Potato Curry

Most curry dishes, you think with meat often chicken, but this one uses the lowly potato.

Time to get spicy hot !

Getting the rhythm of the curry cooking, while I watch some periscopes of persons in India cooking, it becomes a secondhand nature.

Don’t mind the ingredients, keep it simple, (until the spices !)

Parboiled some potatoes and shallot. Drain. with smaller potato you could probably skip this step.

Prepare the spice palate. Tomato in place of tomato paste.

I prepared some ghee.

Wok fry the potato and shallots slightly browned in the gee, remove from pan.

add the spices and toast very quickly in  a bit of ghee. Alternatively you can sputter whole spices, even better with a curry leaf.

 

add the tomato

cook till the oil separates for the mix.Add back the potato and shallots

cook till desired thickness

good alone or as a side dish.

I’ve made slight variations of this recipe,

• sputter or cook the spices in ghee
• add onion , ginger etc.
• add tomato paste, stock
• add main ingredients, potato, meat, vegetables
• simmer
• serve

other notes

use grated fresh turmeric

curry leaves

grated fresh ginger

dried or fresh chopped hot peppers

whole preferred or dried spices and seeds

 

 

 

Cruffins

A new method for dough, I had though of this idea but wasn’t sure of what type of dough would work with the pasta machine. Found this recipe. A bit labor intensive, but a different take on the traditional dinner rolls.

ladyandpups.com

Here’s the ingredients, refer to the link for the technique.

Ingredients

• 150 grams (1 cup + 1 tbsp) bread flour
• 150 grams (1 cup + 1 tbsp) all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp (6 grams) instant dry yeast
• 1 1/2 tsp (11 grams) salt
• 130 grams (1/2 cup) luke-warm water + 30 grams (2 tbsp) for adjustment
• 50 grams (3 1/2 tbsp) unsalted butter, soften and cubed
• 165 grams (11 1/2 tbsp) unsalted butter, room-temperature

I doubled the recipe but made each batch separate.

Utilized tipo “00” for the bread flour and all-purpose for the other flour.

There’s a lot of mixing involved, but with the dough hook on the machine it’s just a matter of time.

after the butter has been blended in I let it mix about 15 minutes at medium low-speed.

The fun is just beginning !

As the recipe suggests, loop the dough back through the pasta roller before it runs through resulting in a continuous loop, too long to effectively manage once you decrease the thickness settings with results in a long loop of dough. I did each strip without the looping, possibly with a helper the continuous loop method will work , but I didn’t see it as an advantage.

The dough, I guess with the amount of butter incorporated and the long kneading time , is very forgiving, it went very thin without breakage and very silky and manageable. I hope you like playing with butter, a lot more is spread on the dough strips, I found out by microwaving the sticks of butter several seconds only and somewhat whisking, the butter became soft enough for spreading with an offset spatula. Too thick a butter results in tears in the paper-thin dough. You merely roll the butter frosted strips cigar style. Placing one rolled strip on top of another  unrolled strip and rolling again. Then it cut length wise, exposing the lamination.  Just loop the half cigar with the lamination on the outer circumference pulling the ends together to fit in a muffin pan.

(I don’t know why you could not just place one buttered strip, on top of another and roll them at once. Possibly once buttered would be too fragile to lift.)

The recipe suggest letting the cruffins rise till double, mine did nit really as I noticed a fast rise only after a short rest of the initial mix of the dough.

No problem with the baking , with the high butter content and the buttered muffin tins, the butter will be bubbling within the tins at the completion of baking. I feared that the cruffins would be soggy ! NO they finished extremely light and crispy on the outer edges and pull apart flaky interiors. Of course with buttery flavor. No reason to have to butter these rolls ! Broken apart on the plate, pour over some gravy !

Now the real test as they are presented at the Holiday dinner table.

Hurry up before they are all gone !

Many comments and accolades from the family food critics ! Since I bake many variations of dough products, some not repeated, they asked if this would be another one time bake !  Now, I’m going to repeat this recipe, more free form croissant style less the muffin pan, and perhaps a savory version.  Even though the recipe calls for the powered sugar atop , of course for dinner rolls I omitted that.

