The Great Im-Pasta, Gluten Free!

   I've been thinking a lot about the gluten free lifestyle lately. Part of it has been because I've been doing some cooking for my friend Terri who found out she needs to be GF just before getting badly hurt in a riding accident. Girlfriend needed some treats and it's become a very interesting puzzle for me to try and see what things might be whipped up for her. Terri (before going GF) also made some of the best cookies I've ever eaten. Her cookies are like crack to me and that's going some seeing as I'm not a big indulger in baked goods.
   I do a certain amount of gluten free cooking naturally, as Indian food by and large suits that lifestyle. There are alternatives to the common roti and naan made from non-wheat based flour such as besan, rice flour, coconut flour and jowhar (sorghum) flour. Beyond that however I'm lost. What Western style baking I've done has never been GF and is fairly limited. However even I can't help but notice the trend toward GF products on the shelves on my local markets.
   And then I read Atlantic Magazine  which brought up a whole lot of reasons and arguments for the gluten free lifestyle even if one doesn't have celiac disease. So there was that. I have to add here that as far as I know, no one in my house has celiac disease, but it seemed like a good idea to give all this stuff a further look see, and not just for Terri and her lost crack cookies. Wait a minute, that sounds terrible...but you know what I mean.
  Cruising around on line the other day, I noticed a tweet from the go-to guru for all things GF Glutenfreegirl. On her webpage she had an absolutely mouth watering photo of a big, big bowl of pasta. Being raised in an Italian household, I grew up eating all sorts of pasta from the sublime (my Nonna's) to the ridiculous (Mom's Chef Boy-Are-Dee in the box). I have always felt I've done pasta...thoroughly. Alan however, growing up in a Jewish household in Westport Connecticut... not so much. He loves his pasta and it's always a favorite treat for him when we eat out. When I had my dental surgery last fall I cooked ahead and froze pasta sauce for him so he could fix his own Italian feast while I was on enough drugs to make a Borgia's eyes bug out.
   Normally I ignore big photos of pasta but there was something about that picture, and knowing that what was on that plate was gluten free. This looked like real pasta. I showed the page to Alan.  "How does that look to you?" I asked.
   "This is a trick question right? What's wrong with it?"
   "Nothing, Doesn't it look good...mmmmmm"
   "You're up to something" He's lived with me too long.
   "Okay, it's gluten free"
 He was immediately suspicious but I looked up the company that made the pasta Jovial Foods.
    "Look!" I said. "It's made in Italy... and not just Italy but Lucca, Italy where my grandmother was born! Let's try it!"
   "Well...."
   But Alan loves his pasta too much to turn down any opportunity to try some, so I was off to Whole Foods to see if they carried it. They did. There it was. Shelves of gluten free pasta made from brown rice flour in Italy by guys that have been making pasta a long, long time. This stuff had to be the real deal. There were several shapes available. I bought a box of penne rigate. I decided I would try out this GF experiment using a tried and true pasta salad recipe that I've been making for years. I called up some friends and said come to our house tonight for pasta. I did not tell them it was gluten free. Yes, I am a sneak.

Gluten Free Pasta Salad

Here's what to do:

Prepping the Corn:
 Clean, shuck and remove the kernels from two ears of corn.
 Lightly saute the corn in1 tsp of oil for about two to three minutes until it's softened.

Set it aside.

The tomatoes:
Rinse and dry 1 pint of cherry tomatoes
Drizzle them with a bit of olive oil and scatter a bit of coarse salt over the.
Place them in an oven proof baking pan
Put them in a 375 degree preheated oven and roast for about 15 to 20 minutes or so until they split and start to char a bit.
Take them out and set them aside.

Mix the Dressing:
In a small bowl mix together
  3 Tbs of sherry vinegar
  6 Tbs of olive oil
Salt to taste
Add a bit of lime juice
Add in 1/2 tsp of Dijon seeded mustard 
Blend well and taste, if needed adjust seasoning adding a bit more mustard  
Set aside.

Cook The Pasta:
Bring 3 qts of water to a roilling boil (I like that better than rolling).
Sprinkle some salt in the water.
Toss in the pasta and cook for 9 minutes or until al dente.
When cooked, drain and rinse with cold water.

Putting It All Together:
When the pasta has dried mix in:
 The corn
 1 can of black beans, rinsed well and dried.
 The tomatoes.

