The Hungry Squid

Thanksgiving this year came at the perfect time. After a crazy summer and a lightning-fast September, it was lovely to have the chance to rest and to spend a few lazy days enjoying the Haligonian sunshine. I was fortunate enough to be invited to three Thanksgiving dinners this year, and spent much of the long weekend in the company of friends, new and old. One of the things that I love most about Thanksgiving is the culture and spirit of sharing, the knowledge that everyone at the table has contributed in some small way, material or otherwise, to the meal. Our contribution to the third and final dinner was a French apple tart, elegant in its buttery simplicity. The puff pastry (truly wonderful stuff) flakily supports sweet layers of thinly sliced early fall apple, glazed over with salted caramel; served with Madagascar bourbon vanilla ice cream, is as decadent as it is demure. The perfect finish to a rich turkey meal, and a last hurrah to the vestiges of an east cost India...

I haven't written in a while, but it isn't for a lack of wanting, or a lack of will. Rather, it's for an excess of Wallander. Wally is the Portuguese Water Dog puppy that recently became part of our household. He is a lot of things: fluffy, loving, soft, energetic, stubborn, gentle, smart, wily. He is the sweetest thing, and despite the incredible amount of attention he requires, he is the light of our lives. Dog ownership caused us to put experimenting with food on the back burner (...) but now that he has settled into a routine (and is calming down a bit), we've started to put more time into our neglected hobbies. Looking for a new recipe to try one night, I came across a beautiful cookbook by Naomi Duguid entitled Burma: Rivers of Flavor . My mother gave it to me a couple of years ago but for some reason I had never taken a stab at any of the recipes. As a book, Burma  impossibly lush, full of photographs and descriptions of the intriguing...