Our house salsa is fairly trivial to prepare and fairly amazing to consume. Based loosely on memories of the salsa at Papilote in San Francisco.

• 4-5 small tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 red pepper, trimmed
• 1 red chile pepper
• 3 small cloves of garlic, unpeeled
• 1 medium carrot, cut in half lengthwise
• 2 spring onions, trimmed
• Juice from 1/2 lime

• Get the broiler going. In the meantime, get your prep on.
• Arrange all of the veg in a medium baking dish. Just before you pop it under the broiler, give everything a nice coating of vegetable oil.
• You want everything to have a nice char, especially the tomatoes and peppers. This usually takes about 10 minutes or so to achieve, but keep an eye on the proceedings.
• Remove the dish from the oven. Trim the top off the chile and remove the garlic from its skin.
• Pop everything into the food processor and blend until smooth. Add the lime juice and season to taste.

Mix it up with some cilantro, if that’s your thing. Sometimes that’s my thing too. This goodness keeps for few days in the Frigidaire.

Blended to Avi Buffalo – Avi Buffalo.

This is not so much a recipe as it is a rough guide. Even as a sketch, the results are virtually guaranteed to be both tastier and less expensive than any you’d find on a shop’s shelf.

Use whatever combination of seeds, nuts and dried fruits strike you. This latest batch had sultanas and pumpkin seeds, but for the longest time my favourite was a simple combo of almonds and oats.

Beyond the goodness that is fresh-from-the-oven granola, the big secret here is salt. A nice flaky sea salt really makes things special. I put about 1 healthy teaspoon of salt for each cup of oats.

• 1 part white flour (optional, but helps make nice clumps)
• 2 part rolled oats
• 1-2 parts goodies – nuts, seeds, dried fruits, whatever
• (Flaky sea) salt to taste
• enough honey or maple syrup to lightly coat everything
• enough oil (extra virgin) or fat (butter) to lightly coat everything

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170C / 325F
2. In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Leave out anything you don’t want to brown in the oven, like coconut or some dried fruits. Add those for the last few minutes of toasting action – or just stir them in afterwards.
3. Drizzle the wet ingredients over the dry ones and mix well.
4. Pour out the mix onto a large baking sheet and spread evenly.
5. Bake, turning them every 5 minutes of so, until the oats turn a golden brown. They might feel a little wet to the touch, but they’ll crisp up in the air.

Toasted to Volcano Choir – Unmap

Masoor dal (daal, dahl, whatever) is such an altruistic dish. It asks so very little of you, but gives so very much in return. So this variant asks that you have some spices at hand, fine, but even if you made it using only red lentils and broth, you’d still end up with something extremely edible. The prep work is done in mere minutes, the rest of your time is spent waiting patiently for things to thicken up.

There are infinite variants of the mighty masoor dal. This just happens to be the one we made last night. Experiment. It’s very difficult to ruin.

• 1 cup red lentils
• 4 cups light vegetable broth
• 1.5 teaspoons cumin seed
• 1 teaspoon mustard seed
• 1 clove garlic, smashed
• 2 cm piece of ginger, halved
• 1/4 teaspoon of chile powder or to taste
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tablespoon of fat: oil, ghee, butter, whathaveyou
• salt to taste

1. Rinse the dal with a few charges of cold water and set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, heat the oil over a medium-high flame. When the oil’s nearly smoking add the garlic, cumin and mustard seeds. The cumin seed should pop on impact. Keep this moving for about a minute, careful not to let the cumin seed burn.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients to the pan and bring it to a simmer.
4. Cook over low heat for about 45 minutes, or until it’s at a consistency you’re more than happy to eat. Stir occasionally. The water tends to separate from the lentils and you could get in a bad way if you’re not mindful.
5. Serve over a nice basmati rice, like Majula’s wonderful zucchini rice.

Dal making music: Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem.