Indian dinner

Way back when I just started writing this blog and wasn't sure what to do with it I started to draft some sort of essay on Indian cooking.  Check the archives; it never made it to publication.  Since then I've posted three Indian(ish) recipes, one of which hardly even counts despite having a semi-accurate flavor profile and ingredient list.

Which is all leading up to say: Indian cooking can be tricky.  Forget the ingredients; they're really not that unusual for the most part.  We all know about cumin and ginger and mustard and cinnamon and even some of the less obvious things spices like turmeric, coriander, and even cardamom aren't anything all that special.  In the end dal is just lentils and asafoetida isn't strictly necessary.

And yet it still ends up being somewhat tricky to figure out -- largely because of the process involved.  But rest assured, tricky doesn't mean hard.  Just... tricky.  All the rules about what goes in when and why in French cooking get tossed out the window (note: same is true of most Asian cuisines; it's just that Indian food is also quite different than anything with Sino-Japanese influences).  You end up building your spice profile from the beginning rather than the end, use odd thickening tricks, employ dairy in weird ways... etc, etc, etc.  But once you get the hang of it it's actually pretty hard to screw it up.  At least not too badly.  After trying a few (good) recipes (that actually try to explain themselves) and maybe using some of those boxed spice mixes (and analyzing what's in them and what each ingredient adds) improving becomes relatively simple.

Case in point: new year's eve 2010.  The wife (am I going to get used to saying that sometime?) calls on the way home and requests Indian.  A quick inventory of the kitchen and a run to the store yields:

• Almost 2 lbs of tri tip (thank god for discount meat but note that there's absolutely no reason to use this if you want to be authentic or otherwise cost-conscious; just replace with boneless skinless chicken breasts if you prefer)
• 2 yellow onions
• 3 bell peppers
• 3 jalapenos
• 7 red potatoes
• Chicken broth
• 1 large can diced tomatoes
• 1 can tomato paste
• Olive oil
• Cumin (whole; this is important)
• Coriander (whole; this is important)
• Cardamom pods (always pods; the flavor difference is substantial)
• Ginger (powder is fine but raw grated is always good)
• Cinnamon (ground; sticks are fine)
• Yogurt
• Rice
• Salt/pepper

I also had turmeric and a handful of masala blends laying around but opted against them this time around.

Looks viable... right?

Of course.  We'll start with the rice:

• Make rice

Basically I'd forget to do this until too late if I don't get it in early.  And if it's a little cool by the time you serve it it's no big deal.

Then move on to bigger, better things.  Like building a spice profile and braising a bit.  In a skillet combine:

• Olive oil
• Cumin seeds
• Coriander seeds

Get that HOT.  You want the seeds to be popping and jumping and generally scaring your domestic wildlife.  A little smoke from the oil isn't a bad thing.

In the meantime cube up your meat of choice.  Since mine was beef I felt obligated to conservatively apply salt and pepper.  Brown that in the superheated oil then transfer to a stock pot (along with some of the oil, naturally).

Take the heat down in the skillet, add a touch more oil along with the seeds from a half dozen cardamom pods.  Bring the heat back up a bit until they become pungent and then quickly add onions chunked rather largely and toss until they're just slightly cooked.  Then transfer everything to the stock pot, scraping for all the little bits of goodness left behind from the high heat.

Now you're just stewing.  Add:

• Bell peppers, also chunked
• Jalapenos, I like them ring sliced, seeds and all
• Diced tomatoes with juice
• Chicken broth
• Ginger

Bring to a boil and let that simmer together for a few minutes before adding:

• Potatoes, large chunks
• Cinnamon to taste -- but don't go overboard
• Tomato paste to thicken

Stir well, ensuring that the tomato paste is evenly distributed.  That's the only thickener you're using so make the most of it.  You're likely to want to add a bit of salt somewhere in here as well.

And that's it.  Walk away.  When the potatoes are done you have dinner.

Serve in a bowl with layers of rice, stew, and yogurt.  Garnish with cilantro if you're so inclined.

See?  Simple.  The spices toasted at the beginning are the primary flavor modifiers -- and they had to be whole in order to stand up to the high heat without burning.  The secondary spices are more mellow, present primarily to round out the flavor.  The onions are left nearly raw, imparting a very different flavor than the long sweats and browns you're used to.  The jalapenos add just enough heat to notice without being overpowering.  The potatoes take on the flavor of the broth, oil, and tomatoes.  And it all works wonderfully.

But yes, it does take some getting used to.

Simple bean/chicken salad

Well, mostly simple.  The actual prep is just a tiny bit time-consuming (if half an hour counts) but it's very good.  Especially for coming out of a can.

Basic idea: throw together some beans.  Make them taste good.  Make sure you have plenty of protein going so it's a full meal or more.  And make sure it's a complete protein or two.

Basic salad

And I mean really basic.  Five cans.  Oil.  Vinegar.

First, drain a can of diced tomatoes; retain the sauce in a bowl.  You're going to have the colander out anyway; just drain the juice into the bowl.  Crush the tomatoes by hand a bit.

