Something for Nancy

Okay, so each time I've posted (this year a bit more irregularly than last), I've kind of jammed my Indianized recipes or twisted Indian recipes down your throats whether you liked it or not. Today I thought, I'll start with an Italian one, for my friend Nancy, who loves Italian (food I mean, men, I'm sure) and also Asian food.  
   A couple of days earlier, after a long hanging out session with Nancy in her lovely La Jolla home, I somehow managed to return to my apartment with a bunch of parsley, oranges, lemons and avocados from her garden. Don't ask me how, but that's what happens when you go to Nancy's. No, you don't steal from her garden, she just hands these beautiful veggies to you.
   So I thought, how about making something that I know she's good at making, but something that I have been hesitant to try. No reason, but the first time I had this dish, it was dry, too cheesy and the rice was undercooked. And I was told that it was how it always tastes. Did. Not. Like. It. And I like pretty much everything. Risotto. So, I tried it again in Portland. And it was AMAZING. And no, I don't have images of it, I ate it up way too fast for the camera to capture it. But I can tell you where it was. A place called Equinox on North Shaver, Portland--it's a small place, with a patio, and cozy dining area, all built with recycled materials. If you are planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest, give this place a try--fresh local ingredients, with a keen respect for vegetarian, vegan as well as meat eating customers.
   And since I don't have a photo of that restaurant itself, how about just a cool Portland shot? Like this one at the Saturday Old Town Market.

And not to miss the most wonderful Voodoo doughnut shop that is just decadent, crazy and a Portland must-do and has nothing to do with this blog:

   Okay, enough digression. Risotto with Shitake Mushrooms (a mix of Italian with Asian mushrooms, and of course, par-boiled rice is the Indian aspect to it). Did you know, Shitake mushrooms have been cultivated in China, Korea and Japan since pre-historic times? And that they grow only in cold places, so San Diego may not be the place to start a shitake farm? Did you even think you'd get a history/agriculture lesson from a food blog? Hah. Anyway, the mushrooms have a fragrance, and a texture that adds a lot of body to the risotto, so it's a good addition (in my opinion) to the Italian dish.

 

Ingredients
1 cup par-boiled rice
Optional: 1/4 cup barley and spelt mixed
1 cup grated (good) parmesan cheese
1 1/2 tsp vegetable broth mix added to 3 cups water, or
3 cups vegetable broth
2 cups roughly chopped mushrooms
1 cup sliced white onions 
4 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp (or more) garlic, chopped
1 tsp ground pepper
salt to taste
2 tbsp grapesed oil
1 tbsp melted butter

 

Recipe

• In a big pot, boil the broth. Check for salt. If it's too salty (some pre-made broth mixes are oversalted), dilute it with water.
• In a pan, add the oil and butter on medium low. Cook the onions, and then the mushrooms, till they are browned. Add the garlic, sauté some more.
• Bring the pan off the fire once the vegetables are cooked. You can substitute this with asparagus, salmon, carrots, you name it.
• Cook the rice in the broth on medium-low flame. Once all the broth is absorbed in the rice, stir in the mushroom/onion/garlic mix.
• Keep stirring (the mixture, not yourself). Add the parsley. Your kitchen should smell very nice or else, you've done something wrong.
• Add the cheese at the end. Switch off the gas, stir the pot some more.
• Add more parsley, sprinkle some ground black pepper, more salt (if you want to get high blood pressure) and enjoy the dish warm!

 

Serves (at least) two.

Mine looked like this:

Anyway, if you really want a closeup of the same, this is what it looks like when it's hot, steaming:

     And like I said, I'm sure Nancy has made this multiple times, but it's worked for me this time. So I am a risotto convert.

     Happy Birthday, Nancy, enjoy!

Updates and Such

     How have you been? It's been a crazy few weeks--food foraging (not really) in India, in search of Chinese food in Kolkata, hard drives crashing, losing photos in that crash, silent mental breakdowns with even quieter panic attacks...that's been me for a few weeks.
    Anyway, to start with the start, wanted to share a neat little blog with you. Click on it and enjoy the site: It's called A Taste of Savoie --the photos are amazing and so's the blog. Let me know what you think.
     On another note--last month and the beginning of this one, I was in New Delhi and Kolkata--and yes, all I did was eat.
A representative image would be this:

    And no, I didn't eat the girls. That's Dilli Haat. More on that in the next post. But yes, it was a colorful, beautiful, crazily busy, and a surprisingly fun (food) trip. And did I mention the food?

