Indian Food!

Saturday I picked up my half lamb order from Back Forty Acres. I had decided a couple of days earlier that I wanted to use some of it for an Indian lamb dish. I had never made anything more complicated than saag in my kitchen (as far as Indian food is concerned). After some Internet sleuthing, a quick inventory of my existing ingredients, and a trip to the grocery store, I was ready to cook. I had the Engineer to assist me, which saved a great deal of tedious chopping time. The Engineer is very meticulous about his chopping, and when I say "cut this onion into 5mm cubes," I know I will get a prep bowl full of perfect 5mm medium diced onion.

I decided to use the meat from the lamb chops I received instead of cutting up my only shoulder roast. The chops were on the small side and I didn't know what else I could use them for. I went to work with my boning knife and eventually I had a bowl with about 1.5 lbs of lamb meat in it.

Fast forward an hour and my Dutch oven was bubbling with fragrant lamb, there were red lentils in another pot, and a large bowl of chopped spinach standing by for saag. My kitchen was redolent with curry, cumin, and coriander. I couldn't wait to eat!

The lamb dish (rogan josh) was AMAZING. It was the clear standout of the meal. The red lentils (dal) could have been spicier and needed more time in the pot to thicken. I will have to tweak the recipe in the future. The saag was not as good as the saag I have made in the past; it was too watery. Fortunately, I made some basmati rice to serve as an absorbent substrate, so it was all good. Oh, was it ever good!

My house still smells like curry.

Yum.

Rogan Josh (Indian Lamb Stew)

1/4 cup canola oil
2 lbs boneless lamb shoulder, cut into 1-inch pieces
Kosher salt
2 onions, thinly sliced (3 cups)
2 Tbsp minced fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp hot Madras curry powder
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
14 oz tomato puree (I pureed a can of diced tomatoes)
1 cup plain yogurt
2 cups water
1 tsp garam masala
Chopped cilantro leaves

In a large soup pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil. Season the lamb with salt and cook over high heat, stirring occasionally, until the lamb is browned, about 12 minutes. Transfer the meat to a plate to drain.

Add the onion to the pot and cook over medium heat until lightly browned, 4 minutes. Add the ginger, garlic, curry, turmeric, cayenne, and bay leaves and cook for 2 minutes. Add the tomato puree, yogurt, and water. Bring to a boil and season with salt.

Return the lamb to the pot. Cover partially and simmer over low heat until the lamb is tender, 1 hour. Stir in the garam masala and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Serve, garnished with cilantro.

November Spice Rack Challenge: Cinnamon

Mom's Kitchen said: "Surely you've got cinnamon in your spice rack."

Of course I do. It's one of those things---along with thyme and chili powder---that my spice collection never lacks. We think of cinnamon primarily as a baking spice. Not so! It is very versatile.

Let's face it: butternut squash by itself is...lacking. It's not the most exciting vegetable around. I've found creative ways around its blandness, and the one that has captured my taste buds right now is this method of preparation. The "let it sit" method for browning I picked up from Cook's Illustrated, but I never would have thought to add cinnamon to squash were it not for my friend Holly at Rust Belt Runner.

Sauteed Butternut Squash with Cinnamon

Butternut squash
Olive oil (and/or butter)
Salt
Cinnamon

Peel, halve and de-seed the butternut squash, then cut it into chunks. I find that 1-inch chunks are just too "chunky," and fail to yield bite-size pieces, so half-inch chunks are more mouth-friendly (and take less time to cook).

Note: I used the other half of one squash in a stew recipe I made last week, so what was left over was perfect for just me to use in this recipe. Depending on how many people you wish to feed, you may have to adjust accordingly.

Heat oil or butter in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Butter does provide a richness of flavor that is missing with just oil, but it's your call. I lean towards the healthier fats, so I tend to cook exclusively with olive oil, but when I made this tonight I threw a blob of butter in with the olive oil. I was feeling frisky! As for how much...well, I'm a big fan of "liberal drizzling." A tablespoon? Two? Who knows...I pour oil into the pan until it looks like it's enough to sustain whatever it is I'm cooking.

Once the oil is warm, dump the squash into the pan. Shuffle it around a little so the pieces lie down, but then BACK OFF and leave it alone for a good ten minutes. Resist the temptation to stir it. This is important, as the point here is to allow the squash to caramelize. After 10 minutes, flip a couple of pieces. If the underside is browned, go ahead and stir the heck out of the rest of it! Let it sizzle for another five minutes. Sprinkle some salt over it and stir it some more. Sprinkle cinnamon on it, stir it around, and it's done. That's what I had for dinner. Oh, and some white wine. YUM!

