Fruit of the Underworld (Pomegranate lime vanilla cake)

Pretty in pink can be difficult to achieve without food dye. Unfortunately, taking an all-natural approach might not always turn out as you expected. This was the case with a batch of blood orange cinnamon rolls Aaron prepared one day. While delicious, the attempt to stain the icing ruby red with blood orange juice instead yielded a deeply unappetizing mauve-taupe. My attempts to correct with the trusty dropper of food dye resulted in nuclear pink. Ultimately, the project was abandoned for photographic purposes. This pomegranate lime vanilla yogurt cake, on the other hand, is perfectly calibrated to yield a beautiful finish using only the most natural of ingredients.

Au naturale

In the Limelight (Lime Delicious)

Lemon pudding cake is a recipe that has been haunting me across social media for weeks, now. Whether it's an algorithmic snafu or message from the divine, I finally surrendered and clicked through and now I have a new go-to dessert recipe. Especially using the Australian name of Lemon Delicious, it's an easy sell: soft, pillowy citrus white cake floats atop a layer of warm, semi-liquid custard. Making it in individual ramekins allows you to turn out portions onto plates for a prettier presentation and the enjoyment of drizzling the creamy sauce down over the cake. Or, you can chill them, in which case it becomes akin to a cakey rendition of lemon meringue pie. As both of the GourmetGents prefer limes to lemons, this version is for Lime Delicious, but any citrus variant is an option.

Delicious by any name

Salubrious, Celebratory Citrus (Triple citrus pound cake, citrus curd)

Hilariously overdue, I am loading the backlog of articles into the blog. Expect lots of updates, soon...

Now that Snowmageddon is but a fading memory, I'm ready to celebrate. This may seem somewhat incongruous, given my desire to go all-healthy last month, but every calorie-counter can find a way to make room for a little cake. If not for the pleasure of food, there's not much point eating, in the first place. Early spring is an interstitial season. For those in the northeast U.S., the first plants are just starting to perk up, leaving fresh & local food options a little thin on the ground. Spring greens like asparagus, fiddleheads, spinach, sweet peas, would all be appropriate, but I think they lack the right appeal for dessert. Instead, I opted for a melange of citrus fruits, which blend flavors I've always considered quintessentially summery, despite the most bountiful fruiting season being the dead of winter, splitting the difference for a spring theme. Triple citrus cake paired with citrus curd makes an easy, elegant dessert, appropriate for any time of year.

Citrus!!!

Curried Away (Massaman Curry)

To Aaron's distress, I absolutely love Thai food. Not that he doesn't, but I tend to take things to extremes. I'll recommend we order Thai takeout multiple times per week, sometimes on consecutive days (Aaron usually says no to that). I simply can't get enough. Thai food utilizes a number of flavors somewhat unique to Southeast Asia: fiery, licorice-y Thai basil, sour tamarind, darkly sweet palm sugar, citrusy notes from lemongrass and kaffir limes, and a somewhat surprising lilt of seafood from savory shrimp paste and salty fish sauce, which end up in almost everything. These ingredients combine to give Thai cooking, like many Asian cuisines, a spicy, sweet-and-sour character that was once prevalent in European cooking throughout the Middle Ages, but fell out of fashion in favor of the simply savory. One of the most familiar dishes to a Western audience will be curry - a dish decidedly lacking a Western analogue. Curries are soup- or stew-like dishes with rich flavors imparted from curry pastes or powders, themselves made from copious amounts of spices. Common throughout South and Southeast Asia, an Indian curry can often be identified by use of more dried spice powders and a thicker, richer texture, whereas Thai curry is often a bit soupier and relies more on fresh, moist seasonings (curry paste).

Nom

Sweet Sangria (Sparkling Cherry Sangria)

Having recently opined on the sublime delight of tapas, I feel I'm now required to share a couple more recipes to help round one's dinner out. To start, the ideal accompaniment to tapas: sangria. Named for the sanguinary shade typically imparted by red wine, this traditional fruit punch is a classic libation of the Iberian summer. By combining a variety of sweet and tart notes, it serves as a pleasing counterpart to the generally savory and salty array of tapas.

Sweet

We Secretly Love The Heat (Salsa Fresca)

We're heading into the peak of summer, so what better time to post a classic treat enjoyed in cultures throughout the world: salsa! The Spanish word for sauce, salsa can actually refer to a number of sauces in Hispanic cuisines; however, in the U.S., it typically refers to a spicy tomato-based sauce, often enjoyed as a dip. There are a number of types of these salsas (Wikipedia lists over 15), but the two main categories break down to cooked versus raw. In this case, we're focusing on the raw side, and making our own salsa fresca, or "fresh sauce". And given it's the time of year when those of you with gardens should be seeing ripened tomatoes and peppers, this is a perfect idea for what to do with some of your harvest.

Can you handle the heat?

Challenge: Accepted (Roasted Acorn Squash and Avocado Salad)

I was browsing some of my favorite food blogs the other week, when something stuck out to me on My Madeleine: a roasted squash salad from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty. Molly's blog is a great place for top-notch photography (I could spend hours looking at a tabletop alone) and honest-to-goodness recipes, present company being a great example. Plenty is a great book for produce: while Ottolenghi is not a vegetarian, it features only meatless recipes. It likewise offers gorgeous photos.

Taking a stab at it