Coconut muffins

I recently bought a young coconut. After we drank the coconut water inside, I was left with the question of what to do with the coconut meat. It was too soft to grate, and its flavour was quite subtle -- not that exciting to eat on its own. But cut into chunks and baked into muffins, it was amazing.

Even though it was quite a lot of work cutting into the coconut, I am thinking about getting another one just so I can make these muffins again. (The coconut water was great too -- it wasn't the flavour that blew me away, but the scent, which was surprisingly floral.)

I used this recipe with a few modifications*. (I should take a moment to praise this recipe -- it is terrific. I say this as someone who has made many failed muffins.) I used some cooked and pureed pear for the cup of fruit in the recipe, and added the chunks of coconut plus some Dutch chocolate sprinkles.

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* I reduce the oil to 1/4 cup, use regular whole wheat flour, reduce the sugar to 1/2 cup and increase to 3/4 if necessary, replace the egg with a 'flax egg' or just extra water, and use soymilk + vinegar for the buttermilk. So far the fruits and vegetables I've used to great success are: pumpkin, pear, apple, banana, and most surprisingly, a mixture of banana and pureed kiwifruit.

Thai corn fritters

Last month I went to a festival celebrating Buddha's birthday. I'll admit it, I was there for the food. There was a wide array of vegetarian food stalls, and after I checked them all out, the thing that caught my eye was the stall offering Thai corn fritters. I love those things, so I lined up, money in hand, only to find that they had run out. Curses! All was not lost -- I ended up grabbing some delicious sesame balls filled with mung beans.

But Thai corn fritters are great, so I decided to make some. The thing is, once I mixed up the batter, it was kind of delicate (I put so much corn in that it would barely hold together), and the thought of forming individual fritters and trying to flip them without destroying them... well it seemed like way too much work. So my bright idea was to cook one enormous fritter, and -- success! We cut slices of this like a pizza, and had it with the traditional accompaniment of sweet chile sauce.

 

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.

I don't know why

Here you see my take on Cincinnati-style chili: beans and TVP in a tomato-based sauce spiced with cinnamon, clove and cocoa, served over fettucini (we had no spaghetti) with some cheddar-ish cheese (Kingland soy cheese) on top.

I don't know why I was craving this -- I mean, I've never even had the real thing. But it ended up being pretty tasty.

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.

Really?

Bao

Here you see (a cross-section of) a steamed bun, filled with leftover tofu scramble, cabbage and mushroom. These were fun to make, and really tasty.

I used a recipe from Essentials of Asian Cuisine (but used regular white flour rather than cake flour, and canola oil in place of lard). You make a yeast dough with baking powder in it, let it rise until doubled, shape the buns and fill them, and then steam them for about 15 minutes. (I found that the water should be really boiling rapidly while you're steaming them -- it makes the buns rise better and get much fluffier.)