Potato Cheese Patties

Summer seems to be the time for get-togethers, an excuse for spending long afternoons clustered around a table that is groaning with food and drink and noshing with abandon.

I made these little cheese-filled morsels earlier this summer and we made a big batch again yesterday to take to a party. The patties disappeared in minutes (late arrivals to the party were met with an empty platter) and since this is such a crowd-pleaser, I wanted to jot down the recipe here for my own future reference.

The recipe calls for a liberal use of many spices, because I wanted the patties to be tasty enough on their own, without a chutney or dipping sauce, and I wanted them to taste good even at room temperature.

The hardest part was answering the question, "what are these?"- V and I mumbled something like "they are little...things...you know, with potatoes and herbs and cheese". Call them patties or croquettes or tikkis or "things", people are happy to eat them and that's all that matters sometimes. The recipe below made 24 patties, each about the size of my palm.

Potato Cheese Patties

1. Boil about 10 medium potaoes. When cool enough to handle, peel and mash the potatoes.

2. Heat 1-2 tablespoons of oil in a large, heavy skillet and saute 1 large onion, minced fine, until golden.

3. Add 3 shredded medium carrots and 1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste and saute well.

4. Add turmeric, red chilli powder, coriander powder, cumin powder and Kitchen King masala and salt (all to taste but be sure to add enough to season the bland potatoes that will be added later). Saute for a minute more and turn off the heat.

5. When this mixture cools, stir in the mashed potato, large handfuls of minced cilantro and fresh mint, a teaspoon or less of sugar and chaat masala to taste. Knead the mixture gently to mix well and taste it. Adjust seasonings if necessary.

6. Shred 1 cup Pepper Jack cheese and 1 cup cheddar cheese and mix them together to make the filling.

7. Divide the potato mixture into 24 portions. Pat each portion into a disc, fill with some cheese and pinch the edges together to make a stuffed patty. Shallow fry the patties using a few drops of oil. Don't worry if some cheese leaks out of an occasional patty, it will crisp up in the hot pan and seal the leak. The cook gets to eat the leaky patties ;)

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The Print Lover gave me a sweet award (thank you!) and tagged me for a meme. The meme had a lot of questions about fashion and style and these things are not my forte (to put it very very mildly) so I'm just answering a few of the questions here...

1. What is your current obsession?
Knitting socks. I just made my first pair (Fall colors!) and I am smitten. I was warned that sock knitting is addictive and that seems about right.

Pattern: Wise Hilda's Basic Ribbed Sock.

3. What’s for dinner?
Spaghetti squash with sauteed onions, red peppers and kidney beans, topped with a dollop of sour cream and habanero-lime salsa. I was inspired by this recipe.

6. What do you think about the person who tagged you?
I'm glad she delurked!

7. If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
In a liberal, eco-friendly, walking-friendly, dog-friendly community- anywhere in the world.

16. What’s your favorite magazine?
The New Yorker

17. If you had $100 now, what would you spend it on?
KnitPicks yarn

20. Describe your personal style.
Shabby Chic. OK- Much Shabby with just a hint of chic.

22. What are your favorite movies?
Documentaries. Two memorable ones are Mad Hot Ballroom and Born Into Brothels. I'd love to hear your recommendations for good documentaries.

28. What is the meaning of your name?
Nupur means "ankle jewelry" in several Indian languages. In particular, it often means ghungroo or the bells worn by Indian classical dancers on their ankles. Click here to see a picture of these beautiful metal bells and here is a picture of a dancer wearing them. In keeping with my name, I did learn Indian classical dance (kathak) for 10+ years as a child. Dance is my favorite art form. About my name, people seem to either love it or think it is very outlandish. I love it :)

29. Which other blogs you love visiting?
I read hundreds of food blog and like visiting them all, but I'll mention three non-food blogs that I enjoy reading- The Happiness Project, Zen Habits and Kamini's wonderful blog, Tales of South India.

Can you believe September is only hours away? I'll see you in a week or so!

Good Times

Kanchan from Kitchen Gossip gave me a sweet award and asked me to list 7 interesting things about me. Instead, I'll share 7 interesting things I did this weekend, in pictures.

1. Read a book

and started another book written in a similiar vein

2. Finished knitting a scarf

Pattern: Lace Ribbon Scarf by Veronik Avery

3. Went to the Farmers' Market and bought a vegetable I've never cooked before

Can you guess what it is?

4. Tried a new recipe

Molly Wizenberg's Banana Bread with Crystallized Ginger and Chocolate: recipe can be found on various blogs

5. Watched 2 episodes of Foyle's War on DVD

I saw the Foyle's War series first on PBS, and I think it is the most scintillating detective series ever made. Intelligent, sensitive and studded with poignant moments and gentle humor. We have been borrowing episodes from our library and each episode is a treat.

6. Picnicked at a local winery


7. Watched my favorite dog enjoy himself at the picnic


Did you do anything fun this weekend?

I'm off on a work-related trip this week, so I'll be back in 7 days or so.

A Verdant Salad

I'm facing yet another episode of the Magical Never-ending Cabbage. Every time I buy a large head of cabbage, it seems to last forever and ever. I shred it, saute it, steam it for one dish after another, and yet I can never seem to use up the cabbage. Does it sound like I am complaining? Never. Cabbages are the stars of my vegetable crisper. Budget-friendly (the current 5-lb monster cost me 2 bucks and was grown on a local farm), sturdy enough to live in the fridge for a couple of weeks, and versatile, there is much to love here.

This impromptu salad was our dinner last night. I came home to a power cut, after being thoroughly soaked in the thunderstorm that precipitated the power outage. In the half-darkness of the kitchen and the black hole of the fridge, I groped for a few ingredients, chopped them together and put together a salad.

I had been playing with the idea of an avocado-based dressing for some time, with herbs and avocado and yogurt all blended into a thick, creamy dressing. With the food processor out of commission, the herbs went into the salad and the dressing was simply whisked by hand. If you are no salad lover, this is the kind of tasty dressing that will change your mind about eating a salad-only lunch. I speak from experience :)



Salad- In a large bowl, toss together
1 cup cooked black beans
¼ medium head of cabbage, thinly shredded
1 green bell pepper, thinly sliced
Handful of cilantro, minced

Season the salad with salt, pepper and some lemon juice.

Dressing- Mix together
Pulp of 1 ripe avocado
½ cup yogurt
1 fresh hot green chilli pepper, minced
1 tbsp. minced onion
Salt and freshly ground black pepper.


Pile the salad on a plate and ladle on the dressing!

In shades of pastel barely-there green, this dressing looked innocent enough, but the heat of the green chilli asserted itself in every bite.

With three kinds of peppers (bell pepper, chilli pepper and peppercorns), this salad is heading to the soup/salad event No Croutons Required- the theme this month is Peppers.

