Ah Potatoes! Indian Cuisine Takes Them To A New Level

I love potatoes. I can’t think of a way potatoes could be cooked that I wouldn’t like. Fried potatoes, especially in the morning are a favorite. I thought I’d had fried potatoes just about every way possible until I was browsing a favorite Indian market and discovered a small packet of Potato Sagu. It was a spice mixture for a fried potato dish. My love of potatoes and my enjoyment making Indian dishes came together on this one.

The next morning, a gray Sunday, I peeled and set three medium Russet potatoes on to boil. It called for 250g (which a Google search revealed was about 8 ½ oz. or two small potatoes. I decided that three medium would, for me, take the spices and ingredients quite nicely and I was right, besides, I wanted more potatoes.  While they simmered, I chopped 1 med. onion and 1/3 of a jalapeno (without seeds). In a small dish I placed a teaspoon of crushed garlic (I keep a jar in the fridge).

The unusual element in this recipe was 1 tsp. Bengalgram Dahl. A discussion with a young fellow shopping the store informed me that it was dried chickpea. For the recipe it would be ground to a powder. Not having dried chickpeas, but having some Masoor Dahl (split orange lentils) on hand, I put some in my Krups coffee grinder dedicated to spices. (Don’t put aside this delicious dish for the lack of a teaspoon of something. If you have lentils or dried peas of any kind (dahl) grind enough for the recipe. Even though purists might cringe, I believe that for this element, because so little is used, flour, esp. whole wheat flour, could be substituted. Also, as Indian dishes often include such a variety of spices and textures, if  you leave this out, it wouldn’t be missed.)

I put the 3 teaspoons of the Sagu Masala called for into a small dish (3 to 4 are called for and for a first time with Indian dishes I tend to go with less.) The ingredients in the Saga Masala (spice mixture) are: Sugar, Coriander powder, Red chili powder, Turmeric powder and Asafoetida (a white powder offering flavor reminiscent of leeks that available in Indian markets made from a perennial herb grown in Afghanistan and processed in India).

I set out mustard, lemon juice and put a few tablespoons of water in a dish.

This is how I’ve learned to enjoy making Indian dishes. I set out the ingredients ready to be added then things go together very easily and at the right time.

Draining the potatoes, I mashed them with a hand mixer right in the kettle, adding some butter (not called for).

With my large electric frying pan on med high, I added about a Tablespoon of cooking oil. When hot I added a teaspoon of mustard and the ground dahl stirring it together as it began to fry. Very quickly, I added the onion, garlic and jalapeno stirring the mustard, dahl throughout. I fried the mixture until golden brown and the onions were soft. To this I added the Sagu spice mixture fully stirring it in. It called for lemon juice and salt to taste. With no experience, I added about 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and about 6 shakes of the salt shaker. Finally, the potatoes. I folded the mashed potatoes into the onion, ginger, garlic, spice mixture and began to fry it. Ah, the aroma. It called for water "to bring it to the right consistency". Not knowing the “right consistency”, I began adding a little and watching the texture of the mixture. I ended up adding a couple tablespoons water. (Next time I'll save some of the potato water for this).

If you eat this right away, it will have more, spicy heat. As it sits awhile, the “heat” mellows but there is a nice tang. If you like heat, add more of the pepper than I did.

I put some in a dish, topped it with a bit of butter for richness and it was one of the best potato dishes I have ever tasted. It had personality; it had dimension. Wow is all I could say. What a treat. My husband suggested that it would be a great basis for a hash. I happened to have a piece of left over roast in the refrigerator so chopped it up and incorporated it into the potatoes. I'll have a hard time making a hash the old salt and pepper way again.

These potatoes would make a perfect side dish for an Indian or any other meal where potatoes would be a good addition. I could see making them ahead and serving them for breakfast.

If you are used to American fried potatoes made with salt and pepper, maybe some chopped onion, and are concerned about the “taste” of all those spices and the ginger, you will be amazed. They blend; none of them are overt or intrusive. They create an overall pleasant complexity of taste. If you don’t like hot spice tang, leave out the pepper.

If you love potatoes like I do, though, I challenge you to extend your potato repertoire into an Indian Potato Sagu.

