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.

a bit of a lemon

Five straight days of sauce posts did not cure me.  I think we may need to gather weekly to talk sauce. The Condiment of The Week is....lemon pickle.  I have a knack for selecting items that have singular and God-given recipes in the minds of many, and surely this is another of these, for which, as usual, I offer one dopey and personal version not meant to stand as the be-all, end-all and ideal in the eyes of entire nations.

I started with my trusted source Madhur Jaffrey, and then veered.  The point of lemon pickle is not a mild and mellow experience; it is a powerful and pungent kick for anything involving (traditionally) dals or other bean dishes and rice, but which I like (shocking) to put on my grilled cheese, my eggs, and the end of the fork heading for my mouth.  Like all fermented foods, it is considered a digestive.  I think there are a berjillion different ways (of course I am estimating here) to make it.

The essential ingredient, other than the lemons, of course, is a very sharp knife.  A dull knife will turn five minutes of pleasantly aromatic slicing and dicing into a misery.  The weirder ingredients proposed here are mostly optional; if you make something with just lemons and salt and red pepper, you will still be pretty happy.  I used cayenne, but I saw some shredded red pepper in the Asian market a few weeks ago that I have my eye on for next time.   If you can get hold of the weirder ingredients, even better.  Of time, you will need perhaps a half hour of the hands-on variety.  Then you switch over to patience.

  

lemon pickle of no particular region of any known country,

yet with an unmistakable Indian flair

4 average size lemons

3 T sea salt

1/2 t sugar

2t cayenne pepper

1/4 t ground turmeric

2" fresh ginger root

2-4 fresh kaffir lime leaves (optional)

1/4 c canola oil

1 pinch ground asafoetida or hing powder (optional)

1 t urad dal or dried split yellow peas (also optional)

1 t brown mustard seed

Have ready a quart mason (or similar) jar, with a non-corrosive and tight-fitting lid.  Fill the jar with boiling water, and dump the boiling water out over the lid.

Using your sharp, sharp knife, slice the lemons into thin (1/4 inch or so) slices, and use the knife tip to poke out any seeds as you go along.  Stack the slices three or four deep, and cut into a fine dice.

Scrape the lemon bits and any juices on the board into a mixing bowl.  Peel the ginger root (remember how you can peel it with a teaspoon?  I love that trick.  It never gets old). Slice it thinly lengthwise and then cross-wise into fine shreds (or you can just mince it).  Add this to the bowl.  Stack the lime leaves and slice them into thin ribbons, or use scissors to cut them into shreds, and into the bowl they go, along with the salt, sugar and cayenne.  Stir to combine.

Heat the oil in a small, heavy skillet and drop in the asafoetida, then the mustard seeds and dried peas.  As soon as they begin to sizzle, dump the entire contents into the mixing bowl.  Stir again to fully mix, and scrape everything into the waiting jar.

Set the jar in a sunny window and leave it there for 7 days, shaking gently every day to move the contents around.  After a week, you can move it to the fridge.  It's ready to eat in about two weeks, and just gets better with more time, provided it lasts long enough to establish that.

I once made a dolled-up version of it by adding some thickly shredded carrots and green mango, and you can, too--or you can leave it as is.

Have a great weekend!

that cosí feeling

I know about 28 words of Italian, not including words like “rigatoni” and “prosciutto.” They are very handy words, most of them, comprising survival-oriented sentences like “do you have these shoes larger, and in brown?” and “I'd like apricot, but with whipped cream, please.”

I am going to teach you seven of them today, and then move on to dinner. Apologies if you know them already.

Years ago, I was in Sicily with my parents and a school friend. We were staying in a breathtakingly beautiful old monastery, which had been converted into a decidedly not-monastic hotel. In Sicily, super delicious olive oil basically runs out of the faucets, and everything you eat is drenched in it, and your skin feels and looks fantastic, and there is no chance you could possibly need to eat when you get back to your room or before you leave it, because the food everywhere you go is so good.

Even so, for some reason I can no longer recall, my friend and I noticed that our in-room refrigerator was not working properly, and felt the need to have that corrected. I cannot imagine what it was that we needed to keep cold, but the refrigerator refused to do anything other than shield whatever was inside it from the ambient room temperature, no matter which knobs we twiddled. We called the desk, and in the fullness of time--probably the next day--they sent a man up to have a look. He looked.

“Non é freddo,” he pronounced. [“It is not cold.”]

