Bollywood Idol

India is a strange place. Most of my impressions of India come from friendships with Indian-American peers, a handful of books by Indian authors, photos from friends' travels there, and secondhand tales from A on his work with Indian firms and colleagues.  And, of course, from eating.  I don't eat much Indian food, as I'm still getting to know it.  A handful of trips to an Indian buffet and an obsession with Trader Joe's veggie samosas, plus a feast of epic proportions while traveling in Bath, England, have shown me that this food is worth getting to know a lot better.

One of the most commonly known dishes, Butter Chicken (also known as Chicken Tikka Masala) is actually, if food blogs are to be belived (they are!) a UK invention.  So much identified with the UK that some call Chicken Tikka Masala England's true national dish, stemming from the Empire's long occupation of India and the cultural exchange that resulted.  So calling it "indian" food might be a misnomer, but it's certainly influenced by the spicy, colorful country. 

With a small portion of dough languishing in the fridge, begging to be made into naan, and four small chicken thighs seeking a recipe to call their own, Butter Chicken seemed a perfect solution to these food conundrums.  I investigated several online recipes before just deciding to go for it--they were either too easy or waaaay to complex.  Seriously, it's a curry, it doesn't have to be hard.  Plus, it doesn't have to be loaded with butter and fat...reduced butter to 1 Tbsp, removed chicken skin, used plain nonfat yogurt.  Way healthier in three short steps!

So, I seared chicken thighs covered in a spice mix, then cooked a sauce with tomatoes, onions, garlic and more spices.  I removed the chicken skin (the skin protects it during searing but I really don't need to eat it!) then let the thighs finish cooking begin poached in the sauce.

Perhaps I didn't totally remove the pot from the heat before stirring in the yogurt, so mine looks a little grainy.  But this is just cosmetic--it still tastes the same. Next time I'll probably saute or stir in more veggies--squash, peppers, zucchini all come to mind. So easy, so good.  This is definitely Indian for beginners--the spices come through as enveloping warmth, not heat, and the creamy tomato sauce is approachable, definitely not decidedly ethnic.  I would guess that most people wouldn't necessarily identify this as Indian or curry, either.  Plus, who doesn't love hearty food that's healthy too!

Necessity is the Mother of...Soup!

What do you do when you have 10 different non-analogous items that are hovering around going bad?  If you said throw them away, then you clearly have a lot to learn, young grasshopper.
No, you don't throw away perfectly good--or still pretty much OK--food.  That's wasteful.  Starving children in China!  Starving children on everywhere, actually.  Besides, we throw too much away, this culture of waste that I'm fully, guiltily a part of.  No, I knew that I could forge something out of the leftovers.  Macguyver, I'm not though.  No, I learned at the alter of another anti-waste crusader, my father, to whom anything was fair game for his favorite leftover vehicle--SOUP!

Having not grocery shopped for at least three weeks and needing to throw something together for dinner, lunch today, etc., I scrouged through the fridge to see what we still had left to eat.  I found:

2 shriveled jalepenos
1 fair-shape banana pepper
1/4 cup homemade roasted tomato salsa, which lacking chips to eat it with was languishing unloved in the fridge
1 overripe, starting-to-rot-in-a-spot tomato
1/2 a dried-out lime
1/2 of each a zucchini and a summer squash

Well, these things together sounded pretty southwestern/mexican, so I turned my thoughts to that direction and thought about what to do.  I had homemade chicken stock in the freezer, as always, frozen in "butterware" 2-3 cup portions (bonus hint: keep a gallon-size ziplock in the freezer and throw your chicken bones, onion scraps (but not skins-they are bitter), carrot ends and celery trimmings in it throughout the month.  When it's full, dump it in a stock pot, cover with water, and simmer for 2-3 hours, and strain--instant stock!). And I always have 6 or 7 cans of various beans in the cupboard to give substance (read: protein) to thrown-together meals. Lacking only tortillas from a basic tortilla soup, I forged ahead into deliciousness---with great success!

I'm an easy pleaser--I like almost all food, and I really like soup.  It is somehow both filling and light.  Although a hearty bowl of soup doesn't really fit with a hot, humid summer day like today, this soup is veggie-heavy and spicy, rather than gloppy or heavy.  Recipe after the jump.

Side note--the funny part about this recipe is that it isn't even what we had for dinner last night--I just made it to have on hand for lunch and to stock the freezer for future lunches.  I often find myself cooking two things at once--one to eat now, and one to eat later.  It's just how I work--always thinking ahead to my next meal....

Frizzle Rizzle

There is a lot of great, authentic Chinese food to be had.  In Chicago we have a Chinatown bursting with fancy Shanghai palaces, grungy oriental food stores, and tiny little mom n pop dive restaurants, the latter being probably your best bet at eating what real Chinese people eat.  Instead of the sugary, syrupy fried chicken concoctions we Panda Expressers call Chinese, real Chinese cuisine is very veggie and rice-heavy--and, to speak very generally about a cuisine that spans one of the world's largest and most populated regions, fairly healthy as well.

I don't really know that much about Chinese food, to be perfectly honest, except what little I glean from magazines, TV and the good old web regarding food in general. I surmise that Chinese food is extremely regional,with variations to be found in every village.  I think the southern "sichuan" food is more spicy and obviously coastal areas are focused more on fish--basically, you eat what's around you.  And, surprise surprise, I don't really have much of a point, except that most of us probably are eating versions of Chinese food that a Chinese person wouldn't recognize as supposedly indigenous to his or her country of origin.   And perhaps I might do my food education well to try to eat more of the real and less of the Panda.

