new curry 2.

Yeah, no posts, I know. What can I make. I imagine there'll be a Winter Photo Roundup Jamboree at some point, but for now what-a we have-a to offer is some continuing documentation of Papyrus Problems 'round the globe.

And.......segue........also some continuing terse documentation of recent Indian food successes. I thought that the Anna Jones curry from last month was pretty special, and while I'm pretty sure it still is, this kind of even simpler and rounder version from Kristy Turner's vegan cookbook that I can't even type the name of because it offends my tender sensibilities was really almost every bit as good. I could imagine making both of them for a dinner party kind of thing if you could decide which one would more resiliently handle swapping out the main ingredient since they're both sweet potato curries. I kind of think this one would be good no matter what the main ingredient was.

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sweet potato and red lentil curry with green peas and spinach.

1 medium or large red onion, chopped
1 tbsp coconut oil

4 garlic cloves
one 1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled
one 2-inch piece fresh turmeric, peeled

1 tbsp sambal
1 tbsp curry powder, I used Chan's Surinamese masala
1½ tsp garam masala
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

good pinch smoked salt

2 or 3 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
3 cups peeled and chopped sweet potatoes (about 2 medium)
1 cup red lentils
1 cup coconut milk
1 tsp to 1 tbsp Dutch appelstroop (mm, kind of like molasses or treacle, start with 1 tsp)

1½ cups frozen green peas
2 handfuls fresh spinach, leaves roughly chopped

1 teaspoon black salt (kala namak) or sea salt (didn't have this)

Melt the coconut oil in a pretty big pot and throw the onion in. "Meanwhile", process the garlic, ginger, and turmeric and after the onion has browned a bit throw this stuff in too. Don't burn it, if you start to run out of liquid/oil you can either add more coconut oil, or toss some coconut milk in, or some of the broth you'll be using in a minute.

After say 5 minutes of cooking the onion/paste mixture, throw in the sambal, curry powder, garam masala, turmeric, black pepper and smoked salt, cook for maybe 3 minutes. Then add the broth, sweet potatoes, and lentils. Cook for maybe 20-25 minutes, until your potatoes are almost done. Throw in the coconut milk and appelstroop, cook for 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Add the peas, cook for 5 minutes, make sure everything's still hot and the frozen peas have become unfrozen, then throw in the spinach and serve over the starch of your choice. Serves, mwahhh 4 at the most.

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breaking the chains.

Cleaning up my phone I found this mysterious picture: I know what it is but not why there would be a picture of it.

As a break from the wattle-gazing that's going on around here, it's convenient that this is also a food blog. It's no secret that I/we seem to be growing ever more in love with pickled things over the years, probably because our tastebuds are getting old and saggy, but whatever the cause, I found another new pickle that, while it's a lot of chopping, and a little frying, and kind of feels like a bit of work while you're doing it, and boy are these a lot of commas, etc: then it sits in the fridge for 24 hours and your aged-ass moth-eaten brain has almost entirely forgotten about the prep work by then. Suddenly you're all, "Crikey, who left this bright yellow incredibly healthy-looking Nyonya/Malaysian fish pickle in my icebox? I shall bite into it right now", etc.

It's really, realllly good. One of the more obviously restaurant-quality Asian things I can make, which is interesting (to me) because there are so few ingredients. It really is the Nyonya/Malaysian version of this, so if you do it right it's another perfect treatment for oilier fishies. The post-cooking marination does something extremely complementary (and complimentary, but more the former) to the texture of this particular fish.

Which is not the fish that the original recipe calls for, which I got from here, obviously my version is totally inauthentic, I'm using dirt-cheap (but sustainably fished!) Alaskan salmon, and I didn't technically "deep-fry" anything. And some more different colors would be a good idea (adding the green chiles for example), and then check out their sprinkle of sesame seeds, which every recipe I saw included. Tragically I didn't have any so I can't comment. I left the chile peppers cut big so I could choose spicy or non-spicy bites. And I added black pepper b/c turmeric needs it in order to be bioavailable or something scientific like that.

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nyonya fish pickle. 

