Bit of a panic getting thru long, long lines at Dulles, but it’s sweet to hear the last call for boarding as you dash to the gate.

We spent the final Saturday evening of our month of self-imposed sobriety over at the Harrisons’, where in addition to good conversation, we enjoyed a tasty dish of Thai red curry with eggplant and tofu.

I finally found some green mangos and decided to make a salad. The recipe I was using called for some toasted coconut, and I thought it would be fun to start with an actual coconut.

A couple of sharp raps with the back of a chef’s knife cracked the nut, and it was soon in two pieces.

The green mangos were nice and firm – easy to peel and grate

This is a long way from Kraft’s Italian Dressing – fish sauce, lime, brown sugar and chile sauce:

But together with the mango, coconut, bean sprouts, scallions, chile pepper, cilantro, basil and peanuts, it makes for a delightfully zesty (mostly) vegetarian lunch!

Whether a vegetarian pho is a proper pho is a question for another time, but this tofu-rich noodle soup was delicious. Your pho is only as good as your broth, and I made a great one with kombu and mushrooms to give it some depth and all-around umami goodness. Charred onion and ginger and cinnamon, star anise and cloves gave it that characteristic aroma and flavor. Unfortunately the rice noodles were the weak point; still haven’t found a good source for pho noodles. In addition to the dry fried tofu, I added some sauteed mushrooms and bok choy, and as always, the finishing touches are key:

As a side dish, I love roasted cauliflower, but as the main event, I’m more likely to make a curry out of it. When I came across a recipe for cauliflower and red lentil curry – two superfoods – I knew we’d soon have a warm dinner for a cold night.

The recipe called for Madras curry powder (which evidently survives the city’s name change to Chennai), and I knew that – like a lot of home cooks – the curry powder I had on hand had been around for a long time. Fortunately, a quick scan of ingredients and a check of the cupboard revealed that I had everything on hand to toast and grind a fresh batch on the spot.

Well, with a couple of caveats. I didn’t have any ground ginger but figured that wouldn’t be a problem because I would just add fresh ginger to the dish. Likewise for turmeric, which by the way is on the superfoods list and warrants taking the time for a special mention.

Turmeric is a relative of ginger, and it looks like this:

Usually you can only find it in its bright orange-colored powdered form, and at first, I thought about getting some for the curry powder because that is what give Madras curry its distinctive color. But I decided besides being a pain in the ass to go to the store, it had to be better to use the root in its original state and I could just add it to the dish like the ginger.

Turmeric’s active ingredient is called curcumin, and there seem to be lots of suggestive results about its health effects. For our no-meat-and-no-alcohol diet, two stand out in particular: curcumin has been shown to reduce the carcinogenic compounds that form when meat is fried or barbecued and it seems to delay liver damage associated with the development of cirrhosis. If that isn’t enough, curcumin is also linked to reducing the risk of skin cancer and perhaps Alzeimer’s. I’m pretty sure we’re going to find new ways of introducing turmeric into our meals well past the end of this long month.

So back to making curry powder. I toasted up some coriander, cumin, mustard and fennel seeds until they began to pop and then added a long list of other spices and ground them all up in my mortar and pestle.

From there it was a simple matter to saute the onion, garlic, ginger and turmeric, stir in coconut milk and water, add the cauliflower and lentils, simmer until done and top off with cilantro and cherry tomatoes:

Put it all in the blender?