This is an experiment I threw together the other day, so some of the amounts are guesses.
First, of course, I prepped all the ingredients. Then, I started by caramelizing two onions in a fair amount of peanut oil, adding a head of garlic towards the end. At the same time, I put the water, potatoes, and carrots in a stock pot and started it heating. Once I brought that pot to a boil, I kept it simmering for the rest of the dish.
Once the onions were ready, I put most of them aside (to use in other dishes) and left about 1/2 cup's worth in the skillet. Then I added the rather aged eggplant, and cooked it until soft, and added it to the stockpot, along with the spice mix, ginger, and tomato sauce.
Then I added the lamb and red bell pepper to the skillet, fried it until the lamb was done, added the sherry and soy sauce, reduced it, then added it all to the stockpot.
Simmered the stockpot for awhile (10–20 minutes) and then added the mint and started thickening it with the oat flour. When I was happy with its consistency, I stirred in the garam masala and removed from heat.
I had a few purposes besides just dinner when I made this. One was that I wanted to use up a bunch of vegetables that were getting old. Also, lamb was on sale and I almost never cook lamb for cjo, and cjo is rather fond of lamb, so I thought I'd give it a go. And then there were a few techniques that I wanted to experiment with.
So, given all that, I was quite happy when it turned out delicious! It was a bit on the hot side, but not so hot cjo couldn't eat it, so it was a resounding success.
Ate it with bread, though it would also go great over rice.
Mix ingredients together, and whip with a hand-mixer. This will last a couple of days in the fridge. The stiffer you whip it, and the heavier cream you use, the longer it holds. Of course, once it collapses, you can still use it, it just doesn't have the nice texture. It still goes great in coffee.
I feel the need to proselytize two things:
The first is that whipped cream has sugar and vanilla in it! I don't know about the rest of the country, but in Seattle there is this tendency for restaurants and cafes to use the "gourmet" version of something, such as whipping cream from scratch rather than using a premixed aerosol can. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact, it can be quite a good thing. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to actually make the from-scratch version, so, for example, they just whip cream without adding anything at all. Yuck.
The second is the difference between actual whipped cream, and nitrogen-flushed whipping cream. When you whip cream, you actually change the structure of the whipped cream, causing these long strands to form that give it its body. Nitrogen just fluffs it up by injecting an inert gas. Nitrogen-flushed can actually look really pretty, but for flavor and mouthfeel, whipping is the only way to go.
That being said, it doesn't bother me that restaurants and cafes use the nitrogen-flush method, it's a tradeoff of time and labor costs versus quality. Using that method is the right decision for most restaurants. But the point of making food at home is that you can make better food than you can get out, much cheaper. And quite often, spend less time doing it.
I have often purchased the Costco package of hamburger meat, only to then have to figure out what to do with it. I've tried a number of things in the past. Sometimes I've divided it up into packages and frozen them, raw. Sometimes I've made meatballs of the whole thing, cooked them, and frozen them. I've occasionally even tried to use the whole thing up, which is a bit on the difficult side.
One of the problems is that I really like hamburgers, whereas Carol doesn't care for them very much. Another problem is that while I like meatballs, I find them a bit of a pain to make in quantity.
I finally hit on the solution, which has been working quite well for us.
I buy the package on Friday, and take out enough to make hamburgers for myself all weekend. At some point during the weekend, I use some more to make a dish of sloppy joes, which we both like. The rest I fry up with onions, garlic, and some spices, which I then freeze in about 3/4 pound packages.
Then we have spiced, cooked hamburger meat, that we can throw into a pasta dish to add a quick bit of flavor and protein, whenever we want a fast, easy dish.
Then, and this is the hard part for me, I wait until we've used up all the frozen hamburger before I purchase another package so I can have another weekend full of fresh hamburgers.
I usually just fry up some onions and garlic, and then throw the hamburger in with whatever spices I want. I'll often toss some wine in once the meat has browned, and maybe some soy sauce.
I also drain a bunch of the fat off, so it's a not too-unhealthy addition to any other dish.
Keeping things like this around the house help me keep cooking when I'm tired in the evening, instead of just giving in and ordering out.
Flour can be somewhat problematic to measure. Oh, it's easy if you have a good kitchen scale – I don't, yet – but if you measure with scoops there can be a huge variation in quantity.
If you just take a cup measure and take a firm scoop out of the bag of flour, you'll get somewhere around 5 ounces of flour, but it's quite inconsistent.
My technique is, I fluff the flour with a fork before each scoop, scoop, then level the top with one swipe of a butterknife. This gives about 4 ounces per scoop, and is somewhat consistent, though still not as good as weighing.
A scale! A scale! My kingdom for a scale!
This is another recipe from The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, page 203. The recipe as given in the book:
There's a note that the asafetida refers to the yellow Cobra brand, and that if you use other asafetida you should reduce the amount by three quarters.
1.) heat 6 tablespoons (90 ml) of the ghee or olive oil in a large nonstick frying pan or wok over medium heat. When it is hot but not smoking, add the eggplant and fry, stirring frequently, until it is browned and offers no resistance to the point of a knife. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.
2.) Add the remaining 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of ghee or vegetable oil and raise the heat to moderately high. When it is hot but not smoking, add the ginger, chilies, and cumin seeds and fry until the seeds turn dark brown. Drop in the asafetida and seconds later the tomatoes. Stir well, then add the ground coriander, paprika, cayenne, black pepper and turmeric. Cook until the tomatoes are reduced to a sauce that separates from the oil (up to 10 minutes depending on intensity of your heat).
3.) Add the water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and add the eggplant, chickpeas, fresh spinach, salt, and half of the fresh herb. Cover and gently simmer, or bake in a preheated 325°F (160°C) oven, for about 30 minutes. If you are using frozen spinach, add during the last 10 minutes of cooking. The dish is now cooked, but you could cook it for another 1-1/2 hours if you want a sloppy joe consistency. Before serving, stir in the remaining fresh herb and the garam masala.
This is what I actually did:
I used 6 tablespoons of olive oil for the initial frying. For the eggplant, I used a bunch baby eggplant that I picked up at a local stand. Then, after removing the eggplant, I added 2 tablespoons of peanut oil and raised the heat, fried the ginger, chilies, and cumin until they were dark. For tomatoes, I used a can of tomatoes, since I didn't have any fresh. I prepped them in a bowl with the rest of the spices, and dropped it all in at once.
I used 2 cans of chickpeas and cilantro for the fresh herb, and fresh spinach. I covered and simmered for half an hour, added the rest of the cilantro and the garam masala, and served over brown rice.
It was delicious. I mean, I could taste the spinach and the spices, and that was good, but it also had this wholesome filling delicious flavor that I couldn't describe, that I'd previous gotten occasionally at Indian restaurants but had never managed at home before, like there was an essential nutrient in the food that my body had been craving.
One of the best things I have ever cooked, and with no meat, no onions, and no garlic. Amazing.
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