Combine in a large bowl:

• 1 can black beans, drained and washed
• 1 can great northern beans, drained and washed
• 1 can garbanzo beans, drained and washed
• 1 can corn, drained (no washing needed)
• 2 celery stocks, finely cubed
• Chopped parsley; flat leaf if you have it
• Tomatoes without the juice
• Olive oil
• Red wine vinegar

 And that's your basic bean salad.  Get that in the refrigerator.

Chicken

I used two breasts to balance this and it seemed to work.  Marinate in:

• Red wine vinegar
• Orange juice
• Red pepper flake

After about half an hour, toss that in a pan, cover, heat, and more or less poach it.  When done, cube/shred and add to the salad, tossing well.

Rice

Prepare rice as normal, except:

• Use the reserved tomato juice to replace some of your water
• Add coriander
• Add one bay leaf

Very hearty.  Best served cold.  Makes a great summer meal.

BLTs

Sometimes simplicity wins out.  For me, this often has to do with it being before noon (aka breakfast time), but it can obviously carry on throughout the day depending on your priorities (and the ingredients, of course).  And some classics just call for it.

So, BLTs.  Two versions here, both dead simple in their basic form.  They're definitely toaster oven fare once you get past the bacon itself (and I don't actually object to resorting to a microwave here even if it does come off better in a cast iron skillet every single time).  But the idea remains the same: pick a flavor profile, add a minor twist, and enjoy.

Version one

1. Cook your bacon
2. Toast a split bagel under a broiler, tossing on a grated hard italian cheese halfway through
3. Add either sliced or diced tomato
4. Add bacon, chopped works well here
5. Add a green of your choice; I like spinach but an actual italian green would do very well
6. Layer on alfalfa sprouts (or whatever bean sprouts you happen to have around; mung is particularly nice for the added crunch)

Asiago bagels are an obvious choice here, but onion, garlic, everything, etc all work fine.  As does plain, really.  Just make sure you crush down the top once you're done layering; they become quite unwieldy without some manual encouragement.  Cut in  half and enjoy.  Maybe make two if you're hungry or, ahem, want to use a whole tomato.

Version two

Closer to my heart, of course.  This is the simple version.  If you just happen to have fresh-roasted green hatch this might be the best BLT in the entire history of mankind.

1. Again, cook bacon, slice or chop it
2. Toast a fairly hearty bread
3. Melt a thin layer of cojack on the bread; again, using a toaster oven is easiest here
4. Add sliced, canned green chile
5. Layer your tomato, in this case chopped probably is better
6. Add your choice of lettuce; again I like spinach but romaine isn't bad

Slice.  Eat.  Make another.

If you wanted to go crazy you could, I don't know:

1. Replace the bread with a sopapilla, stuff the ingredients, make sure you're using good chile, and smother in a red sauce.  But then, that would be complicated, wouldn't it?
2. Just  use a tortilla to wrap said ingredients, making sure to chop the bacon, and call it a BLT burrito.  Maybe even add a salsa or guacamole to finish it.

But now we're straying back into complicated, aren't we?

(For the sake of completeness, I should link to a post from Farmgirl Fare on pita in general and another great option for BLTs that I've always wanted to try.  Baking at altitude, especially if you're inept in the first place, has proven a problem.)

So you have some apricots

The family got some apricots from some very nice neighbors who have had the tree for years and only this summer decided to produce fruit.  Lots of fruit.  Way too much to use; they've been giving it away like crazy [ed. many inappropriate similes considered and rejected].

But they're not exactly the tastiest in the world.  I mean, they're good.  They're just not omgwtf wonderful.  And did I mention there are lots of them?

So, we cook.

Apricots, apricots, searching...  No, we're not going to make a jam or a desert or anything overly sweet.  Just not my thing.  And we're not doing pork.  Mainly because I can't find any in the house.

But wait.  Let's think about traditional pairings.  I mean, I'm pretty sure apricots are used all over south asia and the great middle east, right?  (Wikipedia says yes and much, much more.)  Ok, so let's think about, say, Iran.  Maybe Turkey.  What would compliment a mild pear-like fruit...

Pistachios.  Just stay with me here; this is about the point where my brother declared that either the proposed dish or I were "weird".

We have a high-sugar, medium-flavor fruit.  We need it to shine.  Something rich with a nutty yet still slightly sweet taste?  Perfect.  Plus the oils are delicious; otherwise almonds would do the trick.

So let's do this thing.

Combine in a food processor:

• 18 or so apricots, cored
• About a ramekin of shelled pistachios, washed several times if salted

Whir together.  10 1-second pulses are fine; you don't need to feel obligated to pulverize the pistachios.  You definitely want to get rid of some of the excess salt though.

In the meantime, start heating a decent sized sauce pan with a bit of oil (olive is fine).  Also, start thawing some chicken if need be.

Once the oil is hottish, add the seeds of three cardamom pods, maybe four or five cloves, and a very small number of cumin seeds, in that order, waiting for each to become fragrant before adding the next.

