Food India Cook

Why I keep Candy in my Crisper

2012-02-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

I keep black licorice drops in the fridge in that drawer meant for butter and cheese so I can whip up some lovely salty-sweet licorice ice cream (see above). I'm not saying ice cream is a health food but in India the dried roots and underground stems of the licorice plant are used as a medicine so technically you could justify licorice ice cream as a sweeter way to make the medicine go down. Licorice is called honey stick in India and it is sold in solid sticks of concentrated essence which are black and glossy with a bittersweet taste. Licorice has cooling energy and helps relieve coughs, colds, sore throats and stomach aches. Licorice is believed to calm the mind and nurture the spirit, promoting concentration and harmony. I'm sure a bowl of licorice ice cream will nurture your soul and promote a feeling of blissful harmony. Rather than roots or sticks I created this recipe using Nordic black licorice drops melted in the custard mixture until dissolved. The color will look grayish but once churned it is a soft pale brown color. You will need an ice cream maker and I suggest using one made by Cuisinart called the Supreme.

Linda's Licorice Ice Cream

2 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/4 cups whole milk
4 ounces black licorice drops
6 large egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Splash of vanilla extract

Place cream, milk and licorice drops in a heavy 4-quart saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring from time to time to help the licorice melt.

Place egg yolks and sugar in a medium bowl. Using a hand mixer, beat on highest speed until thick and pale, and mixture forms a ribbon when beaters are lifted, about minutes. With the mixer on low spead, slowly add 1 cup of the hot cream mixture to the yolk mixture. Stir the yolk/cream mixture back into the simmering pot of cream (adding the cup of warm cream to the yolk mixture prevents the yolks from curdling). Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, just until the mixture reaches 160 degrees F on a candy or instant read thermometer--do not boil! Strain the custard through a sieve into a medium bowl. Stir in salt and vanilla. Chill in the refrigerator, covered, at least 8 hours (custard can be prepared a day ahead). Churn according to the instructions that came with your ice cream maker. In the Cuisinart Supreme, it takes about 35 to 45 minutes for soft ice cream and 45 to 60 minutes for hard ice cream. Serve right away and store any left over ice cream in resealable container.

Valentine Spice and Yours Truly on Deco Drive TV

2012-02-01T16:31:00.000-08:00

It is countdown day to Valentine's Day. If you want to spend the most romantic day of the year with a special someone book a special package being offered all of February by Playa Property Management at The Alexander Hotel on Miami Beach. You will be met with champagne and sweets and stay in a beautiful suite overlooking the ocean, dine at Shula's Steakhouse the first night, sip cocktails by the pool and get a 1 hour massage. The second night you will get me as your personal chef in your suite. You can watch me cook and ask questions or sit on the balcony enjoying ocean breezes with a glass of wine while I prepare your meal. Choose from citrus and spice glazed lamb chops with mint chutney and rice pilaf, spice rubbed salmon fillets using my homemade blend of toasted and crushed Indian spices served with sour cream sauce with fresh dill and capers or vegetarian Moroccan tangine with spicy harissa paste, carrot and lemon salad and couscous or a baguette. The meal will be followed by desserts that I make--a light meringue pavlova laced with Amaretto liqueur and cacao nibs topped with whipped cream and raspberries or mini tarts filled with lime curd or mocha cream. The package is for anyone from married couples to a group of friends or family (there are 1, 2 and 3 bedroom suites).

To get the full scoop and see me making the salmon dish tune into Deco Drive on channel 7, Feb. 2nd at 7:30 p.m. or 11:30 p.m. The package was put together by Playa Property Management. For more info or to book a romantic Valentine gift that says "I love you more" than a box of chocolates (although chocolate is always welcome) contact Silvia Ortiz at sortiz@playapropertymgt.com or call 786-229-7615 or Nat Leon at nleon@playapropertymgt.com or call 786-537-0751

I hope I will be cooking for you in the near future! By the way the art work is a collage I made celebrating my love of mermaids and the siren call of the sea. Also the seduction of love, food, chocolate and wine.

Cochin Sabbath Chicken and Rice Pulao with Spiced Salt

2012-01-31T14:20:00.000-08:00

Today we are making chicken and rice pulao slow simmered together in a pot and I've added the
wonderful Halen Mon sea salt from Wales mixed with ground spices: peppercorns, coriander seeds,
cumin, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, paprika, cayenne, turmeric and cloves. It is like having a salt shaker
filled with a spice cabinet. These beautiful sea salt crystals are mainly used as a finishing salt
sprinkled over finished dishes but I experimented and used it in the recipe along with other spices. Of

course I'll sprinkle some over the chicken and rice when its done. See picture above.

Not many people know the legacy of the Indian Jews who have long been one of the diverse threads woven into the tapestry of India. One-pot chicken and rice is a type of pulao served for the afternoon Sabbath meal in the Cochin (Kochi) Jewish community of Kerala in South India. It is called hamin (the Arabic word for “hot”) and is the Indian equivalent of cassoulet cooked over very slow heat. The pot of rice and chicken seasoned with lots of turmeric and cloves, cardamom and cinnamon is placed in the oven or on the stove top at very low temperature just before Shabbat begins at sundown and is served lunch the next day after prayers. The idea is to avoid violating the Shabbat laws that prohibit lighting flames, a form of work (no work is allowed on the Sabbath).

A large group of Jews is believed to have sought refuge in Kerala around 500 B.C. after the destruction of King Solomon’s Temple. Many Jews were involved in the spice trade and familiar with the Malabar Coast and the tolerant Hindu kings. Jews possibly had sailed to Kerala much earlier, sent by King Solomon to study how Hindu temples were built and to buy timber, sandalwood, ivory and other materials for the construction of his temple. Some no doubt stayed and married local women. The Cochin Jews became well integrated into Kerala society while retaining their distinctive identity and religion. They became Indian as much as they remained Jewish. Their food is a culinary mosaic. This pulao recipe is based on one from Queenie Hallegua who taught it to Nathan Katz and his wife Ellen Goldberg when they lived with a family for a year in Cochin recording the culture of a dwindling community (since 1948 most have emigrated to Israel). No beef or lamb can be eaten as the last ritual slaughterer left 30 years ago. Chicken and fish are staples. Most Sabbath meals start with fish balls in curry gravy or fried fish smeared in spices and koobe ( rice flour dumplings) followed by hamin. This version is an Indian-spiced memory of the Sephardic original, with tender chicken melting from the bones and moist rice infused with the rich patina of browned onions and garlic and the sweet hotness of the spices with a gentle tomato tang. Some cooks add a few eggs in the shell that hard cook nestled among the rice and chicken. For special occasions dried fruit and nuts are usually sprinkled over the finished dish.

Ingredients

One 4 pound chicken cut into pieces, skin removed

2 cups basmati rice

3 tablespoons olive oil

One 2 inch cinnamon stick

4 green cardamom pods, lightly bruised with a pestle or other heavy object (such as a tin can)

4 whole cloves

5 medium yellow onions (about 2 1/2 pounds), peeled, quartered and thinly sliced

6 large or 12 small garlic cloves, smashed, skins removed and minced

1 cup canned crushed tomatoes

1 generous tablespoon peeled and grated gingerroot

2 teaspoons turmeric

1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt crystals, preferably spiced Halen Mon

1 teaspoon cayenne powder or to taste

PREPARING THE CHICKEN. Cut the breasts into 3 pieces, using a large sharp knife. Hack the thighs in half, through the joint. Cut the wings into 3 pieces at the joints. Place in a bowl and set aside.

PREPARING THE RICE. Place the rice in a medium size bowl and rinse under running cold water, swishing gently with your fingers to loosen the starch until the water runs clear (keep pouring off the water). Cover with fresh water and soak 30 minutes (the rice can soak while the onions brown). Pour into a mesh sieve and leave to drain until ready to cook the rice.

FRYING THE BROWN ONION AND GARLIC PASTE. Heat the oil in a large wide skillet (not nonstick) over medium-high heat. Add the cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom and fry until the cardamom swells, about 2 minutes. Add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring fairly frequently with a slotted spoon as the mixture changes from soft and translucent to pale yellow and then light caramel, about 20 minutes. Watch carefully and stir almost constantly for another 5 minutes as the bottom layer starts to darken—scrape up and keep churning the limp mass of onions as they deepen to a rich caramel brown color. Add the crushed tomatoes, ginger, turmeric, salt and cayenne, and cook, stirring frequently and scraping up from the bottom of the pan until starting to thicken, about 3 minutes.

ADDING THE CHICKEN. Add the chicken pieces to the pan, stirring well to coat in the sauce. Cook, stirring from time to time and turning each piece at least once until the flesh changes from glossy pink to milky white tinted golden, about 6 to 7 minutes. Taste and adjust for salt and turn off the heat.

COOKING THE CHICKEN AND RICE. Oil the inside of a large heavy pot, such as a 5-quart saucepan or Dutch oven and add the chicken with all the sauce. Add the rice and 2 1/4 cups of water. Give the mixture a quick stir using a slotted spoon to distribute the rice evenly over the chicken. Bring to a boil over high heat and boil a few minutes and reduce the heat to very low. Place a piece of foil over the pan, press the lid on and crumple the overhanging foil around the rim to create a seal (if you have a heat diffuser place it over the burner with the pot on top of it). Simmer about 1 1/2 hours. The rice will be moist and soft and the chicken falling off the bones. Alternatively, preheat the oven to 300 degrees and bake in a tightly covered, foil-sealed pot about 1 1/2 hours. Transfer the chicken and rice to a serving dish and serve garnished with cilantro and/or sea salt crystals. Makes 4-6 servings.

Sweet, Salty and Spicy for Jess

2012-01-28T12:57:00.000-08:00

Since discovering Welsh natural Halon Mon sea salt crystals from the Isle of Anglesey I've been experimenting. The flakes shine and add a crisp element to whatever they are sprinkled over and they add depth in a recipe especially the salt mixed with crushed Tahitian vanilla beans used in sweets. I came up with the pictured mini flourless chocolate cupcake topped with mocha cream. I used my cake recipe for the cupcake (see my earlier post on spiced flourless chocolate cake) and piped a big swirl of mocha cream on top and sprinkled the vanilla Halen Mon salt crystals over the mocha cream. The mix of Indian spices (cardamon, cinnamon and garam masala) in the cake plus the salt and Bailey's coffee liqueur-infused mocha cream make for a sweet delight melding chocolate, coffee, spices and salt. If you don't have a pastry bag, no big deal. Take a plastic sandwich baggie, fill with the mocha cream and cut off one of the corners and squeeze in a circular motion to create a swirl. The final touch is a dusting of the vanilla salt.

Salted Mocha Cream for Jess

1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup powdered cocoa
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
2 generous tablespoons coffee liqueur such as Bailey's
1/2 teaspoon Halen Mon sea salt with Tahitian vanilla, plus more for garnishing

In a large bowl, with mixer at medium-high speed, beat all ingredients until stiff peaks form. Mixture with be dark brown and delicious. Just try to not dip in a finger and lick.

Pipe the mocha cream on cakes, cupcakes or fill a pie shell or layer between layers of angel food cake or any other cake. Garnish your creation with Halen Mon sea salt flakes with vanilla. You might want to invest in ear plugs so the applause wont deafen you ( just a suggestion).

Little Haiti Garden Pot Luck and Green Papaya Salad Recipe

2012-01-22T18:10:00.000-08:00

WARM GUJARATI GREEN PAPAYA SALAD

On Saturday I attended a pot luck in the Little Haiti Community Garden hosted by Project Medishare, the organization that brought the gardener, Prevner and his injured son, Bilex to Miami two years ago with two other injured boys. It was supposed to rain but turned out to be a beautiful, warm winter day. The food was mostly from the supermarket but there was also a big fresh salad, roti (Indian-Caribbean thin bread folded up like a handkerchief) with thick dal (stewed split yellow peas with garbanzos) laced with cumin seeds. Gary Feinberg and Tamara Hendershot who bought the land and started the garden last year were there and gave me two green papayas and a bunch of mustard greens pulled right from the earth before I left. Here's my recipe for Warm Green Papaya Salad from Gujarat, a mainly vegetarian state on the western coast of India. Papayas are a giant herbaceous weed, like the banana plant. They grow along the stem shaded by starry-shaped leaves. If you don't have a papaya in your back yard, look for them in Asian markets or visit the Little Haiti Community Garden and volunteer in exchange for a green papaya. This is a cooked salad, unlike the raw green papaya salads you may have had in Thai and Vietnamese restaurant (hey! A nod to the Chinese New Year of the Dragon that starts tomorrow) as it is cooked, gently tossed with spices that get absorbed into the shreds of papaya. It is served warm, but I have been known to scarf cold leftovers and it tasted great. I recently discovered Halen Mon sea salt crystals that are hand-crafted from sea water from the Isle of Anglesey in Northern Wales and I tried the sea salt with ground celery seeds in the recipe. It punched up the flavor but regular salt is fine to use. Serve the salad with rice and a main dish.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons mustard seeds (black or yellow)
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes with seeds (like what you shake on pizza)
1 sprig fresh curry leaves (available from a tree in the backyard of an Indian friend or an Indian market)
1 green jalapeno, seeded and minced
1medium green papaya, grated (to make 4 1/2-5 cups)
Salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
Juice of 1 lime or to taste
Fresh chopped cilantro to garnish

Heat the oil in a wide skillet over medium-high heat. When shimmering drop in the mustard seeds, chile flakes and curry leaves. When the seeds start to pop and sputter, add the jalapeno and cook, stirring constantly for a minute or two. Add the grated shreds of green papaya and stir-fry for a minute and sprinkle in the salt and turmeric. Stir-fry for about 4 minutes, until the papaya softens and is saturated with the spices and turns golden from the turmeric. Taste and adjust for salt and add the lime juice. Cook anther minute and serve garnished with cilantro if you like it. If you don't garnish with lime wedges. Makes 4-6 servings.

Court-Style Dishes Shine at The Copper Chimney

2012-01-15T14:51:00.000-08:00

Indian food is a rich tapestry of culinary threads woven together over thousands of years. A new Indian restaurant, The Copper Chimney offers sumptuous dishes influenced by Persia and Central Asia in creamy kormas and kebabs cooked in a clay tandoor oven. Owner Jasmine Oberoi chats with customers and presents the food beautifully with colorful garnishes. She grew up in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh in North India and learned to cook from her mother. She and her husband Gurvinder have lived in places as diverse as Bahrain, New Zealand and Orlando because of the needs of his software company. They recently relocated to Sunny Isles and couldn’t find an Indian eatery so Jasmine hired a Delhi-born chef and created an elegant space with a full bar and signature Kama Sutra martini. Lucknow flourished as a cultural and artistic capital in the late 18^th century and is renowned for a refined cuisine, a legacy of the Nawab princes who governed it. Royal cooks perfected the technique of dum pukht (slow steaming). For a taste try parda gosht biryani made with spice-marinated lamb layered with rice. The lid of the pot is sealed shut with bread dough allowing the meat to steam in its juices and infusing the rice with the flavors of saffron, cinnamon, cloves and mint. There are also versions made with shrimp or vegetables. The tandoori platter brings char-grilled chunks of chicken including safed (in spiced yogurt-cashew paste), tulsi (with holy basil), and tikka (marinated in saffron laced yogurt), plus sausage-shaped ground chicken gilafi (meaning “pillow” and gilded in beaten egg), saffron salmon, and shrimp angaare (seared in blackened butter). It comes with crispy wonton cups filled with tangy chutneys, hot onion sauce and sweet green papaya relish. One of the best kormas is khazan-e-lazzat or “treasured delicacy”. Soft potato dumplings stuffed with a mixture of cheese and sun-dried tomatoes are simmered in delicately spiced cream and nut gravy. Or surrender to paneer lababdar (meaning “to love”) in creamy tomato sauce laced with fennel seeds. There’s also pepper lamb chops, buttery garlic naan and carrot pudding with raisins to complete the edible mosaic here.

The Copper Chimney is located at 18090 Collins Avenue, Sunny Isles (behind the KFC in RK Plaza), 305-974-0075

Carrot Halwa (Pudding)

This is one of the simplest Indian sweets, although it does require constant stirring to keep the sweet mass from scorching. It has a coarse, lumpy texture. Serve warm or chilled garnished with chopped pistachios and a dollop of yogurt, if desired.

4 large carrots, coarsely grated

4 cups whole milk

1 cup of sugar

1 to 2 cardamom pods, split open and the small seeds crushed

Put the grated carrots and milk in a heavy saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium and cook, uncovered to keep the milk from curdling for about 25 minutes, stirring often. Add the sugar and crushed cardamom. Cook for another 10 to 20 minutes, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and turns deep red in color. Remove from the heat and serve in bowls. Makes 6 to 8 servings, depending on size of the bowls.

Jasmine

An Urban Garden Brings Green to Little Haiti

2012-01-10T13:54:00.000-08:00

Today we are meeting my friends Gary and Tamara who are working together to build a community garden in the Little Haiti neighborhood in Miami. Anyone who wants to get involved is welcome. In March or April there will be a fundraiser lunch in the garden with local chefs helping. I will blog again about this when we know the exact date, but keep it on your radar...

Pictured above are Gary and Tamara flanking Prevner and his son Bilex

The construction on North East Second has finally ended on the stretch by the Little Haiti Community Garden at the Northwest corner of 58^th Street making it easier to reach. A third of an acre enclosed by fencing is planted with produce to support the local food network and to encourage healthy eating in the neighborhood. Longtime friends Gary Feinberg and Tamara Hendershot bought the vacant lot seven years ago as an investment. He owns Brownes & Co Apothecary and she runs Magic City Farm, an urban oasis with cottages for photo shoots. When the real estate market crashed they decided to turn the land into a garden. Last fall over 200 volunteers helped clear 20 years worth of dumped garbage. The soil was toxic so beds of mulch were built up where the produce is grown. They got a mixture of compost, manure and mulch from central Florida and planted coconut, mango, and longan trees (the soil has been retested and is now safe).

Pictured about are green papayas (in India the hard flesh is grated and cooked with spices to make a warm salad), Malabar spinach with red stems that is native to the Malabar coast of India and often cooked with coconut milk plus okra, hot peppers and flowers. The second picture is of the yellow eggplants like little yellow submarines.

