Cooking Challenge Week 29 (Late!) - Inspired by a Color - Burritos Blanco

They were supposed to be Burritos Verde, really, but both of my green elements turned out not-so-green.

They're made from chopped cooked chicken tossed with this fantastic tomatillo sauce, and cilantro-lime rice.  And they're delcious, even if they're not very green!

Neglected Cookbook Project: Gingery Chickpea Curry

This is from the very first cookbook on Indian cuisine that I ever got, the day after my first Indian meal.  I was in England, visiting my husband while he was doing his Master's over there, and he took me out to this charming curry house down the street from his flat.  The next day, I found Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail at a used bookstore two streets over.  I browsed through while I was there, but we had a lot going on, so it was on the flight home that I read most of it.

It's an odd and fascinating blend of travelogue and cookbook, being a companion piece to a BBC radio series.  Being a sort of journey-through-food, the recipes are divided by region and often subdivided further by ingredient, focusing on the handful of predominant flavors of the area.  This means I usually start hunting in the index when I want to make something with a specific ingredient (like this week, when red bell peppers were on sale and I really wanted to use them in a curry), which is not my normal method of finding recipes, so that may be, in part, why I don't use this book nearly as often as it deserves.  Until now, I really had only made one recipe from it, a cinnamon-scented caramelized rice that can be tricky to pull off without burning, but goes so, so well with super-spicy curries.  I haven't made it for a while, I should really make it again soon....

This recipe starts out as a side dish without any red pepper in it at all, but one of the variations recommends stuffing the chickpeas inside peppers and baking them.  From there it wasn't much of a stretch to simply include it in the curry to begin with, very similar to my bean and broccoli curry, which was so good I made a second batch that same week just to freeze for later.

One note: while I cook most of my own beans from dry, I don't have an inexpensive source for dried chickpeas, which is why I use canned here.  If you're cooking them yourself (which I highly recommend you do, if you can) the steps remain basically the same, you just leave out the bell pepper and dramatically lengthen the cook time from twenty minutes to whatever your brand of dried chickpeas recommends.  The original recipe assumed dried and says 1-3 hours, depending on brand, and suggests canned as a time-saver. Throw in the bell pepper for the last 20-30 minutes and you're good to go!

Gingery Chickpea Curry

• 3 15-oz cans chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
• 1 large red bell pepper, chopped
• 2 to 3 inch piece ginger, skinned and minced finely, divided
• 6 cloves garlic, minced finely, divided
• 2-4 thin green chillies, half left whole but slit, half seeded and finely chopped
• 1 large onion, finely sliced
• 2 tbsp ghee or butter
• 1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 15-oz can diced tomatoes
• salt to taste

Combine the chickpeas and bell pepper in a large saucepan, and add just enough water to cover.  Stir in half of the minced ginger, half the minced garlic, and the slit chillies.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the ghee or butter in a skillet and fry the onion until soft and golden (which should take just as long as the simmer, I won't lie and say you can caramelize onions in 5 minutes like so many recipes do.)  Add the rest of the ginger and garlic, and the cumin seeds.  Fry another minute or so until the garlic is fragrant and the cumin seeds start to pop.  Stir this mixture into the chickpeas.

If a lot of water is left, remove some of it now; then mash some of the chickpeas against the side of the pan to thicken what's left.  Stir in the undrained tomatoes and heat through.  Season to taste, and serve with plain boiled rice.

Cooking Challenge Week 20 - Rice - Mujaddara

This is a dish that I don't make often, but when I do, I wonder why I don't make it more.  It's easy, inexpensive, relatively healthy (to anyone who doesn't think carbs are evil) and, most importantly, delicious.

The only downside?  It's hard to photograph well because it's a pile of greenish-brown mush.  Don't let it fool you.  It's super tasty.  I mean, look at those onions!

Not being familiar with much in the way of Middle Eastern Cuisine of any stripe, I was intrigued when I stumbled across the recipe while looking for something else--doesn't that seem like the best way to find new things, sometimes?--and, loving lentils like I do, had to try it.

One of the things I like so much about allrecipes is the sheer volume of users leaving ratings and reviews--so I knew, heading into it, to add some spices that weren't called for in the recipe.  Some swear by cumin, others by cinnamon, yet more by coriander.  Trusty Wikipedia says cumin, coriander, or mint.  I haven't tried mint yet, but I do like it in my meatballs...

