Classic Indian Cooking

Last night, the hubby and I had a bit of an Indian cook-off. I made Chicken in Onion Tomato Gravy (Murgh Masala) from Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking, a book we've owned for over a year and yet hadn't cooked from until last night. Ian made Saag Paneer using a recipe from FoodNetwork.com, courtesy of Aarti Sequeira.

It was a learning experience. I learned a technique called brown frying, which is a lot like caramelizing but in a lot more oil. Ian learned that he is fully capable of following a recipe, and he produced a better Saag Paneer than any I've ever had in a restaurant (it's not my favorite dish, so I'm not the best judge, but his--Aarti's--was pretty good) with no help at all. We learned that turmeric leaves yellow stains everywhere, especially when distributed through the spattering of oil.

It turns out, it's pretty easy to make Indian food at home. With Ms. Sahni's (and Ms. Sequeira's) guidance, it all turned out wonderfully, and since we love Indian food but have no Indian restaurant in town (until we move across the state in May... counting the days) we have a wonderful alternative. I have prepared a lightened version of Rogan Josh a few times from a light cookbook we picked up at Costco, most of whose recipes are woefully lacking in seasoning (thankfully an easy fix) and I've bought pre-packaged sauces that always disappoint, but now I don't have to worry about any of that. I might have to worry about some oil spattering, since it seems the heat levels are higher in some of these cooking methods than I'm used to (I cook with electricity... another thing I'm hoping to remedy soon), but since I've had turmeric, cardamom, and coriander in my pantry for a while now, I'm sure we'll soon be having Indian once a week.

Leftover Pie Crust

As long as I can remember, when making a pie, my mother would take the leftover scraps of dough, re-roll them into a flat amoeba (don't worry about the old adage not to roll a pie crust more than once--if it's a good dough and you're gentle with it, one more rolling won't hurt it), sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar, and throw it in the oven. This crispy bit of sweet and fat was often more popular than the pie, and my dad, brother, and I would descend upon it (I had to tear this bit from my husband's clutches to get a photo before it was all gone). Happy family, and no waste.

Brunch

It's only just beginning to feel (to me) like the new year has started. Those first couple vacation days, with my husband home and free license to loaf, don't feel like real time, but vacation time, and the new year is about making changes, right? Bettering oneself. At least for the first month or so. Which is partially why I just signed up for spinning and yoga classes through parks and rec. But like I said, the first couple days of the year don't count, calorie-wise especially. This has not been my stance in past years but I've spent the first couple (okay, three--but at least today I'm counting my calories to avoid overindulging) days eating French food and leftover Christmas fudge. So my view of the new year has become less puritanical and more relaxed. I don't want to spend 2012 chastising myself every time I slip up nutritionally or sleep in late or forget to work out.

Instead of dieting on January 1st, I made quiche.


I realized, as I was making this quiche, that I have been grossly misinformed about quiches. Mainly because, in my six-to-eight-serving recipe, there were only two eggs. The rest was blue cheese, cottage cheese (I used 2% though it was a Julia Child recipe), half-and-half (the recipe called for cream, but the half-and-half, 2% cottage cheese result was still wonderfully creamy),butter, salt, white pepper, and a little green onion. Of course. Quiches are custardy. They're not omelettes in crusts.

They are also delicious. This part I knew, but I chose the blue cheese quiche recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking because I had blue cheese in the fridge, and I never could have guessed how wonderful it could be. And it was so simple. I did vary the recipe a tiny bit (see my lighter substitutions, previous paragraphs), but mostly in technique. I used a tart pan instead of a flan ring. I did not press my filling through a sieve to remove chunks; instead, I whipped it all up in the blender, which proved a smooth and frothy filling. Julia's pastry crust--mostly butter with a dash of shortening to keep it from crumbling--was fantastic. It was possibly the best brunch I've ever had, and most certainly the first brunch I've ever made. I had bought kiwi the day before for a special New Year's fruit, and cut up an apple, and served it with bubbly cran-apple juice (no mimosas for us--the hubby and I are not morning drinkers).

But, though the quiche was delicious, it's gone now. The real new year is starting to gear up, with real obligations and deadlines and such. We won't be indulging in custard or pastry or custard in pastry until possibly Valentine's Day. But we'll be waiting patiently for our next chance.

On the Rise

I've heard it said that whatever you're doing on New Year's Day, you'll be doing all year long. Which means that in 2012, I'll be quite productive (fingers crossed). Even after sleeping in and staying in my pajamas until almost noon, I've also deconstructed and packed away Christmas, made a lovely brunch (I'll tell you about the quiche a little later), and baked an absolutely incredible batch of French bread.


To be fair, I started the bread the day before yesterday. It's Julia Child's recipe, from Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 2, and it requires a lot of rising. Because I didn't plan perfectly, my dough spent a lot of time in the fridge, rising as slowly as yeast bread can rise, and, maybe not rising enough. At least, the second two rises didn't seem as dramatic as Julia said it would be. But I pressed on, knowing that this was my first batch of French bread ever and as such unlikely to be perfect, and used the first method of steam infusion suggested in the book: a spray bottle (there is also a wet-brick method, but I was unsuccessful in finding a store that sold mason bricks until yesterday, and yesterday, they were closed). And then, after so much recipe reading, care and attention, I burned my loaves.


Not to worry. They may have been dark on the outside, but the crust was thick and crackling, and the bread inside so tasty (and webbed with the characteristic air bubbles French bread is famous for) that it was difficult to believe it was made of only flour, water, yeast and salt. But that's what French bread is. There's actually a law in France forbidding any bread with other ingredients to be called "French." And yet it had more flavor than the "sourdough" I'd been making from my Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. It wasn't kneaded long at all, but it seemed more glutenous than any of the long-kneaded breads I've produced.

It seems the secret ingredient in French bread (not to discount the many various techniques used in producing it) is time. It needs to sit and rise, not just double, but triple, and not just twice, but thrice. It needs to be left alone. It needs to rest. This seems appropriate, considering it's New Year's Day, a day when many of us lounge after a night's festivities. You see, I used to think that I never wanted to be lazy on New Year's Day, because it would set a lazy tone for the rest of the year. I thought if I slept in and watched cooking shows, if I didn't count my calories or jump immediately into work, there would be some sort of pattern set, as if January 1st might be the most important day of the year. But this year, I let myself rest. I lazed much of the morning away, drinking coffee and watching TV shows. And my rest did its job. It replenished me. And then I wanted to clean up the apartment, cooked and baked and took down Christmas lights. I was better for it. Just like my bread.

New Resolutions, New Recipes

One year ago, I was formulating a project in which I would broaden my palate and challenge myself to cook and eat new foods. I had recently read Jeffrey Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything and thought his quest to become a less picky eater was not only admirable, but something I'd had a long time coming. I borrowed a phrase from him for a title and created a blog. Thus, "A Perfect Omnivore" was born.

As you might have noticed (or not, if you're new here), I missed very few days for the first four months of this project--only one to my recollection but I haven't gone back and checked--and only a few more in the second four months, though my "new foods" were at times a bit uncreative. When the third four months came, I fell off the blogosphere.

You see, cooking something new every day is hard. You knew that. But it's not just difficult to commit to culinary feats each night of the week; it's expensive, wasteful, fattening, time consuming, and just not very plausible. Even Julie Powell, whose book (and the movie based on it) were, admittedly, inspirations behind my food blogging (and probably 1,742 others out there, to make a conservative guess) did not cook French food every night in her quest to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. She had Eric's Spicy Thursdays, when he would make things involving jalapenos and hot sauce to cleanse all that rich creamery butter off her palate. She would get into funks and miss days because she felt like it. But I thought, Hey--she's working a 9-to-5 job in New York, with a long commute, and has way less time to commit to food than I do, so of course I can do it every day. She also had less of a fear of getting fat than I do (she gained, naturally, 20 pounds over the course of the project; I refuse to do the same). And, while I don't have a day job, I do write, and do various editing projects, and I'm learning to play the guitar and crochet and in a few days I start rehearsals on a play--et cetera.

Excuses, excuses, right?

But, I must admit, I have missed food blogging. I have missed having a "good excuse" to be obsessed with food, even if it was unhealthy for me. So I've come up with a new project for myself, which is not nearly so intense, but might result in better blog posts for you to read (I hope) and less mania on my end. I do want to keep cooking new foods and using the many (many many) cookbooks I have sitting on my shelves. I also want to use the culinary knowledge I've accrued over the years to create new recipes, if I can.

So I plan to post at least once a week, chronicling my more leisurely culinary experiments, and one of a more intense variety: About once a month, I plan to give myself a Chopped Challenge based on interesting foods in the grocery store and/or foods that have been lounging around in my fridge/cupboards. I will give myself three "mystery ingredients" and challenge myself to create a recipe from them--not in a twenty-minute time frame like on the show, but with a fair amount of planning and forethought, so it's not just a waste of food.

Cafe Boulud

This last week, the hubby and I went to New York City as a sort of birthday celebration (yesterday, I turned 27; tomorrow, he turns 29), and one of my mom's former coworkers, Gavin Kaysen (you might remember him from Iron Chef America) is the executive chef at a restaurant in Manhattan, so of course we made reservations. I didn't realize, when we made these reservations, that his restaurant was between Madison and Park, or that I would be dining near real, live millionaires. I didn't realize that in certain cities, fancy restaurants are not just someplace normal people go to feel fancy; there are actually people who are fancy down to their cores. People who think that Belgian endive salad and duck confit ravioli aren't necessarily fancy food, but just food. Who joke about burning $100 bills (you think I'm making this up, but I'm not) at the table next to you. Who make you wish you were down occupying Wall Street instead of wasting a bunch of money on a meal that you didn't actually enjoy as much as your hole-in-the-wall-slice-of-pizza lunch.

Not that the food wasn't wonderful. The ravioli was delicious and beautifully presented. The dark chocolate mousse we had for dessert looked like a small piece of art. But the servers didn't seem to know what to make of me and my husband, obviously tourists, in outfits that probably cost less than the tablecloth. They weren't exactly rude, but they didn't exactly engage us, either. I don't blame them, really; we obviously weren't going to rack up a large bill, which means they weren't going to earn a very big tip. And while in the area I live in, "fancy" restaurant servers can probably afford to live in the nicest apartments around, or even pay a mortgage, in Manhattan I wondered how far out in the boroughs the busboy or the coat check girl had to live, or whether they had to hold other jobs. I've seen Sex and the City and Selling New York. I know, generally, how much fancy New York real estate costs. And even with generous tips, I doubt any server could afford it.

Basically, this made me feel really bad about being there. Normally, I would feel self-conscious, as though everyone there was judging me, but I don't think any other customers actually looked at me all night. And I was so busy judging them, I didn't care what they thought. Most of them barely looked at their food, drank their expensive wine like it was Diet Coke. It was like they didn't know how lucky they were to be eating there, to have the luxury of food that has been so carefully crafted and wine that has been aged for years in French oak--to have the luxury of affording it.

So the next day, we shared a street vendor pretzel and hot dog for lunch. Pub food for dinner. No guilt involved.

Parsnip/Pumpkin Beer Soup

2 tbsp olive oil
1 lb parsnips, peeled, trimmed, and chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
1 small onion, diced
1 stalk celery, chopped
two medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
one cup pumpkin beer
three cups water
two bouillon cubes
dash nutmeg
salt
pepper

In a large pot, heat the olive oil; saute onion, carrot, and celery about five minutes. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add parsnips and potatoes; saute about two minutes more. Add beer, water, and bouillon; bring to a boil, reduce to simmer; simmer about twenty minutes, until all veg are soft. Puree in a blender or with immersion blender. Garnish with sour cream (reduced fat works well) and croutons (homemade are always delicious), and serve with pumpkin beer.