Stir it all together and drizzle in the dressing slowly.

Add in 4 finely chopped green onions
A sprinkling of freshly chopped cilantro

Mix everything together.

And serve it up.
 I served it with some Chevre from Cypress Grove and a nice Spring Hill jack.

I added in a bowl of fresh figs, crackers for those who wanted them, (remember this was not a GF crowd and I didn't want to tip my hand) and several good wines a Chalone Vineyard Sauvingnon Blanc

and the one that everyone was crazy for Pelligrini Eight Cousins Vineyard 2003 Zinfandel winner of the Gold medal at the Sonoma County Harvest Fair.

So did the pasta pass muster? you bet it did! They loved it. Perfectly al dente with good flavor, not gummy or mushy, it totally passed. Served to a bunch of people who are not GF they couldn't tell the difference and that's going some. Gluten free pasta has arrived, and it took a my Ancestral City to do it! Go Lucca!

   Will I be serving it again? You betcha. And soon. Their website also promises a type of flour and pasta not GF made from Einkorn Flour which is the very first species of wheat grown by humans...not modified, not hybridized! Old skool grain. It doesn't seem to be available here in Sonoma yet but I can't wait!!
  I am so glad I stopped at Gluten Free Girl and the Chefs page and read about this great GF pasta. If you drop by her website, you can enter your name to win a free trip to Tuscany in May to cook with Gluten Free Girl and The Chef for a week in a villa outside of Lucca. Just click here to read about it and enter.
  Now after a meal like this... there's gotta be a dessert, right? Actually there doesn't have to be, but we were little piggies and I really needed to try out a special GF dessert on some willing victims, What was it? Find out soon. Meanwhile follow along on Twitter @kathygori

Sorry H8ers..Okras' Back In Town

   Poor okra. Nobody loves her. She is a joke worse than spinach. The mere mention of her name at a party sends guests running for the hills. Nobody wants to have dinner with her. Every time her name comes up it's the same old thing..."No! Don't have her...She's slippery, she's slimy " Where's the love?
   Imagine growing up Okra. Those traumatic family reunions, you know when all the Malvaceae  clan get together. Don't even mention Thanksgiving. Sitting at the table with her beautiful older sister, international sex symbol Cocoa, the Angelina Jolie of the food world. I mean she just happens to be a natural aphrodisiac. Hello? how's a girl to compete?
   Of course there's her extremely successful older brother Jute, you know the Carpet King? He's all business and tough as nails. Everybody's really, really proud of him. There's perky younger brother Mallow, as in Marshmallow, always fun and another big favorite. Even her stinky Uncle Durian is sought after in certain circles. But poor poor Okra is the red headed step child of her family.., and I say that as a red head. So it's time for Okra to get a little respect. Props.
   As someone who cooks Indian food, I love working with okra, aka bindi or ladies fingers. It's a big favorite of the Indian kitchen. It's not always a favorite in my own kitchen however. Alan has been a slow convert to okra. He's got a major fear of "the slimes" so I usually go for a recipe that's spicy and crispy. But on the other hand, that's only one of many, many ways this vegetable can be cooked.
   The other day I saw beautiful okra at the market and I just had to have them. I told Alan we're having okra for lunch. Of course he wanted to know how I was going to fix it. "Not crispy," I told him "but you'll like it. It has yogurt.., and coconut!" One reluctant agreement later I was prepping my lunchtime okra. It didn't take long to have it on the table.

Okra Coconut Curry

Here's what to do:
Rinse and dry 1/2 lb of okra. Cut it into 1/2 inch slices.

Soak 2 Tbs of uncooked rice in  6 Tbs of water for 15 minutes.

 While all that is going on, heat 2 Tbs of oil in a skillet or kadhai.
 When the oil is hot toss in:
  1/2 tsp of mustard seeds
  1/4 tsp of fenugreek
  2 dried red chilies
  10 fresh or frozen curry leaves (these can be found at Indian and many Asian markets.)

 When the mustard seeds start to pop add in:
  2 medium red onions thinly sliced
  3 whole green chilies slit

Stir fry everything together until the onion is translucent.
Mix 1/2 tsp of ground turmeric into 2 cups of plain yogurt and set aside

Take the soaked rice and the water it was soaking in. Place it into a spice grinder or blender and whirl it into a paste.

