So I decided to give you my take on avocado toast. Drizzled with soy sauce and sprinkled with Furikake or Shichimi. Avocado and soy sauce are a match made in heaven, to my mind. Just think about California Roll Sushi.

If you have been following my recipes, you may have acquired some Nori Komi Furikake to make Hawaiian SPAM Musubi. That mixture of dried nori seaweed, salt, sugar and sesame seed is amazing with the avocado and soy sauce. Then if you want to try something a little different, a little spicy, the Shichimi Togarashi is a blend of dried red pepper, dried orange peel, black and yellow sesame seed, Japanese pepper, seaweed and ginger. Either way, really delicious, interesting and easy.

I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the 50’s and 60’s and I don’t remember there being an avocado in sight at any time. Nope, no avocados. I experienced my first avocado after moving to Los Angeles in 1971. My then-husband and two little kids moved to Inglewood, because he worked for city hall and we were required to live in the city. We lived in a dinky 2-bedroom apartment, which had a wonderful bonus: the next-door neighbor had a massive avocado tree that hung over the wall of our driveway. They also had chickens that woke us up every morning, but it was worth it for the free produce. Massive amounts of avocados. Thus began my love of avocado toast for breakfast, although back then it was just sprinkled with salt and pepper.

After I wrote this post, I thought I would see if anybody else, on the off chance, had sprinkled their avocado with Furikake. Well, I have to laugh at myself, there is really nothing new under the sun. My google search turned up 53,400 results and a plethora of images. But it also means it’s really good and you should try it. Oh yeah.

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So, I may be old, but I’m not a luddite. Yes, I did have my little Nokia cell phone for about 15 years or more, but it worked great. Calls went out and calls came in, and it stayed charged for a week. It was perfect. Then I got a letter in the mail saying my phone would no longer work in a few months, so it was time to electronically move into this century. Those rats! I had been putting it off for so long. Why did I need to be carrying around a little computer anyway?

Long story short, I am now the proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy S6. And the reason I’m bringing this up is because the photo of the appetizer board was taken with my phone camera. Not exactly like my Canon, but not too shabby. I think I’m going to enjoy my new acquisition. No laughing -.

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Fregola is a type of pasta that originated on the Italian island of Sardinia. It is made from coarsely ground semolina and water, and has a deliciously nutty flavor because it is toasted in an oven. When you eat toasted bread, you know the flavor of the browned wheat dough? Well, that is the flavor of the fregola. Toasted. It is unusual and interesting. I got my fregola at Bristol Farms, and you can also get it on-line at Amazon.

I made my fregola salad fairly simple this time, because it is part of an upcoming dish I’m making with lamb and tahini sauce. If you are serving it as a pasta salad or side, you could add roasted veggies, or olives and herbs. You could also use it as the pasta with your various pasta sauces. I am planning to use it in a Sardinian dish with squid and tomato sauce with currants. Very fun. I hope you try it.

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The Egg. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That is an easy one. Originally, 300 million years or so ago, all animals laid eggs. About 210 million YA mammals ancestors diverged from reptiles, dinosaurs and birds, but mammals didn’t stop laying eggs until about 120 million YA. Mammals were giving birth to live young, but no mammals were bigger than a cat and they were nocturnal, because dinosaurs were big daytime predators. Then, 65 million YA, all the non-avian dinosaurs died in that big extinction event, leaving a big space for those little mammals to fill and evolve. Around 5 million YA the first people, hominins, appeared and they ate eggs. Any bird and reptile eggs they could find. Eggs were great, because they didn’t have to be chased and killed. They didn’t have claws and teeth. So finally, one million years ago people made fire, and cooked those eggs in the coals. So good.

Homo Sapiens showed up about 200,000 years ago, and by 7500 BC, in China and India, we were keeping chickens, which we had domesticated from jungle fowl. And eating their eggs, of course. We figured out how to make pottery around 5000 BC, so we could boil water and make soft boiled eggs. By 800 BC, chicken eggs had reached Europe, although we had kept ducks and geese for their eggs before that.

Chickens and their eggs came to North America for the first time in 1493 on the 2nd voyage of Columbus and became the first domesticated fowl in the new world.

The Onion. Wild onions, resembling green onions and scallions, grew wild on every continent. Bulb onions, on the other hand, originated in Asia, Iran and Pakistan around 5500 years ago. They were growing in Chinese gardens 5000 YA and by 3500 BC, Egypt had organized onion cultivation. They spread throughout Europe and in 1620, bulb onions crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower and were planted by the Pilgrim Fathers as soon as they could clear land.

