44 posts tagged “stew”

Sorpotel comes from the same spot as the Vindaloo: the former Portugese colony and current-day hippie hangout of Goa (hey, the Beatles went there, even). It is traditionally made with pork innards, which I avoided. There's a broccoli dish that I can't remember. And of course, raita. Ugh, this doesn't look too good.

The original recipe called for the use of coconut meat, which isn't very popular around here, so I just used coconut milk the last time around, but it ended up tasting very coconutt-y. This time, I decided to use toasted, ground cashew nuts instead. I don't know of anything that could replace coconut, but I figured I'd give it a go. It turned out really nice.

The cashew was mixed into a paste with the meat from three stripey Pete tomatoes that were skinned and seeded, and had most of its water removed. This mixture was thrown into the wok after I'd stir-fried some diced garlic, Jalapeño pepper, galangal and lemongrass paste over very high heat. Next, some brown sugar, turmeric (the color of this dish just screams turmeric, hehehe), lime juice and some torn kaffir lime leaves. After about 20 minutes of simmering, I buzzed it in a blender till smooth (galangal takes quite long to go soft) and returned it to the pan, pushing it through a sieve. Finally, I ended up adding some coconut milk, but let it simmer long enough to blend the flavors together.

I stirred in some cilantro towards the end, and served it over rice, garnished with more cilantro and a couple of very thin slices from a very hot Jalapeño. Very tasty. Would work very well chicken also, I think.

This is a dish that I've gotten very close, and not so close, several times. This time, I nailed it — as often as not, by accident.

My main problem has been the balance of the sweet flavors of cinnamon, cloves and bay leaves, against everything else, but especially the green cardamom, which can turn things very nasty if you use just a little too much. I've been experimenting with whole and ground spices, roasted or not, using a tea steeper — and in particular, with removing the seeds from the cardamom pods (grinding them or not, before or after roasting them, if you do that at all) or just leaving them whole — and with whether or not to leave them whole in the stew, or in a tea steeper. And if you use a tea steeper, you have to use a lot more of the spices, because the stew just doesn't get to interact with the spices as much. Gah.

This time, I used whole cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves and green cardamom pods in cheese cloth, a la bouquet garni. It gave me just the right flavors, and it allowed me to remove the spices, when I felt they had provided just the right amount of flavor.

The accidental thing was that I used far more ground cashews than the original recipe called for. This created a very rich, smooth and creamy flavor and texture.

Still, there was a lot of improvisation going on here. I ended up removing the chicken pieces towards the end, and running a stick blender through the sauce. That didn't break up the cashews enough, so I had to use a regular blender. But it worked.

It was damn good.

Grinding cashews into a paste, and using it in a sauce — bloody good idea. But don't even think about doing the same with peanuts. I was out of cashews one time when I made this, and tried this. Didn't work at all. I like peanuts in food — whole or otherwise. But for this, peanuts are worse than nothing.

Tilapia poached in a garlic, chili and coconut milk stew, served over spinach rice.

Plain rice is a little unimaginative, but I have no problem with it, if it is just used to soak up the sauce from a stew such as this. Still, this dish was lacking in vegetable so I decided to chop of a bunch of spinach and stir that in just as the rice was finishing. It worked a treat; definitely something I'll have to keep in mind.

The curry recipe was very simple, but I had some problems. First off, it calls for eight cloves of garlic (which I did use), and four fresh chilies — Thai, Serrano or cayenne. I've never had fresh Thai chilies, but I understand they can be very hot. Serranos, as hot chilies go, are on the mild side. Cayennes, well — they are murder. That's what cayenne pepper is made from. Four of those, and this dish would have been completely inedible. I used one small, fresh Jalapeño, and that gave it a gentle heat — it would have worked if it was a little hotter, but this was fine.

The coconut sauce was made by blending the garlic, chilies, salt, turmeric, some flour (for thickening) and a can of coconut milk. The uncooked garlic gave the mixture a very sharp, bitter flavor that never faded. Next time I think I'll use half the garlic.

Mustard seeds were throw into a hot wok, along with one finely chopped red onion. Once softened, the coconut mixture was added along with some curry leaves and a finely chopped, skinned tomato. The fish was placed on top, the sauce spooned over it, and it was left to simmer until flaky.

The problem here was that I had too much flour in the sauce so it became so thick that it didn't simmer properly — it was just too gooey and there wasn't enough bubbling, so to say. So the fish was undercooked (which you can clearly see from the red coloration on the fish — cooked tilapia is white when done). So I had to dilute it with water and return it to the pot after having taken the picture. Embarrassing.

But in the end, quite tasty. 

Vegetable curry with a sauce from onions, homegrown tomatoes, some leftover, homemade Thai style curry paste, adjusted with some homemade, leftover Indian style curry spice — and whatever veggies we had laying around. This, I figured, would be just an easy, lazy Sunday meal. I figured wrong...

First off, with all these tomatoes going ripe right now, I'm always trying to find a use for 'em. And in one of the few cooking shows I bother watching anymore (Molto Mario) I saw him peel and de-seed tomatoes for a sauce — this would work great for a curry. First off, I used so many tomatoes that they cooled the water down too much, so they didn't get blanched properly. This made peeling them a nightmare. Secondly, it's a de-seeding tomatoes is a horrible mess.