The Bookmark Project: Walnut Oatmeal Burgers

Cauliflower, potato, onion, cabbage, beetroot, sweet potato, corn, beans, black eyed peas, kidney beans, lentils, brown rice, wheat, soy granules, tofu.

These were some of your guesses when I asked about the two main ingredients of this veggie burger.


All good guesses, and to be sure, over the years I have made veggie burgers with most of these ingredients. But when I spotted this veggie burger on the blog Everybody Likes Sandwiches , the recipe sounded outlandish enough that I just had to bookmark it and try it.

So, dear readers, the two main ingredients of this burger are oats and walnuts!

Mamatha guessed oats correctly (congratulations :D) as did an anonymous reader. No one guessed that this burger is also chock-full of walnuts.

I followed the burger recipe quite closely. It could not be simpler. Walnuts are ground up, then combined with oats, flavored with onions, garlic and herbs, seasoned and the mixture is held together with eggs and some milk. The burger mixture is refrigerated for an hour or so, then formed into 8 hearty patties. At this step, one expects to brown the patties in a skillet, but after browning, this burger is actually cooked in some stock. This was another unusual step.

My modifications (based on what I had on hand): using 2 eggs instead of 3, using dried oregano and thyme in place of the sage, using sooji/rava (semolina) in place of the breadcrumbs and using mushroom stock instead of vegetable stock.

As they were browning, the kitchen filled up with a very savory and unmistakably meaty smell. Not meaty enough to put me off, but meaty enough that it might fool a meat-eater into thinking that this is a "real" burger! There is some chemistry going on here which turns the combination of a nut and a grain into something quite unexpected. These burgers are tasty and very hearty. With all the grains in the burger, we decided to forgo the buns- they would have made the meal too carb-heavy even for me.

To go with the burger, I wanted something crunchy and savory. I had been leafing through Ellie Krieger's book The Food You Crave and a recipe for baked onion rings caught my eye. So, in response to Kamana, who asked, "I can never get my onion rings to crisp and stay that way. how do you fry yours?", the answer is simple- I don't fry them :)

The recipe called for an unusual ingredient to coat the onion rings with some sought-after crunch and crust. I got several guesses for this ingredient- cornflakes, panko, rice, coconut, semolina, vermicelli- but Manisha was spot-on when she guessed that the onion rings were baked and that the crust was made with crushed kettle chips. Yes, indeed these onion rings are coated with crushed potato chips. Manisha, how did you know?

The recipe for the onion rings is here. I added other spices (aleppo pepper, oregano, basil) to the buttermilk mixture and also the crushed potato chips for some extra flavor, and otherwise followed the recipe closely.

For once in my life, I opened a bag of potato chips and did not scarf them down in a few nanoseconds. Instead, I placed them in the food processor and helplessly watched them being pulverized. It was a bit of a challenge to crush the potato chips into a fine powder, and to get them to cling to the onion rings, but we did our best and the results were fantastic. The onion rings are incredibly crunchy and addictive!

Finally, my sincere thanks to all those generous souls who left me fantastic suggestions for the Boston trip. I'm only going there next month but will return with a report of everything that I managed to fit into the oh-so-short trip.

Meanwhile, I have some cabbage and avocados in the fridge and there are some black beans soaking on the counter. Let's see what I can make with these ingredients! Have a great week, everyone.

Questions, Questions...

I've got questions, do you have the answers? ;)

A) What ingredient formed the crust on these onion rings?



B) What are the two main ingredients in this veggie burger?



C) This one is off-topic. I'm going to Boston for a long weekend, so gentle readers, do you have any suggestions for must-see, must-do, must-eat things in Boston? I don't eat seafood so the chowda is out.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone! Answers to the first two questions will be posted on Sunday night.

The Bookmark Project: Dal Makhni

Regular readers of this blog know that I get a special kick out of being able to imitate restaurant favorites in my home kitchen. Dal makhni (which translates as "buttery lentils"- the name says it all) is one of those classic dishes that is probably on the menu of every generic Indian restaurant I've been in.

The simplest recipes are often the hardest to nail down. But lurking in my bookmark folder was a recipe for Dal Makhani, Oberoi Style- a recipe extracted straight from a restaurant chef! I never ever can muster up the courage to ask for recipes at restaurants, and am eternally grateful to bloggers who do this and save me the trouble of reverse engineering a coveted recipe.

The recipe calls for three kinds of legumes- chana dal, black urad dal and red kidney beans or rajma.



At some point, I have had to grapple with the fact that there are an infinite number of beans and lentils and legumes on this planet, as opposed to a woefully finite amount of space in my pantry, and also a finite limit to how many beans and lentils can be consumed by a family of 2 humans (canines, on the whole, seem indifferent to the joys of beans).

The way I keep things under control is to have only(!) about 10 beans/lentils on hand. Some of these are staples and the others are ones that I love but don't use often, and these are on a rotating schedule. As far as urad dals go, the skinned white urad dal (bottom right in the picture above) is a staple for meals of the idli/dosa variety, and the black urad dal is a brand new arrival in the pantry. It is Vaishali's tempting recipe for spicy urad dal (very tasty, by the way) that prompted me to buy it. And suddenly, I had all the ingredients for dal makhni!

As an aside, English is such an exasperating language. Skinned (which sounds like something that has skin) is the same as skinless. I just had to get that off my chest. Moving on.

I modified the recipe a little and here's how I made it. For the complete and proper recipe, visit the wonderful blog that the recipe is adapted from.

Dal Makhni

Adapted from Dal Makhni: Oberoi Style from a Life (Time) of Cooking

1. Soak ½ cup red kidney beans, ½ cup black urad dal and ¼ cup chana dal. I soaked the kidney beans for 16 hours or so and the other dals together for 6-8 hours. Rinse all the legumes thoroughly to get rid of the soaking water. Pressure cook them together, then mash coarsely and set aside.

2. Heat 2 tsp. oil and splutter 1 tsp. cumin seeds, a pinch of asafoetida and 8-10 fenugreek seeds. Add 1 heaped tsp. ginger-garlic paste and stir it for a couple of minutes. Add 2 cups thick tomato puree. Cook the mixture for 5-7 minutes, stirring often.

3. Add the cooked legumes, salt to taste and bring to a boil.

4. Stir in 1 tsp. red chilli powder (or more/less to taste), ¼ cup heavy cream and 1 tbsp. butter. Simmer for 5-10 minutes.

5. Turn off the heat and stir in 1 tsp. garam masala (the best you can find) and 1 tbsp. butter for a glossy finish. That's it.

Thrilled. To. Bits. That was me after I tasted the dal makhni. This one is a keeper, people! To be honest with you, I don't know if I have ever tasted good authentic dal makhni, but this recipe yielded completely delicious results. The slippery mouth-feel of the urad dal makes the dish a silky, buttery experience.