August Spice Rack Challege: CUMIN!

After dropping the ball on July's Spice Rack Challenge (probably because I was thinking only about my upcoming vacation), I am ALL OVER this one. Why?

I love cumin. I put cumin on everything. Okay, well, not literally everything, but it is one of those spices that disappears more quickly than others from my collection. It seems as if I am always upending an empty jar of cumin over one of my little prep bowls and muttering "better add this to the list..."

My cumin of choice

The problem I face here, however, is what recipe to post when I use cumin all the time. I sprinkled some on the beets I roasted for dinner on Monday. I dusted my stir-fry with it last week. I toss it with grated sweet potatoes, I add it to my saag, I pat it onto chicken trussed up and ready for the oven.

I went with chili, my favorite chili, the chili recipe that came with the instruction/recipe booklet from my parents' first-ever Crock Pot, circa 1982. I received that Crock-Pot's successor (Crock-Pot 2) when my parents upgraded to Version 3.0, but I also have a photocopy of the Favorite Chili (that's really what it's called) from the original 1982 booklet. If I'm aiming to feed a crowd, I go for Favorite Chili every time. I make this for work lunch potlucks and drive my co-workers insane with the smells emanating from my cubicle as I keep the pot on low on my desk.

Favorite Chili (for slow cookers)

2 16-oz cans red kidney beans, drained
2 14.5-oz cans diced tomatoes
2 lbs ground chuck, browned and drained
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
1 green bell pepper, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbsp chili powder
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground black pepper
Salt to taste

Place all ingredients in slow cooker in the order listed. Stir once, Cover and cook on low for 10-12 hours or high for 5-6 hours.

As with many things, this recipe is ripe for editing and improvisation. I have used a pound of dry beans instead of canned beans. I've used both red and green bell peppers, tossed in a few minced jalapenos, splashed broth over it, added chili sauce for some extra moisture...you can't really mess it up. It always ends up smelling amazing and tasting just as good. And it's got cumin.

June Spice Rack Challenge: Mint

Wow. So much for posting every month in 2011. Slacker, thy name is Sun Runner. But! Yesterday I picked up my first box of the season from Tantre Farm. Oh, glorious green bounty of spinach, kale, lettuce, tatsoi, spicy mix, radishes, green onions, and asparagus!

How fortuitous, then, that one of the herbs available for selection was mint. I love me some mint. I grow mint in my herb garden. Well, upon further reflection, the mint sort of grows itself. What started out as one plant a few years ago has morphed into a multi-stemmed invader. I should have stuck that bad boy into his own pot. Be warned, herb garden growers! Isolate your mint, or it will advance on the rest of your garden like the Visigoths on Rome!

Mint is best utilized in my favorite warm weather beverage. After the past two weeks of dreary rain, today's 70 degrees and sunshine were a welcome sight. Thus, I made myself a gin smash, heavy on the mint. Perfect for this month's Spice Rack Challenge.

But what mint to use??

My herb garden mint

Tantre Farm mint

How about BOTH?

Mint-o-rama!

Muddled

Ready to drink!

Ahhhhhh

Ingredients:

• mint leaves (a few)
• gin (a lot)
• club soda (to fill the glass)
• sugar (a teaspoon or so)

I make mine thusly:

Put mint, sugar, and a splash of club soda in a flat-bottomed glass. Smash the heck out of it with a muddler. If the club soda starts turning green, that's a good sign. Measure out some gin depending on how mellow you'd like to be and add to the glass. Throw in some ice cubes. Top off with club soda. Stir it up. Toss on a mint spring (or add some more gin) if you're feeling feisty. Retire to porch, relax in sun with cold beverage and reading material.

Vegetable Chowder

Yesterday I met up with some of the Michigan Lady Food Bloggers for a soup swap. I brought my tub of chowder and went home with five large containers of soup, which will feed me for days. My offering was a vegetable chowder.

• 4 tsp canola oil
• 1/2 cup green bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup red bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup shallots, minced
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 3 cups corn kernels
• 3/4 lb red-skinned potatoes, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 3 cups milk (skim if you're fat-content-conscious, 2% if you want a rich flavor)

Heat the oil in a large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the bell peppers and shallots; cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the curry powder and cook, stirring occasionally, until fragrant, 30 seconds.

Stir in the corn, potatoes, broth, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the vegetables are tender, 10 minutes.