Prevner Julien, a farmer from Haiti came to South Florida two years ago when his young son Bilex suffered a serious head trauma in an accident and was airlifted to Jackson Memorial. Tamara met Prevner through a Project Medishare fundraiser and he was hired in August as the master gardener with his salary paid by the Miami Dolphins Foundation for now. He planted organic companion plots pairing corn with cabbage, basil with tomatoes, and okra with peppers. There are also yam and cassava beds, red-stemmed Malabar spinach entwining a Florida pine and cucumbers, squash, yellow eggplant, green beans, pigeon peas, pumpkins and watermelon all mixed up with bananas, hibiscus, nasturtium and sunflowers. By planting selected varieties together the plants produce a higher yield with fewer diseases. Bilex who has healed completely helps after school and on the weekend along with Rev. Geffrand Frederick who lives across the street. The garden is dedicated to the community where volunteers can meet, talk, and grow fruits and vegetables in a model of urban renewal.

The Little Haiti Community Garden is located at 5804 NE 2^nd Avenue. The produce is sold at the Liberty City Farmers market, 6161 NW 9^thAvenue Thursdays from noon until 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more info call Tamara at 305-757-7711

More Food For Thought

2012-01-08T17:09:00.000-08:00

Pictured above, yard long beans with coconut and mango cubes in cilantro sauce with yogurt cheese, examples of Ayurvedic foods. Ayurvedic foods are categorized by culinary and medicinal properties. Herbs and spices that harmonize with certain foods cooked together to promote the body's own healing properties. Excessive warmth in the body is thought to be the cause of many ills, so "heating" and "cooling" foods are always balanced in Indian meals. Yogurt, ghee, honey and rice are cooling. Meat, mangoes and cashews, to name a few, are heat inducing food that are eaten in moderation (except for mangoes during mango season!) Everyone needs a certain amount of each of the six rasas (basic tastes), but too much of one can be harmful, just as a lack of one can upset the body's balance (or dosha). With this in mind, it is easier to understand the complexity of Indian meals, which are designed to include all the rasas--sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent.There is always a spicy, sour dish, a cooling yogurt, a hot, bitter pickle and a sweet. Indian cooks are aware of the healing properties of spices and herbs, and foods. The cooks fine-tune and adjust recipes accordingly. Black pepper, garlic, ginger and turmeric are some of the most common Ayurvedic ingredients used in the majority of most Indian dishes and were first used for their medicinal properties not the taste.

Ayurveda teaches that different people have different constitutions, or prakruti. You can be one or a combination of the following types. See if you can find yourself!

Vata: This person is thin, very active, cool tempered, nervous, curious, fast speaking and has a variable-to-low appetite. Vata represents movement, and is associated with the nervous system.

Pitta: This person is of medium build and weight, moderately active, hot tempered, aggressive, and sharp spoken with a good-to-excessive appetite. Pitta mediates between the forces of vata and kapha, controlling digestive and metabolic functions.

Kapha: This person has a large frame and is heavt, lethargic, calm tempered, self-contented, slow and melodious in speech with a slow steady appetite. The opposite of vata, kapha is potential energy.

Food For Thought: The Ayurvedic Kitchen

2012-01-05T15:01:00.000-08:00

All of the above pictures show Ayurvedic dishes. The word "Ayurveda" means "the science of life". It is an ancient medical system with a holistic approach. Ayurveda treats the whole person, not just the illness. The individual takes an active, responsible role in his or her own living and healing process. The concept of Ayurveda is to maintain a balance between body, mind, spirit and environment, and by doing so , to prevent sickness. This involves a natural diet to suit your constitution (more on that in another blog), herbal cleansings, yoga, relaxation, and therapeutic massage. The purpose of Ayurvedic healing is not just treat the cause, but to bring out-of-balance elements back into harmony. Treatments using foods based on the six tastes or rasas: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent. All foods including spices are ayurvedic from the pomegranate with lychees, hazel nuts and garlic to the whole and powdered spices and greens with crushed peanuts pictured above. Food, as the ancients knew, is the best medicine for health.
To learn more about this ancient traditional Indian system there is a free lecture tomorrow night, January 6th at 7 p.m. by Dr. Bapat at the Miami Beach City Hall, 1700 Convention Center Drive (first floor). Dr. Bapat is a senior faculty member and Academic Dean at Sai Ayurvedic College and Wellness Center in Miami. The free lecture is sponsored by H3 (Health, Hope and Healing) in support of breast cancer survivors.

An interview with Anthony Bourdain

2012-01-04T20:09:00.000-08:00

I have consulted for the Miami No Reservations TV show and the Layover segment shot in Miami last July that aired December 13th. What does consulting mean? It means selecting the places Anthony will go and getting the permission to shoot which means lots of footwork, phone calls, lining up production assistants and being a fixer so nothing goes wrong. It is work but fun and always a pleasure working with Anthony who may give off a bad boy persona but is a very considerate, smart, funny and sweet person. He also gives credit to the people who help him which makes him a gentleman too.

Here is what he said about me in an interview of himself on Eater.com

The question asked by Eater interviewer Jackie Sayet: In the mainstream, Miami tends to be equated with South Beach in recent memory, and culturally to a large extent Cuba for good reason. Do you think Miami is misunderstood or do you think people are finally able to see it through the eyes of those who live here?
Anthony Bourdain answers : I mean, the extent which Miami is Latin American and Caribbean I think is under appreciated for sure. The Haitian dimension is largely overlooked, like the other Latin American countries, Colombia, Nicaragua. There is a tendency...You know it is your burden and your blessing that people associate Miami with Miami Beach and Miami Vice. I mean, that show made your city in a lot of ways. There's good and bad that come with that but if you spend long enough in town...Repeated exposure to Linda Bladholm really helped me, from the first time I came to Miami looking to do and article for Gourmet Magazine. That's pretty much her area of expertise. That there are other large groups, that there are many people from West Africa and countries in South America...She really concentrates on that and has done really, I think trailblazing work in that area.

The photo of Anthony Bourdain is by me just as the sun was setting when he was shooting No Reservations Miami and I took him frog gigging in the Everglades. He was a great sport and gigged his only frog on his first try, not an easy thing as you are in an air boat in the dark on water with mosquitos and alligators and have a helmet on with a little light to shine in the eyes of frogs. When you spot the eyes, you take what looks like a giant fondue fork and try to gig it (stab it). Later we feasted on Derek the air boat captain's stash of frogs legs, battered with Everglades spice mix and deep-fried. I contributed banana bread with Indian spices to cap off the night and the long drive from the River of Grass to Miami Beach.

Spiced Flourless Chocolate Cake

2012-01-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

I celebrated New Years Day at my friend Sherry's house in Doral. She served a Southern-style spread including a glazed ham, cornbread and black-eye peas with collard greens (they symbolize wealth in the new year). I baked and brought spiced flourless chocolate cake (see photo and recipe below).

Cooking a curry takes care, but baking requires mindfulness. Baking is more of a discipline, almost meditative in a Zen way. My friend Bharti Kirchner, a cookbook author who specializes in the cuisine of her native India is also a novelist and set one of her intriguing stories in a bakery in Seattle (where she now resides). She says baking is a metaphor for life. In baking, the right ingredients must fuse together at the correct temperature to create the right result. Similarly, in life, right elements must come together at the appropriate time to cause the desired set of events to occur (timing is everything). This flourless chocolate cake may or may not change your life but it is gratifying to make and the results are delicious. I got the basic flourless chocolate cake recipe from my baker friend Milenko Samardzic and lavished it in spices. I added ground cinnamon, crushed cardamom and garam masala (warming spice blend) to the batter made from a mixture of melted butter and chocolate, egg yolks whisked with sugar and stiff beaten egg whites. The egg whites are lightly folded into the chocolate mixture until the texture is like a big bowl of marbled marshmallow. The cake is baked in a spring form pan where it puffs up and then collapses creating a slightly cracked crust. The beauty of this cake lies in its simplicity yet it looks gorgeous on a cake stand with flecks of gold or silver leaf (varak) pressed onto the surface. It also looks gorgeous dusted in a little confectioners’ sugar and crowned with berries and served with ginger ice cream. The only real discipline in making this cake is to keep from eating more than one slice and the only meditation will be on why you never baked this before—and when you will again.

6 large eggs

8 ounces unsalted butter (2 sticks), plus a tablespoon for brushing the pan

8 ounces fine-quality semi-sweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup sugar, divided use

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

6 whole green cardamom pods, crushed with the back of a spoon, seeds removed (discard the pods) and seeds powdered in a mortar using a pestle

1/4 teaspoon garam masala (store-bought)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (to stabilize the foam and prevent it from collapsing)

Confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar) for dusting cake

Gold or silver leaf (varak) for decoration, optional

PREPARING THE EGGS. Let the eggs come to room temperature for about an hour (this makes them much easier to separate). Carefully crack and separate the eggs, plopping the whites in a medium-size mixing bowl and the yolks in another larger mixing bowl. Be careful no bits of yolk get into the whites or they will not whip into stiff peaks (if any does, scoop it out using a piece of eggshell).

PREPARING THE PAN. Position a rack on the middle rungs of an oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Melt a tablespoon of butter, in a small skillet and using a pastry brush, lightly coat the bottom and sides of a 9 x 3 inch round spring form pan. Place the pan on a piece of parchment paper (or wax paper). Trace around the bottom with a pencil and cut out the circle. Line the pan with the paper, and lightly brush with melted butter.

MELTING THE BUTTER AND CHOCOLTE. Place the 2 sticks of butter (cut into chunks) and chocolate in a double boiler (or use a small skillet set over a saucepan filled about half way with simmering water). Stir from time to time until the butter and chocolate are melted and blended together.

BEATING THE EGG YOLKS. Add 1/2 a cup of sugar to the mixing bowl with the yolks. Using a standard electric mixer with the paddle attachment (or a handheld mixer), beat on medium speed until thick and light lemon yellow, about 5 to 6 minutes (the eggs should have almost tripled in volume and when you lift the beater, the mixture will fall back into the bowl in a slow ribbon). Add the vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon, garam masala (warming spice blend), salt and melted butter-chocolate mixture and beat until well combined with the yolks. Wash and thoroughly clean and dry the beaters (to ensure no yolk gets into the egg whites).

BEATING THE EGG WHITES. Beat the whites on high speed until foamy, about 40 seconds. Add the cream of tartar and continue beating on high until they hold soft peaks, about 1 1/2 minutes. Gradually add the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form, about 2 to 3 minutes.

COMBINING THE CHOCOLATE-YOLK MIXTURE AND EGG WHITES. Make sure the chocolate and yolk mixture is in a large enough bowl to hold all the batter. Using a large rubber spatula, stir 3 generous scoops of the egg whites into the chocolate-yolk mixture to lighten the batter. Gently fold in the remaining egg whites until just incorporated (avoid over mixing or the batter will deflate when baked). The batter will be light milk chocolate, marbled in lighter swirls with the texture of marshmallow.

BAKING THE CAKE. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with a rubber spatula. Bake about 1 hour or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean ( a few moist crumbs sticking to it are fine). If very moist, bake another 5 minutes, checking again (a crust will form and crack on the cakes surface as it bakes). Remove the cake from the oven and cool in the pan on a wire rack about 30 minutes (it will collapse slightly as it cools). Remove the sides of the pan, leaving the cake on the bottom of the pan. Transfer to a cake stand or serving platter and dust with confectioner’s sugar rubbed through a fine mesh sieve. Decorate with torn bits of silver leaf (varak), if you wish and serve while still warm. This cake can also be made one day ahead, allowing the spices to mingle for a more pronounced flavor, but if refrigerated, it should be served after bringing to room temperature. If you wish, serve with berries and whipped cream or ice cream. Makes about 10 servings.

Eating at Indian Thali and a Mashed Eggplant Recipe

2011-12-29T15:55:00.000-08:00

Last night some friends and I celebrated the holiday season at Thali Indian & Thai Cuisine, a restaurant on South Beach. Thali is the Hindi word for “plate” but means a meal with small bowls placed on a stainless steel tray filled with vegetables, dal, yogurt, chutney, pickle, and a sweet that comes with rice, bread and a thin lentil crisp (pappad). Non-veg thalis include meat and seafood. The dinner menu adds Thai dishes influenced by both India and China.

Owner Denis Nazareth was born in Mumbai and when he was 19 he went to Muscat, the capital of Oman on the southwest coast of the Arabian Peninsula to work at a hotel. He met many American professors who were teaching at the nearby Sultan Qaboos University. In 1984 one arranged for him to attend Western Carolina University where he studied resort management and lived with a host family. After graduation he moved to Miami and managed several chain restaurants he now owns. He opened his latest eatery on Miami Beach.

Indian starters include samosas, pakoras (battered veggie fritters) chicken tikka and bhel puri, a jumble of puffed rice, chips and chickpea flour noodle bits tossed in fresh chutneys. South Indian dosas (rice and lentil pancakes with various fillings), chicken gassi (in coconut coriander gravy with mustard seeds) and Malabar grouper in tamarind-coconut curry are on the menu with Northern-style kormas, biryani and tandoori and a few Indo Chinese snacks from Calcutta like cauliflower in soy tomato masala with ginger and garlic. I tried the diamond thali and chose sambar (stewed red lentils), sag paneer (spinach with cheese cubes), roasted mashed eggplant, tandoori shrimp, chicken makhani (with cream) and gulab jamun (fritters in syrup).

One friend tried the Thai Buddha’s thali with hot and sour soup (tom yum), mixed salad, green curry with baby corn, bamboo shoots, sweet potato and basil, mild Massaman vegetable curry enriched with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, sweet-sour vegetables with pineapple, and a Thai doughnut. The spice is twice as nice at this new spot.

Thali Indian & Thai Cuisine is at 754 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, 305-216-1234

Mashed Roasted Eggplant (Baigan ka Chokla)

Serve this spicy dish with bread as part of a meal or mix with sour cream for dip.

1 medium globe eggplant, about 1 pound

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

1-3 fresh green chile, such as Serrano, minced (scrape out seeds for less heat)

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon grated fresh gingerroot

Salt

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Prick the eggplant several times wrap in foil and roast for about 35 to 45 minutes, until soft. Cool slightly and peel off the skin. Place the pulp in a bowl and mash with a fork. Stir in the oil, onions, chiles, garlic, ginger and salt to taste. Mix well. Makes 4-6 servings.

Christmas Duck

2011-12-23T20:03:00.000-08:00

Christmas is around the corner and I'm sure everyone has their menu planned, most likely what is served every year: glazed ham, roast beef, turkey or goose but I'm posting my South Indian duck recipe for consideration another year or another holiday gathering. One year I made the duck with several other Indian dishes and my guests swooned as it was something very different and delicious. How much turkey or ham can you eat during the holidays?

In Kerala, Syrian Christians celebrate Christmas with roast pepper duck and cakes filled with plump raisins, currants, and dates that have been soaking in rum for months. Although it is called a roast, the duck is not roasted whole in the oven as until very recently no one had ovens, so “roasts” are really a type of braise. In this recipe pieces of peppery marinated duck are pan-seared, then braised in coconut milk until a thick reduction clings to the meat. The duck is traditionally served with oven-roasted potatoes but for Christmas you could serve cinnamon and nutmeg laced mashed sweet potatoes and green beans with garlic and crushed peanuts for a holiday repast with an Indian accent. In India ducks are hunted when they arrive from northern climes as well as raised in flocks that can be seen waddling along the edges of rice paddies in South India. The excess fat is always removed, but in this recipe the skin is left on as it is browned until crisp first, adding appealing texture and color. Cinnamon, cloves, and pepper hold up to and enhance the dark rich flavor of duck, balanced with the sweetness of coconut milk, tang of vinegar, and heat of the chiles. If you make the duck a day ahead and refrigerate it, it is easy to remove the congealed fat from the surface before gently reheating. Since there are only eight pieces of duck you can either serve four people two pieces or eight people one and make lots of side dishes or cook two ducks and invite four more lucky guests.

The Duck

One 6-pound duck, thawed if frozen

1 generous teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals

The Spice Paste (Masala)

One 2-inch cinnamon stick, broken in half

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

4 whole cloves

3-4 small dried red chiles, snipped in half and seeded

1 generous teaspoon coriander seeds

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

4 tablespoons clear vinegar

Finishing The Duck

4 tablespoons olive oil, divided use

1 medium yellow onion (about 8-ounces), peeled, quartered and thinly sliced

1 sprig curry leaves, stripped from the twig (about 12 leaves), optional

One 15 ounce can unsweetened coconut milk

PREPARING THE DUCK. Remove neck, giblets, and any pouches of orange sauce hidden in the body cavity and discard (or save for another use). Rinse the duck and using sturdy kitchen shears, trim off the overhanging flaps of fat. Place the duck on a cutting board with the breast side up, and starting at the neck cavity snip in two lengthwise, cutting through the breastbone. Snip down each side of the backbone; remove and discard it. Cut off the joined thighs and legs in one piece. Feel with your fingers for the joint connecting the thighs and drumstick and snip between it to separate the pieces, repeating with the other thigh-drumstick joint. Using a sharp knife cut the breast in half crosswise to make two pieces of breast-only meat and two pieces of breast with a wing attached. There should be 8 pieces of duck. Make several deep diagonal slashes to the bone on the breast and thickest part of the thighs and drumsticks. Sprinkle lightly with salt and smear in the slits using a rubber spatula.

MAKING THE SPICE PASTE (MASALA). Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat and drop in cinnamon pieces, peppercorns, cloves, chiles, coriander seeds and cumin. Roast the spices, shaking the pan frequently until they smell fragrant, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a small electric coffee/spice grinder and add the turmeric. Blitz, pulsing on and off several times and stopping at least once to scrape down the sides with a small spoon until fairly finely powdered, about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Scrape into a small bowl and stir in the vinegar and turmeric, making a paste. Using a small spoon, work the paste under the duck skin and into the slashes, smearing on both sides of each piece. Marinate for 30 minutes at room temperature.

COOKING THE DUCK. Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large wide flat-bottomed skillet (not nonstick) over high heat. When the oil is hot, add four pieces of duck, skin side down. Fry until the skin is crispy, about 5 minutes, scraping up several times with a slotted spoon. Turn pieces and fry on the other side, until well browned, about 4 to 5 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl. Fry the remaining pieces of duck in the same pan for about the same amount of time turning once. Place two 3 to 4-quart heavy saucepans over burners and add a tablespoon of oil to each pan. When the oil is hot, add half the onions and curry leaves to each pan and cook, stirring frequently until the onions are just starting to turn pale caramel at the edges, about 4 to 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and shake the can of coconut milk to make sure the thick and thin layers are mixed together. Pour half the coconut milk and 1 cup of water into each pot, stirring to blend. Place the two wing and breast pieces and one thigh in one pot; add the remaining parts to the other pot. Partially cover and cook, checking to stir from time to time and adding water if necessary until the coconut milk mixture is reduced to a thick sauce, coating the duck, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. As the sauce thickens the oil will separate and pool on the surface and the duck should be buttery tender. Serve heaped in a large platter.

