Soan Papdi (Version One)

I am currently staying with friends in San Jose where I was recently introduced to a heavenly Indian confection called soan papdi. There's no way I can accurately describe it. It's sweet, buttery, and very strongly flavored with ground cardamom. The texture is spectacular: light, flaky, and quick to dissolve on the tongue. What we tried was a packaged sweet but of course I wanted to know if mere mortals might be capable of making this delight in a home kitchen.

There appears to be one recipe on the internet, endlessly copied and pasted into numerous blogs and Indian cooking websites with little information beyond ingredients and basic cooking instructions. After a trip to the Indian market for exotic ingredients like besan and charmagaz, we were ready to give it a go.

Wheat and chickpea flours are mixed together and cooked in copious amounts of ghee. Meanwhile a sugar syrup comes to a boil and is eventually mixed into the ghee dough until "thread like flakes" appear, obviously key to that heavenly texture. Unsurprisingly this was the part that completely eluded us. We beat and beat but there was nary a flake to be found. Defeated, we spread the dough into a pan to cool, and topped it with freshly ground cardamom and melon seeds. The resulting sweet was tasty but nothing like what we'd hoped. I was surprised at how little information I was able to find. I would love to know more about the process by which threadlike flakes come to be. I definitely want to take another stab at this.

Central Asian Carrot Salad

It's funny how a carrot dish could start with turnips, but sometimes things work out strangely.

Late winter is hardly the high season for farmers markets but when The Spouse and I found ourselves unexpectedly free on a recent sunny afternoon we decided to include the lone east side winter market in our walk. As expected, greens featured heavily along with some lovely baked goods and some downright weird sauerkraut crackers.

Off to the side of the main action was the Hayat Farm stand whose offerings consisted of one lone table heavily laden with nothing but turnips. Normally I'm not a turnip fan but I really wanted to support this particular farmer whose family is one of the Meskhetian Turk refugee families who have recently moved to Portland and whose teens have studied in my classroom.

If you've read my not-food blog you'll have come across stories of these kids, some of whom have been among my most memorable students. They've not had had easy lives and I'm happy to support their communiy by buying their produce, even if that happens to be turnips.

Hayat Farm hands out recipes for much of their produce, but we couldn't get any suggestions about how to use the turnips as Farmer Idrisov's English is pretty minimal and my Russian isn't much better. But I did end up using their recipe for a carrot salad that was just delicious.

I don't think a person can have too many carrot salad recipes. Carrots are super nutritious, always tasty, and they keep well so they're always on hand at my house. This dish is flavored with deeply browned onions and their oil along with a liberal amount of ground coriander which give the dish an exotic twist. The recipe can be found here, at the end of a great article about Mr Idrisov and his family.

As for those turnips? They became a lovely curry courtesy of Mahanandi and they were pretty darned good. For turnips.

Best Food Book Ever

I know, that's a pretty subjective statement so let's just say that Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices is easily the best food writing I've read in a very, very long time. I thought I was going to read this one cover to cover in no time, but I forced myself to savor it like good chocolate. I rationed it out, a chapter at a time, going back for seconds and thirds as often as I pleased.

My knowledge of Indian cooking is so much greater after reading Eating India. Sure, we all know about the Mughal influenced North Indian specialties, but this book takes the reader on a comprehensive tour of numerous Indian communities starting in the author's own Calcutta and wandering all over the subcontinent. No recipes, but lots of interesting tidbits to chew on.

Chocolate Truffles

It's an annual thing around here: chocolate truffles for Valentine's Day. It wasn't quite as fun to make them on our own (we usually have the company of good friends) but The Princess and I had quite a lovely time making them on our own and tucking them into shiny paper wrappers.

Truffles don't take long to make. You still have time to make a lovely Valentine's Day gift if you hurry. The recipe is here. Make sure to use a chocolate that you really love. The coatings are up to you. I used ground toasted hazlenuts, finely ground coffee mixed with cocoa and sugar, and toasted coconut shreds. Give them a try and bring a smile to your valentine's face.

Chocolate Orange Cake

Don't you just have to love a cookbook with an entire chapter dedicated to chocolate cakes? Nigella Lawson's Feast has just such a chapter and it's filed with all kinds of delightful looking possibilities. Since my Fridays have just gotten considerably less complicated, I was able to sit a and plan and then cook a proper Shabbat dinner for the first time in a very long time. We even invited guests, which hasn't happened in I can't tell you how long. Clearly a cake was in order.

