INDIAN SPICED POTATOES

Gosh! I actually have nothing to say on this post. So I'll let this really funny song about potatoes by Cheryl Wheeler do the talking.......

They're red, they're white. they're brown
They get way underground
They can't be much to do
So now they have blue ones too

We don't care what they look like we'll eat them
Anyway they can fit our plate
Every way we can conjure to heat them
We're delighted and think they're just great

Chorus Po ta to (13 X)

Sometimes we ditch the skin
To eat what it's holding in
Sometimes we'd rather please
Have just the outside with cheese

They have eyes but they do not have faces
I don't know if their feelings get hurt
By just hanging around in dark places
Where they only can stare at the dirt

Chorus Po ta to (13X)

I guess the use is scant
For other parts of the plant
But that which grows in view
Is eating potato too

I imagine them under their acres
Out in Idaho and up in Maine
Maybe wondering if they'll be bakers
Or knishes or latkes or plain

Chorus Po ta to (13 X)

Words and music by Cheryl Wheeler

What more can I say?..........

Except that this is a very tasty and fast dish that I got from watching the Food Safari show. And if you were to use Russet potatoes it will just absorb the spices so much better than the firmer and less starchy white, red and yellow potatoes. This dish is yummm.


Here's the recipe..............

2 Russet potatoes, boiled in skin, peeled and then cubed
1 tbsp dessicated coconut
1 tbsp sesame seeds

1 tbsp cooking oil

Seasoning for potatoes :

1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp tumeric powder
1 tsp chillie powder
salt to taste

To be sauteed :

1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds
1/4 tsp of fenugreek seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds

Season the boiled and cubed potatoes with the seasoning ingredients. Mix well. Put aside.

Put about 1 tablespoon of oil into a pan. Heat it. Saute the cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds and mustard seeds. It will pop and sputter but stir it around for a minute then add teh seasoned cubed potatoes and mix in. Add the dessicated coconut and sesame seeds and stir.Add salt to taste. Serve.

MEAT LASAGNA

I have finally resigned myself to the fact that lasagnas are not forms or ideas. I have finally resigned myself to the fact that I'm not a manacled prisoner in a cave. I have finally resigned myself to the fact that the lasagna I make is not a mere shadow of perfection. And I have finally resigned myself to the fact that lasagnas ooze. Seriously ooze.

I have seen it illuminated by the sun, I have seen it in the confusion of twilight, I have seen it in the shimmer of dawn. I have seen it in the blaze of my camera's flash bulb. I have seen it at all times imaginable. And they ooze. Period.



The chase for perfection, even in lasagna world, can be foolish. We ignore the fact that cheese melts and oozes. We ignore the fact that meat sauce is sauce. And oozes. We ignore the fact that if you put these two things together in one dish, one on the top of the other and apply 375 degrees of heat, continuously, for 45 minutes, to the whole, some major oozing will surely occur. We ignore logic, reason and reality. We begin to chase this 'vision of truth'. We become philosophically fatuous. We become me.

And that was what I have been. Foolish. I refused to blog about an oozing lasagna. I refused to share the recipe for a great but oozing lasagna. I refused to take a picture of a great but oozing lasagna. But how could I?

Because, I had asked myself, what are those out there then?. What are those that are perfectly layered and not regurgitating while their picture is being taken? What are those that are cut in perfect squares or rectangles neatly and with un-spluttered edges? What are those?

Those I have found are not real. They are so so not real. They are an illusion, are fancy tricks of the experts, of fanatical food stylists, of flabbergasting photoshop artwork .....whatever..... they're not real.

But mine is. And it's so GOOD. Ok let's be honest here...it's Mary Berry's. And is soo GOOD. It's foolproof, it's utterly scrummy, slurpy and sumptuous and it oozes that wonderful, heavenly ooze.



Yes I've finally come down and hit earth with a big bang. But I've bounced back and Ooze is now my friend. But I will still not be taking a picture of Ooze. The whole is what I'll show here. The bronzed and beautiful Whole.

