Spoonful of curry over our notes from Udaipur

For Diwali, I decided to put the spices I picked up at the Bastille market to good use. I bought six different types of spices, plus dried lentils and chickpeas, on the weekend. The man scooping up the spices for me was hilarious in a please-let-me-just-buy-what-I-want sort of way. He had a lot of input on what I was buying, even though I told him they’re not all for the same recipe, and he kept on trying to sell me the generic “curry” spice when I said I wanted to make a curry. Also, the French are absolute wimps when it comes to spice. I got piment fort and the spice man looked impressed, and after a generous teaspoon I can’t say it brought any heat to our curry. Bah.

I also saw this idea on a different blog one day and decided to try it myself: I documented the cooking process with my iPhone/Insta.gram, and the pictures look so much better than if I had tried to style the food!

Enjoy the picture tutorial with the recipe for Indian masala from our cooking class in Udaipur earlier this year.

  
  
  
  

1. Grind up half of an onion (or a shallot) with a knob of ginger and a garlic clove or two in a mortar and pestle. You can use a blender if you want, but the flavours aren’t quite the same. You can also do what I did: put in Ziploc, wrap between tea towel, and beat with a rolling pin.
2. In a pot, heat up oil and fry up the other half of the onion, diced, with 2 tsp. of cumin seeds.
3. Add in the paste when your onions are cooked to translucent. Add in 1 tsp. each of coriander powder and turmeric, and cayenne or something spicy and salt to taste. If you have garam masala, throw a dash of that in, too. I didn’t, and my curry worked out fine.
4. When it gets quite paste-y and the onions are cooked through, add in 1/2 cup of water. Stir. Bring to a boil, and then reduce until you see some of the oil come through the liquid.
5. Chop up some tomatoes (3 roma tomatoes for me) and throw them in. Bring to a boil, then simmer for at least 20 minutes.
6. In the mean time, prepare your lentils by cooking them in water until just done, and drain into curry sauce. Let simmer together for another 20 minutes or so, longer if you have the time and patience. Serve with rice or naan.

Note: you may need to add more liquid to your sauce as it cooks, depending on the time and heat you cook at. Adjust as you see fit – some people like a watery sauce, some like a thick sauce.

Happy (belated) Diwali!

Read the rest of Lentil Curry on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

For the past couple of years, I’ve had great success with making fruit jams. The first year I struck gold with a delicious peach jam, and last year I swooned many with the strawberry vanilla jam from well fed, flat broke. Aside from a class on jamming in high school, I was pretty much a n00b to this amazing display of 50s-housewife-domesticity…and I should’ve known it was all too easy. Today, in my hometown, not more than two blocks away from where I first learned it all, I discovered a completely failed batch of strawberry vanilla jam.

It failed because…well, I don’t know. I may have gotten the instructions a little mixed up and added pectin when I didn’t need to. I may not have let it boil long and hot enough. Or the jamming gods have just decided enough was enough, my ego needed deflating. For all those reasons above, I eagerly opened a jar of strawberry vanilla goodness in front of my (very critical) mother, to discover something that resembled strawberry syrup. I spent the rest of the afternoon wallowing in self pity, googling remedies, and have now tried to correct one jar to see what happens tomorrow morning. It’s very difficult to type with my fingers crossed.

To comfort me in the middle of this mess, though, is the discovery that my other batch, the strawberry lemonade marmalade, turned out perfectly. I love strawberry jams that veer off course with a little bit of a surprise flavour, and this one totally fit the bill with bursts of citrus peel suspended in the jam. So this one, directly from Bernardin’s Complete Book of Home Preserving, with some tweaks to dial down the sugar content, has instantly become a part of my repertoire.

  

Quick Strawberry Lemon Marmalade

• 1/4 packed cup thinly sliced lemon peel, white pith removed as much as possible
• 4 firmly packed cups of whole washed strawberries, don’t worry about crushing them as you pack them into the measuring cup!
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 package powdered pectin
• 3.5 – 4 cups sugar*

*Original recipe for 6 cups sugar was wayyyy too sweet, so my second batch had 4 cups and it still worked out fine. I may tone it down a little more to 3.5 cups on my next try, to try to bring out the tartness from the lemons even more.