500g wild salmon or mackerel
olive or coconut oil for frying

5 tbsp olive or coconut oil
20g fresh turmeric (three pinky-sized pieces), peeled and julienned
50g fresh ginger (the standard "2-inch long piece"), peeled and julienned
30g garlic (ended up being about 5 cloves), peeled and etc
2 green Holland chiles
2 red Holland chiles
5 tbsp (or slightly less) raw sugar (I used one disk of palm sugar b/c that's all I had, HOW FUCKING GOURMET AM I BITCHESSSS)
1 tsp salt
freshly cracked black pepper to taste
200ml white vinegar
1 tsp white sesame seed or even a drizzle of tahini, I know it sounds weird but it worked for me

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Fry the fish in as little oil as you can to be able to call it frying. I cooked my filets 3 minutes per side and, while that doesn't sound like much, and it's true they were "just cooked" when I took them off, they kept cooking while they rested, and then the very vinegar-centric soaking finished whatever needed finishing. They were pretty perfect 24 hours later.

I can't remember if I wiped the pan out here, it could've gone either way. Let's say I did. Then you add the 5 tbsp of oil and fry the turmeric until it's lightly browned, about 5-7 minutes. Remove it and then do the ginger and garlic together, which I normally wouldn't do b/c ginger always seems to take a little longer, but again it worked perfectly, about 5 minutes, don't burn your garlic. Remove the ginger and garlic and then do the chiles.

And then put the oil and whatever's in the pan into a pickling jar or sealable glass bowl and let it cool. Then add sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper and combine with the fish pieces and rhizomes and chiles and whatnot. Something like that, I did whatever the original recipe told me to do. Cover/seal and put in the fridge for 24 hours.

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khichdi.

Ja so I'm making the same thing for dinner I made last night, not something that happens much around here unless we've purchased an Econosize something from somewhere. And thus I figure this recipe might be worth jotting down.

It sounds like hippie food, but it has a surprisingly complex thing happening: the surprise ingredient is the split yellow lentils, they have a very pleasant toothsomeness if you don't overcook them. Well also the fennel seed, it's an ingredient that has really grown on me over the past year or so. OK wow all very exciting yes.

Supposedly this is Ayurveda food, extremely thrilling for your digestion: I didn't notice anything startling myself this morning, but maybe two days of it will prove educational and/or stimulating. I'm really just likee how it TASTEE (though it looks like, well, only slightly less gross than this ill-advised serving option).

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kichadi.

1 cup yellow split mung beans

2 tbsp coconut or olive oil
1 tbsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds

1 tbsp ground turmeric
3 tbsp coconut

2 tbsp chopped fresh ginger
1 liter boiling water

2 large carrots, sliced into rounds or whatever shape floats your boat

1 sweet potato, skin on, diced medium

1 tsp sea salt, or to taste

1/2 cup to 1 cup kale or spinach, chopped

1 cup cooked basmati rice

cilantro, chopped
lime juice, squozen

So I didn't follow the original recipe's instructions except for the part where you take your (in my case unsoaked) mung beans and coat them in the oil, then add fennel, cumin and turmeric and fry for 5 minutes or so, taking care not to burn your seeds. Then I added the water and ginger and cooked for 25 minutes or so until lentils were almost done. Then I added sweet potato and carrot and cooked for another 20 minutes. Then I added the cooked rice at the end and re-seasoned. Then I et it. 

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"too dangerous to go outside".

That's what city officials are saying today. We're having a windstorm, 75mph winds, two people one person killed by trees (falling trees) already this morning, etc. So we're all staying inside. It's not like we need an excuse to stay inside, but it's actually kind of nice to have one.

I did manage to dash across the street to the Dirk b/c we're out of eggs (obvs worth risking your life for), and I picked up a cute little "sale pumpkin" (€1.29 each), so I'll probably be roasting that in bit. Which reminds me, Saturday night we were changing the "couch cover", an arduous two-person job that never seems like it's going to work until it just suddenly does, and suddenly there was an obvious commotion outside involving a lot of people.

I went to the window while Moop grunted and swore at the couch. "Is it Halloween?" I asked. Mara said "maybe, why". And, all Hollywood-like, I said, "if it's not, we've got a real problem on our hands". The street was full of zombies. Hundreds of them, men, women, dripping, oozing, doing the stereotypical lurching and stumbling forward, lit from behind by some semi-massive light source. And then the house music started. Zombie parade. It went on for 15 minutes or so, frankly the most horrifying thing about it being their choice of music, totally brain dead fwwaaahahahahha.

