First Day, 10 step salad and surprising new flavors

I had a beautiful pomelo at home. I love pomelos, they smell amazing and are one of my favorite fruits. I never heard about pomelos until 2 years ago when I moved to California. They look like giant lemons but are sweet and a mix of grapefruit, orange, grape that is hard to describe.

There is a recipe in the book called "Pomelo Salad" (pg. 19) and the picture looked amazing so I decided to start with that one. I wanted to prepare it for our Sunday lunch so I a main carb dish, "Quinoa Porridge with Grilled Tomatoes and Garlic" (pg. 101) and a side of "Honey-roasted Carrots with Tahini Yogurt" (pg. 163).

I will start right away telling you I adapted the recipes and changed a few things I will describe on the way. First, believe or not but I couldn't find green or red chile peppers so I used dry flakes instead. I also removed cinnamon from the salad and carrots since I don't like cinnamon.

I got all ingredients in the local Safeway a day before and the remaining at Whole Foods in the morning. Then I prepared the workplace, turned on the music on, prepared myself a  Mojito and I was ready!

My strategy to cook all three dishes was: making the marinade for the salad (pomelos need to marinate for 30+ min), carrots (40+ in the oven) and quinoa (25m cooking). I imagined it would take me about 1h even considering I didn't spend time on the mise en place (preparing, cutting, peeling all the ingredients ahead) since the marinating/oven/cook time overlapped. 

I was wrong. It took me about 2h, the dishes are complex and required specific steps and techniques I didn't master yet. Let's start with the Pomelo Salad marinade.

There is a lot of prep and cutting for the vinager, spicy marinade and I was able to use one of the prettiest spices ever: Star Anise!

The marinade smells amazing and it's impressive how it well it goes with the pomelo. The recipe includes cinnamon, but I removed it from the recipe as I don't like it.

As I mentioned, I didn't grow up eating Pomelos and didn't  research any techniques to peel it. This fruit has a super thick skin and a very bitter membrane attached to the segments of the fruit so you must peel it carefully. I developed my own technique that involves my bare hands and determination. A good pairing knife helps too but it took me about 10 minutes just to peel  the fruit.

Then I let the Pomelo sit there while I cooked the rest of the meal.

Next I prepared the carrots, the honey glaze has a lot of spices, including one of my favorites: coriander seeds. They have an amazing perfume and go really well with vegetables. I picked rainbow carrots just because they look pretty. I tried to move fast for this since it required more time in the oven and I had already spent too long with the Pomelo.

The carrots go with a yogurt-tahine dip that is absolutely amazing. I love garlic so I selected the largest garlic clove for the dip. The garlic will be raw so next time I will select the smallest one instead...

Then I decided to add lemon zest (it wasn't on the original recipe). Because... why not?

I then moved to the quinoa but all the pictures were really bad so you will only see the quinoa in the final picture. There is no secrets on this one, you just have to cook it slow with more liquid for about 25 minutes. You add feta and herbs and cover with a herb oil I blended myself. Then you grill small tomatoes with garlic. I got tomatoes in the vine and thought it would be a good idea to keep them in the vine to grill them. It's not since I wasn't serving them like that. 

The most exciting part was mixing the salad. The pomelo joins herbs, watercress and mango with other colorful and tasty ingredients and look how beautiful it is (recipe ask for black sesame, I had regular so I just used that instead):

And this is the final result:

I was super excited about the recipes but was surprised about how much the flavors exceeded all my expectations. 

The salad is very refreshing and there are so many complex flavors. The texture is also great as you have the pomelo, mangos, herbs and the crunch from peanuts. I never spent so long preparing a salad, but it's worth it.

Honey glazed carrots are also amazing, very sweet and perfumed. The yogurt-tahini sauce breaks the sweetness a little bit but the raw garlic overpowered a little bit. I also used mid size carrots so I have a lot of leftover sauce. I will probably add more yogurt and tahini to lower the garlic power and reuse it during the week.

Finally, the quinoa is also a great and healthy alternative for the main starch of your meal. It can also be a single dish meal as the the herb oil and tomatos add a lot. I would just add more tomatos next time.

An year ago my brother gave me the book Plenty More from the British chef Yotam Ottolenghi. I knew nothing about the chef and never been to any of his establishments but this book is the most beautiful cookbook I have. I love cookbooks but just like anyone else (I guess) I mostly look at the pictures and keep dreaming about how that dish would taste like. I almost never make any of the recipes. 

I decided to change that and started a project to cook all the 150+ recipes from this book. In order to keep me motivated and share the experience with my friends and family I decided to start a blog to register my journey.

I don't have a deadline and timeframe but I will try to do at least one recipe a week. The posts will follow the format: intro, explaining why I chose the recipe; planning, describing how easy or hard it was to find the ingredients; prep, going through the challenges of preparing the recipe; taste, finally telling how it turned out.

There are huge disclaimers here. First, I am not a professional chef or cook. I enjoy cooking at home and I hope that will be enough to accomplish this challenge. Second, one of the main reasons my brother gave me this book is because all recipes are vegetarian. Yes, I am a vegetarian. The chef is not a vegetarian but he became famous by his vegetarian recipes and the way he prepared and celebrated vegetables and grains. My husband and friends are not vegetarians so if may mention if there is a non-vegetarian side in the meal but it won't be prepared by me or described here. Then, I am not going to list the recipe here, that's not the point and this is not my recipe. If the recipe is available on Ottolenghi's website, I will link it, otherwise you will have to buy the book (it's worth it).

Finally, as I mentioned before, this blog is personal. I want to register my experience and share with friends and family. If you found this somewhere on the internet you are welcome to join and I will do my best to answer comments but can't promise to do that in a timely manner.