Eggs n’ Potatoes Curry

Filed Under Eggs, India - Kerala, Potato, Side Dish - Gravy | 32 Comments

It’s been raining potatoes here in the blogosphere lately. That is because 2008 is the International Year of Potato. Wow, a whole year devoted to the spuds! Recently Sra wrote that she has used up all her potato memories, but she did have enough memories to fill about a dozen posts… That got me thinking about my relationship with the spud, and I realized that sadly I may not even have enough memories to fill one post!

Growing up, potatoes were these large ugly cubes in sambar with the weird texture and no specific taste that I struggled to avoid getting on to my plate. The rule in my house was, if it is on the table, it gets in your plate and if it is in your plate, you eat it. So as much as I hated sambar then, I had to have it, only thing I could do was to try and stop the potato and eggplant pieces from landing on my plate. The only other potato dish I remember from back then is something which was simply known as “masala” as in Poori-Masala.  Rolled inside a hot poori, the masala was quite bearable, I think I might have even liked it a bit. I am sue there were plenty of other dishes, like stews and cutlets where potatoes were used, but I don’t think I really cared. As long as the pieces were small enough, I wouldn’t even sense their presence.

But everything changed after I was introduced to a wonder called Finger Chips some time during my college days. Finger Chips is what we called French Fries in India. I was totally addicted to the deep fried goodness from the first bite. And after coming here, there are all types of potato goodness that I have grown to love - french fries, mashed potatoes and hash browns to name a few. I also learned to add potatoes to my meat dishes and started making baked potatoes and potato wedges as quick sides. I love potatoes now, even the large pieces in sambar are okay!

Wow, I somehow managed to fill a post with enough potato memories, who knew I had all these untapped memories inside me… Anyway, this egg and potato curry is a classic Kerala dish, that we used to have with appams at home, and I am pretty sure my mom cut the potatoes into really tiny pieces, because I remember this dish, but don’t remember the potatoes!

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Mutton Biryani - Kerala Style

Filed Under India - Kerala, Lamb or Goat, Rice Or Biryani | 45 Comments

We have ongoing arguments in our household as to who the better cook is. Now we all know there is really no argument there but I have to admit that there are a few dishes - when I say few, I mean single digits - that Siv is better at. For example he makes the best fish curry in the world, and I am not exaggerating. He also makes some mean crab dishes too. With chicken, mutton etc we both have our own masterpieces, but if it was an iron chef competition, my cuisine will reign supreme I am sure. Well, modesty is not one of my strongest qualities. We even do some iron chef style competitions once in a while, where we pick an ingredient for the night and each cook one dish. There are no judges or prizes or anything like that, but it sure is fun.

When it comes to biryani, it still is an open issue as to whose is better. Our biryanis are totally different in taste, technique and appearance. He makes the authentic Tamil style biryani in the pressure cooker, a truly one pot dish. I have a few different biryani recipes, but my favorite is a Kerala biryani very loosely based on a recipe from Flavors of the spice coast, and it is a multi-step, multi-pot process. We both love each other’s biryanis, but each still believe our own version is better. Well you be the judge, Siv’s version was blogged long time ago, and here is my version of Mutton Biryani - Kerala style. Don’t panic seeing the large set of ingredients, and the long list of ingredients. I have been making this for a long time, and have simplified the process as much as I can over the years.

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Young Green Mango Pickle

Filed Under Chutneys and Dips and Pickles, India - Kerala, Mango | 44 Comments

There is nothing like the sight of a fresh green mango to bring back the nostalgic memories of a happy Indian childhood. Unfortunately after coming to the US, the only real sour variety of mangoes that I could find were the greem frozen ones from the Indian stores. It works in chutneys and such just fine. But those slices are so sad looking, with a tired texture once defrosted, I use those only in emergencies, when the cravings for the green sour mangoes get unbearable. It never gives the satisfaction of the fresh ones though.

But last Friday night, we went on an Indian store raid, hunting for Gongura leaves to make Sailu’s Gongura Mutton curry. Ever since I showed the picture to Siv, he wants to cook this curry, but both of us are not familiar with these leaves. So Friday night, armed with a print out of Sailu’s post that includes a picture of the Gongura leaves, we went on a quest, determined to find the leaves. We went to three different Indian stores with no luck! But the search was not entirely in vain, the last store we hit had a big basket full of fresh young green mangoes - never seen these in any stores before.

