Monochromatic but Polygustative

My birthday dinner this year is brought to you entirely by Monica Bhide’s Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen. My friend L. came over and we picked a few things to make that required only a few additional ingredients to be purchased. I had been fixated on the garlic smashed potatoes for a while, and to go with that we chose cauliflower roasted with a fennel chili spice rub (which I’d made once before), and a tamarind chicken recipe adapted for tofu, because I’d been eating a lot of meat lately.

The cauliflower couldn’t be simpler. The spice rub is a mix of toasted fennel seeds crushed up with dried red peppers, black pepper seeds, and coriander. Toss it together with some cauliflower florets and some vegetable oil–

and roast at 400F for 30 minutes, tossing once halfway through.

Then for the potatoes, cook potatoes as for regular mashed, and mix in some melted butter. Then cook some mustard seed, shallot, garlic, and hot peppers (yay for a stash of jalapenos in the freezer!) in vegetable oil, mix in some shredded coconut, and then mash all that into the potatoes.

The result is very flavorful and not as cream-laden as traditional mashed potatoes (a welcome alternative, since Thanksgiving is just around the corner and we’re all bound to O.D. on butter and cream soon enough). Garnish with fresh cilantro.

And then, for the tofu. Saute some shallot and hot peppers in vegetable oil–

and add in some cubed tofu.

Cook, stirring, until it starts to brown a little, and then stir in a little turmeric.

Then turn off the heat and mix in some tamarind chutney–or, if you were planning last minute and live closer to an Italian gourmet market than to Kalustyan’s, a tablespoon each of tamarind paste and fig jam. A surprisingly good combination–L. and I were very proud of our ingenuity–and one that worked very well with the tofu.

When we put everything on the plate, I commented that we happened to choose three recipes that were all in a white/cream/yellow color palate–a white meal, as my mom would call it. But while they were maybe not so visually stimulating, there is a TON of flavor in these three dishes.

And then we O.D.’d on cupcakes from Crumbs for dessert. Because that’s what birthdays are really about.

Fast Food

What I really wanted to make tonight was this mashed potato recipe from Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen that’s got mustard seed and hot peppers and coconut flakes and sounds fantastic. But what it does not sound like is a complete meal, and I did not have the energy to make TWO dishes. So instead I turned to Deborah Madison once again, for her Indian-Style Saute of Cauliflower and Greens. The greens I had were kale and the greens from the actual cauliflower (they are edible, which I should have known intuitively but had to be told about on somebody else’s blog) so I altered the recipe by boiling them a bit ahead of time. (The original calls for spinach and watercress, which just need to be wilted when they’re added into the rest of the already-hot dish.)

In any case, you need some potatoes, and some cauliflower, and an onion, and a bit of carrot.

The onion gets sliced thin and sort of caramelized in ghee (or clarified butter).

The potatoes get peeled, diced, and steamed or boiled until tender.

The greens, if you’re not using something like spinach, should be cooked sort of al dente.

The cauliflower gets quartered and sliced thin, which is not how I’d usually cut it up. Brown it in more ghee/butter–

and then add in the caramelied onions and some garlic, as well as turmeric, cumin, coriander, and mustard seeds.

Chop up the greens, grate the carrot–

and then add them into the pan, too, with some salt and water (the cooking water from the greens works perfectly).

Cover it and let it cook until the greens are cooked through and most of the water has cooked off. Then finish it off with lime juice and fresh cilantro.

I was surprised by how NOT overwhelming the spices were in this dish. That seems like an odd comment to make–and I don’t mean it in a bad way–but it was my immediate reaction. My second reaction was, “Did I really just make this dish in less than an hour?” In the future, though, I think I’ll go with spinach for this one. I think there was too much brassica in one pot this time.

Mix and Match

I’ve had a bunch of recipes in mind for a while that I hadn’t gotten around to, until I found myself with an evening to myself on Saturday. They don’t all necessarily go together, or even make a nutritionally complete meal, but believe it or not, that’s not generally how I choose my menus.

First we’ve got skillet carrots with sage from The Italian Country Table.
Then Smitten Kitchen’s Jalapeno Cheddar Scones.
And finally, Roasted Cauliflower with Tahini Parsley Sauce from the Times.

It turns out they’re also not all very interesting to photograph, or very attractive in the final product (the carrots might be an exception there), but here you go anyway:

The thing about cooked carrots is that I’ve never liked them. Or I never thought I liked them. We did not eat them growing up, and so many people I know dislike them that I kind of assumed I hated them, too. I do NOT like sugary vegetables that are cooked with added sweet elements (like sweet potatoes with brown sugar–dude, that’s dessert, get it off my dinner plate) and carrots are often glazed in something like honey or brown sugar, so maybe that’s it. But alongside my presumed dislike of cooked carrots is an instinct to question those kind of presumptions. So when I saw this recipe, which says in the intro that it is an antidote to all those recipes that give cooked carrots a bad name, I figured it was as good a use as any for the seemingly endless supply of carrots we keep getting.

So. A pound of carrots, cut on the diagonal, along with a shallot and 8 sage leaves.

Cook them all in a skillet, in butter (I think it was butter, not olive oil…) until the shallot starts to brown. Then add some white wine and some chicken (or veggie, or whatever) stock, cover, and cook, until they’re done, I guess, and sprinkle on as much salt as you like.

They start to caramelize just enough to get sweet, but the wine cuts into that, and they are really delicious, I have to say.

Then onto the scones. Mince up a couple of hot peppers and saute them in butter for a couple of minutes. Then set them aside and when they’re cool, toss together with a quarter pound of diced cheddar and a tablespoon of flour. Meanwhile, mix up the batter, which is flour, egg, heavy cream, and I think baking powder.

Mix it all together, and then turn out onto the surface of your choice. Mush it into a rectangle (or whatever) that’s an inch or a little less thick, and then cut them into squares. Or triangles. Or use a biscuit cutter. Bake for 20 minutes at 400F, or alternately, freeze them first for later meals.

And then on to the cauliflower. This is romanesco cauliflower, which is practically too cool looking to eat.

Each little floret looks like a tower from the Sagrada Familia.

Anyway, you blanch it a little and then roast it in olive oil with salt & pepper. The sauce is easiest to put together in a cuisinart, I think–tahini paste, garlic, lemon juice, and a lot of parsley. Toss it all together and you’re set.

The Times‘s recipe specifically says you will have extra, which makes no sense to me. It’s not the kind of recipe that calls for, like, an egg, or something else that’s really hard to portion out if you want to make only 2/3 of the amount. So why not just reduce the amounts of everything? But in any case, the sauce is delicious (assuming you do not have a fear of raw garlic) so having extra isn’t really a bad thing.

So there you have it. I kind of lumpy, funny looking meal, but it tastes good and I enjoyed making it, and that is sort of the whole point.