1. Prepare your canning jars and lids and set up your workstation for canning – mise en place highly recommended here. You will make about seven 250mL jars of marmalade.
2. In the large pot that you’ll be making your jam in, boil the lemon peel with just enough water to cover them. Boil for 5 minutes on a soft but continuous boil, until the peel is softened. Discard liquid and put peel back into the pot.
3. Add strawberries and lemon juice to peel and mix well. Mash up the strawberries roughly with a potato masher. Whisk in the powdered pectin until dissolved, then bring the mixture to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
4. Add sugar all in one go, and return to boil. Let it come to a hard boil continuously for one minute, then remove from heat and skim off foam.
5. Ladle hot jam into the prepared jars, and leave 1/4 inch headspace. Place lids on, ensuring the rims of the jars are clean. Tighten screw band.
6. Place jars into canner and boil for 10 minutes. Turn off heat and open the lid of the canning pot, and let sit for five minutes before removing to set for 24 hours undisturbed.

My favourite thing about this jam so far has been the times I’ve come across the wonderful bits of lemon peel in the jam. Set against the rich sweetness of the strawberries, the burst of sunshine-y citrus is amazingly refreshing. I can’t wait to make more to share because I can’t imagine parting with my half batch of 3.5 jars just quite yet!

Read the rest of Can’t Have All the Jam on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

Check out one of my favourite food destinations online, well fed, flat broke, for my guest post today! The post features a couple of recipes from our cooking class in Udaipur. While you’re at it, give Emily a follow and send along well wishes on the Space Dinosaur!

Read the rest of Guest post at well fed, flat broke on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

Since we’ve been eating super healthy all week (Alex snuck a cookie in midway, but I…well, I had absolutely no sugar/junk food!), I was going a bit stir crazy planning on what feast we’ll have on Sunday. I wanted to include a traditional galette des rois since Epiphany has just passed and the interwebs has been flooded with pictures and recipes for the galette. Alex requested steak. I had been dreaming of Jamie Oliver’s peanut sauce for steak since I watched him demonstrate the recipe live in November in Toronto. Overwhelmed with the desire to try all these new recipes and irrational from sugar deprivation, the final menu ended up being a mish-mash of cultures – a little Mexican salsa verde pizazz, a little southern US smoky peanut sauce, and a slightly ritzy Parisian galette des rois.

  

To start, we had a chopped green salad with lots of crunchy veggies and a light citrusy dressing to balance everything. I used a combination of romaine lettuce, radishes, red onions, and radicchio, and the dressing was simply olive oil and freshly squeezed lime, lemon, and orange juices with salt and pepper.

The sauces for the steaks were adapted from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s America.

Jamie’s Salsa Verde

Chop together in a food processor or by hand:

• a small bunch of mint leaves without stems
• a roughly chopped up garlic clove
• 4 stalks of green onions
• 2 medium tomatoes – I used a green/brown variety
• a small jalapeno, seeded
• a large bunch of cilantro

To finish, squeeze in the juice of a lime to toss everything together.

Jamie’s Peanut Sauce

• 1/4 cup white sesame seeds
• 3/4 cup shelled toasted peanuts
• 1 tsp. smoked paprika
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 tsp. cumin seeds (not ground cumin)
• a few sprigs of fresh thyme leaves
• 2 cloves of garlic, smashed up and chopped roughly
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/2 cup warm water
• juice of 1 lime
• 1 chopped up jalapeno or green chile, seeded

  

1. Toast in a dry frying pan the peanuts, sesame seeds, thyme, garlic, paprika, cumin seeds, and oregano for a few minutes until it smells nice and fragrant (took me about 5 – 8 minutes).
2. Throw into a food processor with the olive oil, lime juice, and water. Add in the chopped up jalapeno. Process until smooth and shiny. If it’s a little dry, add in a little bit of oil and water at a time until the consistency is thick and still spread-able.