Then there was an awful lot of peeling and chopping, of course. Onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, tomatoes. Took far more time than I expected. And finally of course, there was the prolonged simmering required for this type of a stew. So Sunday dinner was served way late. I really hate screwing up the timing like that.

Still, it was very tasty when it was finally done. And it's also nice to see that it is easy to create curry pastes and dry spice mixes that are far better than anything you can buy in a store. And it's even nice when you can bring them out and use them like this — without using commercial stuff, and be all Semi-Homemade etc.

The better-known aloo gobi just doesn't hold up to this recipe. But that's just the recipe, I guess. I've got to try doing this recipe with cauliflower in lieu of the peas, and see if that changes anything.

Some more naans. This time I tried a different recipe than normal, with fake mayo and lemon juice instead of yogurt, and some baking powder. But I didn't like the results too much. Still, the black arts of breadmaking is beyond my knowledge, so it might just as well have been something I did wrong. Still, I'm learning, so that's good.

Great stuff — a very hot and flavorful, and very simple fish curry. In a blender, mix almost an entire bulb's worth of garlic, 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, hot chili peppers to your taste, 1 tsp salt, 2 tbsp AP flour (or besan, if you've got it) and just enough coconut milk to mix it up properly. Blend until smooth, and add the rest of the coconut milk. The flour thickens the stew, but it also prevents the coconut milk from curdling (clever — I didn't know about that trick).

Pop 1 tsp mustard seeds in a mid-high wok and add one chopped, purple onion. Stir fry until browned, and add one finely diced tomato, the coconut mixture and some karhi leaves. Simmer until properly mixed, bring to a boil and add fish. Serve over rice, garnished with cilantro. The lime wasn't necessary though; I just added them because I had a few laying around.

Very nice, as always, although I should have left it to simmer a little longer, to blend the flavors properly. That "invention" of mine — the curried bread sticks — were nice too, although they were too modestly flavored to be noticable against these dishes. Also, the dough was left over from a pizza I made, so it had already risen fully before being refrigerated again so they didn't rise up enough, and were a little dense. They weren't overly dense, but not light and fluffy like I like them.

Most of the dal I've made, used chana dal; the yellow ones. But I have an enormous bag of Urad Dal, which are the black ones. Mind you, they're kinda Oreo black, cause it's just the shell that's black — they're white inside. Well, so I decided to try it, and this is a traditional recipe for those legumes.

And it was absolutely excellent. It doesn't look very nice, but it tasted fantastic. It's supposed to be much darker, and also to be almost completely homogeneous in color. I don't know how to make it darker, but at least I can mince the onion up a lot more to make the whole thing into more of a smooth, stew-like consistency.

I've never seen this opinion expressed anywhere else, so maybe I've had an original thought (or possibly, I might be completely off the mark), but what has always impressed me about Indian food is that certain slow-cooked, stew type dishes will develop an entirely new flavor, that is so perfectly balanced that it's almost impossible to determine the individual flavor components. In other (excellent) South East Asian foods, you can easily tell what's gone into a dish — coconut milk, kaffir lime leaves etc. — and that's perfectly nice.

But with Indian food, you can create entirely new flavors, that your palate cannot break down into individual components. I really like this.

What I also like, is that this type of food makes your house smell like pure, unadulterated happiness. It's like the smell of pine needles around Christmas. The aromas of Indian food just makes me happy.

The fact that I've risen to this enlightened state of mind makes me even happier, because I grew up in a 100% white environment where salt and pepper were the only food flavorings, and when some Indians moved into the area, everyone went all "They're taking our jorbs!" and complained about them damn, dirty, garlic-stinking Ayrabs. Truly, food must be a useful tool in ending racism.

Spinach and potatoes, with curried bread sticks. Spinach is called saag in some cases, but with this dish, it's called palak. Sag can refer to other greens than spinach, while palak tends to mean spinach specifically. Also, I believe palak is a Punjabi word, while saag is something else, like Hindi or Urdu. I'm starting to suspect that some of these languages are almost as closely releated as Scandinavian languages.

This was really very good, but the recipe I used was a little too quick. Next time, I'll add about half an hour of simmering to make the flavors blend a little better. The potatoes were boiled, peeled, cut into large chunks, pan fried until browned, and finally mixed into the spinach — although I reserved one piece for presentation.

The breadsticks were made from some dough that I made a few days ago, for a naan. I mixed in a curry powder mix I made a while ago, and the result was excellent. Next time I may naan, I think I'll use this curry powder, but with some garlic and ginger mixed in, as a paste when I make the dough.

The dal just didn't have the depth of flavor that I wanted. The recipe I used was just too simplistic. Most of the recipes in the book I used have been very good, but not this one. I'd better do some research on this thing, and add a few more flavor components.

On the other hand, the naan was very good. I used a tad too much methi, and have made a note of that. Another interesting thing is that I tried using some of that healthy margarine style, fake butter, but I'm not sure if the results were quite the same as with proper butter.

Finally, the apple raita had a little too much toasted cumin seeds, but other than that, it was very nice. The dal was quite spicy, so the raita was a great accompaniment.

Sadly, the weather is becoming too hot for this kind of food. Dal can be stored almost indefinitely, so it's something that can be put together purely from the larder. Great stuff. I hope we'll get a few cold spells still, so I get another chance at it before too long.