Thyme is the new basil

I cook a lot and it's always some variation of a few staples, but I never remember what I cook. Although I keep promising to blog my food, mainly to keep track of what I tried, I have yet to do it consistently. Here's another attempt:

On Sunday, my friend from Gulu Abigail and I went to Eastern Market. Now I live in Eastern Market, so I expected that I’d accompany her through the stalls to which I’ve become accustomed. In fact, while I like Eastern Market, I haven’t been too impressed. I mean it’s got good meat and a few little cutesy crafts, but meh. Well, apparently Eastern Market doesn’t do winter, because when I met Abigail at the “food court” and I discovered that once it warms up the market quadruples in size. It was fun and I bought real kosher dill pickles, 1500 count Egyptian cotton sheets and some other things.

For dinner, I used some other things to make dinner. I bought fresh buccatini, which I boiled for two minutes. I mixed up a little sauce of lemon juice and garlic and my new trick that’s not new at all to cooks: cornstarch.

I’ve never been good at sauces. Even when I make what I think is a very good sauce, it never really sticks to the noodles or whatever I’m mixing it in. It always just sort of slides off. With cornstarch, it all mixes together and sticks to the food. Wow. This is the problem with being a self-taught (ok, mom taught) cook. I can miss very obvious cooking skills. CORNSTARCH. Hellowah!

I mixed the sauce with onions, fresh red pepper, shitake mushroons and chicken, along with a healthy sprinkle of my new favorite spice, thyme. Thyme is a fairly common spice, but I’ve never really isolated it’s flavor until my trip to Beirut. At an Eastern Market type place in central Beirut I bought a mix of spices that has made many dishes since taste amazing. Thyme is the lead spice in the mix, with sesame and dried lemon too. Since I bought that mix, I’ve realized that although I didn’t know it, I’ve been enjoying the taste of thyme forever (and that's a long "thyme" Eesh). Anyway, when I isolate it, it has a distinct and delicious flavor.

I stirred in the buccatini with a little pasta water and viola! Things congealed perfectly and dinner was served.

Other dishes prepared this week:

Chinese Orzo
I stir fried broccoli, red pepper, red pepper flakes, onions, garlic, fresh ginger in soy sauce and a little white wine vinegar (with cornstarch!) then added orzo and fresh cilantro. It was delicious. I really like Orzo - it's very versatile, easy to cook and I like the texture a lot.

Sweet sweet potato
I roasted a sweet potato by coating it very thinly with veg oil and popped it in the oven for an hour at 400. I did not wrap it in tin foil as was advised. I topped it with my favorite turkey sausage with feta and spinach which I took out of it's casing and fried. Instead of sour cream, I topped the sausage with curried yogurt. Awesome and simply. Jeter got the leftover sweet potato. He loved it and has been quite regular ever since.