The Melting Teapot

New show on the air today and tomorrow
(Saturday & Sunday, May 15-16)
KCTS9 Seattle

KCTS9 Cooks is a long-running series that features regional chefs and home cooks who have favorite recipes to share. Each installment appears only a few times a year, and ranges in theme from Desserts to Cheese to Local Chef Favorites. This time, all of the meals are more calorie-conscious than usual. It’s a long show at 4 hours, so I set the DVR to record.  This lets me forward through the multiple pledge requests and all of the meat-based recipes that don’t interest me.

Local ingredients are often featured, and some of the more interesting dishes use local ingredients with an ethnic twist.  Here are two from the first hour that looked really wonderful:

Masala Flavored Veggie Wrap with Mango Chutney, with Archana Verma of Bellevue
Onions, cauliflower, bell peppers, and paneer (or tofu) sautéed in several spices.  These are  placed in a warmed flat bread or tortilla, which is spread with mango chutney. It looks quick and easy

Spiced Salmon with Fennel & Tomato, plus a Green Apple & Mango Salad, with Chef Christina Arokiasamy of Kent
The spices in these two dishes seemed to be incredibly fragrant and flavorful.  Neither recipe is vegetarian, since both have fish or fish sauce, but they are mostly-veg.  The salad used a few ingredients I haven’t used before: pickled garlic, green mango.

You can support our local PBS station, KCTS9, with a donation that comes with the gift of a cookbook.  Choose your thank you gift, either the Light & Healthy book or the DVD (which includes an electronic version of the cookbook).   The cookbooks are usually jampacked with recipes, many more than you see during the show itself.


I’m saving the rest of the show for later because it is a gorgeous, sunny day here in the Seattle area – time to get outside!