Archive for November, 2007
Indian food has intimidated me more than any other cuisine. Only recently have I begun to experiment with it, but I’m still completely overwhelmed with the vast amount of things I don’t know about: there are ingredients I’ve never heard of, approximately one hundred bajillion types of lentils (I counted), endless variations on dishes between regions of India, culinary traditions that vary from family to family, and a number of different languages used to describe all these things. I could spend my entire life studying Indian food and always be learning something new.
The good news is I don’t have to know everything to start making dinner. Thank god.
When it comes to cooking, there’s no better place for me to learn than in the kitchen with someone who knows what’s what. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to learn a bit about Indian cooking at the home of my husband’s boss, Nars. Nars and his family are from India, and they graciously invited us over for dinner, allowing us to hang out in the kitchen and learn how to make the dishes we would be eating. It was an invaluable experience for me, and today I want to share with you some of what I learned that night.
Flatbreads are common in India, with numerous variations. There’s roti, puri, parathas, chapatti, naan, bhakri, bhatoora, papadum… I’m sure the list goes on. Today I’m going to show you how to make parathas, both plain and stuffed with spiced potatoes. Parathas are my favorite — they’re flavorful, easy to make, easy to customize, and they go with a lot of different main dishes.
The first thing you’ll need is the right kind of flour. It’s often referred to “duram atta.” It’s a combination of stone-ground wheat and regular flour that’s perfect for roti, chapatti, and parathas. The brand I use is Golden Temple. Once you have the flour, you’re set. Here’s the recipe for the dough:
Paratha Dough
Makes 8 parathas
1 Cup Golden Temple Flour (duram atta)
1/3 — 1/2 Cup Water
1/2 tsp Salt
2-3 tsp Oil
Combine all the ingredients in a medium sized mixing bowl. Depending on the humidity in your area and how compacted your flour is, you’ll need anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 cup of water. Add 1/3 cup first, adding more water if needed. Your goal is to achieve a soft, elastic dough after about 5 minutes of kneading. It shouldn’t be sticky, but smooth. I don’t sift my flour, so my “1 cup” tends to be a heavy one, and I use 1/2 cup of water to get the dough consistency I like the best. Keep in mind that a softer dough will yield more tender bread, but may be harder to control. After kneading, the dough should look like the image above.
Break the dough up into 8 equal pieces, rolling into balls. Set in a small, oiled bowl and cover with some oiled plastic wrap. Let the dough balls rest for as long as you can - 30 minutes up to a few hours. This allows the gluten to relax. If you’re making aloo parathas, begin making the potato mixture now.
Aloo Stuffing
For 8 Parathas
2 Medium Potatoes
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Garam Masala
1/2 tsp Cumin Seeds
1/4 tsp Turmeric
1/4 tsp Red Chili Flakes
5 Sprigs of Cilantro, chopped
Peel, chop and boil potatoes until fork tender. Drain well. Use a ricer or food mill to mash potatoes. This ensures there are no lumps in your potatoes that could break the dough while stuffing the parathas. Add in the remaining ingredients and mix well. Form 8 balls the same size (or smaller) as your dough balls, cover, and set aside.
Now for the fun part! It’s time to stuff and roll out the dough. Before you start, heat your pan up and get your workspace ready. Choose a pan that heats quickly and evenly, has a non-stick surface, a wide, flat bottom and low sides. It ideal pan for this is usually seasoned iron. The traditional pan is called a tawa, but a crepe pan, pancake pan, or cast-iron skillet works just as well. For your workspace, you’ll need a bowl full of flour, a cutting board or other flat surface for rolling out the dough, and a small rolling pin called a Belan. (Or do what I did and use a clean, label-less beer bottle.)
Heat your pan over medium heat with a very light coating of oil.
For Aloo Parathas
Dip one of the dough balls in the flour to coat it.
Flatten it out into a disc.
Roll out the dough a little, so it’s large enough to cover the potato ball. Wrap a potato ball with the dough, gathering the edges together.
Pinch the edges together to seal, flattening it into a disc again.
Dip it in the flour again, coating all sides.
Roll out the disc evenly into a circle, roughly six inches in diameter. The dough should be thin enough so you can see the spices through it.
