Sambhar masala

Toasted spices, waiting to be ground up:

(Recipe from 660 Curries.)

Green mango

Let me introduce my new love: green mango.

Mangoes are absolutely my favourite fruit. They may be my favourite food full stop. But until now, I hadn't investigated green (unripe) mangoes. Wow, they're amazing. When you start peeling the skin off, the mango scent just hits you. The scent and especially the flavour is of course much different from a ripe mango -- they are mouth-puckeringly tart -- but there's a commonality. Interestingly, the texture is much less fibrous than a ripe mango.

One great use for them is shredded in a Thai-style salad, similar to a green papaya salad. There are also Indian pickles and chutneys. But this recipe I tried from 660 Curries was fantastic: Mango, Bell Pepper and Onion in a Pigeon Pea Sauce. (I didn't have any pigeon peas, so I used yellow split peas.) This was tangy and spicy and just wonderful.

Stuffed okra

This okra was so good that even this not very appetizing photo is making me want some more.

It's Onion Stuffed Okra with Mango Powder from 660 Curries. Stuffing the okra is kind of a pain, but it is so worth it. You make a filling with ground up onion, chile, ginger, garlic and various spices including mango powder, then stuff the okra and cook -- at first browning them in a pan until half cooked, and then adding water and tomato and covering the pan to finish cooking them.

Two accidents worth repeating: (1) use tomato paste instead of fresh tomato, and (2) let the okra and its sauce burn just a little bit. The burnt bits were the best part!

The recipe made twice as much filling as I needed, so I used the rest of it in an eggplant curry the next day (based on Stewed Eggplant with a Coconut-Chile Spice Blend from 660 Curries.) Alongside that we had a split pea and mango dal (again, based on a dal in 660 Curries. Perhaps I should just note when a curry I make is not from that book?).

Avocado Relish

Oh my god, if you love Indian food and guacamole, you must try this. From 660 Curries, it's Kerala-style Avocado Relish with Tamarind and Chiles. We had it with Eggplant-smothered Yellow Split Peas (left) and old favourite Cabbage and Potatoes with Fennel and Chiles (right).

This was so good! It's like guacamole, with chiles and cilantro and tamarind, and with a tarka of mustard seeds and curry leaves.

Fenugreek cauliflower and dal

     Sometimes I wonder what the point of these 660 Curries posts is. Every time I make something from the book that I love, I want to post it so that I remember it and can make it again. But, seriously, I think I've loved almost everything I've made from the book. I think flipping open a page at random has just as good a chance of ending up with a good dish, as does sticking with the tried-and-true. But I digress...

This meal was great. Here you see, at the front, Fenugreek-Perfumed Cauliflower, and at the back, a dal of Yellow Split Peas with Tomato and Chiles. 

The cauliflower curry was supposed to include ivy gourds, but the book suggested cucumber as a replacement and that's what I used. Cooked cucumbers are a revelation -- I know the idea takes some getting used to, but they're really good. The curry also used up the half of my fenugreek crop that didn't get eaten by snails. In the end, I couldn't really taste the fenugreek greens distinctly, but maybe they added something because apart from them, this curry has a pretty simple list of ingredients, and yet it tasted surprisingly good.

The dal was also simple and delicious: the split peas are cooked (I did them in the pressure cooker) and then you add a tarka with the usual suspects (coriander, cumin, chile, garlic, turmeric) and tomato. I don't usually put tomato in my dals, but it added a really nice tang.

Carrots with peanut and coconut sauce

I must admit that I usually find carrots kind of boring, but this recipe from 660 Curries is a winner. It's Carrots with Wilted Spinach in a Peanut-Coconut Sauce. The peanut and coconut sauce is outstanding.

Okra curry and pizza

Exhibit A: A Goan style okra curry from 660 Curries -- the okra is cooked in a cashew sauce with vinegar. This kind of tangy curry was new to me, and I liked it. (The cashews could have done with being ground a bit finer, but that was the best my stupid mini-food processor could do. Once I find a coffee grinder that costs less than $50, I'm making this again. And yes, about $50 is the going price for a bottom of the range coffee grinder in Australia, if you can believe it.) (Also shown here: chana masala.)

 

Exhibit B: Pizza topped with leftover okra curry, caramelized onions, and mozzarella style Cheezly. I hesitated briefly before putting the cheese on top of this pizza, but it worked.