(No, you don't have to locate an Indian market (though you might love the adventure). Amazon.com has the Potato Sagu I used: Potato Sagu on Amazon)

Thanks, Mom, For Your Festive Spirit

 

Hey Mom, the holidays are coming and I wish you were here. You loved holiday festivities, holiday decorating, holiday gift giving, holiday cooking...really, holiday anything. And, you didn't limit your enthusiasm for the "big" holidays. You'd be pleased to learn that Americans have embraced Halloween. It's second only to Christmas in the money spent these days. Remember the black cat costume Donna made for me.She stuffed the tail with Kapoc that wafted all over the house. I'm amazed and impressed you felt comfortable letting me take off in the dark of night to wander the neighborhood with my friends for Trick or Treating. I'm glad it was a less frightening world back then, and I"m glad you had confidence in me. 

 

Not having children, you'd be sad to find that I've been hardly aware of the holidays. I think you'd have been sad I didn't have children, too, though you would have never told me. I have intentions of doing some decorating but have rarely gotten around to it. This weekend, though, I'm going to buy a large pumpkin and set it on the steps. No, I won't carve it. I know, that confounds you. If I remember there were no pumpkins adorning our house that hadn't been carved with triangle eyes and noses and a smile with missing teeth. Just like you felt that pictures needed to have people in them to be worth taking, you couldn't see a pumpkin without needing to give it a face.

 

I want you to know, Mom, that I have a friend who embraces and enjoys holidays in ways that remind me of you. She has boxes of holiday decorations like you did. She enjoys adorning her home with special holiday reminders of the past, like tree ornaments celebrating earlier years in her children's lives. She just began decorating for fall, the Halloween/Thanksgiving part of the year. The picture of her unusual wire and beaded pumpkin shape with votives surrounded by turkey's was creative, beautiful and something that would have lit up your eyes and convinced you that here was a person 'after your own heart'. You would have enjoyed her, Mom, and she would have appreciated you and understood your love of holidays.

 

I remember the year that the BIG Christmas gift to the whole family, plus Grandma and LD, was tickets and hotel accommodations to see the Ice Capades in Spokane. Wow, I remember staying in a hotel room for the first time in my life, how exciting and exotic it felt. I think I remember that treat more than the actual Ice Capades.

 

I loved the lights that always adorned our house at Christmas. I remember the year you bought a stuffable life sized plastic Santa from that little catalogue filled with odd and sundry things. Stuffed with newspaper, you sat him out on the bench in our yard. Then, as the story goes, Daddy came up with the idea of putting Santa's feet in a bucket with some dry ice. The Christmas-inspired humor made the neighbors laugh and won you third place in the town's home decorating contest. That began a tradition that, every  year had the whole town driving past our house on the tour of decorated homes as you vied for top prize and won it a couple of times. I can still see the picture from the newspaper of you and Daddy holding up your first place trophy. You took holiday decorating more serious than most. 

 

Be it Valentines Day, Fourth of July, or Halloween, our house did not go unadorned. Easter Baskets, well planned pranks on April Fool's Day, you loved it all. In honor of, and as an inspiration from you, when Donna's boys graduated college, as a present, I sent them each a large box filled with some beautiful holiday decorations and dishes to help them start their own holiday traditions as they began their adult lives.

 

As the holiday season approaches I think of you often, Mom, and that is good. How our lives have an impact on those left behind is through memory. Though I wish we could have built more memories together as adults, I treasure my memories of you, your kind heart and your festive spirit.

 

 

 

 



An Experience of Many Pleasures

Estate saling with friends, is an experience of many pleasures. On a sunny day in Seattle the first pleasure was driving through neighborhoods different than the familiar trails of my life. Trees and flowers abound reflecting the creativity and love of nature amidst the people who inhabit this city. It reminds me that life goes on in different ways all around me. When you walk into the "estate" of the sale that awareness occurs on a more minuscule level. It's like seeing someones life unfold with clues to their loves and hobbies and pleasures everywhere.

The homeowner of the last of three sales today was a writer. She even published a book of her own. She and her husband traveled extensively (I found a map of London for a friend who goes there often and a map of Seattle for our car). I was pleased to find a tea towel emblazoned with the Lancaster Squadron of WWII. One of the members of my writing class was a part of it and has written extensively about his wartime exploits, he'll be surprised and pleased with this towel that wouldn't mean much to many. The couple in this home loved movies and classical music. Their pleasures, though, were eclectic as there were Cd's of blue grass music and other genre's, as well. Funny, at the home of these cultured and obviously wealthy folks I found an unused Dirt Devil, perfect for my small space. I also found a book explaining the new IPhone I bought, a book of words authored by Wm. F. Buckley and a classy, black leather unused lined book. I love empty books and have a small collection. And this home provided something I've been looking for, a plain small kitchen timer. I left behind some beautiful place mats in a 40's esque flower design, alas, I love the design but wasn't sure what I'd do with the placemats. I just realized I left in the car the Liz Claiborne black crocheted purse I snagged and an oversized mug with a reddish brown lined design.

