NYC, here we came.

We finally made it into the City on Saturday at 4:20 PM. The flight was delayed, and I was, understandably, swearing proficiently and colourfully under and over my breath. But, we made it in, and I took some pictures of our new home.

The picture below is how you see our bedroom as soon as you enter it. The fireplace doesn't connect to anything.


This is our palatial kitchen. It's freaking HUGE. It's also really pretty. It's granite floors, and marble counters. That's a hardwood table, and the appliances and utensils are all top of the line. I love my land lady.


To christen our kitchen with my mark, I created a few new dishes, and cooked. This one here is whole potatoes, tossed with some oil, and then combined with diced tomatoes, and sliced onions. I baked it at 350º until the potatoes were tender. They got crispy on the outside, and nobody needed margarine, because the oil and tomatoes and onions provided lots of flavour.


This is a dish of plantains, with the typical spices that I used to make Indian roasted potatoes, but I added crushed peanuts at the last five minutes of cooking. Very yummy, and the skins got all crispy, so the two textures of the plantains were cleanly balanced.

While I was waiting for the plantains and potatoes to cook in the oven, I dashed off and snagged a picture of Steve on the bed, checking his email and my blog.

On the way out, I snagged a quick picture of all of our luggage. To imagine that we managed to make the move with only five pieces of luggage in total is pretty darned good, I think. No need to tell you that the red suitcases are mine, as well my red purse. I hope you're all taking notes, so that you know what colour of stuff to get me!

I found some tinned beans, so I made a really quick bean soup with adobo seasoning.

I used the same adobo seasoning to give the rice a yellow tint, but then I thought it looked too boring. I quickly deep fried some onions to get them dark brown. It was still lacking. So, I sliced up a couple of carrots in thin slices, and deep fried them as well. I think it came out rather pretty. The sweetness of the carrots and onions offset the dark, earthy adobo seasonings in the rice. Quite yummy.

My landlady seems to enjoy my cooking quite a lot, and has been eating vegan since I arrived. It is her house, so I'm not going to make a fuss if she has animal products, but I think it's very sweet of her to be so accommodating. Dinner that first night gave us leftovers for a while. I froze half of the soup. In fact, I froze a lot of the leftovers, so that we don't get bored.

Now I need to figure out what to make for tomorrow!

Empty fridge ... again!

It's one of those times that we're all very familiar with—empty fridge syndrome. There is literally no vegetable sitting in there. I've got onions and tomatoes (because I always have onions and tomatoes) and all of three potatoes which I'm loathe to use, because they cost do darned much. I'm highly annoyed that there's nothing, because Steve gets in soon. Furthermore, I don't fancy serving my boy a mess of fried stuff. Not going to happen.

While I was swearing under my breath, I took a quick inventory of the pantry to see what I could rustle up. No tinned beans, no tinned veg, no nothing. I've got a large box of polenta in the fridge, but man cannot live on polenta alone. I continued grumbling under my breath, as I took an inventory of the shelves where we keep the dried beans. There you are! A pound of chickpeas, and a pound of mung beans. Hrm. There's no way I'm eating mung beans that are just soaked. They have to be sprouted to bring out the best taste. Chickpeas also need soaking.

I set both batches of beans to soak on Sunday night, and got them to start boiling on Monday. By Tuesday, we'll have daal. All I did was take that tomato-onion-curry leaf base, and add the cooked chickpeas to it. Gold.

Sambhar

It all started a week ago, with a split pea daal gone horribly awry. See, I had made the daal with the proper spices and onions, and garlic, and all that other wonderful stuff. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a stupid moment, and pitched in a fair bit of spinach and broccoli and potato. While the potato and broccoli made a nice break in the smooth texture of the daal, the spinach (because I forgot to chop it up into pieces before adding it into the daal) became all stringy and mushy. It was disgusting. Every time I'd pick up some onto my spoon, the strings would hang down, and it was highly unpleasant to eat. It tasted wonderful, though.

So there I was, sitting on a couple of kilo's worth of a disaster of a daal. I wasn't about to get rid of it. It was the texture of the whole spinach leaves that was so off-putting. There had to be a way to save it without losing all that effort of making a good daal. Out came my trusty blender. I ground the whole lot of it as finely as it would get. While I was there, I also tipped in some finely ground almonds, tahini, and extra water to thin it out.

I roasted some curry leaves in some oil, and poured the ground daal into the pot. While the soup came up to a boil, I rummaged around in my fridge. Chayote. Black beans. Onions. Tamarind.

Sambhar.