Add the paste to the yogurt turmeric mixture, and set it aside.
Turn up the heat to high on the onions and chilies and add the okra to the mix

Stir fry everything for about 6 minutes until it's about half cooked through.

Turn down the heat so things don't curdle and pour the yogurt rice mixture into the pan.

Add salt to taste, stir everything together and let it all cook for another few minutes until the sauce has thickened.
Drizzle with 1 Tbs of coconut oil and serve it up.

   Put it together with rice or any sort of vegetable, or even a Western style entree, and you are all set. This is not your crispy fried okra. This is a creamy South Indian style okra curry that can bring the heat. If you 'd rather not have all the chilies, you can always scale things back a bit no problem. If you like okra, you'll love her in this silky yogurt gown, and if you're an okra h'8er this may just change your mind because as I've discovered, coconut is the vegan equivalent of bacon. It seems to make everything tastier.
   Coming up next, I take advice from Glutenfreegirl and give Jovial Gluten Free Pasta a road test.
 Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

Mission Possible... Eggplant Mughlai Style

   I've been cooking a lot of vegan food for the last three weeks as our friend was preparing for his radiation treatment /isolation period for thyroid cancer. There is a very specific non/low iodine diet that's prescribed for patients, and fortunately most Indian recipes fit comfortably into that slot. My Mission if I chose to accept it was to find interesting and taste tempting treats that could keep our friend's taste buds excited through the three weeks he'd have to be off his regular vegetarian diet and in vegan land. I love a challenge. Sexing up eggplant wasn't exactly like dropping on wires through a deadly laser trap... but for me it was close. Really.

Imagine how much more exciting it would have been for Tom Cruise if he'd had to find a new and  interesting way to fix eggplant rather than whatever the hell he was looking for on those wires.
   But why the eggplant obsession you may ask? Good question. For one thing, eggplants were on special, and most importantly eggplants have a great texture when preparing any vegetarian or vegan food. Eggplants are up there with mushrooms for providing a nice "meaty" mouth feel.
   Most of the eggplant recipes I'd been fixing had been savory with tomato playing a major part. But three weeks in, I was looking to expand eggplant's flavor profile and take it in a different direction. I looked to the north of India. I found an eggplant dish fragrant with cinnamon and cardamom, studded with raisins. I'd found a Mughal Eggplant dish.
   The influence of Mughal  cooking is strong in the North of India. There's less heat and more aroma. Paula Wolfert and I were talking at the Tuesday Farmer's Market a couple of weeks ago about the similarities between Moroccan Food and Indian Food. They use the same spices and many of the same cooking technique. In fact, when we talked about some recipes, they seemed to be virtually the same. I haven't run this one past Paula yet but I'm sure she's going to tell me there's something in the Moroccan kitchen that resembles it.
   While turning out a lot of different vegan dishes regularly, I needed dishes that could come together easily with easy to get ingredients. Alan and I are also on a script deadline trying to get our latest piece of work out of the house, so there wasn't the usual amount of time. Enter Mughlai Eggplant.

Mughlai Eggplant

Here's what to do:
Wash, quarter, and quarter the eggplant again.

 Put the eggplant in a colender and sprinkle it with 4 tsp of kosher salt.

 Let it sit for about 10 minutes then rinse it thoroughly.

Pat the eggplant dry and heat 3 Tbs of vegetable oil.
 When the oil is hot toss in:
  1/2 tsp of mustard seeds
  1/2 tsp of cumin seeds
Stir fry them until the mustard seeds start to pop.

Add in:
 2 onions thinly sliced
 The eggplant slices

Stir them around until the onions start to brown and the eggplants cook through.
 Add in:
  1/4 tsp of Kashmiri chili or 1/8 tsp of cayenne mixed with 1/8 tsp of paprika
  1/2 tsp of coriander
  1/4 tsp of turmeric
  1/4 tsp of cinnamon
  1/4 tsp of cardamom

Stir it all around so that the spices are mixed into the dish, and continue cooking until the eggplant starts to brown.

 Mix together:
   2 Tbs of chopped cashews
   2 Tbs of golden raisins

Sprinkle them over the eggplant spice and onion mixture.

Stir everything together while the cashews and the raisins brown. Salt to taste.

