A whole lot of recipes from Weekend Herb Blogging

From Seattle to Sydney, we've got 30 cooking ideas (including mine) for last week’s Weekend Herb Blogging. This should make a home dinner planner very happy for the remainder of spring with all these recipes featuring healthy vegetables, herbs, spice and grains. Let’s dive right through the list...

Meatball Barley Stew
Location: Vendee, France
Katie’s official good-bye to winter is this stew that she claims doesn’t require hours of cooking and could be adapted with ground chicken or turkey, and even a vegetarian version. Read more at her blog Thyme for Cooking.

Beans and Beans with Garlic and Tomatoes
Location: Seattle
Finding an innovative way of cooking green beans, Kaykat of Cooking From Matoz decided to create a gravy-laden dish with a can of cannellini beans and a generous portion of chopped tomatoes and crushed garlic.

Rogan Josh: the ultimate comfort food
Location: Toronto
Elizabeth from “Blog from OUR kitchen” features the Bay Laurel for WHB. Her recipe is adapted from a Kashmiri dish named Rogan Josh. She has made her own version with pork instead of lamb.

Salt Lassi
Location: Mexico
Relatively new to the food-blogging scene, chef and cooking school owner Victoria of Flavors of the Sun gives us a run down on everything we need to know about cooking with salt, along with her simple yoghurt drink.

Mushroom Fried Rice
Location: USA
DK of Culinary Bazaar shares with us a rice recipe using a variety of fresh and dried mushrooms and a whole lot of other vegetables. Sounds like a tasty and complete vegetarian meal.

Peruvian Quinoa Stew
Location: Sydney
Anna from Morsels and Musings conquered three of her 2008 Food Challenge and succeeded in replicating a Latin American recipe from the cookbook “Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. Her key ingredient is the quinoa grain, something that I would love to attempt as well.

Spring Carrots with Mint & Quinoa
Location: Southern California
Another quinoa creation, this time by White on Rice Couple’s Dianne and Todd. Their recipe is lovingly made with miniature palm-size carrots harvested from their very own edible garden.

Roasted Asparagus Recipe with Creamy Tahini-Peanut Dipping Sauce
Location: Utah
From the creator of WHB, Kalyn adapted a sesame-peanut sauce to go with roasted asparagus (instead of the usual way of cooking them in hot water). Sounds like a very easy starter, good for appeasing hungry guests at the dining table.

Borscht
Location: Southern California
Wandering Chopsticks features what she calls a “gloriously vibrant soup” with Ukrainian roots. Borscht is made with beets, and is said have been brought in to America by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Pineapple Prawns
Location: Clermont-Ferrand, France
Pamela aka The Cooking Ninja shares with us a stir-fried pineapple and prawns dish. Learn more about the pineapple fruit and try her tip of using its juice as a meat-tenderizer.

Nectarine and Raspberry Strudel
Location: Melbourne
Johanna of Green Gourmet Giraffe gives us this amazing fruit-paring dessert recipe complete with photographs of the assembly process and lots of research on the vitamin-rich nectarine fruit.

Sticky Ginger, Fig and Nut Loaves
Location: Sydney
Lemonpi has got some sticky ginger, fig and nut loaves to share. This cake is simple and not too sugary, and the figs make this perfect weekend treat fibre-rich and low in fat.

Lemon & Honey Drink
Location: Sydney
Zoe of Puku shares with us a soothing citrus remedy and tells us why lemons are great for cold and flu. Her entry is also loaded with lovely pictures of her cooling creation.

Mint Tea
Location: Melbourne
Featuring one of my favorite herb, Haalo from “Cook Almost Anything” creates a batch of mint tea using fresh mint leaves and gunpowder green tea leaves. Learn about the goodness of the herb on her blog.

Kohlrabi and Apple Salad
Location: Cesseras, France
Jennifer of Like to Cook introduces us to the curious looking kohlrabi or cabbage turnip. Love this healthy fruit and veg combination. Thanks for your courage of picking that first kohlrabi up from your market!