I'd long wanted to try the chocolate orange cake in Feast. I can't think of a better combination of flavors and I loved that this recipe included and entire orange, skin and all. The orange is boiled first to soften it then mixed with ground almonds, eggs, cocoa powder, and sugar. I topped it with some strips of candied orange peel and it was quite lovely. Not being super sweet or dripping with icing, the cake wasn't a huge hit with the kids but that's why I was able to enjoy the final piece as my breakfast.

It has a wonderful, slightly nubbly texture and a bright orange flavor above the chocolate. I hope you'll give it a try. Folks from my tribe might even want to keep it in mind for Passover as the recipe can be made kosher-for-Pesach. In that case I would omit the baking powder and soda, separate the eggs, and beat the egg whites until stiff before adding to the batter. That should work in terms of leavening. The recipe is here--Enjoy!

Dosas at Home

I think about dosas a lot. I love nearly every Indian dish I've ever tasted but I've actually dreamed about dosas which says something either about dosas or about me. I've been reading about them for weeks, gearing myself up to try making them at home. Most recipes have you soak rice and lentils, grind them together, and ferment them over a few days. Not necessarily difficult but planning is required. Planning isn't one of my strengths, sorry to say. I'd pretty well convinced myself that my homemade dosas wouldn't be worth eating anyway.

I was looking up a recipe on Bureka Boy's blog today, a yeasted roll with exotic flavors to serve with coffee (and I'll write about those soon, I promise) when I came across an old recipe of his for No Wait Dosas--just the kick I needed to finally try making my own.

No long-soaked lentils here--these are replaced by wheat flour. And rice flour takes the place of the soaked rice, making these a snap to whip up in the blender. I omitted BB's mustard seeds as I wanted those to flavor the filling. Grated coconut added a lovely nuttiness to the batter.

These don't have the lovely sourdough tang of a classic dosa, and mine didn't have quite the crunchy/chewy texture of the professional varieties I've tasted. But nonetheless, they were very tasty. I made an approximation of potato fillings I've eaten before, bright yellow with turmeric and speckled with green cilantro and black mustard seeds. The crepes take a bit of skill on the griddle, but you'll get the hang of them quickly enough. These came together in under an hour and that's with a pot of chana dal to serve alongside. Bureka Boy's recipe for quick dosa batter is here and my potato filling is here. I hope when you give these a try you'll get hooked, too.

A Little Something for the January Blahs

I am not at my best these days. My luxurious 3 week winter break is just a fond memory, all the kids' activities are back in full swing, and there's been a great deal of extra stuff needing my attention of late. As one might imagine, nutritious home cooked meals have been few and far between. I should be posting here more often but I can't imagine anyone needing to get the details on the burritos, pasta, and tuna melts that have kept everyone fed around here. Sadly, that's so often what it comes down to. My efforts to uplift my family's meals haven't come to much lately as we've just gone for the old standbys, food without fuss, just enough, really to keep going. Not what I envisioned for my family years ago when the introduction to Laurel's Kitchen regularly got me all fired up. Well, what is parenting all about if not dispelling illusions right and left?

Another oft-used cookbook back in the days when my kids were too young to complain was The Savory Way by Deborah Madison. Among the many treasured recipes this book contains is Smoked Chile Salsa, something I need to make a few times every winter. In her introduction to the recipe Madison writes:

This sauce is based on a Mexican sauce I like very much but that is almost impossible to find. Búfalo is illustrated with a picture of the charging body if a red buffalo, which is just about how it feels in your mouth.

The book was written way back in 1990 before Búfalo became easy enough to find in any town with a Latino population but I find this homemade sauce to be infinitely better even without the stylish little glass bottle. This isn't a tomato-y chip and dip kind of salsa but rather a rich, flavorful, slightly smoky, slightly tangy hot sauce to be served in small dollops. It's plenty picante but also delightfully full of flavor, and just the thing to add some zing to the boring, inoffensive kid food we've been living on. Burritos with tasteless canned refritos? This sauce will help. Stodgy home fries? You'll want this sauce. Another pan of macaroni and cheese? It won't make the boxed stuff edible, but this sauce will definitely do something worthwhile to cheesy pasta. My very favorite way to use it involves sautéing chunks of sweet potato in a bit of broth until tender and tucking them into a warmed tortilla with cheese, and home-cooked pinto beans. A nice drizzle of this smoky, tangy sauce sets off the sweet potatoes beautifully. Too bad my kids won't touch my sweet potato burritos with a ten foot pole.

The recipe is here. I hope it helps to liven up these cold, dull mid-winter days.