A Life (Time) of Cooking happens to be the chosen blog this month for Zlamushka's Tried and Tasted event, so I'm sending in this post to this event.

What's next? If you feel like playing a little guessing game, come back on Saturday!

Julia's Provencal Tomato Quiche

Years after she passed away, Julia Child is once again the talk of the town. I went to see the movie Julie and Julia this weekend, and quite enjoyed watching Julia Child's larger than life personality artfully brought to life by Meryl Streep. What I love about Julia Child has nothing to do with French cooking, really. It is the way she grabbed life with both hands and simply went on to do whatever she felt like, without being self-conscious in the least.

V and I have spent so many lazy Saturdays going about our chores with the TV tuned to PBS in the background. We would be putting away the groceries and folding laundry as Julia Child chatted with master chefs in her trilling voice, Lidia Bastianich made gigantic vats of pasta and plumbers dispensed sage advice on This Old House. I love the cooking shows on PBS- they are so authentic and professional and infused with genuine love for cooking.

Last week, I hauled home a mighty tome from the library- Julia Child's The Way To Cook, published in 1989, a cookbook that focuses on techniques. Don't you love illustrated cookbooks from the '80s? There is something utterly charming about the colors on the photos, the over-the-top garnishes and the layout of the food. The pastry and dessert chapters in this book had me completely mesmerized.

The recipe I chose was one that sounds perfect for the season- Provencal Tomato Quiche. It calls for pre-baking a pie shell, then layering it with an anchovy paste, a filling of sauteed onions and tomato blended with eggs, and a topping of parmesan cheese and fresh tomato slices. My two major modifications were- I did not want to use anchovies so I substituted olives instead, and I used a store-bought frozen pie shell. There, I said it. I do have several excuses for not making my own pastry dough! Take your pick: There was a heat advisory that day and I was loathe to spend a minute more in the kitchen than absolutely necessary. I was busy hoisting myself up a wooden ladder to see the roof-top herb garden of a nearby cafe (no joke). My lace scarf won't knit itself. But before you cast your judgement, I'll have you know that this chapter contains a paragraph called "To Prebake Frozen Store-bought Shells". So Julia has actually legitimized such behavior!

Provencal Tomato Quiche

Adapted from Julia Child's The Way To Cook

1. Pre-bake a pie shell. I used a 9-inch whole wheat pastry shell, defrosted it for 5-10 minutes, pricked it all over with a fork and baked it at 450 F for 15 minutes.

2. Base: Blend ½ cup kalamata olives to a coarse paste.

3. Filling: Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan, then saute
-2 cloves of garlic, minced
-2 medium onions, sliced thinly
until the onions are cooked but not browned.

Add 2 cups tomato puree and cook the mixture until it is very thick and the water has almost evaporated. Season the mixture with cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper, oregano and thyme.

Let the filling cool almost to room temperature, then stir in 1 whole egg, 3 egg yolks and ½ cup minced fresh parsley.

4. Grate some parmesan cheese and slice 1-2 fresh tomatoes.

5. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Assemble the quiche- layer the olive paste at the bottom of the prebaked pie shell, then pour in the filling, scatter the cheese and arrange the tomato slices ("tastefully", Julia instructs. I tried). Drizzle the top with olive oil and sprinkle with some salt and pepper.

6. Bake the quiche for 30-40 minutes until the cheese is golden and bubbly.



This quiche would be perfect with a fresh green salad. However, that evening, I had a bunch of vegetables that needed to be urgently dispatched, and as I had fired up the oven already, I simply roasted them and served them on the side. This quiche is divine. It is absolutely hearty and flavorful, a mouthful of summer.


This post goes to Lisa at Champaign Taste, for her fourth annual Julia Child Birthday Celebration.

Coming up next- lentils + butter + cream= ?? Stay tuned!

The Bookmark Project: Tangy Curried Vaal

Well, well, well. I certainly learn something new every day. Usually in the first 15 minutes after I wake up, as I am sipping the first cup of tea and browsing through the latest RSS feeds.

I love all the beans in my pantry (and there are many), but the vaal (hyacinth beans) have a special place in my heart. Sprouted and peeled, they get cooked into two dishes that I have adored all my life. The problem is...the peeling! It is a little labor-intensive and needs a bit of planning, and this is why the poor vaal tend to languish in my pantry.



Shilpa of Aayi's Recipes posted a recipe recently that showed me a new way to cook the vaal- unsprouted (I can live with that) and unpeeled (hurray)! Bookmarked!

And that's how I could make vaal today on the spur of the moment for a weeknight meal. All I did was soak the vaal in the morning for tonight's dinner. I adapted Shilpa's recipe slightly to omit a few spices and make a basic version of this curry. I seem to be genetically programmed to cook goda jevan (food with a hint of sweetness) and that's how a small lump of jaggery ended up in there as well. I loved the way it contrasted with the tangy tamarind and slightly bitter vaal. A simple curry with complex flavors. And no, you can't taste the peel.

Tangy Curried Vaal

Adapted from Shilpa's delicious recipe

1. Soak 1 cup vaal for 8 hours or so, then rinse them and pressure cook them.

2. Soak 1 tablespoon or so of tamarind in a cup of hot water and extract the tamarind juice.

3. Roast the following together, then cool and grind into a fine powder. Add a tablespoon of cooked beans to the powder and grind again to make a thick paste.
1 heaped tsp. cumin seeds
1 heaped tsp. coriander seeds
1 heaped tsp. sesame seeds
1 heaped tsp. poppy seeds

4. In a saucepan, heat 2 tsp. oil. Temper the oil with mustard seeds, a pinch of asafoetida and a sprig of curry leaves.

5. Add 1 small minced onion and fry it for a few minutes. Add turmeric, red chilli powder and salt to taste.

6. Stir in the cooked beans, spice/bean paste, tamarind juice and a small lump of jaggery. Add water as need to thin down the curry. Simmer for 10 minutes. Done!

I served the tasty curry with some freshly steamed rice and a simple subzi of eggplant and potato for a truly sumptuous weeknight meal.

This post goes to the bean-lovin' event, My Legume Love Affair. The 14th edition is being hosted at the home of this event, The Well-Seasoned Cook.

August has started and I find myself in a busy phase, work-wise. But I fully intend to continue cooking the bookmarks and featuring the successes in short posts like this one. See you soon!

The Bookmark Project: Sweet Sticky Rolls

Sweet and sticky enough for ya?


Wow- I'm getting better with my bookmarking behavior. I tried this recipe less than a week after bookmarking it! Bakers' Banter is one of my favorite baking blogs; written in a kind and encouraging tone and with well-tested recipes. I took one look at the excited faces of the kids making monkey bread (sweet rolls that you pull apart and gobble up) and wanted to try the recipe right away.