For the galette des rois, I used the recipe by Dorie Greenspan, as posted on Serious Eats. Overall, the dessert surprised me. It’s nothing like the typical cake or tart, but rather just as the recipe describes – almond pastry cream enveloped by puff pastry. The pastry feels light and airy, but the eggs and butter really make it a rich and delightful treat after dinner. I made two 6″ galettes rather than one large 9″ one, and splitting one of the galettes between 5 people, I think I could’ve had seconds! From making the galette, I also think I’ll be experimenting further with pastry cream in the futur – I can see it making a really nice, rich vanilla base for a buttercream for finishing off cakes.

Read the rest of Sunday Supper: Mixing Cultures on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

One of the regular “weekly columns” I’d like to start working on in 2011 is Sunday Suppers. The idea is that throughout the week, Alex and I will eat relatively healthy, but on Sundays I’d like to take some time to make a nice meal with a real dessert. It’ll be a chance for me to try new recipes, or make a lovely layer cake, or overdose on chocolate, or….you get the idea.

The inaugural post came from the idea of using up the turkey stock from Christmas, and from me eyeing my copy of Jim Lahey’s My Bread every night on my bedside table. I decided to throw together a stecco with cherry tomatoes, and a ribollita soup with lots of veggies and canned beans to counteract all the indulgences we’ve had recently. For dessert, I also took something new for a spin – my apple pie recipe in the Williams-Sonoma apple pie pocket mold. Old recipe – something totally new and pretty!

Ribollita

• 2 small carrots – diced
• 1 onion – diced
• 1 stalk of celery – diced
• 1 small potato – peeled & diced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp. fennel seeds
• 1/2 tsp. chili flakes
• 1/2 28-oz.-tin of San Marzano tomatoes*
• 3 cups of chicken/turkey stock
• 1 bunch of kale, roughly chopped
• 1 small can (about 1.5 cups) of beans – soy, navy, that kind of texture works well
• a couple of handfuls of fresh bread pieces
• salt and pepper to taste

1. In a medium-sized pot, cook onions, celery, and carrots (mirepoix) with the diced potatoes on medium-low heat so that the vegetables “sweat” for about 5-8 minutes, until the onions are translucent. Add in the garlic, fennel, and chili flakes, and continue to cook for about another 5 minutes.
2. Turn the heat up to medium. Drop in the tomatoes and mash them up roughly, mixing them in with the rest of the vegetables.
3. Add in the stock and bring to a boil on medium-high heat, then add in the kale. It’ll look like a lot, but it’ll cook down quickly (much like spinach).
4. Once the kale is wilted, put the lid on the pot and let the soup simmer for about 10-15 minutes.
5. Add in the beans and cook for another few minutes before serving.
6. Serve with bread pieces, a glug of olive oil drizzled on top, and freshly grated parmesan sprinkled on top.

  

For the homemade bread, I used the recipe as posted here, but shaped them into thin strips with cherry tomatoes or crushed garlic cloves pressed into the loaves (the recipe makes about 4). When pressing the sliced cherry tomatoes in, Jim Lahey’s recipe also called for a thin slice of garlic on top of each tomato, with a little bit of thyme leaves on each one. Don’t be afraid to push the tomatoes in – the dough should’ve risen to the point where it doesn’t bounce back when poked. Then brush with olive oil so that everything is coated thinly, and sprinkle with coarse sea salt to finish off. Bake uncovered at 475 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20-25 minutes until golden.

*Apologies for using a 1/2 tin – I suppose you could use the whole tin, but I prefer a lighter tomato soup.

Read the rest of Sunday Supper – Ribollita, Homemade Bread, & Apple Pie on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

This post will be a quick one. A friend recently told me about a salad dressing that she came across that was “so good you could eat it by the spoonful”. In fact, she had made it so often since she got the recipe, that she had it committed to memory. Thus the recipe was given to me on a purple Post-It Note that has become a permanent decoration in my kitchen. Alex and I have become addicted to this dressing, and have had more salads that we normally would.