Kerala Chicken Fried in Browned Onions for Hanukkah

2011-12-13T19:41:00.000-08:00

With Hanukkah around the corner (it starts at sundown December 20th) I thought I would share a
recipe from the very small Jewish community in Cochin, Kerala in South India. Hanukkah is about oil and while the chicken in this recipe is fried, it is in melted browned onions not a lot of oil.

To eat in India is to taste the layers of history as in this chicken dish, a specialty from the Jewish community of Cochin (now Kochi), Kerala. Jews have been in India for a long time, believed to have come in several waves, the first arriving after the destruction of King Solomon’s temple ( King Solomon had commercial contact with a kingdom along the Malabar Coast of South India). Many Jewish merchants were involved in the spice trade and settled in Cranganore, known as Shingly in the medieval Jewish world. This establishment was known in Jewish communities outside India and more Jewish merchants arrived, helping bring prosperity to the kingdom. The Hindu ruler, Sri Bhaskara Ravi Varman granted the leader of the Jewish community, Joseph Rabban dominion of a village and made him a prince, with all the rights of the ruling families of Hindu kingdoms. The charter was written on copper plates, probably dating from the 10^th century, now preserved in the Cochin Paradesi synagogue—the first Jews who arrived in King Solomon’s time are called Malabari, while the ones who arrived at different times from the Middle East, Spain and Eastern Europe are known as Paradesi. Both groups claimed the prince was from their community. Just like Hindus, the Cochin Jews created their own caste system, with freed slaves who arrived with merchants having the lowest ranking, although all are Sephardic whether they have Iberian roots or not. Most of the history of the Cochin Jews is documented in a book called The Last Jews of Cochin co-authored by my Miami Beach neighbors Nathan Katz and Ellen Goldberg, a husband and wife scholar and journalist team. This chicken recipe is from Glennis Salem and was taught to them by her when they lived in Cochin for a year learning about Indian kosher food and integrating into the small close-knit community. They arrived just in time for Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and stayed through the cycle of festivals including Hanukkah, living in an Old Dutch colonial house on Synagogue Lane with Raymond Salem, a bachelor with plenty of space (the majority of the Cochin Jews have emigrated over the years to Israel). The couple gained weight as much of their research was spent happily engaged in conversation around dinner tables—and whenever they dropped in on anyone, food was brought out and could not be refused. This chicken cooked in onions became a favorite. It is very simply spiced with cloves, cardamom, and star anise sizzled in coconut oil with garlic and onions. The onions are cooked down in two steps, first sautéed, then covered and sweated over low heat until they darken and begin to melt. The chicken is cooked with the onion and spice mixture with a liberal addition of crushed red pepper flakes adding heat. The chicken slowly browns, cooked until tender and saturated in the sweet, sharp perfume of cloves. This is a dish that is better the next day, when the warm anise flavors develop, one reason it is a good dinner party dish, as it can be cooked ahead. It won’t look as good, but be reassured the flavor is deeply delicious. Just sprinkle with lots of fresh chopped cilantro just before gently heating serving.

Ingredients

One 3 to 4 pound skinless chicken cut in pieces

4 tablespoons coconut oil (or olive oil)

10 green cardamom pods

10 whole cloves

Half a star anise pod, broken into several pieces (or 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds)

10 large or 20 small garlic cloves, smashed, skins removed and coarsely chopped

3 large yellow onions (about 2 1/2 pounds), peeled, quartered and thinly sliced

1 generous teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt or sea salt crystals

PREPARING THE CHICKEN. Cut the breasts into 3 pieces, using a large sharp knife. Hack the thighs in half, through the joint. Cut the wings into 3 pieces at the joints. Place in a bowl and set aside.

BROWNING THE ONIONS. Heat the oil in a large wide nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the cloves, cardamom and star anise (or fennel seeds) and fry until the cardamom swells and starts to split and the oil is sizzling, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic. Cook, stirring constantly and scraping up from the bottom of the pan with a slotted spoon, about 30 to 40 seconds, being careful it doesn’t brown (or it will become bitter). Quickly add the onions and stir, scraping up the garlic from the bottom of the pan and mingling it in with the onions. Continue stirring and scraping up fairly frequently until most of the water released has dried up and the onions become a sticky mass, and are starting to turn a very pale golden color, about 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and cook until the onions are a soft caramel brown mass, about 15 minutes, checking once or twice and stirring.

ADDING AND FRYING THE CHICKEN. Push the onions to the sides of the pan; increase the heat to medium-high and add the chicken. Sprinkle in the salt. Scrape up the onions with the slotted spoon and scatter over the chicken pieces. Cook until the flesh changes from glossy pinkish to milky white, turning several times with the onions, about 6 to 7 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until the chicken is coated in the brown onion paste and brownish all over, about 40 minutes, checking once or twice to stir (no need to add water unless you want gravy). Transfer to a serving dish and serve garnished with cilantro.

Happy Holidays!

I'm back and can be your personal chef!

2011-12-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

After taking a year off from my blog, I am back. My best friend passed away very suddenly from cancer on December 8th 2010. We grew up together and it it still hard to believe I will never hear Mary's laugh again. But life goes on and so does the cooking and eating especially this holiday season. If you'd rather do the eating I am now offering to cook for families, couples and small parties offering Indian food. I can bring the food and serve it or come to your house and cook while you watch (the best way to learn a cuisine you might not be familiar with). I can personalize the menu with selections of appetizers, salads, entrees, sides and delicious desserts.
Examples include stir-fried lemon rice noodles with shrimp, samosas (triangular pastries stuffed with potato, peas and cashews, mini pastry cups filled with creamy roasted and mashed eggplant, lamb biryani layered with fragrant basmati rice and spices, butter chicken and Bengali salmon in yogurt sauce. Sweets include sea salt toffee, flourless chocolate cake with cardamom and coconut flan. Impress your guests with exotically spiced dishes that can't be found at any restaurant. Meanwhile as the days grow shorter and darker I will be posting some Indian-style holiday recipes soon like Kerala duck braised in coconut milk and roasted beets glazed in tamarind.

The Festival of Lights: Diwali

2010-11-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

Today is the second day of Diwali (three more to go!), the largest festival in India celebrated by all religions. Pesident Obama has chosen an auspicious time to be visiting India and should see the fireworks at night that explode in fizzy sparks and swirls to ward off evil spirits. Diwali means "cluster of lights" and the return of light is what the festival is all about. Diwali, also called Deepavali, celebrates the triumph over darkness. On the eve of the festival rows of small clay oil lamps called diya are lit and placed at the entrance to homes to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity. The holiday also celebrates a Hindu legend. Rama's beautiful wife had been aducted by the demon King Ravana and held captive in Sri Lanks for 14 years. With the help of Hanuman, the monkey king and his troops of sibians Sita is freed and brought back to Ayodhya, Rama's kingdom in North India. The people rejoiced at their homecoming by lighting oil lamps to illuminate a path for them to follow. Today during the fve day festival homes, temples, churches and other building are lit with electric lights and flickering oil lamps and people exchange gifts and boxes of sweets. Elaborate meals are served to guests with lots of rich creamy kormas thickened with ground amonds, paneer cheese curries, puffy deep-fried poori breads and fragrant pilafs all reflecting the hosts hope for abundance in the coming year. The festival is all about feasting and fun and feels like Christmas and New Years Eve rolled into one. Let there be light in the world.

Tea For Two Cookies with Cumin Shortbread Recipe

2010-11-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

Note: The pic above is Tea For Two Shortbread Cookies

Cumin Shortbread Wedges

In this spin on traditional Scottish shortbread, renowned Miami pastry chef Hedy Goldsmith found the butter-rich tender, crumbly cookie is the perfect vehicle for the slight bittersweet, warm, peppery bite of toasted cumin seeds. Honey adds a special sweetness and the cornstarch in the confectioners’ sugar insures a very tender cookie. In Scotland shortbread was traditionally only made for Christmas as they were supposed to represent golden pastry suns for the winter solstice. They were cut into wedges called petticoats, as they resembled the bell-hoop petticoats worn by 12th century ladies. In India a type of shortbread called para is made from a mixture of chickpea flour and wheat flour, butter, melted palm sugar and spices with a spicy caramel flavor and firm, yet soft crumbling texture. They are not bad, but hard to find fresh as they are usually sold in packets. When Hedy’s shortbread comes out of the oven, it is hard to resist waiting for the big round to cool long enough to cut along the scores and devour a warm, cumin-laced petticoat. Serve these large wedge-shaped treats with chai (milky spiced tea) for an afternoon snack or as a sweet ending to a spicy meal.

Ingredients

6 ounces unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), slightly softened
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar)
4 tablespoons honey
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals
1 1/4 tablespoons cumin seeds, plus extra for sprinkling
Granulated sugar for dusting

MIXING THE DOUGH. Place the butter in a large mixing bowl and add the confectioners’ sugar, honey and salt. Using a standard electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or hand held mixer), beat on medium speed until pale yellow and light, about 2 to 3 minutes. Sift the flour and baking powder together into another mixing bowl. Add the flour mixture with the cumin seeds to the creamed butter and sugar mixture. Mix on low speed until just combined and transfer to a flour-dusted work surface. Knead the dough lightly until it holds together, about 2 to 3 minutes. Divide into two balls about 3 inches wide.

ROLLING OUT THE DOUGH AND BAKING THE SHORTBREAD. Position oven racks on the rungs in the lower third and middle of the oven and preheat to 275 degrees. Cut 4 pieces of parchment paper into 15 x 12-inch pieces. Press a ball of dough between your palms to slightly flatten and place it on a sheet of parchment paper on a hard work surface. Place another sheet of parchment on top. Roll the dough out into an 8 to 9 inch circle about 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch thick (the edges will be a little thicker than the center). Trim the scraggly edges with a knife, cutting away about half an inch (discard scraps or use to make small cookies). With a knife, cut the circle into 8 wedges like cutting a pie. Using a fork, press the outer edges, leaving small tine marks. Dust with granulated sugar and sprinkle with extra cumin seeds. Slide the parchment paper with the cut cookie dough on a baking sheet. Use the other two sheets of parchment to roll out, trim, and cut the other ball of dough. Slide the baking sheets onto the oven and bake until lightly browned, about 35-40 minutes. Carefully cut over the marks again while still soft and warm and cool completely. Slide the wedges apart. Store in an airtight container up to a week in a dry cool place (but not the fridge).

Tea For Two Cookies

2010-11-03T15:16:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I met Kim Neale, a woman in Sunrise Florida who makes shortbread cookies in interesting flavors the buttery cookies also are made an infusion of teas and there are flavors like lavender and rose topped with real dried flowers, orange blossom and some with spices. Kim loves Indian food and her spicy cookies are turmeric and ginger (my favorite) tinted yellow with a touch of ground turmeric and bits of candied ginger and chai with a touch of chai tea spices and tea. Other flavors include rich Mexican chocolate with spices and banana toffee with bits of toffee. The cookies are 90 percent organic and hand made with care. Kim suggests dunking the cookies in port for a real tree. I paired the chocolate with a Chilean red for dessert last night and it was wonderful. What's next cookie and wine tastings? Hmmm. Next up is my cumin shortbread recipe.

Meanwhile check out www.teafortwocookieco.com

A Curry Recipe for Laura the Winemaker

2010-10-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

This is a Parsi recipe known as jardaloo murgh or apricot chicken and would go great with Malbec wine from Argentina, especially the Malbec made by Laura Catena.The Parsis or Zoroastrians, are one of the smallest groups in India but are prominent business leaders and gracious hosts,and an invitation to a Parsi dinner party is eagerly anticipated. One dish guests hope to be served is chicken jardaloo. I learned this recipe for chicken cooked in sweet and tangy tomato sauce with dried apricots from Kitty Bombaywallah when I dined with her family in Mumbai. Cooking with dried fruits dates back to the Parsi's Persian ancestry and they brought this tradition with them when they migrated to Gujarat over a thousand years ago. The apricots absorb the flavors of the sauce and plump up to succulent softness while the chicken cooks to tender juiciness. Parsi's enjoy wine with meals and often add a splash to their curries and gravies adding body and flavor. Chicken jardaloo is one of my favorite dishes to serve friends as they love the exotic flavor it exudes and I love the simplicity of cooking it. Serve with rice or crispy fried potato wedges.

Ingredients

The Chicken

3 to 3 1/2 pounds of skinless, bone-in chicken thighs or drumsticks (about 8-10 pieces depending on the size)
1 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals
1 teaspoon cayenne powder
1 teaspoon garam masala (warming spice blend), store-bought
1/2 teaspoon turmeric

The Apricot-Tomato Sauce

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium yellow onions (about 1 pound), peeled, quartered and thinly sliced
4 large or 8 small garlic cloves, smashed, skins removed and minced
2 teaspoons peeled and grated gingerroot
1 pound tomatoes (2 large or about 4-5 plump plum tomatoes, chopped (or one 15-ounce can crushed tomatoes with juices)
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 cup dried apricots (about 7 ounces) soaked in 1 cup of hot water 15 minutes and drained

PREPARING THE CHICKEN. Blot the chicken dry with paper towels. Make several deep diagonal slashes to the bone on the thickest part of the thighs or drumsticks. Place in a large non-reactive mixing bowl and sprinkle with cayenne, garam masala, and salt. Using a rubber spatula, toss until well coated in the seasonings on both sides. Marinate about 30 minutes at room temperature.

COOKING THE CHICKEN. Heat the oil in a large wide nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring frequently with a slotted spoon until soft and translucent, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the chicken and cook until the flesh changes from glossy pink to yellowish tinted milky-white, and firms, about 5 to 6 minutes, stirring and turning once or twice. Add the garlic and ginger and cook, stirring and scraping up from the bottom of the pan, about 1 minute. Stir in the tomatoes (or canned tomatoes) and about 1/4 cup of hot water, and cook, stirring occasionally 2 to 3 minutes. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered about 10 minutes, checking a few times to stir and add a little hot water if necessary. Stir in the sugar, vinegar and apricots; increase the heat to medium-high and cook, uncovered until the sauce is thick and shiny, about 10 minutes. When the thickest part of a thigh is pierced with the tip of a sharp knife the juices should run clear. If the juices are pinkish, cook a few more minutes. Transfer to a serving dish and dinner is ready.

Finally the Perfect Wine to Match Indian Food

2010-10-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight I had the extreme pleasure of meeting and dining with Laura Catena, a winemaker from Argentina with an amazing life and story. We will get to that sometime but what I want to share is she served me the perfect wine to go with Indian food. She also has just had her book Vino Argentino, an Insiders Guide to the Wines and Wine Country of Argentina published by Chronicle that is a real page turner. You may have toured the winerys of California, France or Italy but this book will make you book a flight to Argentina to experience vineyards with the snow capped Andes in the background. But back to the wine for Indian food. It is Malbec. What Laura let me taste was her families wine (from great grandparents who settled Argentina from Italy). In her words Malbec is "the black wine with a dark color and intense fruity taste". The grape varietal is perfectly suited to Mendoza's sunny mountain soil and climate and the slight sweet notes with dark, ripe, concentrated fruit flavors stand up to and enhance the spices in Indian food. I will soon be sending Laura a simple curry recipe that will just make her Alamos Malbec shine and my dish all the more good. Coming soon....

In the Future Try Okra or How About Right Now?

2010-10-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

Okra is believed to be native to the Ethiopian Highlands and is related to hollyhocks with yellow flowers and pods that grow pointing upward. It eventually spread to the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and India where the tapering ridged green pods are evocatively called ladies fingers as well as bhindi from the Sanskrit bhinadaka. Okra are a favored vegetable in India where the pods are prepared in many different ways and added to soups, stews, and curries. The okra dish pictured in yesterdays blog was inspired by Seema in Chicago who liked my roasted pumpkin recipe and said she had just cooked frozen okra. I've only cooked with fresh so I had to try--according to her the frozen--not thawed pods cooked up less slimy when added to a hot pan and what ever metaphysical occurance, it seems to work. No water needs to be added as the the melting ice is enough as the pieces of pod thaw in the pan. To make my dish I simply heated some olive oil in a skillet, added one chopped small yellow onion and one large minced garlic clove. I sauted them until soft and tossed in about 2 cups of the frozen okra, and added a little turmeric, lots of cayenne powder, salt to taste and a few pinches of amchoor (green mango powder) and stirred for about 8 minutes until the okra were soft and any liquid was just about dried up. If you don't have green mango powder use a squeeze of lemon to add a slight tartness. At the very end stir in some dried coconut chips or grated fresh coconut from a cracked coconut (more on how to do this in a later post). Serve garnished with fresh chopped cilantro and a cascade of coconut chips. It is good hot or served cold the next day for lunch. In the future when tired of the same old carrots, broccoli and potatoes, okra can add a new taste to your palette. So if you are an okra hater please give it a try. Soon.

More on okra

2010-10-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

I just posted an Indian okra dish pic that will change your mind (maybe) about the slimy finger-shaped pod.

My Indian scientist friend inspired me to toss frozen chopped okra out of the bag! (horrors) into a pan sizzling with onions and garlic with some added spices plus coconut. Yum. I'll send details tomorrow.

Okra is the Future

2010-10-19T19:36:00.000-07:00

Indian Roast Pumpkin

2010-10-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

Now that fall is here, it's time to eat pumpkin! This dish was inspired by a dish I ate as a special at Gigi prepared by Chef Jeff McInnis. For my version, I bought a wedge of calabasa pumpkin, cut off the outer peel and scooped out the seeds and threads they are attached to, cleaned the seeds and cut the pumpkin into slices. Then I oiled a cast iron skillet and rubbed the slices in the oil and sprinkled them with fresh ground black pepper, sea salt, a litte ground cumin and plenty of cayenne powder. I roasted the pumpkin for about 30 minutes at 450 degrees and then sprinkled the seeds over the slices and added a few dots of butter and roasted the pumpkin and seeds for another 10 minutes. Serve the slices in a shallow bowl spread a little thick, whisked Greek yogurt and enjoy! For a wonderful short film look up The Life and Death of a Pumpkin by Aaron Yonda on google or U-tube. You'll never feel the same about carving a Jack-O-Lantern after watching it.

