We've had an unusually cool summer here (something for which I am very thankful); this meant that all the vegetables and other crops were behind in their growth cycles, and so harvest time came later than usual.

About a mile northeast from our house is a vegetable farm offering U-Pick i.e. you can pick your own vegetables from their fields, take it to their stall and have it weighed to pay by weight. No hothouse vegetables, no ripening in artificial conditions, just fresh, ripe vegetables on your plate that were still growing this morning.

With the nip of autumn in the air early mornings and at night, we decided to try a hearty soup with our freshly harvested bounty, and this recipe from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes From Around the World seemed just the ticket; for one thing, it looked as if their ingredients-list was written while checking off the items we brought home from the farm!

Of course, we take most recipes as merely a suggestion - I might be more guilty of that than my chellelu, which is why she is a better baker than I - so we adjusted the proportions toward more tomatoes and onions, but fewer capsicum and less garlic.

The general principle is this: roast the vegetables, then roughly chop them. Add them to vegetable stock, season and simmer until the flavors are blended. The recipe calls for a quarter cup of cream to be stirred into the soup when it is removed from the heat; our household was split on that however, so we placed a creamer on the table and let each person add to taste - if at all. Also on the table, a block of parmesan and a grater, and chilli flakes.

Onions, tomatoes, zucchini, bell pepper and brinjal starting to take on color
spread out on the roasting pan, drizzled with olive oil and herbs The magic part comes from a familiar quarter to us, but a new one to this kind of cuisine. Who says that tempering can only be applied to Indian food?

I use olive oil for this dish (since it used olive oil throughout). After heating the oil, I added a few black peppercorns that I have crushed, a broken red chilli and a pinch of the herbs mentioned earlier. I use fresh rosemary, so a little goes a long way because the fresh flavor is a lot more intense than the dried one. Adding this to the soup just before bringing it to the table intensifies the wonderful flavors.

Some notes and hints:

Do not crowd the vegetables on the baking sheet while roasting it; leave space around each piece so it can brown all around.

If you have a barbecue grill outside, feel free to roast any or all the vegetables out there; they have if anything an even more intense flavor.

This month's Microwave Easy Cooking event focuses on the basics. And you can't get much more basic than White Sauce, nor can you easily find something more versatile when you venture into the world of western cooking.

Update: You can see the other entries for the event in the round-up on Srivalli's Cooking 4 All Seasons.

From the standard "continental" or au gratin dishes in India that consists of some boiled vegetables with a bland white sauce poured over it and stuck under the grill, to your basic grown-up macaroni and cheese or greek moussaka, once you have mastered a white sauce, a world of options open up to you.

Now, I say "master" because many people are scared of trying to make a white sauce; they have been told how easily lumps form, how you have to watch it like a hawk and keep stirring madly all the time. But with a microwave it is easy to get a perfect white sauce every time, with very little effort.

Remember: each model of microwave is different; the times are given as a general guide, and will differ from model to model.

You start to get an inkling of how simple this is when you look at what you need: just 5 things.

Equipment:

Microwave proof dish holding at least 4 cups - I use my Pyrex measuring cup

Wire whisk - this is very important

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp butter

2-4 Tbsp flour

~2 cups milk

	Note: Click on the pictures to see (much) larger images. The first step is to place the butter into the vessel, and microwave on high for 30 seconds or until the butter is melted.
	Add two tablespoons of flour to the melted butter, and whisk it in until all the butter is absorbed. Now here you have a choice, depending on how thick you want the final product to be. If you stop adding flour now, your base (roux, pronounced roo) will look like the picture on the left. If you add two more tablespoons of flour, it will look like the picture on the right. Either way, you proceed the same from here on.
	You now need to add the milk; slowly. Start with roughly four tablespoons of milk, and start mixing slowly. Once all the liquid has been absorbed, add a little more this time. Keep whisking gently, and you should end up with a pliable mass. Now you can add more milk in a stream while whisking, until the volume in the vessel is about 1 cup, and everything is mixed thoroughly without lumps.
	Place the vessel back in the microwave and turn it on high for about 3 minutes. When the time is up, look at the contents: it should look as in the picture on the left i.e. there should be a semi-solid rim of slightly darker yellow, and some portion of more liquid, whiter sauce in the center. If it does not look like that yet, put it back in the microwave for another 90 seconds at a time. Keep checking and cooking for another 90 seconds until it starts to resemble the picture. Once it reaches that stage, whisk it, breaking up the semi-solid rim and mixing through the liquid part; the result will look like the picture on the right.
	Now add the rest of the milk, slowly as above, i.e. first a very small quantity, and once you've whisked that in, a bit more, and finally the whole lot. You will now have a liquid with some substance, about the consistency of good dosa batter. Place this back in the microwave, for 3 minutes on high. Check and stir, then return to the microwave for 3 minutes more; after this do 90 seconds at a time, until the sauce has thickened.

