Masala Mushroom Loaf. Yowza.

Tired of the same ol' same ol' mushroom loaves? Thyme for something new? In need of some sage advice?

Try this spicy sweet number on: mushrooms, yes, and some tofu - but minced chilis, sweet peas, curry leaves, and good, toasty Garam Masala kill the Fall Flavor Set and make room for Spring. In the middle of February. Yes plz.

I LOOOOVE the parchment paper trick when making vegetable loaves - the lovely browned crust the oven's worked so hard to make comes out in one piece, every time. Just cool for 20 minutes, invert over a platter, and there it is, ready for slicing.

Its the perfect opportunity to play with inclusions, but remember - greenery roasts to brown, so use vegetation with color. Small red pepper flowers work well. Green peas, carrots, and beets work too. Enoki mushrooms keep a light brown shade, so you can laminate your own little 70's Forest Scene on top of your next loaf, if you'd like, as long as you lightly coat your parchment with oil - otherwise, your lovely lamination might stick. And we can't have that!

Masala Mushroom Loaf
serves 4-6


1 tablespoon olive oil
12 small or 8 medium crimini mushrooms, minced
1/2 small red onion, minced
1/2 red pepper, minced
1 bird's eye chili, minced

1.5 tablespoons garam masala

7 ozs extra firm tofu, well drained, crumbled
8 dried curry leaves, crushed
2 tsp brown sugar
2/3 cup raw cashew pieces

2 tablespoons melted EB
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon flax meal
1 medium white potato, baked until soft, mashed (or 2/3 cup mashed potato)
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp asofoetida

1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tablespoon sea salt


Loaf pan
1 sheet parchment paper
Canola oil, to coat



Preheat the oven to 350f. Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the loaf pan, sides included. Cut slits in the corner so it will fold flat to the pan's form. Spray a little oil on the bare metal before fitting the parchment inside - it'll help it stay in place.


Reserve a few pieces of red pepper for garnish. In a dry skillet or saute pan, toast the garam masala for 2-3 minutes, until very fragrant. Set aside.


Heat the olive oil in the same skillet and add pepper and onion. Cook 5 minutes, until pepper softens and onion is translucent. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring often, for 6-8 minutes, until mushrooms have released their liquid and almost all of it, but not quite, has steamed off.


Remove sauteed veggies to a heatproof bowl.


In a food processor, pulse cashews until they're the texture of large polenta - not powdery, with some chunks still there. Add to warm vegetables. Mix in remaining ingredients and taste for salt - add a teeny bit if need be. The mixture should be relatively dry, but not crumbly - add a little more Earth Balance or even a titch of water if it needs it.


Cut small triangles out of two or three sides of a piece of red pepper with a paring knife. Repeat for as many "flowers" as you'd like.

Arrange red peppers and a stem or two of cilantro on the bottom of the loaf pan, and press 1/2 a cup of the mushroom masala mixture over top, pressing down to keep things stuck in place. Add remaining loaf mixture, pressing down firmly, and flattening top with wet hands once the mix is used up.

Bake for 50 minutes covered, then another 15-20 uncovered, until loaf is browned on top and firm-ish to the touch. Let rest 20 minutes, invert onto a platter, and serve. I'll share the apple-lentil gravy we noshed ours with next week - it was pretty killer.

Cheers!

Indian Riff, plus a giveaway

I'm a devout Indian food fiend, and I know I'm not the only one. I blame being broke while in school in NYC - there were so many delicious, cheeeeap places within walking distance of my studio that most dinners were samosas, mulligatawny soup, and naan. For 4 bucks. Oh, Panna II. I miss you.

There's a bit of a fable that Indian food is difficult to pair wines with, so a sommelier bud of mine (also a worshipper at the throne of Curry, and also an AMAZING photographer - all the shots below are hers) and I set out last weekend to dispel that falsity. Did we? Well, we'll just consider this one installment in a series (since we didn't even make it through three courses, how wimpy is that).

What we did make it through were an hors devours course and a soup course - Pakora-style marinated cauliflower and, for lack of a better descriptive, Indian Mozzarella Sticks, plus a rasam. Which might be my favorite food of all, that thin, picturesque, chili-laced stew. Like the big, sophisticated brother of mulligatawny, acidic, tomato, spicy, just the right amount of stink.

Rasams come in many forms, but share one quality - they're thickened by cooked and mashed dal (mung beans, typically, although I've used red lentils). The one we ate was a pollution of this recipe, which I've been making for a long time. In order to pump the flavors (we went with an aged, super-rosy Reisling as our 2nd course wine, there had to be some serious Ooomph to cut through the flower) I did a lot of roasting - the tomatoes, some garlic, some shallot. Fried curry leaves, crumbled. About three times the asofoetida called for. Many more chilis.