These are young mangoes where the seeds are not hard yet, these can be sliced in half through the seeds. It is different from tender mangoes which are normally pickled in whole. I guess these are teenager mangoes, not a baby, not yet an adult either. Look how fresh they are!

We picked up about 3lbs of these beauties, and already finished half of those. Siv has them sliced with salt and chili powder, I just have them with salt. Before we completely run out of the mangoes, I wanted to pickle some. I don’t expect the the pickle to last long either, Siv can finish off half a bottle pickle in one go, so the pickling is more of a blogging activity than a preservation method.

Recipe courtesy Flavors of the Spice Coast by Mrs.K.M.Mathew

Ingredients

• 2 cups fresh green mangoes, seeded and diced
• salt to taste
• 2 tbsp olive oil (gingely oil is the best, if available, use more oil if planning to keep the pickle for a while )
• 1 tsp red chili powder
• 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
• 1/4 tsp mustard powder
• 1/4 tsp fenugreek powder
• 1/2 tsp asafoetida powder
• a few curry leaves
• 2 cups boiled water

Method

Toss the diced mangoes in salt in a bowl, cover and marinate for about 1/2 an hour or more.

Heat oil in a pan, reduce the heat to medium low and add the chili, turmeric, mustard, fenugreek and asafoetida powders and curry leaves. Fry for a few minutes till the spice powders are aromatic, making sure not to brown the spice mixture.

Add the water and bring to a boil.

Remove from the heat and let it cool. Add the marinated mango pieces. Mix well and bottle.

This pickle can be kept at room temperature, and is best a couple of days after it is made. Transfer to the refrigerator after about a week, if there is any left.

Don’t forget Monthly Blog Patrol!

I am guest hosting MBP this month. The theme for March is Mixed Drinks and the deadline is March 24th.

Check out the details here.

Txori - Taste of Basque in Belltown

Filed Under Belltown, Spanish, Tapas | 16 Comments

When we heard that the Harvest Vine folks opened a new restaurant in Belltown last fall, we were jumping with joy. Harvest Vine is one of our favorite restaurants in town and we love Spanish food. Then I came to know that Txori is a pintxos bar. Pintxos are the Basque version of Tapas, a culinary delight we discovered during our recent trip to Spain. When we were feasting on Pintxos in Barcelona, we kept wishing how great it will be to have such a place in Seattle. As soon as we got back we heard of this new Pintxos bar less than two blocks from home, what a lovely coincidence!

Anyway, we couldn’t wait to try it, but somehow we never got around to it till January. When I had to pick a place to meet up with two lovely friends for some much needed girl talk, I didn’t have to think twice. Txori doesn’t take reservations, it is a walk in and seat yourself place. There aren’t that many tables, but we started pretty early on a weeknight, and there were some tables free. By about 7pm, the place was packed and loud (in a good way of course) and so many Spanish speaking people, it almost felt like I was back in Spain.

The menu has only about 20 dishes, and the price ranges from $2 to $6 per plate. The pintxos are not shareable, they are all bite sized portions except for one or two dishes. Between the three of us, we ordered most everything in the menu. Since Spain was fresh in mind, I can say without doubt that the taste was very authentic! The service is really slow, but having to make so many different dishes hot, I think that is expected. Here are some of the dishes we had, we didn’t have a single bad dish, but some sure stood out above the others, and we had to get seconds and thirds of those.

Here is a sample of the dishes. Names are directly out of the menu, except for a few items which are not in the menu anymore!

tartaleta de champiñones 2.50 button mushroom – jamón serrano tart

tortilla española 1.75 potato onion omelet – alioli

pulpo da feira 3.00 galician octopus – potato – pimentón – lagrima oil

blood sausage. Loved this, I had to have a couple. Not in the menu anymore.

Salt cod wrapped with Piquillo pepper. This is not in the menu anymore, so I don’t know the Spanish name.

idiazabal 3.00 latxa sheep cheese – olive oil

pera a la plancha con valdeón 3.00 . grilled pear – blue cheese – walnut .My favorite, I don’t know how many I had!

An assortment of pintxos.

ensalada de pato confitado 2.50 duck confit – orange – romaine lettuce

braised oxtail 6.00 . Can’t find this in the menu anymore as well. It was my next favorite after the pear walnut cheese dish. This one is definitely shareable, but I had two on my own.

The dessert selection is nowhere close to the pintxos selection. We had an espresso flan, which tasted amazing. This is a perfect location for a night out with friends, in small groups though. I am guessing it will be pretty hard to secure a table for a large party. We were just three, and it was great.

