Curried Squid

Sometimes recipes disappointment me and I know that part of the fault lies with me and my tendency to take liberty with certain ingredients. Who knew that just a few tablespoons extra coconut milk would completely wash out all other flavors? Well, I suppose I should have known that but ignored that logic and went ahead with my instinctive desire for MORE, leaving me with bland coconut squid. I will also lay some blame in the frozen squid hoods I used: I would have bought fresh but the thought of cleaning those things - removing tentacles, head and innards, then peeling the skin off - was in itself too much work, so I went the easy route and suffered through the resulting chewiness. I wanted to enjoy this recipe - I love (cooked) squid - but just couldn't get into it. I'll give you the recipe as written in the book so you can make it without my adjustments. Or, if you know a better curried squid recipe by all means let me know - I still want to like it!

Spicy, Yet Simple, Lemon Pickle

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For the first time I made something that took two weeks to complete. Two weeks! Not shocking, then, that the thing is a pickle, though not "pickled" in the way of a cucumber. In case the lemons above didn't give it away, I made a simple lemon pickle. After boiling, slicing and coating with salt you're left with a hefty bit of rind (though the recipe does encourage you to use thin-skinned lemons, but how are you supposed to check for that?) and I admit I was cautious on taking my first bite, but was fairly surprised. Yes, you still taste lemon, yes, it's a powerful taste, but nothing bitter or overwhelming. I served it with spicy chicken tikka masala and the lemon power cut right through the chili and helped make the chicken a tad more calm.

Naan

I will let you in on a little secret: I hate leavened flatbread. To be clear, I don't hate the taste - I love bread and giving it up has, at times, been difficult. I hate making it. Kneading, waiting for it to rise, then shaping and baking, usually one (or two if you're lucky) bread at a time. So much effort for something with a just a bit of fluff, yet still very much flat.

I am sure if I had a clay oven like ones traditionally used to cook naan - or any other similarly leavened and baked flatbread - it wouldn't be so much of a hassle, but how many home cooks do know with one? Maybe those with homes and backgrounds. I bet a clay oven would be great alongside a grill. Anyway, lacking the special oven I have to do it the hard way, which is keeping a pan of water in the oven so the dough won't dry out; shaping each bread right before it goes in the oven; baking, flipping, then baking some more, before moving on to the next bread. See why I prefer chapatis?

 But naan was on my November cooking list, so here it is. The bread came out better than I had expected, though I forgot to add salt to the dough. The recipe I used called for kalonj (nigella) seeds but you should consider them optional. I also spread butter over each freshly baked bread after Seth tasted the first and remarked, "This would taste really good with some butter." Who am I to object?

Naan
The Food of India, only slightly different from the one at Indian Food Forever

4cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4cups milk
2tsp dried yeast
2tsp kalonji (nigella) seeds, optional
1/2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
2tbsp oil or ghee
3/4cup thick plain yogurt

1. Sift the flour into a large bowl and make a well in the center. Warm the milk to approximately 100F.

2. Add yeast, kalonji, baking powder and salt to the flour. In another bowl, mix the egg, oil and yogurt. Pour into the flour with 1 cup of the milk and mix to form a soft dough. If the dough seems too dry add remaining milk. Turn onto a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, or until smooth and elastic. Put in an oiled bowl, cover and leave in a warm place to double in size. (This will take several hours.)

3. Preheat oven to 400F. Place a roasting pan half0filled with water at the bottom of the oven.

4. Press down dough, knead briefly and divide into 10 portions. Using the tips of your fingers, spread out one portion of dough to the shape of a naan bread. They are traditionally tear-dropped in shape, so pull the dough on one end. Put the naan on a greased baking sheet. Bake on the top shelf for 7 minutes, then turn naan over and cook for another 5 minutes. While the first naan is cooking, shape the next one. (You should be able to fir two or three on a baking sheet.) Remove the cooked naan from the oven and cover with a cloth to keep it warm and soft.

5. Repeat until all dough is cooked. Be sure to use the top shelf because the naan will not cook properly on the middle shelf. Spread cooked naan with butter, if desired.

Spinach Kofta (with yogurt sauce)

Spinach Kofta
The Food of India

1lb spinach leaves (tough stems removed) or 1lb frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1 1/2cups besan flour (I used brown flour because I had it on hand)
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 ripe tomato, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1tssp ground cumin
2tbsp cilantro leaves, chopped

oil for deep-frying

1. Blanch the spinach in boiling water for 1 minute and refresh in cold water. Drain, squeezing out any extra water your hands. Finely chop the spinach.