The recipe calls for a handful of simple pantry ingredients. Flour, oil, egg, salt, sugar, instant yeast and cinnamon. I've been baking bread a lot these days, and I finally got a big pack of instant yeast, much more economical than buying the single-use packets.

I made a quick dough, let it rise in a bowl, then divided it into 16 rolls, coated them in water and then cinnamon sugar and let them rise for a second time. The little rolls rose obligingly to fill up the pan.



I thought these pull-apart rolls were really easy and a lot of fun to make. I highly recommend this recipe to anyone who has either never worked with yeast before. Of if the yeasty beasties have not cooperated with you before and you need a confidence boost. It would also be a fun project to do with school-age kids. Here's what the bread looks like after baking.



You get 16 fluffy rolls, crunchy and sugar on the outside, soft and airy on the inside when you pull them apart. I tasted one and sent the rest of the batch for V's co-workers, my obliging tasters for all sugary baked goods that are too dangerous to keep around the home.

I did think this recipe is a little bland, though. Next time, I will add a little vanilla into the dough. Or slather them with a cream cheese frosting. And I might let the rolls rise overnight in the refrigerator for tastier bread. This will also make it more convenient to make them for breakfast or take them in to work.

I'm sending these sweet rolls to Bread Baking Day #22: Sweet Breads.

Now I'm all excited about pull-apart breads. It is very silly to keep saying "yay" and picking bread apart but there you have it. Apart from this monkey bread variety, there's the pull-apart coffee cake and cloverleaf rolls which also fall in the same genre.

I fully intend to play around with this basic recipe, maybe adding whole wheat, stuffing the rolls, coating them with seeds etc. I do believe an excellent variation on the recipe is the one suggested by 'Dr. Lauren from Illinois' in the comments on the recipe page. She coated the rolls in herbs, garlic and parmesan to make savory garlic bread. Now that sounds very tempting!

PS: It turns out that clearing the bookmarks folder is a Sisyphean task, because minutes after I made this recipe, I saw the latest post on the same Bakers' Banter blog and promptly bookmarked it!

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Dale wants you to follow his lead and get some good R & R this weekend!

The Bookmark Project: Pad Thai at Last

Once in a while, I come upon a food blog post that I immediately recognize as a precious gift from the blogger to us readers. Pim's Pad Thai for beginners was one such post. It contains a level of knowledge and detail that I wanted to learn from, and I bookmarked it, of course. Two years have gone by, and thanks to my ongoing bookmark project, I finally took the time to read the post thoroughly (twice!!) and learn how to make good Pad Thai. She describes the procedure as a "quick footloose dance in an ultra hot wok" and it was definitely one of the most rewarding recipes I have tried in recent months.

This is yet another case of restaurant envy. Pad Thai is a classic Thai dish of noodles, tofu, scrambled egg and bean sprouts in a sassy sauce, topped with crunchy bits of peanuts. I like it. V worships it. We've spent many evenings comparing the Pad Thai in local restaurants. Making it at home was the next logical step.

After reading Pim's post carefully, I found that I had some of the ingredients in my pantry already. Tofu, tamarind, garlic, green onions are already staples in my kitchen. I did have to plan ahead and go to the international store to stock up on some of the other ingredients though- the long mung bean sprouts, discs of palm sugar, pickled radish and dried rice noodles. I found these easily enough. I highly recommend reading her post carefully to learn some important tips and techniques in the making of this dish in an authentic way. The following recipe simply tells you the way I made Pad Thai on Sunday night.

Pad Thai

Adapted from Pim's incredible recipe, makes 4 servings

Note: One of Pim's tips is that you need to make only 1-2 servings of Pad Thai at a time in the wok in order to have enough room to maneuver. I prepared the ingredients for 4 servings, then made the dish twice, 2 servings at a time, rinsing and drying the wok in between.

1. Make the Pad Thai sauce by simmering the following in a small saucepan with water as required. You need about 1 cup of sauce (or a bit more) in all. The proportions of the components are entirely to taste.
-Tamarind pulp
-Soy sauce
-Vegetarian oyster sauce
-Palm sugar
-Red chilli paste

2. Keep the following ingredients ready and prepped in bowls
-Extra-firm tofu, sliced
-Mung bean sprouts
-Dried rice noodles, soaked in warm water until soft, then drained
-Pickled radish, chopped
-Sliced green onions (green parts only)
-Roasted peanuts, chopped coarsely
-2 Eggs

3. Heat 2-3 tablespoons of oil in a wok to smoking point. Add the tofu slices and fry for 5-6 minutes until they are golden brown.

4. Add noodles and sauce, stir, stir, stir, until the noodles are cooked through.

5. Add bean sprouts and pickled radish, stir well.

6. Push contents of wok to one side. Drizzle a little oil and crack an egg on the wok surface. Cook the egg well, then mix in with the noodles and the rest.

7. Add green onions and peanuts and serve immediately.

Tips:
1. The ingredients need to be dry or they will splatter wickedly in the hot wok. So, drain the rice noodles thoroughly after soaking and remove as much extra water as possible from the tofu.
2. If the palm sugar discs are too hard to cut, microwave them for 10-15 seconds to soften them. Handle them carefully while they are hot. Cool the remainder of the sugar lump thoroughly before storing it.

I paused only for a second to click a quick picture of the Pad Thai still in the wok, then sat down to an incredible meal. Next step: to make bean sprouts at home. I sprout beans and lentils all the time for Indian dishes and making these long mung bean sprouts should not be too hard. Have you ever made these bean sprouts at home?

I'm sending this tasty dish of noodles to Presto Pasta Night hosted this week at Very Culinary.

Tomorrow morning, I plan to bake something sticky and sweet. If it works out, I'll come back and tell you about it!

The Medu Vada has Landed

In Bombay, you can't throw a rock without hitting an eating establishment, and there is a very good chance that the rock will land on a particular genre of eating establishments, the Udipi restaurant. It refers to the cuisine of a particular region of Southern India, and these restaurants represent the best of both worlds, combining certain attributes of chain restaurants while also serving tasty meals. They are independent places, for the most part, but have the kind of standard fare and reasonable prices and solidly good food that make them the restaurant of the masses.

A meal in an Udipi restaurant is typically a no-nonsense affair. The staff is all business, the place is teeming with people and noisy with the clattering of stainless steel utensils and whirring fans. You already know what will be on the menu. Most people have a specific Udipi-dining profile. There are the uttapam people and the crispy dosa people. There are those who want to eat the full thali (prix fixe platter). Of course, you always have that one person who insists on perusing every line of the 12-page menu before finally declaring that they will eat masala dosa, the same thing they have eaten on their previous 50 Udipi restaurant visits. Then there is also that person who will order something like matar paneer and naan, the few North Indian dishes placed on the menu for people exactly like these. Within 20 minutes, you will have placed your order, wolfed it down and have the bill plunked on your table, in a small plate of fennel seed. Now that's fast food.