The food was so awesome, I couldn’t wait to go back with Siv. So within a couple of days we went back, and this time they had a bunch of specials. Actually more specials than the number of dishes in the menu! And our lovely waitress knew all the dishes, their Spanish names and the English translations by heart! I didn’t take my camera the second time, what a pity, since we had totally different dishes this time around. This is going to be one regular hangout of ours for sure!

Update: 04/06/08
Sending this post to a new blog event called Seattle Restaurant Review 360 hosted by Michael over at Herbivoracious. The idea is for different food bloggers to review the same restaurant and compare notes. Very interesting concept! The first chosen restaurant is Txori, since I am out of town during the event I have to send an older post. 

http://www.txoribar.com

Announcing Monthly Blog Patrol March Edition - Mixed Drinks

Filed Under Blog Events | 50 Comments

In my last post I mentioned how over-stuffed my “Recipes-to-Try” folder has gotten over the past year, and most of you seems to be in the same boat. As food bloggers, we all spend a lot of time reading our fellow bloggers’ recipes, and every day we come across so many mouthwatering dishes, it is impossible to try every single one. A blog event that encourages trying a recipe from a fellow blogger, is a small nudge in the rear to go hunting through our bookmarks and other blogs to find that special recipe we have been meaning to try.

Monthly Blog Patrol aka MBP used to be a popular event in the blogosphere, which has been taking a break for a few months now. The idea is to do a monthly patrolling of our favorite blogs and cook something from them based on the theme of the month. MBP is the brainchild of the dynamic blogger Coffee of The Spice Cafe, who has been really busy lately with her work commitments. I know all the bloggers have been missing this event, I for one certainly was. So I am proud to be the guest-host for the March edition of MBP, and the theme for this month is Mixed Drinks…

Image by Christy Thompson - Fotolia.com

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One Hot Mushroom Chettinad

Filed Under India - Tamil Nadu, Mushroom, Side Dish - Dry, Vegetarian | 38 Comments

I have a folder in my browser favorites called Recipes-to-Try and it is overflowing with all the links I have been collecting over the past year… I have tried so many recipes from other bloggers, and I normally thank them through comments or e-mail, but I have never taken the time to take a picture and write a post about it. The reason behind this is nothing but sheer laziness.

All the food bloggers out there know how much hard work is involved in cooking, taking a decent picture, coming up with an introduction to the post, and typing up the recipe making sure all the ingredients and the quantity mentioned is accurate. We know that once we have a recipe out there at least one person will try it, and we don’t want them to have a bad experience. So the few meals that we cook from other blogs or the ones that we have already blogged about are such a relief, it just means that we can actually have a hot meal for a change. That doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate the people who painstakingly wrote out the recipe, but sometimes we are just too tired to make a big deal out of it.

That is where events like Taste and Create becomes important., an opportunity to show our appreciation for our fellow bloggers. It is a blog event around community, sharing, tasting, and blogging -  a concept all of us food bloggers are familiar with. For the event, we are paired with another food blogger, and are supposed to cook and taste one dish from our partner’s blog and make a post about that. What a terrific idea, I couldn’t resist but signup for it.

My randomly chosen partner was none other than Nupur of One Hot Stove, a blogger who doesn’t need much intro. I first came to know of Nupur during my early days of blogging sometime last year, when she was hosting a highly ambitious, but hugely successful blog event called A to Z of Indian Vegetables. The idea was to cook a vegetable dish that starts with the alphabet of the week, every week for 26 weeks. Most of my early vegetarian dishes were specifically made for Nupur. If it wasn’t for Nupur, I’d have never made dishes like Ilaneer drink, that became a favorite summer drink.

When I heard that I was paired with Nupur, I went hunting for a recipe in her nicely categorized recipe index. She has been blogging for three years now, so you can imagine how many choices I had to chose from. I was going through the index, and the name Mushroom Chettinad jumped out to me, you all know how much I love spicy food. The recipe was so simple, and it looked super delicious, I didn’t want to look any further.  On hindsight I think it would’ve been more appropriate to pick a Marathi dish, since it is a very unfamiliar territory to me. I guess I can still do it, we don’t always need a blog event to try something new. This mushroom dish turned out so good, hot and spicy, just the way we love it, I am so glad I picked this.
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A Sunny Seattle Day and Some Awards and Link Love

Filed Under Random Musings | 28 Comments

When people think of Seattle, the first word that they think of is Rain. Yes, we do have those days.  But then we have days like today, that makes us forget about all the dark gloomy days and count our blessings that we live in such a beautiful city.

