I’m almost always hungry first thing in the morning. But today, after a good long jog yesterday, I was ravenous. What to eat?

Before I even got out of bed, a dish I had heard about recently, quinoa pancakes, popped into my mind. I had no idea how to make them, but it was pouring down rain outside, I had a strong cup of coffee in hand and I was up for a little experimentation.

First, I rinsed and drained a handful of quinoa in a colander (some varieties of quinoa have a toxic powdery substance coating the grains). I put the damp quinoa in my mini food processor and tried to grind it to a paste. It was slow going, but after scraping down the sides of the processor a few times and adding a few teaspoons of water, the quinoa finally formed a paste. It had an assertive, nutty aroma — a lot like sesame tahini.

I poured the paste into a bowl, and whisked in some whole milk and an egg. I wanted a savory, not sweet cake, so I seasoned the batter with salt and pepper, and stirred in a handful of grated parmesan and a little chopped fresh rosemary.

Then I just cooked the batter as I would when making pancakes (but with olive oil instead of butter) until the cakes were brown on both sides and cooked through, about 2 minutes total. I topped the cakes with a couple of olive-oil-fried eggs and a little more grated parmesan.

The cakes were really flavorful — bold, nutty — and filling. I’m looking forward to tinkering with the recipe some more. I think they’d be good really big and thin, used like a flatbread.

Reference: What is quinoa?
Reference: How do you pronounce quinoa?
Reference: Is quinoa a grain or a seed?

Yesterday afternoon I was looking forward to grilling two beautiful Niman Ranch pork tenderloins for a dinner party. But when it was time to fire up the grill, the sky cracked open and it started to pour. Even though my grill’s just outside the door, the rain was coming down hard and I didn’t feel like getting wet. So I opted instead for my second-favorite way to cook meat — pan roasting.

I preheated the oven to 375F and sprinkled the pork generously with smoked paprika, toasted and ground cumin and coriander, salt and pepper. I seared the tenderloins in canola oil in a hot skillet until they were dark brown on all sides, then put them in the oven to finish cooking. When their internal temperature was 150F in the thickest part I removed them to a cutting board to rest, loosely tented with foil, for 10 minutes.

The pork didn’t quite have the charred flavor that grilling gives, but thorough searing in the skillet, smoky paprika and toasted spices helped compensate. It went well alongside fragrant coconut rice, mango-avocado salsa, cucumber raita and the sound of steady rain through a cracked window.

Recipe: Pan-Roasted Pork Tenderloin
Recipe: Coconut Basmati Rice
Recipe: Mango-Avocado Salsa
Recipe: Cucumber Raita

On Saturday, it poured down rain here all day long. When it came time for lunch, I was craving something comforting and nourishing, something with Asian flavors, but I didn’t want to walk to the store in the rain. Luckily I had a head of cabbage, some fresh ginger and garlic and a leftover half block of tofu tucked away in the fridge, and some egg noodles in the pantry.

So here’s what I did:
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I’ve always loved pasta. Its simplicity, versatility and reliability (especially when you nail down a few key steps) make it one of the dishes I cook at home the most.

Last night I got back from an out-of-town wedding on the late side, and didn’t feel like stopping at the store on my way home from the airport. So I decided to put together a quick pasta with a few things I always have on hand — whole wheat spaghetti, canned chickpeas and parmesan.

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There are so many ways to use our deeply aromatic, saffron and vanilla-infused pineapples from this week’s Root Source), it’s hard to know where to begin.

I made some headway last night. I wanted to put together a quick dessert for friends, and remembered that I had a few leftover rings of pineapple in the refrigerator, happily swimming in their fragrant steeping liquid.

So I ladled some of the liquid into a small saucepan, and boiled it until it was the consistency of syrup. Meanwhile, I seared a pineapple ring in a nonstick skillet in a little butter until both sides were a deep, rich brown.

I topped the caramelized pineapple with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, then drizzled the saffron syrup all around. The warm, slightly crisp pineapple and cold, smooth ice cream made quite a pair.

Recipe: Saffron Pineapples (Cookthink)

Yesterday, after a relaxing holiday weekend, I decided to try my hand at a batch of dumplings.

First I peeled half a carrot, a section of ginger, a small shallot and a couple of cloves of garlic, trimmed a chile pepper and tossed those straight into my mini food processor.

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Now that it’s officially fall, I have a good excuse to skip daylight vegetables and eat a ploughman’s lunch. This afternoon — cloudy, rainy, leaves falling — I stacked a few slices of pumpernickel bread on a cheese board, added a couple of Real Pickles, a dollop of grainy mustard and a hunk of Hillman Farm harvest cheese.

On my way back from a quick run around the neighborhood this afternoon, I stopped in Whole Foods to pick up something to snack on before dinner.

I saw a pile of Zespri Gold Organic Kiwis in the produce section, and couldn’t resist grabbing a couple of them — I love their smooth bronze skin and silky sweet, tropical gold flesh.

I took them home, peeled and sliced them, laid them over a few dollops of plain yogurt, drizzled over some wildflower honey and went to town.

On Sunday, it was one of those stifling, hot days — 98, hazy and humid — when D.C. felt like a beach town without the ocean. It made me shift from enjoying the beginning of fall back to tolerating the hot, tired summer.

Earlier in the day, I had picked up some fresh vegetables at the farmers market. Since I didn’t want to cook, I decided to make gazpacho. A little chopping and food processing is all it would take — quick, easy, cooling and refreshing.

Here’s how I made it:

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With this week’s Root Source on rosemary, and lots of cut rosemary on hand from a recent pruning of my herb garden, I was in a rosemary kind of mood this morning. So I decided to make my usual pot of black tea, but with a couple of rosemary sprigs tossed in.

I’ve read somewhere that rosemary, a mild stimulant, is good for the intestinal tract (which, I recently learned has been called the body’s second brain, containing 95% of our neurotransmitter serotonin and more nerve cells than our central nervous system). Whatever its medicinal value, I thought it’d add a nice complex flavor to the black tea.

To make the tea, I let the rosemary sprigs steep in almost boiling water with the black tea for a couple of minutes, then fished them both out, and stirred in a squeeze of lemon and a little honey. It hit the spot. I can’t say I noticed much stimulation other than what the black tea’s caffeine usually delivers, but the rosemary added a warm woodsy, resinous aroma to my average cup.

There was a time a couple of years ago when I was always throwing a whole host of herbs — rosemary, lemon verbena, basil, thyme, whatever — into a coffee press and then steeping them for a few minutes to make a fragrant herbal tea. This morning’s impromptu rosemary tea made me want to get back into that.

Suggestions for good combinations?