Mixed Daal with Cauliflower and Potatoes and Peas

This was my final meal for Nepali week. I intentionally made it a simple meal because I had planned on making it on a Friday and I've mentioned before how Fridays are my tired days. After the previous disaster, I took a couple of days off from cooking to get my thoughts together and to become less stabby. The last thing you want is a stabby person using a large kitchen knife. It worked and I enjoyed making this meal and losing myself in the preparation. Cooking should be a form of therapy. I just Googled it and what do you know? It is. Well there goes my next "big" idea...

 The ingredients for Mixed Daal

1/4 cup split yellow mung beans, without skins

 

1/4 cup masoor daal, without skins. These are also known as pink or red lentils.

1/4 cup split white urad beans, without skins

1/4 cup split yellow pigeon peas, without skins

1/4 cup split yellow chickpeas. I didn't use these because a cup of beans was already enough. And I thought I had chickpeas at home so I didn't buy any but then I realized I didn't.

3 tbsps ghee

1 tsp cumin seeds. I used ground cumin.

1 1 inch stick cinnamon

2 small bay leaves

1/2 tsp ground tumeric

A large pinch of asafetida

1 large onion, finely chopped

3-4 garlic cloves, chopped

1 tbsp minced ginger

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro. Garnish only.

Wash and soak your beans. How do you wash your beans? Put them in a bowl of cold water, swish them around, and empty the water. Repeat until the water is clear after swishing them.

Heat the ghee in a large pot. Add the cumin seeds and fry until fragrant. Add the cinnamon, bay leaves, tumeric, and asafetida, then immediately add the onion, garlic, and ginger. Cook until the onion is soft, stirring frequently, then add the tomatoes and cook until soft. Add the daal, salt, 4 1/2 cups of water and bring to a quick boil, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't boil over. I only used three cups of water because I took into account that the beans would have a good amount of water soaked in. Reduce head to medium-low, cover, and cook until the daal is tender. About 40-45 minutes. If you need to add water while it's cooking, do so 1/2 cup at a time. Serve hot. 

 The ingredients for the Cauliflower with Potato and Peas

1 medium sized head of cauliflower

1/2 cup mustard oil

2 dried red chilies, stemmed

1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds

1/4 tsp cumin seeds

1/4 tsp Himalayan herb (jimbu). I didn't have this.

2 small red potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes

2 green cardamom pods, crushed. I had seeds so I crushed them. 

1 1 inch stick of cinnamon, halved

1/2 tsp ground tumeric

1 bay leaf

2 whole cloves

1 tbsp minced ginger. Look at how small that ginger is now!

1 1/2 tsps ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1 cup fresh peas. I used frozen

1 small red or green bell pepper, cored and cut into 1 inch pieces. I didn't add this because I accidentally used the bell pepper I had bought for this recipe in the mixed veggie patties/stir fry.

1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro

3-4 green onions (white and pale green parts) finely chopped

1 tsp garam masala

Break the cauliflower into 1 1/2 inch florets. Discard any yellow leaves but reserve any green ones. Peel the stem and cut into 1/2 inch pieces. Heat the mustard oil in a wide saucepan until it's smoking. Add the dried chili, fenugreek, cumin, and jimbu and fry until several shades darker and fragrant. Immediately add the potatoes, cardamom pods, cinnamon, tumeric, bay leaf, and cloves. Cook, stirring frequently, until the potatoes are light brown. With a slotted spoon, remove the potatoes and set in a bowl, draining as much oil as possible. Add the cauliflower, leaves, and stem and cook for about five minutes. Stir in ginger, coriander, cumin, salt, and cayenne pepper. Reduce  head to medium, cover the pan, and cook until the cauliflower is lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Mix in the potatoes, peas, and bell pepper, and cook, covered, until veggies are tender. Stir in the cilantro, green onions, and garam masala.

Both dishes were really good and I especially enjoyed how the spice livened up the peas. It was a good simple meal.

Aside from that one day, I really enjoyed making Nepali food. There are a lot of ingredients, FOR SURE, but it was fun trying out new things. I discovered asafetida and how frying the spices beforehand really makes a difference so it was a good experience. If someone can help me get rid of the scent, that would be cool, too!

Next up is Germany! Auf Wiedersehen!

Black Urad Daal, Ajowan Rice, and Buttered Peas with Garlic and Spices

When I mentioned to people I was making Nepali food, a few asked if I would be making daal. And when I spoke to people that have traveled to Nepal, they mentioned daal so I kinda got the feeling that I'd have to make daal at least once. I made it twice and it turned out great both times. This is the first time.

