Green Persian Pilaf

Posted on by
Reply

Persian Pilaf is a delicious  Middle Eastern combination of vermicelli and rice, sometimes with add-ons like garlic or fried onions. The textural contrasts between the rice and the browned nutty vermicelli make this dish sing. I combined the pilaf with raw greens and herbs and raw garlic inspired by a Sarah Copeland recipe for the NYT that I have written about before. The trick is to brown the vermicelli (but not burn it) and make sure the rice and vermicelli is hot before adding the garlic. The steam gently cooks the garlic and the greens for a delicious fresh flavor.

Ingredients:

1 cup basmati rice and 1 cup wheat vermicelli

5 oz spinach shredded in the food processor (pulse it, stop before it becomes a paste)

1 cup parsley and cilantro (I used half and half) also shredded in the food processor (pulsed 5-6 times)

3-4 cloves garlic finely chopped and 1-2 jalapenos finely chopped

2-3 tbsp brown butter or ghee

Methods:

Add 1 tbsp of butter to your rice cooker insert on the stove or on the saute setting if you have it. Brown the vermicelli (less than 2-3 min, this burns very fast). Add rice and 3 cups of water. Press cook on your rice cooker or cook rice on stovetop.

Once rice is done, mix the greens, the ghee and as much garlic and jalapenos as you wish. Salt generously (1 tbsp or so)

Serve with a fried egg or a soft boiled egg.

 

Tunisian Chickpea Stew

Posted on by
Reply

This is my version of Tunisian chickpea stew but what do I know- I’ve never been to Tunisia nor do I have any Tunisian friends. But the flavors are from the region and it’s quick and delicious.

1 cup chickpeas (soaked overnight and pressure cooked for 15 minutes)

1 14 oz can tomatoes (whole tomatoes puréed)

Aromatics- half an onion and half a red pepper chopped into inch cubes, 1/2 preserved lemon, 8 or so olives, parsley, 2 garlic cloves

Spices: 1 tbsp Harissa paste (I have the Trader Joe’s version) , 1 tsp cumin seeds and 1 tsp cumin powder

Heat 1-2 tbsp of olive oil, add 1 tsp of cumin seeds, let them sputter, add onions and peppers. Cook on high heat for 4-5 minutes till they brown slightly. Add 1 tbsp of harissa paste and the cumin powder, cook for a minute. Add chickpeas and salt.

While the onions are cooking, blitz the tomatoes, olives, preserved lemons and garlic in a blender. Add to chickpeas in pan.

Cook on medium heat for 10 minutes. Add parsley- serve with any grain or couscous or pasta.

Bean Broth

Posted on by
Reply

Bean Broth: My recipe for the best bean broth. Use it for minestrone, a fantastic gravy base and everywhere you would use stock. It’s great plain with just rice or any other grain as the base for a brothy grain bowl. This has the mouthfeel of a meat stock, it’s the garlic and the bean liquid that make it thick. For the gravy- just add a roux.

1 cup soaked red kidney beans

2.5 cups water with 1 tsp better than bouillon vegetable base (or 2.5 cups vegetable stock) and 1 tsp salt (less if your stock has salt)

1 tbsp olive oil

4-5 cloves of garlic crushed

Heat oil, add garlic, after 1 minute, add beans and stock. Pressure cook on high for 15 min (I use my cuisinart). If you don’t have a pressure cooker, it will take 45 minutes on the stove top.

Green Garlic Rice and Eggs

Posted on by
3

Raw garlic is spicy and acrid in a very pleasant way. The trick to this dish is mixing the greens, raw garlic and jalapeños with the hot rice directly from the rice cooker. The steaming rice gently cooks the garlic and the greens. The flavors are surprisingly delicate and go extremely well with the unctuousness of the egg.

Inspired by this NYT recipe

Rice: cook 1.5 cups of basmati rice

Greens: finely chop 5 oz of spinach (about 2-3 cups), 1 cup of cilantro and 1 cup of parsley. I used my food processor, the measures are for the unchopped greens

Finely dice 4 cloves of garlic and 2 jalapeños (add some salt to the jalapeños for a half hour before using to draw out the painful bite of the chilli pepper)

Just after the rice is cooked, add 2 tbsp of ghee or butter and all the greens. Start slow with the garlic and jalapeño and add to taste (I used all of it). Squeeze some lemon on the rice.

I served this with a fried egg and roasted carrots (roast at 400 F for 30 min with salt,pepper, olive oil and coriander powder)

My husband said he could eat this rice everyday

Amti (Dal) and Dumplings

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve lived in the South for a long time and despite all the many many problems I faced there, I do love Southern food. Chicken and dumplings used to be a favorite. Here is my attempt to “vegetarianize”  this dish. In doing so, I have also “Indianized” it.