Place the paratha on your heated pan. You’ll see the dough begin to change color (it gets slightly yellow and dry-looking), and then, with any luck, it’ll puff up! Once it puffs up, check the bottom–if you see scattered brown dots, flip the paratha over. Oil the cooked side of the paratha lightly. Cook the second side until it looks like the first, flip it again, and oil it. Your paratha should be finished cooking in 1-2 minutes, and should not look raw when it’s done. Keep warm in a tortilla heater, or in a low oven on a covered plate.
Do you want to make plain parathas? I got you covered. There are two ways I was taught to fold the parathas to make sure they’re tender and flakey. Follow the link below for step-by-step photos of both techniques!
Easy Triangle Parathas
Dip your dough ball in flour and roll out to a 6″ disc. Coat one side with oil.
Fold it in half and coat it in oil again.
Fold the oiled sides together again to make a triangle. Coat it in flour.
Roll out the triangle to about 6″ and follow the cooking instructions in the main recipe above. To ensure your paratha stays tender, you must “break” it when it comes off the pan. Simply crumple it a bit, like your crumpling a piece of paper to throw away. I know people who do this with their bare hands, but I recommend using a towel to prevent burning yourself. Don’t “break” stuffed parathas.
A More Difficult Spirial Paratha
Dip your dough ball in flour and roll out to a 6″ disc. Coat one side with oil.
Fold the dough like a fan, forming a long strip of folded dough.
Roll the strip of folded dough into a spiral shape.
Tuck the end underneath and press to hold it there.
Dip the spiral into flour and roll it out into a 6″ circle.
Follow the cooking instructions in the main recipe above. To ensure your paratha stays tender, you must “break” it when it comes off the pan. Simply crumple it a bit, like your crumpling a piece of paper to throw away. I know people who do this with their bare hands, but I recommend using a towel to prevent burning yourself. Don’t “break” stuffed parathas.
You can roll out the next paratha while the last one is cooking, just keep glancing over at the stove to see if it has puffed yet. Rolling the dough out in one of these two ways creates layers in the dough that make for a tender, flakey finished product. Every time I make parathas they get better, so don’t be distressed if they don’t come out right the first couple of times. They take practice. Keep at it, and they’ll keep improving, I promise. They are best eaten immediately, but you can refrigerate them and re-heat them in your pan the same way you cooked them. Good luck and have fun!
November 27th, 2007
I know a lot of you have probably already planned your Thanksgiving menu, but I thought I’d put up this easy side dish just in case. It’s just a simple candied sweet potato dish, but the addition of lime really makes it special for me. You can throw fresh parsley on the top, or if you’re feeling a bit less traditional, fresh coriander (cilantro).
I think sometimes people forget that the cut of the vegetable you choose is really important for the overall texture and flavor of a dish. This dish will almost definitely work without slicing the sweet potatoes so thinly, but the delicate candied rounds give it an elegant appearance and uniform texture. Every bite becomes infused with the sweet lime syrup. I used a Japanese mandoline that allowed me to quickly slice the sweet potatoes evenly and efficiently. If I was working with only a knife, I wouldn’t attempt to get slices this thin and accurate. Thicker coins or chunks will work just as well, but if you have a mandoline, this is the perfect dish to use it for. The slicing disc of your food processor will also work.
Candied Lime Sweet Potatoes
Serves Four
2 Sweet Potatoes, peeled
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 tsp Molasses
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Tbs Fresh Lime Juice (no bottled stuff!)
Zest from 1 Small Lime
1/2 tsp Minced Ginger or 1/4 tsp Ginger Powder, optional
Black Pepper, to taste
Earth Balance, for dotting
Parsley or Cilantro, for garnish
Preheat oven to 400º F.
Slice sweet potatoes thinly, about 1/8″, with a mandoline or a food processor. Mix remaining ingredients (except pepper, earth balance and garnish) together to form a paste. Coat the sliced sweet potatoes well with the lime sugar mixture.
Arrange the coated slices in overlapping rows in one layer in an oiled casserole dish. Dot with earth balance, sprinkle with pepper, and wrap tightly with two layers of aluminum foil.
Bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake uncovered for an additional 10 minutes. It’s okay if it looks a little watery when you remove the foil, it’ll reduce and form a nice glaze during the rest of the baking. Finish under the broiler to brown the top. Sprinkle with parsley/cilantro and serve immediately.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
November 20th, 2007
Sometimes you need to trust the classics.
