Baingan Bharta (Eggplant Curry)

Eggplant. Never liked it, never though I would. Last year, Kevin's family came to visit and we had a big dinner with the whole extended family. We had a kids table and an adults table. They brought out this super stinky casserole dish to the adults table and if we could see stink lines, they'd be green. I will always remember this story of eggplants.

I disliked eggplants so much that it was the first thing i put on my "don't cook" list when I was living with Rachelle. We had a list of all the foods we didn't like or were allergic to on the fridge. So we knew not to make anything with it or to not share if made.

But then, a few weeks ago, Kevin and I invited Kev's little cousin, Benjamin, over to play video games. Because we promised him this when he watched our fish when we went on vacation. His mother invited us to stay over for dinner when we dropped him off. Her friend was over at their house and made this indian feast and my favorite dish was this veggie curry mash. I was very surprised when she told me it was eggplant. That's when I decided to look for a recipe and try my hand at making this classic Indian dish. I altered it by adding ground pork for my carnivore fiancé.

1 large eggplant
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste or minced ginger/minced garlic
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 tomato, diced
1/2 cup plain yogurt (optional)
1 fresh jalapeno chile pepper, finely chopped (subbed with a few dashes of cayenne)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 bunch cilantro, finely chopped

Ground pork

1 1/2 Tbsp corn starch

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. Place eggplant on a medium baking sheet. Bake 20 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until tender. Remove from heat, cool, peel, and chop.
3. Meat option: Mix corn starch into the ground pork and mix in pepper and salt for taste.
4. Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Cook pork. Mix in cumin seeds and onion. Cook and stir until onion is tender.
5. Mix ginger garlic paste, curry powder, and tomato into the saucepan, and cook about 1 minute. Stir in yogurt. Mix in eggplant and jalapeno pepper, and season with salt.
6. Cover, and cook 10 minutes over high heat.
7. Remove cover, reduce heat to low, and continue cooking about 5 minutes. Garnish with cilantro to serve.

I'm not sure how it would taste like with the yogurt, but the way i made it with the substitutes, it was yummy. I'd make this again. I think the yogurt would give it a more bland taste, which wouldn't be a bad thing. Without it, it had a much stronger curry flavor.

Baked Tandoori Chicken

I recently found a recipe for tandoori drumsticks while leafing through on of my giant cookbooks. And since the recipe called for only 5 ingredients (one of which is just salad), i thought it would be great. Kevin and I both like Indian food, but i've never made tandoori chicken. I had a bit of a dilemma, because it's the middle of winter and our BBQ grill outside is buried under a lot of snow. So I had to compromise and bake the chicken instead.

Chicken Drumsticks

2/3 cup (150ml) Plain Yogurt

3 tbsp tandoori paste

freshly squeezed juice from 1 lemon

1. Preheat oven to 400. Use knife to make deep cuts all over drumsticks
2. Mix yogurt, tandoori paste, and lemon juice in a large bowl
3. coat drumsticks with the mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 1 hour
4. Bake in oven until cooked or juices run clear.

Dilemma numéro deux: as mentioned before, the 5th ingredient in the recipe was 2 cups of arugula lettuce. For some reason, I misread it to be 2 cup of plain yogurt. When I realized my mistake (from the pale colour of my sauce), I had already mixed in the 3 tbs of tandoori, so i could salvage the plain yogurt. So what I ended up doing was adding more tandoori paste...but dilemma numéro trois, I was runnign out of tandoori paste. So I just put in whatever was left and just prayed the tandoori drumsticks wouldn't be too bad. The chicken ended up being oh-kay. Good, but not memorable. I might make this again when we can use the grill. Since I baked it, it came out more saucy. Real tandoori shouldn't be.

Part III: Rainbow Trout with Coconut Curry Beurre Blanc

The star of our Indian-inspired dinner was the main course. With Rachelle as my guest, I couldn't cook meat, she's a vegetarian who eats fish. So I searched for an Indian-inspired fish recipe. I have been in love with cooked salmon/fish ever since I had the fish dish my friends served at their New Year's Eve dinner party in 2007. They served Maple-Green-Curry Salmon. So I knew curry would taste yum on fish.



3/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup coconut milk
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 cup cold, unsalted butter, cut into pieces
kosher salt to taste
1/4 cup vegetable oil
8 (6 ounce) fillets Alaskan king salmon (we used Rainbow trout)
2 tablespoons garam masala
kosher salt to taste

1. Pour white wine, cream, and coconut milk into a saucepan; season with curry powder. Bring to a light boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until the liquid has reduced to 1/2 cup, about 10-20 minutes.
2. When the liquid has reduced, turn heat to low, and whisk in the butter, a few cubes at a time, until all of the butter has incorporated. Do not allow the mixture to boil or else it will separate. When the butter has incorporated, season to taste with salt and set aside to keep warm.
3. Heat the oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat until it begins to smoke. While the oil is heating, lightly season both sides of the salmon with garam masala and salt.
4. Sear the salmon in the hot oil for 3 to 4 minutes on one side, then turn over, and continue cooking for 2 to 3 minutes until done. Briefly drain on paper towels to absorb excess oil, then serve immediately with the curry butter sauce.
   

I actually forgot to season my fish before cooking. We also skipped searing the fish with oil...I always prefer baking my fish...less oily. Once baked, I poured some of the sauce on top of the fish. I also did not have unsalted butter. I had semi-salted. I had to add some sugar in the sauce to balance the taste. The sauce took a long time to prepare, but it was absolutely sinful, and worth the prep time.

