Blog Bites 9: The Holiday Buffet

Towards the end of last year, in a moment of temporary insanity, I declared that I would try 40 new recipes in 40 days and post about each one until the new year. It was a crazy and exhilarating experience. This year, I have better control over my impulsive behavior. Still, I am keen on making the best of what's left of 2010 and cooking and baking to my heart's content.

The rest of the year is packed with holidays so I expect most food bloggers will be churning out festive meals. And our last Blog Bites potluck was so much fun that I decided a good way to celebrate would be to host another potluck buffet.

I took a screenshot of the recipes bookmarked on my computer yesterday and this is what it looks like: there are about 55 recipes in here, and I'm dying to try each one. More are being added to this list on a daily basis, I might add.

Perhaps you too have recipes bookmarked from other blogs that are sitting around waiting to be made. This is your chance to try any recipe from another blog and bring it to the holiday buffet. You have almost 2 months to send in entries (yes, this is a double edition) and depending on how many entries arrive, I might do a string of round-ups or one massive holiday buffet.

The Rules

1. From now until December 25, try ANY recipe from another blog. 
2. The recipe has to come from another blog; that is the whole premise of Blog Bites, so please turn to other blogs for inspiration.
3. Write a post telling us about the recipe you tried, with the following (a) A link to the recipe on the inspiring blog (b) A link to this post (the event announcement).
4. Please write a post specifically for this event.
5. Please do NOT copy a recipe word for word from another blog- that would be both illegal and unethical. Let's all give credit where credit is due.
6. Please make sure your entry meets all the rules above. Then, send me the link (URL) of your entry at the following e-mail address: OneHotStove AT gmail DOT com
7. You can send in as many entries as you like.

I will kick things off with my very first entry to BB9: butternut curry soup inspired by this recipe from Not Eating Out in New York. This blog has a nice feature- it rates recipes by cost, health factor and environmental impact. If you live in or around NYC, you might be interested in the local food event listing in the left side-bar.

Coming to the recipe: For the last three weeks, ever since winter squash made an appearance at the local market, I have been buying one medium butternut squash every week. Each is large enough that I can cut it and cook it, and use it in two different dishes that week. So far, one butternut squash was made into soup and quesadillas, another went into chili and dal and so on- it is simply a wonderful versatile vegetable with a sweet buttery taste.

A whole butternut squash can look formidable- you look at it and wonder, how on earth am I going to cut this thing without an axe and without losing a digit or two? These two tutorials were very helpful, and now I've combined some of the tips to come up with a method that works for me, as follows:

1. Cut off slivers at the top and bottom. 
2. Stand the squash upright and carefully cut it down the middle into two halves. 
3. Scoop out seeds and innards and discard (you can save the seeds and toast them).
4. To cook, either use the microwave or oven. I use the former because it takes only minutes.
5. Place the halves in a dish that will fit in your microwave. Pour in some water, to create steam. 
6. Microwave for 8-12 minutes, a few minutes at a time until the squash is fairly tender. 
7. Cool and store in the fridge until use. To use, peel (much easier now that it is cooked) and cut into cubes. 

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

1. Heat 2 tsp. oil and saute a large minced onion with salt and pepper.

2. Add the following and saute for 2 minutes:

• 1 chopped tomato
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tsp. Sri Lankan curry powder (or your favorite masala)
• 1 tsp. paprika
• 1 tsp. red chili powder (optional, but the heat contrasts well with sweet squash)

3. Add cubed butternut squash (4 cups or so, half of a medium squash) and saute for 2 minutes.

4. Add 1 cup thick coconut milk and 2 to 3 cups water or vegetable stock. Simmer for 10 minutes. 

5. Blend the soup using an immersion blender. Garnish if fresh herbs if desired and serve. 

For something so simple, this soup has incredible flavor- you must give it a try. I served it with egg pulao. 

I'm looking forward to eating down my bookmarks by the end of the year, and here's hoping you will join me for this special edition of Blog Bites.

Making Yogurt at Home

Before I begin this post, I have a question for you all. A reader sent me this description and asked if I could identify this fruit/vegetable. I am stumped and have no idea at all. The reader asked,

" I was hoping you could help me identify a fruit that I ate in India. It looked like an edamame/soybean pod with prominent bulges. If you peeled away the green part, the insides were several pods that were pinkish/whitish in color. Not at all sticky. Each pod had a black seed that resembled a tamarind seed. Any idea what this fruit is called? I bought it at a street vendor in a market in Ahmadabad. Perhaps it is a vegetable? I did see people peeling the pods and eating the white/pink parts and spitting out the seed. The taste was sort of mildly sweet and astringent...This fruit looked like a bean that had curled up. Each 'bean' was say 3-4 inches long and maybe half an inch across."

Within 15 minutes of writing this post, three people- Khushi, Sana, Uma- identified it simultaneously as Manila Tamarind.