Two times I found a celeriac in my possession, and two times I let it go to waste. I wanted to use it. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to eat it.
Every article I read about celeriac starts the same way: It’s ugly and unpopular, but I swear you’ll like it! It’s humble, gnarly, and caked in dirt, but just try it! It’s tough and fibrous, but treat it right, and you’ll fall in love.
Celeriac certainly has a small but passionate fan club. But even much-loathed brussels sprouts make it to the table during the holidays (I, for one, adore them), and no one has ever attempted to serve me celery root. I figured that if it actually tasted good, it must be such a pain in the ass to prepare it that it wasn’t worth the time.
A brief rundown of celeriac: It’s a root vegetable, and it’s not simply the root of green ribbed celery, but a related plant. It’s about the size of an oblong baseball (or slightly larger), and it’s covered in twisted, knotted roots that collect dirt. The prevailing flavor is celery, but a milder, nuttier flavor than the crispy stalks provide. Some people taste notes of anise, but I didn’t detect that personally. It’s in the same family as carrots, coriander, cumin, fennel, parsley and lovage. It keeps ridiculously well in your refrigerator; wikipedia says you can get 3-4 months of storage out of it if it doesn’t dry out. I wouldn’t keep one that long, but I mention it to underscore the fact I seriously did not have an excuse for not eating the first two I had; it’s not like they went bad.
I remembered today that I had a third, fragrant celeriac taking up room in my refrigerator thanks to my CSA. Stewart was at the office, so I figured I could scrape the whole mess into the trash and pretend nothing had happened, should something go awry. All I needed was a recipe.
People use celery root in a lot of dishes (supposedly), but the classic recipe is something called celery rémoulade. It’s French, and it seems to be as popular in France as cole slaw is here in the states. Since it’s easy to prepare, and widely consumed, I figured celery rémoulade was a good bet. But I needed one final piece of insurance—I adapted a recipe from Julia Child. If I didn’t like celery root prepared this way, chances are I wasn’t going to like it at all.
I’ll quit stalling and tell you what I thought. Holy crap this stuff is good. It wasn’t at all bitter, and shredding and tenderizing the root changed what might have been described as tough and fibrous into delightfully crunchy. The celery flavor tasted… well… warm. If warm was a flavor instead of a feeling, it might taste like celery rémoulade. The creamy Dijon dressing really brought it together, and I can’t wait to have some with my dinner. You should definitely, definitely try this out.
Celery Rémoulade — Adapted from Julia Child
Serves 4-6 as a side dish
1 1/2 tsp Salt
1 1/2 tsp Fresh Lemon Juice
1 Celeriac
Dressing
1/4 Cup Dijon Mustard (check label and make sure there are no eggs in it!)
3 Tbs Boiling Water
1/3 — 1/2 Cup Mild Oil (canola, safflower)
2 Tbs White Wine Vinegar
1/4 tsp Salt (or more to taste)
1/3 — 1/2 Cup Veganaise (vegan mayo)
3 Tbs Fresh Parsley, chopped
Place salt and lemon juice in the bottom of a large bowl. Rinse the root and remove as much dirt as possible with a brush. Using a large, sharp chef’s knife, remove the skin, cutting away the twisted roots. Working quickly (the root will discolor if exposed to air too long), quarter the root and shred finely in a food processor. Add the shredded celeriac to the bowl containing the salt and lemon and toss well, making sure all of the pieces are coated. Leave to tenderize for 20 minutes while preparing dressing. The lemon juice will protect it from browning.
Place another bowl over a pot of warm water on the stove, warming the bowl (like a double-boiler). Add mustard and water and whisk well. Gently drizzle in the oil and whisk to emulsify—take your time so the dressing doesn’t “break”. Dribble in the vinegar, whisking all the while. Add salt.
Rinse the celery root with fresh water and dry well, rolling it in paper towels and squeezing out as much water as you can. Put it back in the bowl (dry the bowl, too) and add the dressing and toss well. Fold in the Veganaise and parsley.
You can eat it immediately, but this refrigerates well. The longer it is refrigerated, up to a few days, the more tender the celeriac gets.