The Turtle at the Dentist Office in Singapore

2010-10-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

My second day after arriving in Singapore I started teaching graphic design at the Nanyang art school almost next door to the building Lisa and Bruce lived in. Every semester they have a guest teacher from England come and the one they had invited couldn't make it so I went and applied and got the job. My students were only a few years younger than me and at first were confused that I was more or less a peer. They mostly copied from books and magazines. I got the idea to take them on location to learn to draw from real life--a shocking turn of events but the school complied and on the second day we were in a hired bus and going around the island--to the bird park, botanic garden and tea house where men bring their prize song birds and hang them from hooks to listen to them sing while sipping tea and then we went to Chinatown, not the disney version that exists today but the real one with cramped lanes and rows of shophouse where one could see wooden gods being carved, a maker of Chinese opera masks, snakes in cages and a dim-lit Buddhist temple that smoked with giant coils of incense. The students were mind boggled and excited to try and draw from life and I was getting to sight see. On the third day we were back in the class room working on the previous days sketches when my back molar begab to tingle. By lunch it was throbbing pain and a student told me to put clove oil on it. It numbed the tooth for a moment but by the end of the day I knew I was in serious trouble. I staggered back to Lisa's. We found a dentist on Orchard Road and I wrote the address on a scrap of paper and took a taxi (Lisa didn't have a car). The cabbie dropped me off in the vicinity of the dental office as he didn't really know exactly where it was and I was wandering the steet in tears the pain was so bad when an Indian man asked me if I needed help. By now I was sobbing and could hardly speak so I showed him the scrap of paper and he took my arm and led me to the office biluding. I wished I could have thanked him, but the second I opened the door I collapsed and the dental assistant dragged me into a dental chair and immediately gave me an injection. Once I was numb the tooth was opened and the infection drained out. It seems I'd had some not so great work done on the tooth in San Francisco where I had a root canal. It hadn't been cleaned propberly before being sealed and the hot climate of Singapore had caused it to swell and put pressure on the sealed tooth cap. The Singapore dentist worked on me while I dozed off in a cloud of pain killer and when I came to I thought I was hallucinating. In the chair next to me was a large sea turtle! Do turtles have cavities, I wondered? It turns out it's shell had been been cracked by a boat propeller and someone had found it on a beach and brought to the dentist. When I left it looked like the operation to glue the shell was working and I'd like to think somewhere in the South China Sea a turtle is swimming around with a shell held together with dental bonding glue. I went back to teaching and was invited to several students homes to eat home cooked Indian, Malay and Chinese dishes. Meanwhile what about the job at FEP (Far Eastern Publishing Company)? A week had passed and I only had one more week on my tourist visa...then I'd have to take a bus across the causeway that connects Singapore to the Malaysian Peninsula at the city of Johore Bahru. Woud I get another stamp to stay two more weeks in Singapore?

Taking a Risk to get a job: Happy Anniversary!

2010-10-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

October 2nd has special meaning for me, not because it is Gandhi's Birthday (although it turned out to be a happy coincidence) but because it is the day I departed San Francisco on a Singapore Airline flight to Singapore many years ago on, get this, a one way flight with no visa (unheard of today). I simply planned to stay for as long as I wanted once I got a job. And, yes I had a sort of possible job offer. Before I became a professional writer I was an artist and illustrator. In high school I went to an art fair in Ravinia Park (near Highland Park) and met a just-out-of-college artist named Tom James. I liked his zany, colorful magic marker work and we chatted all afternoon. I told him my dad was an artist and gave him my address and phone number. He said he'd drop by the next evening. Well I never heard from him. He had kept my contacts in the glove compartment of his car and by the time he called my parents told him I was no longer living at home and was in San Francisco. He wrote me and I sent him some photos of the type of illustrations I was doing. Then one day a letter from Singapore arrived. I looked at the post mark with extreme curiosity as I didn't know anyone in Singapore. Finally I opened it. It was from an American woman named Lisa who was working at a Publishing Company in Singapore. She had gone home to Evanston, Illinois to see her family and went to a party at Tom James house. For some reason he showed her the photos of my work and she said she thought it was more original than the illustrators the company used and asked for my address. When I read her letter she said she couldn't promise anything but if I came to Singapore I could stay with her and her husband who worked for an oil company and she would set up a meeting with the publishing company. I sold most of my stuff and left what I wanted to keep, should I return, with a friend. I got a passport and bought a one way ticket and a group of friends took me to dinner the eveining of October 2nd. Their plot almost worked as at the last minute I remebered I had to catch a flight. Richard rushed me to the airport. I ran up the stairs to plane out on the tarmac just as the doors were about to close. I was the last on and made it by seconds. This was my first international flight and was about to change my life forever. I'll never forget finding my seat and calming down, thinking I could have missed it by a second. We stopped in Hong Kong for a few hours and I learned one cannot leave the airport unless it is their final destination. Then I finally arrived to Changi Airport on October 4th. Everyone on the flight went through customs. Except me. I was taken to a small room and grilled. I got the gist of where this was going when I learned they wanted to see an ongoing ticket. I quickly said I was meeting some girlfriends to go on a tour of Asia and they had the tickets. It worked but I got a 2 week tourist visa dashing my plans to stay as long as I wanted (a few years at least!). Then I made it through customs, got my luggage and found Lisa and felt the hot tropical blast of air as we stepped out of the airport doors. So I made to Singapore, but would I get the job? Thats another story to be continued....

A Cambodian Feast for a Baby

2010-09-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

My friends Mony and Neang Lon who are Cambodian had a baby shower Sunday September 19, exactly one month after baby Giovanni was born. In Cambodia it is considered unlucky to throw a shower for an unborn baby because of age old superstitions. Cambodian showers are just like any you might have been to with family, friends, colleages and neighbrs dropping by all day, some with gifts for the baby or the proud parents but the food is different. Mony and Neang run a restaurant in Miami Springs called Thai Rama (alas no Cambodian dishes) and they know how to enetertain. With Mony's mother cooking you know the food will be delicious. If you are not familiar with Cambodian food, I'll explain. Cambodia lies in the region of Southeast Asia known by the French as Indochine (Indochina) as it lies between the huge countries of India and China. The food has been influenced over the centuries by India (thats where complex spicy coconut curries originated) often served over rice noodles (from China) or sliced baguettes (the gift from the French who ruled Cambodia during the colonial days). Neighboring Vietnam, Laos and Thailand also contributed threads that weave together the tapestry of Cambodian food. It tends to be less spicy and more subtle. On a trip to Cambodia years ago I fell in love with the cuisine, eating roasted chicken that had been smeared in a black pepper, lemongrass, and lime juice paste mixed with salt that was crispy golden on the outside and meltingly juicy within that I tore apart with my fingers. I also remember eating steamed freshwater fish with green mango salad from the great Tonle Sap Lake area near Angkor Wat (the largest religious structure in the world, now Buddhist but originally built to the Hindu god Vishnu). But back to the shower in Pembroke Pines. When I arrived I was escorted into a room to coo over baby Giovanni who had red strings tied around both wrists for good luck and then headed to the buffet in the backyard overlooking a manmade lake. Canopies shaded tables and guests helped themselves. There were spring rolls with tuk trey (sweet and sour dip made from sugar, vinegar and fish sauce), a huge pan of roasted pork chopped into hunks, ground pork stir-fried with glass noodles, grilled satay sticks of spice-marinated chicken, barbecue chicken smeared in hotly red spices, and a red coconut curry called nom banchock namya served over a skein of soft rice noodles to be mixed with with slivers raw cabbage, bean sprouts and sliced banana blossom. It brought back my trip to Cambodia with its complex spicing and richness, cut with lime juice. Then I was served light spongy slices of cake cemented together with thick layers of whipped cream and bits of candied fruit and sprinkles from an Asian bakery. My friend Perun who is also Cambodian was there and brought boxes of longan from her farm in the Redland. They are a bit like lychees but the size of large marbles, smooth and dark golden with sweet honey-scented translucent flesh. In the center, reached by sliting the thin shell with a finger nail and popping it open is a small shiny black seed you have to nibble and in the end suck around, one reason they are also called dragon eye fruit. I'm sure Giovanni will grow up a happy and well fed little dragon with a good eye as his dad is a graphic designer.

More on Spices

2010-09-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

Indian food is far less complicated to make than it tastes. What can seem intimidating at first are the long lists of ingredients, but when you take a closer look, you’ll find that the majority of the list consists of spices. Once you assemble the spices, the rest is easy. It is the variety and combinations of spices that distinguishes Indian cuisine. Sometimes one spices flavor predominates; more often relative proportions of spices are balanced with seasonings and other flavorful ingredients to compose a vibrant mosaic of complementary and contrasting flavors, including sweet, bitter, nutty, pungent, salty and astringent. Balancing enticing colors and textures is important too.

How you use spices determine a successful dish. Spices can be used whole, ground, fried or roasted. In this blog you will learn the techniques to unlock each spices special property. As you gain confidence, you will instinctively balance spices and bring out the best flavor of each one. This can be accomplished by dry toasting and freshly grinding spices to add at various stages or sprinkle over a finished dish, or whole spices can be sizzled in hot oil to start a dish or pour over a finished one for extra aroma and flavor. Most of the same spices are used throughout India, but are manipulated differently depending on the region. In the north, whole spices are toasted, then ground and added while cooking. In the south, both whole and powdered spices are blended into wet pastes, often with grated coconut and used in various stages of cooking. A pinch of the warming spice blend, garam masala is sprinkled over dishes in the north. Cooks in the south finish off a dish with a seasoning of curry leaves, dried chiles and mustard seeds spluttered in hot coconut oil.

If spices are the heart and soul of Indian dishes, spice mixtures (masalas) are the spine—the underlying foundation of most Indian dishes. When Indian cooks ask for a recipe, they are requesting the special masala that makes each cooks dish unique. Every housewife has their special blend that makes their fish curry sing or spicy chicken sizzle. Like a musical raga, recipes are melodic patterns with plenty of room for riffs off the classical foundation. Commercial spice blends are sold in Indian markets, but no self-respecting cook uses them—instead the blends are made in the kitchen from freshly roasted and ground spices as the recipe is cooked. Some blends that are used on a daily basis can be made in large batches and stored in airtight containers.

Stay tuned for yet more spice talk with tips on assembling a spice box....

Where Spices Are The Variety Of Life

2010-09-15T16:25:00.000-07:00

INDIAN SPICES AND AROMATICS

For centuries spices have served three important functions in Indian cooking---medicinal, preservative and seasoning. Today the main focus is on the flavor spices impart to a dish, although traces of their original uses still linger. Turmeric with antiseptic properties is rubbed on fish before cooking and is added to pickling mixtures as a preservative Turmeric also stops bleeding and can plug a leaking car radiator, one reason truck drivers in India travel with a bag of ground turmeric for emergency patch jobs. Legumes are usually cooked with a slice of ginger to reduce flatulence. Cumin features in cooling digestive drinks and chiles are used liberally to stimulate the liver, which tends to become sluggish in hot weather. According to Hindu scriptures, spices are classified as “warm” or “cool” depending on whether they generate internal body heat or take away heat from ones system. Black cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, mace, nutmeg, cassia leaf (a type of laurel related to cinnamon), peppercorns and red pepper are warm spices. Larger amounts are used in the winter to create a warming effect. All the other spices fall into “somewhat cool” to “moderately warm” categories and are used anytime in various amounts to keep the system in balance. Herbs and spices that harmonize with certain foods are cooked together to promote the body’s own healing properties. Ghee, honey, rice and yogurt, for example are cooling. Meat, mangoes and cashews are heat-inducing foods eaten in moderation. Spicy hot foods are eaten in larger quantity in hot weather as they induce perspiration. You sweat, then feel cooler as even tepid air hits your damp skin—all the better if its an icy blast from an air conditioner. Not all Indian food is fiery hot as you might have come to think after a meal in the old guard curry houses that specialized in super macho, hot dishes. Some spices do impart heat, but work in tandem with more subtle aromatics, infusing dishes with heady fragrances, beautiful tints and piquant notes. Many spices also help thicken and bind sauces and some act as a natural tenderizer. A few, such as saffron, turmeric, cayenne and fresh green herbs lend flavor, aroma and color.

Stay tuned for more on spices....

Eggplant and Chickpeas with Garlic

2010-09-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

This recipe is from northeast India, a region integrating the cuisines of both the north and Bengal. Anita Sen, a friend and colleague from our days in Singapore cooked this for me when I visited her in Kolkata (Calcutta) on a rain-chilled night when all Bengalis wrap themselves in shawls to ward off the dreaded cold. We sipped spiced chai over stories of her idyllic childhood growing up in Assam on the tea garden her father managed in the foothills of the Himalayas. She recalled the cool mists, the tea shrubs clinging to the hillsides in neat pruned rows and the meals cooked over glowing embers in a clay oven, adding special flavor in her memories. This dish combines succulent chunks of eggplant with nutty chickpeas in a simple spice mixture (masala) with coconut milk and is a family favorite. She learned this dish from the family cook who was a Buddhist descended from a line of Mogs. They were tribal people from the Chittigong hill tracks in Bangladesh bordering Myanmar taken as galley slaves by the Portuguese and later hired as cooks by the British. This is Bengali in essence but less pungent. The flavor is deeper than the list of ingredients implies. Eggplant and chickpeas are fried with ground spices and slow simmered in coconut milk until the eggplant is tender and falling apart and the chickpeas start to become creamy. The final touch is a to stir in gently fried golden garlic and sliced bits of jalapeño with a garnish of fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves. I prefer the silky texture and mild taste of long slender Asian eggplant, but any type will do, from the small oval ones sold in Indian groceries to the striking mauve and white Pandora Striped Rose or elongated white Casper varieties sold at farmers markets. If using small eggplants halve or quarter them depending on the size.

Ingredients

1 large eggplant or 2-3 slender Asian eggplants (about 1 to 1 1/4 pounds)
1generous tablespoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2-3 small dried red chilies (such as japonés or chile de arbol), snipped in half and seeded
4 tablespoons virgin olive oil, divided use
1 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
One 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and well rinsed
1 cup canned coconut milk (shake the can before opening to mix the top layer of cream into the thinner milk)
Juice of half a freshly squeezed lime (about 2 tablespoons)
6 large or 12 small garlic cloves, smashed, skins removed and coarsely chopped
1 jalapeño, halved lengthwise, seeded and coarsely chopped
Chopped coriander (cilantro) leaves (about 1 tablespoon)

PREPARING THE EGGPLANT. If using a large eggplant cut in half lengthwise. Cut into quarters lengthwise and cut crosswise into 2-inch sections. If using Asian eggplants cut them in half lengthwise, then cut crosswise on the diagonal into 2-inch thick slices. Set aside.

ROASTING AND GRINDING THE SPICES. Heat a small heavy skillet over medium heat. Drop in the coriander seeds, cumin and dried red chiles. Roast until the spices darken a shade and smell fragrant, shaking the pan a few times, about 1 1/2 minutes. Transfer to a small electric coffee or spice grinder and grind until fairly finely powdered, stopping once to scrape down the sides with a small spoon, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Scrape out into a small dish.

COOKING THE EGGPLANT AND CHICKPEAS. Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large wide skillet over medium-low heat. Add the ground spice mixture and fry for about 1 minute, stirring almost constantly with a slotted spoon. Add the eggplant, salt, turmeric, and chickpeas and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring and scraping up from the bottom of the pan almost constantly until the eggplant is encrusted in the spice mixture, about 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the coconut milk and reduce the heat to low. Cover the pan and simmer until the eggplant is tender and all the liquid is dried up, about 20 minutes. Stir in the lime juice and turn off the heat and keep covered.

FRYING THE GARLIC. Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in a small heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and reduce the heat to low. Sizzle the garlic, watching carefully and stirring from time to time until starting to become slightly sticky, in about 6 to 7 minutes. Keep frying until starting to become crispy and light golden, about 2 to 3 more minutes. Remove from the heat and stir into the eggplant and chickpea mixture. Keep covered until ready to serve.

GARNISHING THE EGGPLANT AND CHICKPEA CURRY. Stir in the jalapeño and transfer to a serving dish. Garnish with the coriander (cilantro) and serve. Makes 4-6 servings

Mermaid Seasalt Toffee

2010-09-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

Spicy Salty Sweet Toffee is back

2010-09-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

Over a year ago I started making toffee under my own label, Mermaid Seasalt Toffee. I've always been intrigued by the idea of mermaids, love swimming in the ocean and grind my own Indian spice mixtures so came up with a toffee infused with spices to create a buttery delicious treat that is brushed with chocolate and sprinkled with homemade curry powder and Himalayan salt ground from marine fossils that are 2 million years old from the time when the mountains were an ocean. Each batch is hand made with the idea of candy that is sweet and just a little bit salty. I'm glad she's back after taking the summer off. It felt good to sweat again, cutting burning hot toffee before it got too hard to cut into bite size pieces. I like that my apartment is once agian filled with the scent of almost burnt sugar and I have the mantra-like task of cutting wax paper and wrapping the little pieces of toffee. If you haven't tried it, you really should.

The Bengali feast I cooked with Seema

2010-09-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

An Old Friend Resurfaces and I'm Hungry

2010-09-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

A few days ago my friend Seema Desai found me on facebook (isn't the social networking age great?) I met Seema in Miami who is a scientist and was working at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine (she's now an assistant professor in Chicago at RUSH). In Miami we would meet to cook Bengali food and the seafood dishes of the Koli fisherwomen who were the original inhabitants of the cluster of islands that became Mumbai (Bombay). Seema is from the Juhu Beach area of Bombay and worked in the Koli community before living with a Bengali family when she was doing research in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata). I haven't told anyone yet about my passion for Bengali food, but my mouth waters thinking about carp in yogurt custard and greens cooked in mustard oil in a paste of ground spices. Bengalis are clever but smart enough to back themselves up and have a creative streak a mile wide. Seema is a genius. She found frozen smelt to make a deliciuos Bengali fish dish and taught me to stuff mild finger peppers with fake crab among many adapations to life in America. She's not like any woman scientist friend you could have who happens to be Indian in this life (she jokes I must have been Indian in a past life and I'm sure it could be true). She calls me Kalindi Mukherjee, a great Hindi-Bengali pen name. The best news is I'll be seeing her in January when I am in Chicago and we plan to go to Divine Devon Street, a great artery of Indian shops and restaurants mingled with old world Jewish shops selling kosher meats, pickles and yogurt. It is a great river of life like the Indus that was the birth of one of the great civilizations in the world. There's just some people you meet along the river of life that become a current so strong you can never lose them and Seema Desai in one of them.