 Scatter the eggplant with:
  1 chopped seeded fresh green chili
  A 1 inch piece of fresh julienne ginger
  Chopped fresh cilantro

  There it is. Sweet, spicy (but not too) crunchy eggplant ready as the star of the table in less than an hour. Serve it with rice and some chapatti or dal and another vegetable, or go totally out of the Indian arena and pop it down next to any meat entree. I can tell you from personal experience, it goes just as well with an Italian meat dish.
   As for our friend, he had his final scan at the hospital this morning and got his all clear! We couldn't be happier. Thanks to all of you who sent me great hints and dessert recipes during the last three weeks.
 Coming up next , once again I go for The Big O for all you Okra Lovers out there. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours. Dirty Dessert Secrets

   Awhile back, a few of us got involved in a Twitter conversation about Food Secrets. By Food Secrets I'm talking about  a version of Food Fight Club, and the first rule of Food Fight Club is you don't talk about Food Fight Club. You know what I mean. The stuff no one wants to mention. The bag of Oreos under the bed, the bag of Cheese Doodles no one else in the house knows about but you, the Slim Jims in the back of the underwear drawer. The Double Stufft (yeah spelled that way) Oreos, The Chili Lime Chips. You get my drift. No matter how organic, made from scratch, non processed we are, the itch is always there. Whether you cook in old school clay or are performing molecular gastronomy miracles, turn down that Ding Dong.....go ahead...I dare ya.

Thought so.
  Well, I'll go first. Here's my dirty little secret, the thing that if you were to search my larder behind all the Indian spices, and dal and exotic flours you will find this.

   Yes this. Am I proud? No. Do I always have it? You bet your ass.

   It started as a joke years ago in LA. We were having a dinner party and I needed a quick, fast dessert. I grabbed a pack of instant chocolate pudding. A musician friend who was a guest that night was over the moon about it. He raved about childhood pudding memories. I had obviously hit some sort of twisted sweet spot there, and so I kept buying it and keeping it in the cupboard ...just in case. Okay, if we're really being honest here I'm never without this stuff. 

   So why am I talking about it here? Well, this weekend it all came out in a mad rush. I was cooking my last group of food requests for my friend who was having treatment for thyroid cancer. He was finishing his radiation isolation and was going back to his regular vegetarian diet. The special requests were for  Black Eyed Peas, cornbread, and a pumpkin pie. 

   The black eyed peas Indian style I had been making for him pretty regularly. For the pumpkin pie and the cornbread I decided to go waaaaaaay back to my Great Grandmothers' Native Daughters of the Golden West Cookbook. This book features pioneer California recipes with directions that call for stuff like "a hot fire" and "fresh squirrel."  We're talking old school cooking. I decided to make the pumpkin pie recipe from the book along with the cornbread.

    The pie crust recipe is extremely simple. Very few ingredients, sort of typical for the times.
It comes together very easily.

Chocolate Cream Pie

Here's what to do:
In a large bowl sift 2 cups of pastry flour.
Measure it, add in:
 1/2 tsp of salt
Sift again.
Cut in 1/2 cup of cold shortening ( 1 stick of butter)
Mix it together until it looks like a fine meal
 Add in :
 1/3 cup of ice water a bit at a time.
 Mix it with a knife or spatula until the dough cleans the bowl (not my words that's what Vessie Orr who came up with this says to do.)
The idea is to use as little water as possible.
Roll the dough about 1/8 of an inch thick on a lightly floured board.
Place it in you pie pan...and you get the idea.
 Thanks Vessie!

   Well, after making the pumpkin pie which is one crust, I had enough for a second crust left over. Of course cooler heads would have said stick that thing in the freezer. Use it later. But I wasn't listening to that cooler head. I was looking at the picture on the back of the Instant pudding box... you know the part that says..."or pie filling" "Hmmm," I thought. I've got crust and I've got "or pie filling." I'm making that freakin' pie. Like now.
  I poked the pie crust with a fork all over and stuck that pie shell into a 450 degree oven for 15 minutes until it was a nice pale, golden color. It was done.
   As far as the "or pie filling" part goes I used two small boxes of Chocolate Fudge Instant Sugar Free pudding mixed for 2 minutes with 2 and 3/4 cups of low fat milk. Instant "or pie filling"!
 I poured the pie filling into the cooled pie shell and popped it into the fridge.

