I made naan pizzas topped with butter chicken, garlic spinach, artichoke hearts, chopped cauliflower, and mozzarella. DH made a salad of mixed greens with cucumbers, tomatoes, and cashews with a creamy cilantro-mango dressing.
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Nice setup! Your celebratory meal looks delicious too. Can you share the olive oil cake recipe?
Of course, stay tuned!
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Braised chicken and eggplant. The sauce included capers, sun-dried tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. Roman gnocchi, which is essentially semolina polenta, made a nice accompaniment. I love the crispy, browned parmesan on top.
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the cabbage looks very appetizing to me!
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food project for the weekend: Bolivian salteñas. Two-day process and BF & I had today off. They’re not easy to get right - the dough being the trickiest part. We got the filling down yesterday, and it tasted right, better than previous attempts. It had to sit in the fridge and gel (made with unflavored gelatin) overnight. We made the dough last night, portioned, and formed into balls. Turned out stiff but also very pliable – lots of lard, no eggs, surprisingly. Achiote gets melted into the lard, which gives it that yellowish coloring. Ours looked like several of the videos we watched so we were hopeful. We used our mortar as a stone to flatten out the dough (as seen in a video.) Today we rolled the balls out - the BF made those cute little rolling pins himself! - and stuffed with the filling (onions, beef, peas, beef broth, raisins, potatoes, cumin, sugar, aji Amarillo, aji panco, paprika, s&p) a slice of HB egg, and a kalamata olive in each. BF’s braiding is much better than mine. We tried different batches at different temps, and I think the key is lower temp (400) and more broth when making the filling. Our finished dough and filling TASTED exactly right, but the texture of the dough still isn’t quite there when baked. And the filling should be much juicier. We froze a bunch uncooked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salte%C3%B1a
Made llajwa - bolivian salsa - too, to go with.
Work in progress….
Please excuse - lots of pics!
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They look fantastic. I think you are perhaps a tiny bit too picky 
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hah - we’ve both had SO MANY of these, from so many different places, in the US and in Bolivia, that we just KNOW what they’re supposed to taste like. and since they’re not easy to make, it’s not something we’re probably going to do over and over (or anytime soon) to try to perfect (this is our 3rd attempt in 16 years!)
but don’t get me wrong, they were still delicious. 
and thank you!
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My bad takeout streak keeps going… indian tonight.
My “safe” order of chicken tikka was… bewildering. Their tandoori chicken is actually decent, so I know they know what tikka is. And yet, what I received was dry chicken chunks in a sweet and sour sauce with onion and green pepper. Wtf?
My sides were homemade leftovers - cabbage thoran and spiced spinach.
And the saving grace of the takeout - a really good samosa.
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Looks delicious!
It’s always amazing to me how versions of the same idea exist across disparate cultures.
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Third attempt in 16 years . Love it. I’m more like the second attempt in twenty two years.
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It was a very brown dinner. I got on the “fish fragrant eggplant” train, and served that with veggie fried rice and some leftover grilled tri-tip. Pretty tasty, and cleaning out the fridge.
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Fridge/freezer/pantry dive tonight. Bone-in Shake and Bake pork chops. I don’t care how good or fancy a cook you are, you need to keep a pouch of that or Oven Fry for those lazy nights where you don’t want to order takeout but don’t have the energy to really cook. Side of peas with bacon and white cheddar mashed potatoes.
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Tremendous effort.
I did enjoy many a salteña in Bolivia. They get snatched up real fast and the shop closes for the day. If anyone is planning to eat salteña in Bolivia in the future you must go to the shop early. I mean before noon.
Argentinians have their empanadas and we also enjoyed them so damn much. My favourite was caprese filled.
Oh day-aammm, the good old travelling days… I hope they are coming back!
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From your lips! Facebook has been torturing me lately with “on this day xx years ago” posts - we often spend time in the Caribbean this time of year, and all those photos of us having fun in the sun are giving me the sads! Booking travel is my first order of business once we’re vaccinated.
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ohhhh yesssss to the good old traveling days…!!
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Wow! I’m impressed.
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I’ll be picking up more Ballymaloe later this week, so maybe I’ll get a bottle of A1 (cheap enough at the supermarket) and do a test next time I make the sirloin tips. 
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thanks!
