02.19.10
Posted in Cooking, Homestay students, Recipes tagged cookies, Mexican wedding cookies, polvorones, Russian tea cakes at 5:20 pm by kyrias
We went out to Minado’s on Valentine’s day and I fell in love with a nutty, buttery cookie that they had simply listed as “butter cookies w/ walnuts”.
By the way, going to Minado’s on Valentine’s day, which was also Chinese New Year’s — was a terrible, terrible idea. The number of people there was staggering. We waited 30 minutes in line to get our food even though we arrived at 5:15, a mere 15 minutes after they opened. When we left at 7:30PM, the number of people crowding the entrance was boggling. Poor hapless, witless fools.
Caesura thought that they tasted like some sort of Mexican cookie and so I went home and looked up “Mexican buttery cookies” on Google. It turns out that they’re called Mexican wedding cookies, or Russian tea cakes, or polvorones. Since I can’t choose between Russia and Mexico, I’m going with the polvorone option.
Although I bought the walnuts this Monday, I finally got around to making them yesterday night. I’d been feeling overstressed and in no mood to test a new recipe, much less a fiddly baking one. It was a good thing too, since what happened afterwards prompted me to make a breakfast of these.
See, we’d been thinking that out of the two homestay students, S was the better one. He’s mostly quiet, didn’t seem to be quite as oblivious as N, and didn’t get up to nearly as many escapades. Note the past tense used for the latter descriptions.
Yesterday night, he told me at about 5pm that he would be going out to eat. This was slightly irritating, because I had already started cooking and if I need to cut back on portions, I really would prefer more advance warning. However, I realized that it was probably a last minute invite from friends and so I brushed it off as a minor issue. I asked him when he would be back and he said around 9 pm.
Later that night…
I’m puttering in the kitchen, it’s about 10:30pm and I’m wondering where S is when I hear the sound of footsteps at the door. Kevin and I turn, only to see two other boys walk in.
Boy1: “Hi. What are you doing?”
Me, somewhat bemusedly: “Making cookies.”
S: “We’re going to watch a movie at midnight.”
Me, blinking more than a bit: “Oh, you have fun with that.”
They leave and my brother rounds on me. He’s livid that S brought two random people home at 10:30pm, and worse, was intending on going to a midnight movie. He thinks that I should have said something. I said that I was hardly going to toss them out on their ear and that I would speak to S separately.
My problem was that, for me, I’m not comfortable disciplining the K-kids. Further, I don’t know as of yet where the line is of how much I can discipline or humiliate them in front of other people and I wasn’t going to just throw cold water on their plans and kick his friends out.
Frankly, I was not processing all of this too well. I vaguely thought that it wasn’t the best idea, but I’ve been living with people who are of-age for far too long and it never even occured to me that I probably should have said something regarding the late hour, the movie idea, and the two people showing up until my brother pointed it out.
Kevin storms off.
He comes back, apparently after having a little chat with S, with more mind-boggling details. Not only did S bring back two people without saying anything beforehand, he intended to have them sleep over.
At this point, I’m speechless. And here we thought he was the easy one to deal with.
This morning, after staying up until 3:30am making sure that he got home safely, I made a breakfast of about half a batch of these polvorones. The only saving grace is that I used less sugar than the recipe called for, and white whole wheat flour. With a little bit of imagination I could almost convince myself that they weren’t that bad for me.
Polvorones
- adapted from Deb at smittenkitchen
- 1¼ cup toasted walnuts
- 1 cup butter
- 2 cups white whole wheat flour
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 egg (optional)
I used the food processor to turn the toasted walnuts into a powder. Putting the brown sugar in with the walnuts seemed to help keep it from turning into a paste.
Being the genius I am, I added the butter immediately after pulverizing the fresh-out-of-the-oven walnuts and brown sugar. I was very surprised when with the first pulse, the butter immediately liquidized and spurted upwards. Good thing I had my hand over the feed tube or my night would have gone quite a bit worse.
Somewhat alarmed at the liquid state of the ingredients, I dumped in the flour. Happily, the dough came together and it didn’t seem that much worse for wear.
I stuck the bowl outside in the snow and started on my second batch. 30 minutes later, I brought it back inside and started making balls of the dough.
Not sure if it was the liquidized butter, but the dough was extremely crumbly. I ended up just scooping teaspoons of it and dropping them onto the cookie sheets. The second batch I added an egg, which seemed to help matters and the two didn’t have that much texture difference, so I think I might just throw in an egg the next time too.