Dumplings with the neighbors

2010-09-11T00:45:00.000-07:00

Last night I met my neighbor Michael, a graphic designer and his wife, Manal an accountant at their home, three blocks from me. Michael had written to me regarding a barbecue place I wrote about in my column in the Miami Herald. Next thing I know he invited me to his bi-weekly Friday night gathering. Then I am helping make Chinese dumplings with Monica and Theresa--they are from China and Taiwan and friends. I stripped fresh thyme and rosemary from the stem and we mixed the herbs with chopped basil and minced garlic with ground turkey, chopped shrimp and spinach to make the filling for the dumplings. Monica directed us and my job making eggrolls at Jins BBQ when I was at university in Carbondale, Illinois came in handy. I placed a spoonful of filling on a round won ton wrapper and smeared beaten egg around the circle, then folded it up to create a half moon and pinched it closed. We steamed the dumplings in a pot with a bit of oil and water until crusted on the bottom and soft on top. Very delicious plain or dipped in vinegar or fish sauce. We all mentioned the fact that today is 9/11. I remember being on day 11 of a trip to India that started September 1st in Delhi. On September 11th I was in Jaipur in Rajasthan. I went to a village fair, rode a camel, went on a little Ferris wheel and ate the food of the desert at a low table with my fingers, mixing dal and rice and scooping it up with torn pieces of blistered flat bread punctuated with hot and spicy chutneys. I rode home with my Indian host and friend and stumbled into bed dreaming of the village fair and woke up at 4 a.m. to pack and head to the airport to Mumbai. I skidded into the lobby in the dusky early hour and grabbed a newspaper. I saw a picture of the world trade center twin towers collapsing and went into a semi state of shock. I knew my friend was on the way to take me to the airport but another part of me went numb. I saw a TV that was replaying the image of the towers going down and I started to cry. What in the world had happened? Then my friend arrived on his motorcycle and with tears in my eyes and a huge ache in my heart we headed to the airport and next thing I know I was airborne on my way to Mumbai where a friend from Miami I met at Rajas little down town eatery met me and took me for a bite to eat and comforted me in the hour of no mans land. So there I was in Mumbai on 9/11

The Cookie Connection

2010-09-08T20:51:00.000-07:00

In my Miami food writings I have met hundreds of people from owners of small cafes with Indonesian and Indian food good enough to make you want to move to Bali or Bombay to homecooks with brillant dishes from Bolivian soup-filled empanadas to Venezuelan corn pancakes folded around cheese, all with various stratifications of stories to accompany the dishes. Last week Gil Katzman, the Israeli-born proprietor of a dessert company he runs with his wife Smadar called Cookie Pursonality (the collection of cookies are packed in Deco-style cardboard "purses") got in touch with me and told me about a book called The Hundred-Foot Journey, written by Richard C. Morais, a classmate of Gil at Zurich high school in Switzerland. I got the book yesterday and finished it tonight. It's about being displaced and having to answer the question, where are you from? In the novel a young Indian boy moves to England, then France discovering his gift for cooking, and after winning his 3rd star for his haute French cuisine, he realizes it is a thousand year journey back to his roots in India when on winning his prestigious star he peers in on a hole-in-the-wall Indian place that has closed but he smells the familiar curry and yearns for home--and a home he is not sure he has after so many years abroad. The lives of the people I write about reflect my own life of living in many countries. My life, Gil and Smadar's, my friend Yonder, my friend Shar, my friend Barry, my friend Shiny--almost everyone I know has had their life intersected by life circumstances for good and bad.To answer where are we from? The World.

Eggplants of Friendship

2010-09-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

On Sunday my friend Lisa brought me a small curry plant (the leaves are added to curries--it's not curry powder growing on a tree!), a mango from her parents tree, her homemade mango chutney and some long slender Asian eggplants that I like as they have smooth (not bitter) skin and sweet flesh that is succulent when cooked and absorbs the flavors of what it is cooked with. They came with the curry plant from Asia Grocery on SW 56th Street in Miami which is really an Indian market where one can get jars of lime, mango and carrot pickles in mustard oil and spices, whole and ground spices, lentils, basmati rice, and Southeast Asian-Indian produce like the slim eggplants, bitter melons and long beans. Lisa had an appointment in that part of Miami and was kind enough to get what items I asked her to get for me. So last night with the leftover curry base from the chef friend, half a can of coconut milk and the eggplants I made eggplant curry. I just heated some olive oil, tossed in mustard seeds and cumin seeds and fresh curry leaves. When they were sizzling I added the chef friends curry base (who he adapted from a North Indain chef he met in Egypt) and chopped up eggplant, turmeric, cayenne, fresh cilantro and salt. I stir-fried the eggplant in a a wok from my friend Eleanor until it started to soften and poured in the coconut milk with a splash of vinegar and cooked it down until the sauce was thick and clinging to the eggplant and then threw in the remaining baby spinach I had in my fridge. I ate it with rice and Lisa's savory mango chutney. Today, Labor Day, Lisa invited me for dinner. By coincidence--or maybe because she had been shopping in an Indian grocery--or because we were on the same wave length--she had cooked Indian. I brought over my eggplant curry and we feasted together on this last night of summer as lightning splintered in the sky and rain streaked her windows. She had made chard with coconut and tamarind, basmati rice scented with cumin and cloves steamed with peas, corn and carrot shreds, potato cubes cooked with whole spices and red lentil dal. It's the end of summer but I'm sure many more Indian meals remain with my circle of friends to extend the season--isn't it called Indian summer?.

Northeast India

2010-09-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

West Bengal and Assam form the main mass of the northeastern part of India and share a similar cuisine based on rice, fish, dal (stewed lentils) and vegetables. These regions encircle East Bengal, now known as Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan). Most of West Bengal lies on the western delta of the Ganga where numerous rivers, including the Ganges, and its branch, the Hooghly pour out into the Bay of Bengal. The bay is bordered by mud flats and mangrove swamps of the Sunderbans in the far south. To the far north is Darjeeling meaning, “region of the dorje”, or thunderbolt, perched in the shadow of the cloud shrouded Kanchendzonga mountain range and surrounded by forests and terraced tea gardens. In southern West Bengal, summers are hot and humid, followed by cooler, clear winters. This region is called Sonar Bangal, or “the golden land of Bengal”, a rich gold and green landscape of rice paddies with stands of sugarcane, coconut palms, and bananas. Bengalis are crazy about the wild, leafy greens that poke up in the wet lushness of monsoon season and get cooked with coconut, chickpeas and chiles or added to dal (stewed lentils). Water lilies, taro, bitter gourds, banana blossoms, potatoes, crab, shrimp and sweet water fish are all relished and plentiful. Dal-bhat (boiled rice and split lentils) with a little fish is everyday sustenance in Bengal. Rice is a must at every meal, but puffed deep-fried bread is also popular with the soft collapsed balloons torn and used to scoop up fish curries. Panch phoron is a 5-spice blend indispensable to Bengali cuisine. Unlike most spices, the seeds are not ground, but roasted and used whole. Mustard seeds are also widely used, sizzled in hot mustard oil or ground raw into a pungent paste and added to vegetable stews or smeared on fish pieces steamed in banana leaves. White poppy seeds are also wet-ground into pastes for thickening stews. Bengali cuisine is highly ritualized, with emphasis on freshness but also how each fish and vegetable is cut on a boti, a terrifyingly large upright blade clamped onto a wood block. Also unlike other regions, dishes are always eaten in a precise order, based on age-old beliefs that relate to the aid of the digestive process. A bitter vegetable melange called shuko starts the meal, followed by fritters, rice, lentils, vegetable stew and roasted vegetables then fish, possibly a meat dish and sweet chutney, lentil wafers and thick, sweet yogurt called misti.

Joy Luck Curry

2010-09-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

Today I was lucky enough to get a plastic container holding a curry base from a chef-friend who obtained the mother base from an Indian chef working with him in the Middle East. The roots were ground spices with yogurt intended for a north Indian lamb curry. The chef-friend adapted it with coconut and his own spin with the backbone of a ginger garlic paste and onions fried almost to burning and dark brown and pureed with the the ginger-garlic paste and tomato to weld together a great meal that using the base curry can include what ever you can imagine. I thinned the base slightly with a little coconut milk, reduced it down and added fresh spinach by the handful, then some chopped boiled eggs. I added a bit of sambal (Indonesian chile paste) and ate it spooned over rice and was happy. Next time I'll try crab or shrimp or tofu. I just joined the joy cook club.

South Indian Cauliflower with Scallions

2010-08-31T12:46:00.000-07:00

The best food in India is cooked at home, often utilizing just a few spices and market fresh ingredients. Ghar ka khana (home-style) cauliflower radiates deep satisfaction yet is very easy to make. It is always the surprise hit when I serve it at parties. Guests are attracted to the vivid green tangle of scallions atop golden brown clusters of cauliflower speckled in dark mustard seeds. The underlying secret is shallots, which add a delicate complexity when slightly caramelized along with the cauliflower. A short steam bath ensures tender florets that brown as the liquid reduces, encrusting them in the spices. In South India, shallots are sometimes called scallions, probably the origin of the name of this dish. I tasted several versions on my travels through Kerala and Tamil Nadu and none used spring onions. Intrigued with the idea of adding them to the already delicious cauliflower, I tried frying slender stalks of scallion (also known as green onions) to add some color and textural contrast and loved the results. This dish can be made ahead and served at room temperature adding to its allure as a party food.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 bunch scallions (about 6), trimmed and cut in half lengthwise
1 1/2 teaspoons black or yellow mustard seeds
1 small dried chile, snipped in half and seeded
4-5 shallots (about 8 ounces), peeled, halved and thinly sliced
1 medium head cauliflower (about 1 1/2 pounds), trimmed, quartered, and cut into 2-inch florets
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals
1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder

Garnish

Chopped coriander (cilantro) leaves (about 1 tablespoon)

FRYING THE SCALLIONS (GREEN ONIONS). Crumple several paper towels and place in a shallow bowl near the stove. Heat the oil in a large wide skillet over high heat and when the oil is hot, add the scallions. Cook, turning once or twice with a slotted spoon until limp but still bright green, about 2 minutes. Remove from the pan and drain on paper towels.

COOKING THE CAULIFLOWER. Add the mustard seeds and red chile to the hot oil in the same skillet. When the mustard seeds start to crackle, reduce the heat to medium-high and add the shallots. Cook, stirring frequently until starting to turn pale golden brown at the edges, about 2 minutes. Add the cauliflower, turmeric, salt, and cayenne, stirring to mix well. Stir in 1 cup of hot water, cover and steam the cauliflower until tender-crisp, about 4 to 5 minutes. Remove the cover and continue cooking until all the liquid is dried up and the cauliflower starts to brown, stirring and turning from time to time until golden brown all over and crisped in spots, about 15 minutes. Taste and adjust for salt. Mix in the scallions and transfer to a serving dish. Serve garnished with the coriander (cilantro). Makes 4-6 servings.

Goan Chicken and Potato Rechad

2010-08-31T11:19:00.000-07:00

Portugal and India collide in culinary beneficiary in this dish. Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India in the quest for coveted spices at the turn of the 16th century. The Portuguese introduced chiles, discovered in the Americas by Columbus who thought they were related to black pepper. From the Iberian peninsula chiles quickly spread along the spice trade routes around the world. Goan rechad--short for recheado (meaning stuffed in Portuguese)--is a bright red spice mixture (maslala) based on dried red chiles and spices ground with vinegar and garlic. It is similar to vindaloo, but used to stuff seafood. In Portugal squid tubes are stuffed with a mixture of rice and spicy chourico sausage and cooked in tomato sauce. In Goa a similar sausage called lingiss in Konkani is seasoned with fiery rechad. The spice paste is also used to stuff whole mackerel and pomfret and used as a base for cooking shrimp, mussels or clams. Chicken rechad is the invention of my friend Ayesha D’Mello who is Goan but grew up in Gujarat where her father is a doctor in the port city of Surat. When she moved to Canada to attend university she started cooking but couldn’t find the fish from home and tried sautéing boneless pieces of chicken in the rechad paste. Rechad is not hard to make but requires two grinding steps. Freshly roasted whole spices are ground in an electric spice grinder then blitzed in a blender with vinegar soaked chiles and garlic. The ensuing brick red paste is cooked with the chicken until it reduces down and glazes the morsels of meat. Ayesha serves her chicken rechad with home made French fries but I’ve adapted the recipe to add boiled potatoes and cook them with the chicken—they become melting soft, offering mellow pillows of starch between bites of spiced chicken. You can use breast but it tends to dry out so cut it into larger pieces. I find thigh meat more flavorful, and it stands up better to the muscular spice mixture.

Ingredients

For the Red Hot Sauce (Rechad Masala)

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
8 small dried red chiles (such as japonés or chile de arbol), snipped and seeded
One 1-inch cinnamon stick, broken into a few pieces
1 generous tablespoon coriander seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon black or yellow mustard seeds
8 whole black peppercorns
2 whole cloves
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
1 generous teaspoon light brown sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
5 large or 10 small garlic cloves, smashed, skins removed and coarsely chopped

The Chicken and Potatoes

3 to 3 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs (about 8-10 pieces), depending on size
1 pound red-skinned potatoes (about 3 medium ones)
1 tablespoon olive oil

MAKING THE RED SPICE PASTE (RECHAD MASALA). Pour the vinegar into the jar of a blender; add the chiles and leave to soak half an hour. Meanwhile heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Drop in the cinnamon, coriander, cumin, and mustard seeds, peppercorns and cloves. Roast, shaking the pan several times until the spices darken a shade and smell fragrant, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a small electric coffee/spice grinder and add the sugar, salt, turmeric and paprika. Blitz, pulsing on and off several times and stopping at least once to scrape down the sides with a small spoon, until fairly finely powdered, about 1 1/2 minutes. Scrape out into a small dish. Once the chiles have soaked long enough, add the ground spice mixture to the blender with the garlic and blend into a smooth paste, stopping once to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula, about 2 minutes. Scrape out into a cup. There should be about 1/2 a cup of fairly thick brick red colored paste.

PREPARING THE CHICKEN. Blot the chicken pieces with paper towels. Prick several times on the thick meaty side of each piece with a fork to allow the marinade to penetrate. Cut into 2-inch pieces. Place the chicken pieces in a large non-reactive mixing bowl and add the spice paste (rechad masala), and using a rubber spatula mix well, turning the pieces so the chicken is coated on all sides in the paste. Leave to marinate about an hour at room temperature.

BOILING THE POTATOES. Peel the potatoes and cut into quarters lengthwise. Place the potato wedges in a 2-quart saucepan. Cover with water and add a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook until tender enough to easily pierce with the tip of a sharp knife but still al dente, about 9 to 10 minutes. Pour into a colander and rinse under cold water and leave to drain.

COOKING THE CHICKEN AND POTATOES. Heat the oil in a large wide skillet (not nonstick) over high heat. Add the chicken with the spice paste and cook, stirring fairly frequently with a slotted spoon until the flesh changes from glossy pink to milky-white, about 5 to 6 minutes. Add the potatoes, and continue cooking, stirring frequently as the reddish sauce bubbles and begins to thicken, about 3 to 4 more minutes until the oil rises to the surface in small pools. Keep stirring and cook another 3 to 4 minutes until the chicken and potatoes are glazed in the thick sauce and all the liquid has dried up. Transfer to a serving dish and serve garnished with a few sprigs of coriander (cilantro), if you wish. Makes 4-6 servings

Ayesha D'Mello the Indian cooking teacher with bebinca cake

2010-08-31T08:48:00.000-07:00

The Southern Peninsula of India

2010-08-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

South India is comprised of four states, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. The Western Ghats (steps) merge into the Nilgiri, or Blue Mountains and Cardamom Hills near Kerala and continue to the southern tip of the peninsula. At the very tip is Cape Comorin, where Hindus believe bathing in the waters where three oceans meet will wash their sins away. Beyond the Western Ghats a plateau slopes eastward to the broken chain of the Eastern Ghats. The climate is hot and humid except when the cool monsoons blow in, drenching the forests and rice paddies. Dravidian dynasties competed for supremacy in the south over thousands of years, but no one kingdom ever controlled the whole pendant-shaped tip of the peninsula. The Malabar Coast was strategically important in the lucrative spice trade. Today spices and chiles permeate the cuisine of South India. While each state has their own specialties, similar ingredients are used. Rice is the staple grain and many varieties are grown. Rice, known as sadam in the south is flavored with lemon, tamarind, coconut and yogurt and made into puddings and other sweets. Rice is ground into flour and used to make batter for fritters, steamed cakes, pancakes and noodles. To make string hoppers, cooked rice dough is pushed through the holes of a press, the strands swirled into flat nests and used to sop up curry or sweetened coconut milk. Fish and shellfish come from the sea, rivers and backwater canals. Tropical fruits and vegetables grow in abundance. Tea and coffee are cultivated in the cool hills. Coconut and date palms sway in the warm breezes. Coconuts, coconut oil, curry leaves, turmeric, mustard seeds, shallots, tamarind, lime juice and smoked kokum called kodampoli or “fish tamarind” are widely used in southern cooking. Two other unusual ingredients are kalpasi, a dried fungus collected from rocks along the beach and vazlapoo, the pale yellow inner buds of banana blossoms. The moss is used in biryanis and the buds are often ground with chickpeas to make fritters. In general, South Indian food is less oily and lighter than in the north where cream and ghee make the food richer and harder to digest. Only in the south are small amounts of split lentils roasted or fried and used as a seasoning, adding a nutty flavor to many dishes. In the south curries are hotter and thinner than in the north, perfect for mixing into the plain foil of rice. Hot, thin rasam (literally “dal water”) and slightly thicker, tangy-hot lentil and vegetable sambar accompany rice at all meals. The duo is also served with paper thin rice and lentil pancakes and spongy steamed rice cakes that resemble flying saucers. Cooling tamarind and other souring agents are used in abundance to help balance the large intake of chiles. Tamarind also preserves the vitamins of vegetables and helps soften the hard water found in many parts of the south. Food is served on banana leaves, which are fed to cows when the meal is over. The size of the leaf and placement of dishes on it differ in each community, and one glance tells a person the status, wealth and origin of a family. Chewing paan (betel leaf) after meals originated in the south as a digestive.

