fully fed up

My sister has a shockingly beautiful friend named Purnima, which is already a pretty lucky thing to have, and when you consider that she is called Punty, and is the kind of cook whose meals make the people who have eaten them get misty in the recalling, and that she came over recently and gave me a cooking lesson--well, the luckiness factor just multiplies exponentially.

She was planning to teach me how to make a simple fish curry, and she did that.  But even a simple fish curry has a lot of steps. I am reluctant to tell you how to do anything that has a lot of steps, generally.  There are layers and layers of flavor in a good curry, and you do not get those in a snap, unless you buy a jar of what a friend of mine calls Curry In A Hurry, and then you have something, but not anything you would serve to Punty or that would make anyone terribly misty when they recalled it.  This is not to say that some of these jiffy products are not tasty enough to fall back on when you must.  Some of them are.  But they are not what we are talking about.

Punty said she did not learn to cook as a child in India.  She just ate.  But when she moved to the U.S. and found herself to be a homesick and hungry student, she began to try to piece together what she had witnessed and what she was hungry for and to reconstruct it in her little kitchen.  The rest is history.  My nephew cannot speak of Punty's food in public because the weeping compromises his manliness.  "Her breakfast..." he says, and has to clear his throat.  Punty told us a hilarious family story about an Indian gentleman declining an offer of more food by saying politely, "Oh, no, thank you. I am fully fed up."  Max has been fully fed up by Punty more times than he can count, though I think on nights when he can't sleep he is happy to try.

One of the steps on the road to Punty's fantastic curry was the one where she said, "does your family like it hot?" and I said (thinking of the innocent little children) probably not by her standards, and so she said, then we will add only a little pepper.

This is a visual on "only a little pepper," Purnima-style:

Another one of the steps was this paste, which did not take very long to assemble at all, and which is the topic of our discussion today.  "We will make a lot," said Punty, "because it is very useful to have on hand." 

She was right about that.

Here is one thing you can do with this paste: when you melt butter for popcorn, drop a tablespoon of this in there and let it bubble a bit.  You would never (or anyway, I would never, no matter what you suspect) make garlic and ginger paste as part of the process of producing a bowl of popcorn.  If you happen to have a jar of it lurking in the condiment forest of your refrigerator, however, you have this kind of option before you.  And then you also have this kind of popcorn. Salt it as liberally as you generally would, and maybe get a little nutritional yeast on there.  Never look back.

Here is another, perhaps more useful thing you can do with it.  Make a fast and fantastic and pretty memorable for a weekday curry for dinner.  Curry in a hurry, Punty-style.  With a pot of rice, you are set to jet.

the paste

a head of garlic, peeled

about 3" of fresh ginger root, peeled (peel it with a teaspoon--it will change your life)

1 small hot pepper, seeded (a jalapeño, for example)

Coarsely chop the ginger and the pepper, using all proper and prudent precautions regarding not touching your eyes or other tender areas after touching the pepper.  Put all three ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine, and then really mince the hell out of them.  Maybe add a little water if you need it to get things moving.  You want a smooth and uniform paste. Put it in a glass jar with a tight lid, and keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks, if you can manage to hang on to it for that long. 

the curry in a hurry

about 3T of canola oil, ghee, butter, or coconut oil

about 2T of ginger-garlic paste

about a T of curry powder

about a pound of chicken breast, chopped, or tofu, cubed

about half a cup of half and half or coconut milk

about half a cup of chicken broth or water

salt to taste

a large handful of baby spinach

a large handful of chopped cilantro (or not, if you hate it)

Heat the oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat.  Add the paste and stir it around for about five minutes, letting it golden up a little but not brown at all.  Add the curry powder and stir a few times.  Doesn't that smell nice?  Add the protein and sear it well on all sides.  Now add the liquids and simmer a few minutes, scraping all the tasty stuck bits off the bottom as you go and letting the sauce thicken a bit.  Throw in the green things and the salt, and taste.

armchair travel

My friend Andrea is a good friend to have.  She will agree to come along and pick cherries in unbearable weather, and show up with even more containers than you have brought--a sign of her optimism and enthusiasm.  She will share your obsession with cracking the code on some elusive Turkish or possibly Greek baked pudding that may also be boiled, which seems to contain chicken but doesn't have to, and present you with cookbooks and late-night emails testifying to her mettle as a code-cracker.  She may, if you are very lucky, also present you with a bottle of olive oil, which turns out to come from the olive grove belonging to her family in Greece.  

Then again, she may twink off to Greece for a month, and send you what can really only be described as apricot porn.  So think twice before getting too friendly with her, or you may find your inbox clogged with images like these:

all photos by Andrea, who is in Greece, and not by me, home here in Massachusetts

Look at the pits, lolling about in that sultry way, on top of the jars.