Snow capped Olympic Mountains and the Puget Sound - a shot from our living room window;the view that makes getting up every morning worthwhile.

I was planning on reinstating my long forgotten work-out regime today, but once we saw how beautiful it is outside, we decided to just go out to the Elliott Bay park for a brisk walk. The weather was absolutely perfect for a walk, cold but not too much. I just bought a new camera (Nikon CoolPix S700) as a gift for my parents, so this was a chance to take it for a test drive too. Here are some pictures from our walk.

A ship silhouetted against the sun.

A brand new ship, waiting to be loaded with wheat and Mount Rainier in the background.

The view of the Space Needle from Elliott Bay.

Before I forget, I want to thank some people and spread some link love around.

Susan of Food Blogga gave me this You make me Smile award. I was so honored to get this from Susan, since she is one of my favorite bloggers whose posts make me smile every time. Just read about the French kissing elephants and you will know what I am talking about! Thank you Susan!

I’d like to pass this award on to some bloggers that consistently make me smile.

• Sra - She has a way with words, her witty anecdotes and funny observances not only make you laugh out loud but make you think as well. She is so effortlessly funny, when I am at her blog I often forget to read the recipe part.
• Sia - She writes really long posts, but the type that you want to read in full. This girl knows how to give an intro to a post. Just check out her latest post about her steamy affair with a certain dark, handsome someone…
• Rajitha - She is a dear friend on a blogging break now, who has such a don’t care attitude about everything. She doesn’t write long posts, out of sheer laziness I know, but most of her posts are packed with a punch. We have had so much fun over e-mails, just seeing her name makes me smile.
• Sandeepa - I have no idea where she disappeared to, but I am sure she is having a fabulous time wherever she is. This bong mom’s funny anecdotes about her cute little daughter S and everything else around her makes me smile without fail. Come back soon, I miss you!

Bharathy of Spicy Chilly, the girl from my hood gave me this Nice matters award. I am glad at least my virtual friends think I am nice

“Nice Matters Award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world.”

I want to pass this award on to everyone who is reading this. I am just naming a few here, but this one really goes out to all of my blog buddies out there! Asha, Indosungod, Nags, Padmaja, Pravs, Raaga, Revathi, Richa, Shankari, Shilpa, Shn, Srivalli, Sunita thanks for being you!

I was also tagged to write Seven weirdest facts about me by Happy Cook and Swati. Now you all know how much I like to talk about myself, and how weird I am. But I have done a very similar one before, Seven random facts about me, and I think that one qualifies for the Weirdest me-me as well. So I am not going to do this again, thanks for tagging Happy Cook and Swati!

Crab Curry

Filed Under Crab, India - Tamil Nadu, Seafood | 36 Comments

Wish you all a fabulous Valentine’s day! Siv and I are not too big into V-day, it is just another occasion to go out and eat. But over the past few years, Valentine’s day has become the worst day to go out for dinner. Every place is crowded, you have to wait for at least half an hour before the table is free even after making reservations. And the worst part is, even the normally good restaurants churn out mass-produced, over-priced crappy food in the name of Valentine’s day prix-fix menu. So this year we’ve decided to forget the whole V-day dinner and get take-out and eat in front of the TV, if we even get back home on time. It’s been a hectic week at work so far for both of us.

But we don’t really need a special day to celebrate romance anyway right? It is the small things that you do for each other every day “just because…” that really counts. Last week when I was down with a cold, Siv made this spicy crab curry that cleared my cold up in no time, that in my opinion is more romantic than any number of roses.

Siv is the crabman in the house, I don’t know (rather, I pretend not to know) how to clean fresh crab. So he cuts, cleans and makes these delicious crab dishes following his mother’s recipe. I have already blogged one of his crab curries, this one is very similar in the list of ingredients, but it is a green chilli based paste and the ingredients are fried before grinding to a paste. It looks and tastes quite different from the other crab curry plus I thought the picture is cute, so here is another Tamil style crab curry recipe.  

Ingredients

1. 1 large dungeness crab (~3lb with shell)
2. 8-10 green chilies
3. 1 tbsp sliced ginger pieces
4. 10 cloves Garlic sliced
5. 1 cup shallots sliced
6. 1 cup grated Coconut
7. 1 tbsp Cumin
8. 1/2 tbsp Peppercorns
9. 1 tsp Fennel seeds
10. 1″ Cinnamon
11. Diced onions - 1/4 cup
12. 2 Tomatoes diced
13. A few Curry Leaves
14. Salt
15. 2 tsp Oil

Method

Clean the crab and cut into 6-8 pieces. Remove the top shell.