There were fewer clues in the second "estate", a single level, 1970's era home in a wealthy neighborhood. It had a unique, 'mother-in-law-apartment built in. We heard there'd been a bidding war for the place. They were actively Christian with a line of books on the subject followed, ironically, by a book, Understanding Tax Loopholes. Ah well, my father-in-law always said, "You'll never meet an honest rich man". My friend was thrilled to find a kit for splicing line, a skill she's been wanting to learn, plus a book of knots. Dweller in a small space that I am, I loved the  collapsible plastic  tub I found. That 'estate' also had dishes, not what I'm after. I am, though, on the lookout for unique vessels for flowers. Besides the plastic tub I found an oven-safe fish shaped dish in an attractive blue. I might keep it or it would be a cool container for a flower arrangement to take as a gift to someone. The 'Gig Harbor' tea towel I found in this home would be a fun item for an acquaintance who just bought a home there. And, turning a corner into the kitchen of this house sat a huge, attractive roasting pan, just the one my friend had been looking for to do a 25 lb. turkey comfortably.

At the first estate, the least refined of the three, I was thrilled to find a favorite book in hardbound, Gavin de Becker's, The Gift of Fear, also a book I haven't read of his, Fear Less. It's kitchen was abounding and gave up a new garlic press enabling me to store garlic in the refrigerator and press at will. We'll see how it goes. I love garlic accouterments and have many I've found over time at estate sales. I found a medium sized metal mixing bowl that will hold up on the boat, It's my third metal bowl, I love them but they're expensive at the store. The kitchen also had a new box of plastic storage bags and a new serrated knife. It wasn't a high quality knife but I need one in my kitchen drawer for bread. I got two oversized mugs in a periwinkle blue, a color that I love. They were left in the car, thus out of the picture.

We enjoyed a yummy lunch of breakfast at The Breakfast Club on Lake City Way. It, like each 'find' at the sales, was a treat. Breakfast only, home-made corned beef hash, platter sized pancakes, perfect Eggs Benedict and home-made rustic hash browns that will bring me back, for sure.

What fun to share these experiences with like-minded friends who enjoy each other and share a love of the treasure hunt.

Have a Salad Adventure

For many years, I never looked at cooking as an adventure, but thank goodness that changed. My husband’s love of food and talents as a cook excited me about food. Then the gift of my learning about Indian cuisine piqued my interest further in the art of melding ingredients into tasty delights. For some years now I’ve been enamored by the deli counter at Puget Sound Consumer Cooperatives (natural food stores through the Pacific Northwest). They do amazing things with salads. I’ve been known to reverse engineer several of their salads as the ingredients are on the labels. Then I discovered that they will kindly print out and provide a copy of a salad’s recipe upon request. The recipes are in amount that may yield 10 lbs. but, hey, I can do simple arithmetic.

Sometimes I wander over to the Fremont PCC and browse. They have the best buy on Patak’s Curry Paste, a staple for my Indian food adventures. Their vegetable department is beautiful and tempting. I particularly love the bulk food section. I’ve got recipes for salads that include unusual grains. When is the last time you made a salad with Faro? It’s a chewy form of wheat and makes for a great texture. I’ve learned to love Quinoa mixed together with a tangy Italian dressing I make, chopped cucumber and chopped tomatoes. 

The other day I needed a diversion so I wandered PCC. There in the deli counter was a new salad. I tasted it and loved it. It had some ingredients I didn’t own and for which I had no other recipes. I realized,  though, if I owned them I could remake this salad a number of times. It’s a Saturday morning, breakfast is completed and I indulged myself in concocting my new salad. I’m munching on it now. It’s as tasty as I remember and the first time I’ve created something including miso.

My new and tasty salad Sesame-Miso Cucumber Salad has toasted sesame seeds, miso, rice vinegar, honey, hot water, toasted sesame oil, and red pepper flakes blended together into which chunks of English cucumber is marinated.

So, the next time you are at PCC or another market with diverse and interesting salads in their deli, have fun, reverse engineer the salad, ask for the recipe (or check on the Internet) I found a version of the salad at this site: http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/sesame-miso-cucumber-salad-50400000111965/
so who knows from where it emerged. I used 1/4 cup sesame seeds, 1/4 cup miso, 2 Tablespoons of vinegar, honey, hot water and sesame oil and 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper.