November 12th, 2007
Consider the unloved rutabaga. It’s a cross between a turnip and a cabbage, two other frequently skipped-over veggies. If Frumpy and Unloveable had a root vegetable baby, it’d be a rutabaga. Like most winter vegetables, they store very well after harvesting. This means you can usually find rutabagas year round. As far as I can tell, this is why they’re unpopular.
Rutabagas were one of the only available foods during WWI in many countries, because they’re easy to grow and easy to store. They soon got a reputation as being “famine food” and many, many people had simply eaten too many of them. This dislike was so strong that even people who have never been forced to live off of rutabagas revile them. Ask someone in the US if they like rutabagas, and they will probably say no. Ask that same person if they’ve ever had one, and they’ll probably say no to that, too.
Granted, I’m sure there are people out there who have given rutabagas a fair shot in recent memory and still dislike them. But there’s no way everyone dislikes them. In fact, you might even like them! Even if you don’t know it yet.
Now I really like the word “rutabaga”. It’s fun to say. Maybe that’s why I gave them a chance. I have a theory that we need to stop calling them rutabagas if we want people to try them. But maybe it isn’t the name? Maybe everyone loves the word rutabaga and the problem lies elsewhere? I decided to do an experiment on my husband:
Me: Vegetable aside, what does just the word “rutabaga” make you think about?
Husband: A car part, like a carburetor.
Me: Hmm.
Husband: Or some kind of rickshaw.
Clearly the name needs to go.
I propose we call them what nearly every other country calls them: swedes. It seems to me that the majority of people out there who like rutabagas don’t live in the US and therefore don’t call them rutabagas. If you’re ever searching for recipes for them, search for the word “swedes” as well and you’ll get a whole different set of recipes.
Swedes can be used a slew of different ways. They’re nice boiled and mashed, like potatoes. A popular dish, called rotmos, is a mix of mashed rutabagas, potatoes and carrots, seasoned with butter and salt. You can roast them, fry them, saute them, or eat them raw. They’re generally sweet with a mild turnip like flavor, and they smell like fresh cabbage. I think they’re quite delightful.
If you’re going to give them a try, but don’t know where to start, you can try the soup I threw together today for lunch. Almost everything in it is roasted first, which gives a nice, rich flavor. I think it’s a safe way to experiment with swedes. If you’re not digging it as a soup, add some earth balance, nutritional yeast, and more salt and it makes an interesting and creamy pasta sauce. I often do that with the leftovers the next day.
Oh, and as an added bonus, this recipe is soy free!
Swede Potato Soup with Fried Spaghetti Squash and Toasted Pepitas
Serves two
Roasting the Vegetables
1 Spaghetti Squash, halved and seeded (for garnish, but you’ll have leftovers)
1 Head Garlic
2 Cups Rutabaga, peeled and diced
1 1/2 Cups Sweet Potato, peeled and diced
Oil
Salt
Pepper
Preaheat oven to 400º F.
Rub squash with oil and place cut-side down on a roasting pan.
Cut the top off the head of garlic and remove the papery skin, reserving the skin on the cloves themselves. Drizzle with oil and wrap in aluminum foil. Place on the same baking sheet.
Coat the rutabaga sweet potato in oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add these to the baking sheet.
Bake for 50-60 minutes until everything is golden, soft, and well-roasted. Allow garlic to cool a bit before opening the foil package.
Making the Soup
1/2 Onion, chopped
Roasted Sweet Potatoes, from above
Roasted Rutabaga, from above
1/2 Cup Cashews
2 Cups water, more if needed
1 Bullion Cube
1 Pinch Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Dried Thyme
Roasted Garlic, from above, as much as the whole head if you’re brave
Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the head and reserve the paste. If you’re not using all of it, you can freeze it in an ice cube tray and add it to recipes as you wish.
Saute onion until very soft and caramelized, about 10 minutes. Blend all of the above ingredients in a high-speed blender until smooth. If you’re worried your blender will not blend the nuts completely, you can sub soy or coconut milk for the water and skip the nuts, and/or strain the soup. It’ll taste a little different, but it’ll still be delicious. Add water as desired to get preferred thickness.
Making the Garnish, optional
1/4 Cup Pepitas
1/4 Cup Roasted Spaghetti Squash, see above
2 tsp All Purpose Flour
1 Pinch Salt
Oil
Heat a small amount of oil in a cast iron pan over medium heat. Add pepitas and cook until browned. Be careful, they may pop and fly around while cooking. Remove to a bowl to stop the cooking and set aside.