Anyway, it was more than a cappuccino, and yes, it was at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. And fascinating because I am in a reverse-culture shock mode right now with all these Americanisms flourishing in India.






     Okay, back to food, and food that I enjoy. At Kolkata's Chinatown, thread chicken--basically, wonton skins-wrapped chicken--yum.

    And a favorite at South Ex New Delhi's most famous Bengali Sweet Market--the savory part, the best in the world, chole bhature (छोले भठूरे):

     And yes, we're not talking low-salt, nutritious, low-oil, non-fried, non-greasy food. But c'mon, how can you resist this? I go home just for that! Anyway, thought I'd give you a preview on what you'll see from my trip in the next few quite frequent posts: Chicken biryani, zarda, आर (aar) fish curry, Wenger's pineapple pastries, Keventer's milkshakes, Dilli Haat's food and dance shows...you get the picture.

     Finally, to end, don't know if you caught this, but there's my mug with my Masala Scrambled Eggs recipe on Good Bite.

    I'll be back soon, till then, hope your week's going great, and hope you're enjoying yourself--the snow, the sunshine, the fog...wherever you are!

Make it a Spicy 2010!

Happy 2010! Hope this year you're able to do everything you always planned on--take a trip, get that degree, earn millions, be healthy, stay healthy, eat at the restaurant you always wanted to, laugh a lot, laugh everyday, write that book, be patient, sing that song, cook for friends, make new friends, keep old friends, be nice everyday, fight nice when you need to...you know all the things you wanted to do and be but life and time got in the way...yes, those things.

     We took this break to hang out in San Diego and decided to go to our favorite soup haunt. It's a Mongolian hotpot restaurant. No, don't groan. It isn't a large cast-iron skillet noisy joint with all-you-can-eat veggies and meat. That's a Mongolian all-you-can-eat place. (Just because you heard Mongolian, huh? Shame on you!) This is soup and fun stuff like that, cooked on a burner right at your table, and you get to choose your own soup broth (vegetarian, beef, half and half, pretty neat). The restaurant is called Little Sheep Hot Pot and I'll wait till you stop laughing. We did the same when we heard of this place. What does little sheep have to do with soup unless they're in it (yikes!)? And we're dealing with a vegetarian spouse here, so, that wouldn't have worked. But Little Sheep has a wonderfully flavorful all vegetarian soup broth as well as non-vegetarian options. It's apparently quite popular in China, and there's reason why. The spices are so interesting--gojiberries, galangal, chinese ginger, star anise, four types of pepper, a hundred berries I don't have a clue what they are, mushrooms, I mean...it's really fun if it's slightly cold and you're in the mood for soup.

     Little Sheep in San Diego's located in a strip mall in Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, and you could easily miss it. But inside, the restaurant is impressively huge, and mostly and usually filled with families who are serious about soup. Man, no one even looks up from their plates, it's that good.

     So we went. Sanjay, who was fighting a cold, and being the manly man that he is, told the server, "We would like extra spices in our vegetarian soup broth". The server nodded, no expression. I should have known. (You know where this is going, right?). Anyway, here's how our soup looked when it showed up:

     You have to admit, it's pretty. Look at the spring onions, the mushrooms, the berries...and we were planning on adding tofu, watercress and more mushrooms to this. It was supposed to be fun. Well, we then fished out the red chilies that Sanjay obviously had expressly requested. This is the proof:

     And we fished out even more as the soup boiled in chilies slowly releasing their chiliness (that's a new word you learned in 2010). At least a hundred fiery red chilies waving hello at us. Oy.

     Chicken that I am, I tried one bowl and gave up. And believe me, it's my favorite soup place! But I don't give up that easily, so I moved to their salad, an order that I placed (no spiciness requests were allowed this time!).

     They have a very interesting wood fungus salad that's infused with seasme oil, tons of garlic (yeah, maybe not a first date kind of salad if that's what you're worried about, but garlic's good for you!). It goes really well with soup, especially the 'non-spicy' kind.