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napa cabbage and shiitake mushroom soup.

1 head napa cabbage
200g fresh shiitake mushrooms
1 2-inch piece of fresh turmeric, peeled
4 cloves garlic
2 cups leftover chicken broth
crushed red pepper
freshly cracked black pepper

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gingerly.

Since you know by now that we loves us some dieting around here, how bout let's start an anti-cancer diet, what you got to say about that? Why, you might ask? Why not, I might reply. What exactly does an anti-cancer diet mean? We don't know really.

We do know that turmeric is almost definitely a good fixer-upper, and that it becomes exponentially more bioavailable when you combine it with black pepper and olive oil.

This here is a recipe that ALREADY HAS MOST OF THAT SHIT IN IT (no disrespeck but we was Thug Kitchen long before they was any such thing as a Thug mfkin Kitchen). It's from Cradle of Flavor, and it's for Singaporean black pepper crab, but I'm betting it would be pretty righteous on anything that used to live in the water. 

There's also a super-long version of acar kuning in Cradle of Flavor (more turmeric and useful rhizomes), I'm wondering if a simpler one would do. 

AFTER A LITTLE GOOGLING: No, they're all complicated. This one looks good too.
AFTER A LITTLE TASTING: The below recipe is awesome. But really, unless you "like spicy food", this is probably not for you. I myself am going to keep making it until I'm sick of it. 

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singaporean black pepper paste. 

4 tbsp black peppercorns

8 cloves garlic

3 inches fresh turmeric, peeled with a spoon or 2 tsp dried

3 inches fresh ginger, peeled

3/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp mild olive oil

3/4 cup water

Basically, process the five ingredients in a food processor. Fry the paste in the oil over medium-low heat, about 5 to 7 minutes or until the garlic no longer smells raw. 

If you're going to be adding seafood to this now, add the water and your seafood and cook til it's done. Otherwise just keep it as a seasoning paste and use it over the next week or so.

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cellophane.

One of the best Thai things we've made in a long time, and super easy.

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glass noodle shrimp hotpot.

1 pinkie-sized piece of fresh turmeric, peeled and minced fine, or 2 tsp ground turmeric
1 and 1/2 cups coconut milk
2 tbsp Thai red curry paste
2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp palm sugar
1/2 pound or 1 cup shrimp, peeled, deveined
1 small red bell pepper, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 handful sugar snap peas or snow peas
1 handful fresh spinach, chopped

100gr cellophane noodles

1 cup basil leaves, chopped
cilantro, chopped

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soto ayam.

Tried to take a picture but no camera would cooperate, and plus it's just a bright yellow chicken soup, you can imagine that just fine I think. It's really good, a totally soothing yet spicy and exotic chicken soup.

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soto ayam (indonesian/surinamese chicken soup with turmeric).

4 chicken legs (not drumsticks, the whole leg) or 1.2 to 1.5kg equivalent whole chicken with bones.
400gr carrots, cut for soup
1 onion, in large dice
2 liters water
8 kaffir lime leaves
one 2-inch-long piece of fresh turmeric, peeled
1 tsp coarse salt, less if it's not coarse
1 habanero, Scotch Bonnet, or Madame Jeanette pepper, whole
12 allspice/pimiento berries, whole

1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp coriander seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds

the turmeric from earlier, plus more if you like
4 cloves garlic
one 2-inch-long section of ginger, peeled
one 2-inch-long section of galangal, peeled
5 candlenuts
one or two tbsp water to make processing possible

1 to 2 tbsp coconut oil for frying spice paste

for serving:
fresh coriander leaves
cut limes
hard-boiled eggs if you want

Basically, combine the first group of ingredients and cook for 45 minutes. Remove the chicken, let it cool, and then get the meat off those dang legs and shred it. Also get that chile pepper out of the soup and discard.

While they're cooling, take the pepper, coriander, and cumin, and grind them to a fine powder in a food processor. Add the next set of ingredients plus the turmeric from the first step and process to a paste, adding water if necessary. Fry the paste over LOW heat for 10 minutes, it should bubble but not burn or get crispy .

Add the spice paste and the chicken back to the broth and cook for 10-15 minutes. It should be done now, but mine didn't taste awesome until the next day, when you should really skim the fat off, reheat and serve with garnishes. You could remove the allspice berries and kaffir lime leaves if you wanted. Also, soto ayam traditionally has noodles, you could do cellophane noodles if you wanted, I just didn't want.