She says she has a jar of this in her suitcase for me.  I think that is the sea that I see, there behind the jars and the olive trees.  I hope some of that is in her suitcase, too.

As for what we can actually eat, the greens have been glorious lately, now that the weather is cooling off and we have had some rain.  My default treatment of a mess of greens is to saute them with garlic and tamari, but I went successfully out on a limb last night and this is how you can, too:

almost rich greens

a large bunch of kale 

a large bunch of swiss chard

2-3 T olive oil

1-2 T butter

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

salt to taste

1-2 tsp curry powder

2-3 T heavy cream

Wash the greens (leave the washing water clinging to them) and chop them up--I like to roll them and then cut in fine ribbons.  Heat the butter and olive oil in a large, heavy skillet and saute the garlic for maybe a minute--don't let it brown, just become fragrant.  Stir in the curry powder and immediately add the greens, in batches if need be.   Cook, stirring, with maybe the addition of a splash of water if there is not enough water on the leaves, until the greens soften and become almost tender.  Now add a fat pinch of salt and the cream, and cook another few minutes, until tender enough to suit you.

new day

There are a few reasons to be grateful today.  Actually, there are dozens and dozens.  Here are three four:

1. The Miracle Chicken, who survived being pecked for all intents and purposes pretty much right to death, as I told you, and then dodged The Hand Of Chicken Death that claimed her bunkmates and three other chickens in one dreadful week of random and distressing poultry management misery that I kept secret from you, and was presumed Taken From Above yesterday by the circling hawks, has materialized yet again.  Though unnaccounted for at roll call last night, there she was this morning all "where's my breakfast?"  She continues, at least for today, not to be dead. This is a specialty of hers, thus far.

2. When I said, honestly but also, in truth, kind of reflexively, "Thanks so much," to the young man with special needs who does the bagging at the grocery store this morning, he said, very thoughtfully, "You are welcome so much."  I became, instantly, way more thankful than I had been a moment earlier, and a little more alert to the nice ways we can connect to other humans as we go about the day.

3. At least 10 of you are battling Ryan Gosling with me.  There is still time to leave your name to win a jar of jam and save us all from my searches to see what other food groups have been rendered into effigies.

4. The corn and the tomatoes are rolling in, so it is time to make my go-to summer potluck salad.  I don't make it every single day in August like I used to, because barley of course had to go and have gluten, and sometimes I make it with quinoa, which is also really fine, but nothing beats it with barley.  Nubby and chewy and satisfying.  Or so I recall.  It is a snap to make and loves parties.  (If you don't feel up to cooking the corn, or have more nectarines than tomatoes, make Alana's salad.).

corn, barley & tomato salad

1 c raw pearled barley

4-6 ears of corn, shucked

about 2 large tomatoes, any color

a large handful of fresh basil, chopped

1/2 c olive oil

2 T balsamic vinegar

fresh ground pepper and coarse sea salt, to taste

Cook the barley in lightly salted water until tender, about 30 minutes, and drain.  Cool (you can rinse it to make this happen faster).

Cook the corn, cool, and slice from the cob. (This is also a fine use for leftover cooked corn, if that ever happens to you). Slicing slowly is the key to not filling your kitchen with corn asteroids.  It usually takes me a cob or two to remember this.

Chop the tomatoes into a chunky dice.

Combine the corn, barley, tomatoes and basil in a large bowl.  Season with the oil, vinegar, salt & pepper; taste and adjust as you like it.  Err on the side of a little extra salt and vinegar, as the flavors mellow out as it stands. 

may I please be excused?

I seem to have wandered away from the table here. This is mainly a result of practicality. In two days, we are leaving for five so I am cooking to clean out the fridge and not pausing to take pictures of what results.

While I do that, and also contact a psychic to see if she can conjure a mental image of where we stored every single pair of swim goggles we own as they have vanished and we suspect they are all together, and also check the EWG’s Skin Deep website to see if we can purchase a sunscreen that does not feel like peanut butter, stink of wild carrots, cost $50 per tube or cause genetic mutations in endangered caterpillars, I can also be found guest-posting on my friend Suzi’s website.

There is a lot to be said for and about my friend Suzi. It is good to have friends who, when you call and say, “I need you,” answer “where?” before they ask “why?” I am wealthy in this kind of friend, and Suzi is absolutely and recently and frequently one of them. Here, also, is a woman who understands the implications of hundreds of pounds of gooseberries ripening near your home, and a person who will place a gentle boot at your back when you stand at the door of the plane, because she has helped you sew the parachute and is ready to dive right there with you. She’s a courageous chick, and we all know courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to recognize that something else is more important.

This is her post on where we intersect on these matters, and there is a link about halfway down to a post I wrote for her series, "Out Of The Mouths Of Babes."