Cookbooks have a life cycle: when a book is new, it’s exciting, it might get cover to cover, torn bits of paper sprouting up like so many shoots in the spring marking promising recipes. Then comes experimentation: making each of those recipes, seeing which work and which don’t. And finally — tragically — the third age of cookbookdom; sad years spent languishing on the shelf, ignored but for the one or two recipes that keep the book from being sent off to the big cookbook library in the sky.

Some cookbooks can avoid this fate — maybe a copy of the Joy of Cooking that gets referenced for everything (I prefer Cook’s Illustrated’s New Best Recipe) — but most are destined to become so much shelf decoration.

Take Curried Favors: Family Recipes from South India by Maya Kaimal MacMillan. When I received this book as a gift, I was into Indian food in a big way. The book was a perfect gateway into the cuisine: easy, apparently authentic recipes that produced great food. In the first months I had this book I cooked widely from it, even preparing the multi-course dinner menus suggested in the back. We had such good times, Curried Favors and I. But, eventually, my enthusiasm for Indian food was crowded out by other cuisines and Curried Favors joined the other disgraced books of yesteryear on the shelf, pulled down only when I had a craving for that one recipe; in this case cholé — a curry of chickpeas and tomatoes.

Cholé is a household favorite for Martha and me, made so many times we don’t really need to look at the recipe anymore. But for whatever reason last week I got the urge to double check the recipe — maybe just to be sure I had the spice mixture right. What page was cholé on? The paper scrap bookmark had long since fallen out. To the index! C… ch.. hey, cabbage! In all my excitement for the familiar flavors of cholé I hadn’t forgotten that we had half a cabbage sitting in the crisper drawer, on its way to being thrown out, rotten in two weeks unless fate intervened.

And as fate would have it I found myself turning not to Cholé on page 93 but to Cabbage Thoren on page 73. Scanning the list of ingredients — coconut, a green chile, garlic, cumin, coriander, cayenne, turmeric, salt, mustard seeds, dried red peppers, bay leaves, rice, the aforementioned cabbage — we had everything on hand: it was meant to be.

I had never made Cabbage Thoren before that night — in spite of having the recipe in my possession more than eight years — and it’s a shame, because it was very good. And it got me thinking, maybe it’s time to start exploring Curried Favors again. Paging through to the elaborate suggested menus at the back, I started to plan another Indian feast.

This month is replete with bloggers’ suggestions for food resolutions. Here’s mine: find a cookbook you own that you have more or less forgotten, dust it off, and see what new things it has in store.

Besides being delicious, cooking a variety of cuisines is educational — you learn the quirks of the cuisine itself, and tricks and techniques from one cuisine can enhance the understanding of others. Take the fritter: practically every culture has its little fried ball of something, its croquette, pakora, hush puppy, etc. The methods for producing each are unique to the cultures — and individual cooks — that produce them. But cultures tend to be chauvinistic, assuming their way is the only way to fry. It’s a shame, because you can learn a lot about beignets from frying buñuelos.

Take two cultures not exactly known for their capacity to cooperate: Israel and Egypt. Israelis might fry up a mean latke — maybe one made of turnips, even — for the eight nights of Hanukkah, but believe that an Egyptian — especially if he happens to be a nationalist or an Islamist — would not be caught frying up those quintessentially Jewish treats that time of year. Instead, he’d probably head to the shop around the corner for some ta’amiya (think of falafel, but Egyptian), fried spheres of fava beans with herbs and spices, sandwiched in country bread with salad and tahini sauce.

I’ve always been disappointed with my homemade ta’amiya;  among other problems I can’t get the binder right. Bringing the frying oil to a high enough temperature helps (if it’s too low the fritters will disintegrate), but there needs to be something more. I’ve tried eggs, but it makes the ta’amiya too heavy. But my recent experience with turnip latkes got me thinking: they are bound with egg, true, but the egg is beaten with flour to form a batter that binds the shredded vegetables together. A batter would be perfect for holding ta’amiya together: a loose slurry of water and chickpea flour helped bind the ground favas and also made for a crisper crust. My best homemade ta’amiya yet, and I never would have arrived here if not for experimenting with other fritters.

Just to mix things up a bit more, we ate the patties topped with tzatziki sauce. Greeks, Israelis and Arabs, all working together toward a common goal — the ultimate fritter? Now there’s a vision for peace in the world.

