tom hudgens

•CHICKEN CURRY WITH GREEN GARLIC AND SPINACH
•WINTER VEGETABLE DAL WITH COCONUT MILK
•BASMATI RICE AND QUINOA
•PAPADUMS
•YOGURT RAITA WITH MUSTARD SEED
•BLOOD ORANGE GELEE WITH SPICES AND FENNEL CANDY


While I'd love to think I could be content cooking and eating simple, elemental meat and vegetable dishes--"salt-and-pepper cooking"--for the rest of my days, as my ancestors did, nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes, I want spice, intrigue, exotica. At these times, I often "go" to India. I've always loved Indian cuisine; in early versions of The Deep Springs Cookbook, later to become The Commonsense Kitchen, I extolled: "Indian food is a wholly different and exciting culinary idiom. Fresh ginger, basmati rice, and whole spices are no longer hard to find, as they were early in my cooking days. Once you learn a few of the basic dishes and procedures, Indian food lends itself to flights of improvisation, especially when you have access to a variety of vegetables. Vegetables are closer to the heart and soul of Indian food than meat; in fact, it may be perfectly expressed without any meat at all." Bearing that in mind, I thought an Indian feast using lots of winter vegetables would be perfect for the winter seasonal cooking class. The chicken curry contains silky green garlic--a late winter farmers' market specialty--and fresh spinach, and the vegetable curry has vegetables that might seem more Mediterranean than Indian: butternut squash, fennel, kohlrabi, and celery root.
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