Chervil Kohlrabi Soup
Location: Northern Germany
Also using Kohlrabi as a key ingredient, Ulrike of Küchenlatein creates a soup with the addition wonder herb Chervil, which is purported to aid digestion and liver and gall functions.

Brussels Sprout Stir Fry with egg, chilli, ginger and garlic
Location: Oxford, UK
Sophie of Mostly Eating gives us a fun way to up our Brussels sprouts intake with her stir fry. She convinces us that growers have been working hard to come up with sweeter tasting varieties of the vegetable, and she offers a list of other recipes to tinkle with.

Herbed Hemp Seed Balls
Location: New York
The Chocolate Lady tries her hands on these balls with lot of other seeds that she thought turned out a bit more like falafel balls. A great finger food that also goes along perfectly good with pasta and sauce.

Olive Chicken Stew
Location: Lima, Peru
Olive-obsessed Gretchen of Canela & Comino gives us a lesson that olives cannot be eaten straight from the tree; only the processed are edible. Her recipe is a great complete meal fit to feed the entire family.

Vegetable Lumpia
Location: Philippines
Spring rolls are a mainstay in various Asian cultures, and Lumpia is the native name of these delicate parcels in Gay of Scientist in the Kitchen’s home country. This version is absolutely fun with its use of sweet potato, taro and Thai basil.

Shrimp Risotto with Sugar Snap Peas
Location: Canada
Jerry’s risotto recipe features the use of a homemade shrimp stock and a complex intermingling of flavours including a hint of mint, a touch of chili pepper spice and lotsa sugar snap peas.

Sun-dried Tomato Hummus
Location: Atlanta, USA
Chris of Melecotte gives us a fun variation of my favorite party food, the Middle Eastern chickpea dip, Hummus. Check this one with the addition of sun-dried tomatoes and parsley. Absolute yumm!

Kimchi Pork Stir Fry
Lcoation: California
Tigerfish of Teczcape is getting into the "heart" of kimchi -- Korean pickled cabbage. Recounting a little story she heard one day, she explains how a kimchi pork stir-fry is done.

Just-About-Spoonbread Quick Corn Muffins
Location: Iowa City, USA
Genie of the Inadvertent Gardener has got all the mileage for her prized Iowa sweet corn which she even got some frozen from last summer. There’s more you can do with basic cornbread and muffin mix with the addition of fresh corn kernels. Wicked.

Chicken Tikka with Onion Relish
Location: Victoria, Australia
Pam from the Backyard Pizzeria has got a great chicken dish you can’t resist, especially for a spice-seeker like me. This recipe has got the chicken sitting in a yoghurt marinade, complete with the flavours of coriander, garam masala and just a hint of chilli.

Lazy Potatoes
Location: India
Sra of When My Soup Came Alive has got it right with this spice-laden baked potato dish for that lazy day in. Her rethoric of “lazy days are great for food” proves that with the odds and ends that you have at home you can end up with a stunner.

Colcannon
Location: USA
Getting ahead of St. Patrick’s Day, Glenna of A Fridge Full of Food gets into the festive mood with her cardomom-spiced colcannon served with corned beef and green bread.

Rose Petal Ice Cream
Location: Somewhere on the globe
Ever thought about spiking delicate desserts with rose petals like what the Indian Maharajahs do? Snehal of Gel's Kitchen Blog shares this creation using perfect rose blossoms from her garden.

Taro Root Fry
Location: Glendale, California
Divya of Dil Se tries her hands for the first time at some taro root fries, easy enough to give yourself a try.

Butternut Squash and Pancetta Risotto
Location: Alaska
Laurie of Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska made up a batch of butternut squash risotto that looks absolutely lovely. She even shares with us a bonus accompanying recipe, pan-fried scallops and capers.

Fried Onions for Indian Cooking
Location: Croatia
Maninas gives us the run down on how to brown onions, a base for most classic Indian cooking. She tells you what fats to use, how to slice it and how to brown them to the edge short of burning.

Want to participate? Weekend Herb Blogging for March 16-23 is hosted by Katie from Thyme for Cooking. Send your entries to thyme2 (dot) kate (at) gmail (dot) com before Sunday March 23.