Very simple stuff: the fillets were dusted with flour, dipped in a beaten egg and then in homemade bread crumbs with salt, pepper and thyme -- and pan fried. Mashed potatoes with the skin on, and asparagus.
I restrained myself in this case -- I have the bad tendency of always wanting to throw a little cayenne pepper or something else into something like this... I tend to fall prey to that idiotic feeling that "I'd better add something more, in case this ingredient doesn't work out..." But the thyme turned out to work really well.
One thing that annoys me about pan frying breaded things, is that they end up glistening, like they're just LOADED with fat -- which they're not (although in truth, it looks worse in the picture in real life). I have heard that one way to prevent this, is to leave the fillets in the fridge for a while after breading them. But I never seem to remember this when I cook 'em... Does anyone out there have any advice on this?
I restrained myself in this case -- I have the bad tendency of always wanting to throw a little cayenne pepper or something else into something like this... I tend to fall prey to that idiotic feeling that "I'd better add something more, in case this ingredient doesn't work out..." But the thyme turned out to work really well.
One thing that annoys me about pan frying breaded things, is that they end up glistening, like they're just LOADED with fat -- which they're not (although in truth, it looks worse in the picture in real life). I have heard that one way to prevent this, is to leave the fillets in the fridge for a while after breading them. But I never seem to remember this when I cook 'em... Does anyone out there have any advice on this?
Starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of this now. I've seen some cheesecakes that are completely pale on top -- and some recipes I've tried, resulted in that. Well, I much prefer this slightly speckled, browned surface.
I've settled down with a recipe that combines a CIA recipe with one from Cooking for Engineers, with various modifications. The CIA recipe creates a very thin or low cake, which I'm sure is fine if you're a professional who makes half a dozen cakes in a batch, but if you only make one, it takes almost no extra effort to create a bigger cake that will give you twenty servings, rather than ten. So I increased the ingredients; almost doubling them. I think I can safely double them, now.
Another thing I learned this time around, is that there's a very good reason why some recipes calls for using fewer egg yolks, than egg whites: it creates a lighter flavor. One of my goals has been to create a light and fluffy cake (hence my whisking the egg whites separately, into stiff peaks, and folding them in). I just thought it would be a shame to throw away egg yolks, so I decided to keep them in. This created a really rich flavor -- which is nice; nothing wrong with that -- but it wasn't what I was looking for.
Well, I think I'm getting close to my perfect cheesecake...
I've settled down with a recipe that combines a CIA recipe with one from Cooking for Engineers, with various modifications. The CIA recipe creates a very thin or low cake, which I'm sure is fine if you're a professional who makes half a dozen cakes in a batch, but if you only make one, it takes almost no extra effort to create a bigger cake that will give you twenty servings, rather than ten. So I increased the ingredients; almost doubling them. I think I can safely double them, now.
Another thing I learned this time around, is that there's a very good reason why some recipes calls for using fewer egg yolks, than egg whites: it creates a lighter flavor. One of my goals has been to create a light and fluffy cake (hence my whisking the egg whites separately, into stiff peaks, and folding them in). I just thought it would be a shame to throw away egg yolks, so I decided to keep them in. This created a really rich flavor -- which is nice; nothing wrong with that -- but it wasn't what I was looking for.
Well, I think I'm getting close to my perfect cheesecake...
This was my fourth shot at this dish. I've been experimenting with how to control the spices in it -- it's a very flavorful dish, with a certain sweetness. The original recipe calls for whole spices like cloves and cardamom, which I don't like to leave in the stew. My initial idea to resolve this problem was to grind them up, but that just didn't create the same flavors. So my second idea was to use a tea pod/strainer thing, like a French style bouquet garni thing. It's just that I figured I needed to use far more spices, to compensate for the fact that most of them would be in this pod, and I overcompensated, and added too much. So this dish ended up too sweet for my taste.
Laal Maas is a West Indian lamb stew, or curry -- in the Curry Cuisine book, it is described as fiery (I agree). I've had a higher rate of success with the dishes in this book, than just about any other book. But this one just didn't work out for me.
The recipe calls for 25-35 dried chilies, without making ANY comments as to what kind of chilies are to be used -- exactly how hot should they be? If I used 25-35 dried chilies of the variety I've got, the meal wouldn't be edible (I used 10, which turned out to be pretty close to the upper limit for my dinner crowd -- fiery, indeed).
But the rest of the ingredients (both green AND black cardamom, and a helluva lot of cloves) just didn't work for me. Oh well, they can't all be Cadillacs.
