Chocolate pumpkin cupcakes (for Halloween!)

You can't really see it in the picture unless you know they're there, but these are very special cupcakes because they have a festive Halloween-themed cupcake paper. In fact, that's pretty much the whole reason these cupcakes came into being--I have a thing for festive cupcake papers.

I found the recipe on the Internet sometime last year when I was looking for a good Halloween-themed cupcake to make, and these seemed to fit the bill--the cupcakes are chocolate and pumpkin with a lightly spiced cream cheese frosting. The cupcakes themselves actually leave a little to be desired. On the plus side, they seem to be a bit on the "healthy" side for cake, at least until you add the frosting. They don't have much butter and are made with plenty of pumpkin and yogurt. They aren't bad by any means, but they just sort of taste like generic cake--they taste of neither very much chocolate nor pumpkin and I really wanted to taste a nice chocolatey-pumpkiny cupcake. However, cream cheese frosting is pretty much always delicious, and the frosting (plus the candy corn on top) still makes the cupcakes, enough so that they're still worth making.

The human brain is a wondrous thing. Your mind can play tricks on you based on your expectations, and in the case of these cupcakes, it would only be to your advantage. Expectations can create a mindset that causes a bit of shock when they're not met--like if you were to take a swig from a glass containing milk when you're expecting apple juice. The milk would taste completely weird and even disgusting, at least until you realize it's milk. Likewise, if you expect the cupcakes to taste like pumpkin and chocolate, and you look at them and they look chocolate and you know there is pumpkin in them, you will taste at least a little pumpkin and chocolate. A fun experiment: feed them to someone, not letting them see the actual cupcake, and see what flavors they can identify. Until I conduct that little innocuous bit of psychological experimentation (I knew I got that psych degree for something!), I may just look for a truly chocolatey and pumpkiny cupcake recipe to make to go with the frosting.

Red lentil soup

Red lentil soup is another of my tasty, satisfying and, once again, cumin-spiced dishes, and it really couldn't be much easier. So much so, in fact, that I sometimes wonder why I work so hard to make other dishes that involve all sorts of intricate layers of washing, frying, dicing, mincing, and stirring when dishes like these are so quick and delicious. Chop up some carrots, onions, garlic, celery and tomatoes (or even easier, open up a can of tomatoes) and whatever else you have on hand that would be good in soup, toss in some chicken broth, red lentils, and a couple of spices, simmer for about 20 minutes, and call it a day.

The first time I made this soup, which is also the first time I ever made anything with red lentils, I was in for a bit of a surprise. Uncooked red lentils are smaller, cuter and obviously more red than "regular" lentils. I sort of thought they would stay red in the soup, but the lentils basically soften quite a bit more than regular lentils do when you cook them, and they also turn a sort of orangish yellow. It's not a problem at all for the soup because the carrots and celery still lend good texture. The only added fat to the soup is a bit of olive oil to saute the onions in, so even though it's a soup I tend to overindulge in, I'm always able to rationalize that away since after all, it's only vegetables and plant-based protein, anyway. Plants!!

Wide rice noodles with pork, basil, and chinese broccoli

I've had a thing for wide rice noodle dishes since I was a kid. When my family went out to dinner, and it was almost always Chinese, we would order "chow fun," the wide rice noodle, beef, and broccoli dish, at my behest. Not knowing the Chinese name, I requested it by the name "fat noodles." In my mind, the name has stuck ever since, so much so that I often forget that my family and I are the only ones who actually call it that. I've never tried to replicate the Chinese version of the dish--too classic a dish from my childhood to mess with, I suppose--but when I started broadening my eating horizons and becoming more familiar with Thai food, I gravitated toward the Thai dishes that also use what seem to be the same wide rice noodles. No matter what the sauces and the dressing are, it is the texture of the noodles I find especially appealing--satisfyingly wide and thick, chewy but not too chewy, and sometimes even crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.

Browsing at Asian grocery stores in my early cooking days, I often saw packs of fresh wide rice noodles for sale--sold in broad sheets folded over to fit the little styrofoam tray, not even cut up yet into a more familiar noodle form. How could I resist? There's something exciting about cooking fresh noodles (especially if I didn't have to actually make them), not to mention the freedom to cut them in any width/shape I want (although I've always stuck with the classic wide noodle shape).

I've made this dish in a number of incarnations, but it always takes on a basic form--stir fried ingredients, one at a time--onions, vegetables, of course the noodles, some kind of protein, plus a sauce --usually soy sauce. In this dish I used Thai basil, something I always pick up when I see it because it's always so irresistibly fresh and fragrant, the fresh noodles, onions, Chinese broccoli, some sliced pork, and a mixture of soy sauce, fish sauce, and a little sugar.

It's hard to go very wrong with these noodles. This is a solid dish except that the noodles always get a bit soft on me. Someday I hope to figure out how restaurants manage to get the noodles crispy and sometimes browned on the outside. (I have a suspicion that they use a lot more oil than I do, but I'm also sure it's more than that.) Whenever I try to achieve that, the noodles get a crust--then the crust gets stuck on the bottom of my pan. Until the happy day of achieving crispness comes, I'm happy enough with my version.

Chocolate Bread

Starting with my first job, I have always considered myself ad-hoc director of morale around cubicles. Of the many duties I am called upon to perform in this self appointed position, the most important is “Baked Goods Friday.” While not the first thing I brought to the office, the Spiced Chocolate Bread is certainly one of the most popular. This treat combines chocolate, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and dried cherries. Though meant to be enjoyed with coffee, this is pairs well with tea, wine, hot apple cider. One thing to be careful of is getting this dessert out of the pan. Most quick breads can be stamped out, but to do so with here would ruin the decorative sugar that gives this treat its special coloring.

Shrimp

Next to salt and pepper, cumin seems to be the spice that's appearing in most of my dishes these days. This shrimp dish comes courtesy of How to Cook Everything and is extremely simple ("the simplest and best shrimp dish," the name of the recipe, is certainly appropriate)--shrimp, olive oil, slivered garlic, cumin, paprika, and parsley. The recipe calls for a bit more oil than I'm used to cooking with--even with a "healthier" oil, I feel guilty using any more than a smallish amount--but the oil proved to be the key ingredient in this recipe, magically absorbing and smoothly combining all the flavors from the other ingredients and keeping the shrimp tender. It's so tasty (and again, easy) that I'm once again finding myself amazed by Mark Bittman. With almost no chopping or measuring, I'm excited to have a great dish that I can make on short notice without planning (at least if I keep shrimp on hand).