Indian - - Page 6

by gansie

Taste Bud Geography

Friday night. Date night.

80P went off to play video games with one of his college friends and I had my girl El over to cook and eat. In past posts you may have learned that El was a huge factor in creating the food monsters that BS and I are today. So it was a mighty treat to have her over for a kitchen session.

The menu/plan: butternut squash soup and salad. Details to be determined upon opening fridge, pantry and through many rounds of tasting.

Before El got there I ~~cleaned my terribly messy kitchen~~ roasted two butternut squashes. Peeled those motherfuckers, cut them into pretty small pieces, tossed with oil, salt and pepper and threw them in the oven. Maybe on 400 for about 30 minutes, getting in there halfway through and shaking the pan.

Near the end of the roasting, I sauteed half an onion and two cloves garlic with oil, salt and pepper. I then dumped in the soft and slightly browned squash and stirred it around with the onion and garlic.

Enter El.

in Veggie 10 comments

by gansie

Pan-African-Asian-Indian-Greek-Fusion

You all know, I really don’t know what I’m doing. I have some kitchen knowledge. Some is learned from watching cooking shows, reading cookbooks and mags, frequenting the farmers’ market, eating at a variety of restaurants and cooking a majority of my meals. I know I have a lot to learn.

My mom, who is an avid NOT-COOKER, recently asked me what my favorite part of cooking is. It took me a second. Of course I love to eat. I also love to be in the kitchen. And I love the act of feeding my friends and family. But right now, what excites me in the kitchen, is cooking with ingredients from other cultures and countries.

And this is where I go back to not really knowing what I’m doing. Now, that doesn’t mean I can’t make my food taste freaking awesome. I just don’t know the proper, the correct, way to pair spices from a certain country. (One reason that we have a tag as “Asian” is because we don’t yet know the nuances of each individual country. Sure, fish sauce is Thai and wasabi is Japanese. But ginger—how do you categorize?)

This post is a good example of why people hate fusion food. And love. It was really delicious, but totally not accurate. Please excuse my ignorance.

Recipe post jump.

in Veggie 4 comments

by BS

Why Do I Always Fall for the Weird Ones?

I have a problem. I literally cannot go to a grocery store that has a decent produce section without picking up some out-there fruit or vegetable, from delicious monsters to ridiculous mini-kiwis. I’m perfectly happy with regular old oranges and zucchinis, but when I see something weird, I think “I just have to get that so I can blog about it,” whether it looks good or not. So enter cranberry beans.

I picked up these weirdos at the Brooklyn Fairway even though I had no idea what the eff they were. A cranberry plant cross-bred with green beans or something like that I assumed. Actually it turns out cranberry beans, or borlotti, actually aren’t like either. They’re just cranberry-colored, not cranberry-flavored, and they’re more like a lima bean or cannellini than a green bean. So good thing I actually did a little research, because I was all ready to just steam and sautee these things up like green beans, but according to the Internets, that would not work.

Instead, you have to shell them and cook the beans, not the whole pod. Take a look inside:

by gansie

Jack Wasn’t Kidding With That Stalk

Somehow TV brings out the best of my food. Yes, TV is accused of gluttonous atrocities, but in my circle, it gives us an excuse to create inventive snacks. Vio decided on an all appetizer food party for the 2nd episode of Top Chef. I clearly obliged, although I really wasn’t sure what to make. I knew, however, it had to involve brussel sprouts.

When I went to the farmers market this past weekend I bought about 3/4 lb loose sprouts. But then I wandered over to another stand and saw something wondrous – sprouts on the stalk. All at once I felt totally enlightened and totally embarrassed. I try be cognizant of where my food comes from, try to think about where it grew and by who. I try to think beyond the super agri-industrial complex. But, fuck. I honestly have never thought about how brussel sprouts actually physically push through the earth. Apparently it’s on a stalk. I’ll need to find out a bit more (JoeHoya?) but for now, I knew I needed to eat my way through this first round so I could buy some on the stalk next weekend, the last weekend of the Mt. Pleasant farmers market <tear.>

Wait, one more thing. Okay, two. Does anyone know why sprouts get such a bad wrap? They’re totally delicious. And, why are there two spellings for the veggie? 80P forbid me to use the “brussels sprouts” version. I had to eradicate that first “s.”