   As far as the whipped cream topping, I had to make my own whipped cream stabilizer since the cake shop down the road was all out. It turned out to be pretty easy.

Here's what to do for 2 cups of whipped cream:
Dissolve 1 tsp of gelatine in 2 Tbs of cold water for five minutes.
Whip the cream in a chilled bowl with 1 tsp of sugar until it just starts to fluff up.
 Place the gelatine mixture in a small pan (double boiler) over boiling water until it dissolves completely. Let it cool a bit then pour it all into the whipped cream at once and continue beating it until the whipped cream is in stiff peaks.
 Ice the pie with the whipped cream.

Cut a slice.

 Realize that this whole deal has just one tsp of sugar in it...we won't even discuss what else is in it because this isn't about reality. This is about pie.
 Our guests loved the pie and the next day this was all that was left

   Believe it or not the whipped cream kept its' shape and density. Who knew. Vessie Orr meets Rachel Ray. So, there it is,  my guilty little instant pudding secret. What's yours?
   Coming up next, I go back to healthy roots with a great new way with eggplant. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

In Search Of The Perfect Loaf...For Loafers

   Everybody has one of two movies that have made an impression on them in their lives... or maybe five or six. Either way, I believe we all walk around with internal movies playing in our heads, or at least the trailers for them. There's that deep voiced guy  saying... "In a world where everything was upside down...." you take it from there.
   I know that I cannot for the life of me try on clothes without thinking of Julia Roberts in that dressing room in Pretty Woman (hey, I told you this was a fantasy) or set a table without the memory of Babettes' Feast, and don't even get me started on the endless outfits in The Devil Wears Prada. But the movie that made one of the biggest impressions on me didn't concern stilettos or over the top food porn. It had to do with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin with a pissed off Kodiak bear on their ass in The Edge .



   In this movie Anthony Hopkins (Sir) is stranded out in the woods with Alec Baldwin, and what keeps them alive is that Hopkins' character Charles knows how to do stuff. The old fashioned way.  Ancient lore. Which was why after seeing this film, I really decided there were a few things I needed to know how to do well. Just in case of a zombie attack or 2012, I wanted to be prepared. It's not that I was a Girl Scout. Actually I was a pretty poor Girl Scout all things considered. The only badge I ever managed to get was The Story Teller Badge... and that could easily be confused with just being a good liar.
   My Girl Scout troop was unusual to say the least. We met in the Tiki bar in the basement rec room of our troop leader's house. Nine little Girl Scouts on barstools  glueing rhinestones onto empty pill bottles, making "perfume bottles" for our moms while our Troop leader and her assistant, the bored lady from next door, sipped cocktails and listened to Louis Prima.
  After picking me up from Girl Scouts a few times and getting the blinged-out pill bottle for Mothers' Day, my mom pulled me from the troop and the troop was disbanded. We never went camping, but come to think of it, that Tiki bar was pretty damn campy all by its' ownself. Who was that troop leader you may ask? Judy Garland? No, just some lady who taught us to Be Prepared cause even old Valium bottles can be re-purposed.
   But how does that get us back to basics? Well, I actually read my girl scout handbook and then got other books on " things one should know."  My great grandmother's Native Daughters of the Golden West Cookbook for one, filled with recipes that had no cooking times and talked a lot about "hot" fires in the stove and measuring things out in "dessert spoons." It also contained recipes for Squirrel, and venison, how to clean a wild duck and how to make candy. How to preserve crabapples and pickle watermelon and something called Bible Cake and Batchelor Bait Cake.
   Damn I thought, enough with the Valley of the Dolls Craft Hour..these dames were pre-pared... big time! I wanted to learn to do these things too. Because after the zombies attack somebody has to re-start civilization, and where better to start than with the staff of life... bread.
   Years ago my mom got a booklet in the mail advertising a bread machine. Back in the day, these machines were rare and pricy and totally off the table for my household. I however was fascinated by the booklet. It was filed with bread recipes. I studied them and then I started to bake. I'd get right up to the part that said put into the bread machine... and then what? I grabbed great Grandma Fanny's cookbook. It told me to knead and let rise and punch down and let rise again and then bake in a "hot fire" (about 450 degrees). I had made bread! Without an expensive machine. I quickly went through all the recipes in the freebee booklet.
   Over the years I made bread occasionally, but it was a long tedious process.So I stopped, but I was always intrigued by those fancy crusty (pricey) artisan loaves. And then came the New York Times Mark Bittman and No Knead Bread. I had to try it. I did and it worked... amazingly. Though my  bread was never as attractive as the loaves illustrated, it still tasted good. I knew however that it could be better so I went on a search to perfect The Easiest Bread In The World.
   One key turned out to be the flour I was using plain old organic, unbleached flour, I needed a true, high gluten, high protein flour to give my bread a kick in the pants and get it up on its' feet. Paula Wolfert had given me a big bag of Giustos Organic Ultimate Performer Unbleached Flour to try.