Heat 1 tsp oil to a frying pan large enough to cook the crab, and saute the ingredients 2-9 till the shallots starts to brown. Grind the fried ingredients to make a coarse paste.

Add the rest of the oil to the pan. When the oil is hot, add the cinnamon stick and the diced onions and saute till the onions are soft. Add the crab pieces along with the tomatoes and sauté for about three minutes.

Add the ground masala paste to the pan and sauté for another 3minutes.

Add 1/4 cup of water and salt to the pan, cover and cook on medium heat for about 10 minutes.

Serve hot with rice.

Steamed Asparagus with Star Anise infused Pomegranate Molasses

Filed Under Asparagus, Nuts, Pomegranate, Side Dish - Dry, Star Anise, Vegetarian | 40 Comments

If you are a food blogger keeping track of the ongoing blog events, I am sure you looked at this title and thought, Star Anise and Pomegranate - oh she is killing two birds with one stone… But  you are wrong, my friend! I am actually trying to kill four birds with one stone! Confused? Did you forget that Asparagus is an aphrodisiac?

Given it’s phallic shape, asparagus is frequently enjoyed as an aphrodisiac food. Feed your lover boiled or steamed spears for a sensuous experience. The Vegetarian Society suggests “eating asparagus for three days for the most powerful affect”.

-GourmetSlueth

With Valentine’s day just around the corner, I can send this dish to at least two more events around the theme of love… Am I not clever? I knew all these brain cells were given to me for a reason!

This dish is inspired by a recipe in the most recent addition to my cookbook collection - The Vegetable Dishes I can’t live without by Mollie Katzen. As I mentioned here before, we have been trying to eat healthy, and that means a simple roasted chicken or seafood dish with a side of salad or sauteed vegetables for weekday dinners. I try to make different marinades for the meat and seafood, but the sides get boring after a while. This book has a bunch of easy but delicious sounding vegetable recipes, which hopefully will make an otherwise boring weekday dinner more interesting.

This particular recipe is loosely based on the Roasted Asparagus with Pomegranate-lime glaze from this book. I steamed the asparagus instead of roasting, and also made my own pomegranate molasses from scratch where she used the store bought Pomegranate Molasses to make a glaze.

Pomegranate molasses is a thick reduction of pomegranate juice available in middle eastern food stores. I didn’t have any in hand, but I did have a large bottle of Pomegranate juice. So I went online searching for a pomegranate molasses recipe, and came across this easy one at Simply Recipes. Whenever I make any kind of reduction, I try to infuse it with some spices, and since I really needed to come up with a Star Anise recipe, I decided to infuse my molasses with star anise. It added a really nice spicy aroma to the molasses, I would use more next time for a more intense star anise flavour.

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Boka Kitchen and Bar

Filed Under American, Downtown, Northwest | 16 Comments

You all must be tired of reading about my birthday by now. It really wasn’t a never ending birthday as some of you thought.  Since my birthday is my favorite day of the year, I have been talking about it for a while, so I can see why you would think that. But the celebrations lasted for barely two days, a dinner with friends the night before, and dinner with Siv the birthday night. So I promise, this is the last time you will hear me mention my birthday till next year… Actually this post is not even about my birthday, it is about the dinner we had at the Boka Kitchen and Bar, and it just happened to be on my birthday.

Boka (short for Bold Original Kitchen Artistry) is a sleek, modern lounge/restaurant next to Hotel 1000 on 1st Ave. Siv and I reached there before everybody else, since we live closer. We didn’t want to sit at our large table alone, so we found ourselves two seats at the bar. The place was buzzing with the Friday night crowd, a very New Yorkish downtown bar to hangout with friends on a weekend. The whole place looks very chic and I especially loved the color-shifting mood lighting on the walls.

The cocktail menu was fantastic, a nice selection of signature cocktails at $9 a glass. I tried the Frost - rosemary infused vodka, triple sec, pomegranate and lime juice - and the White Peach Cosmo, both were fantastic, but the Frost especially was out of this world! So I stuck to that for the rest of the night. The guys went for Stoli Elite dirty martinis, at $18.50 a glass, that was the most expensive part of our meal! 

While waiting for our friends to arrive, we ordered the Boka poke ($6) - ahi tuna, cubed and served with fresh avocado, vinaigrette and ginger, accompanied by house made taro chips , this was fresh and tasty, but nothing special about it I thought.

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