Scrape out the roasted spaghetti squash into bowl with a fork. Roll the strands in a paper towel or clean kitchen cloth and squeeze out as much moisture as you can. Replace squash in the bowl, add a pinch of salt and the flour and mix well.
Heat a cast-iron pan over very high heat with some oil. Spread out spaghetti squash in a thin, lacy layer and let brown on both sides until, until crisp. Drain on a paper towel.
November 7th, 2007
I really loved the apple and brown sugar flavor of those instant oatmeal packets when I was little. (I might even still like it now, but I’ve done my best to eliminate anything labeled “instant” from my diet.) We had an insta-hot faucet, so I could dump the powdered, sugary oats into a bowl and turn it into a snack as quickly as I could stir. This recipe is the adult version, using a fresh apple and steel-cut oats. There’s also a little dash of nutmeg, and little dashes of nutmeg remind me of donuts, which is never a bad thing in my opinion.
So let’s talk about oats.
Steel-cut oats are the less processed version of the oats we’re more familiar with, rolled oats. At least, rolled oats are the oats I’m most familiar with. While rolled oats are just as much a whole grain as steel-cut, they have been steamed, flattened, steamed again and then toasted dry. A steel-cut oat is simply cut into three or four pieces and then dried. Some people say the rolled oat, being more processed, has less nutrition and less flavor than the steel-cut variety, but I haven’t found any conclusive proof of that (in three minutes of googling).
There is a clear difference between the two; steel-cut oats take much, much longer to cook than rolled oats. It can take steel cut oats up to 40 minutes to cook, compared to rolled oats which finish up in a mere 5 minutes. Steel-cut retain their texture better after cooking, resulting in a chewier breakfast than standard rolled oats provide. Some people who are really into their oats insist that the steel-cut version has a nuttier, fuller flavor. You’ll find many people willing to invest the time in steel-cut oats just for their toothsome texture and full flavor.
Keep in mind oats come in more than these two versions. You can find whole oat groats (Wow. Oat groat? That’s really the term for it?), which are the least processed and take the longest to cook. The next step down from the whole oat groat is steel-cut, then rolled oats, quick-cooking oats, and instant oats. Generally, avoiding both ends of the spectrum is the best advice. Whole oat groats take forever to cook (I think pre-soaking is even recommended) and instant oats are so mushy and formless, they’re not worthwhile when you can make quick cooking and even rolled oats in under 5 minutes.
While I’m geeking out about oats, I should mention that quick cooking oats are generally preferred for making oatmeal cookies. I read that rolled oats can be used, but the dough should be refrigerated for 20 minutes to let the oats soften up by absorbing some moisture before baking. I’ve definitely used rolled oats in cookies without doing the refrigeration trick, so feel free to ignore this paragraph entirely if you’ve got a cookie recipe that works for you.
Apple Cinnamon Steel-Cut Oatmeal
Serves One Hearty Breakfast Portion, Two Petite Portions
2 tsp Non-Hydrogenated Vegan Margarine
1/2 Cup Steel Cut Oats
1 1/2 Cups Hot water
1/4 tsp Cinnamon
1 Pinch Salt
1/2 Cooking Apple, diced
1/4 Cup Soy, Oat, or Nut Milk
1-2 tsp Brown Sugar (or regular sugar with a small drizzle of molasses)
1 Tiny Pinch Nutmeg, optional
Heat margarine in a small sauce pot that has a tight fitting lid. Add oats and toast them for 1-2 minutes, until fragrant. Add cinnamon and salt, stir well. Stir in hot water and bring to a brisk boil. Cover and turn down heat. After 15 minutes, add apple, milk, and sugar and stir. Cook for another 5 minutes uncovered, stirring occasionally.
If after 5 minutes you’d prefer your oatmeal to be thicker, cover and turn off heat and let sit for an additional 5-10 minutes. This gives the oats a chance to absorb more liquid without running the risk of burning the oatmeal. Also, the oatmeal at this point is approximately the temperature of magma, so you might as well let it cool down a bit before you dig in.
If you feel like dressing up your oatmeal, drizzle it with a small amount of molasses and a pinch of nutmeg, or sprinkle it with additional brown sugar, or add a fresh apple slice or two to the top.
November 6th, 2007
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