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Dec. 23rd, 2008 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickAs most of you are now no doubt aware, I am working my way through the 660 Curries book with an eye towards what looks tasty and matches up to the available ingredients in my kitchen. I do a certain amount of off-roading but haven't yet run into anything inedible.
This evening's efforts started with Cumin-scented Split Green Lentils.
1 cup moong dal, rinsed + 3 cup water, 1/2 t turmeric, 1.5 t salt (I used 3/4), 2 green fresh chili peppers (jalapeno was what the store had) thinly sliced, in large saucepan on medium heat. Cook until done. Elsewhere, in small fry pan, put 2 tbsp oil (lard) with 1 t cumin seeds whole and several (I used four) dried red peppers of cayenne type. (My dried red peppers say "Mexican". They look like cayenne peppers, though.). Heat until peppers blacken and cumin seeds go reddish brown. Remove from heat, put in 1/2 teaspoon asafetida powder (weird, but tasty). Stir. Add to cooked lentils when lentils are cooked. Garnish with 2 Tbsp. chopped cilantro if you want.
So I made this. The original directions have the thing being blended to be a smooth sauce thing but I like the soft cooked lentil stew thing better so didn't bother dirtying up an entire blender.
On tasting, this was a damn tasty thing. It was really yummy. It also made my freaking eyes water and my lips burn beyond "acceptable" levels of spicy food because I'd neglected to pay attention to the fact that blackening chiles in oil makes them hotter. Fuck. Also, we're apparently still with the death jalapenos from the grocery. Not sure what is up with that, honestly. Maybe they changed suppliers?
Anyway, in my adventures with curry, I have devised a couple of measures for dealing with the fuck, this is too hot to eat problem that sometimes occurs when I put in more peppers than perhaps I should have put in. (Here, the original recipe called for two red dried peppers and I used four. They were small... but, as it turned out, mighty.)
Solution #1: Add more food that is not spicy. Maybe your curry could use some steamed kale stirred into the dal? Or some potato cubes? Cauliflower florets? This technique spreads out the spices and has the general effect of lessening the burn. If you add a large enough volume of nonspicy food, it makes inedible into edible. If you go this route, try to pick something that will go well with the rest of the dish. It would not, for example, be a good idea to add marshmallows to your curry.
Solution #2: Serve food item as is, but with a side of something that will cut the heat. Raita (a relish thing made with yogurt and cukes) is nicely cooling. In the dead of winter (when the cukes are rubbery and bitter), I serve cottage cheese alongside things that are too spicy to be eaten by themselves. (I realize that it's not appropriately ethnic. So what? Yay calcium -- I don't drink milk and I eat yogurt only reluctantly but I actually like cottage cheese. Also, it cuts the heat.)
This just in: I was sitting here on the couch composing this posting, particularly the troublesome bit justifying my use of cottage cheese as a side to spicy ethnic food, when a mouse (in my unqualified medical opinion, not long for this world due to the massive gut wound on its formerly white belly) flew THROUGH THE AIR over my shoulder and across my body diagonally (I sit longways on the couch, not like normal people do), to land on the floor in front of the couch, where it twitched in the "going to be dead soon" way of mice that have lost feline-murine encounters. Ick.
At the time of this event, Nor was laid out flat on the coffee table in front of the fire. She remains there still, having merely yawned, stretched, and opened one bleary greenish-yellow eye as her measured and sensible response to the whole mouse business. Therefore, I am hanging the blame for the Injured Mouse Flying Through The Air incident firmly on the young and largely-untried paws of Youbee. Er. Good cat? Yay?
I went and got a paper towel (magical girl germ barrier) and picked up the (still-twitching) mouse by its tail and flung it out of doors into the yard. Regardless of what happens to it at this point, it is no longer twitching on the floor beside my couch. I'm calling that a win.
Never a dull moment around here.
