A Tale of Two Stir-Fries

Well, the 21-Day Vegan Kickstart ended two weeks ago and I've decided to stick with being vegan for the duration.  This wasn't really my plan, but then, neither was being vegetarian.  We'll see how it goes.

Saturday evening after work (I work every other weekend.  Always fun.  Not.) I chopped up about half of the veggies I recently bought with a stir-fry in mind.  Why only half, you ask?  Well, because half seemed like enough for one meal plus one or two meals worth of leftovers.  It also occurred to me when I put the other half back in the fridge that I could stir-fry the same veggies a different way later on.  So, I made a Chinesy (I make no claim as to authenticity) stir-fry for us on Saturday and an Indian stir-fry for dinner tonight.  If you ever find that you have an overabundance of several veggies that hold up well in a stir-fry, give something like this a try!
 
The Chinesy stir-fry came out well and was simple enough, now that the fine folks at MediterrAsian have given me the confidence to do Asian stir-fries with or without coconut milk or red curry paste:

2 tbsp canola oil
1.5 cups (approx.) baby carrots, quartered lengthwise
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
1.5 cups snap peas, ends trimmed
1 red bell pepper, sliced lengthwise
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp Chinese five spice powder
4 oz. baby bella mushrooms, sliced
1 cup vegetable broth
salt and crushed red pepper to taste
2 tbsp corn starch mixed with 2 tbsp cold water

Heat oil over medium heat in work or wide saucepan.  Add carrots, garlic and ginger and saute for 3-5 minutes.  Add snap peas red bell pepper and cook another 3 minutes.  Add hoisin, soy sauce and Chinese five spice powder and stir well.  Add broth, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes.  Check flavors and add salt and crushed red pepper as needed.  Add cornstarch mixture and stir often as sauce thickens to a glaze.  Remove from heat and serve over rice.
***
Then tonight I chopped up the snap peas, carrots and red bell pepper for an Indian-style stir fry.  The spices are all from a mixed vegetables recipe in my Indian cookbook, but the veggies that I used were different because hey - it's what I had.  Also a winner!

2 tbsp canola oil
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1-2 bay leaves
1 tsp black mustard seeds
2 tsp urad dal
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 cup baby carrots, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1.5 cups snap peas, cut in half and ends trimmed
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 tsp cayenne
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt

Heat oil in a wide saucepan over medium heat.  Add next four ingredients, cover and heat until mustard seeds start popping and urad dal is golden brown.  Add onion and tomatoes, stir and cook for one minute.  Add turmeric and stir.  Add remaining veggies, stir well and cook for 3-5 minutes.  Stir in tomato sauce and remaining spices.  Blend seasonings well and cook for another minute or two.  Add about half a cup of water to make it saucier and so that veggies don't burn.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for another 3-5 minutes or until sauce has thickened.  Serve over rice.
***
Well, it seems that winter's finally here.  Today I actually had to wear running tights and a knit cap for the first time since I started running again post-foot injury.  I don't know about groundhogs; for me, dark-eyed juncos are much more reliable in the meteorology department, and I saw a bunch in my backyard a couple of days ago - always a sign of cooler weather to come. 

Stay warm, eat and be healthy!

Tamarind Rice and Okra Masala

Well, the holidays are here once again, which means that opportunities to overeat abound.  Since I just bought a pair of skinny jeans the other day (my first-ever time shopping at Old Navy), I'm going to do my best to restrict any holiday excesses in my kitchen to the big day (T minus 11 and counting) and to making stuff for the various parties we've been invited to.  Thankfully, my pantry is always well-stocked for making Indian food that's tasty, filling AND won't stop me from wearing the new jeans when we go out for New Year's.