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aminal.

My cousin Jewy (short for Juliana) made this drawing for me b/c I wasn't at dinner the other night in Atlanta. It's Animal, or Aminal, but you knew that. It's an appropriate reference for her, her demeanor is generally slightly less restrained than Animal's.

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I said I wouldn't be making anything noteworthy over the next couple of days, and that's true, and because that's true I'm making something noteworthy tonight: soto ayam. I'm still trying to find stimulating ways to inject more turmeric into my life, and it's hard to imagine one better suited for me than this.

As much of an Indonesian soup as this is, it's also been completely adopted by the Surinamese kitchen, though their version leaves out several critical things, among them the turmeric. So I'm doing kind of a hybrid of a hybrid. Recipe eventually.

UPDATE: It's a very unusual soup. You make a chicken broth that smells totally kick-ass (yes I said that, it's 1987) via kaffir lime leaves and turmeric and chicken (I added 400gr carrots and an onion), and when it's finished you make a strangely ground-spice-centric (cumin, coriander, black pepper) spice paste (+ ginger, garlic, galangal, turmeric) which you fry and then add to the soup and cook for 10 more minutes to blend flavors.

So you're putting this potentially grainy paste into a cooked soup...I can't think of another soup recipe that does that. By the end, it tastes pretty great, but the texture is a bit....yeah, unexpected. It's a bit like mulligatawny soup, which I've never made, I wonder if the prep is similar. I think I like it. We'll see how it is tomorrow. It sure is yellow.

FURTHER UPDATE: It just needed some time to sit, it's great now.

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markie van oranje.

Photo credit: Me, but it's a picture of someone else's picture in James Oseland's Cradle of Flavor.

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While I'm being all healthy and shit, I thought I'd stain my fingers and many other things a vivid tangerine color via Mr. Indelible Rhizome hisself. I bought some today*: our 45-second-away toko has fresh turmeric in their freezer, so I have no excuse, and I should really start using it more often.

Thus I'm going to make a turmeric-heavy sayur lodeh I think, unless I find something with an even more sinister Eastern European gangster-sounding name.

*LANGUAGE NOTE/HILARIOUS ASIDE: Here in Nederland, there are some herbs and seasonings that are sold via both their common Dutch names and the Dutchification of their original Indonesian names.

For example. The Dutch word koriander (coriander/cilantro) is ketoembar in Dutchified Indonesian (ketumbar in Indonesian). Komijn (cumin) is djinten. Citroengras (lemongrass) is sereh. Gember (ginger) is djahe. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Roun' here you see the Dutch names a whole lot more often, and frankly that's OK cause the Indonesian names are (at least to my multilingually-challenged mind) unrememberable.

Case in point. The Dutch word for turmeric is kurkuma. The Indonesian is koenjit. There is also something called kentjoer, which, while it looks very much like fresh turmeric when it's in a little frozen container way in the back of a friendly Hindustani's freezer....it is not turmeric. No, it's a variety of galangal whose primary distinguishing feature is that it looks exactly like turmeric when it's in someone's freezer.

The point of this endlessly diverting aside: I did not in fact buy a bunch of turmeric/koenjit today. I bought two different kinds of galangal, or.....yes, kentjoer. Cue the violins.

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as big as my arm.

This looks pretty unassuming. But it's something I'm going to keep making until I get tired of it or I can't find daikon anymore. This sounds familiar, I know.

I guess you'd call it chicken and daikon soup/stew. Basically chicken soup with carrot and daikon as the featured vegetables. But you dress it like pho, so: scallions, cilantro, mint, and a squeeze of lime if you want, followed by the appropriate amount of sriracha. You almost don't miss pho anymore.

Now we're making Elana's pumpkin bars. Nice to be cooking with the squawker again.

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UPDATE: By popular demand, more deets on the soup. I didn't include a recipe b/c this was basically an inefficient kind of improv thing.

What I did: I made a neutral but delicious chicken soup, with 4 liters of water, a whole chicken, onions, celery, and carrots, seasoned only with salt and black pepper. Maybe there was a clove of garlic. Oh and there were definitely 4 or 5 uncut chiles in there, the ones I think of as "Szechuan chiles", about the size of your pinky, dark red, not scarily hot. When the soup was done, I took the chicken out, ate half of it, shredded the rest and put it back in the soup.