Photo: John Autry; Styling: Cindy Barr

Arroz con Pollo...The Role of Savory Rice Dishes In Our Lives

Arroz con Pollo, a phrase I remember from high school Spanish class. Rice and Chicken came to mind this week. I have a jar of Classico Alfredo Sauce that I just discovered is one year beyond the expiration date, alas. Before I noticed that, it had inspired me to a dish that I’m planning to make for dinner making. I've decided to go ahead with my dish and make the Alfredo sauce from scratch. (I just looked up a simple recipe ¼ cup butter, 1 cup cream, 1 garlic clove and 1 ½ cup grated Gruyere cheese and parsley which I'm omitting.) Anyway, on with my dish, I’m boiling some rice, Basmati because I have it, and I’m crockpotting on a whole chicken seasoned with Johnny’s Seasoning to be ready in 6 hours. Toward evening I’ll sauté an onion and some celery, cut chunks of chicken and mix it into the onion and celery sautéing in butter, then I’ll mix together my Alfredo sauce, sautéed onion, celery and chicken, and the rice. It’ll be a basic savory chicken and rice dish, rare for me to make.

 

Savory rice dishes are anomaly amidst our favored cuisine. I can hook my husband with the Alfredo sauce (and some shredded, toasted Gruyere on top) but it’s an iffy dish for him. Why? Because neither of our mothers ever made a savory dish including rice. We both remember rice with milk, sugar and raisins and, once in a while, rice pudding. I've wondered why with all the casserole, gravy type dishes so popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s. We both wonder why our mothers had never discovered the meal-extending potentials of rice. Once for high school home economics class I remember making Spanish Rice. My adventure stood out in my mind so much because, first, I never cooked, and second, it was a savory rice dish.

So, high school came to mind on two accounts, Arroz con Pollo from Spanish class and my actually cooking something in the early years of my life.

My late found love of cooking documented in this blog is a testament to the inspiration of my husband who shared his love of food and cooking and to special friends from India who helped me think of food in terms of a cuisine and of cooking as interesting food adventures rather than merely having food for sustenance.
 

A Breakfast On The Boat

It’s a beautiful sunny day, the lake is blue and a peaceful smooth, a perfect day for my husband’s quintessentially favorite breakfast which he hasn’t had in a very long time - a veal chop, two four-minute poached eggs, toast and coffee. I happened to be perusing the meat department of Safeway when they were stocking the discounted section. There they were, two veal chops. (Ok, here’s the caveat, my husband is the biggest animal lover of all time having loved a menagerie of pets but it not a vegetarian. Whatever our meat politics, they were there and they would have gone to waste.)

This is how you pull off a perfect breakfast on a boat that allows only one electric appliance at a time. Coffee made, I crushed a couple of garlic cloves readied for the butter in which I would brown the chops.

I brought a small pan of water to a boil readying it for the eggs.

While it was coming to a boil, I lined a cup with plastic wrap, carefully broke an egg into it then gathered the top and secured with dental floss I keep in the kitchen for this purpose. I readied two eggs in this manner.

Turning the water off, I heated the frying pan. in the hot pan I melted a couple tablespoons of butter and added the garlic for a minute until it started to brown then spooned most of it out so as not to have burned garlic. Then, I seared the chops, browning them beautifully.

 Off went the burner, on went the toaster oven to 400 degrees and in went the chops to finish cooking. They didn’t take long to reach the desired temperature so carefully measured with my new digital meat thermometer. Off went the oven and on went the burner to bring the water back to a boil.

Into the quickly reboiled water went the carefully wrapped eggs. The timer on my cell phone set to four-minutes guaranteed perfectly poached eggs. When the bell rang, off went the burner and into the toaster oven went two slices of 15 grain toast.

I spooned the eggs carefully out of their wrapping and onto the plate next to the perfectly browned chops. The bread nicely toasted, I turned out a beautiful plate of a chop next to two perfectly poached eggs with toast and butter.

SHARED TRADITIONS

SHARED TRADITIONS

By Marilyn Michael

 

Click here to listen to the essay, Shared Traditions

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My grandparent’s kitchen was the hub of their small house. Taking up a whole house end, it had an amazing-to-a-child trap door that led to a musty dirt-walled basement lined with shelves of canned peaches, and pears, dill pickles, apricot preserves and other assorted jellies and jams. The kitchen’s window looked out on a full city lot sized garden from which my Grandfather would emerge with corn to be husked, shiny fat pea pods to be shelled and other fresh food like my Grandmother’s favorite-turnip greens. By the time I was old enough to store memories, the wood and coal stove had given way to electric and the icebox was now a refrigerator, but my Grandmother still had eggs and cream delivered by a local farmer.