I baked them at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.
Since I don’t like things that are too sweet, I cut back on the sugar in the cookies and utterly ignored the usual convention of rolling them in more sugar.
These were buttery, nutty, and I thought the brown sugar gave it a lovely depth of flavor without being too sweet. However, these are definitely cookies — a couple of them will satisfy cravings for a sweet without sending you on a sugar high. These weren’t dry either, which actually was my problem with the ones at Minado. You can have a couple of these without feeling like someone just stuffed a silica packet in your mouth.
I even think these would be lovely with perhaps a pinch of cardamom, cinnamon, or even rosemary and lavender. I’ll have to experiment a bit more and see what comes of it.
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12.29.09
Posted in Recipes tagged Swedish meatballs at 11:55 pm by kyrias
Sometimes I don’t know if I’m just doing it wrong, or if I can never achieve certain levels of tasty simply because I don’t use MSG or hydrolyzed soy protein or certain unknown “natural flavorings”.
Take the Beef Stragonoff, which failed spectacularly. It came out a really unappetizing grayish beige colour which Nora assured me was how Russian food should look and just tasted a lot different from what our school cafeteria used to give us. I might go back and tinker with it because Caesura really liked it, Mr. P was slightly more enthusiastic than indifferent, and I think Zack was ok with it.
Then take the Swedish meatballs of today. First off, they came out tasting different from what everyone expected Swedish meatballs to taste like, even though I compared multiple recipes from multiple blogs, one of which is written by someone living in Sweden.
Yes. I read at least 20 different recipes. I don’t even know who to credit for my end product. Perhaps all of them.
This is one of the cases where I don’t know if I did it wrong, or if the manufactorers of the frozen meals we eat just added random chemicals to our food to make it taste better.
Then there was the sauce. It was a simple sauce made with broth, drippings, flour, some salt and pepper — and was dreadfully bland. Thinking back on it, I also failed at making gravy the last time too — which was a similar undertaking involving roux, drippings, and such.
Blafgh.
To be fair though, I didn’t particularly adore the sauce that came with the Swedish meatballs the last few times I’ve had it, so perhaps I should just write it off as a lost cause. The Swedish meatballs themselves were passable, except perhaps a bit too mushy with too much breadcrumbs. I was ok with the consistency, but the more carnivorous amongst us might want to cut down on them. I might decide to try and make a different sauce for the meatballs the next time I feel like having half my housemates dump their dinner into the trashcan. Say, a nice Alfredo sauce? Or perhaps some ridiculous concoction involving canned cream of mushroom soup, brown gravy, and sour cream? Wait, that last bit would involve those “natural flavorings” and probably more than a bit of MSG. Damn!
Mr. P thinks that adding salt and pepper would fix things. I think that probably it would have, but I didn’t want it to just be one-dimensionally salty either, which it seemed it would have been if I had just added salt to it until it tasted like something. Ugh. Maybe red wine would help. Or nutmeg. Or soy sauce. Or Worchestershire sauce. Or something.
Anyways, for those of you that might or might not want a recipe for some fairly tasty Swedish meatballs sans decent sauce…
Swedish Meatballs
(feeds 3-5 depending on food stretching skill and hunger)
- 1 cup breadcrumbs (can decrease as desired)
- ½ pound ground pork
- 1 pound ground beef
- 2 anchovy filets
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 egg
- 1 large onion, grated
- ½ cup milk
- ¼ tsp each of nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, and cloves
- ½ tsp each salt, black pepper, and white pepper
Mash the anchovies into the breadcrumbs. Mix the spices into the breadcrumbs. Beat the egg and soy sauce into the breadcrumbs and then add the milk. Let the mixture sit for five minutes so the breadcrumbs absorb the liquid fully. If decreasing the breadcrumbs to half the cup, halve the milk as well. Add the meats and blend well. Some people would tell you that excessive blending will make the meatballs tough — but with the amount of wet breadcrumbs I had, I don’t think that would happen.
Roll the mixture into small balls. I found that small balls about the size of a ping-pong ball worked well. Put on a baking sheet in an oven pre-heated to 450 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
As an aside, I think our oven does run hot since the smoke alarm was going off well before the 10 minutes mark.
Eat plain if you’re feeling particularly carnivorous or make some sort of sauce that works for you and eat over egg noodles.
This will make enough to feed 3-4 people. Maybe five if they’re not that hungry and you make more sauce and make the meatballs smaller to give an illusion of bounty.
