Lamb and Potato Curry

I adore lamb, but it’s both expensive and a pain to cut up (sheep seem to have a lot more bones and hard fatty deposits than cows). Fortunately for the fomer, I’ve found a local supplier at one of the farmers’ markets that’s pretty affordable. There’s not much to be done about the latter, although leg is easier to cut up than shoulder. I’ll never figure out how Asian restaurants get the thin slices, though–chunks for curry are the best I can do.

This recipe is based on “Potatoes Cooked With Meat and Yogurt” from the Barnes & Noble Greatest Ever One-Pot. These cookbooks aren’t stellar, but they’re good for ideas and cheap, and not at all bad when I’m in a hurry.

I choose this lamb-and-potato-based curry because I had lamb that needed to be cooked before I go camping this weekend, potatoes that are starting to sprout, and a couple handfuls of spinach I didn’t want to throw out. I didn’t cook it down all the way, so it ended up as more of a stew than a curry. It’s fattier than I’d like (although less than the original), but I’m not sure how to brown the onions in less fat.

This is probably very inauthentic, but it’s tasty, if not as wonderful as lamb biryani.

Rummy Pumpkin Bread

We have consumed two loaves of pumpkin bread in the past week, and I just made the third. I started with the reliable recipe in Joy of Cooking and have been modifying it. Another testament to the wonders of buttermilk!

Rummy Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
(optional) 1/4 tsp nutmeg
Pinch of salt
1 1/4 tsp baking soda

6 tbl softened butter
1 1/4 c. sugar*

1/3 c. buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbl dark rum (I recommend Black Seal; I recommend against Captain Morgan’s Tattoo or Myer’s)

2 eggs
1 c. cooked pumpkin puree (canned or homemade)

Instructions:

1. Sift together flour, baking soda, and spices. Set aside.

2. Mix buttermilk, vanilla, and rum in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Cream together butter and sugar with a mixer. Beat in eggs, then pumpkin.

4. Slowly add flour mixture and milk mixture, alternating (3 flour, 2 milk).

5. Preheat oven to 350º F. Grease a loaf pan well and pour batter into it.

6. Bake for 45-65 minutes, until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The time has varied wildly in just my three batches (all in the same oven at the same altitude), so be sure to test a little early.

*For a less sweet bread, use 1 c.; for more cake-like sweetness, 1 1/2 c. You can substitute in up to 1/2 c. brown sugar.

Altitude adjustment: For over 6000 feet, decrease sugar by 1 tbl per c. if using the maximum amount. Decrease baking soda by 1/4 tsp. Be sure to use extra large eggs. The cooking time will probably be slightly less.

Peanut Sauce

I have a severe addiction to Thai peanut sauce, and I have long been searching for a recipe that didn’t taste like peanut butter. This one is based on the recipe used at my favorite Thai restaurant, Tara Thai in Beaverton, Oregon, but I made some significant alternations. I found that the satay mix they use isn’t strictly necessary; you can produce a very nice sauce without it, but I’d add a little salt and soy sauce if you don’t use the mix.

Sugar is very much a matter of taste. Start with a little and add more if you think you need it. Palm sugar is less sweet than cane sugar (the original recipe called for 1 c. cane sugar and 1/2 c. coconut sugar, which seemed like far too much to me).

Peanut Sauce

Makes lots; freezes fine

Ingredients:

peanut oil
1/4 stalk lemongrass OR 1 tbl lemongrass paste
2 cloves garlic, minced
5 shallots, minced

1 1/2 tsp – 1 tbl Thai red curry paste (Mae Ploy is the best; Thai Kitchen if you’re vegan)
1 1/2 c. ground roasted peanuts
2 tbl. tamarind paste
A few tbl fish sauce (nam pla)
1/3 – 1/2 c. sugar, palm sugar, or coconut sugar
Lobo brand satay sauce mix OR 1/2 tsp salt and a dash of soy sauce

1 14-oz. can coconut milk

Instructions:

1. Grind peanuts in a food processor. How finely you grind them determines how chunky or smooth the sauce will be. Set aside.

2. Heat a small amount of peanut oil in a wok or frying pan. Fry garlic, shallots, and fresh lemongrass (if using FRESH) until browned. Grind to a paste in a food processor or mortar and pestle.

2. In a sauce pan, mix half the coconut milk, peanuts, curry paste, tamarind paste, fish sauce, sugar, lemongrass paste (if using PASTE), and garlic/shallot/oil mixture.

3. Bring to a simmer, stirring FREQUENTLY to prevent sticking and burning, until thickened.

4. Add rest of coconut milk. Mix.

5. Shortly before removing from heat, add Lobo satay sauce mix or salt and soy sauce. Cook for a few more minutes.

Serve with rice, stirfries, satay–anything that tastes good with peanut sauce.

Musings on cinnamon and garlic

Cinnamon:

I was always puzzled by red-hots and other cinnamon candies, because they didn’t taste anything like cinnamon to me. It turns out that they taste a lot like cinnamon — “true” Ceylon cinnamon, not the cassia that’s commonly used today (medieval recipes made a distinction between the two, but cassia has become the standard today).