Rachelle tip: The leftover sauce seperates. When heated, discard the oily film on top and you're left with yummy thick sauce that you can have on fish, meat, vegetables, or with bread.

Part I: Sweet Potato Samosa

For our Indian feast, I looked online for some fusion indian food...during my search on naan bread, i found a recipe for Sweet Potato Samosa...it's absolutely not authentic, but it sounded interesting. So I printed it out.

1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 teaspoon butter
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon dry onion soup mix
ground cumin to taste
curry powder to taste
20 wonton wrappers
sesame oil for brushing

1. Simmer sweet potatoes with a little water until very soft. Drain, and mash with butter, milk, onion soup mix, cumin, and curry powder.


2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).


3. Place about 3/4 of a teaspoon of the sweet potato mixture into the center of each wonton wrapper. Brush the edges with sesame oil, fold into a triangle, and press the edges to seal. Place the samosas on a baking sheet.


4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, then turn over, and bake for 5 minutes more.
   

At the grocery store, it just so happened that they ran out of wonton wrappers...so we ended up buying egg roll wrappers, which are thicker and bigger. We doubled the filling recipe and it smelled so yum. We pop it in the oven for the time indicated on the recipe...and they came out sort of baked, but they still had the powder film on top...we tried one and...yep, they're not done. The wrappers were chewy and tasted like dough. We finally decided that since we were frying papadums, we'd just fry the samosas. They fried up nicely, but probably tripled the fat intake. Despite the oiliness, even though we placed them on paper towels, they were pretty good. Even Kev liked them. I'd make this again when I find wonton wrappers and try the baked kind.

Indian Feast: Introduction

For my 28th birthday weekend, Rachelle came over to my place and we had an indian inspired feast. We were in the kitchen for two and half hours just chopping, boiling, stirring, frying...It was exhausting, but the experience was memorable. We ran into a few speed bumps and resulted in a detour or two. Some things we cooked from scratch, some not so much...Here is a little photo collage of the food we did not make from scratch.

From top left (clockwise): Naan bread, Green peas and Paneer, Saffron Yellow rice, Papadums

We originally wanted to make home-made Naan bread, but decided it took too long since we had to let the yeast grow. So, we cheated and bought President's Choice Naan bread. Of course, we could have went to an indian restauarnt and get take-out Naan, but we were on foot.

The Green Peas and Paneer and the Saffron yellow rice are from Rachelle. She bought them on a recent trip to Ottawa. Both are pre-packaged. The GP & Paneer were microwaved...and tasted...like pre-packaged stuff. It wasn't aweful, but not good. The Paneer was mushy and tasteless, the peas were...well...I hate peas. I guess if you were incredibly desperate for some Paneer, these would be alright. The Saffron rice was a tad salty and even too mushy. Rachelle had followed the cooking directions on the bag. They were also not terrible, but not great either.

The papadums I bought pre-packaged. I had bought them when Kev and I were having butter chicken for dinner one night and I thought I could just tear the package open and eat the papadums. I should have read the instructions and realized that they were not ready-to-eat, I had to fry them in oil. It's important to mention that I have never, never, NEVER fried anything in my life. I hate the smell of oil in the house. Even when a recipes asks me to pan-fry, i almost always bake it instead. So to have the papadums, I gave in and decided to heat up a pot of oil. Rachelle and I were very afraid of getting burned. The papadums took no time to fry and they were yummy...despite the oiliness.

Things we made from scratch (posts coming soon)

• Sweet Potato Samosa
• Vegetable Masala
• Rainbow trout with Coconut-Curry Beurre Blanc
• Desert: Chocolate Soufflé with Gooey Center
• (Rachelle made Baked apple, which she will blog)
  

India meets Lebanon?

Okay, here's the deal...we've gotten a lot of snow in Montreal. I'm not going out in the snow to the grocery store...even if it's only 10 min walk away. I have some leftover naan and no butter chicken left. What do I do? I recently discovered a Lebanese pastry called Manakish or Manaeesh (please correct me if i'm wrong). It consists of dough topped with cheese or thyme or ground meat, but used widely in many Levantine countries. Similar to a pizza, it can be sliced or folded, and it can either be served for breakfast or lunch. The classic Manakish is with za'atar. It is a mixture of herbs and spices used as a condiment with Middle Eastern origins. Za'atar is generally prepared using ground dried thyme, oregano, marjoram, or some combination thereof, mixed with toasted sesame seeds, and salt. Some varieties may add savory, cumin, coriander, or fennel seed. A Lebanese variety of Za'atar usually contains sumac berries, and has a distinct dark red color. Recipes I found online for Za'atar consists mainly of marjoram, thyme and toasted sesame seeds. I don't have marjoram or sesame seeds at home. So I had to improvise with what I had to finish off the leftovers, which also included half a tomato.







Naan bread (store bought)
cheddar cheese
thyme
garlic salt
dried onion flakes
Sliced tomatoes

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Sprinkle garlic salt on Naan bread. Add tomato slices, sprinkle dried onion flakes and thyme. Add cheese and finally another sprinkle of thyme. bake about 10-15 minutes until cheese has melted and browned. Serve hot.

I thought this was a pretty good lunch. It was filling. If my work had a toaster oven, i'd make this for lunch. I loved the bits with the dried onion flakes...