[Tangent, not required for the recipe at all: this is actually an entire idea based on a decidedly non-French style of cooking.  We're toasting spices, not aromatics.  The aromatics come in later and are left either stewed or nearly raw.  It's just a different way of flavoring things and if you're serious about making food that resembles anything from persian to indian and even further east into parts of China, get this technique down.  Through lots and lots of experimentation.]

Once your spices are toasted, add the apricot slurry.  Reduce heat and add:

• White or rice vinegar
• Sugar (if needed; if the apricots were quite sweet omit this)

Slice your chicken (two decently sized breasts or so) in thin strips then add that.  Let that cook while the sauce reduces and caramelizes a bit.

After half an hour or so, add a sliced onion and a medium to large tomato cut into about 16 parts.

And walk away for awhile for the whole thing to simmer down so the sauce can permeate the chicken and reduce further.

Serve with rice and some sort of salad, possibly with pita.

6.0221415 mashed salad

Umm.  Chemistry jokes are in right now, right?











Ok, so no.  So this is guacamole.  If you've never done it yourself, fix that. If you have, learn to go for minimalism; avocados are in season.

For some magical reason, the local grocery store has ripe avocados on the shelf.  This, for the record, never happens. Most avocados are firm and slightly, umm, bitter?  At least when you buy them.  But apparently right now they're just slightly soft and perfect for just slicing into, which is good, because I wasn't about to give them enough time to ripen to that state.

So, a very, very basic guacamole.  Combine in a suitable bowl:

• 2 ripe avocados, type doesn't really matter as long as they're about medium sized, but do reserve one pit
• 1 roma tomato, diced
• Juice of 1 lime
• Either some very finely diced garlic or two or three dashes of powdered garlic

And that's it.  Just stop.  Don't add onions.  Don't add anything to heat it up.  It just isn't needed.  A good guacamole should bring out the avocado flavor, not smother it and use the guacamole as an agent.

Mash by hand.  It's actually fun if the avocados are ripe; they squish like playdough.  Make sure everything is well-combined, wash up a bit, and then serve with chips or whatever else.

_____________________
On the title?  It's a pun.  That is all.

Lemon-tomato chicken

Sometimes the best food comes out of a totally spontaneous list of ingredients and a deadline.

In this case, dinner for 4.  I have:

• 3 chicken breasts, frozen
• Pasta (settled on linguine)
• Garlic
• Dried oregano
• Olive oil
• Salt

On sale at the store I found:

• 1 bunch flat leaf parsley
• 4 roma tomatoes
• 1 grenade of lemon juice (you know, the lemon juice that you find in the produce section bottled like a lemon/grenade)
• Cheap dry red wine

Lots of stuff you can do with a combination like that.  So why not make it complicated?

Chicken prep

Thaw, obviously, then place in a bowl (whole).  Cover in lemon juice and add oregano.  Toss thoroughly and let that sit for, oh, an hour.

Chopping/prep

In the meantime, start with the tomatoes.  To keep things summery, I didn't really want to cook them but I still wanted tomato flavor in with the chicken.  And given the choice of linguine, just chunking the tomatoes wouldn't work anyway.

Solution: quarter them, set up a colander over a bowl, and crush them by hand until they're just small bits.  Then salt them to sweat the juice, toss well, and set them aside to slowly drip.  Go ahead and press them by hand occasionally.

Then rough-chop most of the bunch of parsley and set that aside for now.

Then obviously the garlic.  I used lots.  In the same spirit as the tomatoes, I want some cooked and some raw, but you can just prep it all the same way.

Chicken

In a large saute pan, heat olive oil and add half the garlic.

Remove the breasts from the marinade and cube into about 1/2 inch pieces, retaining the marinade for later use.

Once the garlic is just turning golden, add the cubed chicken and cook most of the way through, stirring often.  Then add the reserved marinade and your tomato drippings and take the mixture down to a simmer.

In the meantime, make pasta.  Use slightly less water than usual and make sure you salt it liberally.

When the pasta is done, drain and add about a cup and a half of the pasta water to your chicken mixture along with a decent splash of wine.

Let the chicken mixture come to a boil and then slowly reduce it until you get a thick enough sauce to slightly cover the chicken bits (the starch from the pasta water will help this along nicely and the sugar from the tomato will nearly carmelize).

Fresh toppings

Combine your tomatoes with the parsley and the rest of the garlic.  Add a spritz of lemon juice and toss together.

Serve, letting everyone choose how much of each component they'd like and finish with grated hard cheese.

Another very nice summer dish.

Bread salad

Look!  It's both summerish and has actual amounts!

Combine:

• 4 cups fresh tomatoes, diced
• 3/4 cup red onion
• 1/2 cup white wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 tbsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1/2 cup (or more; can you really have too much?) shredded basil (traditional Italian)
• 6 cups dense crusty bread in 1-inch cubes

Add the bread last, preferably after a few minutes so the other flavors come together.  You can always toast fresh bread to get the right consistency, but if, say, you live in a high arid climate, your older bread will hit the sweet spot before molding anyway.

Chill, serve.  It's absolutely wonderful.