Ceylon cinnamon has a wonderful, floral-citrusy fragrance, but the taste is much “hotter” than cassia, more like those cinnamon candies. It’s not very noticeable in baked goods (Ceylon cinnamon doesn’t hold up well to heat) or anything with much sugar, but very noticeable on its own (right now I’m drinking plain kefir with cinnamon). I’m of two minds. I love the fragrance, but I’m beginning to think I prefer the flavor of cassia (I never liked those red-hot candies much). It’s probably just as well, since Ceylon cinnamon doesn’t hold up as well in storage. I do think it would work better for Mexican chocolate, though. It’s worth trying.

Speaking of spices, the pumpkin bread was reliably good as always (Joy of Cooking recipe) and we scarfed it in a couple days. I’m wondering if there’s any way I could use buttermilk instead of milk. I’ll have to think about it. I used the wonderful local milk and eggs from the farmer’s market, and added some other spices (baked goods do not call for cardamom often enough). I definitely need to make quickbreads more often; they make great breakfasts, and I’ve been bad about eating breakfast of late.

Garlic:

I bought a great deal of fresh garlic (two varieties) at the farmer’s market on Wednesday evening (it should probably say something about Erin and me that one bulb is already almost gone, in basically two days). Fresh garlic is amazing. It’s juicy, a totally different peeling experience, and absolutely wonderful. It doesn’t hurt that the varities farmers around here grow are much better than the boring ol’ grocery store variety (imported from China and Mexico, mostly).

Fresh shallots are way easier to peel than aged (you just rub them under water to remove dirt and the outermost layer of skin) and seem to make my eyes burn less (although that might be the variety). If you think onions are hard on the eyes, try chopping shallots sometime. Intense burning pain! But they are so tasty.

I’m attempting a version of my favorite Thai restaurant’s peanut sauce now, with local garlic and shallots. They use a packaged mix as a base, but so far I’m wondering if it’s really necessary. The original also calls for 1 1/2 c. of sugar (!), and I’m not sure it needs that much. We shall see how this works! I’ve been looking for a recipe that uses ground peanuts rather than peanut butter for a while now, and I know I love their peanut sauce. Unfortunately, I did not think ahead and my food processor bowl and blades are in the dishwasher…so I am waiting until it’s done for the next step.

Can anyone suggest a source for 7 oz. canned chafing fuel?

Farmer’s Market season begins!

Farmer’s markets in Colorado tend to run June-October or so, not year-round. There are about three in my area, and today I checked one out. It was pretty small, perhaps because it’s early in the season, and about half the stalls were non-edible stuff like art and soap.

But it’s all local and the prices are reasonable, and the produce folks all grow multiple varieties of garlic (I am growing bored with the storebought shipped-from-China kind).

I bought

-Carrots
-Sugar snap peas
-Turnips
-Shallots
-Milk
-Eggs
-2 kinds of garlic
-Italian sausage

I think I will make a root vegetable soup tomorrow, since I have a bunch of frozen bones to make stock with, and fresh herbs on my porch. Today I have some beef thawed that I must cook, and I’m making pumpkin bread for breakfasts.

It’s too early for tomatoes and no one had any fruit, alas–compared to the Beaverton Farmer’s Market in Oregon, it was a bit disappointing. I hope it will improve later in the season, or the others will be better.

Steamed Artichokes

I love, love, love, LOVE artichokes. Madly.

A few years ago, someone told me they take 4-6 hours to cook at 6000 feet.

I am happy to say that this is a filthy untruth.

(This makes me ridiculously happy.)

Steamed Artichokes

Ingredients:

Artichokes (as many as you want that will fit in a pan)
Coarsely sliced garlic
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Drizzle of olive oil

Instructions:

1. Rinse artichokes. Cut off all but 1/2 inch (1 cm) of stem. Cut a thin slice off the bottom. If the “leaves” are especially prickly and you’re picky, you can snip off the tips of the leaves with scissors.

2. In a large saucepan with a lid (preferably just large enough to hold the artichokes upright without crowding), put about 1 inch (2.5 cm) of water. Set the artichokes in the pan stem-down. Drizzle lemon juice and olive oil over them and in the water, and throw in the garlic.

3. Cover and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook for about 1 hour, until a fork stuck in the stem indicates softness. Larger artichokes may take longer.

We’ve always eaten them with mayonnaise. It sounds kind of icky, but is surprisingly good (and I don’t normally like mayonnaise). If you’ve never had artichokes before, you peel off the leaves and scrape the flesh off them with your teeth. Then you can cut it open and eat the soft heart.

Propaganda-free food

Via Tigers and Strawberries, My Children, the Food Experiment, by Sandra Steingraber.

The author raised her children without TV, and fed them entirely from co-op and local farm food. They hate fast food and love veggies. Sounds good? I think it is. But I also think it’s kind of simplistic, and I’m downright disturbed by a lot of the comments.