That was Day 1. Day 2, I ate it as regular chicken soup.

Day 3, I had this big fucking daikon that needed using, so I cut half of it into cubes (I pickled the rest via Momofuku's recipe), probably 3 cups' worth, and added a little water to the leftover soup and simmered this new version of the soup for about 45 minutes, until the daikon was totally soft. Oh yeah, I added four more little carrots as well.

To bring this new version up to taste I used soy sauce instead of salt, maybe 2 tbsp, you could probably use fish sauce as another interesting variation. At this point, it's ready to go, served with plenty of chopped scallions, mint, and coriander. And the sriracha bottle.

Next time I try it I'll probably add some whole aromatics to the initial broth and remove them afterwards, I'm thinking lemongrass, ginger, turmeric, or galangal would all be welcome additions.

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bringie me banana.

New guest-appropriate grilled fish dish discovered tonight. Don't really know what it's called yet. It's essentially bali burgers crossed with Mara's old sate lilit recipe and wrapped in banana leaves instead of being skewered.

This was my first time cooking with the leaf of the banana (I know!), and really, they're great. Immediately two big fish-grilling problems are solved: one, there's no potential for sticking, which I don't care about so much if it's just the two of us, but if people are coming over it's nice to serve them something that doesn't look like it came out of a tumbledryer. And two, there's a vastly reduced potential for charring-beyond-recognition something with sugar in it.

If that weren't enough, it's also a way to use Cheap Dirk Fish for a dinner that seems fancy as all get-out.

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ikan something.

A two-inch knob of ginger, peeled

A four-inch piece of turmeric, peeled

the useful part of 1 lemongrass stalk
10 good-sized shallots

10 candlenuts

6 cloves of garlic

5 red Holland chiles

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tomato

1 tsp belacan/shrimp paste

3 tbsp peanut oil

1 tsp salt, or more to taste (i used more than 1 tsp, but not sure how much...we test again soon)

2 tbsp light brown, thin tamarind paste (maybe half that if you've got the thick, almost-black concentrate)

2 tbsp palm sugar

10 tbsp flaked unsweetened coconut

100ml coconut milk

5 green Thai chiles, minced (this is what the original recipe called for, we didn't do it, we will next time)

10 kaffir lime leaves, snipped into very thin slivers

1 kg catfish filets

Process first 12 ingredients in food processor until paste-like. Saute paste over medium-low heat, stirring often, for 10-15 minutes or until harsh taste is gone. Add tamarind and sugar, remove from heat and let cool. When cool, add coconut, coconut milk, like leaves, and fish, and stir to combine thoroughly. At this point I fried up one tiny bite's worth of the mixture so I could taste it and adjust the seasoning.

Ideally let the fish/paste mix sit for a couple of hours. Then make banana leaf parcels out of it. Grill for 10 minutes per side over a medium-hot fire. I ended up having them on the grill for almost 30 minutes with no discernible ill effects. This recipe makes 8 packets. Serve with sambal.

paneer jalfrezi.

Indian food is not easy. In fact, I can't think of a cuisine whose dishes are consistently more time-intensive and just generally difficult to reproduce accurately in one's home kitchen when cooking from scratch. At least in this home kitchen, with these cooks.

We just made paneer jalfrezi with raita, cardamom/clove basmati, and faux-peshwari naan, and though it really only took 90 minutes or so, it felt like a considerable effort, maybe because we were really insecure about the results until we took the first everything-combined bite. Which was pretty much tasting gorgeous like the real thing.

Thus: we try to document. Recipe in progress.

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paneer jalfrezi.

2 medium onions, roughly chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
2 green Holland chiles, chopped
2 cans plum tomatoes
1 cup water
2 tbsp ground coriander
2 tbsp ground cumin

1 tsp cumin seed
2 tsp turmeric

5 tbsp ghee

300 grams paneer, sliced (recipe to come)
2 red bell peppers, chopped

1 tbsp garam masala, or another masala...we used a Surinamese masala that worked really well

1 male adult big toe-sized knob ginger, peeled

salt to taste (very important, as always)

freshly ground black pepper to taste ( a couple of grinds at least)

In a food processor, chop onions, garlic, green chile. Saute over low heat in 1 tbsp of ghee until browned, 10 minutes or so. Add 1/2 cup water and simmer for 10 minutes.