You know by know that I'm a big dumpling fan - I wanted to bring that combination of textures to this stew as well, so I floated some Khaman dumplings in the soup, tender, sour clouds, delectable. A keeper. With killer wine, or without. This was the first time I'd ever made any of the steamed legume cakes so popular in south Indian cuisine and it was fascinating - a totally new preparation of the Holy Pairing of rice and legume, to me - soak them, dry them, grind them, mix with liquid, ferment, and steam. Feisty and time consuming. But such a soft, buttery texture - and an awesome flavor, earthy, cheese, super beany, lovely.

And of course,  I couldn't resist dusting them with the last of the tomato powder. Adios, Mars Rock. Which brings me to - my first giveaway!


I want to send you some of these awesome vegetable powders I've been bragging about for months - and all you have to do to enter is leave me a comment below declaring your favorite Indian dish. Masala to Malai Kofta, Curry to Rasam - I want to know. And no, I won't be mad if it's a non-vegetarian dish. In a couple days, I'll randomly pick a name and send that lucky person two pouches of powder, both tomato and spinach. Yay!

Roasted Tomato Rasam with Khaman Dumplings
serves 4

for the soup:

1/2 cup split mung dal
5 cups water
1 1/2 tablespoons ghee
1 tablespoon salt, or to taste
1 1/2 teaspoons brown or black mustard seeds
3 fresh bird's eye chilis, split lengthwise
4 shallots, minced
1 1/2 pounds tomatoes
10 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons grated ginger
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoon tamarind concentrate
Pinch palm sugar
1 tablespoon teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon teaspoon ground cumin
1 1/2  teaspoon asafetida powder
4 fresh bird's eye chilis, chopped, deseeded
Handful of fresh cherry or grape tomatoes, small, halved lengthwise
10 fresh curry leaves
Fresh cilantro, minced

for the Khaman dumplings:

3 cups plain Kefir
1/2 cup split yellow peas or mung dal
1/2 cup white basmati rice
2 teaspoons salt
Pinch asafetida powder
Chopped cilantro
1/2 cup peas, frozen
Minced chilis, bird's eye, 2 or 1/2 teaspoon cayenne chili powder
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Let's do this.

Wash your rice and mung dal and set out on towels to dry. With a fan, shouldn't take more than an hour. Put them into your food processor and run until their texture has been reduced to powdered-corn meal. Add buttermilk and set aside in a warm area for 2-3 hours.

Add your remaining ingredients, sans peas, and pour into a greased non-stick quiche or baking pan (mine was an 8x8 square, fit it all perfectly). Add peas, letting them sink to the bottom. Steam over medium-low heat, adding boiling water as needed - easily done using this method or in a wok with a steamer stand. As your rasam is finishing, your dumplings should be solid.

Heat your oven to 450f. Halve your tomatoes and scoop most of the seeds out - toss them with a little olive oil and salt and roast, cut side down, for 20 minutes, or until browned on the edges.

Roast your garlic simultaneously by wrapping the cloves in foil with a little olive oil. Should be done right when your tomatoes are. Chop your tomatoes, reserving as much liquid as possible. Set aside.

As your oven is a-roasting, simmer your mung dal in about 2 cups of water, covered, stirring often, until they completely dissolve. At the end, add your roasted garlic and mash well. You want them super-soft - no structure left whatsoever - so add water and time as needed to achieve this.

In a small skillet, toast your cumin powder over medium heat until fragrant. Set aside to cool.

In the same skillet, heat some vegetable oil to medium hot and fry your curry leaves quickly, until crisp. Drain on paper towels and set aside.

Heat your ghee in a soup pot and add mustard seeds. Fry until they pop, then add chilis. Add remaining ingredients (don't forget the cumin!) sans the 4 fresh chilis, tomatoes, and cilantro (we're reserving these for garnish). Simmer 20 minutes, until tomatoes have liquified. Add lentils and gently simmer, until they're completely dissolved.

Using a cookie or biscuit cutter, cut rounds of your Khaman dumplings and carefully set them aside. Ladle a generous spoonful or two of rasam into a shallow soup bowl, dust your dumplings with tomato powder (optional) and set them gently in the center of the bowl. Scatter tomatoes, fresh chilis (also optional - for the spice-minded) and cilantro over the soup. Crush and scatter curry leaves as well.

Serve. And, of course, enjoy.

Curry Malay with Gluten Free Roti!

On the long list of ethnic foods I miss from my NYC days, Malaysian Curry nears the top (ish).

There's a decent version at Cuisine Malaya, but it's pricey. So when I'm both broke and craving dusty, smokey curry, usually I'll do a batch at home. And since I've been delivering this to some GF clients of mine, coming up with a Roti recipe that would work for them was a priority this week.

(Can I just say, for a sec, that gluten free cooking and baking in particular is a tough nut to crack? Reminds me of Chemistry class. I've started actually writing recipes down, because balances are so delicate. Fun!!)

Malaysian curry is really rad because (like most delicious food) it's a melange of regional flavors. There's Indian elements, Thai elements, and of course Indonesian stuff happening. You can purchase Malay curry powders in most ethnic grocery stores, but making your own is easy-peasy if you stock a well-herbed kitchen.