Ok, we’ve got chicken eggs and bulb onions in North America by 1620, but we still couldn’t duplicate my dish, because potatoes wouldn’t be on the scene for another 100 years.

The Potato. Potatoes are native to Peru and the Inca Indians were the first to cultivate them somewhere between 8000-5000 BC. In 1536 the Spanish conquistadors conquered Peru and discovered the potato. But the potato did not travel a straight line north from South to North America. No, they took the scenic route through Europe, to Spain around 1570 and Sir Walter Raleigh brought them to Britain in 1589. Potatoes arrived in the American colonies in 1621 when the governor of Bermuda sent two chests of them to the governor of Virginia at Jamestown, who may have seen them as a novelty. However, they didn’t catch on. The first potato patches in the New World were planted in Londonderry, New Hampshire in 1719 by Scotch-Irish immigrants. Viola!

Therefore, I contend, my Egg.Onion.Potato dish could have been created in the autumn of 1719 in Londonderry, NH after the fall harvest.

P.S. There is no recipe for this simple dish. Fry an egg. Blacken a couple of onion slabs in butter. Flatten grated potato in a buttered skillet and cook until browned. Turn over. Brown. Put wedge on plate. Top with onions and egg. Salt and pepper. Eat. Enjoy.

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I started with a bunch of celery from which I had taken one stalk for another dish. I had no plans for the rest of it, poor thing. I’m not a big fan of raw celery, so I decided to roast it. I cut the stalks into about 5-inch pieces, put them in a glass pie plate, drizzled with melted butter, a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and popped them in a 350 degree F oven. It took 45 minutes for those celery stalks to soften up perfectly. I sliced them into 1-inch pieces, ready for the final dish.

Meanwhile, I remembered a tilapia fillet I had in the freezer. Perfect to go with the celery. I got it thawing under warm water, while I melted a little butter in a saute pan and got some flour on a plate.

Well, I looked at the pale celery and the pale white fish, and thought how uninteresting the combination was. What I needed was a sauce with magnificent color, flavors and textures. I looked around in the pantry and in the drawers in the fridge. Ah ha! Chinese Salted Black Beans! Perfect. I hadn’t made this sauce for about a year, but these beans keep in the fridge indefinitely. They’re fermented and salted. Pretty much indestructible.

If you have just one sauce in your repertoire, this should be it. It enhances every vegetable, white meat and seafood I have tried it on.

Get everything ready ahead of time to make the sauce. Chop the garlic and black beans. Mix the cornstarch and water. Whisk together the sauce ingredients, which include chicken broth, mirin, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and white pepper. Measure out butter.

There are several brands of salted black beans, but Mee Chun is the one I like the best. I found mine at the 99 Ranch Market (store locator at bottom of home page) and they are available on Amazon. These beans add such an interesting flavor, salty, umami, a little wine-y, a little sweet. You should get some, because they are also one of the ingredients in Mapo Tofu, which will be coming up soon.

Here you can see the start of the sauce as the garlic and beans sizzle in the butter. After the sauce mixture is added, the last pat of butter is stirred in for heavenly flavor and sheen.

About a year ago when I made this sauce, I used it with asparagus. And sprinkled it with toasted sesame seeds. Oh man, so good.

Like I said, Chinese Black Bean Butter Sauce goes beautifully with so many things. Here I packed some rice in a little bowl and upended it onto the plate, along with some deli chicken. Truly, don’t you want to pick up those chopsticks and dig right in?

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Ok, I admit, the dried cranberries, sliced almonds and pomegranate molasses aren’t traditional, but they probably have them in Ireland these days, right? Come on, smile and nod your head up and down.

What I really like about this salad is it has everything a salad should have: crunchy bits (nuts and croutons), sweet and sour (dried cranberries), salty and umami (bacon, cheese). Every bite gives you a different combination of taste treats, along with the veggie goodness of the beans and dandelion.

And it’s green, people.

I was thinking maybe I’ll have a little Irish libation to celebrate on the day. I remember my first Irish Coffee back in 1971 at the Buena Vista in San Francisco and what a revelation it was. Time to go buy some Irish whiskey (Tullamore Dew…my fav), whipping cream and sugar cubes. How many days is it til the 17th?

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Lamb Shepherds Pie with Parmesan Ricotta Potatoes
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Irish Soda Bread
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Corned Beef and Cabbage
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Bailey’s Irish Cream Trifle

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The muffin inside is sort of like a nutmeg-flavored cake donut, with a soft small crumb that melts in your mouth. Then, with the flavor of the melted butter and cinnamon-sugar on top, you are transported to muffin heaven. Whether for breakfast, snack or afternoon tea, it is a winner winner.