—- later on —
For the record, Worchestershire sauce and soy sauce fixed the sauce sufficiently. Zack has proclaimed that he can make a meal of it. We shall see. I still don’t know if I can make a meal out of it.
The question of why I make things that I will not eat probably needs to be addressed at some point…
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12.24.09
Posted in Cooking, Recipes tagged egg tarts at 11:39 pm by kyrias
Egg towers, if you want the literal translation from Chinese.
I’ve been craving these for a while, but there’s a couple of reasons why I haven’t made them in a long time. I’ll type out the recipe first, which should explain one of the reasons why:
Dan Ta (makes 12)
Pastry:
- 4 oz cream cheese
- 4 oz butter (1 stick)
- 1 cup flour
Filling:
- ½ - 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup milk
- 4 eggs
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract (optional)
Melt the butter and cream cheese, then mix in the flour until you get a supple dough. If you feel it’s a tad on the greasy side, add flour as needed. Allow the dough to rest for 20 minutes, covered, then press balls of the dough into the cups of a muffin tin.
Mix the vanilla extract, eggs, sugar, and milk together. Pour the mixture into the mold.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
If you look at the recipe, you’ll see that it’s pretty much nothing but fat, fat, and more fat. Considering that Azora and I can each eat 6 without even thinking about it — it’s pretty much a bad idea to have these lying around.
Secondly, I do not particularly enjoy the part of the recipe where you press the dough into the molds. It’s tedious, time consuming, and you have to be careful not to have thin spots.
Lastly — I often fail at making these, depending on the whims of the stove. Tonight I made two batches and met with abysmal failure both times. The first batch over-puffed and the custard portion looked holey. I thought it was because I left it in for 20 minutes, so the second batch I tried leaving it in for only 15 minutes and allowing it to cook with the residual heat. The custard portion still looked over-cooked and this time the custards seemed to give off water and became soggy.
I have no idea what happened and how to fix it, which is pretty aggravating. I would have made a third batch to test it further, but Caesura pointed out that we were going to have problems consuming the two bad batches already without further adding to the problem.
I looked up more recipes online and it appears that they have a couple of differences. Namely that their recipes have a higher egg to milk ratio, bake at higher temperatures for longer periods of time, and use evaporated milk instead of plain milk.
I think for next time, I’m going to bake at a lower temperature and keep an eye on them so that I can pull them out when they first begin to puff. If my muffin tin would fit in a baking pan, I’d try the water bath method used for making baked custards, but since I don’t have a pan that big, I suppose not. I have succeeded at this before, so I know it can be done, but I have no idea what I did differently. For all I know it’s because my mother’s oven heats differently from the oven at 136 Perkins or our oven runs hot, or something like that. Perhaps a oven thermometer is a good investment?
I know Azora likes these just as much, if not more than I do. So perhaps she’ll carry on the experimenting? I’m feeling a bit tarted-out at the moment and slightly boggled at the idea of eating 24 of these all by myself. Which essentially is 2 sticks of butter, a block of cream cheese, 8 eggs, and nearly two cups of sugar.
Note to the wise: White whole wheat flour doesn’t work well with these. Neither does replacing brown sugar for the white. These things are pretty much heart attacks waiting to happen and there’s no way to even make them seem healthier.
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10.30.09
Posted in Recipes tagged banana bread, Joy of Cooking at 12:35 am by kyrias
Passable — as opposed to the Bestest Banana Bread recipes that you can find by randomly Googling. You know the ones.
I started out with the Joy of Cooking recipe, but I thought that version was a bit dry and so I upped the amount of bananas and made it a full 6 tablespoons of butter. I tried it once with nuts and thought that detracted from the pure banana bread experience and so I’m not doing it again. I might try banana bread with additives in the future, but this really is just how I like it — with no apologies for sheer banana taste and no distractions.
Banana Bread
as adapted from the Joy of Cooking
- 1⅓ cups whole white wheat flour
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 6 tablespoons melted butter
- ½ cup succanat
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 1½ cups mashed banana (about 3)
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Sift the dry ingredients together. Add the melted butter, then the eggs, then the bananas. Blend it just enough to incorporate the banana and so there are no clumps of dry ingredients. Dump into a buttered standard sized loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes — or until a knife comes out clean. This pretty much can be a two bowl process, which I really like, and it’s a lot of bang for the time bucks.
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10.20.09
Posted in Cooking, Recipes tagged scones at 2:07 pm by kyrias
I made these for a potluck the other day and they were very good — but then how is anything with bacon and cheddar ever nasty?