     I had two orders of the same while Sanjay, the manly man, had the soup to himself (maybe that was his plan all along...hmmm, didn't think of it that way!).

     Anyway, here's Little Sheep HotPot's salad:

The celery and baked tofu along with the wood fungus is really flavorful and a fun dish with their green tea.

     I've made my own twisted version of the same. So, here it is:

Twisted Wood Fungus Salad

Ingredients

1 packet dried wood fungus

Tofu (half a packet, cubed, optional)

4 large garlic cloves, grated

4 tbsp spring onions, chopped

1/2 cup diced carrots (optional)

2 tbsp sesame oil

1 tsp chili hot oil

2 tbsp lemon juice

salt to taste

Recipe

Boil the wood fungus for about 5 minutes in salt water, drain, cool

Mix the wood fungus with garlic, tofu, spring onions
Toss in more tofu, carrots if need be
Add chili and sesame oil and mix the salad
Add salt to taste
Squirt lemon juice and mix again
Chill for about an hour in the fridge (not you, the salad, silly!)
Serve with soup or as an appetizer

     See, it's simple, isn't it? All you need to do is go to any Vietnamese or Chinese store and ask them for the dried fungus. You can even get dried shitake mushrooms that you could soak in water for about an hour or so and toss that in too. This is what mine looked like:

     So that was our greatly spicy start, and hope you enjoy the new year with new, exciting and fun foods, good health, and fun times!

     More in a bit, till then, enjoy!

Daal Pakoras Before Christmas

Hope you're in the Christmas spirit by now. Am assuming the packing of gifts, the drinking of wine, the eating of chocolates and all things dessert have peaked or close to peaking right about now, huh? This year, it's been quite a mellow holiday season for me, just the way I like it. In case you didn't know, I like boring. Excitement isn't good for the heart, or your stomach. And I live for what I put in my stomach! Anyway, back to food. I thought, how about sharing yet another appetizer recipe, and a quick and easy one at that? In fact, how about using up yesterday's lentils that you don't really want to eat, but can't bear to throw because, hey, it's daal (दाल) and who throws out daal?

     This is what I learnt from my mother. She had innovative ways of fixing fresh meals from leftovers, and she'd tell us, yes, it's a new appetizer. Or she'd say, it's a very popular and well-known dish (she never did clarify where it was popular, and I was too intrigued with the food to care to ask!), and I couldn't wait to eat it. So when I looked in my fridge and found a bowl of day-old lentils, this is what I came up with.
Daal Pakoras with Coriander Chutney 
Serves 2 (two very hungry souls)

 Ingredients
1 cup cooked daal/lentils (use moong, or masoor daal)
1 tbsp whole wheat
2 green chilies, chopped
1 purple onion (medium), diced
2 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
2 tsp Kashmiri chili powder
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp grapeseed oil
4 tbsp chopped coriander leaves
2 tsp lime juice (optional)

Recipe

• Strain the lentils so most of the liquid is separated. Use a sieve if need be.
• Add the whole wheat to make the mixture thick. Add more if needed.
• Add half the onion, cumin, coriander, chili powder along with half the green chiles and half the coriander leaves.
• Mix the ingredients well, and mash the lentils with a spoon while mixing.
• Make flat round balls of the daal pakora, and place them on a plate
• Heat the oil in a cast-iron skillet.
• Saute the daal pakoras, making sure they don't touch.
• Add more oil if need be, but since you're using a cast-iron skillet, you should need less, that's the idea.
• Transfer the cooked pakoras to a bowl, sprinkle coriander leaves and green chilies as garnish.
• Season with pepper (optional)
• Spice it up with lime juice (optional)
• Eat with fresh coriander chutney.

     My favorite memory of home has been eating pakoras with a hot cup of tea when it's raining outside and there isn't much to do but eat and make my sister's life hell. I'm not sure what your memories of good times are, but make daal pakoras, and you'll know what I mean when you bite into one.
     Enjoy, and happy holidays!