Edit: I would ALSO like to point out that I put the lj cut text (the kick is up, it's ... GOOD) about ten minutes BEFORE the flying mouse business. And no lie, for realz. I was getting tired of putting "read more" in. WTF?
This evening's efforts started with Cumin-scented Split Green Lentils.
1 cup moong dal, rinsed + 3 cup water, 1/2 t turmeric, 1.5 t salt (I used 3/4), 2 green fresh chili peppers (jalapeno was what the store had) thinly sliced, in large saucepan on medium heat. Cook until done. Elsewhere, in small fry pan, put 2 tbsp oil (lard) with 1 t cumin seeds whole and several (I used four) dried red peppers of cayenne type. (My dried red peppers say "Mexican". They look like cayenne peppers, though.). Heat until peppers blacken and cumin seeds go reddish brown. Remove from heat, put in 1/2 teaspoon asafetida powder (weird, but tasty). Stir. Add to cooked lentils when lentils are cooked. Garnish with 2 Tbsp. chopped cilantro if you want.
So I made this. The original directions have the thing being blended to be a smooth sauce thing but I like the soft cooked lentil stew thing better so didn't bother dirtying up an entire blender.
On tasting, this was a damn tasty thing. It was really yummy. It also made my freaking eyes water and my lips burn beyond "acceptable" levels of spicy food because I'd neglected to pay attention to the fact that blackening chiles in oil makes them hotter. Fuck. Also, we're apparently still with the death jalapenos from the grocery. Not sure what is up with that, honestly. Maybe they changed suppliers?
Anyway, in my adventures with curry, I have devised a couple of measures for dealing with the fuck, this is too hot to eat problem that sometimes occurs when I put in more peppers than perhaps I should have put in. (Here, the original recipe called for two red dried peppers and I used four. They were small... but, as it turned out, mighty.)
Solution #1: Add more food that is not spicy. Maybe your curry could use some steamed kale stirred into the dal? Or some potato cubes? Cauliflower florets? This technique spreads out the spices and has the general effect of lessening the burn. If you add a large enough volume of nonspicy food, it makes inedible into edible. If you go this route, try to pick something that will go well with the rest of the dish. It would not, for example, be a good idea to add marshmallows to your curry.
Solution #2: Serve food item as is, but with a side of something that will cut the heat. Raita (a relish thing made with yogurt and cukes) is nicely cooling. In the dead of winter (when the cukes are rubbery and bitter), I serve cottage cheese alongside things that are too spicy to be eaten by themselves. (I realize that it's not appropriately ethnic. So what? Yay calcium -- I don't drink milk and I eat yogurt only reluctantly but I actually like cottage cheese. Also, it cuts the heat.)
This just in: I was sitting here on the couch composing this posting, particularly the troublesome bit justifying my use of cottage cheese as a side to spicy ethnic food, when a mouse (in my unqualified medical opinion, not long for this world due to the massive gut wound on its formerly white belly) flew THROUGH THE AIR over my shoulder and across my body diagonally (I sit longways on the couch, not like normal people do), to land on the floor in front of the couch, where it twitched in the "going to be dead soon" way of mice that have lost feline-murine encounters. Ick.
At the time of this event, Nor was laid out flat on the coffee table in front of the fire. She remains there still, having merely yawned, stretched, and opened one bleary greenish-yellow eye as her measured and sensible response to the whole mouse business. Therefore, I am hanging the blame for the Injured Mouse Flying Through The Air incident firmly on the young and largely-untried paws of Youbee. Er. Good cat? Yay?
I went and got a paper towel (magical girl germ barrier) and picked up the (still-twitching) mouse by its tail and flung it out of doors into the yard. Regardless of what happens to it at this point, it is no longer twitching on the floor beside my couch. I'm calling that a win.
Never a dull moment around here.
Edit: I would ALSO like to point out that I put the lj cut text (the kick is up, it's ... GOOD) about ten minutes BEFORE the flying mouse business. And no lie, for realz. I was getting tired of putting "read more" in. WTF?
