Cooking up a storm

Yes, I know that I’ve been weak on posting recently, but in part that’s because I have been so busy cooking. I’ve always loved cooking but between graduate school and then two years of EIS, it seemed that my time to play in the kitchen got more and more limited. I’m actually probably busier now than ever, but the beauty of things is that it’s a little bit easier to leave my work at work, so my cooking has flourished. With the wonderful farmer’s market here, all sorts of unique ingredients are easily at my fingertips. And, thanks to my continued Bon Appetit subscription from C and M, I have been stockpiling recipes to try for years and years. It also doesn't hurt to have a highly appreciative audience.

The past few weeks have been all about grilling and Mexican food. It started out with these carne asada tacos, accompanied by this salsa. IG and I loved these so much that I made them again. And again. I find that making the perfect salsa always takes a little tweaking but I finally got it right on the third try. I think using red wine vinegar rather than limes (which I forgot to buy) may have been the key.

Last weekend was K’s birthday, so I used hosting a party for her as a guise to experiment with some more taco recipes. Easily made the night before and then grilled at party time, I made these incredible tacos al pastor with this salsa, fish tacos with a salsa verde, and grilled shrimp with rosemary. In the spirit of experimentation I also made pickled onions which IG loved and I thought were good but everyone else seemed too scared of to eat. Of the lot, the pork tacos were by far and away the crowd favorite, and despite my usual fear of fruit in my main courses, the pineapple was a great addition to the marinade (although I did forget in the hustle and bustle of things to grill the leftover pineapple). The two-chili salsa was quite good, but I think the consistency put some people off (rather thick and pasty). I am going to try the leftovers as a marinade for chicken or fish. The fish tacos were also great, but I am still not convinced I’ve found the perfect salsa verde.

Increasingly bad at blogging

It looks like I'm getting worse and worse at keeping up with this blog. Not sure why, I guess between travels and this and that (mostly not wanting to post from work, which is largely the only time I am on the computer), I've slipped way behind.

Here are some pictures from my early May trip to Kenya.

Will try to pick up the frequency of posting here!