Goan chicken and okra with fries from Ayesha's class

2010-08-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

Ayesha's Kitchen

2010-08-30T16:19:00.000-07:00

Six years ago I attended the first cooking class Ayesha D'Mello offered here in Miami, not to learn to cook Indian food but to write about the experience in my weekly column in the Miami Herald called Fork on the Road. From that article and other media notice, her classes began to fill quickly as word of mouth got around. Now you may have to go on a waiting list. The classes are hands on, fun and a real learning experience. Ayesha is confident, energetic, organized, wise and kind. Her joy for cooking Indian food is as infectious as her mega-watt smile. She is Goan and Goan's are known for their love of life and food and Ayesha is the perfect example of this personality trait.

Ayesha's philosophy: Cook quick, healthy and delicious Indian dishes

She offers scheduled as well as private group cooking classes in her home

Classes range from all about Indian bread, dinner on the spice route and classic Indian cuisine to traditional vegetarian fare and vegan village of India (check the schedule of upcoming classes on the website below)

Gift certificates are available for all occasions including birthdays, anniversaries, reunions, etc and can be personalized

Most classes include 6-8 dishes designed to get a new-to-Indian cook started using readily available ingredients and participants will go home with copies of the featured recipes to make at home

At the end of the class everyone sits down to a full meal that they helped cook from appetizer to dessert

For more information or to schedule a class go to: www.ayeshaskitchen.com

Contact info: 305-254-069/ayeshaskitchen@yahoo.com

Link to Foodbuzz.com

2010-08-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

Foodbuzz.com

Doing an Indian cooking demo (Rajasthani chicken in yogurt sauce)

2010-08-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

Goan food (Beef curry, croquettes, green chutney and shrimp curry)

2010-08-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

Maharashtra Beet and Coconut Soup

2010-08-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

My Spice Box (Masala Dabba)

2010-08-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

Indian vegetables with fresh turmeric

2010-08-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

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Temple Parrot, Chennai India

2010-08-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

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What my blog is about

2010-08-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

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Tangy Goan Purple Cabbage Salad

2010-08-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

In Goa cabbage replaces lettuce as the main salad green as it keeps fresh longer. This light crisp slaw-like salad is deliciously tart in a vinegar base with a pleasant hint of garlic, crunch of bell pepper, and juicy bits of tomato all jumbled together. The salad is beautiful with the purple cabbage and red onions perking up anything it is plated with. This is the everyday salad of Goa served as a tangy crunchy textural contrast to rich meaty curries and spice smeared grilled chicken and a must with fried fritters and fish. Use good olive oil and vine ripe tomatoes for best results. Soaking the cabbage for a short time helps crisp it.

Ingredients

1 pound purple cabbage (half a large head or 1 small head), cored and shredded
1 medium red onion (about 8 ounces), peeled, quartered and finely sliced
1 small green or red bell pepper (about 5-6 ounces), cored, inner membranes removed and cut into fine strips
1 large ripe tomato or 2-3 plum tomatoes (about 8 ounces), quartered, sliced into paper- thin half moons (separate with your fingers)
2 fresh green chiles such as serrano or Thai, halved lengthwise, seeded and minced
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large or 2 small garlic cloves, smashed, skin removed and minced
Freshly ground black pepper

CRISPING THE CABBAGE. Place the shredded cabbage in a bowl of lightly salted cold water to cover and add the sliced onion. Soak 5 minutes and drain well in a colander.

DRESSING THE SALAD. In a serving bowl, mix together the cabbage, onion, bell pepper and tomato. In a small bowl whisk the vinegar with the salt and sugar until dissolved. Whisk in the oil, garlic and ground pepper to taste and pour over the cabbage mixture. Toss to coat well, using a rubber spatula and serve. This salad can be made one day ahead and refrigerated until ready to serve.

Goan Pork Vindaloo

2010-08-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

Unlike the molten vindaloos served in many restaurants, a vindaloo should not bite back. An authentic vindaloo is a glorious balance of heat, tartness, spice, and subtle sweetness. Vindaloo comes from the corruption of vinh d'alho, meaning wine of garlic in the Portuguese creole spoken in India. In Portuguese, vinho de alho means a slow-cooked stew with wine vinegar and garlic. The Portuguese introduced this method of cooking to Goa, a tiny state on India's southwestern palm fringed coast where it evolved into a spicy braise. Along the way tamarind slipped into the pot, as well as tomatoes and chiles brought from the New World. The vinegar works as a tenderizer and preservative, important in a hot humid place with little refrigeration until recently. Cooking over low heat also helps tenderize the pork and allows the flavors to meld. To learn about genuine vindaloo, I spent a day with Premila Fernandes in the enormous smoke-blackened kitchen of her friend Mario Miranda at his 300-year-old estate in Loutolim, Goa. Built in a baroque blend of Iberian and Indian architecture, the mansion is a reminder of four and a half centuries of Portuguese occupation of Goa. Another reminder is the pork. Rarely eaten in the rest of India, pork is a favorite of the Christians in Goa, who roast whole pigs for feasts and turn ground pork into spicy sausages. Over centuries Latin influences mingled with tropical ingredients forming a fusion cuisine unique to Goa. Premila starts with the basic spice blend of Goa (piri piri masala), blending toasted spices and lots of mild red chiles with tamarind pulp and vinegar into a smooth paste. After marinating in the dark red paste, the chunks of pork and the marinade are sautéed with onions, then braised until the liquid reduces down to a thick sauce with only a flicker of heat. Vindaloo tastes even better reheated a day after making it as the flavors meld.

Ingredients

Pork and Spice Paste Marinade (Wet Masala)

2 pounds boneless pork leg (fresh ham) or shoulder (often labeled pork for stewing)
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt or sea salt crystals
1 dried ancho chile, snipped in several pieces and seeded
1/2 cup malt or apple cider vinegar
8 whole black peppercorns
One 2-inch cinnamon stick, broken into several pieces
1 generous teaspoon black mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
4 whole cloves
6 large or 12 small garlic cloves, smashed, skins removed and coarsely chopped
1 generous tablespoon tamarind paste (or substitute lemon juice)
1 teaspoon turmeric

To Finish the Vindaloo

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium yellow onions (about 1-pound), peeled, quartered, and finely sliced
1 large tomato or 2-3 plum tomatoes (about 8 ounces), coarsely chopped
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons tomato paste, thinned with 2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
1 whole star anise pod
2 tablespoons thick, aged balsamic vinegar, optional

PREPARING THE PORK. Blot the pork dry with paper towels. Trim any excess fat off, leaving a few flecks for flavor and moistness. Cut into 1-inch pieces. Place in a non-reactive mixing bowl and sprinkle with the salt. Mix and toss with a spatula to coat all the sides in salt.

MAKING THE SPICE PASTE. Place the ancho chile pieces in a small bowl, add the vinegar and soak about 15 minutes. Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat and drop in the peppercorns, cinnamon, mustard seeds, cumin, and cloves. Roast, shaking the pan from time to time until seeds start to crackle and smell fragrant, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a small electric coffee or spice grinder and blitz, pulsing on and off several times and scraping down the sides with a small spoon until fairly finely powdered, about 2 minutes. Pour the ancho chile and vinegar into a blender. Add the ground spices, garlic, tamarind, and turmeric. Blend, stopping once or twice and scraping down sides with a rubber spatula until the mixture is smooth, about 2 or 3 minutes (you should have 1/2 a cup of thin mahogany colored paste). Pour over the pork and, and toss with a rubber spatula until evenly coated. Cover and refrigerate at least 24 hours or up to three days.

COOKING THE ONIONS AND PORK. Heat the oil in a large wide skillet (not nonstick) or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until soft and translucent, about 3 or 4 minutes. Add the pork and marinade, and cook, stirring frequently and scraping up from the bottom of the pan with a slotted spoon, until the pork changes from pink, becoming firm and light brownish, about 4 to 5 minutes. The pork will begin to exude rich reddish-brown juices that bubble and foam. Stir in the tomatoes, vinegar, tomato paste, sugar, star anise with 3/4 of a cup of hot water and the balsamic vinegar, if using. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer, checking and stirring every so often to make sure it is proceeding at a gentle bubble and the pork is not sticking (add a little water if it is), about 1 hour. The sauce will become shiny as it thickens and the pork will be fork tender. Transfer to a serving dish and serve garnished with paper-thin red onion rings and a few sprigs of coriander (cilantro), if you wish.

Goa

2010-08-27T16:20:00.000-07:00

Goa’s climate is typical of coastal monsoon lands— the endless cycle of a dry hot season increasing in humidity, followed by monsoon rains that cool the air, then a dry cooler season that gradually gets hotter and humid. During the rains, the thickly forested hilltops of the ghats are capped in clouds and mist. Lower slopes are planted with spices, cashews, teak, guava, jackfruit, custard apples, papayas, pineapples, melons, mangoes, muzambi (sweet limes) and bananas. Between the ghats and beaches, lush rice paddies and fields of vegetables surround villages with white church steeples stabbing the blue skies. The rivers and sea yield fish and shellfish year round. Rice is the staple grain, eaten at every meal, often with fish curry. The rice grown in Goa is thick, reddish and round-grained with a nutty flavor. Ragi (red millet) is also important, ground and roasted to make thick flat breads. Coconut sap and cashew apples are fermented to make feni, a potent spirit. Dried fish are utilized during the monsoon season when fishermen remain home. Chilies are grown and used in tongue curling abundance. These of course are the legacy of the Portuguese who ruled Goa for 450 years. Before the Iberian colonists and missionaries arrived, this verdant chunk of land was ruled by waves of Hindu dynasties and Arab invaders. The Portuguese however had the biggest impact on Goan food. In Goa, pork and beef is eaten by Christians as well as many Hindus. Brahmins indulge in seafood and vegetables are often cooked with tiny shrimp. A popular souring agent is kokum, the dark purple dried rind of a tart type of tropical plum. Meals often begin with a digestive drink based on kokum extract. The local rice is served double boiled which makes the grains larger and soft, a perfect foil for spicy curries and caldeiradas (layered seafood stews). Pork vindaloo is a fiery, sweet and sour curry with a touch of vinegar. Chouriço is Goan sausage based on chorizo, laced with garlic, spices and chilies, often added to pots of simmered beans or sandwiched inside bread rolls. Muslim cooks add the sausage to rice pilaf with shrimp and spices. Pale poppy seeds are roasted and ground with toasted coconut, chilies and spices to make complex chicken and seafood curries called xacuti (pronounced “sha-koo-tee”) with a nutty flavor. Xec xec is thick coconut curry with crab or lobster. Sukem are dry curries, made with seafood or vegetables, often eaten with bread. Besides flat breads, there are many baked types including crusty bangle-shaped kankon, pao (soft rolls) and ápa (rice cakes) layered with a spicy shrimp filling. Sweets are based on egg yolks, palm sugar and coconut. The most famous of these is bebinca, a cake of layered pancakes made with a coconut milk, flour, sugar and egg yolk batter enriched with ghee. Each layer has to be baked before the next one is added, taking several hours although modern cooks often make do with a modest number of layers, not the traditional sixteen.

Galicia has deep tentacles to the sea and soccer

2010-08-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

My musings about Paul The Octopus after a recent trip to Galicia, Spain (can you tell I'm a soccor fan?)

Paul the Oracle Octopus is a national hero in Spain after he predicted they would win the World Cup, creating an international frenzy. Altered Spanish flags with a crowned Paul have been waving in triumph. A Brazilian company is developing a Paul iPhone app and a businessman in the town of O Carballino in Galicia raised a “transfer fee” to have Paul present at the annual Fiesta del Pulpo (octopus festival). Despite the assurances of the head of a local business club that Paul would be alive in a tank and not on the menu, Sea Life Centre in Oberhausen, Germany where Paul resides rejected the offer. Germans threatened to eat Paul after their loss in the semi-finals, as did the Uruguayans and Argentines to taunt the Spanish who are famous for their love of boiled octopus. Much of the catch comes from the waters around Galicia in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. The Madrid Zoo is negotiating to trump any other offers for the celebrated cephalopod but for now he is staying put. One has to marvel at the joy a little octopus pundit has brought Spain. Pulpo certifies any event in Galicia as a serious celebration, so the next four years should be quite a party.
Sadly, Paul won't be around for the 2014 beautiful games because he is already 2 1/2 years old and Octopuses only live to be about 4. Perhaps he will return reincarnated as a mind reading monkey from India.

To meet a Neighbor Takes a Column

2010-08-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

I will soon be marking the 10th year of writing a weekly food column for the Miami Herald. I started in October of 2000 and have met many interesting people, many who have become friends over the years. I even visited the remote village in South India that is the home of Raja Kandaswammy, the owner of Rajas's in downtown Miami (NE 2nd near Flagler). At one point, faces of the villagers were pressed to each window staring at me. When I walked to the local Hindu temple, everyone followed. It seemed like I was a strange star that fell from the sky. I then visieted the nearby town where Raja's wife Chitra is from and spent a memorable night eating with her sister and parents. My every move was videotaped and for a year after I had returned to Miami the video played in the small restaurant as Raja proudly shared his parents, his village and way of life with customers.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth St. Theresa, the Albanian Sister who went on to found her charity in Calcutta (now Kolkata). I visited it when I was in Kolkata and you can't but feel the immensity of her faith manifested in her work with the poor. Tonight several buildings in South Florida are lit in the blue and white colors of the sari she always wore. Let her light shine on forever. And by the way, Kolkata is not a "black hole". It is a vibrant Bengali city known as the intellectual center of India with poets, writers, film makers, actors and artists contributing to works that are known around the world. The food is very different and based on freshwater fish and rice from the region, but I'll be getting to that later.

And today a person e-mailed with a comment on one of my Herald columns. A random stranger. I found out in replying that we live three blocks from one another. The next time he and his wife have one of their Friday night gatherings, I'll be there. The world works in mysterious ways but I'm glad to be making the connections.

Chaat Masala

2010-08-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

CHAAT MASALA (TANGY SPICE BLEND)

In Hindi chaat literally means “to lick”, referring to mouth watering snack salads and finger-licking foods enlivened with chaat masala. This is a tantalizing blend with a distinctive flavor from earthy ground cumin, tart green mango powder (amchoor) and smoky, sulpherous black salt (kala namak) that tastes tangy, like lemon with a hint of egg salad. These are combined and ground with dried mint, dried ginger, nutmeg, cayenne, salt, and pepper for a well balanced seasoning that is tossed with chaat ingredients (boiled chunks of potato and raw fruit are popular), then smothered in sweet, sour and hot chutneys for full effect. If you for any reason, you can’t find black salt, don’t substitute table salt, as the mix will be overly salty without the special tang. Instead, add a little citric acid (sold in small crystals in Indian markets and finely ground Kosher “sour salt” in supermarkets). Commercial chaat masala blends are sold in small boxes in Indian markets and I find most are more than acceptable in flavor with a good spicy-tart-salty taste. Besides adding allure to chaat salads, try this masala sprinkled over yogurt salads and on French fries and other fried snacks, including samosas and vegetable fritters, added to stewed chickpeas and mixed into coleslaw and other creamy salad dressings. In India, it is all the rage to dust grilled kebabs, fried fish or shrimp and tandoori chicken with a little chaat masala.

Here's a link to to find Indian ingredients on line: http://www.indiangrocerynet.com

Makes about 1 cup

Ingredients

3 tablespoons cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

3 tablespoons dried crushed mint

1/2 teaspoon asafeotida (hing powder)

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, grated on a microplane rasp-style grater or other grater

1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger

4 tablespoons green mango powder (amchoor)

2 tablespoons black salt (kala namak)

1 teaspoon cayenne powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals

ROASTING THE SPICES. Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat and drop in the

cumin and peppercorns. Roast, stirring from time to time with a slotted spoon until the

spices smell fragrant, about 2 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and add the mint,

asafoeotida, nutmeg and ginger and toast another minute, stirring constantly. Remove

from the heat and cool slightly.

GRINDING THE SPICE MIXTURE (MASALA). Transfer to a small electric

coffee/spice grinder and add the green mango powder, black salt, cayenne and salt and

blitz to a fairly fine powder, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides with a small

spoon, about 2 minutes. Store in a glass jar or tightly sealed container and use within 6 months for the best flavor.

Beet and Coconut Soup from Maharashtra

2010-08-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

There is nothing shy or retiring about beets. The bulbous burgundy roots are bold, turning everything they touch shades of ruby and hot pink. The roots sweetness is best balanced with the sharpness of an acidic seasoning to bring out the earthy flavor. Beets also need something creamy to soften the assertive edge. To make this soup I simmer boiled, chopped beets in an aromatic herb paste and puree it with coconut milk. Lime zest and juice adds the tang to balance the sweetness while mint, garlic, cumin, chiles and shallots add layers of flavor. The color is a lovely deep magenta-pink garnished with vibrant green fresh coriander (cilantro) and pale chopped shallot. A final dusting of chaat masala (tangy spice blend) adds another contrasting tartness against the bed of subtly sweet, earthy soup. Beets evolved from the wild sea-beet that thrived along coastlines from Ireland to North Africa, India and Asia since prehistoric times. They were eaten for their greens since the roots were small and spindly. The Greeks made offerings of beets to the sun god Apollo and the Romans cultivated beets, calling them beta and used the roots medicinally to treat everything from fevers to toothaches—an irony since beets contain more sugar than any other vegetable. My Indian friend Seema loved beets growing up because they were so sweet, especially compared to karela (bitter gourd) and the tongue-prickling patra leaves from the taro tuber. As a teen she smeared her lips with a slice of beet in place of lipstick that was strictly banned in her Mumbai convent school. When shopping for beets, look for smooth, hard round deep red beets. Avoid ones with soft spots or flabby skins and wilted, yellowing leaves. The smaller the size the sweeter the taste, making for beet soup that is hard to beat, and is both hearty and and blushingly beautiful. Chat masala is based on black salt and green mango powder and is sold in small packets in Indian grocery stores. I will also post a recipe for making it yourself.

