Mint

Lamb marinaded in a spicy yogurt sauce and grilled to a perfect medium rare.

Homemade grenadine makes a great gin daisy cocktail!

I had some co-workers over for a quick bite on the way out to a “Team Building Event” (bar crawl). Had to stick to veggies because one is vegetarian, but I wanted to make something light anyways. I needed it to be really delicious because these people cook my recipes at Cafe Burrito every day and I wanted to show them that I was good at cooking other types of food too. I decided on making a simple cauliflower and chickpea curry and rolling it into some fresh rolls. I made a quick yogurt raita as a dipping sauce and the rolls were a big success.

I had a handful of different cravings at the grocery store on my way to my friends place. I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted but I knew we were grilling. I started to go into the direction of an italian pesto-like pasta salad with some grilled sausage, but then I got the usual cravings for Vietnamese rice noodles I have all the time. I ended up sort of combining the dishes into something fun and delicious.

You guys know I love to make twists on the burrito from all over the world. There are even some good versions in Stuffed! The key to making this work is not just slapping a bunch of exotic ingredients into a tortilla, you really have to take the time to replace all of the burrito staples like rice, beans, meat, and salsa. This week Mandi and I made an incredibly tasty Persian take on the burrito. For the rice, we used a sour cherry rice complete with the crispy bits Persian rice is famous for. In place of beans, we used lentils. The meat was a classic marinaded chicken, salsa was a Persian tomato-cucumber salad, and for sour cream, we made a yogurt sauce.

I was craving a breaded chicken dish with pasta like chicken parm but I wanted it to be lighter. I was also craving Vietnamese bun vermicelli. I put the two cravings together to create this dish. I had been thinking of Vietnamese for a long time actually. The other day I finally was going to order some but I was having a lazy day and didn’t want to leave the house, so I found the only place that delivered. I had never been there and didn’t look at the reviews, but it turned out that it was more of a Chinese place that had some Vietnamese dishes on the menu. The bun vermicelli was almost embarrassingly bad and it made me crave the stuff even more! I’m not saying what I made here is super authentic or anything, but when I am craving it what I really need is the interplay of cucumber, mint, peanut, fish sauce, and rice noodles. The one that I ordered that day only had 3 out of 5 of these ingredients and for me that just doesn’t cut it!

Did you guys know that hummus makes an awesome alternative to pizza sauce? I used it on pizza at a recent pizza party, and a few people even called it the best pizza there! I decided not to get weird with the flavors like I did yesterday, instead I just topped the pizza with some of hummus’s best friends. Friends like feta, olives, kofta, and tzatziki.

Super spicy potato salad inspired by Vietnamese ingredients and bland potato salads everywhere!

These chicken tacos are inspired by the Brazilian Cocktail Caipirinha