Ta’amiya of Justice and Understanding

• 1# dried favas, soaked overnight and shelled to 2# 1¼oz
• .445 oz dill (~½ cup)
• .480 oz mint (~½ cup)
• 2.5 oz chickpea (gram) flour
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• 8 oz water
• 5 scallions (1.6 oz), thinly sliced on a bias
• 6 small carrots (4 oz), julienned fine (use a mandoline)
• 6 cloves garlic (1.155 oz), minced or crushed in a garlic press
• 1.5 tsp cumin (.1 oz)
• ¾ tsp coriander (.05 oz)
• 1/8 tsp cayenne (.01 oz)
• ¼ tsp black pepper (.025 oz)
• 1 Tbsp salt (.7 oz)
• Oil for frying

Working in small batches, process the  fava beans and the herbs together to a paste (I did three batches in my 6 cup food processor). In a large bowl, whisk together chickpea flour, baking soda and water. Mix in scallions, carrots, garlic, spices and salt. Knead in the fava bean mixture until well-distributed and homogenous.

Heat oil to 375ºF. Pinch off golf-ball sized clumps of the fava bean mixture, quickly roll the mixture into a sphere (technically they should be oblate, but I thought the spheres were attractive), and place it carefully in the oil. Repeat until the pot is full but not crowded. Fry until patties are a deep brown (the oil will have recovered to 375ºF at this point) then drain on paper towels and sprinkle with salt. Continue frying in batches until the fava bean mixture is gone, periodically sampling the ta’amiya right out of the fryer to make sure they’re still good.

Serve with pita bread, greens, tomatoes if they are in seasons and tzatziki, tahini sauce, hummus, or any other sauce you feel culturally appropriate.

Although ostensibly a day devoted to giving thanks, Thanksgiving for many descends into gluttony — or at the very least eating a bit too much food that is a bit too rich. Whatever effect this might have on one’s soul, it definitely takes a toll on the body, as the pending post-thanksgiving naps will attest. The days after Thanksgiving give no respite, either: these are days devoted to the consumption of leftovers, constructing, eating and immediately regretting ever-more ridiculous “Thanksgiving sandwiches”. I’m not saying I don’t like Thanksgiving — quite the opposite, I assure you — just that it has a way of making one’s body feel pushed to the limit.

Anticipating this food binge in the days before the big day, I’m filled with a puritanical need to purge. For about three days before Thanksgiving I adopt an almost-vegan diet, avoiding meat, heavy fats and anything that feels like it will linger past its welcome in my gut. Simple meals of grains and vegetables — in small portions — is what I crave before a meal that is complicated, rich and excessively-portioned.

If you too are both excited for and slightly dreading Thanksgiving indulgence, or if in the aftermath of the holiday you’re ready to give up on the damned leftovers, make a meal of this dal and flatbread, inspired by Jeffery Alford and Naomi Duguid’s Flatbreads & Flavors.

Dal

• ½ medium onion, sliced thin
• 2 tsp vegetable oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed through a garlic press
• 1 cup red lentils
• 4 cups water
• 1 tsp salt
• ¼ tsp black pepper, ground
• ¼ tsp ground cumin
• Dash ground turmeric
• Cinnamon stick, a couple of inches long
• ½ cup cilantro

Fry onion in vegetable oil in 4 qt saucepan over medium-high heat until edges start to brown. Stir in garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add lentils and water and stir to combine. Add salt, spices and cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil, then simmer over low heat, covered, for 20 to 25 minutes, until porridge-like. Off heat, stir in cilantro and adjust seasoning. Serve warm.

Puri

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• ¼ tsp black pepper, ground
• ¼ tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 cup yogurt
• ½ cup water

Pulse flours, spices and salt together in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade to evenly distribute. Add yogurt and water and process until dough has formed a cohesive, smooth ball — about two minutes in my processor. Place dough in an oiled bowl, cover, and let rest about 1 hour.

Divide the dough into 3 oz balls — you should have 14. Allow the balls to rest 20-30 minutes. After the dough balls have rested, begin rolling them out: they should be rolled as thin as possible, as if for tortillas.

Heat a dry large skillet over medium high heat. Cook one flatbread at a time, flipping after bubbles appear all over the surface of the bread. The bread should be dark brown, almost charred in spots. Store cooked breads in a towel to keep warm while you prepare the rest of the breads.