Every Christmas of my childhood was spent in this simple, inviting house in walking distance from my own. There were family traditions, often involving food. Christmas Eve was a buffet and always included my two favorite dishes, brown beans and ham bone and Grandma’s potato salad. We opened our presents that night and Christmas day was spent enjoying them and preparing a traditional feast of turkey, ham and all the trimmings.

One Christmas Eve tradition was a treat but always seemed a bit odd for my family. No one drank alcohol and milk was something had ice cold with a meal or plate of cookies. On that night every year, though, they made Tom and Jerry’s all around. A rare bottle of whiskey would appear for the adults and the kids would enjoy vanilla poured straight into the hot milk thickened with a powdered sugar and egg batter. A dusting of nutmeg gave it an exotic taste as it went down smooth and warm. I’d savor the smells of the nutmeg and vanilla and wonder why we had this yummy drink only once a year. It just didn’t occur to my family that the Christmas Eve tradition of this sweet, hot milk drink could be enjoyed at other times.

As an adult, I stayed close to middle class culinary roots and never tried hot milk drinks outside of a couple Christmas Eve attempts at Tom and Jerry’s. When coffee became a culture declaring basic drip passé, I began drinking mochas. The steaming hot milk and sweetness of chocolate brought memories of the creamy milk drink of my Christmas Eves. The presence of coffee, though, somehow made it different. But, it was comforting and exotic in a similar way. And, they even had freshly grated nutmeg on the counter.

When a new libation called Chai began appearing in coffee shops I never tried it. Not having been raised on tea, I had never developed a taste for it. I vaguely remember my Aunt Mame sipping tea from china cups, but she was an anomaly in my coffee-fanatic family. We had sturdy percolators that sat on stovetops with little glass toppers for a view of the perking brew. Dad had an odd-seeming habit from his farm family upbringing of sometimes adding a few eggshells in the coffee grounds to “take the bitterness out”. We were definitely coffee people. Even after retiring, my father kept the tradition of morning and afternoon coffee breaks, usually with a sweet treat, often pie.

As an adult, two women who had grown up in India became my close friends and offered to teach me to make some of their traditional dishes. Developing a taste for this cuisine opened my mind to food traditions other than the basic comfort foods of my youth. I was eager to try it all. I learned to make Tandoori marinades, vegetable dahls, meat and vegetable curries, rice-based pulaos, coconut sauces for fish, spicy chutneys and I discovered a store that made heavenly garlic Nan, a delicious flatbread to accompany the dishes.

One day a new friend from Pakistan shared that his favorite food memory was the Chai his mother would always have for them. He offered to make it for me. Though concerned the element of tea would preclude my enjoyment of this libation, I looked forward to trying it. He used loose black tea that came in half-inch strings, not the powder filled tea bags that characterized, for me, a cup of tea. Into the boiling water went the tea, and then brown sugar, whole cloves, chunks of cinnamon sticks, and small rounds of fresh ginger. When the milk and cardamom powder were added to the boiling aromatic brew, it foamed up impressively. Then, his Mom’s secret, several fifteen-second removals of the pot from the heat and reboiling.

The aromas grabbed me. This was clearly not the watery, tepid brown drink I thought of as tea. He strained it and poured me a steaming cup. I was in love. Cupping my hands around the mug I was transported to exotic lands and at the same time back to my Grandma’s kitchen on Christmas Eve. It was lightly sweet and creamy smooth. And, beyond the nutmeg and vanilla of my Tom and Jerry memories, its spice blend was exotic and yet comforting. How lucky he had been. He’d enjoyed this amazing treat year around. It was his favorite food memory; I’m sure in a similar way that I look back fondly on those Christmas Eve cups of hot sweet milk and nutmeg.

 

Sam Khurshid’s

Chai Recipe

Makes 5 cups

Ingredients:

3 cups water

2 cups milk

5 rounded teaspoons black tea (one per cup or

       1 tea bag per cup)

5 whole cloves (for ten cups he used 15,

       traditionally it’s two cloves per cup)

5  -  ½ cinnamon sticks (one per cup)

5 teaspoons brown sugar (one per cup) or to taste

5  - 1/4 inch thick slices of 1” round fresh ginger,    

       unpeeled (one per cup)

1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder (just 1/2 teaspoon

       for the entire batch.)

Instructions:

Bring water to a boil. Add black tea. cinnamon, brown sugar, cloves, and ginger. Boil for  2 minutes then add milk and cardamom. (It expands in pot, watch it.) Bring back to boil, take off heat for 15 seconds return it to heat and boil. Do this twice more. Strain off the spices and tea. Serve. (This can be made with equal parts water and milk or all milk.)