What DID work though, was the naan. I'm starting to get this feeling as if I kinda know what I'm doing with these suckers, at this point. Making bread is (I think) just about the absolute pinnacle of cooking: cold hard knowledge and technique, artistry, and pure fecking magic. But unlike cooking a meal, I feel like there's still an awful lot more to understand, even if I get it right once or twice... If I get a meal right just once, I most often feel fairly confident that I can recreate it -- and I'm mostly right. But with bread, it's a different story. Still, I have hopes that I'll truly figure it all out. And I'll share it, of course.
The recipe calls for 25-35 dried chilies, without making ANY comments as to what kind of chilies are to be used -- exactly how hot should they be? If I used 25-35 dried chilies of the variety I've got, the meal wouldn't be edible (I used 10, which turned out to be pretty close to the upper limit for my dinner crowd -- fiery, indeed).
But the rest of the ingredients (both green AND black cardamom, and a helluva lot of cloves) just didn't work for me. Oh well, they can't all be Cadillacs.
What DID work though, was the naan. I'm starting to get this feeling as if I kinda know what I'm doing with these suckers, at this point. Making bread is (I think) just about the absolute pinnacle of cooking: cold hard knowledge and technique, artistry, and pure fecking magic. But unlike cooking a meal, I feel like there's still an awful lot more to understand, even if I get it right once or twice... If I get a meal right just once, I most often feel fairly confident that I can recreate it -- and I'm mostly right. But with bread, it's a different story. Still, I have hopes that I'll truly figure it all out. And I'll share it, of course.
I had some leftover, home-made tandoori paste from this meal, and wanted to see how it would work with something other than salmon. I also wanted to repeat my thin-beef-on-a-chimney thing, but picked flank steak instead of sirloin this time. Now, since this would be a bit experimental, I decided to cover my bases and add another protein -- I figured shrimp would be good (which also let me see how the paste would work on two different things, in a single cooking session).
The whole "Surf & Turf" thing was incidental -- I'm not really that vulgar. Besides, flank steak and shrimp won't set you back anywhere near as much as lobster and fillet mignon -- which is fitting, since Indian food can be so wonderfully inexpensive. Voilà: a boorish and extravagant dish has been reincarnated as an affordable and far tastier one. Is there a Nobel Prize for Cooking? I'd better make some space on my mantelpiece right away. Or perhaps not.
There's no such thing as a failed experiment -- I mean, you generally learn more from failure, than success (well, you have an opportunity to learn, I guess). But basically, the beef didn't turn out too good. In spite of being marinated overnight, the flavors of the paste couldn't really be tasted. I'm pretty puzzled by that. Perhaps the paste was too thick to penetrate into the meat. I honestly don't know.
The shrimp was good, though. It wasn't marinated in the paste at all -- it was just brushed with it prior to grilling. It was very nice, but not as good as the salmon I mentioned earlier. I guess I'll stick with using this paste just for sautéed fish fillets.
Sadly (or hilariously), the best part of the meal was the side dish: Aloo Mutter -- potatoes with peas. Aloo Gobi (potatoes and cauliflower) is a well known vegetarian dish that I like (perhaps because the director of "Bend It Like Beckham" included a segment where she cooks the dish with her mother and "auntie" in the Special Feature section of the DVD, heheh), but in my opinion, aloo mutter is even better. It's a simple and extremely good tasting side dish. And I'm glad I made it, for this little experiment.
One thing I love about cooking on the chimney, is that I cooked the beef one minute per side and the shrimp about a minute and a half per side. And I still got serious grill marks. I've gotta use this method a lot more...
The whole "Surf & Turf" thing was incidental -- I'm not really that vulgar. Besides, flank steak and shrimp won't set you back anywhere near as much as lobster and fillet mignon -- which is fitting, since Indian food can be so wonderfully inexpensive. Voilà: a boorish and extravagant dish has been reincarnated as an affordable and far tastier one. Is there a Nobel Prize for Cooking? I'd better make some space on my mantelpiece right away. Or perhaps not.
There's no such thing as a failed experiment -- I mean, you generally learn more from failure, than success (well, you have an opportunity to learn, I guess). But basically, the beef didn't turn out too good. In spite of being marinated overnight, the flavors of the paste couldn't really be tasted. I'm pretty puzzled by that. Perhaps the paste was too thick to penetrate into the meat. I honestly don't know.
The shrimp was good, though. It wasn't marinated in the paste at all -- it was just brushed with it prior to grilling. It was very nice, but not as good as the salmon I mentioned earlier. I guess I'll stick with using this paste just for sautéed fish fillets.