I began dicing up the chayote, and tipping them into the boiling daal, as I chopped. In went in a scant teaspoon of sambhar seasoning, along with lots of cracked black pepper, some chili powder, and a bit of cumin and coriander powder. In went the remainder of the chayote. I ran to the fridge again, and quickly diced up the onion. In that went as well. My kitchen started to fill with the aromas of the cooking spices and vegetables. The soup began to thicken up tantalisingly. I couldn't believe how easy this is! Once I had a spare moment from chopping, I dissolved a bit of tamarind paste in some of the hot water from the pot. In the last five minutes of cooking, in went the tamarind as well.

The sambhar was complete. It was a deep toasty dark brown, and it smelled incredible. I had some rice cooking in a pot, and was ready to try it.

A quick once-over with my spoon, and the rice in my bowl was slightly smashed about. On went a few ladles of the sambhar.

A taste ...

Heaven.

Kitchen Triage

I made a batch of potatoes, carrots, and beans. I used red potatoes, cumin, black mustard seeds, black beans, and garbanzo beans. Ostensibly, it should have tasted wonderful. Then I took a bite of the final dish.

...

That was the worst idea ever. Let me amend that. I don't know whether it was a worse idea to cook the dish, or for me to take a taste of it. It was horrifically bland, the texture was akin to mealy tomatoes. It was so bad that I needed a couple of hours to just get over the shame of making such a catastrophe. What's worse is that Steve took a taste as well, and was far too polite to call it the abomination that it truly was.

I knew that I would have to redeem myself.

Enter Kitchen Triage. Whenever you have a wet dish, such as a soup, stew, or curry, there are certain secret weapons at your ready disposal whenever you know that it should be better, but it really isn't. It is time for me to reveal these secrets to you. Garlic, onions, carrots, tomatoes, salt, curry powder, and oil are essential ingredients that you should have access to at all times, to save yourself from disaster. Regardless of what type of dish you're working with in this vein, you have this secret arsenal ready to save the food, and your palate.

Here's how it works. Mince up your garlic and onions (1 medium onion per pound of food, and 1 clove of garlic per pound) as finely as you can get them. Start with a healthy dose of oil. For every pound of food that you're trying to resurrect, start with 2 tablespoons of neutral flavoured oil, such as corn oil, Canola oil, or peanut oil. In a large stock pot, begin to heat up your oil over high heat. Get it nice and screaming hot. You know that it's hot when you see it shift from a thick viscous oil to a decidedly more liquid one. Once it gets hot enough, add the onions and garlic. Add a healthy dose of salt and curry powder. Roughly a teaspoon or so should do the trick. You want the taste of the spices to permeate the dish, but not overpower whatever other flavours you're trying to build. Stir the onions and garlic around in the pot to combine them with the spices and oil. Once the mixture in the pot turns yellow, turn down your heat to medium low.

While the onions and garlic are cooking in the pot, start slicing up your carrots in any manner that suits you. I personally just grate it up quickly on a box grater. Usually, one or two medium sized carrots for every onion that you add is a good amount. As soon as your carrots are processed, add it to the pot with the onions and garlic. Don't worry about stirring anything. Cover the lid of the pot, and let the carrots gently cook in the pot for about ten to fifteen minutes. Basically, you want the carrots to get soft. Stir the ingredients around every five minutes.

Open up some cans (about 1 pound should do it) of diced tomatoes. By now, there should be little bits of brown spicy stuff sticking to the bottom of your pot. You're going to think that you've messed up, because stuff is clumping and sticking, and being annoying. Guess what? This is a Very Good Thing. The flavours that you have just developed cannot be matched by any other cooking method. Be proud of yourself.

Add your can of tomatoes, juice and all, into the pot as soon as your carrots are soft. Increase the temperature of the stove to as high as it will go. Keep stirring around the tomatoes until they get sort of broken down a bit. You'll know it's just about right when the stuff in the pot starts to resemble a tomato sauce. Once you reach that stage, you're at the home stretch. Pitch in whatever it is that tasted dead to you. Pour in just enough water that you can stir everything around in the pot, and release all the brown bits from the bottom of the pot. Add another generous dosage of salt. Let the water come up to a full rolling boil. Drop down the heat to medium low, and cover the lid of the pot. Let it simmer for about fifteen minutes.

Give your food a taste test. If there isn't quite enough salt or heat for your liking, go ahead and adjust it at this point. Let the water come up to a full rolling boil if you do add more salt or pepper. If it's still feeling a bit tired, feel free to pitch in a few more cloves of minced garlic. If nothing else, your breath will be too strong for anyone to care about the taste!

On Salting

When you're in the process of putting together a soup, stew, or chili, make sure to lightly salt as you go along. What you want is for the salt to get into the components, but not to the point where you're making a pickle! Instead, take your time, and add gentle additions of salt with every new ingredient that goes into your pot.

For example, let's say we're making a soup with aromatics, root vegetables, tomatoes, and leafy greens. Let's take this step by step, and see if we can't make sense of it, shall we? As with any soup or stew, we're going to be going in the proper order of oil, then spices, then deglazing, then long cooking vegetables, then short cooking vegetables.