 

Post-disaster cooking

This dinner got onto the table after a series of disasters. The fridge stopped working (but started immediately after I called the guy we bought it off to complain); we had an ant invasion; my battles with the electric stove continued, as evidenced by my ability to burn something with the element turned to the lowest setting.

These are both from 660 Curries: on the left is Cumin-scented Split Green Lentils and on the right is a very adapted version of Cabbage and Peas with Roasted Mustard Seeds and Lentils. (My first attempt involved burnt mustard seeds. I tried to cool the pan by throwing in almost all of the cabbage, which resulted, as you might expect, in burnt-mustard-tasting cabbage. My second attempt bolstered the small amount of remaining cabbage with potatoes and cauliflower.)

Two firsts tonight: my first use of asafetida powder (in the dal) and toasted urad dal (in the cabbage and peas).

Roughing it in Westhampton

There's no camera, and no internet, and not much in the way of kitchen tools here at the beach. But I made sure to pack my spices and my copy of 660 Curries, and so we're eating well. Here's a crappy snapshot (taken with my computer's camera) of last night's dinner: Eggplant and Okra with Fenugreek and Mustard (left) and Chana Saag (right). I also made Malabar Parantha, which ended up kind of like a cross between naan and paratha.
All three recipes are from 660 Curries (though I made a few changes to the Chana Saag (no ginger or onion paste on hand, and I used diced turnips and turnip greens rather than spinach)). I had to roll the bread out using a jar!

Here's a bonus non-food shot of the view from the balcony:

Last days in the Noho kitchen

For dinner tonight we had something I've been meaning to try for at least a year, ever since I borrowed Greg Malouf and Lucy Malouf's book Artichoke to Za'atar from the library: Portobello Mushrooms Baked Between Vine Leaves.
You wrap the mushrooms up in the grape leaves like a parcel, and the leaves keep all the tasty juices in as the mushrooms bake/steam. (Apparently Elizabeth David also has a recipe like this: she recommends grape leaves as a way of improving the flavour of cultivated mushrooms (or as this link puts it, providing them 'a tasty bosky pedigree').) This worked out very nice -- I cooked it for a bit longer than the recipe suggests because it seems to be written with smaller mushrooms in mind. I had expected to discard the baked grape leaves, but they tasted good (almost like kale chips).

We also had okra cooked in a style I learned from 660 Curries: the okra is blistered on a hot pan and then removed, then you cook your spices (in this case, cumin seeds and chile flakes) and onions, then add the okra back to the pan with some tomato and water, cover and simmer until the okra is tender.

In the background of this photo you can make out an office chair. We sold all our other chairs!

Mint and lemon thyme

We scored some herbs from B + V's garden up in Maine over the weekend, and they starred in tonight's dinner. We had Nutty Rice with Cashews, Almonds and Fresh Mint (from 660 Curries), zucchini done under the grill [=broiler], and sauteed red capsicum [=bell pepper] and sugar snap peas with lemon thyme.
The rice was great! (I used long grain brown instead of white.) This was our first zucchini from the farmers' market this season, and we're looking forward to many more cooked just like this.

For sp, waiting for the book to arrive, a recipe

Tonight we had some old favourites (chana masala and saag, both leftover from a couple of nights ago) along with a new one from 660 Curries: Chunky Potatoes with Garlic and Peanuts (recipe here). Delicious!
I didn't have any tomato -- note to self: read the whole list of ingredients before you start, don't just fall for the recipe's name -- but made do with 3 T of tomato paste, and things worked out just fine. Oh, and I bet the cilantro and curry leaves that the recipe calls for would've been great to have too. Oh well.

660 Praises!

I had to make some substitutions... like, for starters, a sweet potato... and then some tomato paste instead of tamarind?  Parsley instead of cilantro?  Yeah, well, it was GREAT.  Leftovers for lunch today with a cabbage salad (and still some left).  Ohhh, when oh when will my copy arrive?

Okra love

The lovely sp brought us okra all the way from NOLA, and we couldn't wait to dig in. Here you see Pan-Fried Okra with an Onion-Tamarind Sauce, Jyoti brand Delhi Saag (spinach and mustard greens, from a can), and Five-Spiced Whole Pigeon Peas (Sabud toovar with panch phoron).
The okra and pigeon pea curries are of course from my obsession, 660 Curries. Both were delicious, and pretty quick (under 30 minutes, because I used canned pigeon peas). The pigeon pea curry was the first time I've put my jar of panch phoron to good use, and now I'm a believer. The Delhi Saag was pretty good, considering it was from a can. (I don't know if I'd pay full price for it, but if I find it on sale again, I wouldn't mind having some on hand.)