The best part about the recipe? Everything is proportional, so you only need one measuring spoon. In my example below, I’ve used a tablespoon.

Ingredients

• 3 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 tbsp. red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp. honey or agave nectar
• 1 tbsp. dijon mustard
• 4 tbsp. almond slivers, toasted
• salt and pepper to taste

Putting it together

1. Measure out the olive oil first into a bowl or a salad dressing jar. This way, your spoon has a light layer of oil to help get the honey out later.
2. Add in the honey, dijon mustard, and red wine vinegar. Make sure you don’t skimp on the honey – a little more sweetness makes all the difference!
3. Finely chop up the toasted almonds. You could just put in ground toasted almonds if you have that on hand. However, I like toasting mine and then chopping – a little bit of grittiness in the dressing isn’t bad at all!
4. Add salt and pepper to taste – I find I usually need about 1/4 tsp. salt and some freshly ground pepper would do.

Let it sit for about an hour before serving, so you get more almond flavour coming through the dressing. The small batch above can last us a couple of days, and the dressing is equally as delicious, if not more, on the second and third days. We usually just toss it together with romaine lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, and cucumbers – simple and delightful!

Read the rest of Burnt Almond Vinaigrette on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

I never used to like pancakes, and was always more of a waffle person. However, these days whenever I decide to eat healthy and cut out refined carbs, I always get this weird craving for pancakes – yummy, dense, carby goodness for breakfast. After making these pancakes, I also think I might’ve just had bad luck with crappy pancakes before (McDonalds, boxed mixes, etc.) and the real homemade stuff actually isn’t bad at all!

One thing that made me love my pancakes even more was that, as you might have noticed, I didn’t put syrup on these pancakes. Those giant chunks of white on the pancake stack are not butter, either. Welcome to a world of pancakes with leftover cream cheese icing, my friends. Try it – and celebrate the fact that you’ve just been able to use up your leftover cupcake icing, like me.

Blueberry Lemon Pancakes
recipe from Joy the Baker

You will need

• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 1 egg
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 lemon, zested
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup blueberries, frozen or fresh*

*I used frozen, but I had frozen mine on a tray last summer, so the berries were nicely separated and there were no large chunks stuck together with ice. If you have store-bought berries, you may want to thaw and drain first before using.

How to make ‘em

1. In a bowl, whisk together butter, egg, and buttermilk
2. Stir in dry ingredients and lemon zest quickly with the whisk or a fork. The mixture will be slightly chunky, but don’t overmix to get it to be super-smooth!
3. Throw in berries to the mixture just until it’s evenly distributed in the mixture
4. Heat a non-stick pan (I am paranoid about using Teflon pans but pancakes are one of the few exceptions that require it to make the breakfast process less stressful!) and spray with cooking spray
5. Drop the batter in dollops and flatten slightly with a Teflon-friendly spatula. Flip when small bubbles begin to form at the edges of the pancake. These cook relatively quickly! Serve with a smear of cream cheese icing :-)

Happy Sunday!

Read the rest of Blueberry Pancakes on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

Last Wednesday I got home from work and just wanted to veg. I was agitated, annoyed, and frustrated with everything that’s been happening. To sum up, life at work has been absolutely nutty for the past six weeks, and I have a few things that I am working on outside of work that are adding pressure faster than I could have imagined. The perfect storm for a night to wallow…but then I got an idea – I kneaded to work out the stress. (Sorry, couldn’t help it, the pun was staring me in the face.)

All you need are eggs and flour to make delicious pasta, and here’s something I wasn’t quite ready to admit to the Interwebs just yet: after almost a year, I have finally figured out how to use my pasta press properly! I know where the little latch goes to lock it down on my countertop! Imagine that!

Homemade Pasta
from Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio, which is an amazing book. I’ll talk about that more later.