And here's the recipe ................but before we begin lets talk lasagna sheets...the 'instant' kind, the only kind that is available here.

"Oven ready lasagna sheets" "No pre-cooking required". Unless you have your sauce quite saucy, so that the lasagna sheets could soak up all the moisture as it cooks, you will end up with rather tough, half cooked lasagna sheets.


So comes the next biggest, mind boggling question in the universe. How saucy should the sauce be? A tad? Very? Not too? Well I don't have much time for such complex philosophical questions so what I do is to make make my sauce nice and thick in consistency.

And while the sauce is cooking I soak the lasagna sheets that I will be using in one layer spread out between at least 2 large baking trays, for at least 30 minutes, or more, until they soften and then use them to build up the lasagna. It will cook through in the oven and my lasagna comes out perfect. Not Ideal as in Plato's Utopia, but perfect.


And now...here's the recipe.................as per Mary Berry's.............

4 oz mature cheddar cheese, grated ( I used about 1 1/2 oz more) :D
1 oz parmesan cheese ( Iused a little bit more) :D
6 oz pre-cooked lasagna sheets ( I used about 8 sheets)
chopped parsley to garnish

MEAT SAUCE

2 tbsp olive oil
1 kg lean minced beef
45 gm plain flour
300 ml beef stock
1 x 400 gm can chopped tomatoes
6 celery stalks, sliced
2 onions, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, crushed
4 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp sugar
salt and black pepper

WHITE SAUCE

I actually make one and a half of this recipe because I think it adds that little bit more of yummy richness (If you're not on a diet).

60 gm butter
45 gm flour
600 ml milk
1 tsp Dijon mustard
pinch of grated nutmeg

MAKE THE MEAT SAUCE.............

Heat the oil in a deep pot, add the beef, and cook stirring until browned. Add teh flour and cook, stirring for one minute.

Add the stock, tomatoes, celery, onions, garlic, tomato puree, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer for 1 hour.

MAKE THE WHITE SAUCE.................

Melt the butter in a asaucepan add the flour and stir for 1 minute. Remove from heat and gradually blend in the milk. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly untilt eh mixture thickens. Simmer for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the mustard, salt and pepper to taste.


BUILD......at this point I deviate from Mary Berry's recipe...........

Divide the meat sauce and white sauce each equally between 3 seperate bowls to ensure each layer will be even.

Grease a shallow reactangular oven proof dish measuring about 10 by 7 inches, using butte or olive oil.

Line the bottom completely with about three of the soaked, and drained lasagna sheets (depending on the size of the sheets).

Top with 1/3 of the meat sauce, 1/3 of the white sauce and 1/3 of the Cheddar and Parmesan cheeses each.

Cover again with enough lasagna sheets making sure to reach the edges of the dish...............TIP : Using the pads of your fingers (and the palm of your hand, if necessary) press down gently to compact the layer so that the layers come out somewhat 'perfect'.

Then top with the next 1/3 of the meat sauce, white sauce and the cheeses. Cover again withe lasagna sheets, press down again and top again with the remaining sauces and cheeses, making the final layer.

Bake for 45 minutes in a 190 C oven.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley as a garnish just before you serve. YUMMMMMMMM

COOL CUKE SALAD

Well I never! Imagine seeing a cucumber salad recipe on the New Scandinavian food show and realize after you make it that it tastes exactly the same as the one that your mother in law used to make in a far flung corner of the island of Borneo, thousand of miles away from snow capped mountains, freezing rivers, romantic and idyllic looking grassy slopes and with no bone freezing wind whipping your face.


The show has an IKEA-ish looking outdoor kitchen put together in a matter of minutes usually on a cold Scandinavian mountain top with a picturesque view of snow capped mountains and a wide, lazy bend of a river in the background.

My late mom in law did it in a hot humid corner of her kitchen with no such view, but where a cool cuke salad fitted perfectly in and was a perfectly logical dish to serve on a hot, humid, blistering and blazing afternoon for lunch.