Note: Purists will note this is not actually puri, which should be fried in oil. You might recall the whole point of this meal was to avoid fats like that — if it makes you happier think of these as puri-inspired flatbreads. Also, if you can get it, substitute 3 cups Indian atta flour for the flour in the recipe.

Serve the dal and puri together, using torn off bits of bread to scoop up the lentils.

Let me start by saying I don’t like squash. I kind of hate it. It’s certainly not an aesthetic objection: nothing brightens up the drear of the fall farmers’ market quite like all the whimsical varieties of winter squash — impossible to resist! This combination of compulsive buying and strong dislike leads me to accumulate squash in the fall. Earlier this month, our squash collection reached critical mass and it was time for desperate measures. And so the idea was born: the week of squash. We would cook and eat a different squash each day for five days. At the end of the week, we would have finished our kuri, delicata, acorn, butternut and spaghetti squashes. And I would either have learned to love squash or never need to eat it again.

Day 1 Curried Kuri Squash Soup

Not wanting to be too ambitious the first day, I went for an old standard: squash soup. Most of the versions of this I’ve had are sweetened with brown sugar and pretty fatiguing after just a few spoonfuls. To try to make it a little more interesting, I attempted squash mulligatawny; a squash-based version of the citrusy Angl0-Indian soup. After peeling and steaming my kuri squash, I pureed the flesh with some of the steaming liquid, and added ginger and curry powder. Back in the pot, I added a bit of cream and some lime juice. For garnish, I made a mint-cilantro-garlic yogurt sauce, dolloped generously in the center

Squash Hatred Level: 6. The squash was pretty passable, but I think I was a little too heavy-handed with the lime juice; the soup was overly sour. The yogurt sauce helped improve the soup’s flavor, but as is often the case with squash soup (for me, anyway) a few bites was enough.

Day 2 Delicata Squash Enchiladas

This dish was inspired by a post on Serious Eats and an email I received from my Aunt Ann talking about having made enchiladas using squash with chard, feta and onions. I kind of took the worst parts of both of these ideas, ignoring their saving graces, and added some even nastier elements. So my ‘enchiladas’ contained: roasted delicata squash, kale, never-tender-enough-sauteed chard stems, charred red peppers and onions, and cilantro. After preparing my fillings and tossing them in a bowl with the recommended enchilada sauce, I rolled enchiladas, topped them with more sauce and covered the dish with a healthy (or hopefully unhealthy) dose of pepper-jack and put it in the oven to bake.

Squash Hatred Level: 8. The squash soup was not good, but it was okay. These enchiladas, on the other hand, were just nasty. Even as I was putting the recipe together, I could feel the train-wreck beginning. Eliminating the black beans and the feta was obviously a mistake. And in my overzealous cleaning of the crisper drawer I didn’t think about why combining kale and chard stems was a terrible, terrible idea. The only salvation for this dish would have been a lot more sauce and/or a lot more cheese, and preferably just those things. At this point I was getting pretty discouraged about squash week.

Day 3 Stuffed Roast Acorn Squash

With exotic reimaginings of squash having utterly failed me in the beginning of the week, it was time to turn to a stand-by. Growing up, this was how I knew squash: an acorn squash, cut in half, stuffed with pork sausage, and roasted until both were nicely browned. Of course, as a child, I would only eat the sausage, though I did eventually learn to also eat the squash, provided it was mashed together with plenty of butter, salt and pepper.

Squash Deliciousness Level: 6. This is actually a very good way to enjoy squash: pork loves a sweet compliment and finds a great one in the flesh of the squash, and the pork fat mingled tantalizingly with the squash. I hardly needed any butter at all!

Day 4 Spaghetti Squash and Broccoli Gratin

I suppose the star of this meal is actually in the background of the above photo: slow-cooked duck legs with a red wine pan sauce. But squash is the point of this post, and squash we did have to the side of our duck. For this gratin, I combined the flesh of a roasted spaghetti squash with steamed broccoli and a generous handful of New Zealand cheddar cheese in a buttered gratin dish. I topped the mixture off with bread crumbs tossed together with parmesan cheese and baked the dish until the breadcrumbs were brown and the cheese bubbly.

Squash Deliciousness Level: 4. This dish had a good level of sweetness without descending into sweet potato pie territory, and the combination of textures — the still slightly crisp broccoli, the gooey squash and cheese, and the crunchy breadcrumbs — was interesting and pleasant.