• 9 oz. all-purpose flour or fancy flour if you have some (I do not. I shouldn’t be trusted around excessive amounts of carbs.)
• 6 oz. eggs (I try to add more yolks than whole eggs – i.e. 3 yolks + 2 eggs is roughly 6 oz.)

Add flour in a medium or large bowl. Make a well in the middle of the flour and toss in eggs. Stir together to form a dough, using a spatula or a fork. Once dough comes together (it doesn’t always all come together into one ball – that’s OK), dump onto a well-floured surface and try to continue integrating the dough and the little stubborn crumbs, and start kneading. Kneading, to me, means pushing the dough away with the heel of your hand, folding, turning 90 degrees, repeat. Continue this for 5-10 minutes (closer to 10) while imagining your stress being beaten up in that dough – it really helps! You’ll know when you’re done by looking at and touching the dough. It should feel smooth and velvet-like, almost. Form into a ball, seam side down if you have seams, and cover with the mixing bowl. Let rest on floured surface for at least 10-15 minutes.

When the dough is ready to be rolled out, divide into 4 parts for easier handling. Cover the dough you’re not using with the bowl. You can roll the pasta out thinly with a rolling pin if you don’t have a pasta press. Make sure if you’re doing so, that you flour everything well and continue rotating the dough as you roll it so it doesn’t stick. Get it as thin as you can, then flour the top well, roll it up gently, and slice into noodle widths with a sharp knife.

With a pasta press, I always find it easier to pass my dough through the flat lasagne press first to get it to my desired thinness, before pressing through the noodle cutters to get the noodle sizes. Again, flouring well is important, as is the patience of slowly working your press. You’ll find that the dough takes on a bit of an attitude in that the pressing process can’t be rushed, so enjoy it. It can be therapeutic to watch your stress get shredded into yummy, thin, delicate noodles!

I topped mine with the tomato sauce with onion butter from Deb at smittenkitchen, and some homemade meatballs that I conjured up, but am too lazy to type up the recipe right now. I will soon though – they’re gluten-and-carb-free, which makes over-indulging in pasta a little more justified!

Oh, and an update on the way things have been since last week’s kneading session? Let me just say, at the rate things are going, I think I’m going to have a freezer full of Ziploc bags of pasta soon – and that, my friends, is also known as making lemonade when life gives you lemons.

Read the rest of Kneading Away Stress on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

Just like chocolate, English toffee was another delicacy that my mom rationed in small quantities to me when I was little. She had her reasons, and now I have my reasons for why I pick up a box of Almond Roca once in a while.

It’s never Christmas without my candy thermometer, and this year I decided to put the little thing to the ultimate test – candy making. After a quick search, I realized that toffee is actually pretty easy to make, so after a Christmas party where I had already drank a few glasses of wine, I began heating up butter and sugar in my kitchen at 10:30pm on a Sunday night. Surely enough, even with alcohol in me, this recipe was hard to mess up – now it’ll be a staple for Christmas time next year!

English Toffee with Chocolate & Hazelnuts

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of chocolate chips if you’re going for easy, or 1/2 cup chocolate to be tempered
• 1/2 cup hazelnuts, toasted, slightly peeled where you can, and chopped roughly

1. In a heavy-bottomed pot, melt butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla at medium heat. Stir constantly, using a heat-proof spatula if you have one. Keep the candy thermometer clipped to one side of the pot.
2. Once mixture reaches threading temperature, just over 100 degrees Celsius, reduce the cooking temperature so that it is not a hard rolling boil, but still boiling nonetheless. At this point, you don’t have to stir as much – just temper the mixture once in a while.
3. While this is cooking, line a 9×9 square dish with parchment paper, making sure to cover all sides.
4. When the thermometer registers at about 140 degrees Celsius – pay close attention! This is all going to happen very fast – it’ll reach the 300 degree Fahrenheit or about 150 Celsius hard crack stage very quickly, and as soon as it does, remove, stir mixture and pour into the square dish lined with parchment paper.
5. If you’re going for an easy toffee recipe, wait about 2 minutes for the mixture to start setting, and throw the chocolate chips on top. The heat will melt the chips, so smooth out the chocolate evenly, and then sprinkle the hazelnuts.
6. If you’re going for tempered chocolate goodness, let the pan cool and stick in the fridge if you can, while you temper the chocolate. Just before throwing the chocolate onto the toffee, dab it first with some paper towel to get rid of excess oil. This will help the chocolate stick better. Sprinkle on hazelnuts.
7. Let chill in the fridge overnight or at least a few hours, then break apart and enjoy!