What did I use this particular white sauce for, I hear you ask? I made a quick supper dish of Spinach and Pasta Bake.

I sweated a chopped onion and a slit green chilli in oil in a kadhai after I had spluttered some mustard seeds, and when they became translucent, I added chopped spinach that had been thawed from frozen and squeezed dry. Once the spinach was heated through, and had picked up the flavors from the kadhai, I added some homemade tomato sauce. (You can use your favorite recipe, or just use some bottled pasta sauce. This is also the time to add your favorite veggie protein like "cooked" Nutrella chunks if you want to make the meal more substantial).

I mixed in two cups cooked macaroni, and after tossing it through, I scooped in the white sauce and mixed well. After checking and adjusting the seasoning, I stirred in a luscious amount of cheddar cheese, and let the ooey-gooey goodness melt in there. You can serve it at this point or (as I did) place it in an oven-proof dish (e.g. corningware), sprinkle some more cheese on top, followed by some breadcrumbs, and place it under the broiler to get a lovely crisp crust.

It definitely looks as if Autumn has well and truly set in, Fall has fallen. The trees around here have blushed into red, or have been gilded with bright golden foliage, and more than a few of those leaves are covering the ground below. The nip in the air is getting to be more pronounced, and the rain has become a regular fixture.

I like the cooler temperatures, and I love the rain, but I get nostalgic for the Summer when I think of all the ripe fruit that we could get fresh from the trees, not some hothouse variety - bred for durability in appearance rather than taste - from the supermarket.

As a rule we don't go to the Farmers Market (and we have several very good ones in this area); instead, we go directly to the farm.

This dessert is so simple that I am not sure that it can really be called a recipe.

• Take some ripe dessert peaches (these are Albertas), remove the stone and slice them in wedges.
• Lay them cut side up, and sprinkle a little sugar over them.
• Optionally sprinkle a little marsala (or sherry) over. If using the wine, sprinkle it before the sugar, or it will just wash it away.
• Let it macerate for at least 30 minutes, and then serve as a light, fresh dessert.

You can serve a little cream or even some french vanilla ice cream with this, but really, the tastes are so wonderful that it doesn't need anything else. It is a little sunshine on your plate and on your tongue.

My husband has an eye for a bargain; at least that is his story.

He has been known in the past to buy things from these direct marketing TV ads; you know the type: "But that's not all. If you call in the next 17 minutes, we will give you another one, absolutely free - you just pay shipping and handling; that is a ****-dollar value for just three easy payments of $39.95!" When they arrive, he opens them once, and then store them away, never to be touched again.

Now when one of these ads come on the TV, I just change the channel very quickly!

A little while ago he came home lugging a 25 lb bag of onions. Twenty-fi-i-ive pounds! And since then we have been trying our best to find ways to use up these onions.

Everybody in the house have pretty hectic lives - there are some days when the only time we are all together under the same roof is when we are sleeping. On days like these, it is important to have an easy meal that is quick to prepare and filling. Now that the weather has turned colder, we often turn to thick and hearty soups to fit the bill.

This particular soup again comes from 1000 Vegetarian Recipes From Around the World - I have previously referred to it when I made the Roasted Vegetable Soup. The more I use this book, the more I like it; the recipes tend to be straightforward and well-illustrated, and more importantly, they work.

We've made a few minor changes, mainly in the spicing and the cheese biscuits. Yes, this meal includes a recipe for really quick and delicious cheese biscuits - totally delicious.

Note: The parmesan cheese can be replaced by sharp cheddar instead.