Transfer 1/2 cup of the vegetable mixture to a blender; add the milk and puree until nearly smooth. Return to the pot and cook over medium heat, stirring, until just heated through. Makes four 1 1/2-cup servings.

(adapted from Weight Watchers Ultimate Flex & Core,  "Fresh Corn Chowder," p. 52)

As always, I made some modifications...since I was making this for a larger number of people than specified, I used more corn, more peppers, more potatoes, more broth, and more milk. I also sprinkled a healthy portion of cayenne pepper into it, giving it a spicy kick which elicited a number of comments.

This recipe is my favorite way to use up large amounts of fresh corn scraped from the cob during the summer. When my farm share yields 6 big ears of corn, instead of eating them one at a time, I make this chowder. I also like to use red peppers and potatoes from my farm share.

It was lovely to see the ladies of the MLFB again...I think my last event was the holiday cookie exchange in December 2009!

January Spice Rack Challenge: Rosemary

My, my, my it has been a while since I posted here, hasn't it? I find the lack of attention paid to this blog rather shameful, considering how much I cook. Fortunately, I have an excuse to resuscitate my food blog: a monthly cooking challenge put together by my fellow Michigan Lady Food Blogger Mother's Kitchen: the Spice Rack Challenge. The focus for January was on rosemary.


Rosemary. It grew wild and untended in my childhood home of northern California. There was a particularly lush, fragrant patch in a grassy area on my walking route home from my elementary school. I forgot about the rich piney smell of rosemary bushes warmed by the sun until I went back to California for vacation in 2009. I discovered rosemary being used as landscaping near the house in which I was staying.

It's...a shrubbery! Of rosemary!

It smelled fantastic!

I hosted a large gathering at my house at the beginning of the month which necessitated the cooking of several different crowd-pleasing dishes. Along with the black bean chili and the beef chili and baked ham I made this lamb stew, one of my cold-weather favorites.

Savory Lamb Stew (adapted from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook, 2006, p. 203)

Ingredients:

• 4 tsp olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 lb boneless lamb leg meat, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
• 2 tsp fresh rosemary, minced
• 2 tsp fresh sage, minced
• 2 tsp fresh thyme, minced
• 1/2 tsp grated lemon zest
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup water
• 2 medium red-skinned potatoes, cubed
• 2 cups cut green beans
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley, minced

In a large soup pot or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil. Saute the onion, carrot, celery, and garlic until the onion is translucent, 8-10 minutes. Add the lamb and saute until no longer pink, about 4 minutes. Add the wine and cook for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, rosemary, sage, thyme, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and 1/2 cup of the hot water, stir, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer gently for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the potatoes, green beans, and the remaining 1/2 cup of water, cover, and simmer until potatoes are tender and the liquid has reduced, about 20 minutes. Serve sprinkled with the parsley.

I quadrupled this recipe for my party because I was expecting about 20 people at my house. This meant I used almost all of the little container of fresh rosemary I had purchased. It was a huge success and I had several people tell me it was absolutely delicious. You'd never guess it was a Weight Watchers recipe!

I hope the coming months of the Spice Rack Challenge will motivate me to resume regular posting. I have a food blog for a reason: I love to cook and I love to eat, and at one time I wanted to share that with whoever was interested. I can't wait to see what next month's challenge is!

Limoncello

A while back my friends in Sacramento, California, sent me a box full of lemons from their lemon tree. After some pondering I decided to use some of them to make homemade limoncello.

They smelled so good, you just can't even imagine. It was a burst of summer in the middle of a Michigan winter.

I did a simple Google search for "limoncello" and after some perusal settled on this recipe, from the Washington Post. I had a source from Indiana procure for me a bottle of true high-octane Everclear, 190 proof, which is unavailable in Michigan. This, according to various persons in the know, is what one should use to make homemade limoncello.

I used one of my growlers for the initial steeping. It worked perfectly! And yes, I did manage to get all of the lemon peel out of the jug once steeping was over. There was a lot of shaking involved.

The sugar water-lemon infusion mixing step. This was messy and sticky. The end result filled two half-gallon growlers. That's a lot of limoncello.

The finished product!

I was as careful as I could be when I peeled the lemons but I think a wee bit of white pith made it into the infusion and made it a tiny bit more bitter than it should have been. Nevertheless, for my first attempt at anything like this, it turned out remarkably well. It tastes great and is delicious by itself with some ice or mixed in with other things.

This is not a concoction for the impatient. It took five weeks from start to finish, and I have another half gallon that's still resting in my basement. Anyone want some homemade limoncello?