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.

for what it's worth

I am a pretty unreliable clipping service, since my attention to the newspaper and other periodicals, both real and virtual, even in my topics of choice, is pretty haphazard. But a few of my customarily cursory glances in recent days have yielded a Thread.  I read Elizabeth Kolbert's article in the New Yorker, "Spoiled Rotten," about poorly-brought-up American children, then I happened across two pieces in the New York Times: "Is The Family Dinner Overrated?" and "Are Family Vacations Worth It?," the latter aiming to settle once and for all whether parents should "soldier forth and try to create those irreplaceable family memories...[o]r take a real break by zipping off without the kids."

Certainly the article attempting to debunk the notion that regularly sitting down to dinner together will have a long-lasting positive effect on your children was the one that got my goat most emphatically. That's hitting me right where I live, my friend.   Using hard science and real data, the researchers examined this previously-established "fact" that dining together correlates with long-term happiness, success and other fantasies of the harried parent.  Turns out it's a little more equivocal than we've been told.  We can thank these investigative hard-hitters for unearthing the real deal: it turns out that OTHER STUFF ALSO MATTERS.  I am paraphrasing here, but just to save you the trouble of reading the whole article.  If you never let your children out of the basement or speak kindly to them, but sit down to dinner together every night: NOT SO GOOD.  Don't count on the kiddos avoiding a life of crime. If you sit down to dinner together on a regular basis, probably that is not the only thing going right: THE DINNER ALONE MAY NOT BE THE DETERMINING FACTOR. And there is no guarantee, even when you adjust for all of the other variables, that they will move on from your table to the pinnacle of achievement in all regards later in life.  So, they conclude, if the family dinner eludes you, don't stress out.  Their advice?  "Just find another way to connect to your kids." That is actually the last line of the article.

Sigh.  I won't bother you with a long, snarky summation of the vacation discussion, except to say that it's equally dense (not with meaning.)  You should spend time alone as a couple and you should do nice stuff that is not necessarily in a theme park with your children.  You could, for example, choose a motel with a large pool.  Children like those (they did a study).  Pardon me a moment while I up my subscription so I never miss an issue. Did I say I was going to keep this part brief?  OK, in that case, I will just say how alarming it was to see no mention AT ALL of single parents--not ones that head families alone, nor the individuals that make up couples--in the six experts' testimonies.  Couples vs. children all the way.  Whose Interests Will Prevail? As Elizabeth Kolbert points out, we are kind of coming at this from the wrong angle, with predictably poor outcomes for the children and lots of inane reading for the parents to slog through:

from the 7/2/12 New York Times

Let me just wipe the froth from my lips and the lather from my chin and I'll bring this around to something edible.  Something refreshing.  Pour a glass for yourself, to restore you after the cares of the day are done with.  Pour it for your loved ones, to reconnect if you've been apart.  Just please don't do a study on its effects.  Take my word for it: it's tasty.

apricot-basil cooler

5 or 6 apricots, and if you can get hold of some of the red velvet variety, consider the day well spent

1/2 cup of honey

1/2 cup of sugar

4 c water

a handful of fresh basil (using the leaves is nice, but stems left over from using the leaves for another purpose work just as well)

ice and limes and sparkling water, to serve

Halve the apricots.  Admire them. Now combine them with the honey and sugar in a large saucepan.  (If you can let the apricot mixture sit a few minutes, all to the good.  If not, do not fret.)  Add the water and bring the mixture to a boil; reduce the heat to a simmer and cook until the apricots look spent, about 5 minutes.  

Remove from the heat, toss in the basil and submerge it, and cover the pot.  After 5 minutes or so, pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer, and serve this ambrosial juice you've just concocted in less than 15 minutes over lots of ice with plenty of lime and sparkling water.  It's very concentrated and will serve you for days to come.  

