Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Today, we're headed to Afghanistan for a sweet and savory dish of spiced pumpkin topped with a yogurt-garlic sauce.  Kadu Bouranee  is made of pumpkin, or other winter squash, sauteed with spices and topped with the yogurt garlic sauce. We loved the sweetness of the pumpkin with the tartness of tomatoes and freshness of the yogurt sauce. This a bonus #KitchenMatrixCookingProject that carried over from last month because Wendy and I weren't able to get it together the week we had originally scheduled to cook Bittman's Pumpkin + 3 Ways. So, Karen agreed to hold hers and we're offering a bonus post this week. You can read more about our project  here , but basically   Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm , Karen of  Karen's Kitchen Stories , and I have been making our way through Bittman's Kitchen Matrix Cookbook. What a fun year it's been! Before I get to my pick, here's the rest of our pumpkin patch... An InLinkz Link-up Kadu ...

Claudia from  Honey from Rock  is our   Cook the Books   hostess for this round (June-July 201); she chose  Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise   by Ruth Reichl.*  If you want to join us, posts aren't due till the end of July. You have plenty of time. On the Page This memoir details her exploits during the first few years of her tenure as a restaurant critic for the New York Times . And when I write 'exploits' I mean fully costumed escapades in which Reichl adopted different personae in order to get an unbiased take on a restaurant. I mean, I have certainly received perks and bonuses at places when folks recognize me as a writer for a local food magazine. I can only imagine what sorts of benefits Reichl would get. Actually, I don't have to imagine; she describes it to us. So, she would go in disguise; she became her mother. "And then it hit me: I was going to dress up like my mother. The notion pleased me just a little t...

Here we are at day three of #PumpkinWeek v.2016, hosted by Terri of  Love and Confections , where we are celebrating our love of the season with an entire week of pumpkin goodies, leading up to National Pumpkin Day. Twenty-one food bloggers have come together to share over eighty recipes with you. In addition to pumpkin biscotti, cupcakes, and madeleines, we are also sharing savory pumpkin dishes such as hummus, chili, and pumpkin empanadas. Come back every day for #PumpkinWeek recipes. You can also find these great recipes and more on  Love and Confections' #PumpkinWeek Pinterest Board ! Once I decided to keep all my offerings savory - and inernational - I looked at pumpkin traditions from all over the globe. On day one I shared  Pumpkin Laska , a curry noodle soup with pumpkin from Singapore. On day two, I posted a riff on a Brazilian shrimp stuffed pumpkin using squid instead of Lula na Moraga . Today, we're headed to Afghanistan for a sweet and savory dish...

It's time for Group B's  Secret Recipe Club   October reveal. This month I was assigned to   Searching for Spice , penned by Corina .  Corina shares that Searching for Spice began as a way of recording some of her favorite recipes and to have a place where she could easily find those dishes when she wanted to make them again. I think we all use our blogs that way! Very convenient...except when you're offline somewhere. Some of her favorite recipes are curries, stir fries and spicy salads. And she loves Indian, Mexican, North African, Thai and Chinese food. Gotta love that. I chuckled when I read that she refers to her kids as 'Little Miss Spice' and 'Master Spice.' Mine are 'The Precise Kitchen Elf' and 'The Enthusiastic Kitchen Elf.' I think all of our kids are going to be fabulous cooks with all the time they're logging in the kitchen! Speaking of kids...while mine are not picky eaters, they both really don't c...

Contrary to popular belief among my friends, I do not just wiggle my nose and have good things come out of my kitchen. It takes work and a lot of practice. But here's the thing: the more you cook, the easier it gets. You begin to see similarities in textures and, thus, can adapt and revamp things into other things. Kinda like a nose-wiggle, I suppose. So, this morning, I looked at the pot of leftover Sher Berinj (Afghani Rice Pudding) in the fridge and thought "I can make that into breakfast!" Remember my timbale di risotto , little drums made with leftover asparagus-fennel-leek risotto ? Same idea. I placed the cold pudding in a bowl, added one beaten egg, and formed them into palm-sized patties. Then I cooked them in a large flat-bottomed pan - with a pat of butter - until they were crisp and nicely browned. I topped them with a lightly sweetened organic sour cream (organic brown sugar and a splash of pure vanilla extract) and a sprinkling of cinnamon. "E...

Here's the first stop in my cooking-around-the-world adventure. I was inspired, today, to do this - cooking my way through 195 countries - by Sasha of Global Table Adventure . And, in typcial Camilla-fashion, I asked myself: why wait? So, here we go. Dinner tonight was made up of savory and sweet dishes from AFGHANISTAN , the first country on the list. Click here for my CATWWC (Cooking Around the World with Camilla) launch post . I hope you'll enjoy my tabletop travels. Maybe you'll even join me in whipping up a dish or two. If you do cook something from one of these countries, I'd love to hear about it. Feel free to comment on the posts themselves or email me at constantmotioncamilla at gmail dot com. Country: Afghanistan Being a landlocked nation, Afghani cuisine seems to be influenced by all of its neighbors. The flat bread is reminiscent of Indian naan while the combinations of herbs and spices remind me of dinners at the table of a friend who came from Ir...

These small oval breads are traditionally baked in a tandoor, the stove or oven of the region. In India the tandoor is typically buried in the ground while in Afghanistan the oven is above ground. The bricks of the oven are rounded. The Nans are shaped and slapped onto the hot bricks for fast baking. The recipe I found instructed that caraway seeds could be used if black cumin was unavailable. Since I didn't have black cumin seeds, I substituted black caraway for the look and added ground cumin for the flavor. 1 1/2 C warm water 1 packet of active, dry yeast 1 T organic granulated sugar 4 C white whole wheat flour (I have no idea what kind of flour is traditionally used) 1 T pink Himalaya salt 1/4 C olive oil (the original recipe called for corn oil) 1 T ground cumin 2 T black caraway (the original recipe called for black cumin seeds) Place the warm water in a large mixing bowl. Add the yeast and sugar. Let it bloom for 5 minutes. Add the flour, water, cumin,...