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My mother gave me a generous gift card to Borders for Christmas, part of which I used to purchase a book I’ve had my eye on since November — Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. It’s a coffee table-sized book, quite inconvenient for the kitchen. However, it’s also the kind of book you set in your lap as you relax in front of the fireplace with a mug of chai, letting your imagination take you to places with exotic names like Dhaka, Goa, and Kerala.

After several hours of armchair travel yesterday, I finally got my ass off the couch and cooked something from the book. I made the fennel flecked potato samosas. They were pretty easy to pull together. The dough comes together in the food processor and relaxes for 30 minutes while you make the filling. I used Yukon gold potoatoes in mine, and seasoned them with lots of onion, garlic, turmeric, mustard seed, cayenne powder and finally green peas. (You’re supposed to put chiles in the mixture, but I didn’t have any on hand, so I just added extra cayenne). Then you roll out the dough into ovals, cut in half, and fill with the mixture before sealing into neat little samosas. Then the samosas are deep fried in 350 degree peanut oil till golden and crispy. Even Oliver liked them — till he got a bit of pea in his mouth. Then it was all over. But I loved the sweetness of the peas with the heat of the cayenne and then more sweetness with the fennel.

I also made whoopie pies this weekend. Did you know the white stuff in the middle is basically Crisco with some powdered sugar blended in? Disgusting! But I put my prejudices aside and made a batch — and they were quite tasty. Much better than the ones wrapped in cellophane.

What else? Linda, my friend and co-author, is staying with us next weekend, which means I’m going to have a cooking blowout. We’re thinking of trying a new Indian restaurant in town for lunch, but for dinner I have to come up with something yummy. I was thinking salmon in an asian-style marinade, roasted asparagus, and mango kulfi (Indian ice cream) for dessert. And for breakfast on Sunday I’m making Scottish porridge and my (in)famous spiced chai.

Remember I mentioned something about fruitcakes back in October? This picture was taken then, after I’d procured all the ingredients for my Jamaican black cake, which I’d read about in Laurie Colwin’s memoirs (can’t remember which volume, but it’s the last essay).

I ended up using a modified recipe posted by some kind soul at King Arthur’s Baking Circle. (If you can’t tell, that’s where I purchased most of the candied fruit — except for the cherries, they don’t add additional food coloring.) On the far right is the five-gallon glass apothecary jar I used for the rum and Kosher wine marinade.

I ran all the fruits through my food processor to chop them up into tiny bits — currants, lemon peel, orange peel, citron, prunes, cherries, and raisins. Quite a bit of fruit! Then the fruit got thrown in with the 750 mls of wine and two 375 ml bottles of dark rum. The concoction sat on a shelf in my office for several months. Whenever I was feeling down, I’d stick my head in there and breathe deep. Mmmmm. Heavenly!

Baking day. Oh, what a project. First off, the recipe makes an INSANE amount of batter, enough to make 15 or 16 mini loaves in my case. The KitchenAid was useless in this case — everything had to be mixed by hand in the largest bowl I had, which happened to be a Mason Cash bowl which takes up an awful lot of room but saves my ass when it needs saving, and even then the batter was up to rim. And very difficult to stir, what with the 12 cups of flour, fresh bread crumbs, brown sugar, and more. (Shall I post the recipe or is fruitcake something you’re not interested in?)

But oy, how tasty. I frosted them with a sickly sweet almond fondant and promptly ate half a cake on an empty stomach. I actually got a bit heady, as the fruits really soaked up that alcohol quite nicely.

I’ll post a picture of the finished product later.