Everyone has their own ideas about the best indicators of the quality of an Udipi restaurant. V insists that you can tell how good an Udipi restaurant is by tasting their coconut chutney. Fresh coconut has a delicate taste, but the freshness starts deteriorating rapidly once you shred the coconut. A thick fragrant chutney oozing with fresh coconut milk is a definite sign of the restaurant's superiority. For my part, I say the best Udipi restaurant is the one that has the best medu vada, with the desirable traits being the crispy crackling outer shell and a soft pillowy inside, a bronze look but no trace of the recent oil bath- no oily smell or greasy taste.

On my visit to India, a dear cousin who had been appraised of my lust for kitchen gadgets love for cooking gave me a funny-looking contraption, which I showed you yesterday in this post. She also gave me a fantastic skillet that I am using almost every day (thank you, Smita tai!!)

Thanks to all who played along, and kudos to the dozens who correctly guessed that it is indeed a medu vada maker. Kudos also to the imaginative souls who guessed that it could be a beater or churner or sifter and other things- I enjoyed reading your guesses! The idea is to make the medu vada batter, fill it into this thingy, then press down so that circles of dough can be dropped into hot oil. In theory, anyway. I wish I had action shots of the medu vada contraption at work, but unfortunately, having only two pairs of hands and no other humans at home at the time, I could not. Dogs are pretty much useless at taking pictures of medu vada making, I find.

Medu vada really only needs two ingredients, ural dal and salt. I use gota urad dal, which is black lentils that are skinned, but the two halves of the lentil are still together. So it is skinned but not split. I soaked 1 cup of urad dal for 3 hours or so.

In addition, people season medu vadas with any or all of the following- ginger, green chillies, curry leaves, cilantro, cumin seeds, fresh coconut shards. I chose to only use crushed black peppercorns for some zing.

All you have to do is to drain the soaked urad dal and churn it into a thick and creamy batter, along with the salt and seasoning. I use my KitchenAid food processor for this. This requires very little excess water, if any. The batter has to be buttery soft and fluffy. My mother tells me that if prepared batter sits around, it absorbs oil when fried, so I make the batter as the oil is heating up.

Normally, I simply drop tablespoons of the batter in hot oil to make medu vadas. One can form the traditional doughnut shapes too, with some skill and perhaps a plastic sheet to form the shape on. The idea of the doughnut shape, of course, is to increase the proportion of crispy surface relative to the inside of the vada.

As the proud new owner of a medu vada maker, I swear I gave it my best shot. And it was really fun at the beginning. The vadas came out looking like this:



But after a while the bottom of the thingy is too sticky with batter, and vadas refuse to form well. Am I doing this wrong? Is there a secret to making this thing work?

The bottom line is that the jury is still out as far as the medu vada thingamajig is concerned but who cares really, the medu vadas tasted fantastic.

I'm sending this post to the RCI (Regional Cuisines of India): Udipi and Mangalore event. I love the cuisine of this region and I am sure the round-up of this event will prompt a bookmarking frenzy here!

Come back in a day or two if you would like to see a tasty dish made with tofu and tamarind. Go ahead, make your guesses, this one's easy!

What is this?

Care to guess what this contraption is?

Two Kitchen Sessions

Happiness is...

...reading a good book and baking a good bread, both in the same afternoon.

The current stack from the library


The book in question is the latest installment of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. There are times when you are just not in the mood for hi-falutin' writing, literary flourishes or subjects that give you sleepless nights; when all you want is to hear a good story and close the book with a feeling that all is well with the world. This series is for those times. I adore the "traditionally built" Mma Ramotswe and her little white van and her wise and kind heart, and it is a pleasure to see her at work in her detective agency in Botswana. I read this book while waiting for the bread to rise and proof.

The bread in question is Light Wheat Bread that I bookmarked ages ago from Smitten Kitchen. I've been looking for a nice sandwich loaf, and this recipe looked just right, meaning that I usually have all these ingredients on hand.

The recipe calls for 4 cups flour in all, and I used the following proportions:

1½ cup bread flour +
1½ cup white whole wheat flour +
1 cup whole wheat flour

So while the bread contained enough bread flour to make it airy and soft, it also contains more than 50% whole wheat flour to make it tasty and nutritious.

I followed the recipe closely. One important thing I learned while making this bread was the windowpane test used to determine if the bread has been kneaded long enough. Now I realize that I have not been kneading bread very well all my life. Hmm. You live and you learn, right?

The instant yeast worked its magic in the damp heat of my kitchen and the bread rose quite dramatically in much less time than was specified in the recipe. It took only 20 minutes to get from this...


to this...


Here's the loaf, chubby as can be.


Look, I made sandwich bread!


The results were terrific- the bread was soft and tender with a nice crust, just like you want sandwich bread to be. I'll be making this again and again. We made brie, tomato and arugula sandwiches with freshly baked bread for a light summer supper.

I'm sending this post to Madhuram's Whole Grain (Eggless) Baking Event. The theme this month is Whole Wheat.

*** *** ***

I signed up for Taste and Create this month, the event in which participants are paired up and try a recipe from each other's blogs. I was paired with Katie of One Little Corner of the World. Katie lives near St. Louis and her blog has many references to restaurants in this area; I found some new restaurants that I would like to try.

It was a little bit challenging to find a meatless recipe on Katie's blog, but I zoned in on her Father's Day meal and the chimichurri sauce - I've always wanted to try making this. This sauce of fresh herbs is perfect for summer dining.



I started off following Katie's recipe exactly but ran into a little snag. It turned out that the amount of herbs etc. was too small for my large food processor bowl, and my sauce wouldn't really come together. So I added a handful of walnuts to help the sauce along, and in the process, invented this chimichurri pesto of sorts (now I'm annoying people on two continents with this unholy fusion, I'm sure). But it tasted great!

I made some vegetable-kidney bean-cheese empanadas to go with the sauce. The empanadas were tasty but I definitely need to tweak the recipe some more, so I'll post it at some later time.

see you in a few!

The Bookmark Project: Creamy Basil Pasta

Shopping for produce in the summer months is a highly rewarding activity. Instead of frowning at shrink-wrapped fruits, wrinkling my nose at limp sickly veggies and sighing at the far-away places that all the stuff is shipped from, in summer I am usually squealing with delight at the fresh local produce that always results in lucky "finds".

On one recent trip, we came home carrying an armload of basil, quite literally. It was bigger than most bouquets I have seen- I had no idea basil could grow that big or have stems that thick. I bought the bunch quite greedily and readily, and plunged it into a vase when I got home, and then bit my lip and said, uh oh. Now I had to think of something to make with all that basil. And I had to think fast, because the poor basil leaves were wilting by the minute in the merciless heat.