The labor of this recipe goes into the rolling of the dough through the pasta machine and  time wise  kneading 15 minutes with the mixer. Have plenty of butter on hand for this recipe. (I made one recipe without salt and salted butter and one recipe with salt and  salted butter with, I could not tell the difference. ) Also I weighed the ingredients, highly recommended, so there was no problem with the consistency of the dough in both recipes. After the 15 minutes of dough hook time, the dough came together beautifully.

Sambal

It’s popular now so you buy it by the bottle at the market, but I didn’t have any and wanted a more custom flavor and ingredients for an upcoming recipe. I recently bought some spicy tamarind paste which would have sufficed for the recipe but none the less wanted to cook up my own Sambal.

dried chili, plain and smoked, red onion,garlic, turmeric, scotch bonnet pepper,lemon grass,lime, galangal root,shrimp paste,ginger root,brown sugar.

The basic recipe calls for a paste made and then fried, and other ingredients added with some further cooking. Chilies are an essential element both fresh and dried. I had some scotch bonnet peppers frozen, some  dried chilies, but some were smoked  and would make a dark spicy sambal.

soaking the dried chilies

Processing the paste, it was first a bit thick but added some water that the chilies soaked in to thin and blend it further.

cooking the sambal paste

dark candy sugar added melted in to bring up the sweetness to spicy balance

 

The Sambal paste is put in jar and ready for use.

lo mein

With the abundance of fresh veggies and with the addition of noodles, lo mein was an easy choice, though prep would be essential to the recipe.

A slicing of the veggies was done using the rotary slicer of the kitchen aid attachment.

One of those recipes, the more you look the more variations you find , you settle as with most “authentic” recipes to the ingredients you have available to the village or are grown locally.

I didn’t  get to list all the sauce ingredients and amounts, but loosely followed several recipes that I researched by listing all the ingredients that compose the sauce to get an idea of the basics. I modified it by adding a bit more cornstarch and a good amount of stock as I prefer s saucy-er thick coating to the dish.

The sauce was a build up from the basic soy sauce/rice wine/sugar combo. Some of the associated components are: soy sauce, rice wine, fish sauce, shrimp paste, chili paste, ginger root, galangal root, garlic, sugar, honey, salt and pepper with sesame oil.

The sauce, less the stock.

The veggies are the same deal, use what you have. Pea pods and the baby bok choy were included as they were fresh and attractive from the market. The carrot was also crunchy as they were fresh, large diameter and not very tapered as the packaged carrots were.

Stir fry the veggies in oil.

 

While stir frying the veggies, prep the noodles, I used rice noodles instead of the wheat noodles, so just a brief toss in hot water is all that’s needed, drain and add to wok.

 

Mix well , then add the sauce… serve….

 

 

 

The result is as good or better result than restaurant  because you have control of the ingredients. So if you like salad with noodles with a sauce here it is.

I made this dish twice and this post is a compilation of the pictures from both.

shopping

recent prices / purchases

 Buy something you never had before : longan berries, galangal root and stingray.

The sweet yellow rice is more like couscous.

recent photos

Some out takes from the previous months, mostly re”pete” of recipes, some did not warrant a posting by themselves.

Hamburger Buns

Dough Wrapped Hotdogs

Dumpling Soup

Thai styled Grilled Chicken

Roasting Coffee Beans

Broth

Pesto

Eggplant, Smoke Roasted Tomato

Eggplant, Smoke Roasted Tomato, Flatbread

Fried Dumplings

Chicken Breast, Tomato Curry

Chicken Broth

Noodle Soup

Cold Noodle Soup

Grilled Cauliflower and Veggies

walnut biscuits

From Taste of Health.

Ground walnuts, flour and sugar make for a delicious cookie type biscuit that’s easy to make. (about 80 biscuits)

220 g ground walnuts

220 g flour

110 g sugar

220 g butter

2 egg yolks

icing sugar (10x) mixed with vanilla sugar for coating.

You can see by the ingredient measurements this is a easy ratio recipe to scale.

ready to make the dough

 

combine the dry ingredients then pulse in  the butter, then the egg yolks till combined.

 

Wrap and refrigerate for awhile

 

 

 

Use baking paper on baking sheets and with about a teaspoon of dough roll and form the dough into 1/2 moon shapes.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

Coat the biscuits with the powdered sugar, I put a few drops of vanilla extract into the sugar and mixed it. Maple sugar or maple sryup added to the icing sugar would be an alternative.