See? I told you so! Here we are with summer still a warm memory, and already the fresh peaches are almost $5.00 a pound.

Frozen peaches are a better alternative than canned, because to my palate the canning process alters something fundamentally in the taste of the peaches. Don't get me wrong: canned peaches are good for some things like Curry Coronation Couscous Salad (remind me to give you the recipe for that sometime), but when you want that fresh peach taste sans the fresh peaches, frozen is the only way to go.

This week-end a cake was baked for Nini's birthday: a lovely bundt cake whose recipe will soon follow. But it is not the kind of cake that requires icing - in fact, it is the kind of cake that should not be iced.

In honor of the festive occasion we did however top individual slices with whipped cream and peaches.

To prepare the pieces, the frozen wedges were places on a plate and sprinkled (lightly - or not so lightly if you prefer) with sugar. As they defrosted and macerated at the same time, a lovely light syrup formed on the plate. The wedges were then sliced into half-inch slices, and the syrup was drizzled directly onto the naked cake slices.

We whipped a cup of cream with two tablespoons of confectioners sugar and an eighth of a teaspoon of orange essence; when forming stiff peaks, we folded in some orange zest. (The cake itself had lots of orange zest and a little orange essence. The flavors go remarkably well with the fresh peaches)

Then we piped whimsical dollops of cream onto the cake after dotting it with the peaches. I can tell you that the cake didn't last very long, and that Angel Face ended up with cream on her face and crumbs on her shirt!

I am submitting this to AFAM Peaches, hosted this month by Mansi.

PS: There is a special reason why we celebrate Nini's birthday with peaches. In the southern hemisphere, October is spring time; while growing up our father used to say that peach blossoms were Nini's birthday flower, because the two huge peach trees in the backyard would be covered in blossoms when she had her birthday.

We commemorated his 25th death anniversary last month, and I think it is memories like this that keeps him alive for us.

Well, I promised I would post the recipe for the Orange Bundt Cake that played the supporting role in my AFAM Peaches entry, and the foodblogging community did not let me forget that.

One of the weekly magazines in South Africa has a column where readers send in their favorite recipes. They run it through their test kitchen, and if it works, they publish it. After they have collected a good number of these, they publish them in a volume of "champion recipes." A few years ago they selected the best from those volumes, and published "the best of the champion recipes:" Die Beste van Huisgenoot se Wenresepte, edited by Annette Human.

The basis for this recipe comes from that book, but over the years we have adapted it to our tastes. It is basically a "never-fail" recipe, rich and moist without being too dense. Its appearance is rustic - which makes it beautiful to my eyes, just like the unevenness of kadhi is part of its appeal.

If you insist you can certainly ice it, but to me that is gilding the lily. Serve it as it is, or make a simple syrup to which you add the juice of an orange and a couple of drops of orange extract to pour over it, serve it with cream or ice cream, add some fruit or some fruit syrup - the options are many.

Note: The recipe scales really well. Our bundt pan is very large, so we double the recipe. After the first 30 minutes in the oven we check, and do 15 minutes more. That usually is enough, but if not, we add five minutes at a time.

Saffron Trail's Nandita created an event which is one of the highlights of each month for me: The Weekend Breakfast Blogging (WBB) event. This month it is being hosted by Kanchana from Married to a Desi, and the theme for the sixteenth WBB is Omelettes.

I've had my share of omelettes in restaurants: some good, some so-so, some horrible. A well-made omelette is a thing to treasure, and it evokes a fervor among its devotees. A bad one is not worthy of the name.

Now, in many houses like ours people have started eating eggs while remaining veg; some will eat the egg when recognizably an egg (boiled, fried, omelette, quiche), while others will only eat it when unrecognizably inside something (pasta, cake etc). My husband is the latter - he cannot stand the smell or taste of egg, and so won't even eat the fried rice in Chinese restaurants in the US because of the scrambled egg they add.

For the rest of us, egg has proved to be an additional source of protein and something which widens our options on the menu when we eat out. When cooking an egg dish at home, we take care to prepare something separately for my husband.

I learned how to make the best omelettes in the world from my mother.

Now that might sound immodest, so be sure that I am not claiming the ones that I make are the best, just that I know what the technique is that is employed in making the best omelettes in the world :-)

• Establish how hungry each person is, and based on that take either two or three eggs per person (so either four or six eggs for two people).