Moving on to today's post... (updated in January 2022)

My downstairs neighbor dropped in for a chat. The conversation turned to post-apocalyptic books and movies, triggered by my mention of The Road, and the neighbor says to me, "Well, if we have an apocalypse, I want to be near you, because you would know how to cook and knit and make stuff from scratch". I burst out laughing because I know what she means, in that many people today are accomplished as never before, but can be shockingly lacking in basic life skills, so my love for home cooking and knitting is often seen as charmingly anachronistic ("You do know that they sell hats and scarves in Target, right?") The other reason for my amusement is that on the homesteading scale, I fall woefully short in terms of survival skills- if we had an apocalypse, yes, I could keep your feet warm by knitting you socks, but I certainly could not make my own yarn to be able to do that. 

Anyway, it remains one of my goals in life- to learn to do things from scratch, one small step at a time. The things I consume should not be mysterious objects that magically appear in stores to be bought; I want to know a little bit about how they are made and possibly make them myself.

One of my baby steps: for the past year or so, I have been making yogurt at home. Now, for a household in India, this is the most banal thing. In almost every home, on a daily basis, a spoonful of yesterday's dahi is stirred into a bowl of warm milk and put to bed for the night so the family wakes up to fresh yogurt the next day.

But for all the years I have run my own household in the US, I've simply bought tubs of low-fat yogurt and been quite happy about it. I found a couple of brands I liked- Dannon, Trader Joe's- and that was it. Last year, I finally tried setting my own yogurt. I don't know anybody in town who makes yogurt on a regular basis, so the possibility of begging for a starter culture was out. I tried using some "active live cultures" commercial yogurt as a starter but it took ages to set and the yogurt was far from perfect. What did work like a charm were dried starter cultures of friendly yogurt-making bacteria- I learned about these dried cultures, sold under the brand Yogourmet, on the Jugalbandi blog, now no longer active.

Yogurt-making does not require any special equipment but some tools come in handy. Here's what I use.

1. Milk: Whole milk makes thick and dreamy yogurt but 2% also works.

2. Yogourmet dried yogurt culture: I have bought this in natural groceries and online. You also need the packet for the first batch; subsequent batches will use a bit of starter culture from the previous batch.

4. A candy thermometer: This is helpful when heating up the milk to the right temperature and adding culture when it cools to the right temperature. You can always estimate these using sight and touch, but a thermometer makes it very precise. 

5. Milk powder: If you like thick, protein-rich yogurt, this is a good addition.  

Yogurt making is not an issue in summer but may need some consideration during the colder months of the year. To incubate the yogurt, you can set it in a warm, draft-free place, like an oven with the light on for a few hours. Another idea is to use an insulated casserole as your yogurt container. These kind of insulated casseroles were all the rage in India in the 70s and 80s and even to this day; I noticed on my last trip to Bombay that they are cheap and easily available in stores everywhere. Another idea is to use the yogurt setting on multicookers such as the Instant Pot. 

Homemade Yogurt

1. In a saucepan, pour 4 cups whole milk and clip a candy thermometer (if you have one) to the side of the pan.
2. Let the milk heat to 180F (or until it is steaming and bubbles are forming on the sides of the pan) and then turn off the heat. Heating the milk to this temperature improves the consistency of the resulting yogurt so do not skip this step.
3. Let the milk sit there until it cools to 115-110F (lukewarm but not hot).
4. To a container that you want to set yogurt in, add 2 tbsp. skim milk powder and either a packet of dried yogurt culture or a couple of tablespoons of yogurt from your previous batch. Pour in a little of the warm milk. Use a whisk to dissolve the cultures into the milk. Then pour in the rest of the milk and whisk to distribute the cultures evenly. 
5. Put a lid on the container and leave it undisturbed for 6-7 hours at room temperature or until the yogurt sets. You will know when a bit of whey separates from the solids. 
6. Refrigerate the yogurt as soon as it sets otherwise it will get too sour.

The only "tricky" part, if you want to call it that, is to remember to check on the milk periodically as it is cooling and add the cultures as soon as the temperature falls to 115-110F. If you let the milk get cold, the bacteria won't have their ideal growth conditions. 

In my home, Dale gets the thin skin of malai (cream) that forms on the cooling milk. He knows the minute I start warming the milk that the malai treat is coming soon. So he watches the pan like a hawk and every few minutes, he comes and finds me wherever I am and nudges me to remind me of the milk- that way, I always remember to add the warm milk at just the right time. Dogs are good for many things!

I'm happy I started making yogurt for several reasons-

1. Texture: Don't get me wrong, I like store bought yogurt just fine and have eaten it for years. But since I started to make yogurt at home, I love how the texture is creamy but never gummy.
2. Packaging waste: I'm very happy to be able to avoid the plastic yogurt tubs. I always reused the tubs (for pantry storage) or recycled them, but reduce beats both reuse and recycle.
3. Cost: Yogurt cultures and milk cost money, but homemade yogurt is still significantly cheaper than store-bought stuff.
4. Streamlining my grocery list: I use fresh yogurt in place of sour cream and cream cheese in dips and spreads and to dollop on burritos, so I have cut down significantly on buying other dairy products.

Supplementary reading: Harold Mcgee's New York Times article has plenty of great information on making yogurt at home.

Is there anything you have learnt to make from scratch that you previously bought?