Elsewhere, zhoom up the tomatoes until smooth. Heat another pan, gently fry the coriander, cumin, and turmeric in a splash of oil for about a minute, then add the pureed tomatoes and simmer for 10 minutes or so. Add onion mixture from Step One and get that good and goin'. You might need to add the rest of the water here. Simmer for 20 minutes or so.

This is the part of the recipe I'm unsure of. It seems like the ginger should be added with the garlic. But here's what we did. Zhoom up the red bell pepper and the ginger, and add to the pan along with the remaining ghee and the masala. Simmer for 10 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Then, eventually, you shallow-fry the paneer in yet another skillet, with coriander and cumin and salt and ghee, ingredients which are probably not in the ingredient list yet, and then add the finished sauce from above. Garnish with fresh coriander and sliced green chiles (if you like heat), serve with raita and cardamom/clove-scented basmati rice, recipe to come.

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raita.

1 cup yoghurt

2 cloves garlic

1/2 tsp kalonji/nigella seed

1/2 tsp cumin seed

1 tbsp fresh mint, chopped

shredded carrot

1/4 cup grated cucumber

salt

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It's a pretty gross picture, but:

that was one time!

Google is spreading nasty rumors about me, saying that VDuck has the equivalent of VD, a nasty malware problem. And I really don't. I had it checked out! It's sad how rumors can spread.

UPDATE: Um...I did have a bad, bad case of the malware. Not on this page, so you're safe, but several other websites I'm involved with. And I'm not saying I'd rather have VD, but...fixing this is going to be the opposite of fun.

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If anyone's still able to read this blog, I'll soon be posting a bunch of old family pictures that we're digging through. It should be traumatic (in a good way! Hey wait maybe I can turn that into a hip catchphrase..."dude, that party was traumatic"...I'll try to think of an actually funny usage example when I get a sec).

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Tonight: a simplified version of that Thai/Indonesian turmeric + ginger + coconut milk + ketjap manis (my addition) sauce over grilled halibut, plus choy sum stir-fried with a little soy/wine/black bean sauce. We ate it on garish pink-and-purple paper plates, so although the food itself was gorgeous, once plated it looked like a Peter Max nightmare. Thus, no pictures.

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BTW, this is the amount of EXTRA Cock Sauce my dad has in the cupboard, not including the open bottle in the fridge (hand included for scale). I'm sure there's a potential hip catchphrase in that sentence as well. My point is, he's out of control.

orange crushed.

Bought a pile of fresh turmeric at Lee Lee yesterday, and as always the question is then, "mmm, yes, wonderful, but what do I do with it again?" The answer tends to be something Thai or Indonesian, and in this case I think it might be this.

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Still struggling to get on a sleep schedule that actually involves sleep. Last night's obstacles were the relentless stifling temperature and the looming 9am wake-up call from Nephew Cole. Tomorrow I have a day to myself, and it is my sincere hope that the lack of commitments will result in a dreamless, peaceful, or at least somehow otherwise refreshing reality break during the darktime hours.

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The Mysteries of Pittsburgh continues to occupy my thoughts. I finally watched the first ten minutes of it, and it's just, eh....sad, in the 21st century version of the word: sad that this abject failure was a labor of love for the filmmaker, sad that someone in a supposedly creative field could so insensitively patch together choice verbiage from the book with pedestrian, uninspired filler designed solely to transition us into the fatally misdesigned character expansions/reductions of Jane and Phlox. I'm sure it gets worse, but I'm probably going to have to finish it anyway, just in case they got anything at all right.

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brokeacity.

Above: this is what I look like when I run out of beer.

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Ah, the good ol' days. Beer. Terraces. We are sooooooooo broke-ass city at the moment, definitely unusually so, almost funnily so. It reminds me of a bad spell in college where I only had five dollars left in the bank, which I needed to get at, but the ATMs on campus had a minimum $10 withdrawal so I couldn't get it out. I had to borrow five dollars from someone to deposit into my bank account, and then withdraw my last five dollars. Cue violins, drizzle, and some shitty Grey's Anatomy montage music.