No. I take that back. Don’t tell me just how someone can screw up that combo. Especially if it involves moldy bread.
They are very rich, and Caesura doesn’t like them that much as a result. I just eat a small 1×1 square and call it good.
Bacon Cheddar and Chive Scones
as adapted from the King Arthur Flour blog
- 2 cups white whole wheat flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 4 tbsp cold butter
- 1 cup cheddar cheese in small dice
- 1 cup minced chives
- ½ pound maple bacon
- 1 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven to 425°F.
Cut up the bacon, spread it on a baking sheet and throw that in the oven. I used the same baking sheet I was going to bake my scone on so I could skip the greasing bit. Whilst the bacon is cooking, about five minutes or so, whisk the dry ingredients together. Blend the butter into the flour, either with knives or a pastry blender. I used butter from the freezer because I didn’t want the butter melting or getting overly soft in the hot kitchen. Remove pan from oven and drain the bacon. Leave the pan to cool. I kept the grease for cooking, but I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with bacon grease that tastes faintly of maple syrup. Mix in the cheese, chives, and bacon. I added much more chives than the original recipe called for, partially because I love chives, and partially because I was trying to salvage what was otherwise a heart attach on a plate. The additional chives don’t add that much moisture and they don’t really overwhelm the scones in my opinion. Keeping in mind that I come from a culture where we stir-fry chives and eat that as a vegetable course. 
I paused here to allow my baking pan to cool off because I didn’t exactly want the dough sizzling on the hot pan. Note: stoneware cooking pans retain heat really, really well.
Drizzle the buttermilk onto the flour mixture and mix just until it forms a dough. Pat into shape on the baking pan, cut into pieces if you desire, and pop it into the oven. I skipped the egg/cream wash because I didn’t want to bother and it still turned out great. Bake for 25 minutes or until the top is nicely browned.
This was a pretty light and fluffy scone, even with the white whole wheat flour. I might try it with normal whole wheat — but since that doesn’t really have a nutritional edge on the white, I might not bother. I’m thinking about cutting down on the cheddar to see if that will make acceptable for Caesura as a breakfast food.
I’d love to add more pepper to give it a bit of a kick, or use peppery bacon next time. Perhaps adding pepper jack as opposed to cheddar? The possibilities are endless. I’m also thinking caramelized onions, gruyere, and perhaps ham or bacon.
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10.06.09
Posted in Cooking, Recipes tagged brownies at 10:40 pm by kyrias
Nevko called suddenly last Saturday, inviting us over to his sister’s house. Well, perhaps not so suddenly, but as we had already given up hope that he would call at that point, we were in no way prepared. Leena said that she’d pick us up from Alewife station in about 1.5 hours and she’d be supplying supper.
Absolutely thrown into a panic by the short notice, I rushed to find something that I could bring as a houseguest-gift. I pulled out the box of Duncan Hines, thought about it, and tossed it back into the cupboard. If Leena was going to be cooking for us, I felt bad bringing cake from a mix. Besides, Mr. P doesn’t usually eat cake.
Then I remembered that Leena made brownies the last time we visited…
I ran a quick Google for brownies and came up with this post for the Silver Palate brownies. Since I never think that the usual recipe is chocolatey enough, I did some modifications.
Brownies in a hurry
–adapted from the Silver Palate brownies recipe
- 2 sticks of butter
- 8 oz chocolate (I used one bar 100% cocoa from Ghiradelli and a semisweet bar from the same)
- 4 eggs
- 1 and 1/4 cups succanat
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 tbsp espresso powder
First I preheated the oven to 350 degrees, then I melted the butter over a low flame in a small saucepot. Once the butter was melted and bubbling, I broke up the chocolate bars and just tossed them in, turning the flame to the absolute lowest it would go.
I’ve never really seen the point of using a double boiler or the microwave since I’ve never had this burn on me. If you’re not pressed for time, the chocolate will melt just fine even without additional heat once the butter is bubbly.
Whisk the succanat and eggs and then mix in the espresso powder and vanilla extract. After stirring the chocolate to make sure it wasn’t that hot anymore, I then poured it into the egg mixture, folded in the flour, and tossed it into the oven for 25 minutes.
The original recipe called for greasing and flouring the pan, but since I really didn’t have the time and I was feeling lazy anyways — I didn’t. I used this pan, Chantal Pure 2-Quart Square Baking Pan, Clear Light Vanilla
that I got from King Arthur, and it was fine. The brownies didn’t really stick and it was a cinch to clean up afterwards. Some steel wool and it came right off.
