I make salsa roja with similar ingredients (I add a tomatillo and some cumin), but with slightly different technique. I soak the toasted chiles in hot water, and roast the vegetables and garlic (I usually use fresh tomato) in a hot oven until slightly browned. I puree the roasted vegetables, soaked chiles, vinegar, cumin, lime juice, cilantro and salt and add some of the chiles' soaking liquid. Then I simmer for about twenty minutes to thicken the salsa and blend the flavors well. I think the step of roasting the vegetables gives it added depth of flavor. Oh, and sometimes I make it out of a mixture of guajillo and ancho chiles.

At the Strand Bookstore a couple of years ago, I picked up a book by Gertrude Stein--it may have been The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, but my memory is patchy. What I do remember vividly is the very striking design and typography of the title page. It was so eye-catching, that I searched for the name of the book's designer, and it was your father Ernst Reichl. Surely you own a copy of the book I am talking about. I'm sorry I didn't buy it.

I second your recommendation of Sam Fromartz's book. It's the most engrossing memoir/long form writing I've read in a very long time. I have a cousin who is a bread baking fanatic. He created a wild yeast starter seven or eight years ago, and has kept it going ever since. I learned the no-knead technique from him, and he gave me some of his starter to use instead of commercial yeast. It is so easy to do, and the resulting bread was seriously the best I've ever tasted. And that, unfortunately became a problem. With the starter needing to be used and refreshed frequently, the temptation of freshly baked bread was in the house constantly. And we were eating way too much of it, which was bad for my A1C. I'm sorry to say that I had to let the starter die. I'm still experiencing pangs of regret.

I love muhammara, too. But I can't eat the traditional recipe due to my allergy to walnuts. I got permission, via Facebook, from both Paula Wolfert and Nawal Nasrallah (author of _Delights from the Garden of Eden_) to make it with hazelnuts. And it is spectacular. I got a thumbs-up on my version from my daughter, who tasted it on a visit home--she's been living in Beirut, Ramallah, and Amman during the past few years, and muhammara is a favorite of hers.

During the summer when I was growing up, I always ate cold borscht with chopped scallions, cucumber and dill, but without potatoes. Another cold Russian soup that my mother always served in the summer was schav, which she made with sorrel or spinach, tart but not sweet-sour, like beet borscht.

Step #6 should be "Cut in the butter" instead of "Cut in the sugar." Those editing instincts just never go away.

What kind of fat did you use? I remember my mother telling me about saving up ration coupons and standing in line to buy butter for my older brother, who was a butter-loving toddler during WW2. For themselves, my parents used to get sticks of white margarine and separate packets of annatto coloring to mix into it, to make it yellow. For the rest of his life, my father preferred the taste of margarine to butter.

Fascinating process/product exploration. As I read it, my thought was "what about a bundt pan?" It has the central vent that an angel food pan has. Is there some crucial difference that would matter?