Earlier today, Mike alluded to our planned Asian vegetable feast with the produce we picked from our garden.  After we picked our largest veggie yield to date, we did in fact cook up a delicious Asian-influenced meal.  It was a shared cooking adventure – I prepared the cucumber salad (top right) and made myself a Thai-inspired tofu dish as my main protein.  Mike consulted Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and made the miso dipping sauce.  He basted the sliced eggplant with a little sesame oil, broiled them and also prepared the green beans with a spicy garlic sauce.  Finally he poached his halibut in a little olive oil, and then drizzled a sesame scallion sauce on top.  

Start to finish it took us about an hour and a half, but the results were well worth it.  Even Ezra and Helios got to sample a little fish, and were thrilled with that fairly rare event.

Finally, a meal this special couldn’t be accompanied by just any old beverage.  I sampled the Virgil Root beer on the left, and found it decidedly pleasing.  Much better then the common variety root beer that I usually run into on the rare occasion that a root beer appeals.  And Mike enjoyed the organic English Ale on the right.

Overall, a delightful evening in the kitchen with results well enjoyed by all cheese’n'pickles participants!

That’s 2 lbs. of cucumber, 11 oz. of Asian egplant, and 4 oz. of ‘Painted Pony’ green beans.  The orange pepper is a ‘Bulgarian Carrot’ hot pepper and the small purple flowers are from some Thai basil.  Heather has her eye on an Asian-style meal.