2. Combine with remaining ingredients and up to 1/4 cup water, a little at a time, adding enough to make the mixture soft but not sloppy. If it becomes too sloppy, add more flour. Season with salt, to taste. (Test seasoning by frying a small amount and tasting it.) Shape the mixture into balls by rolling it in dampened hands, using approximately 1 tablespoon mixture per ball.

3. Fill a large saucepan with oil and heat to 350F. Fry the kofta in batches, being sure to not overcrowd the pan, and fry until golden and crisp. Remove koftas as they cook, drain on a wire rack, and add to sauce.

Yogurt Sauce

1 1/2c thick plain yogurt
4tbsp besan flour (I used brown because, again, it was handy)
1tbsp oil
2tsp black mustard seeds
1tsp fenugreek seeds
6 curry leaves
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1tsp ground turmeric
1/2tsp chili powder

In a large bowl whisk yogurt, flour and 3 cups water to a smooth paste. Heat the oil in a deep frying pan over low heat. Add mustard and fenugreek seeds and the curry leaves, cover and allow the seeds to pop for 1 minute. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes or until soft and starting to brown. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute or until soft. Add turmeric and chili powder, stirring for 30 seconds. Add yogurt mixture, bring to the boil, then simmer over low for 10 minutes. Season with salt, to taste.

Aloo Chaat (Potato Salad)

Finally I am back on a reasonable schedule. I apologize for the rushed posts of the past week, but NaBloPoMo has been killing me! Who knew it was so hard to post every day for a month? Okay, I could have guessed it would be difficult but I stubbornly refused to listen to logic. I am still not up to snuff with picture-taking skills: last night we had friends over for a dinner party with an Indian menu and I was far too focused on cooking to worry about documenting anything. Let me just say that I cooked snake gourd for the first time and it tasted like . . . nothing. Crunchy nothing. It was still foreign enough that I had to eat it with my eyes closed everyone present only ate the smallest amount, but it's a start! Bitter melon is next on the list.

An Indian Feast

Aloo Chat

Radish Salad

Spinach Kofta in Yogurt Sauce

Snake Gourd with Yogurt

Fish with Kokum

I have been eyeing this recipe for a year or more and I swear I had made it once, but that's impossible since I didn't have kokum until recently, right? It was the simplicity of the recipe that attracted me because, no offense to Indian cuisine - I love you! - but at times it can be time consuming. Plus my cookbook includes a pretty picture of the finished deal and I am a sucker for pretty pictures. The kokum is has thrown me off, though, because it was hard to find even here and damn, I hate buying ingredients for only one recipe. Plus, what would it taste like? The recipe gives tamarind puree as a reasonable substitute; I hate the taste of tamarind. Nevertheless, I couldn't refuse how easy this dinner would be, so once I found kokum it was on.

Chapatis

The glorious, ubiquitous chapati. I don't think there is a food more loved by visitors to Uganda, except for maybe the rolex. My first time in Uganda I ate these at least every other day; they were amazing and cheap and, how did street vendors manage to roll out such deliciousness? While in Mukono and Kabale I had my favorite chapati vendors to visit, a chapati is a chapati anywhere you go (in Uganda, anyway). Sometimes you'd arrive when a stack was already finished, waiting for customers, but the best times were when the vendors were just setting up, rolling out balls of dough, rolling them flat, then cooking them with an obnoxious amount of oil on a flat frying pan heated to scorching hot over a blazing charcoal brazier. I imagined they must be difficult to make, but luckily my friend's host mother, Doreen, showed us one night that they are the easiest breads to make, dispelling the chapati mystery forever. This was confirmed when, a year later, I was in Uganda again and my coworker, Clement, showed me and a fellow volunteer how he makes chapatis - exactly the same way as Doreen, albeit with a bit more oil. Suffice it to say I am presently a chapati-making fool.

Chicken Lababdar

The one that started it all, in terms of this blog, anyway. Chicken Lababdar is Seth's favorite dish at our favorite Indian restaurant here: Dawat. One night, after tasting his dish at the restaurant, I declared confidently that I could easily recreate that at home. However, an internet search for the recipe brought me three sites with the exact same recipe, including typos, causing my confidence to slightly falter. I am not one to give up, though (at least not with cooking) and the internet did provide a decent starting point, so that each time I make this I change something and get a little bit closer to what Dawat has to offer.