And now the recipe

in Recipe / Veggie 8 comments

by BS

Slow Cook, Taste It Easy

So Alex got me this sweet crock pot for my birthday this summer, and I’ve been waiting months for a perfect cold Sunday to kick back and cook up some BBQ pulled pork.

Now before anyone gets all up in my face and yells that this is not BBQ at all (I’m looking at you, Tim), let it be known that I fully understand this is not BBQ at all, but merely a city kid’s indoor imitation of it. You might even call it cheating, but you had better not, because it took me 12 effing hours.

I searched around quickly for this, but the basic recipes (here, here, here) are all pretty much the same, with the only main argument about how long you should cook it for. So I went out to the supermarket and bought a giant pork shoulder, which surprisingly cost about 8 bucks – pretty great considering I’ve got a good 10+ meals coming out of this. The shoulder was so big that I actually had to chop it up a bit to get it to fit in the slow cooker.

Now, ya’ll might yell at me again ’bout this, but as much as I love pulled pork, I’m not a huge fan of the sauce. I often find traditional BBQ sauce too ketchup-y, and you know how we feel about ketchup. So instead I whipped up my own semi-hot sauce: Sriracha, white wine vinegar, worcestershire sauce, garlic, sugar, salt and pepper.

So I poured the sauce on my pork shoulder, set the thing on low and let it cook there for eight hours! I am not the most patient chef ever, to say the least, so as you can imagine I was a little antsy all day. I checked it after 8 hours, and, as one of the recipes recommended, at that point began to remove the fat. I felt like a pretty hardcore butcher chopping off fat. The meat tasted good, but not quite as tender as I wanted, so I put it back on to simmer for another four hours. This of course meant I didn’t even get to eat it for dinner that night, but I was determined to get this one right…

in Cheese / Pig / Recipe / Sandwich 23 comments

by gansie

Worth the Subscription

So I get both Bon Appetite and Gourmet every month. It’s way too many words for me to actually get through in thirty days. They pile up and all of a sudden it’s October and I still haven’t opened up May’s issues. It gets worse. Whenever I’m home, DAD GANSIE gives me his stack of Cooking Lights and just this weekend, I sent in a check to get Cook’s Illustrated once again. Too many magazines, an entire bookshelf dedicated to cook books, and I still never follow recipes.

But once in a while, when I get around to going through my mags (usually it’s before I see BS, as he is the recipient of my used publications) I find something I like and I actually cook it. Most torn-out recipes end up in my never-organized binder of clippings. That I never check.

With my new found taste for yogurt, and a few cucumbers from the farmers market, I had what I needed for Gourmet’s yogurt dipping sauce. Shockingly, I actually followed the directions, except I made less of the sauce than the three cups of yogurt. You can find the recipe here, and what Gourmet thinks it pairs with here, but it’s also good as a spread on tomatoes, topped with a cumber, wrapped in lox.

in Veggie 3 comments

by gansie

It’s Actually Not a Soup

Thank you for your suggestions on what to do with my crazy blended vegetable concoction. But like a true blogger, I really didn’t listen.

Chickpeas and Serrano Spiked Blended Vegetables

Toast a handful of pine nuts. When starting to brown, set aside. Warm up the sauce in that same pan. In another pan, warm through chickpeas and precooked bulgur wheat. When everything is warmed up, spoon sauce on plate. Top with chickpeas, bulgur wheat and pine nuts. Or if you don’t care about presentation, throw everything together and heat up. Blogging means extra pans and plates, unfortunately.

If your coworker happened to give you a fabulous sack of homegrown tomatoes (thank you Edy!) then top the dish with raw chunks of tomato (sprinkled with kosher salt.)

If you hate tomato, skip that step.

Oh, and not that I even know what this does for my body, nor what it really tastes like, but you can sprinkle nutritional yeast over the chickpeas. I’m trying to find more uses for the yeast. Although my two nut. yeast experts — Maidelitala and Elizabeth — claim you can’t mix it with yogurt. We’ll see.

Tag clarification
So this is not Indian, I know. But with the slight heat and chickpeas and cumin and yogurt, 80 and I felt like it had an Indian flare and texture.

in Recipe / Veggie 3 comments

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