Day 5 Butternut Squash Spaetzle

I kind of dread butternut squash because it is so popular and tends to get so repetitive. How many butternut squash raviolis have you seen on restaurant menus in the past five years? So I was very grateful when Serious Eats featured a recipe for butternut squash spaetzle. I mean, I have long wanted to learn to make spaetzle, and if I could liven up squash week in the process, all the better. I also thought the recipe an appropriate wrap-up to squash week, since squash figures into the spaetzle dough as well as being a part of the sauce (I guess the ultimate wrap-up to squash week would have involved all five squash varieties in some kind of squash explosion but even contemplating that makes me a little sick). The recipe was pretty easy to follow; I only screwed up in over-cooking the maple glaze to the point where it wasn’t so much a maple glaze as maple candy. Luckily, the dishes were for Martha.

Squash Deliciousness Level: 8. This dish did a really good job of using the sweetness of butternut squash as an accent while bringing in a variety of other flavors and textures to avoid palate fatigue. Although recommended as a side dish, it made a great light lunch on a fall day.

And so the week of squash ended. Although it wasn’t planned this way, after a couple of rocky starts the meals got progressively better; by the end of the week I could even say I almost liked squash. I suppose I will be able to eat it in the future. But five days in a row again? Probably not.

Like most people my age, I grew up on microwave popcorn. Actually, I have a memory of an air popper with a yellowish-brown plastic top that melted butter and shot popcorn into a bowl, but most of the popcorn eaten in my life has been made in a microwave. Which is amazing because microwave popcorn is really really bad. It is always either burning or leaving half the kernels un-popped, or both. Horrible and frustrating, but it was all I knew.

All I knew until a few months ago, when my life changed. Did you know you can make popcorn on the stove? I don’t mean with one of those exploding foil pans either, but in a pot. It’s as simple as pouring a layer of fat (we usually use olive oil but as long as it’s a lipid it will work) and then covering the bottom of the pan with popcorn kernels. As it happens, the Wedge is an excellent source for local popcorn in Minneapolis. Keeping the pot uncovered, apply high heat. As soon as the popcorn starts to pop, cover the pot and reduce the heat to medium. If you don’t cover the pot, you will soon have popcorn all over your floor. Once the popping slows down significantly, to about one pop every five seconds say, I uncover the pot and reduce the heat to low for another minute or two. At this point all that’s left is to add salt or other flavorings, which I usually do by pouring the popcorn into a large paper sack, adding salt and whatever else, and shaking.

This method has really increased my appreciation of popcorn. For one thing, I have yet to burn a kernel. A burnt kernel of popcorn can turn you off to the whole batch, so this is a major plus. Probably the best thing is being able to control exactly what goes into your popcorn. If you’re concerned about excessive salt, fat or chemicals, making popcorn the old-fashioned way lets you control exactly what goes in rather than being left to the whims of the diabolical Mr. Redenbacher (You only have yourself to blame when you go overboard with lard-popped, bacon-salt corn). This also gives you a lot of room to experiment with flavors. As I mentioned, you can use whatever fat you like, all for different flavor effects: olive oil, butter, lard, bacon grease, suet, other vegetable oils, really anything. For the batch that inspired me to write this post, I used ghee, Indian clarified butter that, at least in the case of my probably too old jar, has a kind of funky, goaty character.

You can play with the fats at the front end of the popcorn process, and then at the back there is an even bigger range of possibilities to be explored with flavorings. Salt is fundamental to all of this, but an obvious variation might be to use the assorted flavored salts, like celery salt or garlic salt. With the garlic salt you might add a little dried dill. Our most recent batch of popcorn involved olive oil and freshly grated parmesan cheese and ground black pepper added at the end. For my popcorn with ghee I decided to embrace Indian flavors and added some garam masala. When adding spices as flavorings always keep in mind that your ability to taste them is wholly dependent on there being enough salt; don’t be shy with the sodium chloride. On the other hand, overly salty popcorn gets fatiguing to the tongue fast; mastering the yin and yang of popcorn salting will probably take a few batches. As Martha reminds me when I get too salt happy, it is easy enough to add more but pretty hard to take it away.

Since starting to make popcorn this way I’ve been eating and enjoying it a lot more. It really doesn’t take much more time than making it in the microwave and the end result is so much better that the two aren’t even comparable. The ability to play with the flavoring offers a lot of entertainment, but even if you were just to go the traditional butter and salt route the sound of popcorn popping around inside your pot is reward enough for any extra effort.