Sadly (or hilariously), the best part of the meal was the side dish: Aloo Mutter -- potatoes with peas. Aloo Gobi (potatoes and cauliflower) is a well known vegetarian dish that I like (perhaps because the director of "Bend It Like Beckham" included a segment where she cooks the dish with her mother and "auntie" in the Special Feature section of the DVD, heheh), but in my opinion, aloo mutter is even better. It's a simple and extremely good tasting side dish. And I'm glad I made it, for this little experiment.
One thing I love about cooking on the chimney, is that I cooked the beef one minute per side and the shrimp about a minute and a half per side. And I still got serious grill marks. I've gotta use this method a lot more...
A remake of this one. This is a really simple way to get all those nice, complex tandoori-style flavors onto a fish fillet...
Here's the recipe:
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp salt
6 cloves garlic, chopped
2" ginger, chopped
2 tsp garam masala
1-2 tsp mild chili powder
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp sugar
Chopped dill for garnish
1) Toast the coriander and cumin seeds a few minutes, until they become fragrant, and grind them up with the salt (I use a mortar -- the salt helps pulverize the spices).
2) Blend everything else together (I use a stick blender, since this makes a relatively small amount).
3) Smear over salmon fillet and sauté in non-stick pan over medium heat till done (start smeared-side down).
4) Serve, optionally sprinkled with chopped dill.
The original recipe used paprika, but the paprika I use had no effect on the flavor. Also, the original recipe used lemon juice, but I think lime juice creates a much more interesting, zesty flavor. The only spiciness comes from the chili powder, so you can adjust according to your heat preferences. I think this dish is best with a pretty modest level of heat -- but I'm biased, because I love the taste of salmon.
This would probably work really well with shrimp or crayfish. I might try that next time around. Or fry some toast with it and top with smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and chives -- I could git me some of that there fusion cuisine and whatnot, heheh.
(The side dishes are just plain rice, and a spinach curry that didn't turn out too good.)
A few things about portions, servings and sizes: I tend to use anything from 1/4 lb. to 1/2 lb. of salmon fillet (or any other boneless protein) per person. It depends both on how big an appetite people have, as well as how filling the side dishes are. And also, to be quite honest it depends on whether I'm familiar with the side dishes (and the starches) and feel confident that they'll be tasty. If I'm doing a side dish I know will be good, I've got no problem using a little less protein -- people can fill up on some tasty veggies... But if I'm doing a side dish for the first time, it's different -- I don't want to give someone a small piece of tasty salmon, with a side dish that (big or small) isn't too good, leaving people to fill up on the starch.
The tandoori paste makes enough to cover about 6-8 portion of salmon. I didn't need that much, but it's hard to properly blend anything smaller (besides, you can always find more use for the leftover paste -- which I hopefully will, this week).
Here's the recipe:
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp salt
6 cloves garlic, chopped
2" ginger, chopped
2 tsp garam masala
1-2 tsp mild chili powder
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp sugar
Chopped dill for garnish
1) Toast the coriander and cumin seeds a few minutes, until they become fragrant, and grind them up with the salt (I use a mortar -- the salt helps pulverize the spices).
2) Blend everything else together (I use a stick blender, since this makes a relatively small amount).
3) Smear over salmon fillet and sauté in non-stick pan over medium heat till done (start smeared-side down).
4) Serve, optionally sprinkled with chopped dill.
The original recipe used paprika, but the paprika I use had no effect on the flavor. Also, the original recipe used lemon juice, but I think lime juice creates a much more interesting, zesty flavor. The only spiciness comes from the chili powder, so you can adjust according to your heat preferences. I think this dish is best with a pretty modest level of heat -- but I'm biased, because I love the taste of salmon.
This would probably work really well with shrimp or crayfish. I might try that next time around. Or fry some toast with it and top with smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and chives -- I could git me some of that there fusion cuisine and whatnot, heheh.
(The side dishes are just plain rice, and a spinach curry that didn't turn out too good.)
A few things about portions, servings and sizes: I tend to use anything from 1/4 lb. to 1/2 lb. of salmon fillet (or any other boneless protein) per person. It depends both on how big an appetite people have, as well as how filling the side dishes are. And also, to be quite honest it depends on whether I'm familiar with the side dishes (and the starches) and feel confident that they'll be tasty. If I'm doing a side dish I know will be good, I've got no problem using a little less protein -- people can fill up on some tasty veggies... But if I'm doing a side dish for the first time, it's different -- I don't want to give someone a small piece of tasty salmon, with a side dish that (big or small) isn't too good, leaving people to fill up on the starch.
The tandoori paste makes enough to cover about 6-8 portion of salmon. I didn't need that much, but it's hard to properly blend anything smaller (besides, you can always find more use for the leftover paste -- which I hopefully will, this week).