Ingredients

3 medium or 6 small beets (about 12 ounces)
3 large or 6 small garlic cloves, smashed, skins removed and coarsely chopped
1 fresh green jalapeño, coarsely chopped (seeded for less heat if you wish)
1 1/2 teaspoons peeled and grated fresh gingerroot
2 sprigs of fresh mint (about 12 leaves stripped from the stem)
Zest of 1 lime, removed with a citrus zester or Microplane rasp-style grater
2 limes, divided use
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 generous teaspoon cumin seeds
3 large or 6 small shallots (about 6 ounces) or 1 small red onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 cups vegetable stock (homemade or canned)
1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of sugar
One 14 to 15 ounce can unsweetened coconut milk

Garnish

Sprigs of fresh coriander (cilantro)
2 small shallots, peeled and sliced into thin rings
Chaat masala (tangy spice blend), optional

PREPARING THE BEETS. If the greens are attached, cut them off leaving about 1/2 an inch of stems. Rinse but do not peel or cut off the root end. Place in a saucepan and add water to cover by an inch or so. Add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil over high heat and boil until tender when pierced with the tip of a sharp knife, about 45 to 50 minutes (a little longer if the beets are large). Drain in a colander and when cool enough to handle trim the root ends and peel the skins off (if the beets are small, the thin skin can be left on). Chop into rough chunks and set aside.

MAKING THE AROMATIC PASTE (MASALA). Place the garlic, jalapeño, ginger, mint, lime zest and the juice of one of the limes in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal S-shaped blade (a mini one that fits on a blender is ideal). Process, pulsing on and off, stopping at least once to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula until fairly smooth, about 2 minutes (the light green mixture will be speckled with small dark green bits).

COOKING THE SOUP BASE. Heat the oil in a large wide skillet over medium heat. Drop in the cumin seeds and fry until the seeds sizzle and darken, about 2 minutes. Add the shallots (or red onion) and cook, stirring almost constantly with a slotted spoon until soft and starting to turn pale caramel, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add the beets and aromatic paste and cook, stirring frequently until the paste dries up and clings to the beets, about 3 minutes. Add the vegetable stock and season with the salt, a few good twists of the pepper grinder and the pinch of sugar. Simmer about 10 minutes and turn off the heat.

PUREEING THE BEET MIXTURE AND COCONUT MILK. Transfer half the beet mixture to the jar of a blender and add half the can of coconut milk. Blend until smooth, about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes and pour in a clean saucepan. Blend the rest of the beets and coconut milk and add to the pan. Taste and adjust for salt and add the juice of the remaining lime. Gently bring to a simmer over low heat. Pour in to a tureen or ladle into soup bowls. Serve garnished with sprigs of fresh coriander (cilantro) and sliced shallots and sprinkle with a little chaat masala (tangy spice blend). Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Chopped Salad With Chickpeas and Minty Yogurt

2010-08-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

This is a type of cachumber (uncooked chopped salad), with the addition of chickpeas and dressed in a creamy mint yogurt dressing, making it similar to raita (curd salad). It is a favorite in Maharashtra State. While not a festival food, I associate it with the celebrations in Pune during the 100th anniversary of Ganesha Chaturthi on my first trip to India many years ago. This is a mass worship of Ganesha, the beloved deity born of the goddess Pavrati, wife of Shiva who is the remover of obstacles. Pune is about three hours south of Mumbai (Bombay) by train and I found it a pressure cooker of activity the week in early September that I visited. I was met at the station by friendship guides and bedecked in flower garlands and anointed with red rice paste on my forehead. Electric-lit decorations and makeshift wood stalls festooned with tinsel and crepe paper lined the streets—stage sets for Ganesha statues, which portray the pot-bellied elephant-headed god. He sits cross-legged on lotus petal cushions waving multiple arms, blindfolded with red strips of cloth, removed the next evening in a ceremony that kicks off the festivities, ending eleven days later with a farewell immersion of all the clay statues in a nearby river. Little cafes with rickety tables and chairs set out under the stars sprawled along roadways. Vendors offered tea, cold drinks, hot snacks and various chaat-like chopped salads, including chickpeas, diced cucumber, tomato and red onions tossed in a minty yogurt dressing. The yogurt is blended with mint, coriander (cilantro), ginger, green chiles and garlic with a little lemon juice, creating a cooling, creamy tangy complement to the earthy chickpeas and crisp cucumber. The version I ate during the festival was served in a small leaf bowl and topped with sev, fine broken bits of crispy chickpea flour noodles. These are sold in the snack section of Indian groceries and make a tasty garnish, but the salad still tastes great with just a few mint springs for adornment.

Ingredients

The Creamy Dressing

Chopped mint leaves (about 1/2 a loosely packed cup)
Chopped coriander (cilantro) leaves (about 2 generous tablespoons)
1 teaspoon peeled and grated gingerroot
1 small garlic clove, smashed, skin removed and coarsely chopped
1 fresh green chile such as serrano or Thai, halved lengthwise, seeded and coarsely chopped
1 cup plain yogurt (not nonfat) preferably natural whole milk or strained Greek, divided use
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil

The Salad
One 15.5 ounce can of chickpeas, well rinsed and drained (about 1 1/2 cups)
2-3 plum tomatoes, (about 8 ounces), finely chopped
1 small red onion (about 3-4 ounces), thinly sliced, then coarsely chopped
1 cucumber (about 12 ounces), peeled, halved, seeded and cut into small dice (or use 2 slender seedless Armenian type that don’t need peeling)

Garnish
A few mint sprigs
Sev (fine chickpea flour noodles), optional

MAKING THE DRESSING. Place the mint, coriander (cilantro), ginger, garlic, chile, 1/2 a cup of the yogurt, salt, lemon juice, and olive oil in the jar of a blender and blend, scraping down once or twice with a rubber spatula, until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute. Scrape into a small bowl (makes about 1 cup of thin light green dressing).

ASSEMBLING THE SALAD. Place the chickpeas, tomato, onion and cucumber in a mixing bowl. Pour in the dressing and gently combine, using a rubber spatula. Whisk the remaining 1/2 a cup of yogurt until smooth and stir into the salad. Taste and adjust for salt. Serve garnished with a few mint sprigs and sprinkle of sev noodles, if you wish.

THe Deccan and Maharashtra

2010-08-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

THE DECCAN AND MAHARASHTRA
The Deccan plateau of peninsular India, formed from solidified volcanic lava eruptions marks the great divide between the northern plains and southern regions of India. Deccan comes from the Sanskrit word meaning “south”. The Vindhya Mountain range acts as a natural barrier and for centuries the two halves of India were almost cut off from each other. The region below this range was once the vast kingdom of Marathas, stretching from what is now Gujarat across the plains to the east coast. Chains of hills run parallel to each coast, known as the Western and Eastern Ghats. To the west, the hills flatten out into the Konkan coastal lowlands where alluvial rivers provide enough water for growing rice and other crops. A number of large rivers flow from the ghats (literally “steps”), draining down into the Arabian Sea. Others flow across the Deccan plateau toward the Bay of Bengal, creating fertile swaths. Maharashtra, meaning “great state” is the heart of the peninsula with Mumbai (formerly Bombay) it’s pulsing nucleus. Maharashtra lies between the wheat growing northern regions and rice growing south and both bread and rice are staples, although rice is a little more favored. Many regional variations of cuisine exist. There are the fierce, chili-hot meat curries in coconut milk bases of the Marathis, a former warrior class believed to be descendents of the great king Shivaji. Hindu Brahmins prepare sparsely spiced pure vegetarian food. In the coastal villages seafood is cooked with green chilies, fresh herbs, onions, garlic and coconut. The main spice blend used is goda masala made by dry roasting and grinding together aromatic spices, dried red chilies, coconut and sesame or white poppy seeds. Staples throughout the region are hand patted sorghum and millet breads, often eaten with a few chilies, an onion and leafy green curry as a meal. Puran poli are thin breads stuffed with a filling of sweet dal or palm sugar and sesame seeds, eaten with spicy curries or as a snack. Greens are also cooked with various dals. Roasted, ground peanuts or chickpea flour is often sprinkled over dishes to soak up liquids or thicken gravies. In Mumbai, every imaginable cuisine can be found in India’s largest melting pots. The Parsis are one of the largest communities who arrived to India centuries ago. They blend Persian influences with the sweet and sour flavors of Gujarat (where they first settled).

Gujarati Green Beans with Peanuts & Garlic

2010-08-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

In Gujarat the general term for vegetable is shak and the majority of the people are vegetarian. Kutchhis (from the Kutch region), Jains (similar to Buddhists), and Vaishnavs (worshipers of Lord Krishna) are just some of the many sects in Gujarat and while tastes differ from region to region in the state—Jains for instance don’t eat roots or tubers that grow underground—all have contributed to the vegetarian dishes that appear in subtle variations on the tables of Gujarat. This is a very simple, delightful green bean stir-fry I tasted in my hosts home in the Kutch region—the biggest district in Gujarat, bordering Pakistan and containing the vast salt flats called the Rann of Kutch. During the monsoons this area is flooded with seawater and when it recedes the land sparkles like snow with a blinding white crust of salt stretching to the horizon. The people in this part of western Gujarat are mostly tribal and each tribe wears colorful embroidered clothing. Their dwellings are round mud huts called bhungas with a central support pole and thatched roof, with a cluster of huts surrounding a large communal courtyard. The smooth interior mud walls are washed with lime paste and embedded with tiny bits of mirror that throw hundreds of shimmering reflections. When the mud stove was lit, flickering pinpoints of fire spun around the kitchen where I shared a simple meal with a tribal family. Kutchhi cuisine is slightly sweet and spicy. Water is scarce in this harsh region so cooking vegetables in a little oil with mustard seeds, garlic, and crushed hot red peppers is common. The green beans are quickly cooked until tender-crisp with a little salt and sugar and peanuts for crunch. I often whip up a pan of these spicy-sweet green beans to bring to pot lucks and they are always one of the first dishes to disappear.

Ingredients

1 pound green beans, cut into 2-inch segments (about 3 packed cups), blanched in boiling water about 2 minutes, plunged into ice water and drained
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon black mustard seeds
4 large or 8 small cloves of garlic, smashed, skins removed and minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals (less if using salted peanuts)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 generous tablespoons skinless roasted peanuts (plain or salted), coarsely chopped

COOKING THE BEANS. Heat the oil in a large wide skillet over medium-high heat. Drop in the mustard seeds and fry until they start turning gray and sputter, about 1 1/2 minutes. Add the garlic and quickly stir, scraping up from the bottom of the pan with a slotted spoon, about 1 minute. Add the green beans, red pepper flakes, salt, sugar and peanuts, stirring and scraping frequently until the green beans are tender-crisp, about 3 to 4 minutes (for less crunch cook another few minutes, stirring all the time and sprinkling in a little water). Transfer to a serving dish and serve garnish with chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves, if you wish.

Gujarati Green Pea and Cucumber Curry

2010-08-24T14:18:00.000-07:00

This luscious golden creamy pea and cucumber curry is an example of food that looks every bit as good as it tastes. To the uninitiated, adding cucumber to a cooked dish may seem strange as the crisp, watery cucumber is usually used raw. The vegetable is native to India where is most commonly added to chopped salads, grated and blended into yogurt to make raita, a cooling side dish salad and pickled. Cucumber is also added to soups, stewed lentils, and curries. Both smooth-skinned slender green cucumbers and a round yellow type called dossakai are used like a squash and is the same family as gourds and melons. Cucumbers are widely cultivated in Gujarat in Western India, adding a crisp-tender texture to many cooked dishes like this curry I cooked with Leela Patel and her daughter-in-law Sheetal near Vadodara in the country side where the two-story family house was surrounded by drumstick trees and fields of cauliflower. This falls in the general category of apnu shak, meaning vegetables dishes (shak means vegetable). We used freshly shelled peas from the pod, but frozen peas work fine are always available. Indian yogurt, made from full fat water buffalo milk is much richer than most yogurts found here so I add a little sour cream (also ensuring it won’t curdle). Diced cucumber is stirred into a mixture of lightly browning onions with cumin and mustards seeds, ginger, jalapeño, turmeric and cayenne and steamed until tender-crisp. The yogurt mixture is stirred with salt and cooked slowly at a low temperature until the cucumber is tender, with the peas stirred in the last few minutes. The thick, creamy light golden curry is irresistible with bright green peas contrasting the icy pale green cucumber cubes in both color and flavor. The peas are meaty and chewy and the cucumber mild and melting tender with just a hint of crispness. The dish is garnisheed with roasted, chopped peanuts, adding nutty crunch.

Ingredients

1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 medium yellow onion (about 8 ounces), peeled, halved with each half thinly sliced then chopped crosswise into small bits
1 fresh green jalapeño, halved lengthwise, seeded and minced
1 1/2 teaspoons peeled and grated gingerroot
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder
1 medium cucumber (about 8 ounces), peeled, seeds scraped out and cut lengthwise into 4-5 strips, the strips cut crosswise into small cubes
11/4 cups plain yogurt (not non-fat), preferably natural whole milk or Greek strained, whisked until smooth and lump free
1 generous tablespoon sour cream, whisked into the yogurt
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt or sea salt crystals
1 1/2 cups frozen and thawed green peas

Garnish

1 tablespoon roasted, salted peanuts, coarsely chopped
Chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves (about 1 generous tablespoon)

MAKING THE AROMATIC BASE. Heat the oil in a large wide skillet over medium-high heat. Drop in the cumin and mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds start to turn gray and sputter in about 1 1/2 minutes, add the onion. Cook, stirring fairly frequently with a slotted spoon until starting to turn pale caramel, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the jalapeño, ginger, turmeric, and cayenne and cook, stirring almost constantly and scraping up from the bottom of the pan, about 1 minute.

ADDING THE CUCUMBER, YOGURT, AND PEAS. Add the cucumber and reduce the heat to medium-low. Add a little water (3-4 tablespoons), cover, and steam the cucumber until tender-crisp, about 7 to 8 minutes, adding another tablespoon of water, if necessary (the onions will be a rich golden brown color). Add a few spoonfuls of the cucumber mixture to the yogurt-sour cream mixture and stir in (to warm it). Reduce the heat to low. Slowly stir the yogurt mixture into the pan, adding a little at a time and stirring in a circular motion until all of it is incorporated (the yogurt sauce will be creamy golden-yellow). Add the salt and simmer, stirring frequently until the sauce bubbles, about 3 to 4 minutes. Taste and adjust for salt and cayenne. Add the peas and cook about 2 minutes (so they remain a bright green color). Transfer to a serving dish and serve garnished with the peanuts and chopped coriander (cilantro).

The first recipe!

2010-08-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break in explaining the various regions of India to post my first recipe--from Gujarat, the last region I told you about. The majority of Gujarati are vegetarians so this wil be a cool cucumber dish--where the cucumber is cooked gently in a mixture of spices and yogurt. I made this dish with relatives if Dinu and Leela Patel who own the Little Market in Fort Lauderdale near the corner of Oakland Park Blvd. and Andrews Dr,, a great place for stocking up on spices, basmati rice, Indian types of lentils, and fresh vegetables. Almost every city or town has a an Indian market, so cooking Indian should never be a problem. Supermarkets have most of the spices and there are lots of mail order web sites where you never have to leave home to shop globally.

Gujarat

2010-08-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

GUJARAT
Gujarat is shaped a little like a Rhinoceros head, with a massive horn jutting out into the Arabian Sea. Gujarat became a state May 1, 1960—it had formerly been a part of Bombay State, which split into Gujarat and Maharashtra states. Gujarat is situated on India’s northwest coast, some 400 miles from Mumbai and is renowned for flavorful and sophisticated vegetarian fare. The terrain and climate are extreme, from the salt marsh and parched desert in the northwest to the lush green land in the southeast. This is one of the richest states, culturally and economically and is home to a large trader class. It is likely a Gujarati, with the surname Patel owns your neighborhood Indian grocery store. Gujarat is divided into roughly three regions, each with distinct climates. Kathiawar Penninsula in the west is dry and flat, dotted with worn sandstone hills and is famous for its dairy products and pickles. Pulses and hearty millet and wheat breads are staples, often enriched with chopped spinach, ginger and a little yogurt, served with sweet grated green mango chutney. Central Gujarat has rich soil where various grains, vegetables and sugarcane are cultivated. Sugarcane juice is boiled down to make thick cakes of brown sugar and small lumps sweeten numerous savory dishes. Battered vegetable fritters found throughout India originated here and shallow-fried chapatti called thepla are staples. Popular snacks are steamed split pea flour cakes called dhokla and savory crunchies called farsan, many based on chickpea flour. South Gujarat gets bountiful rain and the regions vegetables, including chilies are grown here on vads (family farms). The food is spicier and more sugar is used in cooking giving dishes a tangy-sweet flavor. Green chili-ginger paste, red chili powder, turmeric, fenugreek leaves, hing, mustard seeds and sesame seeds are popular seasonings. Sesame oil is favored for cooking and coconut products are used in moderation. Undhiv is a mixed vegetable and bean stew in a creamy coconut sauce, baked in upside down clay pots buried in the ground. Salads based on shredded cabbage or sprouted mung beans with grated coconut and sizzled spices accompany most meals.

Rajasthan

2010-08-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

RAJASTHAN
In the arid desert regions of Rajasthan nothing is wasted—not even time, and curries are thick for carrying out to the fields to eat with thick millet, corn or barley flat breads, chili chutney and small raw onions, which are said to prevent sunstroke. In the driest regions meats are cooked in milk or yogurt with ghee. Small desert berries, called ker and a type of tree bean known as sangri are sun-dried and cooked in oil or yogurt to save water or are pickled. Grains, breads, yogurt and buttermilk are staples. Bati are balls of dough mixed with ginger-garlic paste and green chilies baked in a charcoal fire, and dipped in ghee. Choorma are fried bati, crushed with sugar and almonds and eaten rolled into small balls with ghee or added to a spicy dal curry to make dal-bati-choorma, a savory-sweet combination. The Marwaris of Rajasthan are strict vegetarians from the bania, or business class and have drifted far and wide where commerce has taken them—many settled in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Typical vegetarian fare includes deep-fried puffy whole wheat breads, thick lentil and bean stews flavored with cumin and mustard seeds, potatoes in spicy gravy and vegetables stir-fried with chilies and spices.