Lately I've also been loading up on pantry items because I needed a break from all the cooking and juicing I'd been doing in order to keep the veggies in the fridge from spoiling.  With the exception of a bag of celery that Steve bought on sale last week, I soon found myself with an overabundance of dry goods that needed to be addressed.  One of my go-to recipes in this situation is the tamarind rice recipe from Healthy South Indian Cooking (p. 138).  Since I had a bag of cut okra in the freezer, I decided to make the okra masala from the same cookbook (p. 253) as a side dish and substitute a couple of celery stalks for the diced onion since it was the only fresh veggie in the fridge yesterday.  I made a few more tweaks with both recipes, but they're still pretty close to the originals.

Word to the wise: not for the first time with the tamarind rice, I followed the directions about soaking the split peas and then adding them to the hot pan uncooked, and (like before) I wished I hadn't.  Have you ever made six-bean soup from dried beans and some of the thicker beans didn't cook all the way through?  The result I get with the split peas is a little like that.  Not so undercooked as to render you flatulent for the rest of the day, but just a little too chewy.  I have to make a note about that in the book and just use some chopped nuts instead the next time.

As always with Indian recipes, any ingredients you've never heard of can be found at your neighborhood Indian grocery store.  Some ingredients you have heard of can also be bought there for less, like big bags of turmeric for two bucks.  If you haven't already been, check 'em out!


Tamarind Rice:
1 cup brown rice
1/3 cup yellow split peas
1 tbsp tamarind paste
2 tsp salt
1/4 cup canola oil
8-10 curry leaves
3 dried red chili peppers
1/2 tsp asofoetida powder
1-2 tsp black mustard seeds
1-2 tsp urad dal
3/4 tsp turmeric
1 tsp chutney powder

Cook one cup brown rice in two cups of salted water, covered with a tight-fitting lid, until all liquid has been absorbed, about 30-40 minutes.  Remove from heat and let cool at least 15 minutes.  (If using white rice, use 1.5 cups of water per cup of rice.  It's also better to make it several hours or one day ahead so it can dry out and not get mushy during the cooking process described below.)

Soak yellow split peas in 1 cup of water for one hour.

Blend tamarind paste, salt and 1/4 cup of warm water in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large saucepan or wok, heat oil over medium heat.  When the oil is hot, add the curry leaves, red chilies, asofoetida, mustard seeds and urad dal.  Cover and cook until mustard seeds pop and urad dal is golden brown.  (If the pan is hot enough when adding these ingredients, these items will cook fast.  Watch the urad dal and dried chilies in particular to make sure they don't burn.)

Drain the water from the split peas and stir them into the saucepan, stir-fry for one minute, then add the tamarind mixture and stir well.

Add the turmeric and chutney powder and stir for one minute.  Add the rice and stir until all ingredients are combined.


Okra Masala:
2 tbsp canola oil
1/4 tsp asofoetida powder
1 tsp black mustard seeds
2 tsp urad dal
1/2 cup chopped onion (this is where I substituted celery)
2 cups frozen (or fresh, if you have it ) cut okra
1/2 tsp cayenne or to taste
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 tsp salt or to taste

Heat oil in saucepan over medium heat.  When oil is hot, add asoefoetida, mustard seeds and urad dal.  When the mustard seeds pop and urad dal is golden brown, add the celery and stir-fry for 3 minutes.

Add the okra and spices and stir-fry for another 5 minutes.  Add the tomato sauce and salt (if needed; some tomato sauces are saltier than others), reduce heat, cover and simmer until okra and celery are tender, another 5-7 minutes.

Basmati Rice with Peas and Spinach Kootu

Before I go into detail about tonight's dinner, I have an unhappy update about my garden: about three weeks ago, following a short proliferation period, my yellow squash plants, zucchini plant and cucumber vine all fell prey to a powdery mold blight.  Steve did a Google search to learn more about it and found that spraying milk on the leaves helps to inhibit growth/reproduction of the mold, but it was already too late for the yellow squash, which were laid to rest in the compost bin last week.  The leaves on the cucumber look terrible, but the plant is still producing (for now), and the jury's still out on the zucchini although it appears to be making a comeback.  Lesson learned: don't encourage mold growth on members of the squash family by planting them too close together.  The "oh, screw it, it'll work out" approach worked well enough last summer, when I was mostly growing upright pepper plants, but I now know to space squashes exactly as far apart as the plant tag says (four to six feet).  Oh, well - all the more reason to expand the size of the raised bed next summer.