(I'm pretty sure I know what I bought with my last five dollars: eight boxes of Kraft Mac 'N' Cheese, eight packages of "Oriental-flavor" Ramen, and a jar of Prego. I don't believe I consumed a single green vegetable during my time spent in the Florida education system.)

It's not as bad as that right now, and we know The Poorness will end in a couple or three months, but for a while we have some serious bargain eating to look forward to. Tonight's dinner cost about 3 euros and was almost Thoroughly Repeatable. I fucked it up a bit by not exactly following what is undoubtedly an excellent Madhur Jaffrey recipe: one of my significant modifications to it was the only thing wrong with it. Here's what should have happened:

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roasted cauliflower masala with raita (in progress).

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1 large head of cauliflower, cut into 1/4-inch slices for eG-style roasting
walnut oil to coat
1/8 tsp nigella/kalonji seeds

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic
2-inch piece of ginger, peeled
4-8 tbsp ghee, depending on your conscience (the original uses "vegetable oil")

1/2 tsp ground turmeric
2 canned Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp fresh coriander leaves, chopped
1 fresh green chile, chopped
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp lemon juice

Directions: Heat oven to 250C.

Puree onion, garlic, ginger, and oil in food processor. Add to wok and fry carefully for 5 minutes. Transfer to saucepan, add last nine ingredients and turn to low, let simmer for 35 minutes.

Meanwhile, coat cauliflower lightly with walnut oil, sprinkle with salt and nigella, and roast, turning every 10 minutes until nicely browned (usually 30-40 minutes).

Add roasted cauliflower to sauce, serve with raita.

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raita.

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1 cucumber
500gr yogurt
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp nigella seeds

Grate cucumber. Stir yogurt briskly until smooth. Add cucumber and cumin, salt, and pepper to yogurt and combine. Sprinkle with cayenne and nigella, serve.

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downtime: fried.

The title of this post just keeps getting more relevant. Last night's 40th birthday party (not mine) has left this duck with a case of the Sleepies. Luckily my plans today can all be accomplished while laying down.

In other news: I just found out that I'm an INFP, which according to Wikipedia is something that only 1% of people are (or maybe as high as 4.5%...less notable). Regardless, I'm special. I'm...so very special.

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Made a great piece of salmon for the first time in forever last night, coated liberally with Mara's homemade saag paneer curry powder from yesteryear, pan-fried in walnut oil, and topped with a salad/relish/salsa of cucumbers, tomato, raw onion, and lime with optional fresh basil (the photo above is from a subsequent version with different accoutrements).

UPDATE: I've made it twice thrice now and it's Thoroughly Repeatable, recipe to come as soon as we can remember how we made the curry powder.

There's not really a recipe for the salmon: pan-fry it for 3-4 minutes per side. After liberally coating it with this here homemade curry powder and a bit of salt:
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coriander-centric curry rub for steak and salmon

2 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp whole cloves
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1 tbsp cardamom seeds
1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
1 tbsp turmeric

Toast everything but the turmeric, grind, then add turmeric. Store covered for a month or two.

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catfish are jumpin'.

Anyone who's read more than a few posts out here is probably familiar with our fondness for catfish, and you've probably also heard us complain about the need for a reliable, repeatable, "go-to" catfish preparation.

The search is over, and yes, it was right before my eyes. It's not much to look at, but it's tasty as heck. This is based on a recipe from Epicurious. The original recipe called for 2 cups of julienned ginger, which I didn't have. I did have a jar of preserved ginger, which I used for some of the specified fresh, and I just eliminated the sugar from the recipe.

The turmeric is my addition because we had some in the freezer and my body needed repair. If you don't want to use turmeric, replace it with an equal amount of fresh ginger. Under no circumstances should you substitute dried turmeric for the fresh turmeric in this recipe.

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ginger catfish.

4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup peeled, julienned ginger
1/2 cup peeled, finely chopped fresh turmeric (do not substitute dried)
1/2 cup finely chopped preserved ginger (baking ginger)
700 grams catfish fillets, sliced into 1cm-wide strips
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 large onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1/2 bunch scallions, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces
salt to taste

Heat the oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add the fresh ginger and turmeric and cook, stirring, until brown and crisp, about 7 minutes. Add the preserved ginger and fish and cook for about 3 minutes. Add the soy sauce and fish sauce and stir well. Stir in the onion and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes. Add the red pepper and scallions and cook for another 2 minutes, then serve. It's possible that you could need a little salt...mine did, just the tiniest bit.