 

Store the finished cookie in an airtight container or cookie jar.

A nice addition to coffee, tea or a glass of milk.

Processing…..

It’s one of those days, back from the market the fresh food laid out, recipes floating around what to do to capture the freshness of the purchase. Usually a simple salad is prepared or just tasting the produce with bread is a way to assess the flavors. It’s also a time to have a fresh fruit bowl as a meal.

Tomatoes, still coming  from the garden need to be processed. Some have been scalded, cooled and peeled for the freezer. A real easy way to process tomatoes is to juice them, a bowl filled with fresh picked cherry tomatoes yielded about 20 ounces of juice. The pulp was the chefs treat , good smeared on bread with salt and pepper. Having an attachment for juicing for the mixer makes this an easy task, a worthwhile purchase years ago. Just before bottling, strained with a filter type bag.

 

Processing tomato juice

Tomato juice

One of the other uses for tomato is salsa. Onion, shallot, chives, hot peppers are just some of the additions along with cilantro and various seeds.

tomato salsa over water spinach on flour tortilla, just one of the uses of the cherry tomato.

Other preparations are, water spinach pesto, and basil pesto although I use the term basil loosely, some of the labeling from the market, and my tasting disagree , but I’m not familiar with different type  of basil, none the less the green leaves were mixed with garlic, chives, oil, and salt and pepper via the food processor yielding a very concentrated paste. The home made pesto guarantees an easy way to incorporate the greens into your diet without cooking and as a bread lover a meal in itself when applied to fresh bread or crackers. Dressing pasta is also a favorite of the pesto.  Another leafy green with a lemony flavour was added to each pesto. Also as it was time to bottle Kombucha some of the lemony leaves were added to each bottle. Green beans were trimmed and frozen.

 

Processing water spinach

As a traditional pesto might include Parmesan cheese, none was available at the time. Also some pecans and toasted sesame seeds were added to some of the pesto.

I find a pleasant surprise when I unwrapped the pork belly, atop there were ribs, which I trimmed for an additional meal. 

Trimmed pork belly, ready for freezing or immediate meal.

Mango can be made into a chutney for a flavorful addition to a meal or a dessert.

 

Cookie bars (chocolate)

The actual title is Black Bottom Cookie Bars denoting that the cookie is half chocolate and half plain. Not a big cookie and brownie fan, but other household members are.

Cocoa, vanilla, sugars, coconut oil,eggs, chopped chocolate, flour/salt mixture. 8 inch by 8 inch pan is prepped with baking paper.

A substitute for the butter is coconut oil, which due the current weather had to measured and refrigerated to a solid consistency. (lower left)

 

I also did not have bits, so I had to go to the reserves

 

Blend coconut oil and sugars. Whisk attachment.

Once mixed, add flour gradually.

Finish adding the flour, mix till just moistened.

 

Divide the dough in half, weighed it out but note: the chocolate 1/2 should be a bit less than half because the chocolate bits will take up some volume. (just being picky)

Mix in the cocoa and bits to 1/2 of the plain dough mixture

Spread the chocolate dough, then the plain dough in the pan. Happily

Off to the oven

In the convection oven , still warm weather so no running the gas oven for now.

Chillin out till cool !

cooled finished bars, some of the chips still oozy.

I could have probably left out the chocolate chips, deep chocolate flavor. No comment from the the brownie expert so all is good. I just have about 1/2 of one of the squares, enough for me. Would be good tempered with vanilla ice cream.

barbecue Satay

• 2 pounds pork loin, cut into strips (or chicken)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 3 tablespoon molasses
• 1 small onion, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons grated ginger root
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• Place wooden skewers in a pan and cover with water to cover and let soak about an hour to prevent the skewers from burning during grilling. You could skip this step and broil the pork on a broiling pan instead.

Combine the water and brown sugar in a pan and over medium heat, simmer till the sugar dissolves increase the heat till the mixture reduces to a syrup.

Remove from the heat and add in soy sauce, lime juice, molasses, onion, garlic, ginger root, coriander and pepper, mix until well combined.

Marinade the pork in the sauce reserving about 1/4 cup for basting. Refrigerate for about one hour.

Thread the pork onto the skewers, grill untill tender or broil without the skewers till tender.

Served with couscous and large leaf lettuce.