I've cooked a time or two since the last post and managed to use up pretty much everything in the fridge with the lunch I made on Sunday - and then a bag of spinach showed up in the fridge after I got home from work last night. What to do, what to do...

Spinach Kootu:
1/2 cup yellow split peas
1/4 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp canola oil
1 dried red chili pepper
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp urad dal
1/4 cup chopped onion (I had some in the freezer)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
10 oz. chopped spinach (original recipe calls for frozen, but what the hey)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt or to taste

Boil 2 cups of water, add the split peas and turmeric and cook on medium heat (covered) until they are completely softened (up to 45 minutes).

Heat oil over medium heat in a saucepan big enough for all the chopped fresh spinach (a smaller one is okay if you're using frozen).  When it's hot, stir in the red chili pepper, mustard seeds and urad dal.  Cook until the mustard seeds burst and the urad dal is golden brown.  Slightly reduce the heat, if needed, so that these ingredients don't burn.

Add onion and garlic and stir-fry for one or two minutes.

Add spinach to the saucepan along with split peas and one cup of water (cooking water is fine).  Add the cumin and salt and stir well to blend.

Cover and simmer over low heat for a few more minutes, until the spinach has at least wilted and all the ingredients are blended.

...And since this clearly isn't dinner all by itself, I made a rice and peas dish that can be made anytime (at our house) using pantry, fridge and freezer staples.

Basmati Rice with Green Peas:
2 cups basmati rice
2 tbsp Earth Balance
3-4 shakes of cinnamon (or 4-5 small pieces of stick cinnamon)
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp cashews, coarsely chopped
2 whole cloves
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp ground cardamom (or two whole cardamom pods)
1/2 tsp salt or to taste
1/2 cup frozen peas (or 1 cup if you like more), heated in microwave for 1 to 2 minutes

Rinse rice well and get 3 cups of water boiling while completing the next step.  (Cookbook says 4 but I always get a better result using a 1.5:1 water: white rice ratio.)

In a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid (i.e. one you can cook rice in), heat the Earth Balance (or butter, ghee, oil or whatever) over medium heat.  When it's hot, add the cinnamon, bay leaves and cashews.  Cook until the cashews turn golden brown.

Add the rice to the mix along with the cloves, turmeric, cardamom and salt.  Stir well and toast the ingredients for another minute or two.

Pour in the boiling water, stir, reduce the heat to medium-low and cook, covered, for about 15 minutes.  The rice should be fluffy and all the water should be gone.

Stir in the cooked green peas (drain them first if necessary) and serve.
***
The nice thing about the rice recipe in particular is that, after serving Steve and myself, there was enough for two big leftover portions for later in the week.  I'm always glad to have leftovers when my work schedule's unpredictable, because it means I won't have to make do with the items on the largely non-vegetarian menu at the hospital cafeteria. 

Another happy discovery I made about the spinach recipe is the meaty flavor you get when you cook spinach with cumin.  Steve suggested that I figure out how to bring back the tuna bacon spinach pasta recipe, vegetarian style.  Be looking for it sometime in the near future!

Mulligatawny

...inspired by the "Soup Nazi "episode of Seinfeld.

I've come across a couple of recipes recently that only vaguely resemble the one I make - with chicken, tomatoes and yogurt instead of coconut milk (their version, not mine).  This recipe here is the first one I ever found, years ago, when I went looking for a recipe on foodnetwork.com.  To date, it's the only one I've ever worked from, and it never occurred to me that anyone else made it differently.  So imagine my surprise when I went hunting for recipes and found that nearly all contain chicken, celery, carrots and apples!