Disclaimer: If you click on that link and buy the pan from Amazon, I get a commission fee. If you want to buy from King Arthur, they still have it for sale also.
Speaking of the pan — I really, really like it. I bought it because Azora made lemon bars in our old 9×13 pan and because lemon bars don’t really come out of the pan unless there’s judicious use of parchment paper, it kind of got scratched up a bit when we were serving the lemon bars. This one is stoneware, so there’s no fear of damaging the non-stick finish or anything. I’ll want to get another one, this time probably from Amazon, unless King Arthur (KAF) is offering free shipping. I love KAF and really want to support them — but that shipping cost is a killer.
Back to the brownies. It was very good — it was just the right texture, not too cake-like, not too fudge-like and not that crumbley. It was very chocolatey without being overwhelming, in my opinion. Mr. P said that it needed milk but Anila’s friend Lex said he usually uses 16 ounces of chocolate for half the size of the pan I used — I might have to try that some time. Caesura wasn’t in favor of it though, so I might just have to do it sometime and scarf the entire pan myself. The horror and pain, right? 
I think I’ll keep this recipe, but I kind of want to make brownies with less egg and butter in them. A poster on the original site said something very disparaging about the amount of eggs and butter and whereas I feel that one should be able to indulge once in a while, there’s no harm in trying to make it a bit healthier if it doesn’t affect the taste/texture that much. Perhaps keep 2 eggs and use flaxseed in place of the other two? We shall see.
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07.11.09
Posted in Cooking, Recipes tagged baked goods, pumpkin, quick bread at 12:01 am by kyrias
I was hankering after some sort of baking and since I’m still sore over throwing away three batches of bread that no one ate — I decided I was going to try and make something else that Dochola would eat. Hopefully something that had a bit of nutrition to it. I’ve been looking at butternut squash muffins, but I was reminded of pumpkin bread by a conversation with Mr. P in which we were talking about South Market Bistro and its superlative deserts.
So, here’s my recipe, as adapted from Elise at Simply Recipes, who in turned adapted it from Fannie Farmer Cookbook. It’s almost more like a cake than a bread, moist with a lighter crumb than one might expect. Dense, this is not.
Pumpkin Bread
1½ cups whole wheat flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp allspice
3 eggs *
½ cup olive oil
1 cup pumpkin puree **
1 cup brown sugar
¼ cup water
Sift all the dry ingredients together into a bowl. Add in the beaten egg, oil, water, and pumpkin puree. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes ~ an hour until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
* Although the recipe called for 2, I used 3 because they were so small
** If, like me, you used Libby’s and find there’s about 2 cups left — you can freeze it. Or you can just make another two batches of the bread for friends.
At first I used ½ tsp ground cardamom, but it was a bit overwhelming. Although people who like cardamom might prefer it that way, I think I’ll cut it back to ¼ for my next batch.
The interesting thing is, apparently people use fruit puree as a substitute for oil in baked goods. So, since the usual large can of Libby’s is way more than is needed, I’m tempted to just use more pumpkin puree as a substitute for the olive oil next time. I’ve even heard of people using fruit puree in place of eggs, but I think I’ll draw the line there. Heh — or maybe not.
Let’s see. For the ½ cup oil in the recipe, that would be an additional ¼ cup pumpkin puree. For the 2 eggs needed, that would be ½ cup pumpkin puree. So, if you wanted to sub in ¾ cups more pumpkin puree, you could make this bread entirely vegan!
If the results come out favorably, I’ll update.
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06.26.09
Posted in Recipes tagged Pork, red wine, rosemary, steak, thyme at 11:59 pm by kyrias
I first heard about this recipe from Zack when he made steak the other day. He very kindly gave me a taste and I really liked the flavor. So I then decided that I wanted to reproduce this for myself.
The funny thing is that I somehow bought pork instead of beef — but the surprising thing is that this turned out very nicely despite that. The upside is that pork is so much cheaper than beef it isn’t even funny, so this was very serendipitous.
Red wine marinade with thyme and rosemary
I mixed it all up and left it in the fridge for two days. It was fine, although I did worry about it a bit. I threw it in the oven at 300 degrees and waited for the meat thermometer to tell me it was done, basting with the leftover marinade as I went.
The meat was wonderfully moist and flavorful. Caesura called it “amazingly good” and “exquisite”. Wondrous praise, that.I liked it quite a bit myself. Now I just need to think about which side dishes could go well with it. Perhaps some rice pilaf out of a box. 