I didn't take pictures of any of the ingredients cause clearly I'm really good at remembering things...this is why I have multiple To Do Lists every day. "To Do This Hour" "To Do Today" "To Do Before You Forget the Other List" "Just Do This Right Now" I'm not even joking about that last one. Someone get me some gingko biloba, amirite?!

The ingredients for Black Urad Daal

1 cup split black urad beans, with skins. I don't know why they mentioned they needed to be split, "daal" means a split bean. I also only used 1/2 cup.

1 tbsp finely julienned fresh ginger plus 1 1/2 tsp minced

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp tumeric

1/4 tsp Szechwan pepper. I didn't use this because I couldn't find it anywhere. I'll probably find it next week.

3 tbsps clarified butter (ghee)

2-3 dried red chilies, halved and seeded.

1/2 tsp Himalayan herb (jimbu). I also couldn't find this and the owner at Gandhi Bazar looked at me like I was a weirdo.

A generous pinch of asafetida. I didn't yet know how long the scent would linger

2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced

Soak yer beans. When they're soaked, combine with minced ginger, salt, tumeric, Szechwan pepper, 1 tbsp of the ghee, and 3 1/2 cups of water in a heavy pot. Bring to a quick boil, uncovered, and stir to make sure they don't stick. Cook for about 20 minutes then reduce to low, cover, and simmer until the beans are tender, about 55 minutes. Mine were done in like thirty minutes cause I didn't use as much.

Heat the ghee and add the chilies and jimbu; fry until fragrant. Add the asafetida and then immediately add the julienned ginger and garlic; fry until crisp. Immediately pour the mixture into the daal and stir. Cover and allow the season to develop for five minutes. Serve hot. The daal will supposedly thicken if not served at once but I let mine sit for almost a half hour and it was fine. If it does thicken, the book says to reheat with a couple tablespoons of water.

The ingredients for the Buttered Peas with Garlic and Spices

3 tbsps ghee

1/4 tsp cumin seeds. I used ground cumin.

2 mild green chilies, split lengthwise

8 medium garlic cloves, peeled

1 tbsp peeled and finely julienned ginger

1/4 tsp ground tumeric

A small pinch of asafetida

4 cups shelled green peas. I used about two cups of frozen.

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp Garam Masala

Heat the ghee and when hot, not smoking, add the cumin and fry until fragrant. Add the chilies, garlic, ginger, tumeric, and asafetida, and fry for one minute. Stir in the peas and salt and cook for five minutes. Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and cook until tender, about eight to ten minutes. Add the garam masala and stir.

Ajowan Rice

1/4 cup ghee

1 tsp ajowan seeds

2 dried red chilies, halved and seeded

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

4-6 cups cold cooked rice. This recipe is good if you have leftover rice from another meal. I didn't so I just made some rice in the morning and used it later that evening. I also only used two cups.

1/2 tsp salt

4-5 green onions (white and pale green parts) thinly sliced

Heat the ghee and when hot, add the ajowan seeds and chilies and fry. Add the onion and garlic, and cook until soft. Lower the heat, add the rice a little at a time. Make sure to separate clumps. Add the salt and continue to stir until rice is heated through. If it starts to stick to the pan, add a bit of water. The finished rice should be soft. Mix in the onions and serve.

This was really tasty! The meal the night before was a little heavy so it was nice to have a light but filling meal. It's nothing to write home about and to be honest, the amount of effort was a bit much for such a simple meal, but I liked it. I think the Ajowan Rice was a good use of old rice and it was good but not life changing. I don't expect all food to be life changing but when I spend over an hour in the kitchen, I want it to at lease be asterisk worthy in my life story. I fully expect this blog to be at least a chapter in my life story. It will be titled "The Time I Spent Hours in the Kitchen and All I Got Was Aggravated and Fat" the fat part is coming, I know it.

Summer Vegetable Soup

This week we are in Finland.

Kun menee sutta pakoon, tulee karhu vastaan. 

That means "When you flee from a wolf, you run into a bear" This has nothing to do with this post. I just Googled "Popular Finnish proverbs" and I liked this one. It's supposed to be mean to not give up on one situation for another. I don't get it either. 

FINLAND. The biggest deciding factor in choosing Finland was, and this was backed by some super scientific thought, that it's cold in Finland. It's currently cold in Texas. So I figured the food would be agreeable with the climate. Granted I'm currently wearing shorts in January so maybe I didn't think this one through. I rarely do.

