My obsession with tindora/vargoli/ivy gourd continues unabated, and each time I see them at the farmers market, I cannot help but buy more than one person can reasonably consume. No one has ever called me ‘reasonable.’
Last night I realized that I had about a half-pound of gourds left, and a large sweet potato that wasn’t getting any fresher. I decided to move away from the pickle-and-peanut concept I’ve found so reliable for vargoli, and considered a different tack. The results were really, really delicious.
Ingredients:
Sauce:
– 1/2 tsp. Dijon mustard
– 1/4 tsp. fresh grated horseradish
– 1/8 cup red wine vinegar
– 1/8 cup olive oil
– Splash Madeira wine
– 1 pinch herbes de Provence
– Salt and pepper to taste
Other:
– 1/2 pound fresh vargoli (aka tindora, ivy gourd, gourd, etc.)
– 1 large sweet potato
First, microwave your sweet potato (skin on) for about 3 and a half minutes, until soft but not quite done. Set it aside to cool a bit. While that’s going, clean and slice your vargoli into rounds and set them aside and, in a small glass, mix the sauce ingredients until nicely emulsified.
Now get a wok (or fry pan) going on medium-high heat. Add some oil (maybe 2 tbs). When it’s all up to temperature, add your mustard seed and coriander seed, heating until they start to crackle and jump. Add the sliced vargoli and stir-fry for a minute, then let it be still while you peel and dice the sweet potato.
Toss the potato and cup of sauce in with the vargoli, and cook until everything’s done, stirring as little as possible to let things caramelize a bit.
Served alone this makes a really delicious and very healthy meal that is even vegan and gluten free, but I really like having a side of good yogurt (Greek or home-made regular) to go balance it out. Enjoy!!!
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16May
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15Apr
For some time now, I’ve been craving salsa verde. I don’t really know why, or even what I wanted to do when I find it, but there was a clear deficit of the stuff in my life. Store-bought salsas are pretty much invariably disappointing, and the green varieties double so. They usually at double the cost too.
Traditionally, salsa verde is made with jalapenos, tomatillos, cilantro, and lime juice. I don’t like jalapenos (or, at least, I prefer other sources of heat), the cilantro at the store wasn’t so great, and I forgot to buy lime juice. As usual, I was not about to let this deter me.
I used:- 3 tomatillos
- 1 cup (or so) fresh basil
- 3/4 cup Vidalia onion
- 2 Serrano peppers
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 tbs olive oil
- 3/4 tsp celery salt
- 3/4 tsp turbinado sugar
First, preheat your broiler, with the top rack as far up as it goes. Now remove the papery husks from the tomatillos, and wash the sticky stuff from them. Now, slice them in half, and place on a cookie sheet with your peppers and unpeeled garlic. Put in the broiler, about 1-2 inches from heat. They should stay in until the tomatillos are slightly charred and falling apart, which takes about 10 minutes, but you should turn everything once halfway through.
While those are cooking, chop up your onion and measure the spices.
Once everything’s cooked, take it out of the oven, peel the garlic and stem the peppers. Now, put everything into a blender or food processor and liquify. Adjust with salt, sugar, pepper, and whatever else you like, until you’re happy. Remember – the flavors will be stronger once it has cooled and congealed a bit!
Serve with chips or on enchiladas or wherever you might want a very flavorful, slightly sweet but mostly tangy, heat. It also works very well as a pesto substitute if you use more basil. -
17Mar
Occasional Füddie SNH sends us this quick, vegan & gluten-free dish using lemon zest and tahini to make a delicious, creamy and tangy sauce.
Ingredients:
3 lemons
1 crown of broccoli
1/2 crown cauliflower
1 cup okra, chopped
Thin rice noodles (or other noodles)
1 Tbsp tahini (sesame paste)
2 cloves garlic
Almonds, roasted and chopped
Olive oil
Black pepper (fresh ground)
– Chop broccoli, cauliflower, and okra. Cut large florets in half, keep small florets. Set aside.
– Zest one of the lemons and set the zest aside.
– Juice all three lemons.
– In a small saucepan (cast iron works well*), heat 1 tbsp olive oil on low.
– In a steamer, steam the broccoli, cauliflower, and okra.
– Chop or crush garlic, combine with olive oil in saucepan. Increase heat to medium-low, sautee 5 minutes.
– Add lemon zest and sautée for another 5 minutes.
– Optional: Remove lemon zest and garlic cloves from the olive oil.
– Add lemon juice and tahini to olive oil, stirring until the mixture has a creamy consistency. Reduce heat to low and stir every few minutes until ready to serve.
– Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the rice noodles. Cook according to directions on the package.
Once vegetables have reached desired tenderness, drain the noodles and vegetables. Serve noodles topped with vegetables, sauce, and almonds.
*If using cast iron for the sauce, be sure to rinse promptly after and re-season with oil right away. The highly acidic lemon juice can strip the pan of some of its seasoning/coating. -
25Feb
Recipes are a funny thing. Some people live by them – they read and follow every instruction to the letter, obsessing over how many salt grains are in a “pinch” (is that the same as a “Pinch”?) or if a splash is more than one shake of the soy sauce bottle. Then there are people like my great-grandmother, who are probably aware that “teaspoon” has a specific definition, but wouldn’t admit it if asked.
I’m somewhere in between: I like recipes in theory, but am a bit inconsistent at actually using them once in the kitchen. It’s always nice to have some idea what you’re going to need from the store, and how long it’s likely to take, but once the cooking starts, I tend to let go of what’s written down in favor of what flavors or textures or colors strike me just then. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s a disaster. Other people generally don’t hear about the latter, and that is not about to change.
But this is all subject to a bias, generated by how recipes have always been presented to me: a list of ingredients and instructions, neatly indented and punctuated, with notes in the margins and certain words circled or crossed out and written over. Upon seeing the image above on BoingBoing last week, I couldn’t resist.
First of all, it’s beautiful. Second of all (assuming there’s not much missing from the translations), it does just what I want a recipe to do: it gives me an idea, easily subjected to my own moods and whims. In deference to that concept, I’ll only give the highlights of my version.
I used all the ingredients in the diagram (except duck, I only had chicken), plus some tapioca starch. For the “1 cup sauce” I used about 3/4 cup soy sauce, and the rest was mostly Sriracha and some lime juice.
I fried the spices in sesame oil till they were fragrant, then added the chicken and, after a couple of minutes, my shitakes. After a while I added the sauce and beer (I used Kirin Ichiban, because it’s what I had), and when the chicken was cooked I thickened it with the starch.
I served it over white hominy, because I was too lazy to make rice, and that actually worked really well. It was a bit salty (maybe less soy sauce and more beer next time), but really delicious.
Any brilliant artists out there who want to make me very happy are encouraged to paint some recipes after this fashion – my kitchen has plenty of empty wall space! -
17Feb
Lemongrass is a great spice. It can be used in warm, soothing dishes as well as it can be in cold refreshing and hot jarring ones. I love to use it as a way of brightening up a recipe, much as I’d use lemon juice, although without the acidity or extra liquid. This dish is one I’ve been making, in one form or another, for many years – it’s fast, easy, and pretty healthy.
Because this is a dish that’s best made a bit thrown-together, everything here is approximate, and everyone should adjust to their own tastes and moods.
What you need:1 3/4 chicken breast, cut into strips
1 tbs. garlic (minced)
1 tbs lemongrass, diced small
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs rice wine (or cheap red, if that’s what you’ve got)
2 serrano peppers, diced
Fresh basilWhat you do:
Heat some oil to medium-high in a wok, and add the garlic and lemongrass, stirring until very fragrant. Then, add the chicken and let cook until it’s about 3/4 done, about 3 minutes. Now, raise the heat to high and add your sauces and peppers, stir-frying for about a minute. Lower heat back to medium, and cook until the sauce is reduced about 80%.
Serve hot over rice, and garnish with basil leaves.
(Image from wiki-images) -
11Feb
The one downside to living alone is that cooking for one can be a real challenge. Most recipes serve more than one, and ingredients don’t always come in easily-subdivided groupings. Here’s a recipe I quite like that makes one serving, for which I use chicken breasts which I keep in single freezer bags.
It’s based off of what a friend of mine does for her family, but scaled down and modified to suit my tastes.
This is what you need:
1 chicken breast cut in 1-inch bits
2 baby bok choys, chopped up
1/3 of a yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger
2 Serrano peppers, diced
A handful of roasted peanuts
Another handful of peanuts, ground up
2 tbs rice wine (or marsala)
1.5 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp tapioca starch (or corn if you prefer)
Mirin
Sugar
Sesame oil.
Cut everything up, and make your sauce: mix the wine, soy sauce, half the peppers and garlic, and a splash of mirin in a glass, and set it aside.
Now, get your wok going over medium-high heat, and add a couple tablespoons of oil. Add the ginger and the peppers and garlic not in your sauce, and stir for 30 seconds. Add the chicken, stir around, and let cook for a couple of minutes, until it’s about half done. Now add your onions, and when they begin to get translucent, your bok choy and whole peanuts.