Cabbage with Yellow Lentils

I hope everyone had a fantastic Halloween and that you visited many houses that gave out handfuls of candy. Seth and I had originally planned to go out but changed our plans at last minute and stayed home, leaving us candy-less for the hordes in our apartment complex.  I tried to simply ignore the knocks on our door, but as the background music on the tv grew into crescendo I cringed and went running into the bedroom. I figured the farthest corner in the room was the safest place in case the kids should storm in, demanding booty. There might have been blood when I tried to give away canned goods. When I was young my mom gave out Little Debbie snack cakes, usually oatmeal pies. Yes, we were that house. I don't think Mom gave out candy until I was in college.

Goan Beef Curry + Punjabi Cabbage

I am terrible with meals after returning from vacation. Normally I make a menu for the week and create my shopping list from that, so that Seth and I can get all of our shopping taken care of in one fell swoop; otherwise, it's countless trips to the local (overpriced) store as I try to come up with things daily, only to discover that I am missing about half of the ingredients. While living the single life I would look at a can of chickpeas, canned tomatoes and a bag of rice and think, "Dinner! For the week!", marital bliss had taught me that not everyone enjoys getting by on such monkish offerings. So for a week or thereabouts after returning from a trip I find myself scrambling to put filling, protein-laden (read: meat) meals on the table. That is my first excuse.

Luckily one meal this week only used half a kilo of beef, so I had almost a whole kilo on hand, which it turns out was the only special ingredient I needed for beef curry - well, that and coconut milk. Luckily, I keep that in stock. I didn't even need cilantro! However, unexpectedly cooking a blog-worthy dish meant I wasn't feeling motivated with the camera. I have mentioned this before, but Indian can be tricky to photograph attractively; this difficulty is doubled when all you want to do is eat. Maybe you try and take a couple of pictures of your husband spooning a bite into his, but you can't get the lighting right and want him to keep posing with the food right in front of his mouth, until he gets irritated because he, too, wants to eat. That is my second excuse.

Butter Chicken

 I hate my food processor. Not because it's a hand-me-down and I only have the chopping blade; it's the most useful, anyway. Or because it's a hassle to get it down from the top if the fridge every time I need to use it. Or that, due to the way outlets in our kitchen are set up, I have to delicately balance it on the edge of a shelf, holding onto the sides while it processes away. Or that it's 110 volts and I lost my converter in our last move (and obviously have yet to replace it), so I fear the Foop is going to explode in my hands, blowing chickpeas, parsley and fingers all over the kitchen. No, I can't hate it for those reasons because it does such a beautiful job of chopping and mixing things; plus, it's so persuasive. I look at a recipe that calls for finely mincing onions, garlic and almonds into a fine paste and the Foop calls to me from its perch: "I would make that job so much easier. Come on. Come on." And the Foop doesn't lie.

No, I hate my Foop because after the euphoria of finely ground onions and almonds has passed, I am reminded what bugs me so much: the fact the stupid contraption takes up all space in my teeny sink, forcing me to wash it before I can add more dirty dishes. The Foop mocks me.

Gajar Matar (Peas and Carrots, Northern India Style)

 I am consistently amazed at the way Seth's off-days become time warps that require an additional day of recovery. What did we do for the past week? I recall sleeping (a lot), watching some UFC, the first season of United States of Tara, daydreaming about GSP - oh yeah, and making what turned out to be the most uninteresting, muddled dish of peas and carrots my Indian cookbook had to offer.

Pork Vindaloo

"Vindaloo is notorious for being hot and spicy," according to my Indian cookbook The Food of India: A Journey for Food Lovers.  Trust me, the book doesn't lie.  When I first made this dish I didn't have any dried chilies on hand, so decided 2 teaspoons chili powder equaled 4 dried chilies, ground.  Note: it does not.  Yet despite the sweat pouring from my eyelids and the fire-breathing skills we all gained during dinner, it was fantastically flavorful and delicious.  The roommate, though, had to throw in the towel and eat something else.  The carrot pachadi (yogurt-based salad similar to raiti) wasn't able to provide the relief I had hoped for.  Oddly enough, the heat died down overnight in the fridge, so leftovers were much more palatable. 

This time around I was smart enough to remember to reduce the chili powder to 1/2 teaspoon (still have no dried chilies in the apartment), switched to cane vinegar (because I had it), and left out the brown sugar (because I had used up my last bit making this cake.)  Of course, the fresh chilies I had were much hotter than before so the dish maintained its reputation, but this time we were all able to finish our plates.