My bookmark folder came to the rescue- it contained a recipe involving fresh basil that came highly recommended. My dear friend Cathy told me about this recipe exactly one year ago and I dutifully bookmarked it. The weeks went by, basil went out of season and the bookmark waited patiently for the next summer to arrive. Now, by some propitious alignment of the celestial bodies, I finally had all the ingredients on hand- fresh tomatoes, fragrant basil, raw cashews and whole wheat linguini.

Once these few ingredients are sitting on the kitchen counter, you are only minutes away from a fantastic meal. The pasta boils away, the sauce take a spin in the food processor and a quick simmer with fried garlic, and that's that- dinner is served!



I followed the recipe closely, only adding an extra fresh tomato and 2 tablespoons of pasta sauce instead of the tomato paste because that's what I had on hand. I used white wine to thin down the sauce a little. I've been amazed by Lolo of Vegan Yum Yum before (remember the knit cupcakes?) but now I'm convinced of her brilliance. Her Super Quick Tomato Basil Cream Pasta is super in all kinds of other ways, being super rich and super creamy and super vegan, not to mention super duper yummy ;) Promise me you will try this recipe. Cathy, I owe you one!

I used a handful of fresh basil leaves for that pasta, and still had, oh, about an armful left! V and I spent the afternoon making pesto, filling it into little tubs and stacking them in the freezer. A bit of research led me to the Everyday Food site and this pesto recipe designed specially for the freezer. I liked the idea of blanching the basil very briefly in boiling water to preserve the color. It also wilted the basil and made it easier to pack into the food processor. Freezer pesto is made without parmesan- that can be added later after thawing, if desired. We followed the recipe as directed to make a big batch of pesto.

We did use pine nuts in this recipe, and they were fine, but these days, I seem to be reading of that weird pine nut mouth thing everywhere, so I'm going to think twice about eating them from now on.



I must say having my own stash of pesto in the freezer makes me feel very smug and domestic goddess-y! I simply thaw a tub overnight in the refrigerator and it is fresh and tasty even when thawed. We have been using it for pesto pasta salad, as a sandwich spread and simply slathered on good toast.

This celebration of fragrant basil is off to Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by Haalo this week.

I'll leave you with a picture of our intrepid hiker Dale. This dog won't play in the dog run, looks annoyed if you ask him to "fetch" and naps the whole time he is at home, BUT he absolutely loves to walk. He can hike for hours and is surprisingly sure-footed (which, of course, is easier if you have four feet). On Saturday, we popped over next door to lllinois and Dale spent all morning leading us through Pere Marquette state park.


I'll be back with my first attempt at an Argentinean recipe (perhaps the only Argentinean thing a vegetarian can eat?!). See you then.

Creamy Spinach Soup

I spent a couple of hours this morning humming along in the kitchen, making soup and baking a cake for a friend who is recovering from surgery. Now, there are SO MANY recipes for both soup and cake that I have tried and loved. But I have this hopeless and maddening addiction to trying new recipes (searching for some hypothetical "perfect" recipe...I don't know), and sure enough, I found new ones to try this morning.

I wanted to use a nourishing vegetable such as spinach for the soup, and wanted something smooth and creamy in texture, and this recipe from Mark Bittman's blog looked perfectly simple and delicious. I was curious to see how green onions would work in the recipe. The only modification I made was to reduce the proportion of cream, add some flavorful parmesan and finish the soup with some bright lemon juice which did SO much to bring the flavors together.

The soup came together so quickly and effortlessly. I seriously HEART my stick blender- I've owned mine since 2001 and use it almost everyday. You can puree the soup right in the pot. The result was fantastic- maybe I will make this recipe again and again ;)

Creamy Spinach Soup

Adapted from Mark Bittman's recipe, makes a BIG pot (10 servings or so), easily halved.

1. In a large pot, combine
   8 cups water,
   3 tablespoons mushroom stock base,
   2 1-lb bags of chopped frozen spinach,
   2 bunches coarsely chopped green onions.


2. Bring the mixture to a boil then simmer for 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender.


3. Turn off the heat, add
   ½ teaspoon nutmeg,
   salt and pepper to taste.


4. Blend the mixture in the pot using a stick blender (or wait for it to cool and blend using a regular blender).


5. Finish with
   1 cup heavy cream,
   ¼ cup shredded parmesan cheese,
   juice of ½ lemon. Reheat and serve.

For the cake, I chose one of my own childhood favorites- marbled cake, with random swirls of chocolate and vanilla running through the loaf.


I used this recipe from Martha Stewart. That page has a little video showing this cake being made, and the interesting bit is that the baker, John Baricelli, demonstrates how to get beautiful swirls in the cake by running a skewer through it (the swirling but is about halfway through the 9 minute video). I tried his swirling method but I'm giving away the cake intact so I really won't know how well it worked. That only means I'll have to make another one soon, strictly for research purposes!

Have a great weekend, everyone. We're going on a mini-hike tomorrow and we're supposed to have perfect weather (you better be right, meteorologists!) so I am excited.

Novel Food: Magloubeh

To all those who played along in the guessing game- thank you!

Veggie Belly, full marks to you; you are absolutely right- this is makloubeh/magloubeh. Kedar and Meera guessed correctly that this rice dish comes from the Middle East, Rainee and Manasi guessed correctly that it is upside down (the word magloubeh translates as "upside down"), and Mika guessed correctly that it involves soy "meat". Y'all are a bunch of smart people!

The recipe comes from a memoir by Diana Abu-Jaber, The Language of Baklava. I read the book last week, and with over 40 recipes sprinkled through it, each more tantalizing than the other, this memoir drove me right into the kitchen. Which is why this post goes to the Novel Food: Summer 2009 edition, co-hosted by Lisa over at Champaign Taste. This is THE event for cooks who love reading, or is it bookworms who love cooking?

For someone who loves both books and cooking, food memoirs are a pretty logical choice for a delicious summer read. Everyday mundane moments, events and experiences, sensations and smells and tastes crystallize over time into intricate, vivid memories that can be brought to life by the deft words of a talented writer. To dive into a good memoir is to be invited into a home and a life that can be very different from one's own, and to experience cultures and flavors and perspectives that can be completely new and enlightening. And like they say, "you can't make this stuff up"- I often find myself more interested in events that actually occurred in someone's life rather than in works of fiction. Although descriptions of food and meals may dominate these memoirs, it is never really just about the food. As Diana Abu-Jaber says in the foreword of this book, "...the food always turned out to be about something much larger: grace, difference, faith, love." Even as I read blog posts (and I dozens of blog posts every day), the ones that stick with me the most are the ones where memories gush forth and reveal the events, foods and people that mean the most to us.