Dump in your sauce, adding a bit more oil if you need it. Add the ground nuts and toss that all together, and let cook about a minute. Meanwhile, dissolve your starch in warm water. Now reduce the heat to medium and stir in the starch-water slurry. This will thicken the sauce. Adjust your seasonings to taste (I usually add a bit of Sriracha, because I love it), and serve hot over rice. -
01Feb
I bought one of those pre-prepped bags of broccoli and cauliflower and carrots at the grocery store the other day, because it was on sale and because I love veggies and because I am lazy. At home, I noticed that on the back of the bag there was a recipe for a vegetable curry, using the contents of the bag, and other similarly-branded ingredients. I didn’t have most of those other things handy, and also the recipe didn’t look very good. But the idea’s seeds were sewn.
Days later, at the Asian market, I came upon the aisle of canned curry mixes and powders. When an older lady speaking what sounded like Thai to her cell phone grabbed about four cans of Bright brand (Thai) Green Curry, I decided to try it. I’ve been steered horribly wrong before, but more often than not this is a good way of picking between brands you don’t know. I also picked up a few other ingredients and, for reasons not entirely clear even to me, later (at the farmers market) decided to buy buffalo instead of beef or chicken meat.
I ended up with the following:– 2 cans green curry ( FYI: it has coconut milk and bamboo shoots and kefir leaves already in it, if you’re making your own)
– 1 large fresh Serrano pepper (about 1.5 tbs chopped)
– 1 stalk fresh lemongrass
– 1 lb. of mixed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots
– 1 medium yellow onion
– 1.5 pounds buffalo top round
– Fish sauce
– Dry roasted peanutsBack home, I got to work: I diced the onion and Serrano, chopped about 2 tbs of the lemongrass (slice into thin circles, then quarter), rinsed the veggies, trimmed the meat, and cut it into 3/4 – inch cubes. I got out my biggest pot, and first browned the meat a little bit. Then, I lowered the heat to medium and added olive oil, followed by about half of the chilies and lemongrass. After this was all nice and warm and fragrant, I stirred in the onions. I let them cook about 5 minutes, till a bit translucent but not all the way.
At that point, I added the veggies, and both cans of curry, about 3 tbs of fish sauce, and the remaining spices. I also added sriracha, but then again I like things hot. I upped the temperature as well, to medium-high, and let the curry simmer and reduce, stirring only once in a while, until everything was the right texture. It was, at this point, still a little watery for me, so I mixed a big teaspoon of tapioca starch in a quarter-cup of water, and stirred that into the curry to thicken it.
I am, it should be known, a bit lax in my advanced planning and very prone to forgetting to do things. Like, say, to buy rice at the store. Or to think about boiling pasta before the rest of my meal is nearly ready. Luckily, I am aware of my own, err, idiosyncrasies, and stock my shelves accordingly. It turns out that canned white hominy is easy and fast to warm, and actually makes a nice substitute for rice.
I garnished the dish with the peanuts, which I ground with mortar and pestle, which I think was a key factor in making this dish delicious. Without it, the buffalo was too much of a random flavor – the peanuts helped to integrate it all together. Plus, I love peanuts. -
11Jan
A funny thing about my West-Indian tinged upbringing is that I’ve been exposed to so many amazing foods and cuisines, but not often directly enough to learn to execute them properly. So many of the dishes I grew up loving and still think of as supreme comfort food, I have no idea how to deal with preparing. Breadfruit is a prime example: the sweet, starchy fruit’s luscious perfume transports me instantly to warmer climes and friendlier faces, but once home with one, I’ve always been a bit perplexed. A wonderful substitute for potatoes or yams, the stuff is a royal pain to cook.
Despite this knowledge, the gorgeous aroma as I walked by the breadfruit bin at the farmers market overpowered my better judgment: if at first you don’t succeed, et cetera. Picking a medium-sized, about 1/3 green one (meaning that it was close to ripe, but not all the way), I headed home. First things first, I preheated my oven to 300, washed the fruit and skewered some holes in it, and wrapped it in foil. I roasted it for an hour total, quarter-turning every 15 minutes.
During the last 15 minutes, I diced a small white onion. Out of the oven, I let the fruit cool enough to cut it, remove the center bits, peel it, and dice it, while warming my skillet to medium-high. To the pan I added some butter and the breadfruit, and tossed it with some Vegeta. After 5 minutes or so, I added the onions. When the onions were a bit caramelized, but not charred, I removed everything to a bowl, and deglazed the pan with a cup of dark rum (Gosling, in this case), letting that reduce about 75%. I tossed the sauce into the bowl with everything else, and had a lovely accompaniment to the grilled chicken and spinach salad I’d also made.