Choosing a cookbook for Finland was pretty easy. My three choices at Half Price were a $40 book that wasn't going to happen in any world, a $30 book that focused on Finnish country cooking which involved a lot of wild game like reindeer, and the $10 book I ended up buying. The price was right! Also, the book I ended up buying uses American measurements (in yo face metric system!) and is actually a book on Scandinavian cooking. It's titled "The Art of Scandinavian Cooking" by Nika Standen Hazelton. It was written in the mid-sixties but the recipes seem to hold up pretty well so far. There's an intro to each country, with a little synopsis of their dietary customs and traditions. It's a fun read.

The first recipe is Summer Vegetable Soup, even though it's not Summer. And people say GMOs are bad...how else would I make this recipe in January, hippies?!

The ingredients

1 quart water

1 tbsp salt

1 cup Frenched green beans. I chose fresh green beans for health reasons but if you don't love yourself, canned beans are good, too. I also cut them myself. This would have been a billion times easier if I had a food processor but I recently gave mine away because I never used it. Foiled by my generosity once again!

1 cup sliced carrots. Again, the food processor would have come in handy.

1 cup cubed peeled potatoes. I almost always cook with red potatoes. They are lower in fat than white potatoes and higher in potassium and anti-oxidants than their paler counterpart. It's just science!

1 cup fresh peas. I couldn't find fresh peas so I used frozen. I made up for it by using fresh everything else, though!

1 cup cauliflower buds

1/2 cup chopped spinach

2 to 2 tbsp flour

1 quart milk. I did not use a quart of milk, no one needs that much milk. Except for baby cows but we aren't bovine. I used about two cups, so about half a quart.

3 tbsp butter

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Bring water to a boil. Add beans, carrots, and potatoes. When they are half cooked, add peas, cauliflower, and spinach. When veggies are almost tender, make a paste of flour and a bit of milk; stir in. Then add remaining milk and simmer for ten minutes. Remove from heat and add butter and parsley.

It was forty degrees the night I made this and it.hit.the.spot. I was a little worried about it being bland but the butter and sweetness of the peas and carrots added some great flavor. It was very filling but wasn't too heavy. It probably would have turned out different had I used the full amount of milk but I feel this worked perfectly.

The three year old wouldn't touch it but the nineteen month old asked for seconds. Seriously, she has the best taste.

Spicy Chickpea and Aubergine Stew

Disclaimer: I have made this before.

I know I wanted to try new recipes but here's the deal, it was a Friday and I'm usually pretty beat by Friday evenings. I took this into consideration when meal planning so I chose this with the expectation that I would be tired and would want something quick and easy. This recipe stepped up to the plate! Specifically our dinner plates.

If you don't know, an aubergine is an eggplant. 'Aubergine' is mostly used in Europe and all those countries whose patronus is not a bald eagle. 'Merica! When reading up on the difference between the two words, I learned that there are white and green eggplants! Did you know that?! I didn't know that. So, how does that relate to the color 'eggplant'? I mean, now that I know there are different colors of eggplant, I can't use that word to describe a color. I just can't! There's no turning back, my life has been forever changed.

This recipe changed my life, y'all.

The ingredients

1 aubergine, cubed. The recipe called for three but we're a family of four, there's no need for that much food.

1 cup chickpeas, soaked overnight. I used canned chickpeas because of convenience.

4 tbsp olive oil

3 garlic cloves, chopped

2 large onions, chopped. I used one because of heartburn.

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground coriander. By now you know of my hatred of coriander in herb form but as a spice, it doesn't bother me. While it has the consistency of dirt, it doesn't taste like it when it's ground up. I just felt the need to explain this.

Chopped tomatoes. The recipe called for three 14 oz cans but I like fresh tomatoes and they're supposed to be better for you and I want you to be healthy!

Salt and pepper to taste

Cooked rice

Soak the aubergines for at least thirty minutes in salt water to remove the bitterness.

Prepare the chickpeas according to the can, i.e. heat them up.

Heat the oil and add the garlic and onion and cook until soft. Add the spices and stir. Add the aubergines and stir to coat with the spices and onions. Cook for five minutes. Add the tomatoes and chickpeas, season with salt and pepper. Cover and simmer for twenty minutes. Serve over rice.

Told y'all it was easy!

I love this dish not just because of its simplicity but because in spite of it, it's extremely flavorful. Cumin is my favorite spice and when combined with cinnamon and coriander, it's slightly sweet. The crispness of the chickpeas is a great contrast to the sponginess of the eggplant and both offer different nuttiness. Then the tomatoes kinda bring it all together with slight tang.

So Greek week is over. I wish I would have paid attention to the title of the cookbook because had I done so, I probably wouldn't have used it. There are a few Greek recipes but most of the ones in the book and about half of the ones I prepared are Mediterranean, not specifically Greek, For instance, this recipe is Lebanese. Many of the Greek recipes in the book involved fish and, um, it's January in Texas. Not a lot of access to fresh fish right now. I'll look at ingredients more when choosing future cuisines and keep access to those ingredients in mind.