And so it was. Exactly the same. I guess. Because blond, gap-toothed Andre Viestad, who pronounces every syllable so precisely and a little haltingly and uses deciliters in his recipes, called for white wine vinegar but I used apple cider vinegar instead. I do suspect white wine vinegar might taste a little sweeter but whatever it is this is a recipe for very lazy people and for those on a seriously intensive diet. It has no oil, no egg yolk or no any kind of fat in its dressing. Nothing could be simpler and it is definitely refreshing. I could have eaten the whole dish as a snack except that I am/was/and never will be on a diet.


But for those who are...............here's the recipe............

1 cucumber, sliced very thinly
coarse salt

1 medium red onion, cut in half and sliced thinly
1 -2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp sugar

Sprinkle some coarse salt (to taste) on the sliced cucumber pieces in a bowl, cover the bowl with a plate and shake for a few seconds to get the salt into the cucumber slices, to soften them and to draw the juice out of the cucumber. This allows the cucumber to soak in the dressing afterwards.

Add the sliced red onions, the vinegar and sugar. Mix them all up, chill if desired, and serve. You could add some sliced red chillies too like I did!

A GOLDEN DHALL CURRY

I've been lazy. Absolutely so. I've been vacillating between thinking, imagining, planning and wanting.

Sometimes I wish I hadn't started a food blog because it entails not just cooking or baking but also of planning, of setting up the food so that it looks like it's supposed to, so that colours match, that utensils are appropriate, that the light's pretty, that the camera's battery's fully charged or nearly so, that the memory card isn't full, that my boys aren't in some pitiful or extreme state of hunger, when hub isn't needing me, when I am, myself, not licking my lips at the food with soulfully hungry eyes but most crucial of all, when I have managed to rip my butt off from whatever it is that it's attached to. See how hard it is? It is.

But it's fun too. When it's fun. When the sweat isn't dripping off my brow and down the view finder, when the tripod is feeling frisky enough to join me, when I get to play around with bowls and plates and when no one's salivating on the fringes. Yes it can be fun.

And it would be even better if I made something ridiculously easy to the point of being absurd and that it were so full of flavour that the dish was bursting at the seams.


And that was what I thought of this little dish of dhall curry. It was bursting at the seams . With flavour. It was so good it was unbelievable. This may sound like an exaggeration but it's not. I loved it so much. So much better than the mamak man's dhall curry. So much better than the dhall curries that I have tasted or ever made. So good that I'll watch Food Safari again.


For this was where I got the recipe from. It looked ridiculously easy and ridiculously good even as it shone through all those flickering morsels of light from my tv. When I saw how Maeve O'Meara went "YUMMMM" and how her brows pulled together over the bridge of her nose with pleasure, how she closed her eyes for a split second as if in pain I knew she wasn't pretending. I knew it must have been sooo good. So I made it. And I wasn't disappointed. At all. I ate it with some huffy puffy Pita Bread that I had made.


The recipe............from memory..............more or less................serves 2 or 3.........


1/2 cup lentils ( I used red organic lentils)
enough water to cover the lentils with an inch or two over the top of the lentils
1/2 tsp tumeric powder
2 tsp coriander powder

2 cloves garlic
1/2 inch fresh ginger, crushed to a paste with the garlic above
1-1 1/2 tbsp mustard seeds
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
3 sprigs of curry leaves
1 dried chillie
1 tomato diced (I had forgotten the tomatoes when I made it)
salt to taste

Wash the lentils until the water runs clear. place it in a small pot, add the water, the powdered spices of coriander and tumeric and bring to a boil then simmer until it is soft and cooked through. Add salt and more of the water if necessary. While it is simmering and cooked through prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Pour about 2 tablespoons of cooking oil into another small pan. Heat up the oil and throw in the garlic ginger paste, curry leaves, cumin seeds, dried chillie(whole) and mustard seeds and don't be surprised if they seeds start to sputter and pop. Mix it around a little until fragrant, about 30 seconds, then pour the mixture, oil and all, into the pot of simmering dhall, add teh diced tomatoes and let simmer for another minute or two to allow the flavours to assimilate. Cook it down until the consistency is thickish but still pourable. Taste for salt. Serve. YUM...