Oh Snap, What's That? [Vol #1]

Let’s say you’re walking through the produce section of Whole Foods or Central Market, and you notice they have some new exotic produce in stock. Among that selection is some freaky-ass-looking piece of fruit you’d never heard of before. Or maybe it’s something you’d seen once on Iron Chef or a Travel Channel food show, thinking it’s something you’d never see in your store. You stop dead in your tracks, in awe. If you’re anything like me, first thing that comes to mind is “How do I eat that?”


Buddha's Hand
Last week at the store, I encountered one of these guys at Central Market.



Seriously, how can you look at that and not want to take it home?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the “Buddha’s hand” or “fingered citron,” the world’s oldest cultivated citron fruit, originating from India and China. I saw it once on an episode of Iron Chef America. Alton Brown called out the Chairman lurking in the back of the Kitchen Stadium, holding and stroking the fruit like Dr. Claw with his cat. Someone, seriously, please give Mark Dacascos another action movie role. His Chairman act is just getting more and more depressing.

Citrons are different from other citrus fruits, like lemons and oranges, in that there is no juicy pulp under the skin, let alone juice. Historically, the Buddha’s hand has been used for its fragrance, to perfume rooms and clothing.

These are all facts I wish I had known before I bought one. How can I potentially eat this? Well, if I ever have a recipe that calls for a lot of lemon zest, and if I want a substitute that costs twice as much per pound, it would come in handy. But I have to say, the smell is great, kind of like intense lemon but more floral.


Yuzu
I also saw these next to the Buddha’s hand.



The yuzu is an Asian citrus fruit, mostly popular in Japan and Korean cuisine. The most common use I can think of is in shoyu ponzu, a Japanese citrus-flavored soy sauce. It kind of looks like a mandarin orange, but more spherical and lumpy. Unlike the Buddha’s hand, the yuzu does have pulp and juice. The flavor is like a really tart orange, or like a grapefruit but with half of the slight bitterness. I basically squeezed the juice out and made something like lemonade. Next time around, I’ll find a better application for it.

Lamb Curry [Attempt #1]

Recipe Source: http://www.recipezaar.com/Authentic-Lamb-Curry-from-Kerala-298070
Recipe Result: Rather tasty





This recipe turned out great, and with minimal changing of the cooking steps. I just had to modify the measures of the ingredient list, since I’m obviously not going to work with 4lbs of lamb. Speaking of the lamb, the Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market has a vendor of some great, local, grass-fed lamb. Check it out, it was great quality and at a pretty good price. One thing I should have done with the lamb, though, was tenderize it and then season it with some salt and let it sit for a while. The meat came out a little bland in the end. But the curry sauce was perfect.

Changes:
- I omitted the lemon juice. People usually put in a little lemon juice or vinegar into a recipe to add acid, because the tartness “brightens up” the savory flavors. I don’t usually look for that kind of acid in a curry. Besides, I think the fresh tomatoes added enough of that.

Ingredients:
1 lb lamb (stew-cut)
1 Tbsp veg oil
2 large cloves of garlic (crushed)
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 yellow onion (3” diameter), sliced thin
1 black cardamom pod
4 green cardamoms
1 cinnamon stick (2 inches)
10 black peppercorns, coarsely crushed
1.5 tsp cumin seed
2 large bay leaves (dried)
2 vine-ripe tomatoes (blanched, peeled, seeded, diced)
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp turmeric
1.5 tsp coriander
2 Tbsp plain yogurt
Salt to taste

Served with rice and naan
Yielded 3 servings

Tarka Dal (Spiced Lentils) [Attempt #1]

Recipe source: http://www.punjabi-recipes.com/recipes/174.aspx

Recipe result: Success

I eat meat, and I'm damn proud of it. But at the same time, I'm a firm believer in a balanced diet. So when stuff myself on TX barbecue one day, I try to balance it out with a night or two of eating vegetarian-ish. Lentils are perfect for those meals; they cook pretty quickly, and they're relatively hearty and high in protein.

