Shyam Cooks French

This is an unexpected twist on our usual cooking arrangements. Shyam mostly cooks only Indian and quite often vegetarian. Not tonight! A new Food & Wine annual cookbook arrived yesterday, and he picked a French recipe to cook for dinner tonight, much to my surprise, a very pleasant surprise. For dinner tonight - chicken Dijon - click here for recipe.

Comfort Food - My Special Chicken Soup

I haven't written anything in a couple of days, and even today's post will be short. I have a simple remedy for when misery strikes, be it cold or flu, being frozen to the bones after a long day out (skiing or otherwise) in wintry weather or even when we are sitting inside watching nasty weather rage outside and want some extra warmth and comfort. Chicken soup is that magic potion that makes a cold more bearable or thaws us out after skiing. I "indianized" a basic chicken soup just a bit, not only to add flavor, but also to tap into ayurvedic properties of certain spices, but it is still a very simple and fast dish to prepare.

My Indian Cooking And Hyderabadi Chicken Curry For Dinner

My Indian Cooking

I am Russian, I grew up in Russia, and I grew up eating Russian food (whatever that is, don't ask me). When my family moved to US, I did get a chance to experience new cuisines - Italian, Chinese, Indian, etc. But prior to starting my relationship with Shyam, most Indian cooking I did was get some meat (chicken, usually), and cook it with some "Indian" sauce out of a can. At the time I thought that was some great tasting meal. Boy, was I wrong. Then I starting dating Shyam. So I tried harder to cook an authentic Indian meal. It took me several tries before I got it right. I needed proper resources. I was brought up to believe in power of knowledge in books, so I knew I needed to get some great reading on Indian cooking. I went on Amazon, and eventually I got to 1000 Indian recipes.

Food&Wine Wine Club Dinner

Wine Clubs

Are wine clubs a great deal? Great - no, but I would say they are a fair deal. We used to have Williams-Sonoma wine club subscription when we lived in New Jersey. It was very nice. Unfortunately they won't ship to Colorado, so I had to cancel. Food&Wine wine club does ship to Colorado, and that is what we have now. I would recommend both of these clubs to anyone who is interested in this sort of thing. The very first thing you should check is that you can receive wines from the wine club you are considering in your state before you get too excited with all the details to avoid disappointment if they can't ship to you.