This was not news to us, it being the reason our little summit had been assembled, but he did not tell it to us in a tone that suggested it was new information. Nor was it an apology, it should be noted, or really a diagnosis. It was clearly the first part of a statement that was about to continue.

“É fresco,” he continued. [“It’s cool.”]

He looked at us. “E basta, cosí.” [“And like that, it’s enough.”]

He left. Whatever we needed to keep cold learned to thrive at room temperature, or we learned to love it that way.

I was thinking about that little episode this morning, and then I went to yoga. This is a new activity for me, and it is succeeding as a venture because I finally found both the motivation to look after myself (pain, because I haven’t been), and the right teacher. Ilana always starts us off with a little direction, mentally speaking, and so far her hit-rate in terms of what I came through the door already thinking about is hovering around 100%.

Today she said: as you twist yourself up in pretzels for the next hour (OK, I am paraphrasing), think about giving yourself permission to see what you are doing as just enough, just the right thing to be doing to take care of your body and your needs. Don’t keep your eyes on some ever-elusive Bigger Goal, just dwell, in this moment, on the idea that you are already doing what you need to do.

Basta, cosí.

So, turning our attention from Italian refrigerators and Eastern philosophy to the stove, welcome to Super Vegetable Week. Here in the finally-snowy Northeast, it’s hard to get very excited about vegetables in the winter. They have traveled a long hard road to reach us, maybe been iced down for a good while in the process, and taken a chunk out of the wallet on their way to our plates, too. But it’s good to love your vegetables. They love you back. I was reading yet another “EAT THIS WAY OR DIE” manifesto the other day, and amid all the statements contradicting all the other credos I have encountered prior, the author said “your body owes 70% of its health to diet.” Whether there’s meat on the plate or not, the vegetables ought to play a major role. We all know that. And if you live west of the Produce Line, which bisects the nation more or less where the Long Underwear Line also hits, maybe your access is unrestricted and consequently your enthusiasm never wanes.

Super Vegetable Week is for the rest of us. Kind of like Date Night for your relationship with the Food Pyramid.

My default position on squash is to split it, gut it, and roast it face down, then butter it. It gets eaten, and it is tasty, if not especially exciting. I read a recipe this week that went in a whole new direction, but had too many steps to make use of in a hurry and used spices that did not appeal. So I punted, combining the idea and the amount of time I had to spend on it to come up with this. My friend Laura recently reported, re: a recipe that asked her to toast cumin seeds, that it caused her to roll her eyes at the extra work--but when she gave in and spent the extra three minutes doing it, the aroma made her "understand why the entire age of exploration was fueled by an interest in spice-trading." Good payoff in terms of time invested, I reckon. But toasting the spices, or not, is your call. Tasty regardless and, of course, either way is the path of enlightened self-care.

roasted squash slices

1 medium to large butternut squash

1 t whole cumin seed

a pinch of whole fennel seed

½ t nigella seed, also known as kalonji or black onion, or substitute whole coriander seed (you can also use both)

a pinch of red pepper flakes, if you want a little heat

a pinch of coarse salt

1T vegetable oil

optionally, a lime (and a kaffir lime would do well, too)

Preheat the oven to 400, and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Chop the neck of the squash from the bulb, then put each of these sections down on their cut side and split lengthwise. Scrape the seeds, and cut the squash in horizontal slices not quite ½ “ thick. Plop them in a medium bowl that leaves room for tossing.

Optionally, put a small skillet over medium heat and when it is heated up, drop the spices in and toast for less than a minute, until one or two seeds pop and the fragrance rises. Dump them into a small mortar or into whatever you will use to very coarsely grind them if you don’t have a mortar. They should be cracked, but not powdered. In a mortar, that took me about 40 seconds. Dream of sailing to Madagascar, if you like.

Pour the crushed spices (toasted or not) and the oil and the salt over the squash slices and toss to coat. Spread in a single layer on the prepared pan and roast for about 15-20 minutes, until the slices soften and brown a little. Squeeze a little lime over them, or not, before you serve them at whatever temperature suits you.

A note about the Nigella seed: it is generally not hard to find in the Indian section of your Gourmet Shoppe, or buy it online here or here, among other places. If you are ordering from Kalustyan's, you may as well add a few ounces of the spice known temptingly as 'grains of paradise' to your order, because you can put it in your peppermill instead of black pepper and be very happy you did so.