Plus, here's some news for the 660-curries-obsessed: there's a blog.

Is this getting boring?

From 660 Curries. Again.

Here you see Chana Masala (made with black chickpeas this time, so I guess it should actually be called Kala Chana Masala), garlic naan, and Chopped Spinach with Dried Lentil Wafers (that's right, papadums).


The spinach and papadum curry was wonderful. The spinach is wilted in water that's full of spices, and then you throw in broken pieces of uncooked papadums and simmer a few minutes longer. The bits of papadum end up quite soft, and they flavour the curry really nicely.

Shopping in Hadley

Usually I pick up vegetables for the week from the small grocery store down the street. But this week I was passing by my favourite Asian food store in the next town over, so I bought the weekly groceries there. Okra! Gai lan! Oyster mushrooms! Black chickpeas! (And a whole bunch of other stuff!)

This dinner used some of my haul. On the left, Cashew and Coriander Stuffed Okra. On the right, Black Chickpea Stew (with coconut, chile, coriander and tomato). (Both from 660 Curries.) And in front, premade roti. The okra was great (but then we in this household can't get enough of okra in any form). As for the black chickpeas, well it turns out they're quite like regular chickpeas except their taste is maybe a little bit nuttier, and they take much longer to cook (45 minutes in the pressure cooker).
I was amused to see the Pillsbury doughboy shilling roti.

A new legume

The other day, I was at the local hippie grocery store and noticed that they had a new legume in the bulk foods section. (Yes, my life is this exciting.) It was yellow moong dal. Hiding my excitement, I bought some and scurried home, certain that -- thanks to my favourite cookbook -- I'd know what to do with them.

Turns out that moong dal are actually split and skinned mung beans. So, not so much a new legume as an old one in a new guise. As expected, 660 Curries has a bunch of recipes for them. Here you see Cumin-Scented Split Green Lentils (on the right*) which we had along with Aloo Palak (Chunky Potatoes with Spinach). Both curries were simple, quick and delicious. The moong dal had an incredibly silky texture -- much smoother than any dal I've made with red lentils.
* Just in case you thought legume naming wasn't confusing enough: in 660 Curries, mung beans are called green lentils.

'660 Curries' love, again

This was not the prettiest plate of food, but damn it was tasty. Here you see Cabbage and Potatoes with Fennel and Chiles, and Chana Masala, both from my recent favourite, 660 Curries.
I can't remember the last meal I made that was this good.

Even better, it felt like we were dining like kings when -- just an hour earlier -- the fridge was basically bare of any vegetables. There was cabbage, and I had a couple of potatoes, and wondered: maybe 660 Curries has a potato and cabbage curry? In fact, the book has 4 different ones. I chose the one with fennel seed, because I don't use it often in my Indian cooking, and the taste was surprising and delicious.

Goodbye/hello to 660 Curries

So, 660 Curries has to go back to the library in a couple of days. I really love this book -- I've already bought my own copy.

Here are two meals indebted to the book. In the first photo, going clockwise from the top there's Beetroot Curry from stonesoup, a paratha, and Fenugreek-flavored Dumplings with Cabbage from 660 Curries. The parathas were going to be filled with a broccoli mixture (ala Gobi paratha, but with broccoli instead) but it wasn't very cooperative as a filling, so we ate it alongside our parathas instead (that's that green stuff in the centre). The dumplings are made of chickpea flour; they were flavoured with fenugreek (methi) and ginger. (Think falafel, but without the crispy exterior, and with a very mysterious and delicious taste from the fenugreek.) The Beetroot Curry was pretty good, but I wimped out and didn't put in enough chiles. Also, I put in a ton of curry leaves and they smelled great, but the flavour was quite muted.

The second picture shows two curries from 660 Curries: Brown Lentils with Cumin and Turmeric, and Broccoli with Ginger and Coconut. The broccoli curry was a revelation -- I've been so bored with broccoli recently, but the addition of ginger, coconut (reconstituted from dried) and some spices really impressed me.

Finally, an in-progress shot of the beetroot curry. I will admit it's not the best photo, but the colours are so pretty.

Aloo Methi, and Scrambled Chickpea Flour with Ginger

On the left, Aloo Methi from Tigers and Strawberries. On the right, Scrambled Chickpea Flour with Ginger from 660 Curries. (I added some roasted pumpkin and tomato.)