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vismasala.

Made this for dinner tonight and it just about blew our heads off. The recipe called for one Madame Jeanette pepper (the picture above is what Dirk v/d Broek called "Madame Jeanettes", I'm not so sure), and that's what I used. Maybe half that much would make it edible for the general population.

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vismasala (surinamese fish masala).

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600gr whitefish, cut into large pieces
3 tbsp masala spice mix (coriander seed, cumin, mustardseed, fenugriek, nigella, black pepper, turmeric)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1/2 madame jeanette or habanero pepper, stemmed and seeded, cut into thin rings
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tomato, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup water
4 tbsp celery leaves

Rub pieces of fish with masala and salt, let sit for 5 minutes. Heat the oil in a wok or sautepan and brown the fish pieces. Remove the fish and add the onion, garlic, and pepper to the pan. After a minute of cooking, add the tomato. Cook for a minute or two then add the celery leaves and water. When it reaches a simmer, add the fish back in and simmer for 15 minutes over very low heat. Serve with buttered rice. Serves at least 3, maybe one more if you were serving another dish as well.

fish cake monkey.

Back in the NL. Happy to be shopping at my same old places again, American grocery store prices are fucking astronomical. $2.99 for a head of cauliflower. $2.99 for 2 twigs of rosemary. $3.99 for a bag of salad greens. I just walked around with my mouth hanging open for about 20 minutes at our local Publix, trying to find anything that didn't cost $2.99 (carrots were the lucky winner). I don't know how people are surviving.

My first dinner at home was another good welcome back moment: Mara's adaptation of saté lilit. She's been making it so often that we had all the necessary ingredients already, and it's easy to see why she's got this fish cake monkey on her back: this stuff is like crack. Made from fish.

Here's the original recipe I posted, but her version adds candlenuts and dried laos (galangal). In fact, she has most often made this with all dried spices, and though it's perhaps not as fragrant as using fresh, it's still definitely fish crack. It's really an excellent weeknight dinner (or breakfast), quick, easy, and cheap (she's been using tilapia or catfish as the protein), and made from ingredients that are completely non-exotic here in Mokum.

















































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saté lilit (fish cake saté).

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2 tbsp peanut oil
500gr mild white fish fillet (cod, tilapia, sea bass, catfish)
5 tbsp shredded unsweetened coconut
1/2 cup thick coconut milk
5 kaffir lime leaves, very thinly sliced

5 shallots, chopped
5 candlenuts, smashed/chopped
1 red Holland chile or 1 tbsp sambal
1 tsp dried galangal (laos)
1 tsp turmeric
1 tbsp brown or palm sugar
1/2 tbsp sliced lemongrass (or 1 tsp dried lemongrass)
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
salt to taste


Toast candlenuts gently in medium-hot pan, 5 minutes or so. Add oil to pan and sauté shallots, sambal or chiles, and ground spices until fragrant. Stir in salt, sugar and garlic, remove from heat and allow to cool.

Finely chop fish fillet and combine with shredded coconut, three-quarters of the thick coconut milk and kaffir lime leaves. Stir and mix thoroughly. Add shallot/candlenut mixture and stir to combine thoroughly.

Now you can either form these into cakes or balls and bake them in the oven, or (hypothetically) mold them onto saté skewers and grill them. For the latter, shape 2 tablespoons fish mixture around a saté skewer. Press firmly until it sticks to the skewer. Grill the skewered fish over hot charcoal and brush with remaining coconut milk until cooked. Hypothetically.

Serve with sambal or other chili sauce.

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ladyfingers.

This is Saturday's Okra Pile. I had intended to make some gumbo, but once again I got distractified by my double headphones, and ended up just throwing together an Indian recipe for Bhindi Bhaji. Very simple: oil, chopped onion, cumin, coriander, turmeric, chili powder and a can of tomatoes. And 500gr of cut okra. Cook until sliminess abates. This is not the most thrilling okra recipe I've ever made, so if you've never prepared okra before, don't start here.

But: what made the leftovers roughly 75 times more interesting was the addition of 1 blazingly hot Ethiopian red chile pepper and 2 tbsp of organic peanut butter, taking it in an African direction. Really!

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