Flutterby™! : Dinner

For dinner tonight, Charlene wanted to try a lentil stuffed cabbage with a curry flavor. We didn't have any commercial curry mixes, didn't even have curry leaves, but we made do wit the Sri Lankan curry base from A Taste of Serendib. Actually the first thing I've tried from that book, Mary Anne is one of those authors that I just get everything they release, and even if I don't get to the book for two years I'm never disappointed.

Anyway, we're going to have to play with a bunch of things on it, but the one thing I was amazed at: We had this dark toasted spice mix that was kind of bitter. Tossed it in with a bunch of fresh ginger and onion, cooked it for a while, was kind of disappointed, went poking around for what I could toss in to bring a little more sweetness and a little more higher nose flavors, went back and tasted it again and... I've never had anything's flavor change that dramatically from when I thought it was already cooked. Definitely going to have to play more with that.

Other question of the evening: We were putting up the last of the persimmons from this season, Charlene had eventually broken down and tried the "stuff them in the freezer, pull 'em out and peel 'em in a few months" trick that her parents had been pushing on her. We tried some, and there was an astringency there that annoyed her immensely, but to me was just barely noticeable. Yet another "huh?" that we're going to have to investigate further.