Dal Dhokli is a Gujarati dish with spiced dal and peanuts and noodle like dumplings (besan or gram flour and whole wheat flour and spices without any leavening). It is delicious but fluffy biscuit like dumplings work so much better with the dal than the traditional dhokli. This dish is my version of Dal Dhokli.

The base is a Maharashtrian Amti  which uses goda masala (a Maharashtrian blend – I’ll post the recipe as soon as my  mother sends it to me).  Maharashtrian food is always a blend of salt/sugar (jaggery), fat, spices(goda masala, ginger) and acid (tamarind). This is common knowledge and it may be the reason that I am the only person in the world unimpressed by Samin Nosrat (who missed the spice and the sugar entirely).

The flavored spicy dal, the pillowy biscuit like dumplings and the ghee on top- this was such a comforting dish on the coldest day in the Midwest in a generation.

Amti:

Dal : Toor Dal-  cook 1 cup of Dal with 2 cups of water and 1 tsp of salt for 10 minutes on high pressure ( I use my electric Cuisinart pressure cooker)

Tempering: Heat 2 tbsp of vegetable oil, add 1 tsp of mustard seeds, heat till they sputter- then add 2 pinches of asafetida, 1 tsp of turmeric, 2 large red dried chillies and 4-5 curry leaves.

Add Dal and 2 cups of vegetable broth ( I use better than bouillon) and 1/2 cup of uncooked peanuts.

Add the flavorings: 1-2 tbsp of crushed or finely chopped ginger, 4-6 tbsp of tamarind paste (the quantity will depend on your tamarind paste consistency and dilution),  4-6 tbsp of grated jaggery (use dark brown sugar if you don’t have jaggery) and 1 tbsp of goda masala.

Taste for salt and spice (add chilli powder for additional heat) and boil for 10 minutes

Dumplings:

I used an Alton Brown recipe for chicken and dumplings (From his brilliant book I’ll be Here for more food ) with some modifications. This uses a “biscuit method”. Handle the dough as little as possible.

Dry ingredients: 1 cup all purpose flour, 1 tsp goda masala, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 2 tsp baking soda, 1/8 tsp baking soda

Cut 2 tbsp of very cold butter into the flour till butter is at pea sized pieces

Add 1/2 cup of buttermilk (or 1/2 cup of milk with 1/2 tsp of vinegar) and mix till dough just barely comes together. Use a bench scraper to section dough into 12 parts. Roll gently into balls

Drop dumplings into dal and cook on a gentle simmer for 15 minutes giving the dumplings an occasional stir every 5 minutes

Serving: This is important! Serve with 1 tsp of ghee (heat unsalted butter till the frothing subsides and you have ghee) and cilantro.

 

A Brothy Rice Bowl

Posted on by
Reply

Part soup, part rice bowl, with a different flavor in each bite, the ingredients make fantastic leftovers. The chickpeas were from dinner the day before. The rest of the meal prep and cooking took less than half hour.

The broth is inspired by a Spanish garlic soup recipe, the bean broth and the garlic and vegetable base make for a very unctuous broth- this is equal to chicken stock in flavor and consistency- very good. The toppings are inspired by the Korean bibimap- I kind of like the idea of everything in one bowl rather than the Indian way of keeping all your food items separate.

This is a no-recipe recipe.

Rice: Mixed brown and black rice

Broth: Heat 1 tbsp olive oil, add 5 large garlic cloves, add 1 cup of soaked red kidney beans (soaked for 24 hours) and add water to your pressure cooker 1-2 inches above the soaked beans. Add 1-2 tsp of better than bouillon vegetable stock base. Pressure cook for 15 minutes on high

Chickpeas: Pressure cook 1 cup of soaked chickpeas wiht 1/2 tsp of baking soda for 15 minutes on high. Drain chickpeas, add tahini sauce (1 clove crushed garlic, 3 tbsp tahini, juice of 2 limes, 4-5 tbsp olive oil, salt), crush slightly with back of spoon. Add some chickpea cooking liquid. The chickpeas need to be very very soft for this dish to work . This is basically whole-chickpea hummus.

Green beans: Heat 1 tbsp oil, add 1 tsp cumin seeds, 1 dried red chilli. Add green beans, add a it of water, cook till tender (around 6-7 minutes). Salt.

