Extra Schmaltz!

I have (minimally) adapted this from here. It can be made either as more of a soup, or a stewy pasty thing to eat with rice (and might I suggest Lillian's cumin rice ).If you're interested in more information on chana dal than you could ever have wanted, see here. This is supposed to use the "kabuli" style of chana dal, but I'm guessing you'll be lucky enough to find ANY form of chana dal, let alone have a choice between 'desi' and 'kabuli.' Ingredients: 2 cups of Chana Dal 4 cups water 1 small onion (minced) 3 or so tomatoes, minced finely or pureed (I was pureeing tomatoes for palak paneer anyway) 1 tsp. of cumin seeds 1 tbsp. of fresh ginger (minced) 1 tbsp. of garlic (minced) 1/2 tsp. of turmeric powder 1 tbsp. of coriander Powder 1 tsp. of cayenne pepper (or more - this gave it a relatively mild spiciness). I also think it would be good with jalapenos) Salt (to taste) 1 tbsp. of fresh lemon Juice or Fresh Lime Juice (I used lemon) Prepar...

This is not necessarily a definitive recipe - I just made it to good result the other night, and had to sort of distill a few recipes to do it. I'm not sure if I needed to cook it longer, but it wasn't quite as crisp as baguettes normally are - however, I liked it, and it was a little less harsh on the roof of my mouth. Ingredients: 1 4oz package of dry yeast/2.25 tsp yeast from a jar 1/2 c. warm water 3.5 c. flour 2.25 tsp. salt 1.25 c. water 1 egg white. 1) Combine 1/2 c. warm water and yeast (I added just a little honey to keep the yeasties happy) 2) Mix flour and salt, then add yeast water and normal water, mix. 3) Knead until pliant. Let rise until tripled, or until you get sick of waiting and it's at least doubled. 4) Punch down, rise again until doubled. 5) Punch down, cut into three pieces (or as many pieces as you want loaves). Let rest 5 minutes. 6) Use a rolling pin to roll the pieces out into long thin rectangles, then roll them up to make long thin tubes. Pinch...

Alternate name: Alex's not-quite-beef-stroganoff. This dish started out as a creative way to use up some leeks that were on sale, and evolved into something more complicated since I wanted to make something fancy. It's very similar in some ways to beef stroganoff, but more subtly flavored and not quite as heavy. Ingredients: 1 pound steak (I used top sirloin which was reasonably priced at about $5/#) 1 leek, cut in half then chopped into thin half circles 2 + 1 shallots (the first two should be larger), diced 5-7 mushrooms, sliced (optional) 2 Tbsp butter 1 1/2 Tbsp flour 1/3 c. heavy cream 1/2-1 c. milk 1/3 c. dry white wine Salt and Pepper. Preparation: 1) One hour before cooking, heavily salt both sides of the steak, then cover in plastic and place in refrigerator. After an hour has passed, wash off the steak. It will look a bit dried out - that's fine. Put as much as a tablespoon of pepper on each side. 2) Heat a heavy skillet to quite hot, then add a small amount of hi...