Start with oil in a deep stock pot. A good peanut or sunflower oil should work ideally. Turn the burner's heat dial as high as it can go. When a small wisp of smoke escapes the surface of the oil, add your whole spices (like mustard seeds, sesame seeds, and cumin seeds). Wait for about 30 seconds or so. You should hear them popping and crackling like mad. If you have them, pitch in a healthy handful of curry leaves. If not, skip this step.

Now in come our aromatics. Add your chopped or minced aromatics (maybe some onions, garlic, carrots, and red peppers this time?) to the hot fat. Stir everything around in the pot until everything is combined with the oil. Sprinkle in some salt. You just want to add enough to draw out some of the water from the aromatics. Drop down the heat on your burner to medium low. Put the lid on your pot, and get to work on chopping your other ingredients. These are going to cook for about ten to fifteen minutes, or however long it takes them to get softened. If you'd like some colour, this would be a good time to add some turmeric, and stir it through. If you want more of an earthy flavour, this would also be a good time to add your favourite dried herbs. Thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf works for a deep, rich stew.

Start with your tomatoes. If you're using canned tomatoes, skip this step, and just get them ready to add to the pot. If you have fresh tomatoes, roughly chop them up into 1 inch cubes. Don't worry about getting them perfectly chopped--we're going to end up cooking them down in any case. Reserve about a cup and change of water at this point.

If you're like me, the chopping of the tomatoes is done around the same time that the aromatics are nice and soft in the pot. Once the aromatics have softened, add your diced tomatoes to the pot, and increase the heat to high again. Add a little more salt, and stir everything to combine it with the oils and flavours. You're going to start to discover the delight of the smell of tomatoes with garlic and spices. Savour that aroma. Once your tomatoes seem to be incorporated into the dish, turn the heat back down to low, and put the lid back on. You've got another good fifteen or twenty minutes to go before you have to bother anything. If you're nervous about the tomatoes getting too dried out, check every five minutes or so, and have that reserved water at the ready to loosen things up as needed.

Next come the root vegetables (how does a nice blend of radish, potato, and turnip sound) into roughly the same sized cubes. You want to go for about 1/2 inch all around, to get relatively quick cooking times, and still give the final dish something with some oomph to bite into.

Around the time that you've diced your last potato (or a bit sooner, if you take a little longer in chopping root vegetables), your tomatoes should be ready for the next step of the soup. At this point, there's a couple of different things that you can do. If you notice that there are quite a lot of vegetables left over to cut up, feel free to buy yourself some time by adding a few cups of water to the pot, leaving the lid open, and dumping in the vegetables as you go along. Because they're going to cook for another hour or so, you don't have to worry overmuch about cooking times.

If, however, you've finished chopping your vegetables, dump them into the pot, add a couple of litres of water, and crank the heat up to high. While you're waiting for the first boil, start loosely chopping up your leafy greens. Again, you want it to be small enough to fit on a spoon, but large enough to make an impression.

Once your pot starts boiling at a full, strong boil, add a few more pinches of salt, and let it sustain that rolling boil for about five minutes. Quickly taste the soup for salt. If it tastes salty at this point, there is too much salt, and you've got time for damage control. Grab a couple of cans of beans, and tip the contents into the pot. If, however, your soup just barely tastes salted, and is a little on the bland side, you're in good hands. Why is this? As the soup continues to cook, the water will evaporate, and the flavours will concentrate. You want to know how you're doing at this point, because damage control is far easier when you're still early on in the game, rather than at the last minute when you're scrambling.

But I digress. Once you've gotten that full rolling boil sustained for about five minutes or so, drop down the heat to medium low again. Put the lid back on. Finish chopping any final greens you want to add. While you're here, you might as well wash up some of the dishes you've generated along the way. You've got a good forty five minutes to go. Pour yourself a nice cold glass of the drink of your choice, and clean up at leisure. Why leave the mess for later, when you'll be tired?

After about forty five minutes, test the largest piece of vegetable you can see in the pot. If it's done all the way through, you're good to go. Add the leafy greens to the top, and increase the heat back to high. Put the lid on, and let it come up to the boil again. Let it boil, uncovered, until the greens are done through.

When the greens are done, let the soup sit and settle for about fifteen minutes. It's just had an exciting journey in becoming a wonderful dish. Letting it settle for a bit gives the soup (and you) a chance to just relax and mellow for a few minutes. Take the time to set out the table with some nice dishes and your place settings. You've spent all this time on your dish--why not enjoy it properly?

There. Soup is ready. Test it for salt once more before serving. If it's a touch on the bland side, just perk it up with some more salt. Just make sure to let it come back up to the boil after you've added as much salt as you think you'll need. That final boil will make sure that the salt is properly incorporated.

Enjoy your meal.