Last summer, I read two good memoirs. One was Madhur Jaffrey's Climbing the Mango Trees. I find much of her writing both familiar (raw mangoes with salt and chilli powder, discovering new foods in the lunch boxes of school friends) and enchantingly different (life in a huge joint family, the historical events unfurling around her) from my own childhood experiences. If you want to read an extract from this book, go to the NPR website. The other engaging memoir was by Elizabeth Ehrlich, called Miriam's Kitchen. As the author describes her journey to understanding and embracing orthodox Jewish customs, I gained an understanding of these rituals as never before. One food memoir that I absolutely enjoyed is Julia Child's My Life in France. It is incredible how this woman grabbed life with both hands; her charm and candor are very appealing to me (Psst: Lisa is hosting a Julia Child event next month). For all Anglophiles, a must-read food memoir is Nigel Slater's Toast. His candid childhood memories are sprinkled with mentions of British treats. Another memoir that I found to be entertaining and an easy read was Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires. It contains many of her adventures as a restaurant critic for the New York Times- I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes footage that this book contains. This summer, I am hungry for more food memoirs, and found a blog post which suggests many books that might be interesting. If you have any food memoir recommendations for me, please leave a comment- thank you!

Coming back to the book on hand, The Language of Baklava was a delectable read. Every chapter talks about a certain episode or phase in Diana Abu-Jaber's life. She is a lyrical writer and I felt weak in the knees when she described the Big Market in Jordan, with the scents of "sesame, olive, incense, rosewater, orange blossom water, dust, jasmine, thyme". The lush descriptions of food are intermingled with the search for identity and home.

Out of all the dozens of recipes in this book, I was eager to make the one called "diplomatic magloubeh"- an upside down rice dish with eggplant, cauliflower and meat (that I am replacing here with a vegan meat substitute). Ironically, the author did not care for this dish as a child, and says that eating it made her feel like she was "at the mercy of the terrible sulfur-smoky cauliflower, the bitter, unrewarding eggplant". Mmm...sounds good to me! I always fall for these elaborate rice casseroles, especially the ones that involve dramatic upside down maneuvers at the end.

Magloubeh

Adapted from the book The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups rice
1 package "fake meat" (I used Beef-less strips from Trader Joe's)
2 onions, sliced
1 medium eggplant, sliced
½ cauliflower, cut into slices/florets
Plenty of olive oil
3½ cups vegetable stock (I used mushroom broth)
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp black pepper
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp coriander
Salt to taste
Handful of toasted pine nuts, for garnish

Method:
1. Fry the eggplant and cauliflower in olive oil until browned, and set them aside.
2. In a wide and deep saucepan, saute the sliced onions in olive oil until golden brown.
3. Add the fake meat and all the spices and stir fry for a minute.
4. Pat down the onion-fake meat layer. Layer the fried cauliflower on top of it.
5. Layer the raw rice on the cauliflower, add the eggplant slices as the last layer.
6. Pour the stock all over. This is the tricky part- adding the correct amount of stock so as to cook the rice properly but not leave it too soggy. I added enough so that the contents of the pot were barely immersed, and it worked out OK this time.
7. Cover the pot tightly and let the rice cook. It took me about 35-40 minutes.
8. Once you turn the heat off, let the rice rest for 10 minutes, then invert it very carefully onto a platter. Garnish with pine nuts.

I served this festive rice with cucumber tahini salad, as the author suggests. I made the salad by mixing together 1 large cucumber (shredded) with 1 cup low-fat yogurt, 1 tablespoon tahini, cumin and salt to taste. Now, I have never tasted actual magbouleh and probably never will, since restaurants will make this with meat, but all I can say is this was a very special and tasty meal. The cinnamon and nutmeg and fried onions all combine to flavor the rice in a most extravagant way. The one thing is that the eggplant and cauliflower do get cooked twice (once while being fried and browned and the other with the rice) so they are mushy and overcooked- probably why the author complained about this dish as a child.

At the very end of this post, there is a traditional recipe for makloubeh. I was gratified that my version looked quite similar to the one shown in that post. I also found a recipe for vegetable makloubeh on the Guardian website (scroll down to the middle of the rather long page to find this recipe).

*** *** ***

Let me make a long post even longer by sharing a photo of Dale. I took this one last evening, when our resident pooch was back from a long walk in the sunshine, tired and happy, smiling and resting his feet on his much-loved blankie.

This morning, we have thunderstorms so he's not that happy any more. Dale only has to hear the faintest rumble of thunder to dive into a corner of the nearest closet. If there are storms as far away as Arkansas, you can bet that this brave dog will be quaking with fear. We have lined all the closets with small rugs for his comfort because thunderstorms are a very regular feature of summer weather in the Mid-West. Once the storm passes, he emerges from his hide-out, looks around him carefully, and settles back down on his blankie with a deep sigh.

Guessing game

Can you guess the name of this dish?



Recipe coming up tomorrow!

Restaurant Envy: Chile de Arbol Salsa

For many months now, I have been madly in love with a particular salsa at our local Mexican joint. There are the usual salsas and then there is this thick, fiery, tangy concoction that sets my heart tongue ablaze. It is the chile de arbol salsa that is part of their salsa bar, and I finally decided that I must make it at home so I can unlimited access to this addictive stuff. I'm too shy (hah!) to ask them for the recipe, however, so this restaurant envy must be overcome by good old trial and error.

At the international store, I always catch myself staring at the wall of dried chile peppers, whispering the lyrical names- ancho, pasilla, guajillo, habanero- and this time, I actually remembered to buy a pack of the chiles de arbol.



A hunt for a salsa recipe yielded this recipe on Slashfood that comes from a Mexican chef, and it seemed like a good place to start. With only 5 ingredients- chile de arbol, tomatillos, olive oil, onion and cilantro- I knew that this salsa would have clean flavors at the very least. Here's how I made the salsa.

Chile de Arbol Salsa

Inspired by a recipe on Slashfood

Ingredients:
7 tomatillos, cut into quarters
10 chiles de arbol
2 teaspoons olive oil
¼ onion, chopped roughly
Handful of cilantro leaves, chopped roughly
¾ cup water
Salt to taste

Method:
1. Heat oil and saute the chiles de arbol briefly.
2. Add tomatillos and water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the tomatillos collapse.
3. Turn off the heat. Add onion and cilantro and let the mixture cool for a bit.
4. Blend it into a thick salsa. Add salt to taste.

I scrambled around to grab a spoon and taste the salsa as soon as it was ready. The color of the salsa was disappointingly insipid, but it tasted pretty darn close to the stuff in the restaurant!! These are FIERCE peppers- apparently the chile de arbol only rate in the middle of the Scoville heat scale, but their heat is searing and I used a lot of them in this salsa.

Next time I make this salsa, there are some tweaks I might try, based on other recipes I found on the web, such as using a combination of tomatillos and red tomatoes (to give it the bright red color "just like in the restaurant"), adding a bit of garlic or roasting the tomatoes and tomatillos for a smoky flavor, but I love this version of the salsa already.

