Different ingredients

I cooked two new dishes tonight. These stepped a bit outside of my typical ingredient set, so it was fun and novel to see how they came out.

The meal was an Indian stew, of apples and potatoes and onions and garlic and chickpeas and raisins and celery, simmered in a curry sauce and served over Basmati rice, with some freshly minted yogurt on the side. Preia, continuing her love affair with all things dairy, approved quite heartily of the yogurt, which we let her lick from our fingertips.

Dessert was a vegan approximation of mango cheesecake. A graham-cracker crust was pressed into a pan, and over this was poured a paste comprised of blendered banana, tofu, vanilla, maple syrup, water, dates, and lemon juice. This was baked for 30 min, and then a sauce of pureed fresh mango was poured over the top. Yummy...

Pitted dates boiled in lemon-juice-water makes a surprisingly tangy flavoring.