Good Bite Appetizers: Dhoklas

I know, you don't have to say it. I studied at a Catholic school for crying out loud. Guilt is part of my being. Yes, I disappeared for a couple of weeks. Yes, I ignored the blog, sorry. No excuses, I just did. Anyway, hope you've been well. How's the holiday season treating you? For me, I've decided, gifts will be handmade (mostly), cards, handmade and food homemade for this year. Why? I ask, why not? I remember when we were kids how excited we'd be if we went out to a restaurant. It was because it wasn't a regular thing, it was a treat. Now we either don't have time, or it's easier to buy food from outside. In fact, I think children would balk if they found out their birthday cakes didn't come from Costco! Anyway, that's the reason why I thought, let's go back to how we started. When did I last receive a holiday card (and no, holiday letters don't count), that someone made especially for me? Hmmmm.
     Meanwhile, re: food, I got an email from Good Bite . It's a neat little website on food, conversation and recipes, asking me to contribute some Indian recipes. That was such a challenge that I was in a fear-coma for weeks--what Indian recipes? Why? Which is better? What if they hate it? If you get to their site you'll see beautifully photographed food, easy recipes, and fun conversations. So here's my contribution.
   What I decided today was to talk appetizers. Invaribly, people are busy during this time, wrapping gifts, buying expensive stuff, meeting at expensive restaurants, but what if, what if we made appetizers at home? Lots and lots of them? So, here's the plan--for the next few days till the new year, I'll post a few recipes, all appetizers that if you eat a lot of, it's a meal! But if you eat just a bit, then you just might be one of the few who doesn't gain multiple lbs around the holidays, how's that? Oh, and I'll post a few desserts too--why not, it's the holidays!
    So, today's is Dhoklas from Gujarat. I learnt this from my cousin's wife, Shakuntala Boudi, who was Gujarati, but learnt to cook the best Bangla food ever. I've twisted it some, so it's more spicy than what people are used to, but you can tone it down based on what you can handle.
Ingredients
1 cup besan (बेसन), garbanzo bean flour
1 and a 1/2 tsp semolina (or cream of wheat)
1 tsp sugar
2 and a 1/2 tsp green chili-ginger paste
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 tsp red chili powder
salt to taste
1 and 1/2 tsp Eno's fruit salt (or 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp baking soda)
For tempering
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp sesame seeds
2 slit lengthwise, green chilies
1/4 tsp asafoetida (hing, हिंग)
1 tbsp oil
2 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
Recipe:

• Mix the ingredients, minus Eno's fruit salt, with minimal water. It should be a thick paste.
• Add the fruit salt, sprinkle a few drops of water and mix well (instantly, as it starts to froth).
• Pour the mixture into a greased steel bowl, and steam in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes.
• Remove the dhoklas from the bowl and place on a plate to cool.
• Heat the oil and add the green chilies, hing, sesame and mustard seeds. Stir as the seeds pop.
• Add the this mixture on top of the dhoklas.
• Garnish with coriander leaves.
• Cut into squares (dhoklas, not yourself!).
• Serve with tamarind and coriander chutneys.

     I like to serve dhoklas with chutney. But Gujaratis, I'm sure, would be dismayed to hear that. Usually it's served with rasa, or a liquid soak of the dhoklas, so it's moist. You can do that too if you want. I find that a little too sweet (the rasa has jaggery, and tamarind along with chilies and turmeric, which makes it more sweet than savory) for my taste, but you could modify that if you want, or if you like sweet, just follow any Tarla Dalal recipe.
    And all you need with this (in my opinion), is a good hot cup of tea!
     More recipes to follow, enjoy!

Of Masalas and Boxes

Happy Turkey Day everybody!
     Though I'm sure turkeys aren't feeling the happiness right about now. It's one of those times when you wonder why you eat meat. Okay, maybe not you, I do. But one needs conflict, I guess. This one's mine, and I'm not judging. So, if you're making turkey, try organic. If you're into tofurkey, congratulations, and have fun. I'm making none of those. This day is mine--meaning, all I'll do is eat.
     Last week I had a small Indo-food demo/dinner for Marcie's friends. Very polite people, they said the right things--it's wonderful, it's great, yum. So, despite being suspicious, I'll say they enjoyed the dal, the butter chicken, shrimp, cauliflower, peas pulao and vermicelli pudding. I know, I should learn to say, thank you. I'm working on it, I am!
     Anyway, most of you should have these recipes, but email me if you don't.
An interesting thing happened at the Bunker Bash. More than the food, the group was fascinated with the masala box, the anjala potti as the South Indians call it. I have mine filled with North Indian spices:

And I do agree--the colors are fascinating, textures and smells even more so. For a daily cook/chef, it's easy to forget or get used to these interesting ingredients that make up Indian curries. जीरा Jeera, or cumin, is used whole (साबुत), or as powder. I use a lot of haldi (हल्दी), turmeric powder, chili powder, and garam masala (गरम मसाला) and ground coriander seeds or dhaniya (धनिया). In addition, others may have mustard seeds, coriander seeds, with sides of rasam or sambhar powder. Gujaratis use a lot of cumin-coriander powder where both of them are mixed together. My mother used to grind cinnamon, cloves and cardamom (C-cubed) into the Bengali fresh garam masala powder, that I do too these days. Yes, I'm turning into my mother, I admit.

     The questions that came with the curiosity about the anjala potti got me thinking--why do we use these spices, and why are they stored in such tiny containers? Scientifically, it does make sense though. In India, with the hot weather, spices can go bad easily, lose their flavor especially if you're storing them next to your stove. So, the bulk spices are kept elsewhere, preferably cold, and for each cooking round, you use this potti (it's not potty, so, grow up). In the olden golden days, turmeric was used (and still is), as an antiseptic, on wounds, and even before baths. I remember we applied fresh turmeric paste on our bodies when we were children, and then scrubbed it off before Saraswati Pujo, and waited impatiently for the priest to finish praying so we could stuff our faces with luchi-begun, fried pooris, and eggplant (recipe to follow in a bit). Ma used to check our palms and behind our ears--if the pale-yellow turmeric stain had seeped in, then we'd taken our shower. If there were remnants of turmeric paste, that meant lunch had to wait till we'd washed that off!

Now, back to my anjala potti--

     Turmeric is used in Indian cooking not only for medicinal purposes, but gives a fresh taste to vegetables. When mixed with chilies or chilli powder, it takes on a different tone. Green chilies has the active enzyme capsaicin, which activates receptors in the brain to allow the heart rate to increase, increasing the metabolism rate, which is what you want when you're eating a ton of food. Chilli powder, is usually a shade of red, is dried, and again, used in Indian cooking, for increasing metabolism, fighting inflammation and when mixed with turmeric, is a double-attack on fat (metabolism). Cumin's been considered to be good for digestion, (also anise seeds), and allows for the body's detox mechanism to activate. Coriander, is another nutritional herb/seed, often used for digestion, 'anti-diabetic', and cholesterol-lowering spice in Ayurveda.

     I know it's a lot of science and medicine today, but it's fascinating to know that for centuries, Indian cooking has been quite a science and obviously designed to be good for you. If only we learnt to lay off the cream and butter! I'd love to hear what your anjala potti has, and if you have pictures to share, even better.

     Next time, maybe I'll talk about fresh herbs that I've incorporated into my food--non-Indian ones too--rosemary, parsley, sage, basil, coriander. There's a reason people have been using them for centuries. We just forgot why.

     Thought I'd end with my favorite shrimp dish I like to make. It takes all of 10 minutes to cook (20 mins to marinate). Tandoori shrimp with bellpeppers. I've shared the tandoori paste recipe in an earlier post, so, check that out. For the medium-size shrimp, marinate 50-75 of them in the paste, with 1-2 tbsp oil, chili powder (1 tbsp), salt to taste for about 20 minutes. Cut 2 green bellpeppers longitudinally, and saute them in a cast-iron pan with 1-2 tbsp oil. Plate them, and then saute the shrimp in the leftover oil for 3-5 minutes. Plate and add a dash of lemon juice. Eat with naan or tandoori roti.

Enjoy, and hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Bunker Bash This Weekend!

Quick note --
I'm cooking for Marcie's friends at The Bunker in downtown San Diego this weekend. Am quite excited and fearful, which is a good combination, for there's no need to be arrogant about dal makhani to turn out silky and spicy each time you make it. Also, Murphy's law--the one time things will be disastrous, will be this one. And if Marcie's friends are reading this, you've been forewarned :o)
Will post pictures soon, should it turn out okay. If not, oh well, I'll still post pictures.

Till then, ponder on this cake, and let me know if you want the recipe.
More to follow, till then, enjoy!