In a bowl, add some rice, ladle some broth and beans  add green beans and chickpeas. Enjoy

 

Another spinach and artichoke pasta

Posted on by
Reply

I do like the spinach and artichoke combination and I specially like it in all kinds of pasta sauces. I normally make this a cream based sauce, but I had no cream so I added butter and  tomato paste- cooked it, deglazed it with vermouth and added pasta water to make it a silky but light pan sauce. Total prep time: 5 minutes, cook time 10 minutes. It literally takes longer to cook the pasta than to make this complex and delicious sauce

This aromatics were inspired by Italian sausage seasonings

Vegetables: 6 oz of grilled artichoke hearts (shrink wrapped or frozen), 1 small bag of baby spinach

Aromatics: 1 tsp fennel seeds, 1 tsp rosemary, 1 tsp capers, 1/2 a preserved lime, 3 cloves garlic, 1 red chilly dried

Other ingredients: 2 tbsp tomato paste, 1-2 splashes of white wine (I used vermouth)

Fat: 2 tbsp oil, 2 tbsp butter

Heat 1-2 tbsp oil, add the aromatics, cook for 1-2 minutes, add the artichokes- heat through, wilt the spinach.

Add the tomato paste and butter, deglaze with 1-2 splashes of wine. Add some pasta water, add pasta and top with parmesan.

Delicious, smoky with a lot of complex flavors.

Mango fool

Posted on by
Reply

Of all the English deserts with strange names, the fool is my favorite. It is essentially fruit cream in it’s most luscious luxurious form. I normally make it with raspberries but I found  frozen Alphonso mango slices (by Vadilal) in the Indian store recently. This desert is a perfect way to showcase the king of mangoes.

There is essentially no recipe. Whip cream to soft peaks, add sugar and gently fold the fruit puree- it is summer in a desert bowl while winter rages outside.

Mutta Roast (Egg Roast – Kerala Style)

Posted on by
Reply

I watched a video on another FB group recently. It is a song/recipe for Mutta Roast  by a vlogger – Sawan Dutta. Binge watch warning- once you start her videos, it’s  tough to stop and you may spend the day singing “Macher Jho….l, Macher Jho…l” . It may be worth it- I enjoyed her youtube channel and her point of view.

Anyway back to Egg Roast.  This recipe is not the recipe on her video- this is a recipe cobbled together from other recipes on the internet. I’ve made egg curry plenty of times but never with this recipe – “All the way from the Malabar coat- Mutta Roast, Mutta Roast”

Ingredients:

6 Boiled eggs – as an aside, if you haven’t read the Serious Eats blog post on boiling eggs- please do so ASAP, it is brilliant.

Aromatics: one large red onion- sliced, 1 tbsp ginger, 1 tbsp garlic, 6-8 curry leaves, 1 jalapeno- halved

Spices: 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1 tsp turmeric, 1 tsp fennel seeds, 1 tsp coriander powder, 1 tsp garam masala, 2 dried red chillies

Base of curry: 1 can tomatoes (14 oz) pureed Oil: 2 tbsp olive oil (or coconut oil if you have it) Salt and 1/2 tsp of sugar

Boil eggs for 11-15 minutes (you did read the serious eats PhD thesis on boiling eggs right), shock in cool water and peel. Make slits in the eggs (about 4-5 per egg , these should be fairly shallow)

Heat oil, add mustard seeds – wait till they sputter and pop. Now work quickly, add the turmeric, green chilli or chillies, red chillies, fennel seeds and curry leaves. Stir and immediately add the onions with sugar and salt.  Roast in the oil till pale brown on medium heat (about 10 minutes). Add ginger and garlic and cook for 1 minute, add coriander powder and tomatoes and eggs. Cook- stirring every few minutes for 15-20 minutes till the curry thickens. Taste for seasoning- add the garam masala and salt and pepper.

Serve with appam, rice, toast or as I did today, with dosa.  Here is a link to my dosa recipe.

 

Sausage (Beyond Sausage) and Spinach Pasta

Posted on by
2

I have a complicated relationship with Beyond Meat– I like the way it tastes and I love the way it marries with all kinds of flavorings but it feels, handles and cooks so much like meat that I get a little squeamish handling it. I do like the sausages though- I used the regular one for this recipe, the hot Italian sausage is even better.

This is a pasta sauce based on Italian seasonings- rosemary, capers, oregano, fennel, tomatoes, red chillies (kind of like a cioppino without the seafood of course). This is one of my no-recipe recipes- I just keep the flavor profile similar each time.

Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil, add 1 tsp of fennel seeds, 1-2 dried red chillies (or red pepper flakes), 1 tsp of chopped rosemary, half a diced red onion, 1 diced jalapeno pepper ( I didn’t have any sweet peppers),  sliced Beyond Sausage. Cook for 5 minutes till the sausage is browned. Add 1 small can of tomatoes (pureed), scrape up any brown bits. Add 3 chopped cloves of garlic, 1-2 tsp of capers and 1 tsp of oregano flakes. Cook for 10 minutes. In the meanwhile, boil water, salt and cook pasta. About 2 minutes before the pasta is finally done, add 2 handfuls of spinach and wilt the spinach. Add the pasta, 1-2 tbsp of butter and 1-2 ladlefuls of pasta water (to make the pasta silky). The butter is optional, good olive oil works just as well. Serve with some parmesan grated on top.