I consider the basil-scented apricots in the strainer to be the privilege of the cook, but I have been known to spoil a nearby child rotten by handing them out, as well. We enjoy them together and talk about crimes and tour packages.

salad daze

A hundred years ago when I lived in New York City, there was a French-Japanese restaurant in sort of the Murray Hill area that was stupendously delicious, marrying two detail-minded cuisines with some nice balance that brought out the best in each one.  This was before Fusion Cuisine was big news all over, and long before it passed from cutting-edge to its present state of horrific overuse.  I can amuse myself for hours (Food Nerd over-share!) inventing or merely cataloging foods I categorize as Confusion Cuisine.  It's an excellent distraction if you are stuck in an airport somewhere, both because you will be bored and because you will see a higher proportion of examples roaming all around you.  Airport food courts are a rich natural habitat for Confusion Cuisine.  Think Wasabi Hummus on a Parmesan-Sundried Tomato Wrap with Feta. Think Cajun Shrimp Alfredo with Pita.  Think Grilled Chicken Breast with Kung Pao glaze and Pineapple Pico de Gallo. 

But borrowing a little here and a little there can work out, if a light hand and steady eye on digestibility are brought to bear.

If I had eaten this alone, I might have wondered if it was worth telling you about.  But wrestling over the bowl was observed at the table.  Maybe families all share a skewed tastebud. Let me know.

food-court-here-we-come tomato salad

handful of dried wakame seaweed

1 cucumber, peeled and seeded (if the seeds are large) and coarsely chopped

2 tomatoes, coarsely chopped

large handful of basil leaves, chopped

dash (or more) of sriracha chili sauce

3t (or to taste) tamari or soy sauce

1T EV olive oil

dash toasted sesame oil

squeeze of lemon or dash of rice vinegar

Soak the wakame in cool water to rehydrate; drain, pressing excess water out.  Toss everything together and taste to adjust seasoning to your liking.  Improves with ten minutes or so of resting time, which will mellow things a bit.  This is also true of people.

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!

nuts to you

It is seventy degrees here, sunny as all get-out, and all three progeny are off school for the week. So you can relax in total confidence that nothing I tell you about this week will be especially complicated.

Here are the cookies I promised you on Friday. Here is what they are not, particularly: complicated, beautiful, indulgent.

Here is what they are: insanely simple, delicious, satisfying and exciting for your mouth.



The recipe comes from my friend Naomi, who got it from her friend Lina. These two women wield mighty spoons. Do not doubt them. Especially do not doubt Naomi's warnings and caveats, reproduced for you almost verbatim below from the text message she wrote me on the train where she was when she received my frantic plea for the instructions.

I cannot even really tolerate eating raw almonds; it produces the kind of itchiness that leads directly to scraffing your front teeth along your tongue repeatedly, pausing only to manifest that garchy hairball noise in the back of the throat that is so taxing on a marriage. And yet I ate the dough, and then I ate some more. When I say the recipe makes about a dozen nuggets, I mean that in the end, that is about how many you will be able to bake. If, in your haste to get the dough in the oven and away from your grabby hands, you do not heed the warning about compacting it firmly between two spoons and the cookies look a little fall-apart-ish once baked, you can smish them together a little while they are still warm. Again, this is not the sort of thing I would want anyone to know that I recommend. I am just saying it can be done.



Lina and Naomi's version requires not one iota of improvement, but for giggles there is a variation below it that seems to have worked out fine.

naomi & lina's almond cookies
makes about a dozen

Turn oven on to 300 and line a baking sheet with parchment.

1 cup raw almonds
1/4 cup maple syrup
A good fat pinch of good salt
Dash vanilla
2 cardamom pods, shells removed
2 tsp water

Chop everything up in a food processor until it looks right and kind of sticks together. Try not to eat it all when raw. (Maybe make a double batch next time, eh?)

Put small spoonfuls, well-compacted between two teaspoons, onto the parchment-lined pan. Bake about 20 minutes or until they are a nice golden color. Remove them to a cooling rack. Eat them before anybody notices and start another batch right away.....

Variation on that theme:
Replace the maple syrup with honey. Replace the cardamom with a fat pinch of red pepper flakes, add a teaspoon of grated fresh ginger root and then proceed as above, in the vain hope that the kick of spice will slow you down before you eat it all.