With that being said, we're going to Finland this week! Yes, Finland eats a good amount of fish. I'll be visiting the fish market tomorrow.

Cheers!

Green Lentil Soup

This week we are visiting Greece!

Home of feta cheese, super cool mythology, and, um, that village with the blue tiled roofs...I clearly do not know much about Greece. Gosh Melissa, learn a book! Oh wait! I know something else: Melissa is Greek for honeybee.

So anyway, we are visiting Greece. Why did I choose Greece? Because it was the first cookbook I pulled out of my cookbook drawer. Actually, it was the second but the first one I pulled out was about New Orleans and last time I checked, New Orleans is not a country. Sorry NOLA. The cookbook I'm using this week is "Taste of Greece: Irresistible Dishes of the Sun-Soaked Eastern Mediterranean" by Joanna Farrow and Jacqueline Clarke.

As you can tell from the pic, I paid a whopping $3.98 for it at Half Price Books so it's definitely legit. I've had this book for years and have made a few things from it but this week I'm trying recipes I haven't made before.

Which is why we are making Green Lentil Soup. I was going to make a chicken pie but I forgot to thaw out the chicken and the pastry. Also, I took my kids to Chuck e Cheese (where a kid can be a kid! And parents wonder why they thought procreating was a good idea!) for two hours and I was tired and wanted something easy.

The ingredients

1 cup green lentils. I always soak my beans before I use them. If I can remember, I'll soak them overnight but if not (which happens a lot) I try to do two to three hours beforehand. Supposedly it helps with nutrient absorption but I think it mostly cuts down cooking time. 

5 tbsp olive oil

3 onions, finely chopped. I used one onion because I didn't want a lot of heartburn. Getting older is so cool.

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced. According to Martha Stewart, goddess of everything (maybe not financial planning), you should crush garlic cloves before cutting them because crushing them releases oils, which makes your dishes more flavorful. I'm not one to argue with Martha Stewart (the lady breeds Chow Chows) so I crushed my garlic AND THEN thinly sliced it.

2 tsp cumin seeds, crushed. I just used ground cumin cause, same thing, right?

1/4 tsp ground tumeric

2.5 cups chicken or veggie stock. I used chicken. I like the Kitchen Basics brand a lot. It's moderately priced and I think Emeril said it's the best stock that he didn't make himself. Which I find odd since he had his own brand of stock...whatevs, I use Kitchen Basics. BAM!

Salt and ground pepper to taste

2 tbsp roughly chopped fresh coriander. I didn't use this because do you know what coriander is? It's cilantro. Do you know what cilantro is? It's the devil. I don't like the devil so no cilantro. 

There are no bananas in this recipe, I just forgot to clean my counter before taking the pic.

Now to cooking!

I should also mention that I didn't use exact measurements. I cook enough to know what a teaspoon or half a tablespoon looks like so I don't bother measuring unless I'm baking. #humblebrag

Put the lentils in cold water and boil , rapidly, for ten minutes and then drain. They should look like this when done. 

Heat the oil in a pan and fry two of the onions with the garlic, cumin, and tumeric for three minutes. By the way, your kitchen will smell amazing from the fried onions! Someone should make it into an air freshener. I would buy so many of those things. I'd also probably always be hungry.

Add the lentils, stock, and 2.5 cups of water. Hey! The water wasn't in the ingredient list! Oh wells, it happens. Bring to a boil, reduce, cover, and simmer for thirty minutes. If you soaked the lentils, you won't need the full thirty. 

The recipe says to fry the third onion until golden. You'll use this and the coriander as a topping. 

When the lentils are done, mash them slightly to make it pulpy. Nothing says "delicious" like the word pulpy. #needsaneditor

Season the pulpy soup with salt and pepper and if you hate yourself, garnish with the onion and coriander. No judgement. (There is a TON of judgement)

I didn't mash my lentils as much as the picture because one of my kids was screaming at me while I was mashing them and I didn't get to finish. Overall, it came out good. I mean, it's lentil soup, nothing fancy there. The recipe said to serve with warm bread but I didn't have warm bread so I served it with some super fancy Ritz crackers. I just Googled "the history of Ritz crackers" and they are not Greek, they originated in Philly.  I'm sure if the Greeks could have, they would have invented Ritz crackers but they were probably too busy creating a democratic government. They totally missed out.

Everyone loved it except the three year old. She took one look and said "It yuck" and just ate the crackers. She didn't throw it on the ground so that was great. The dogs ate up whatever the one and half year old dropped on the ground and they seemed to like it, too. Success!