Uttar Pradesh

2010-08-22T16:38:00.001-07:00

UTTAR PRADESH
Delhi, Agra, Lucknow and Varanasi (Benares) all lie in the state of Uttar Pradesh, testimony to the cultural and historical richness of the region which was the setting for two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Agra, of course has the Taj Mahal. Lucknow is famed for its refined Moghali court cuisine and Varanasi is where all Hindus hope to die, cleansed by the Ganges. The fertile plains are watered by two mighty river systems—the Indus and Ganga-Brahmaputra plus there are vast underground water reserves for irrigation. Temperatures are extreme—searing hot, dusty and dry in summer, moderate in spring and freezing cold and windy in winter. Mid-July brings torrents of monsoon rains. Hardy millet, barley, corn and jowar, a type of sorghum are grown across the plains as are pulses and many types of fruits and vegetables. Foods of the northern plain are a contrast of rich, complex meat-heavy, cream and nut enriched Moghul-Muslim and Maharaja palace dishes with the hearty peasant fare of rural villagers and farmers based on grains, breads, and pulses. Moghuls married into the neighboring Rajput warrior kingdoms, a clever move to keep the provinces united, prevent clashes and free both parties for the pleasantries of game hunting. Nowhere was the cuisine more refined than in Awadh, in what is now the Lucknow district of Uttar Pradesh. Here dum pukht , a method of slowly steaming food in a pot sealed shut with bread dough came into style near the end of the Moghul empire. The Nawabs of Lucknow left a legacy of extravagant foods, flowery language and a gentrified way of life that still lingers today. Delhi is India’s capital and third largest city. Here, the food is a babble of North Indian, Punjabi and Mughali fare. Behind the gates of Old Delhi are congested lanes spiraling around the Jama Masjid, or Friday mosque built by Emperor Shah Jahan. Nearby are venerable restaurants serving whole roast leg of lamb (raan), lamb kebabs and kheema (ground meat curry). The original inhabitants of the city were the Hindi-speaking warrior-Brahmin Kayasthas, a well-educated class who became administrators to the Muslim rulers. Their cooking reflects the food of Uttar Pradesh with distinct Muslim influences. Typical dishes include mutton and potatoes in rich gravy, lamb do piaza (with double the amount of onions) and vegetables stuffed with green mango powder, chilies, coriander and aniseed, then fried with onions, spices and tomatoes.

Ganetic Plains & the Punjab

2010-08-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

GANETIC PLAINS AND THE PUNJAB
The great northern plains stretch south from the Pindari mountain ranges to encompass the Punjab, Haryana, Uttaranchal and Madhya Pradesh. This is the densely populated heartland where much of the history of India unfolded. The Harappa civilization flourished 5,000 years ago on the Ravi River in the Punjab. Kingdoms of the Vedic and Gupta ages saw great advances in music, art, culture and religion. After waves of Muslim invasions, the Moghul Empire dominated the region. This Empire collapsed as independent kingdoms arose, and finally the British Raj claimed India as the crown jewel of their empire. The Punjab, or “land of five rivers”, just below Kashmir shares a western border with Pakistan—the region was split between the two countries during partition after Independence in 1947 and later divided into the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. This is the breadbasket of India where wheat is the main crop and bread a staple although basmati rice is grown in the foothills of the Himalayas near Dehra Dun. The special flavor of Punjabi food comes from the tandoor—clay ovens with vents set in pits in the ground and fueled with charcoal at the bottom. Fat drips on the hot coals, creating smoke which is trapped in the bulbous oven with a narrow neck. Meats or vegetables are lanced on skewers and lowered down into the inferno for a quick blast, sealing in the juices. Every village has a communal oven where women bring kneaded dough and marinated meats to have them cooked while they gossip. Most Punjabis are farmers or involved in agriculture at some level. The food is simple and robust, based on what is in season. Many Punjabis consider a hot roti with a gob of melting butter and bowl of dal to be a meal, washed down with frothed buttermilk. Chilies, green mango powder, kalonji (small black seeds with a herbaceous-oregano flavor), and fenugreek seeds are common spices. Most dishes begin with onions and garlic-ginger paste, often with tomatoes added to thicken the cooking sauce. Milk is plentiful and used in many forms—made into fresh cheese, milky sweets, yogurt, butter and ghee. Mustard oil is used for cooking and pickling and mustard greens are a favorite vegetable, cooked in earthenware pots with green chilies, ginger and garlic.

RegionFood Patterns of India: Kashmir

2010-08-21T09:57:00.000-07:00

REGIONAL FOOD PATTERNS
KASHMIR
The far northern region of India is dominated by the glassy blue and white Himalayas, home of Indra, the thunderstorm god, where rivers roar through deep gorges and temperatures are well below freezing. The name Himalaya means “abode of the snow” and Hindus believe the craggy snow covered peaks are Shiva’s hair. When Brahma threw the goddess Ganga down, she was caught in Shiva’s strands of hair, preventing her waters from sweeping away the whole earth. She finally escaped near Gangatori, the sacred source of the Ganges, gushing from the throat of an icy glacier and departing at Hardwar from her mountain confines and rushing across the plains out to the sea. Only wild sheep and cave hermits live up near the glaciers. At the slightly lower altitude of 6,500 feet above sea level are the towns built around the Moghul emperor’s summer palaces and British hill stations—cool escapes from the intense heat of Delhi on the plains below. The Vale of Kashmir was a great center of Hindu culture until coming under Muslim rule in the 14th century and today there are two strands of cuisine—the closely related Hindu Pandit and Waza Muslim (both sides have been converted back and forth depending on rulers so the lines are blurred). The main difference is Hindus use a pungent smelling ground resin called hing in place of prohibited passion arousing garlic and onions while Muslims use small shallot-like onions called praan and garlic. Kashmir has a temperate climate with lush flower carpeted valleys surrounded by apricot, apple, cherry, pear, almond and walnut orchards and thick pine forests where honeycombed morel mushrooms grow. For two weeks in late October the valleys shimmer in a sea of delicate pale purple saffron crocus. Floating vegetable gardens sprout from piled up water reeds daubed together with mud on the lakes near clusters of wooden houseboats. Winters are cold, so in summer and fall every type of fruit and vegetable is sun-dried for use when nothing can grow. Sheep are raised for meat, milk and their wool. Both Hindu Brahmins and Muslims here eat meat—mainly lamb and goat, but the spicing is slightly different. Rice is grown in flooded paddies in the shadow of the mountains. To combat the cold, warming spices such as chili powder, cinnamon, black cardamom, pepper, cloves, cumin, nutmeg, mace, coriander seeds, ground dried ginger, and fennel powder are used.

Geology part two: boundries

2010-08-21T09:52:00.001-07:00

BOUNDRIES
The mighty pinnacles of the snow capped Himalayas form a natural border in north India, curving like a gigantic dinosaurs spine from the Hindu-kush and Karakoram ranges in northern Afghanistan and Pakistan, then sagging down and across Jammu and Kashmir and thrusting through Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh forming a natural border with China, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. The Naga Hills define India’s far eastern border where they bump into Myanmar. Everything below the bands of mountains is considered the subcontinent, including Sri Lanka dripping like a tear off the southeastern tip of the peninsula. India is bounded to the west by Pakistan and engulfs Bangladesh on three sides in the east. The main part of the peninsula is surrounded by the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, and Bay of Bengal. The Lakshadweep Islands off the Malabar Coast in the south and Andaman and Nicobar Islands sprinkled out where the Bay of Bengal merges with the Andaman Sea are Indian territories.

First things first: Geology of India

2010-08-21T09:12:00.001-07:00

FIRST THINGS FIRST: THE GEOLOGY OF INDIA
One Hundred million years ago the diamond-shaped Indian peninsula was still attached to the land mass called Gondwana, a fragment of the supercontinent known as Panagaea by geologists. Who knows the exact moment when volcanic activity along the ocean ridges caused the Indian plate to break off and drift north, smashing into what is now Tibet and giving birth to the Himalayas. I imagine a dark and primordial night filled with fire and blue ice, the calm drift, then the heaving of the earth’s core and crust as saw tooth mountains began to rise up to touch the stars. A land bridge still connected western India to Africa, but was eventually submerged by rising ocean levels as layers of glacial ice melted. For aeons the land was pummeled by rains, swept with winds, dusts and snow and scorched by the sun. Volcanic lava spewed up from cracks in the earth, spreading across large areas of the peninsula and solidifying into crystalline rock. Small mountains and hills rose along the north-south fault line where India was shorn away from Gondwana. Rivers gushed from the mountains as snow melted, carrying rich silt that slowly filled the deep depressions on the plains caused by the thrusting up of the peaks. Some of the great rivers ran all the way to the oceans engulfing the peninsula, creating swaths of green along the way. One of these rivers, the Indus gave India its name and was where the first Indian civilizations flourished five thousand years ago. In the wake of the rivers irrigation pines and poplars sprung up in the shadows of the mountains and valleys filled with ferns and flowers. Bamboo groves and rhododendron jungles covered vast areas. Massive bodhi, ashoka and neem trees grew in others and palms fringed the warm coasts. Thus the three main geological regions of India were formed and remain today—the Himalayas, the Indo-Gangetic northern plain and the peninsula.

India is a subcontinent

2010-08-20T19:10:00.000-07:00

India is so huge it is called a subcontinent and like America, Europe, Africa, Asia or South America, it is made up of vastly different regions from mountains in the north to the convergence of three seas in the far southern tip. My next few blogs on the geology and geography of India will help in understanding the connection of what is sustainable in that region to what is eaten based on the local produce and staple grains. You'll see why bread is a staple in the north where wheat is grown and why rice in the hot tropical south where it grows in rice paddies is the staff of life. I hope you will follow me around India. When you cook a recipe from Bengal you'll see why they are crazed about freshwater fish and rice and teeth-rotting dairy-based sweets. When you make a dish from the Punjab you'll see why wheat bread and buttery black lentils are favored, perhaps with sag-paneer (spinach cooked with cubes of fresh-made cheese). If someone wrote a book on American food and only wrote about Texas, we wouldn't know American food at all. Suffice to say if one wrote a book about one state in India we wouldn't get the full grasp of a great cuisine...

End of the beginning

2010-08-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

India is an incomparable land of bewildering beauty, vast diversity and intricate complexity. It is an immense country of composite textures, teeming productivity and plentiful paradoxes. It throbs with vitality while retaining the burnished ambience of a multi-layered history and lived-in humaness. The food of India reflects the collage of people, faiths and land it is made of, and defies any all-encompassing label or definition. Over thousands of years, India has embraced and absorbed cultural and culinary influences from as near as Afghanistan, Central Asia, Turkey and Persia and as far as China, The Middle East, Portugal, Holland and England. Waves of invaders, settlers, traders, travelers and tourists have all contributed to the great patchwork quilt of flavors that makes Indian food. The threads that weave through this quilt and hold it together are spices. The language, the very DNA encoded in Indian food lies in the lavish use and careful balancing of spices—native spices and imported spices, some aromatic, others flavorful and some for exquisite color and delicate fragrance. Regions are spread thousands of miles apart yet are connected through the lavish use of spices. Handfuls go into cooking pots transforming ingredients into multi dimensional taste sensations.
India has always been a place in transition, soaking up foreign ideas—and foods like a sponge always transforming them into something Indian. This is true more than ever today, with the invasion of imported soft drinks, software and fast foods. Pepsi is spiced up with hot pepper powder, salt and a squeeze of lime. Burgers are made from lamb and smothered in hot sauce, chutney and pickled green chilies. Pizza is topped with crumbled paneer cheese, corn, cumin and hot peppers, and potato chips come in flavors like tandoori and tomato-garlic. Flavors and foods might be borrowed and adapted or new riffs played on classics, but the integrity and identity of Indian food remains firmly based in tradition. Each region is proud of their cuisine and perhaps thinks it is THE cuisine of India! When you eat in India, you discover the heart of its culture and hospitality. In India, you will be welcomed like a long lost family member and fed like a Maharaja. There is no place where people with so little will share so much. Some travelers go to India seeking spiritual nirvana, but I found culinary bliss in cooking with both renowned chefs in 5-star hotel kitchens and home cooks in simple spaces. The recipes I learned and the lives I intersected resulted in this book.

Beginnings, part two

2010-08-20T15:29:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago, but went to college in San Francisco. While a student, I dated a musician, originally from New York who had traveled around India for several months, and smoked bidi, the slim cigarettes rolled up in a brown leaf with an acrid aroma. Together we frequented Bay Area Indian restaurants and the musty little spice shops that often mushroomed nearby--once we bought what must have been a years supply of garlic, just because an Indian man was selling it cheap from the sidewalk. The restaurants at that time served mostly Moghul-style North Indian fare in exotically draped dim spaces reeking of sandalwood with soft sitar music and candles setting a fantasy mood. I recall most of the dishes tasting almost the same, rich, buttery and sweetly spicy, even when hot enough to set my mouth on fire. Desserts were also super sweet and creamy, smelling faintly of face cream and eucalyptus. After graduating, I got a job at a publishing company in Singapore. I moved there and ended up by happy circumstance living in the Little India section just off Serangoon Road. In this area a wizened old man with his head wrapped in yards of white cloth sold yogurt scooped into plastic bags from a milk pail strapped to a bicycle. Rows of open-fronted shops sold spices in large tins, freshly ground in what looked like huge coffee mills. Other shops sold sweets, saris, bangles and jasmine garlands strung on silver threads. It was here I first discovered South Indian vegetarian food, ladled from buckets onto mounds of rice on banana leaf plates for eating with ones hands-- no cutlery provided. The food was lighter and fresher, dancing with flavors that intrigued: coconut, tamarind, black mustard seeds and fragrant curry leaves. These exhilarating banana leaf meals sparked what was to become a lifetime interest and love of Indian food— both eating and cooking it and unearthing the tangled history of a complex cuisine. In Singapore I discovered a small microcosm of India, with a mix of Tamils from South India and Sri Lanka, Sikh Punjabis, Indian Muslims, Malayalees from Kerala, Gujaratis, Sindhis and Chettiars (the latter two clans are prominent in the business community with roots in ancient trader/merchant classes). All had distinct cuisines discovered at street stalls, restaurants and in people’s homes, and all were deliciously different from the rich Moghul-style dishes I was familiar with. Singapore was a perfect introduction to India, preparing me for the assault on the senses a trip to India takes. When I finally made it to India almost a decade later, everything was new yet familiar.

The beginnings

2010-08-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

The catalyst that ignited my passion for India was a piece of mirror cloth. I got it when I was seven years old, a gift from my somewhat eccentric Aunt Edna when she returned from India. For years the cloth the color of the first blush of dawn and sparkling with bits of silver glass was my favorite costume accessory draped over my head or wrapped around my waist. Aunt Edna went off on a solo yearlong trip around the world in the mid Sixties, from Europe and Iceland to Africa, India and Asia. My memories are vague on details of the trip; what I vividly remember are wild mahjong games with my Aunt and the magical carpets, animal skins, elephant tusks, drums, and carved masks that filled her suburban Chicago home. Most of my childhood, I was mesmerized by the long narrow piece of pale pink cotton inset with small polished round mirrors held in place by embroidered white threads like spider webs woven around tiny silver ponds. I liked to imagine the village where it was embroidered and the person who made it. When I stared into the bits of mirror I was transported to India—the one I imagined from the pages of the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. The book was a battered thrift shop find and some of the beautiful color plates were torn, but the pictures of Mowgli, the man-cub and his animal cohorts whetted my appetite for adventure in faraway places. I spent a lot of time reading books from the library about India and other places I hoped to one day visit—Aunt Edna had set an example I intended to follow. An interest in Indian food was piqued long after the mirror cloth was just a happy memory. My culinary passage to India began in San Francisco, the city I was born in.

Day one part two

2010-08-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

I have to mention that today is very auspicious for starting my blog because August 15 in the day India was partitioned in 1947 and won independence from Britain at the terrible price of dividing the country by religion, causing a holocaust as Hindus left Lahore in what became Pakistan and Muslims fled Delhi across the border--see the movie Earth to see how the subcontinent was shattered on many levels. One can certainly clebrate with food though--garlic naan with dark buttery blisters, dal makani (black lentils stewed over night in spices, buuter, cream and tomato paste) and lamb biryani ( I make the best with lamb marinated in spices and yogurt for a few days then cooked and layered with needle-fine fragrant basmati rice, saffron and sliced almonds), palak paneer and butter chicken representing the best of Moghul-Persian Northern cuisine with amazing vegetable dishes cooked with spices, tamarined and coconut from Maharashtra and Gujarat and going further south the paper thin dosas (crepes) stuffed with spice potatoes and rasam (spicy lentil soup) . At the stroke of midnight the people of India were divided but food can still unite the two people who are from the same land. So Happy Birthday to India and Pakistan.

Day One

2010-08-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

I'm a food and travel writer based in Miami Beach, Florida and I am going to blog a book along with what ever else is on my mind. The book is called A Handful of Spices and was written by me over a period of seven years. I started by traveling around India cooking with chefs, housewives and in remote villages where the "stove" was a metal pail filled with coal or dried cow dung. I spent years researching and writing the book only to have the publisher cancel my contract because I was a year late ( I had gone through some health-related issues). But no one can take away the knowledge I gained and the stories I wrote about every recipe--where it is from, who taught it to me or cooked with me. This will all be in the blog. Today I'm starting. I'll start the introduction later. My blog is called Food India Cook as in reading my blog you will discover new foods, get to virtually visit India, and be able to cook the dishes I tell you about. Stay tuned to find out why I became so passionate about Indian food and culture that I spent years writing a book about it. Perhaps it is because my name, Linda almost spells India, but there's much more.

Meanwhile one week ago I returned from Grand Cayman Island, a delightful patch of coral rock and sand in the Caribbean on the far side of Cuba. The water there is crystal clear. Even when I swam out to the reef, I could see the coral, fish of neon bright colors and a turtle. I got to swim with gentle sting rays that are like big slippery cats and brush up against your legs. My guide, Eric has a "pet" one he calls Friday, a girl sting ray that comes swimming up to him every time he takes his boat out to the sandbar where hundreds wait to be fed and touched by humans. This is not a Disneyland kind of thing, it is all natural. The rays just started hanging out at the sandbar as fishermen cleaned their fish at the edge of the reef so they wised up and started coming around for a free meal. My trip was not a vacation, I was there learning about a new section of the island that has been developed in a very nice way and has some Miami chefs opening outposts on the island. They are starting to work with local farmers and use locally grown produce such as Thai wing beans, mammoth basil (huge leaves), tomatoes, and and Indian type of gourd. It is the end of the growing season so there will be lots more in the cooler months--cool being relative when talking about a tropical climate. I'm working on a format for a farm to table chef based TV show but alas the chef with a restaurant on Cayman wasn't interested so I will turn to another chef friend I think might have the time and interest. More soon....