Back in the kitchen

...after nearly a month of not blogging and hardly cooking.  It's not that I didn't cook at all, but on the rare occasions that I did, I simply replayed favorites like the sweet potato spinach praram and pasta salad or just made a plain Greek-style spinach and feta salad.  The rest of the time, when I wasn't up for making anything, it was either frozen dinners or chips and hummus.  Clinicals are over, and I've had a little more time to cook this week.  That's a good thing, because I'm back to having a lot to work with and not a lot of time before it goes bad. 

Bring on the Indian (-style) food.

Yesterday I dispensed with a couple of carrots and a big bunch of cilantro by making something like chickpea soondal but with carrots and cilantro and no coconut.  Easy peasy.  I was afraid that the big bunch of cilantro I had would be too much for two chopped carrots and one can of chickpeas, but it actually came together really well and the leftovers were just as good in today's lunch.  I cooked up just enough brown rice to mix with both of the generous helpings I got from it.

Tonight I made palak tofu.  The inspiration was actually a frozen dinner that Steve buys sometimes called Mattar Tofu.  It's a vegan version of mattar paneer that uses tofu instead of the cheese.  Well, I just happened to have an unopened bag of spinach and half a block of tofu leftover from the last time I made the praram, so I made the palak tofu using those ingredients plus a few seasonings I always have on hand:

3 tablespoons canola oil
3 dried red chilies, torn into pieces
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon ginger paste
9 ounces fresh spinach
1 onion
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon Madras curry powder (medium hot?)
8 ounces extra firm tofu, pressed and sliced into 1-inch squares

Heat the oil over medium-low heat, add the next three ingredients and saute until fragrant (just a few minutes). 

Meanwhile, puree the spinach and onion in a blender or food processor until smooth.  Add to the ginger-garlic mixture in the pan.  Add salt, curry powder and tofu, stir well, cover and cook until onion flavor no longer overwhelms the dish, about 15 minutes.  (Avoid the temptation to over-salt it before it's done; the onion flavor will cook out.)

Serve over rice.

Curried Coconut Chicken Rendang

Today's cooking feat: my first coconut curry dish.
The photo may not be very flattering (the brown stuff is extra sauce heaped on top of the chicken), but it really did turn out well. 

This recipe is in the current issue of Food and Wine (and on their website here).  When I read it, I remembered that we had some chicken thighs in the freezer and half a can of coconut milk in the fridge from last Sunday.  Better to go ahead and use it, and use it I did.

I changed the recipe some, but not a lot.  The package of chicken in the freezer only weighed a pound, so I cut most of the ingredients on the list in half.  I wasn't about to go hunting for one stalk of lemon grass if lime juice was already on the list, and I don't have any allspice berries, shallots macadamia nuts, so those items were left out.  (I did use extra red onion and substitute some salted cashews for the macadamia nuts in case they made a difference in the texture - not sure if they did or not.) 

The rice in the picture is brown rice, not jasmine.  I think I've finally figured out the right proportion of water to rice (2:1) and length of time (40 minutes) so that I no longer have to check it every few minutes while the rest of the food is done.  It cooked in roughly the same length of time as the chicken, which worked out well.  And the chicken was good too!  Anyone who's curious to try it or a variation might also like the chicken just with the marinade, but with more marinade (it didn't seem to go very far when I brushed it onto the chicken).  It probably also would have been good with everything but the coconut milk and powder, or maybe with a substitution of tomato sauce.

That's all for tonight.   Enjoy what remains of the weekend!