Read the rest of Hazelnut Crunch English Toffee on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

I did my third 10K run in a row this weekend and it felt great. Contrary to what I initially thought I would feel, I’ve actually been dreading my shorter runs during the week more than the long runs. During the long runs, ususally at about the halfway point (5K), running becomes more subconscious and less taxing, so I always find it more enjoyable than trying to pummel down 5K at 6:30 in the morning. My sister Julia informed me that this is called a “runner’s high”, but I hesitate to identify myself as a runner still, so right now I’d like to refer to this weird feeling as more of a temporary insanity a la mango.

As emvandee referred to in the comments, I’ve been looking more into carb-loading myself, too – whee! Typically I’ve been avoiding carbs for dinner if possible, but now knowing that I have to run within 12 hours of finishing dinner, I have more excuses to work pasta and bread into our evening meals.

First up, something I’ve been dying to try, the New York Times No-Knead Bread by Jim Lahey. It’s one of the two recipes that got made super-famous by New York Times – the second one being The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies that I kicked off Cookie of the Fortnight with.

Ahhh freshly baked bread – Alex’s grabby hands were swatted away in this picture.

Lots of notes from me on this one recipe, and one Google search will also show that lots of cooks and bloggers out there have tried it and added their notes. I used Clothilde’s measurements, watched the video (you didn’t see the video? Go see the video, seriously) and looked through the original instructions from NYTimes again, and this is what I have come up with:

No Knead Bread

1. Put a big empty mixing bowl on a scale and set scale to 0. Dump in 470g flour (I used all-purpose, but I think you can also use bread flour) and 10g sea salt. Add in 1/4 tsp instant yeast. Use a spatula and toss everything together to mix it up a bit.
2. Add in 350g lukewarm water. Stir everything together with your spatula gently but firmly, but don’t start whipping or beating just because you’re wielding a spatula.
3. That’s it! Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for about 12-18 hours. I usually start the mixture the night before, and bake in the evening.
4. The dough is ready for the next step when its surface has lots of air bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface, put dough on it and pull both sides so it looks like Dumbo’s ears. Fold the ears in. Turn 45 degrees, repeat. Cover with plastic wrap while you move on to the next step.
5. Coat a kitchen towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal and move your dough, seam side down, onto the towel. Try to shape it like a ball if you can, and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with towel and let rise for about 2 hours. If it’s even possible (and it is), the dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.
6. Preheat oven to 450 degrees at least 45 mins before baking. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. Remove super hot pot from oven and be very careful here! Everything is super hot! Sprinkle the bottom of the pot lightly with flour or cornmeal. Pick up the dough with the towel on the bottom and invert into the pot. Don’t owrry if it looks messy on top, just make sure it’s not super lopsided.
7. Cover with lid and bake for 30 minutes. Take out the lid (hot!) and bake for another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned.

This is what it means to be beautifully browned…I think
8. Give the bread a couple of minutes to settle once out of the oven, then remove it from the pot (should be very easy if you did everything right, i.e. sprinkled flour when you were supposed to). Cool on a rack.
9. Let cool completely before cutting – otherwise, Clothilde’s right, the crust gets all rubbery and not crunchy. Boo!

We might’ve cut into this a little earlier than we should’ve, but the homemade butter was crying out for its friend.

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Read the rest of My Third 10K + Some Carb-lovin’ on mango on an apple. © mangoonanapple.com 2009 - 2011

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