I was raised almost TV-free (I occasionally watched it at my grandparents’ house, mostly game shows). When I was 16, my mom got a TV so she could watch videos, and to this day, I use the TV primarily for movies. I sometimes tape shows, but I fast-forward through the commercials. I’ve never understood watching them–if you can’t fastforward, it’s the perfect bathroom/tea/whatever break.

My mom is a good cook, and she did buy primarily organic food. We did belong to a farming co-op for a while, and we grew tomatos, raspberries, herbs, and vegetables periodically (with mixed success). We did not keep soda in the house and I never had sugary cereals or Twinkies.

But I hate most vegetables. I can count the ones I like on my fingers, and they don’t include the dark green ones like broccoli and kale. I think I may have the genetic predisposition to dislike bitter vegetables, but I think it may also be legacy of my dad constantly shoving them at me (I didn’t eat bananas for years, either, and my mom still won’t eat pears. He was persistent). My dad went through a series of fad diets while I was growing up–no fat (and I mean no, which is particularly unhealthy for children), no salt, steamed rice is a superfood (steamed white rice is practically nutrition-free!), etc. He preferred his vegetables cooked to death (my mom and I prefer them stirfried or raw), and while he insisted on bland, boring food at home, he went to bakeries and ate croissants and eclairs. My dad did not model a healthy relationship with food for me.

Puerto Rican Tembleque OR Hawaiian Haupia

My mom’s cousin lives in Hawaii, and whenever my mom and I visited, my mom would make haupia (a kind of coconut pudding). It’s best made with frozen coconut cream, which is hard to find on the mainland, but you can use regular coconut milk for an acceptable result (you could also chill it and drain off some of the liquid if you wanted). Do NOT use the sweetened coconut cream sold for making drinks! I don’t know how light coconut milk would work, and I frankly don’t want to try it. If anyone does, please let me know how that goes.

I decided to make some haupia, and while looking for a recipe, I came across a variation for Puerto Rican tembleque. Yum, I thought, vanilla and cinnamon! Why not?

The proportions are somewhat flexible: you can range from 12 oz. coconut milk and 6 oz. water to 18 oz. coconut milk. It’s easiest to avoid lumps if you have some water and whisk the cornstarch into a smooth mixture with it.

Haupia

Ingredients:

12 oz. coconut milk
6 oz. water
6 tbl. sugar
1/4 c. cornstarch

Instructions:

1. Whisk together ingredients in a saucepan until lumps are gone. It is easier to get lumps out if you mix the cornstarch and water to a smooth consistency first.

2. Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently, until the pudding thickens and gets a silky sheen.

3. Pour into an 8×8″ pan and chill until solid.

Tembleque

Ingredients:

18 oz. coconut milk
6 tbl. sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 c. cornstarch

Cinnamon or nutmeg

Instructions:

1. Prepare as above, adding the vanilla.

2. Serve sprinkled with cinnamon or nutmeg.

Guacamole

Guacamole is really kind of gross-looking, but it is awfully tasty. Last night Erin and I were tired, so we had guacamole and chips for dinner.

Guacamole

Ingredients:

Avocados
Lemon or lime juice
Salt
Salsa
1 clove minced garlic per 2 avocados

Instructions:

1. Put ingredients in a bowl in pleasing proportions and mush around with a fork until pleasantly lumpy and mixed.

Probably the easiest recipe you’ll ever see me post!

If only I lived in Broomfield!

Today I was in Broomfield, visiting friends. Broomfield, although very suburban, mysteriously has three nearly-identical pho restaurants within almost the same strip mall (two are separated by only a couple other businesses). We went to one of them for lunch, which was nice. I don’t often have a craving for pho, but every now and then it’s perfect–and for $6, a giant bowl of noodles, piled with basil and almost paper-thin rare beef, is a good deal.

Afterwards, we stopped in the Asian grocery store next door (Open Pacific Markets, I think Pacific Ocean Marketplace). One of the things that frustrates me about Colorado Springs is that there are no Asian groceries (that I’ve found) with large and thriving produce, meat, and seafood sections.

This one, while not quite up to Uwajimaya in Portland, Oregon, had everything from durian (jackfruit) to chicken feet (yes, I’ve been looking for them*; now I won’t have to freak out the poor meat counter workers at Whole Foods further).

I didn’t buy much because I had over an hour to drive back and no cooler, but it’s good to know it’s there. I did get some galangal and some more packets of the satay mix my favorite Thai restaurant in Oregon uses as a base for their excellent peanut sauce, and some canned mangos for a mango mousse recipe I want to try.

But as I pointed out to Kevin, Broomfield can no longer be suburban hell. Hell doesn’t have Asian grocery stores.

*I have it on good authority that chicken feet are what makes Chinese soup stock so golden and rich. I’m disinclined to eat them; they are bony and I fear irrationally for my esophagus. I am told, though, that chicken feet are like a Chinese french fry: a convenient vehicle for sauces more than an end of themselves.