To be serious though, I need to figure out how to make that stuff myself instead of using the box. It’s like that last little dirty secret — like the bit about using cake mix because it turns out so nicely fluffy.
I suppose this will definitely be going into my “keep” folder.
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06.11.09
Posted in Recipes tagged chinese medicine, food as medicine, 养生， at 12:37 am by kyrias
Alright. So this stuff is supposed to be really good for. Antioxidants, helps you move your bowels along, helps clear your skin up, detoxifies…whatever. Just call it manna, I guess.
However, I eat it because it’s tasty, it’s filling, and once you’re done making it you probably have breakfast for a couple of days down.
The basics is this:
I’m not giving specific quantities because I don’t have all my fancy gadgetry in China. Also, so long as you have the ratios down, it shouldn’t be too messed up.
Take 4 parts uncooked black sesame to 1 parts brown rice or normal white rice.
Soak the rice overnight. Put it in a good blender and give it a whir. I say good blender because if you’re using some $15 crap machine you’re probably going to end up with weird chunks in your smoothie. Just saying.
Toast the sesame over a small flame in a skillet or in the oven at 350F for 15 minutes. You do really want to be careful because it goes burnt really fast if you don’t keep a careful eye on it — better to have it slightly undercooked than burnt. Grind the sesame seeds in a nut grinder or put it in the blender with enough water to cover it and then some. As with the rice, just add enough water so the blender can function. Don’t worry about adding too little or too much. It’s a matter of personal taste anyways.
Pour the rice water into a pot and cook it over a small flame until it comes to a boil, stirring all the while after it starts to heat up. Add in the black sesame paste and continue cooking for 15 minutes.
Add honey to taste and you’re done.
Be warned though, black sesame and honey is supposed to help you “go” so some people might experience that sort of reaction. Might. It’s not going to be laxative strength but — hey, I warned you. 
What I do is I tend to want to add other stuff to it. What I did last night was 4 parts sesame seeds to 1 part brown rice to 2 parts roasted peanuts to 1 part black beans.
Not bad at all, although my peanuts were a bit undercooked. So word to the wise — cook your damn peanuts enough or you’ll end up with raw-tasting peanutty soup.
Next time I might add yi ren (Job’s tears) or just keep my current recipe, which is pretty damn healthy all by itself.
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03.21.09
Posted in Recipes tagged Bastardized Indian at 2:32 am by kyrias
First of all, if you’re using this recipe for garam masala — you might want to know that the results were far too overwhelmed by cardamom. However, I think if you cut the cardamom by a third or even half it might result in something very nice. If anyone has any suggestions on how to balance out a spice blend that is overwhelmed by cardamom, I’d be grateful. I really don’t want to have spent the time on toasting, grinding, and sieving the spice, only to be unable to use it. Not to mention the financial investment.
I suspect a seasoned Indian cook could have told me that it probably wouldn’t turn out well simply from noting the *gasp* 30 cardamom pods — but honestly, this was my first time making a spice blend and it just didn’t turn out well. It’s making me a bit leery of making my own curry powder.
At any rate, I had some chicken tikka masala from Gourmet India the other day and it wasn’t bad. It was enough to pique my interest and I wanted to make some myself. However, I don’t like a dish that is only animal protein, so I thought of adding vegetables to it. Then, I also used fresh chopped tomatoes because I didn’t want to use the canned stuff — which also made it turn out oddly. In addition, I also was far too lazy to grill the chicken separately and just tipped the entire mess into the pot to simmer.
S0 — this isn’t chicken tikka masala, really. But it was good eating, even with the heavy taste of cardamom.
Failed bastard chicken tikka masala
Marinade:
4 cups diced chicken, preferably thighs
1 cup yogurt
½ tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp grated ginger
1½ tsp ground cumin
1½ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
¼ tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
Sauce:
1 thinly sliced onion
6 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
1 cup frozen corn
3 cups diced carrots
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 cup cream
Marinade chicken for at least an hour. Then caramelize the onion in some oil, then dump in the tomatoes and carrots. Cook at a low simmer until the tomatoes break down and the carrots are tender. Fling in some frozen corn, garam masala, and cayenne pepper. Tip in the chicken, marinade and all, and turn the heat up until it boils, then turn down to a simmer for another 10 minutes.
In retrospect, that last 1 tsp cayenne was too much. I couldn’t really eat it very well, so next time I think I’ll cut back.
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