I'm sending a bowl of this fiery salsa to the Monthly Mingle: Mexican Fiesta edition.

The Bookmark Project: Arroz Hits the Spot

I plodded home on Thursday evening feeling exhausted and listless; I simply was in no mood to cook dinner. There were some black beans soaking in a pot, ready for a quick dinner of rice and beans or quesadillas perhaps, but all I wanted to do was slump on the couch and dial for some take-out.

But, ah, there is one potion that has a magical effect on me- something involving a small molecule called caffeine. A cup of hot, strong chai filled me with a rush of energy and I was at the computer, hunting through my bookmarks for something good to make with those black beans.

Scrolling endlessly, there appeared the recipe for Arroz Gratinado that I had bookmarked from Tigers and Strawberries from years ago. I remember reading this recipe and thinking that the casserole of rice, beans, salsa, cheese was my very favorite kind of dish- so messy and oh so delicious. And that is how I went from not wanting to cook at all that evening to cooking something that used three burners and the toaster oven, all at the same time (it also used the oven at the end, no cooking appliances left behind).

Barbara's post suggests endless variations of this Mexican casserole, and the kitchen sink approach was perfect for a Thursday night, when the vegetable bins are getting emptier. What follows is how I made it. It looks like a lot of work, but the truth is that all the components of the casserole practically cooked themselves and instead of standing around in the hot kitchen staring at them, I was able to escape to the living room and spend some quality time with Brian Williams.



1. Rice: I cooked ¾ cup of rice in a mushroom stock .

2. Poblano peppers: I rubbed 2 poblano peppers with some olive oil, salt and pepper and broiled them in the toaster oven. Once broiled and cooled, I peeled off the skin and cut the peppers into strips.

3. Beans: I cooked ¾ cup black beans in the pressure cooker. Once the beans were cooked, I drained off the excess cooking water, then mashed the beans with a few tablespoons of salsa. I used Goya's Salsa Taquera. I keep a bottle of this spicy stuff in my fridge door at all times. You never know when there will be a salsa emergency.

4. Vegetables: I flash-sauteed some assorted vegetables including an onion, a yellow squash, a carrot, tomatoes, then sprinkled them with a Mexican spice blend (from a friend whose family owns a Mexican restaurant...gotta love those foodie connections!), to make the final component of the casserole.

5. Shredded Cheese.

I layered the components in this order, and baked at 375 F for 35 minutes or so, topping with cilantro at the very end.



I served the tasty casserole with a spicy, creamy sauce made by mixing home made low-fat yogurt with some of that same bottled salsa.

Tomorrow, I'm making my own salsa! If I like how it turns out, I'll be back to blog about it. Enjoy your weekend!

The Bookmark Project: Cucumber Curry

My bookmark folder contains many hidden gems in the form of fantastic recipes just waiting to be tried. And I've managed to unearth one of them.

I was intrigued by this cucumber curry recipe the minute I spotted it. The cookbook that the recipe comes from (Madhur Jaffrey's excellent book 'World Vegetarian') is sitting right here on my bookshelf but I completely missed this recipe until I saw it on this blog. I make cucumber dosa often, but otherwise don't cook cucumber, preferring it as a raw salad vegetable. Cooking it into a curry is very new to me.

The curry, with mellow cucumber and coconut looked just right for summer. There is a mild spicy undertone from the chilli(es), but otherwise the fragrance is entirely that of mustard seeds and curry leaves spluttered briefly in ghee to release their aroma.

The curry leaves are the star of this dish, and the ones I used came from my own curry leaf plant. Before I left for my long vacation to India, I gave away all my plants and herbs, keeping only this most precious one. This plant sits in the kitchen window and I spend many anxious moments every week counting the newly sprouting sprigs. It started as the tiniest sapling given to me by an acquaintance but has grown inch by inch. While we were packing for the trip, my green-thumbed friend Julianne came by and kindly took the curry leaf plant away to her home to baby-sit it for the month. As she was getting into the elevator, V called to her, "You know, if you kill this plant, Nupur is never going to speak to you again". The poor thing! She sent me regular messages about the plant's health all month and needless to say, returned it to me in perfect condition.

My problem now is that the plant is growing tall but not laterally- I would love to have it branching out more and now just growing upright. Does anyone know how to accomplish this? Any advice from plant experts would be much appreciated. I "harvest" 3-4 sprigs of curry leaves from my plant every week and that is enough for my cooking needs. Even with just this one little plant, I have avoided buying many packets of limp curry leaves from the store, saving a bit of money and keeping the packaging out of the trash. Oh, the joys of growing your own herbs. I'm obsessed about getting a lemongrass plant next, and want to plant some mint and basil before July is over.





Just to contrast with my baby curry leaf plant, here is the one in my parents' yard in India. It is a curry leaf tree that is 3 stories tall! My parents are drowning in curry leaves. Meanwhile, I am sitting here and rationing sprigs of curry leaves, thinking, "If I use two sprigs today, I won't have any for the sambar tomorrow".


That big tree keeps giving off saplings here and there in the surrounding soil. I have friends here in the US who would give anything for these curry leaf babies that grow like weeds in my parents' garden.


OK, I got a little carried away there. Coming back to the recipe, the only real change I made was in using whole lentils instead of the split ones (masoor dal), because it is what I had on hand, and in reducing the amount of coconut milk a little. It is the very incredible-tasting recipe I have tried in several months. Now, it does not win any prizes in terms of looks; the lentils give the curry a dull muddy color, but this is completely worth overlooking. I highly recommend it. The delicate flavor is perfect for summer.

Cucumber Squash Curry

Inspired by the olan recipe on A Life (Time) of Cooking

Ingredients:
¾ cup lentils (masoor), rinsed
1 cup thick coconut milk
1 medium cucumber, peeled and diced
1 medium yellow squash, diced
1 green chilli, finely minced (or more to taste)
Salt to taste
Juice of ½ lemon
Tempering/tadka:
1 tablespoon ghee/clarified butter
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
2 sprigs fresh curry leaves

Method:
1. In a pot, add ½ cup coconut milk, lentils and 2 cups water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 110-15 minutes or until lentils are barely tender.
2. Add the cucumber, squash, chillies and salt. Cook for 5-10 minutes.
3. In a separate small pan, make the tempering by heating the ghee and popping the mustard seeds and curry leaves in the ghee.
4. Pour the fragrant tempering and remaining coconut milk to the curry. Stir for a minute or two, then turn off the heat.
5. Add the lemon juice and stir. Serve with freshly steamed rice, with mango pickle on the side.

Since the curry is proudly made by curry leaves growing in my kitchen, I'm sending this post to Grow Your Own #31, an event that celebrates foods we grow ourselves.