• Take out two bowls. Take a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice, and swirl it around the larger bowl, then rinse thoroughly with water and dry with a paper towel; this gets rid of any residual oil that might be in the bowl.


• Separate the eggs, putting the whites in the bowl you prepared above, and the yolks in the other bowl.


• Whisk the egg whites first, having made sure that your whisk(s) are also free of any residual oil. It is ready when the whites form soft peaks that bend back on themselves.


• Now whisk the yolks until well-combined; you can do this with a fork.


• Get your frying pan ready: heat it with a teaspoon of oil or butter.


• Then fold in the yolks into the whites, combining well but not overworking it.


• Important: Do NOT add salt to this mixture. Salt in the egg will cause it to draw water while cooking, and you will end up with tough stringy egg-protein and grey water - not appealing at all.


• Ladle enough mixture onto the pan to cover the bottom, and after twenty seconds or so start to lightly jiggle/shake the pan. The omelette will start to come loose and slip around a little.


• From here on there are two options to complete the omelette:
  
  • The traditional way is to next score a line through the center of the omelette with your spatula, then flip over one half onto the other along the line (perhaps sprinkling some grated sharp cheddar first) and then sliding it onto a plate to be served.
    The result is what you see in the picture on the right - a fluffy soufflé of an omelette.
  
  
  • Personally, I like my eggs more well done (and Angel Face should not eat it runny until she is twelve at least), so for ours I slip the whole omelette flat onto a plate, then turn the pan upside down over the plate.
    With the plate pressed to the pan, I flip the whole thing over so that the omelette has been turned over, unbroken.
    Cook for a little bit on the other side until the egg is set through.
    Now sprinkle cheese and fold over, sliding onto a plate to serve.
    The main picture at the top of this entry shows the appearance when made in this manner.
  
  

I have to issue a warning though: after you have made omelettes this way, your palate might be spoilt for any other type, so proceed at your own risk.

Those of you living in the US would surely have encountered the standard American macaroni and cheese (or mac & cheese): the bright orange-colored gooey stuff only a kid would eat, coming either from a (blue) box with "cheese powder," or made with "processed cheese food" otherwise known as Velveeta.

Well, scrap everything you think you know about macaroni and cheese, and open wide for a helping of the real traditional version.

This is a dish with few ingredients, relying only on basic techniques, and yet it is guaranteed to become a firm family favorite on those cold winter evenings; truly a comfort food.

You start off with white sauce, which I had earlier shown you step by step with loads of pictures how to make easily and flawlessly using the microwave. (Just click on the link for the instructions).

• While waiting for the microwave to ping, bring a large pot of water to boil.
• Add salt and a teaspoon of oil to the boiling water, and then a cup of macaroni or other short pasta. Cook until tender and drain.
• When the white sauce is done, add salt to taste and half a teaspoon of black pepper powder and mix well.
  I also add a quarter teaspoon red chilli powder and a teaspoon of strong mustard powder.
• Add a cup of grated cheese to the white sauce (I prefer sharp cheddar) and stir until the cheese has melted and mixed in well.
• Now add the cooked macaroni and mix well.
• Spoon the mixture into an ovenproof dish (I use Corningware).
• Sprinkle more cheese over the top, and
• bake for 20 minutes at 350 F (180 C) until the cheese has melted and started to brown.

Note: You can use vegetarian cheese, eggless pasta and soy milk to make this completely vegan, or any combination of these to suit your requirements.

I reckon that I am about two weeks behind in most things in this stage. Well, I am basically up to date at work, and as they are paying my salary, that is as it should be. But in everything else ... oh boy!

The picture should demonstrate just how far I am lagging. On Halloween Nini and Angel Face were invited to a friend's house so the pipsqueak and their kids could go Trick-or-Treating together, and the grown-ups could socialize. When they reached there, the friend had just taken a batch of cupcakes from the oven, and they were invited to help decorate them.

These are Nini's invention: candy corn for the nose and two Reese's Pieces for the eyes topped with a little piped decoration for the pupils. I just thought that might make you smile, and keep my seat warm until I pull together some recipes and pictures.

I hope all of you are enjoying a better work/life balance for the moment.