Well, the chicken's out because I think I'm done with it (and seafood and red meat) for the duration.  And I don't have any apples, carrots or celery on hand right now - not that I'd want the apples in a soup if I had them.  Really, the reason I decided to make this is to use up the leftover coconut milk from Friday's praram, a jalapeno (with the seeds) and the remaining cilantro.  I might try it one day with carrots and celery if I ever have everything I need to make it that way, but for now I think this version is just as good as any.  It all gets pureed, the coconut milk is stirred in at the very last, and voila - a lovely, silky-smooth lentil-coconut-curry bisque.  Served over rice.

To keep it totally vegetarian, I used Smart Balance instead of the butter and Better than Bouillon vegetable base instead of the chicken broth.  And Steve's been such a good sport about the vegetarian thing.  He bought himself a rotisserie chicken from the Pig the other day, and I told him he could add some to his bowl of soup if he wanted, but he didn't.  He even went back for seconds!

Worst case scenario, he'll have a bigger appetite for snacks by the time 30 Rock comes on.

Dudhi chick pea masala

Adventures in new veggies part one: The dudhi. 

I'm taking an online nutrition class right now, and one of our assignments (for bonus points at the end of the semester) was to find a vegetable we'd never eaten before and share the experience, and/or recipe as appropriate, with the class.  Well, I didn't think I'd have much luck at a regular grocery store - sometimes they have jicama, sometimes not - so after work on Friday I stopped by Royal India Bazaar (formerly J.M. Emporium, next to the Big Lots on Two Notch Rd. in Columbia) to check out their modest produce section.  It turns out that they have several items there that I'd never heard of, and the three that I ended up buying are called dudhi (pictured above), Chinese okra and bitter melon.  In the near future, I'll post on new veggie adventures 2 and 3 as well.

But back to the dudhi: unfortunate name, good squash.  According to my quick Google search, "dudhi" translates to "bottlegourd" in English.  It's about the size and shape of an eggplant, and the texture of the raw vegetable is about the same.  Unlike with eggplant, you do want to peel the skin before cooking.  Some people recommend removing the seeds, others say they're fine.  I went with a recipe that called for removing the seeds but didn't do a very thorough job.  A few seeds made it into the final product, and they didn't hurt anything.  I borrowed heavily from this recipe but made several changes: I added about two teaspoons of urad dal with the aromatics at the beginning, skipped the potato and onion (didn't have any), only used two cups of water and added a can of chick peas (drained) at the very end.  And since I don't have chappatis in my freezer, I served it over rice."Salt to taste" ended up being about 2 teaspoons.

The end result (pictured here) is what we had for lunch today.  The wedge-shaped things on the plate are the stewed bottlegourd.

This definitely would have needed 3-4 cups of water had I used the potatoes, even if they were cooked ahead of time.  Without any extra starch to thicken it up, this maybe would have been all right with only one cup of water, simmered with the lid on for about 10 minutes and then cooked uncovered on a higher heat setting until it was thick enough to eat with a fork.  With two cups of water, I had to cook it for about 30 minutes on medium heat and then on medium-high heat to thicken it up.

Since I did use the sambhar powder, it came out spicier than it would have with the garam masala.  This, I suspect, is the reason that Steve suggested having some sour cream or plain yogurt on hand as a topping the next time.  Anyone who has difficulty digesting spicy foods might consider adding a dollop of plain yogurt on top or even stirring in half a cup of yogurt right before serving.  (Sour cream's too pedestrian for a dish like this.)

So this was my experience with my first new veggie since...okra, I guess, but that was about 15 years ago.  If you live near an Indian grocery store and want to try something different, the dudhi/bottlegourd runs about 99 cents a pound.  Some things, like shallots, are also cheaper than at a supermarket.  Plus the people are very nice, love new customers and will answer any and all questions you have about whatever catches your eye!

Happy Sunday, and enjoy this beautiful weather while it lasts!