spring roll dip/marinade.

IMG_8729

Man! We have sort of dropped the ball with posting this year. Between Summer's computer issues, (it's ugly, from what little I've heard.) me going out of town, and this awesome flu I've been saddled with since midway through my trip, not a lot has gotten done. And frankly- I greatly prefer it when life gets in the way of blogging rather than vice versa, what can I say? I've been busy and there's not a lot else to say about it.

But here, let me offer you this simple concoction. One of my oldest, dearest friends got married last week at San Francisco's beautiful city hall building. I spent a few days crashing in her apartment with her, and on the first night in, we scoured her cupboards trying to find a snack to hold us over for a few drinks before we went out to dinner with future in-laws. We found enough ingredients for some tasty salad rolls, and she tossed together this little dipping sauce. Usually, when Jason and I have salad rolls, he makes a little peanut sauce. I've never been a huge peanut fan, so this soy sauce based dip ended up being more my speed- I can't wait to make it this summer when we dive back into our tradition of eating salad rolls whenever it's too hot to cook.

In a small bowl, stir together soy sauce, slivers of fresh garlic, a drizzle of agave nectar (or honey), chili flakes, and thin slices of fresh scallions, "to taste." Dana tells me she also uses this as a tofu marinade, but I can imagine it just about anywhere- can you imagine marinating a flank steak in this, then grilling to perfection, served on top of a noodle bowl?

And now, excuse me while I nurse myself back to health on a bowl of my husband's chicken soup (last night, made with big, chewy hunks of mitake mushrooms, a pinch of cilantro, and a small squirt of sriracha. mmm, fortifying.) and a cup of chamomile tea.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Delicious Dried Plum Dessert for Autumn

Image
Two years ago in October everyone's favourite Parisian-American foodblogger, David Lebovitz , hosted a one-off Prune Blogging Thursday that resulted in a number of recipes using the humble wrinkled prune , aka dried plum. I submitted a recipe for healthy prune cake , which tasted much better than it looked. However, this time I've got a dried plum dessert recipe that both tastes good and looks good . The recipe is adapted from an Estonian cookbook " Kohupiima- ja kodujuusturaamat " (100 Rooga) and yields 6 small portions. I've garnished mine with sweet pomegranate seeds , but you can use lavender or lemon balm or simply dust the dessert with icing sugar. If you cannot find curd cheese (a popular ingredient here in Estonia), then ricotta or even cottage cheese (press through the sieve) would probably work as well. This would make a nice Christmas dessert - just in case you're already imagining the Christmas menu in your head :) Dried Plum and Curd Cheese Desse...
Read more

layered brownies.

Image
After the spice explosion of Thanksgiving (cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves, oh my!), all I could think about on Monday was something rich and chocolatey. Searching through my pantry, I was dissapointed to find nothing but a tiny bit of cocoa powder and some chocolate syrup. I was quite close to giving up and baking something else when I came across a recipe in an old christmas cookie magazine for brownies using chocolate syrup instead of regular melted chocolate. Hoorah! I was saved. The original recipe for these used a combination of chocolate and peppermint flavoring, but halfway through making them, I sadly found that I had no more mint extract. Instead, I mixed in some caramel extract into the cream mixture, which seemed to turn out just fine. I am sure a lot of different extracts and flavorings would work nicely: cherry extract, Kahlua, Amaretto, coconut flavoring, etcetera. Be on the lookout though. The spices will be back shortly. It's holiday time! Layered Brownies: recipe ...
Read more

Moist, moister, moistest: rhubarb muffins

Image
Photo updated in May 2009 We are still enjoying the rhubarb bounty . Here's a recipe for really moist rhubarb muffins that I made twice last week. Firstly, they were served at a 'girly' housewarming/ birthday party last Thursday, attended by all my aunties (that's three maternal and one paternal), my parents (my dad was unable to attend the 'real' birthday party on a previous weekend), as well as some of my first cousins (not all 11 though:). Instead of birthday cake , I made lots of these rhubarb muffins that day, served as a pyramid on a cake stand. Very pretty!! But in the midst of all the buzz and excitement, we forgot to take a picture. Not that it mattered much, as it gave me a good excuse to make these very same muffins again on Sunday. These muffins, let me tell you, are the moistest muffins you'll make. They're so moist, that even if you eat them on the following day, they taste like they're freshly baked. Delicious! Rhubarb muffins ( Rab...
Read more