I tried it. It was amazing... but I still had the problem of spread (don't we all) and how to fix it. Paula lent me a Sassafras-La-Cloche-Brick-Oven Baker. Think of it as Spanx for your dough.

   It was a good thing she lent it to me because I was unable to buy one. They're sold out everywhere and I was on a waiting list. The deal with this baker is that it duplicates a brick oven in your stove. I was using two pizza stones, one on top and one on the bottom, but the enclosed oven provides perfect humidity allowing the steam in the bread to escape, leaving all those  gorgeous holes in the crumb. Also it helps the dough keep it's shape and not spread out in the hot oven. It also does not require a pan of hot water beneath the baking bread to provide moisture.
 So, I had the perfect flour and a great container to bake the bread in. The rest was easy.

Artisan Bread

Here's what to do:
In a large bowl mix together:
 3 cups of bread flour

 1/4 tsp of yeast

 2 and 1/4 tsp of Kosher salt

MIx all the dry ingredients together well and then add in:
 1 and 1/2 cup of lukewarm water

Stir everything together with a wooden spoon.

 You should have a thick, goopy mass of dough.

   Cover it tightly with plastic wrap and set it in a warm place to rest for at least 12 hours.

 If the dough is going to be sitting for more than 24 hours, store it in the fridge. It will keep there just fine for about 2 weeks turning more and more into sourdough as the days pass.
 When you are ready to bake the bread, flour a board, moisten your hands to prevent the dough from sticking, and scoop the  dough onto the board.
 Fold the dough over into a four corner package shape.

Flour a clean cotton dishcloth.

Rub the flour in well and then pick up the dough and gently lay it smooth side facing up on the dishcloth.

 Place the dishcloth and the dough in a tall bowl. This helps things keep their shape.

Cover the bowl loosely and let it rise again for another 2 hours.
One hour and 30 minutes into the rise, place the La cloche, both top and bottom, or a pizza stone, into the middle rack of a cold oven. Turn the oven on to 450 degrees.
 After the oven comes up to speed, let the stone or the La Cloche heat for at least another 30 minutes. You want every thing hot, hot, hot.
 When the bread is ready to go into the oven, take the lid off the la Cloche and dump the dough into the bottom half.

Put the lid on the la Cloche. If you are using a pizza stone, scatter some coarse corn meal on the stone before the bread dough goes on it to prevent sticking. You don't have to do this with the La Cloche.
 If you are using a pizza stone, put a pan of hot water under the bread as it bakes. This provides the proper moisture in the oven. 

 Bake for 30 minutes with the lid on,  then remove the lid and bake for an additonal 15 to 20 minutes until the bread is crisp and done.

When the bread comes out of the oven, take it out of the pan and place it on a cooling rack for at least an hour. Put your ear to the bread, you should hear a faint cracking noise. That's  not in your head...that's the bread "singing" to you, a sign of a perfect crust.

  I had baked a loaf of this bread a few days before and taken it with us to our weekly Farmers Market Picnic, along with some Cypress Grove Chevre and a good local white cheddar from Petaluma Creamery.

  While we were sitting on the grass enjoying the fine summer evening with friends, someone asked where they could get this bread they were eating. They thought I had bought it at the market. Wow!

   So there it is, non kneading, easy artisan bread. Believe me, I am no baker but I am now totally stoked about this bread and this method. Whether you bake it in a clay pot or a cast iron dutch oven or on a pizza stone, The Big Secret is using the best flour you can get your hands on. The other upside to this: Paula let me keep the Cloche..she knows an addict when she sees one.
    Coming up next, I go all Mughlai on some Eggplant. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori