Well, it wasn't Meatless Monday this week, but it was Veggie Wednesday. I made a
vegetable curry, an Indian-type curry made with wonderful curry powder my mom
sent me. She got it at a great market somewhere in the Napa Valley area. I
can't remember exactly where or the name of the market (even though I've actually been there once or twice). The curry wasn't completely vegetarian because I used
chicken stock (actually Better Than Bullion dissolved in some water--love this
stuff), but it didn't contain any actual meat. You could substitute water or vegetable brother for the bullion to make this truly vegetarian.
I do not like garbanzo beans much at all. I don't like them in salads, I don't
like them in soups, I don't even really like hummus. I think it's partly taste
and partly texture. However, for some reason I like chickpeas (I prefer this
name to garbanzo beans, maybe because I think of garbanzo beans as being something you add to salads.) in curry. I think I like them because they pick up lots
of flavor from the curry, and they simmer long enough to be soft, so the texture
issue is moot.
I never would have known I liked chickpeas if it hadn't been for
an Indian restaurant called Deboo's (I think that was the name) that used to be
in the Bel Air shopping center in Natomas. The first time I went in, the owner
asked what I wanted to order. I said I wasn't sure, and he said he would make me
something good. He gave me tandoori chicken, some naan, a cauliflower dish, and
curried peas & chickpeas. I didn't think I'd like the chickpeas, but they were
surprisingly good. I was happy to expand my culinary vista.
Here's what I did to make my vegetable curry:
First, I cut a leek lengthwise and then thinly sliced it into half rings. I
sauteed these in a small amount of fat (equal parts olive oil & butter). After
the leeks softened, I added a tablespoon of curry powder and stirred that around
for a few minutes. I then tipped in a can of drained & rinsed garbanzo beans
and a small to medium potato cut into chunks. I dissolved a rounded teaspoon of
Better Than Bullion Chicken in 1.5 cups warm water. I poured that over the
beans & potato chunks. I let this simmer, covered, for about 25 minutes.
Once
the beans were tender & the potato cooked, I added some cornstarch to thicken
the sauce and added some zucchini. I let this cook a little while longer until
the zucchini was cooked but not mushy. I was going to add some spinach or
cabbage but my pan was full, so I just left it as it was. It turned out really
well. I served the curry over some rice. I think it made about 4 servings. Anyway, I have leftovers.
The other way I like chickpeas is as falafal. Okay, so it's not really the same,
but falafal is made with ground chickpeas. The first time I had a falafal was in
Boston. Some friends took me to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall, Middle Eastern grocery
near Haymarket. It's right along where they have the outdoor fruit & vegetable market during the warmer months. The shop is down about 5 steps from street level, and you have to duck
to avoid whacking your head on the top of the door frame. Inside there are shelves of groceries and bins of
spices. Tucked to one side is a food counter. You can get takeaway of various
types including shawarma & falafal sandwiches.
There is a little old
man who works behind the counter. I never did get his name, but everyone referred to him as Falafal Man (though not to his face). He makes the food, and it is delicious! For
the falafal sandwiches he takes a piece of flatbread (locally made), spreads on
some tahini & harissa, layers on some veggies including small wedges of dill
pickles (unexpected, but delicious), and then tops that with falafal which he smashes a
bit to break open and then wraps it all up. The sandwich is delicious, and
Falafal Man is such a sweetie. Several of us from Simmons went to see him right before graduation to
say goodbye and to get a last falafal sandwich. He came out from behind the
counter and hugged each of us. Next time I visit Boston, I am definitely going
back.
Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nostalgia. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Dinner With A Side Of Nostalgia
Pot Roast
Does anybody out there make pot roast regularly? I haven't made one in years, but I found this great grass-fed chuck roast recently at Noah's Ark in Placerville. There's just something homey and comforting about pot roast. It reminds me of my grandma (my dad's mom) who passed away a little over a year ago. There were three dishes that I think of as her specialties: "Spanish" meatballs, mustard/brown sugar pork chops, and pot roast. She made excellent corned beef and cabbage too, and her cole slaw (she always called it cabbage & carrot salad) couldn't be beat. She also made the best butter cookies. I've got the recipe somewhere. They were just light and crispy with a nice buttery flavor without being too rich. I can remember helping her mix up batches when I visited her.
When my siblings and I were kids, we would each go spend a week with grandma individually during the summer. During that week, the kid who was visiting was "The Big Cheese." My grandma and I would bake cookies, go shopping, and play tourist in Sacramento. She taught me how to crochet (I made endless hats, scarves, and socks for all the stuffed animals), to play cribbage, and to swim. Her neighbor had Corgis that were so cute. It's funny how much you remember when you start thinking about your childhood.
Well, this is supposed to be a food blog, so I'm writing today about the pot roast (pretty darn good) and the madeira cake (not quite a fail) I made yesterday. Once again, I didn't have a go-to recipe, so I cobbled together a recipe I found online with my mom's advice on how to proceed in the endeavor of pot roast making, and the result was quite yummy.
First I patted the chuck roast dry with a paper towel then sprinkled it with a little flour, salt, and pepper before browning it on all sides in a skillet with a little oil. Once all the sides were nice and brown, I transferred the roast to my Crockpot. I love this Crockpot; it was a gift from my sister one year for Christmas or my birthday, and it is just perfect. It's a perfect size, not too small and not too big, and it's not all gadgety with digital readouts and programmable controls. It has 4 settings: high, low, warm, and off. That's the beauty of a Crockpot, you don't have to do much. Once you start it, it's good on its own for several hours (or more) before you have to do anything. When the dish is done, you really only have to turn it down to warm or off and serve dinner.
The chuck roast went into the Crockpot along with a sliced yellow onion, a few potatoes, and some carrots. I threw in some garlic powder, parsley, and thyme for good measure.
Then I poured in one 12 oz can of V-8 and about a cup and a half of water. My mom suggested the V-8 because that's how she used to make it. She said she used it because it added the flavor of the vegetables, but not chunks of veggies we kids didn't like when we were little. I turned the Crockpot to high and left it for about an hour. Then I turned it to low and left it for another 5 hours or so.
When the roast was done, I turned the Crockpot to warm and then ladled out about 2 cups of the broth, straining it into a smaller bowl. I chilled this for a bit so I could skim as much fat off as I could before using it to make the gravy. When I made the gravy, I browned some flour in a dry pan. You don't really need to used oil or butter to brown the flour when making gravy (cream sauce is another story). Just keep the flour moving (I use a wire whisk) and the temperature of the burner at medium to medium-low, and it browns just fine. Once the flour is ready, pour in the hot liquid and stir like crazy. This works for me, minimizing the problem of lumps. I added a little salt and pepper and let it bubble for a bit before serving it up with the roast and vegetables. All-in-all a success, and and enough leftovers so I can take some for lunch at work tomorrow.
Madeira Cake
While the roast was cooking, I was thumbing through my new baking book I got just after Christmas. It is full of interesting recipes I'm not very familiar with. One of these is madeira cake. The description goes like this,
"This rich butter cake was popular in Victorian England. It was often served with a glass of Madeira, hence the name. It is a moist tender cake due to the high butter content." Sadly, the same could not have been said about my cake. The photo and description in the cookbook made it sound similar to pound cake only with some orange zest mixed in. Something didn't seem quite right when I mixed up the batter; it was more like soft cookie dough than cake batter. It seems to me now that the amount of flour called for might have been too much and/or the liquid ingredients should have been increased. Still, I persevered. I spooned the batter into the loaf pan and patted it smooth. I baked it exactly according to directions: 315 degrees (weird) for 50 minutes.
The cake was not a success. It was dense and on the dry side. The crispy texture of the outer crust was good, as was the flavor of the cake (I mixed in about a teaspoon each of orange and lemon zest.) The texture really needed help. My mom sprinkled some Amaretto Di
Saronno on her piece after the first bite, which helped with the dryness. The one thing that did go perfectly was turning the cake out of the pan. The recipe called for greasing the pan then lining it with parchment paper. Once the cake was baked and allowed to cool for about 10 minutes, it just slid right out of the pan, and the crust was smooth with no stuck spots.
After about an hour's mild disappointment, I had a brilliant thought: Trifle! The cake would be perfect to use in a trifle. Slices of cake or ladyfingers are layered on the bottom and part way up the sides of a trifle dish (if you have one. otherwise, a glass bowl). The cake is then brushed with liqueur or sherry then layered with fruit, custard, sometimes jelly (either Jello or jam), and topped with whipped cream. There are any number of variations. I will be making the trifle tomorrow night or possibly Tuesday, and we'll see how the cake tastes in that. I think it will hold up well; the wet ingredients (liqueur, custard) will soften and moisten it without causing it to dissolve into a soggy mess. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Does anybody out there make pot roast regularly? I haven't made one in years, but I found this great grass-fed chuck roast recently at Noah's Ark in Placerville. There's just something homey and comforting about pot roast. It reminds me of my grandma (my dad's mom) who passed away a little over a year ago. There were three dishes that I think of as her specialties: "Spanish" meatballs, mustard/brown sugar pork chops, and pot roast. She made excellent corned beef and cabbage too, and her cole slaw (she always called it cabbage & carrot salad) couldn't be beat. She also made the best butter cookies. I've got the recipe somewhere. They were just light and crispy with a nice buttery flavor without being too rich. I can remember helping her mix up batches when I visited her.When my siblings and I were kids, we would each go spend a week with grandma individually during the summer. During that week, the kid who was visiting was "The Big Cheese." My grandma and I would bake cookies, go shopping, and play tourist in Sacramento. She taught me how to crochet (I made endless hats, scarves, and socks for all the stuffed animals), to play cribbage, and to swim. Her neighbor had Corgis that were so cute. It's funny how much you remember when you start thinking about your childhood.
Well, this is supposed to be a food blog, so I'm writing today about the pot roast (pretty darn good) and the madeira cake (not quite a fail) I made yesterday. Once again, I didn't have a go-to recipe, so I cobbled together a recipe I found online with my mom's advice on how to proceed in the endeavor of pot roast making, and the result was quite yummy.
First I patted the chuck roast dry with a paper towel then sprinkled it with a little flour, salt, and pepper before browning it on all sides in a skillet with a little oil. Once all the sides were nice and brown, I transferred the roast to my Crockpot. I love this Crockpot; it was a gift from my sister one year for Christmas or my birthday, and it is just perfect. It's a perfect size, not too small and not too big, and it's not all gadgety with digital readouts and programmable controls. It has 4 settings: high, low, warm, and off. That's the beauty of a Crockpot, you don't have to do much. Once you start it, it's good on its own for several hours (or more) before you have to do anything. When the dish is done, you really only have to turn it down to warm or off and serve dinner.The chuck roast went into the Crockpot along with a sliced yellow onion, a few potatoes, and some carrots. I threw in some garlic powder, parsley, and thyme for good measure.
Then I poured in one 12 oz can of V-8 and about a cup and a half of water. My mom suggested the V-8 because that's how she used to make it. She said she used it because it added the flavor of the vegetables, but not chunks of veggies we kids didn't like when we were little. I turned the Crockpot to high and left it for about an hour. Then I turned it to low and left it for another 5 hours or so.When the roast was done, I turned the Crockpot to warm and then ladled out about 2 cups of the broth, straining it into a smaller bowl. I chilled this for a bit so I could skim as much fat off as I could before using it to make the gravy. When I made the gravy, I browned some flour in a dry pan. You don't really need to used oil or butter to brown the flour when making gravy (cream sauce is another story). Just keep the flour moving (I use a wire whisk) and the temperature of the burner at medium to medium-low, and it browns just fine. Once the flour is ready, pour in the hot liquid and stir like crazy. This works for me, minimizing the problem of lumps. I added a little salt and pepper and let it bubble for a bit before serving it up with the roast and vegetables. All-in-all a success, and and enough leftovers so I can take some for lunch at work tomorrow.
Madeira Cake
While the roast was cooking, I was thumbing through my new baking book I got just after Christmas. It is full of interesting recipes I'm not very familiar with. One of these is madeira cake. The description goes like this,
"This rich butter cake was popular in Victorian England. It was often served with a glass of Madeira, hence the name. It is a moist tender cake due to the high butter content." Sadly, the same could not have been said about my cake. The photo and description in the cookbook made it sound similar to pound cake only with some orange zest mixed in. Something didn't seem quite right when I mixed up the batter; it was more like soft cookie dough than cake batter. It seems to me now that the amount of flour called for might have been too much and/or the liquid ingredients should have been increased. Still, I persevered. I spooned the batter into the loaf pan and patted it smooth. I baked it exactly according to directions: 315 degrees (weird) for 50 minutes.The cake was not a success. It was dense and on the dry side. The crispy texture of the outer crust was good, as was the flavor of the cake (I mixed in about a teaspoon each of orange and lemon zest.) The texture really needed help. My mom sprinkled some Amaretto Di
Saronno on her piece after the first bite, which helped with the dryness. The one thing that did go perfectly was turning the cake out of the pan. The recipe called for greasing the pan then lining it with parchment paper. Once the cake was baked and allowed to cool for about 10 minutes, it just slid right out of the pan, and the crust was smooth with no stuck spots.After about an hour's mild disappointment, I had a brilliant thought: Trifle! The cake would be perfect to use in a trifle. Slices of cake or ladyfingers are layered on the bottom and part way up the sides of a trifle dish (if you have one. otherwise, a glass bowl). The cake is then brushed with liqueur or sherry then layered with fruit, custard, sometimes jelly (either Jello or jam), and topped with whipped cream. There are any number of variations. I will be making the trifle tomorrow night or possibly Tuesday, and we'll see how the cake tastes in that. I think it will hold up well; the wet ingredients (liqueur, custard) will soften and moisten it without causing it to dissolve into a soggy mess. I'll let you know how it turns out.
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