This probably isn’t a topic for a food blog, but you may have been wondering if I had fallen off the edge of the earth for the last couple of months. Actually, since last October I have been derailed with a frozen shoulder, also known as adhesive capsulitis. Fortunately it’s my left shoulder as I am right handed. It was the worst pain I have ever had in my life. I couldn’t lift my arm. I couldn’t sleep and had depression. I had a doctor, a shoulder surgeon, a rheumatologist, an x-ray, an MRI, a nuclear bone scan, an injection into my shoulder and now I’m going to physical therapy. I was not cooking or doing food photography, believe me. However, the shot in my shoulder muted the pain about 90%, so now I can sleep and am feeling much better inside my head. These French Breakfast Puffs were comfort food to the max and the first of many great recipes I’m planning to share with you in the near future. I’m so glad to be back!

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Without further ado, here are the top 10 most popular recipes of 2015 on Cook & Be Merry. Above is the #10 most popular recipe, BBQ Bacon Wrapped Shrimp.

#9 Black and White Checkerboard Cookies

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#8 Scotch Eggs with Garlic Butter Parmesan Fries

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#7 Grilled Whole Red Snapper with Ginger Sweet Chili Sauce

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#6 Riesling Chicken & Mushroom Casserole

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#5 Huevos Rancheros

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#4 Oven Roasted Fries with Garlic Butter & Parmesan

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#3 Korean Dak Galbi ~ Chicken Stir-Fry in Spicy Red Pepper Sauce with Gochugaru and Gochujang

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#2 Mini Tart Shells, Food Art & An Optical Illusion

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#1 Twisted Cookies ~ with Rolled-In Sugar. I think Twisted Cookies will always be the #1 recipe on my blog. It has almost 70,000 pageviews and 100 comments, which is by far more than the second most visited post. The comments are really heartwarming, as visitors talk about how they remember their grandma or great aunt making these cookies when they were kids back in the day. It brings back nostalgic memories and they’re happy that they now have the recipe, maybe to pass on to their kids. *smile*

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Here’s to us in 2016. I wish you abundant happiness and prosperity.

Lynne xo

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It was almost Thanksgiving -.then whoosh, it was Christmas -then whoosh, it was New Year’s Eve! And now, all the hoopla is over, and I’m smooth sailing into 2016. Whew!

However, there will be no New Year’s resolutions at this time. No January grain bowls. No salads. No fruit and veggie smoothies. No sit-ups. No sirree. This may be Los Angeles, but it’s dreary, rainy (pouring) and cold (more like freezing) outside. I want something hot, substantial and filling, and then I’m curling up in my down comforter in front of the fire. So there.

This is where the Green Curry with Chicken & Thai Eggplant comes in. It fulfills the hot, substantial and filling criteria, but the flavors just rock you back on your heels. You take your first spoonful and you say stuff like Oh wow! Oh my god! Mmmm! as you quickly get another spoonful in. Every one of your taste buds is singing with happiness. And there is enough in the pot to have a second bowl. Oh yes. Crappy weather, you are so totally foiled!

Mae Ploy is my favorite green curry paste. It has a combination of ingredients, each of which is exciting in and of itself, but together offer an explosion of flavors. Green Chili, lemongrass, garlic, salt, galangal, shrimp paste, kaffir lime peel, coriander seed, pepper, cumin and turmeric. I bought mine at the 99 Ranch Market and you can get it on Amazon.

Thai eggplants are about 2-inches in diameter. The skin stays sturdy, even when cooked; however, the seeds are soft. If you can’t find Thai eggplant for this recipe, you can substitute other veggies, like zucchini, broccoli, red peppers or green beans. For the chicken, you could also substitute turkey, duck or pork. As long as you have the coconut milk and green curry paste, you’re good to go.

On the left is Thai basil, but if you can’t find it, you can use regular Italian basil. Center is galangal, which is a member of the ginger family. To me it is the defining flavor of Thai food with its floral resin smell. If you can’t find galangal, you could julienne some ginger, but very thin and not too much. Ginger is pretty spicy and hot in large quantities. On the right are kaffir lime leaves, which could be substituted with lime juice. Not quite the same, but similar enough. Oh, your Green Curry is going to be so wonderful -.

Happy New Year Everyone!

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By the way, did I mention that I had my 70th birthday in October? The big 7-0 – 70 – Seven-0. Yep, I am officially on the road to oldness. I’m not there yet, but it is coming up at some point. Actually, I feel pretty much like I did when I turned 50 and 60. So besides giving thanks for family and friends when turkey day comes around, I am also thankful for a long healthy life. And, of course, all of you who have come to visit my blog. And leave such nice comments. Dear people. Thank you.

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