Be aware: breadfruit has a very strange texture, if you’re not expecting it. It is a bit spongy, and can be chewy, but don’t let that deter you from this wonderful, and healthy ingredient! -
08Jan
I love calamari, squid salad, and Italian squid pastas, but I’d never tried cooking any such cephalopod myself. As usual, cheap produce lead me to new adventures: fresh squid rings were $2.00 per pound at YDFM today, and Thai basil was $0.99/lb. So, I decided to try a Thai-esque dinner. I used:
For the sauce:
1/4 cup Thai basil
1/2 tsp. ground ginger (or 1 tsp fresh grated)
2 tsp hot pepper flakes
3/4 tbs. light soy sauce
3/4 tbs. fish sauce
2 squeezes honey (1 tsp?).
Everything Else
3/4 lbs. fresh squid rings (or whatever bits you prefer)
White hominy (I used 1 can)
Sesame oil
Rice wine
Sriracha
Lemon juice
I first asked Professor Google how long squid need to be cooked (I’m still not clear on the answer: mine were a bit rubbery), and then set to considering my sauce options. Combining a number of mixtures I’ve used over the years and the ideas I remember from squid dishes I’ve eaten, combined the above-listed sauce ingredients in a mixing bowl, and stirred them together.
Having done that, I threw some sesame oil into my wok and got it going. When the oil was hot (just beginning to sputter), I lifted the wok for a few seconds, threw in a handful of chopped basil, and returned the wok to the burner, beginning to toss the basil and oil about. Once the basil was crispy, I added my squid, stir-frying it with the oil and basil for about 1 minute.
Then, I turned down the heat to medium and stirred in my sauce. As that simmered a bit, I put my hominy in a sauce pan over low heat with a couple splashes of oil, a few of lemon juice, and a sprinkle of ginger.
My accompaniment in the works, I added the remaining basil to the squid and stirred. Then I added a few squirts of Sriracha and maybe a quarter cup of rice wine to moisten it. When the squid seemed done, I removed everything from the heat.
I served the squid over the hominy, the latter’s lemony starchiness balancing the former’s slightly sweet spiciness. All in all a successful and satisfying dinner in almost no time (total fridge-to-plate: less than 10 minutes), plus the sauce is a definite keeper: it’d be good on almost anything! -
10Dec
If really pressed to identify my favorite dessert, I’d probably have to go for bread pudding. I love the stuff, and have many wonderful childhood memories surrounding it.
So, upon seeing Smitten Kitchen’s rendition of a Gourmet magazine recipe I’d been eyeing for Thanksgiving fare, an idea hatched. Then, speaking with a friend about the joys of properly spiked egg nog, the idea grew from a hatchling to … a whatever comes after hatchling … and then in the kitchen on Thanksgiving became a full-fledged recipe. Thanksgiving night, it died in the spectacular way that a really good dessert must: by becoming immortal, eternally embedded in thighs and love handles of diners.
Here’s how it all went:
1 ½ cups egg nog (you could probably use Lite, but then why bother?)
3/4 cup canned pumpkin (the kind that says “Ingredients: Pumpkin” and nothing else)
1/2 cup white sugar (you could experiment with brown or turbinado, but it might be a bit much)
2 large eggs
1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of ground cloves
1 ½-or-so cups bourbon (optional but really important)
5 cups day-old baguette or crusty bread, cut into 1-inch bits
3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted
1 cup raisins
½ cup toasted almond slivers
Vanilla ice cream
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Put raisins and almonds and enough bourbon to cover them into a jar with a pretty good seal on the lid (can use plastic wrap). Set this aside. No, you may not have one yet. They’re not ready.
Now, stir together your pumpkin, nog, sugar, eggs, egg yolk, spices, and about 2 tablespoons of bourbon in a mixing bowl. Coat your bread bits with the melted butter in another bowl, then add the pumpkin mix and toss it so it’s all covered. No, you still may not have any of the raisins. They’re not ready. Not the almonds either.
Now, put your proto-pudding into a baking pan (preferably not too deep, maybe 2” tops) and bake until it looks done, about 20-30 minutes.
When you’re ready to serve, drain your raisins and almonds – OK, fine, you can try a few on the way, just for quality control, sure – and spread them over top of the pudding. Challenge your guests to see who’ll drink the raisin-almond-flavored bourbon, or do so yourself if you’re in to that sort of thing. You could even share!
Serve over vanilla ice cream for best effect, or eat by itself.
