Rubbishy Cookery

  A good friend recently had a dinner party and served a delicious true tagine which inspired this experiment with leftover ingredients in the fridge and pantry. Allons-y! Ingredients: This was made on the fly with ingredients added as I went, so I don’t have my usual class photo of ingredients, but instead, a list: - leftover canned chickpeas - leftover canned tomatoes  - a peeled and cubed sweet potato  - a peeled and chopped carrot  - 4-5 finely chopped garlic - a chopped onion  - chopped dried apricots  - chopped prunes - many spices: salt, ground cumin, ground coriander, ground cinnamon, turmeric, saffron, smoked paprika  - olive oil Directions: Heat up a few gluts of olive oil in a soup pot and start frying the chopped onion: Add the chopped garlic, stirring often, until golden, and maybe a little browned: Add the chopped sweet potato: And chopped carrot: Keep stirring so nothing sticks or burns! Add all those lovely spices: Stir a minute or two ...

  We recently got a little Ukrainian grocery store in our town, and I finally checked it out yesterday. I found many treats and treasures, but the most exciting find for me was roasted buckwheat groats, known to my people as kasha. If the word kasha sounds vaguely familiar to you but you don’t know why, it’s because it was the running gag in an old Seinfeld episode. Everyone who entered the home of George Costanza‘s parents noted the scent of something,… was it… kasha? Now your home can smell like kasha too! Ingredients: These are my basic ingredients. If I had fresh or dried mushrooms, I would add them too. And while I was making this batch I remembered that, instead of plain water, it’s extra good with stock, so: Directions: Let’s ignore the directions on the bag, even though they’re simpler than mine, and come in three languages: And instead, make kasha the way my Bubbie did. First, pour a cup of buckwheat groats in a pot, and add a raw egg: Turn the stove heat to medium, and st...