With all that nonsense said, I love Chinese food--all Asian food, almost.  And I'm getting better about trying more authentic, less Americanized things.  Like green papaya salad and massoman curries at thai restaurants instead of pad thai and pad see eiu.  Baby steps, I know--watching No Reservations shows that even these are paltry cousins to their authentic counterparts.  But sometimes the "challenging" foreign foods, while not as instantly likeable to our western palates, bring a deeper satisfaction...

But then there's fried rice. I love you, fried rice, because you are so deceptively simple and so heartily satisfying.

Not authentic, the way we think about it, although I'm perfectly willing to accept that home cooks everywhere find ingenious uses for leftovers, a tradition I appropriate all the time.  If you have extra rice on hand (day-old or older rice works best) there are far worse ways to use it up than this one.  It's simple, satisfying, and surprisingly healthy, if you go easy on the oil.  A "recipe", if you could call it that, follows.

Used up some of last week's CSA garlic and zucchini, and a few old store-bought mushrooms--waste not.  Brought in a portion of rice for today's happy monday lunch, along with some CSA cherry tomatoes, carrots and green peppers.  Happy tummy.

This week's haul

1 bunch purple carrots, green tops removed
1 lb red/purple potatoes
1 lb cherry tomatoes--red, yellow and one lone purple
2 zucchini
2 summer squash
1 large heirloom cucumber
1 head green leafy lettuce

Summer's getting close to over, people! Although my CSA somewhat prolongs the inevitable.  I think I get to keep picking up my veggies until the second weekend in October.  And, if I could be so technical, summer officially runs through at least Sept 20 (maybe the 22nd) so please don't start bemoaning its end right after Labor Day.  I just can't stand to think that we only have 3 weeks left of this most glorious of seasons.

Although Fall comes after summer, and I love Fall. The smell of burning leaves, the chill in the evening air, pulling on a sweater for the first time in months, football games, pumpkins, the colors....maybe the end of summer isn't so bad after all.

Bueller?...Bueller?.....

So I've been a bit remiss these last few weeks in terms of posting...as in I haven't been.  Oh, faithful internet, you do not know it but in 2.75 weeks I'll be walking down an aisle and saying a couple of choice words, then hosting a giant party afterwards.  Needless to say, time seems short and slippery, and lazy days of cooking and thinking about food have involuntarily been ceded to planning, figuring out details, last-minute crisis-solving, and thank-you-note writing.  At least I actually like doing one of the items on that list...

In the future, fall months I hope to pick up more frequency and creativity and really build up the photos (and my food photography abilities, which are currently nonexistent.  C'mon, I use my camera phone half the time when I have a super-nice camera of my own) and to add a bunch of recipes, both my own and pulled from the stack of food magazines I've acquired through the years and can't bring myself to throw away.  Through these two pursuits, hopefully I'll beef up my actual cooking chops, too.  Or just get really good at lifting a fork...

SALSA, not the dance.

I just realized that I actually have readers, internet!  They have left comments, and I haven't been smart enough to realize it.  But yes, they are coming through!  Knowing that people are reading my nonesensical, rambling posts means that perhaps I'm not quite as nuts as I imagine I sound...

So what I really came here to talk about is salsa.  Yeshua has been making salsa these past few months and then tantalizing me with descriptions, although not tastes, of his masterly creations.  We had a conversation the other day about how easy it really is to make salsa, and how much better is almost always is than the canned/jarred stuff.  Realizing that all these words were true, and that I had no excuse for continuing to buy it, I decided today was the day!  Or, perhaps the grocery bag full of home-grown veggies that my wonderful, generous soon-to-be in-laws sent me home with on sunday, which included several pounds of tomatoes and hot peppers, were the deciding factor.

Regardless, I've had a recipe for Roasted Tomato Salsa bookmarked for as long as I've had Google documents, and a morning off from work hanging with my parents seemed like the right time to try it out, because I'm random like that.  You roast the tomatoes, peppers and garlic, then throw the slightly cooled veggies into a food processor with cilantro, lime, and onion, then pulse until it's salsa.  Easy peasy japaneesy.

And it's awesome.  Really, really easy and way better than even the "fresh" salsa you can get in the deli case.  You can taste each individual ingredient, but the whole is much better than each of the parts.  The fresh lime makes it vibrant, you can easily control the heat by removing or leaving in the peppers' seeds, and the roasting process really brings out the sweetness in the tomatoes while mellowing the garlic's bite.  And super easy.  The recipe makes about 5 cups--great to share, as I did with my parents.

Recipe after the jump.

This week's haul

In this week's basket...

1 big bunch purple carrots
1 bag mixed salad greens/baby lettuces
1 heirloom cucumber
1 zucchini
1 summer squash
2 green peppers

My parents were in town this weekend for a visit and my third bridal shower (I am very, very lucky to be surrounded with generous family & friends!)  My mom and I walked the 2.5 miles to the farmer's market to pick up this week's haul, and, having powerwalked so far, felt entitled to do a little extra shopping! 

The first stall we hit was the cheese stall--how can you not stop at a place that holds out a bag of cajun cheddar cheese curds and offers you a sample!?  Pups got his fair share of sniffs along the table's edge as we examined all the varieties...habanero jack; chipotle cheddar; dill havarti....but we settled on a horseradish & chive havarti, and kept moving.  We eyed a double-chocolate muffin to take home for dad, who was reading and enjoying  a lazy Sunday morning at home.  We got him some raspberries as well--our shared favorite berry.  And a few heirloom tomatoes rounded out our haul, consumed out $20, and filled up our bag...which we then got to cart the 2.5 miles back.  Totally worth it.