A tale of two curries

So, although Jake attempted to impose a "no new food" moratorium after seeing the mountain of St. Patrick's Day leftovers in our fridge, I got around that "regulation" by making a recipe I knew he would love: tofu tikka masala.

But, this post is called a tale of TWO curries, not just one. So, yes. I made a tofu tikka masla AND a chana masala. I adapted two web recipes here and here and followed one main caveat: if I don't have it, it doesn't go in.

Jake's curry

Emma's curry

Somehow, mine ended up a little too spicy, so I made a quick yogurt sauce with the sweet curry powder from Penzeys mixed with smoked paprika.

I also didn't have any garam masala on hand, so mixed my own a bit haphazardly. I also didn't have any fresh ginger, so relied heavily on my powdered. Pro tip: measure your yogurt for the tikka masala. Mine just got plopped in until it appeared to be the right color, but then tasted heavily of yogurt. I jazzed it up with about a teaspoon each of cumin, coriander, tumeric and sweet curry powder.

Both were super delicious, but kind of needed a veggie aspect. I think next time I'll try to attempt a spinach or palak paneer type side dish. But, both curries were not a terrible first try.

Happy St. Paddy's 2011

Strange as it may be, St. Patrick's day is one of my favorite holidays of the year. Not personally being of Irish descent myself, I consider myself to be close enough, as both sides of my family have Irish in them.

The last few years, I've gone all out trying to perfect my corned beef and cabbage dinner recipe. The last two years, I have simmered the beef until they're nearly done, then baked to finish with a brown sugar and Guinness or brown sugar and whiskey glaze.

St. Paddy's 2010

St. Paddy's 2009

So, this year I decided to up the ante a little and cure my own corned beef. I found a method for this on ruhlman.com last year, about two days into the leftovers of 2010's feast. I decided that this year, I would try attempt this process.


I now live very near to a Penzeys Spices store, which is both awesome and terrible. Every time I stop by, it's at least a $20 trip -- just for spices. Again. Awesome and terrible. I stopped there to pick up pickling spice (it smells amazing)

Ruhlman's recipe explains that the pink curing salt isn't 100% necessary, but I didn't want to skip any steps at all. In the spirit of buying local, I decided to try and get this stuff nearby, but found my neighborhood butchers were out of it. I ordered a few packets of this stuff online:

I started with three briskets, and put my kimchi bucket to good use to hold the meat and the brine.

I followed the recipe for the brine on Ruhlman's site exactly, put it out on the back porch to cool, then filled my kimchi/corning bucket up to the brim. These little guys went into the fridge for 4 days (1 day shy of Ruhlman's recommendation).

On Friday, the day before our St. Paddy's day party, I freaked out, worried we wouldn't have enough corned beef or cabbage. So I ran to the store and bought three more corned beef briskets to simmer.

I followed your basic simmer and wait recipe for both the home-corned and store bought briskets, and dumped a bottle of Guinness into each pot. The same pots of water-turned-stock and Guinness were used for the cabbage (of which I had also freaked out and purchased way too many...)

But eating my corned beef and cabbage dinner was too damn exciting, and I forgot to take a photo of the whole thing. However, as usual, dear friend Wendy comes through again with a wonderful photo of the meal:

The big win from this year's St. Patrick's day dinner was finally nailing down the recipe for a brown sugar and Guinness glaze. I made a big pot using 1 1/2 cups brown sugar, 3 Guinness extra stouts, and 1/4 cup corn starch slurry. The corn starch is the key to helping to make the reduction silky rather than just sticky.

Here it is drizzled over my Monday morning corned beef hash:

#LetsLunch: Spring small bites edition

This month for Let's Lunch, our group mashed up two ideas: small bites for March Madness and spring recipes for spring.

I'm really glad we pushed back a week, because it allowed Minneapolis to thaw slightly so that it actually DOES look a bit like spring here.

To me, nothing says spring like radishes, which I've really only started to eat in the last year or so. I went to Trader Joe's looking for something creative to pair the radishes with and found a nice piece of "honey chevre." It sounded delicious and I thought the nice floral notes of honey would balance with the bite of radish.

My original intention was to do some kind of puff pastry wrap or layer on toasted baguette. But, as many of you know, I'm recently engaged, so therefore am trying to cut back on white carbs, such as toasted baguette or buttery puff pastry.

Enter mini phyllo cups. My new best friend, at 25 calories for a serving, compared to 170 on the puff pastry.


Problem solved. And, these little bites are delicious, spring-like and super easy.

Let's Lunch is a monthly meeting for food bloggers and is the brain child of Cheryl Tan. Our group chooses a date and a theme, then we all post our recipes on the same day.

If you'd like to join us, we'd love to have you! send a Tweet to us using #letslunch (I'm @emmacarew).

--

RECIPE:


Ingredients:
1 bunch red radishes
1 package of mini phyllo cups (there were 15 in the package I bought)
1 log honey chevre (or any tasty soft cheese -- I found mine at Trader Joe's)
1 scallion, dark green parts (chives would also be tasty)

* Set the phyllo cups in a tin pie pan or on a baking sheet. Preheat your oven to 350
* Wash your radishes and slice off the tops and bottoms. Slice them on a mandoline, or very carefully using a paring knife. If they are larger than a quarter or so in diameter, cut them in half.
* Slice the cheese and use clean fingers to press about 1/2 tsp into the well of each phyllo cup.
* Bake the cups for 6-8 minutes until the cheese is melty.
* Press the radishes into each cup (I used my slices to make "fairy" wings -- like on a cupcake)
* Sprinkle with sliced scallions or chives.

Check out the other #letslunch blogger's offerings this month:

Linda's Breakfast Cookies, at Free Range Cookies
Ellise's Bite-size Black Pepper and Strawberry Scones, at Cowgirl Chef
Karen's Sushi Sushi, at Geofooding
Cheryl's Popiah, at A Tiger in the Kitchen

More links to come as I find them!

"whoopsie" pies - an accidental success

Now that I'm home on Mondays instead of Saturdays, I try to make my day off a mix of a few things: relaxing and occasionally staying in bed until noon, running my errands, and doing some serious damage in the kitchen.

A few weeks ago, I decided to do another test run on the cakes I'm baking for a friend's wedding this summer. I was pretty sure I had locked into a cake recipe, but wanted to try another just to be sure. I chose this recipe from Pioneer Woman.

You'll notice the title of this post isn't "really awesome test run cupcakes." So, clearly a few things went wrong.

First, I somehow ran out of cupcake papers, so I was forced to use my silicone cupcake tray. I'm not a huge fan of this, because it usually makes squat little cakes rather than nice fluffy ones.

Next, and more importantly, I somehow managed to leave the leavening agent out of the cake batter. So my first batch of "cupcakes" came out like little hockey puck cakelettes. I halved the baking soda in the recipe and added it for the second batch.

My second batch stuck to the silicone pan and were mostly ruined, until I decided to lop off the bottoms and just use the tops to make whoopie pies.

So, I sliced all the little flat cakes in half, and paired them up along side the more cake-like tops of the actual cupcakes. I whipped a batch of the peanut butter mousse I will probably use for the wedding this summer and my "whoopsie" pies were born.

 

The  slightly smaller ones are the ones without baking soda, and the larger ones on the upper right are the more cakelike ones. 

Overall, they were still really delicious. I think I like my original whoopie pies recipe better but this was definitely a decent way to save this recipe. 

PEANUT BUTTER MOUSSE FILLING:
Mix 1 stick of butter with 1 cup of peanut butter on high. Slowly add 1 tsp vanilla and about 2 cups of powdered sugar.
If filling is too crumbly, dribble up milk one teaspoon at a time. Add 1 more cup of powdered sugar, or until fluffy.

LetsLunch: Lucky recipes edition

OK, I'll admit I *knew* it was LetsLunch week at some point last week but when Friday came around I totally spaced...

We decided our February LetsLunch date would be "lucky" foods, in honor of the lunar new year celebration during the first-ish week the month.

 

The lunar new year is kind of a weird thing for me. In the last couple of years, I have learned more about my Korean heritage, so I know the basics of  traditions during the Korean New Year (Seollal)-- I've just never actually put them into play. 

What's definitely clear to me is the importance of eating tteok guk for luck in the new year. This suits me perfectly, since tteok guk (Korean rice cake soup) is one of my very favorite Korean foods.

Some Korean recipes call for beef stock (I used my pho broth last January) but I really like to make mine with a mix of kelp, bonito flakes and dashida (Korean beef stock powder).

I forgot to take photos this month when I made tteok guk last week, but there are step by step photos here and here.

Korean Rice Cake Soup - (2 big bowls or 4 appetizer size)
Ingredients:
1 pack bonito flakes (about 2 TBS)
4-6 pieces kelp
2 TBS dashida (Korean beef stock powder)
1/2 to 1 cup sliced beef (marinate in 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1 scant TBS each: sesame oil, rice vinegar, sugar)*
2 cups sliced rice cake** (tteok guk tteok -- as opposed to tteok bogi tteok, which are shaped like tubes)
3-4 eggs, beaten
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp toasted sesame seeds, divided
2 sheets kim/nori (seaweed sheets -- the kind for sushi or kimbap), cut into matchstick size strips
2 green onions, sliced thinly

Directions:
- Bring 8 cups of water to a boil. Add bonito flakes and kelp. Boil 10-15 minutes.
- While broth is boiling, fry bulgogi until rare to medium rare (the meat will continue cooking in the soup).
- Strain the broth to remove the bonito and kelp. Return to stovetop and whisk in dashida.
- Bring the broth back up to a boil and slowly add the rice cake. When the rice cakes float they are done (about 3-6 minutes, longer if they were frozen)
- Use a slotted spoon and remove the tteok (if you do not think you will have leftovers, you may skip this step). Toss the tteok with the sesame oil to keep from sticking.
- Keeping the broth at a boil, slowly pour in the beaten egg. Count to 10 (seriously, all the way to 10) then use a fork or chopstick to make egg ribbons. Cook 1-2 more minutes.
- Split the tteok and beef into bowls, then ladle the broth over. If you did not remove the tteok from the broth, split the sesame oil in each bowl too.
- Garnish the tteok guk with strips of nori, sesame seeds, green onion and lots of freshly cracked pepper.

Notes:
* I often use leftover bulgogi I already have, so the amount varies. But each person should have 1/4 cup of meat at the minimum up to as much as you have (no more than 1 cup... be reasonable!)
** I like a lot of tteok in my tteok guk! You might increase this to 3 cups if you like a lot too.

--
LetsLunch is a monthly meeting for food bloggers and is the brain child of Cheryl Tan. Our group chooses a date and a theme, then we all post our recipes on the same day (or at least we try to... mine is 3 days late this month).

If you'd like to join us, we'd love to have you! send a Tweet to us using #letslunch (I'm @emmacarew).

Find the other posts on Cheryl's blog or by searching #Letslunch on Twitter.


See you next month for "Thank Goodness It's Spring!" recipes.

"A Tiger in the Kitchen" launch day: family recipes

Today I'm part of a group who are posting their favorite family recipes to honor our friend Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, who releases her book, A Tiger in the Kitchen, today.

Cheryl put her talents as a cook and a journalist to good use for the book, learning recipes and family stories from her relatives in Singapore. She has asked us to share a family recipe today in that spirit of family and cooking.

My recipe is a simple one, and one I've shared before. My Nan's Irish Soda Bread is still one of my very favorite recipes and it's one that I learned when I was first starting to cook, back in my tiny college kitchen, with a crappy temperamental and bakeware that had seen finer days.

The first time I made Nan's bread was a complete failure -- but it had nothing to do with the quality of my kitchen. No, in my haste to copy the recipe from the e-mail my aunt had sent me, I had written 450 degrees instead of 350.

Miraculously, the bread wasn't too burnt, just hard as a rock. A big "350" is now scrawled across the top of the recipe in my notebook, so I never forget.

Nan's Irish Soda Bread:
4 c white flour
1/4 c sugar
1 tsp salt
1 heaping tsp baking powder
1/4 stick  butter broken into tiny pieces
optional: 1 c soaked raisins (I never use these -- always had to pick them out as a kid)

1 2/3 c buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp baking soda

Mix the first 5 ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix the wet ingredients separately with the cream of tartar and baking soda, then add slowly to the flour mixture.

Knead gently and shape into a large round loaf.

Place on an oiled cookie sheet, cut a 4" X on the top, and brush with beaten egg.

Bake 60-70 mins at 350 F. Cool for as long as you bear to wait (I can usually only wait about 10 minutes!).

Serve with butter and enjoy!

---
So, raise a glass to Cheryl's success with the book. I'll try to update the post with other family recipes as I find them. (scroll to end of the post)

Go home and cook a meal with your family tonight. (or stop at your favorite locally owned bookstore and pick up Cheryl's book, like I am)

Call your favorite grandparent, aunt or uncle and ask for a family recipe. Share one of your own with your son, daughter, niece or nephew.

I hope I'm fortunate enough to have an adventure similar to Cheryl's with my Korean birth family some day. In 2007, I learned the basics of Korean cooking from the cook at Ae Ran Won home for unwed birthmothers. The stress of everything else going on with my birth family meant I didn't get the chance to cook with my halmonie and ohmma and learn from them. Hopefully I'll get that chance someday.

Update: here's a running list from Twitter of recipes posted so far:

Kitchen sink pasta

This past weekend I finally got to see my brother play hockey at his home rink at the Academy, in Colorado Springs. Unluckily, our flight got delayed by four hours coming home. I really needed to go grocery shopping, so by the time I was headed for home, I was hungry and unwilling to cook. Sadly for me, it was about 9 p.m. on a Sunday. Nothing was open (which we learned the hard way... driving from place to place).

So, a quick peek at the pantry staples turned up a few things I was pleasantly surprised to find and threw together to make the following dinner.

When I saw my pasta (I found this in a bag in the back of my cupboard.... my pasta supply dangerously low), I felt like I was living out Adam Robert's recent "Weary Traveler's Spaghetti" post. I dressed the pasta with a little oil and some chili flakes.

With the water from the pasta, I blanched a couple handfuls of spinach:

And defrosted a some frozen shrimp from Trader Joe's:

I also found a half jar of pasta sauce in my fridge. The shrimp and sauce were lucky finds. I probably would have used diced tomatoes out of a can otherwise.

All of that, paired with some leftover Italian pesto bread I found in the freezer made for a perfect late night dinner after a long, and fairly crappy, day.

So, no... this didn't turn out to be an "everything but the kitchen sink" dinner. It's actually something I would probably make again. I tried to throw chop up some zucchini to toss in, but after a long weekend and then some, it was feeling a little squishy and funky. Fresh vegetables are NOT a pantry staple when you haven't grocery shopped in a couple weeks.

#LetsLunch: Healthy recipes for 2011 (January)

After really falling off the bus and going a little treat crazy following Thanksgiving, I'm definitely ready for some focus in 2011 on my eating and exercising.

Last year was a great start -- I really learned how to lose weight for the first time. When I went to the gym 5 days a week, tracked calories and drank 1 liter+ of water a day, I lost weight. Regularly. In all, I lost 20 lbs last year (net loss, only 14 lbs, after having to re-lose 6 lbs when we moved).

So, I was excited to land on the theme of "healthy recipes for the new year" for this month's #LetsLunch.

#letslunch is a monthly "gathering" of food-loving writers from all over, hosted by Cheryl Tan, of A Tiger In The Kitchen.

We agree on a date and a theme, then each blogger presents his or her recipe on the chosen date (today).

If you are interested in joining, please send a Tweet using the hashtag and introduce yourself!

I made a dish from my friend Thea today. She's been dating my brother for about six years now, and we made this together last month for my mom's birthday.

Thea's Quinoa with Veggies Salad:

                                        

I made the quinoa salad yesterday for an office potluck -- at the office. I started the quinoa in the rice cooker, and prepped the veggies while it cooked. This is 2 cups of pre-rinsed quinoa and a quart of low sodium chicken stock.

About 1 teaspoon of salt and powdered garlic (don't judge me.... I was doing this in an office kitchen. Thea used real garlic -- about 2 cloves)

Then let the rice cooker work its magic.

Next, grab your veggies. I used two bright bell peppers and 1 1/2 zucchinis. Thea also uses asparagus, which I'm not a big eater of, so I skipped it here.

If you're cooking at home, dice the veggies and pan fry with the garlic, maybe a little onion until tender.

If you're cooking in an office kitchen, grab the Foreman (yes, we keep a Foreman Grill in our kitchen at work), slice the veggies and grill them.

Toss your grilled and diced veggies with the cooked quinoa, season with some smoked paprika, freshly cracked pepper, fresh chopped parsley and feta cheese. This recipe makes a pretty large bowl-ful!

Check out everyone else's offerings below:

Linda's Mesquite Date Muffins at Free Range Cookies
Steff's Frittata attempt at The Kitchen Trials
Cheryl's Watercress soup at A Tiger In The Kitchen
Mai's Spicy Roasted Cauliflower at Cooking In The Fruit Bowl

Sopes, a first attempt

I recently picked up a small sack of masa corn flour thinking I would try to expand my cooking horizons a bit. Pupusas maybe, or after seeing a few recipes posted on blogs I frequent, sopes.

So, I consulted Serious Eats, The Kitchn, and Googled for another recipe.

Shaping them turned out to be the most difficult part. The dough was easy enough (although, I suspect it would have benefited from resting a bit)

Little guy on the griddle, getting warm on both sides.

When hand shaping didn't seem to stick, I tried pushing them into muffin tins, or shaping them around little sauce bowls. Mostly this worked, but a few tore and had little holes in them.

The other issues is that I've never actually had a properly constructed sope, so I had little to go on.

But, there they are, after being warmed, shaped and fried on the bottoms. Not too bad for a first attempt...

The final product, black beans, carnitas, a little cheese, cilantro, salsa and avocado.

This was also the first time I had made my own black beans (from dried beans). This took way longer than I expected but they were super delicious with a little tequila and lime mixed in.

I think I will definitely try these again, but if anyone has made these with any success or has tips, please let me know!!!

Sopes dough: I used the recipe on the back of the bag (but about 1:1 masa to water + pinch of salt).

Carnitas: slow cook pork (I actually oven roasted this one, because they were already sliced) with garlic, onions and cumin. Pull apart and chop into small pieces.

Salsa: 1 large can of tomatoes, drained, + garlic, onion, sugar, splash of vinegar, cumin, jalapeno in a food processor. Chill before serving

Black beans: soak beans over night, cook for 1-2 hours in a crock or large sauce pan. Smash about 3/4 of the beans (I used a mortar and pestle), then stir in about 1/3 cup tequila, salt to taste and squeeze 1-2 limes over. Continue cooking until soft.

Holiday gift recipes: a rundown

I've been a little remiss in my holiday baking this year (partially owing to the fact I'm trying hard not to eat holiday baking this year, and partially owing to the fact I'm about to go to my 5th potluck in 6 weeks)

But, here's a quick look at some of the holiday gift cooking/baking I've done:

First up, and probably most successful in terms of a) money spent, b) time spent and c) ease of process.

Homemade spiced rum: I found a recipe on this on Serious Eats a few weeks ago and immediately decided to make it. About half of the spices, most people will already have in their kitchens. I thought I had almost all of them, but then realized a few more had fallen casualty to the move over the summer.

I started with a 1.75 bottle of Bacardi Gold and used the following: cloves (whole), all spice (whole), nutmeg (ground), star anise (whole), black peppercorns (whole), cinnamon sticks (I broke mine in half), vanilla bean (1 - split down the middle, seeds scraped), ginger (two 1-inch sized pieces, peeled) and the orange peels from half an orange (remove the pith really well with a paring knife).

When I measured out as the Serious Eats recipe called for, however, I thought it looked pretty pathetic, so amped up to about 1 teaspoon of each spice. After tasting the second day, I removed about half of the orange slices. They had given off a sweet, fragrant taste quickly, and I didn't want it to overpower the rum.

The whole project, after straining, made about 4 of these pint-sized flasks. I loved really cute glass ones on Crate and Barrel, went to Ikea to search for similar ones, and ended up finding these at the Rainbow Foods liquor store (they're "unbreakable" plastic), so I attempted to cheer them up with a fabric wrapping.


Next up, a recipe I found on The Kitchn blog: hot cocoa on a stick. I thought, oh fun! how cute! I bet those will be a snap!

This is basically 8 oz of tempered chocolate, mixed with powdered sugar and more cocoa powder to make it fudge-like. You pipe into molds (I spooned mine in since I only had 6 molds to fill), stick a stick in it, and let them harden.

Sounds, oh-so-easy.

I took a few liberties with the instructions, such as using candy canes for the sticks (it's a blizzard, people... you do not run to the store in 17 inches of snow for coffee stir sticks) and using these cute snow-men molds that I picked up instead of standard size ice cube trays.

The chocolate only made enough to fill these six molds, then the chocolate wasn't firm enough to hold up the weight of the candy canes.

Then when I went to pop them out, I accidentally broke two canes!

So, in all, not the favorite in terms of ease or gifts produced. But, the four little snowmen that DID survive are going to be a cute hostess gift for a friend.

Last, but not least, this is a repeat from holiday 2009: Brady's Christmas Caramels.

These are far less nerve wracking to make the second time around. Melt 2 stick of butter, add 2 1/2 cups brown sugar and a pinch of salt, stir in a cup of light corn syrup then a can of sweetened condensed milk, and keep the pot moving.

The caramel cooks for between 15 and 20 minutes, and needs to be stirred constantly. If you have a reliable candy thermometer (that you have used before with good results), clip it to the side of your pan and aim for about 240 F -- soft ball stage.

If your candy thermometer sucks (like mine) use it as a rough estimate, and start cold-water testing the candy at about 220 F. Take a fork, swirl a few drops of the caramel into cold water. The caramel is done when it holds it's form (a soft ball) when you retrieve it from the water.

Be careful though, because the caramel will continue to heat a little, even after you turn off the heat, so don't let it go past "hard ball" stage -- or it will be tough to cut up your candy (see last year's post on hard caramel)

Instead of using a buttered pan, I took a big sheet of parchment (bigger than the 9x9 pan) and laid it over the pan with a little oil spray. Pour the candy onto the paper and spread into the pan. This makes it incredibly easy to remove the caramels later (just lift the paper). Cut into 1 inch pieces and wrap with parchment.

This requires a little more work than the rum but a 9x9 inch pan makes a TON of caramels and they are a really fun treat. This remains one of my favorite holiday recipes!! Thank you SO much for sharing it, Brady!!