Some minor alterations to the recipe:

1) I don't have a pressure cooker. So I put the lentils and water in a regular stainless steel pot, brought it to a boil, lowered the heat to medium and put the lid on for about 10 minutes.
2) I don't have ghee (clarified butter), so I just used a tablespoon of vegetable oil.
3) I forgot to add turmeric to the water when I boiled the lentils, so I just added the turmeric to the oil around the same time as the minced ginger and garlic.
4) The writer basically decided to let the reader figure out on his/her own what to do with the hing (asafoetida). I learned a while ago that in Indian cooking, a small pinch of asafoetida is the first thing you put into the hot oil. It doens't add anything to the flavor or aroma of the finished product, but word on the street is that asafoetida has antiflatulent properties. So, it's up to your discretion.
5) Similar to the asafoetida, the writer preferred to shroud the end use of the lime juice in total mystery. I just cut it out completely.

Aside from these, I followed the recipe as given.

My ingredient list:
1.5 cups of Masoor dal (pink lentils)
4 cups of water
about 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
pinch of asafoetida (optional)
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 medium yellow onion (about 3" in diameter), finely diced
1 Tbsp garam masala
2 vine-ripe tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded and diced
Salt to taste

Yields 5 or 6 servings.

Aside from a couple of items from the original ingredient list being overlooked, it was a straight-forward recipe and the end result turned out great. I guess the lesson learned this time is that lentils are surprisingly simple to work with. Basically, boil them and toss them into whatever you want to flavor them with.

South Indian Coconut Curry Chicken [Attempt #1]

Recipe Source: http://www.spiderkerala.com/kerala/recipes/ViewRecipe.aspx?RecipeId=259

Recipe Result: Flavor was... acceptable. Texture was an epic fail.

I'll be making all Indian dishes this week, and Sunday night I started things off with a coconut chicken curry. I settled on this one since it looked pretty authentic (no pre-mixed curry powder) and I'd never worked with dried, grated coconut before. I made a few changes to the ingredient list, just to yield a little less than the original recipe would turn out; not to mention some of it is pretty vague. I mean, "15 medium sized pieces of chicken." Way to be specific. Here's what I used:

- 1lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into small pieces
- 1 yellow/sweet onion, maybe 3" in diameter (I made thinly sliced half rings)
- 1 cup dried, grated coconut
- 4 large cloves of garlic
- 2 tsp, each, of coriander, cayenne pepper, julienne sliced ginger
- [forgot to buy red and green chilis]
- heaping 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 8 curry leaves
- a little more than 2 Tbsp of vegetable oil
- 1 cup water
- salt to taste (came out to maybe 2 tsp or more)

Yielded about 3 servings

I basically followed the cooking directions as given. For grinding the toasted coconut into a paste, I used about 3/4 cup of water and put it all into my food processor. That was the first mistake. "Grinding" in the processor didn't do a damn thing about the granularity of the coconut, even after letting the pot simmer for 20 min or more. That's what I mean about a step in a recipe being totally intuitive to the writer, but could be lost on the reader.

The other mistake was the 2 tsp of cayenne. I like my food spicy. But that much cayenne all at once while toasting the coconut kind of made it hard to taste-test for adding salt... and made it tough to breathe near the stove.

Lesson learned: Stick with coconut milk. Or if choose to use grated coconut again, use a big mortar and pestle to really smooth it out. As it turned out, the sauce the mouth-feel of sawdust suspended in water.

Mission Statement

I cook... a lot. I started cooking in my sophomore year of college, but it was mostly quick and easy crap that I could make quickly in the shared floor kitchen of my dorm. You know "college cooking," instant rice, hamburger helper, chicken breast in bottled marinades. I started cooking well in my senior year of college, when I had a tiny private kitchen in my efficiency apartment. But even then, time for cooking was really tight and the best I could turn out was intuitive dishes like pasta in Classico sauce with sausage and peppers.

My first summer internship was the first time that I really had that much flexibility with when I could go food shopping and how much time I could devote to working with an actual recipe. From then on, whenever I had my own kitchen and that much free time, I would try whatever recipe or cookbook I could get my hands on.

That being said, there's a lot of shitty recipes out there in the world. The recipe-writer may have had a good end-result, but the way that the recipe is written might doom the reader for failure. Like my boy Admiral Ackbar says, "It's a trap!"

That's why I'm starting this blog. My goal is to keep a journal of the iterative process of trying a recipe, making it truly work, and simplifying/optimizing it. And hopefully, this will get you to try some new things in the kitchen.

So remember, that next cookbook you buy or that next online recipe you find, there's a good chance that...