So, I follow the recipe in all particulars except that I add 1 tsp of cumin and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon.  Usually.  This time I'm actually out of cumin (gasp! the horror!) so I added 1 1/2 tsp of my home-ground garam masala, which includes those two, plus a little coriander, clove, and black pepper.  Sure, it's an Indian spice blend, but you won't tell, will you?  It gets the job done, quite well, in fact.

Cooking Challenge Week 15 - One Pot - Lentil Soup with Chicken and Potatoes

I love lentils.  Maybe they're an odd thing to love, but I have yet to meet a lentil soup I don't like, and I've been known to eat leftover tarka dal on wheat toast for breakfast!  This is one of my two favorite recipes (why, yes, I can have two because they're incredibly different!)  This one came from one of my first Indian cookbooks, and is definitely the more versatile of the two in terms of add-ins; the other relies on the standard mirepoix, plus rosemary and bacon.  I'll probably share that one at some point in the future...

Down to business.  The bare bones soup is delicious--I made it that way first, years ago.  The recipe lists two choices of optional additions, separate but equal: pre-cooked diced potato, or pre-cooked rice, obviously intended to help use up leftovers.  We like both, though I lean in slight favor of the potato.  Then I adapted the recipe to use either uncooked rice or potatoes by adding extra water and playing with the cook times--it is a soup, after all!  Then came experimenting with other vegetables.  Cauliflower is okay; parsnip is a definite no, its flavor ended up dominating the whole soup, which wasn't at all right.

This time, however, is the first time I tried adding chicken.  I had some leftover cooked chicken I'd intended to use for chicken salad, but it just didn't end up happening, so into the pot it goes!

Lentil Soup
(adapted from The Complete Book of Indian Cooking)

• 1 tbsp ghee (or butter)
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 fresh green chili, finely chopped (and deseeded if you don't like the heat)
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/3 cup split red lentils (masoor dal)
• 1 cup water
• salt, to taste
• 1 14-oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• lemon juice, to taste

Optional: 1/2 cup uncooked rice or 1 large russet potato, peeled and finely diced, plus 1 cup extra water ; 1 cup chopped cooked chicken

Heat the ghee in a large saucepan and fry the onion, garlic, chili, and turmeric over medium heat until the onion is translucent.   Add the lentils and water and bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook until all the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes.  Mash the lentils lightly with the back of a wooden spoon.

Add the salt, tomatoes, and sugar and mix well.  For the bare bones soup, you're almost done; raise the heat to medium and cook the soup just long enough to soften the tomatoes, about 5 minutes.

If using rice or potatoes, add them now with the extra water, and cook until the rice is done or the potatoes are fork-tender, 15-20 minutes.  If using the chicken, add last and cook just long enough to heat through.

Finally, season the soup with lemon juice to taste.  How much you need will depend mostly on the acidity of the tomatoes and your personal preference.

Serve piping hot with any Indian flat bread to dip, or even just crusty French bread!

Cooking Challenge Week 10 - Literature/Media - Congee

From the movie Blood Brothers.  We rented it a few years ago, and one of the only things I remember about it was that whenever the gang is sitting down to eat, Daniel Wu's character wants/asks for congee, and the others make fun of him for not being more sophisticated.

I was going to get all fancy and do multiple garnishes, but then (as Jon Stewart would say) I got the bubons.  Three days of fever, chills, deep hacking cough, sinus headache, the works.  Fortunately for me, congee is basically the Chinese version of chicken noodle soup--comfort food and medicine all at once.  I'm still pretty wretched today, but I at least have the energy to type this up before I go back to sleep.

Congee

• 1 cup rice
• 8 cups chicken stock (or water, or a combination)
• 1/4 cup soy sauce (more to taste if desired)

Potential garnishes

• green onion
• chopped preserved turnip
• thousand-year-old eggs
• cilantro leaves
• fried dough sticks
• toasted sesame oil
• sesame seeds
• chopped roasted peanuts

 Combine the rice and chicken stock in a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer very gently for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until the rice is breaking down and the mixture is very thick.  Add the soy sauce and serve with your choice of garnishes.