.

a few of the early aspens

a few snowfields linger in the chutes

After a hike, we’re always hungry because we rarely eat much for breakfast (it’s hard to stomach much food at 4am) and we typically graze infrequently on the trail. The temptation to make a beeline straight from the trailhead to a burger joint or the pizza shack is high, but we try to avoid it by having good leftovers at home to heat up and dig into immediately. In this case, I had tonkatsu – Japanese pork cutlet – in the refrigerator. I like to make extra because Jeremy loves it for lunch. It’s a dish I’ve seen on just about every menu in a sushi bar, but I never ordered it because I’m such a nut about sushi and sashimi. After seeing Marc post about it, I bookmarked the recipe and didn’t look at my bookmarks again until a few months ago.

start by slicing cabbage

and soaking it in water

A traditional accompaniment is sliced cabbage and since you soak it in water for about an hour, it’s advised that you start with that step first. Once you get the cabbage soaking, break out the pork loin! Well, I used pork loin chops. You just need pork loin chops, salt, pepper, an egg, flour, and panko (flaky Japanese bread crumbs – flaky as in texture, not in terms of reliability). And oil for frying.

pork, egg, panko

trim any fat or silverskin from the pork

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: chicken salad puffs

Good people, you still have until Monday, August 29, 2011 noon MDT to enter the raffle for a fine art print of your choice. Thank you!!

Lately it seems everyone is asking the same question, “Where did summer go?” In the case of my Seattle friends, they’re asking, “Summer who?” The start of the academic year tends to be a major social signal that summer is over. If I step outside my house in the afternoons, I can hear the children at the elementary school screaming and laughing at recess. If I drive through Boulder, it takes me twice as long to get anywhere because of all the new (and disoriented) freshman at the university. While I am already daydreaming about 4 foot powder dumps in winter (okay, I’ve been daydreaming about that since the last time I skied on June 21), I know that will come with a little time and perhaps some patience on my part. Autumn is surely coming, but we’ve still got some weeks of summer left as is evidenced by our near 100°F temps, daily thunderstorm cycle, the height of color at the farmer’s market, and meetings in the park with friends on blankets.

kaweah basking in the sun, unaware of the approaching thunderhead

beets the color of candy at the boulder market

calliope eggplants

brilliant carrots

my little buddy getting a snuggle from his mama

I haven’t shot a recipe I’ve made in a couple of months and it feels like forever. It isn’t for lack of mojo as there are several scraps of paper (both carbon-based and silicon-based) strewn about reminding me of recipes I want to try making and blogging. The mojo is there, just not the time. So I’ve dug deep into the queue and found a recipe for the chicken salad puffs I served at the afternoon tea I hosted a while back. It really was a while back – it was in November of last year. I’m hanging my head in shame at my lameness. But I assure you these chicken salad puffs are far from lame!

chicken, grapes, celery, almonds, parsley, onion

prepped and chopped

**Jump for more butter**