Malaysian Curry spice mix: (per can coconut milk or per 3 servings - increase exponentially for bigger amounts)

Turmeric, 1 tsp
Coriander, 1/2 tsp
Fenugreek, 1/2 tsp
Cumin, 1/4 tsp
Cinammon, 2-3 grates
Fennel powder, 1/4 tsp
Cayenne, dash, for heat
Dash ground cloves

Mix it all in a small bowl and heat a cast-iron skillet to medium-low. Toast the spices for 1-2 minutes, until they're very aromatic. This will help relieve the Fenugreek of some of its bitterness and make for a deeper, richer flavor. (A pregnant client of mine told me that she takes Fenugreek supplements, as prescribed by her Doc - so maybe this is good preggers food?)


Onto the rest of the curry! You'll need:


Cardamom, 2 pods
Cilantro, bunch


1 can coconut milk
1 1/2 cups faux-chicken broth
1 tsp salt or tamari
1/2 tsp sugar


2 tablespoons olive oil

3 cups fresh, chopped veggies - Zucchini, green pepper, mushroom used here
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 small tomato, chopped
1/2 avocado, diced (use a not-quite-guacamole-ripe avocado, if possible - it'll hold up better)
2 hard boiled eggs, to serve (optional, but delicious)
Fried, sliced tofu or seitan (also optional, and used here)


In a wok, heat your oil to medium-high heat. Throw the garlic and fresh veggies in, stir, add a dash of water and cover (steaming the veggies a bit as you fry will quicken their cooking time). Stir once every minute or so for 3-4 minutes, until the zucchini has softened a bit. Add your dry spices, stir to coat. Add your broth, coconut milk, cardamom pods, and cilantro. Stir well and simmer 5 minutes. Add sugar and salt, and taste the curry - you want a savory, salty flavor with a hint of sweetness. Use additional sugar if necessary. When you're digging your sauce, add the tomato, avocado, and whatever proteins you're using (ie, tofu, eggs, seitan) and stir gently. Turn off the heat and let the curry sit 5 minutes to blend the flavors.

Serve piping hot with Roti for dipping. Sooo goood.


Gluten-Free Roti


makes 4 crepe-like pancakes


1 cup GF all-purpose flour mix
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tablespoon vegetable oil or melted butter
1/4 -1/2 cup milk or soymilk
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar


3 tablespoons ghee or butter, for frying


Mix your dry ingredients in a small bowl. In another, mix your eggs, milk, and butter/oil.

While whisking, add your wet ingredients to your dry until well combined. Check for thickness - you want the batter pancake-thick, not crepe-thick. Add additional flour or milk as needed to get there.

Melt 1/2 tablespoon butter or ghee in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Grab a large spoon.

Using a circular motion, spoon batter into your hot skillet, around and around, until you've overlapped enough batter to give the pancake some substance. You'll use 3-4 large spoonfuls of batter for each roti. When you see browning around the edges of your 'cake, carefully edge your spatula under and flip the roti. You want some dark spots, which can take longer with GF flour than normal, so be patient.

Keep the roti warm in a 200 degree oven until ready to serve. They'll stay softer that way!

Weekend Nosh

We've been trying to make a tradition out of grilling something, at someone's house, every Sunday this summer. Praying to the Church of Charcoal, if you will. I had a bag of Vadouvan spices staring at me from the shelf, so "tandoori" kebabs were on the menu.

It's kinda misleading to use the word Tandoori in describing these, since a Tandoor is a type of clay oven, and obviously these were getting charred over a pile of briquettes. Although not an impossible stretch since tandoors typically use charcoal as a heat source. But anyway.

The previously mentioned Stuart had played Garden Produce Fairy again and graced us with about 2 pounds of green tomatoes. Those needed to get eaten, so we had some fried green 'maters too, using a secret technique whose how-to I'd pried out of a friendly waitress at the Penguin some weeks back (who shall remain names, lest she lose her job). Bad news for my vegan CLT homies: the fried pickles are NOT vegan.

And then we had this delicious lucky pot:

Bean salad, courtesy of MT. Kid has this uncanny knack for making the mundane surprising - his pasta salad, which I've since tried to replicate, holds a sweet memory in my foodbrain. The kicker here was pickled green beans. Awesome.

Onto the recipes!


Tandoori Kebabs

As with any kebab, use a mix of your favorite veggies, remembering that the marinade will stick best to wrinkly things (cauliflower and broccoli, ungilled mushrooms, scored zucchini).

Makes 15 skewers.

1 pound mushrooms
1/2 head cauliflower
1 block tofu, frozen, defrosted, squeezed to drain
2 bell peppers
2 medium squash or eggplant

2 cups yogurt
1/4 cup vadouvan or Tandoori spice mix (for a make-it-yourself mix, see here, can't go wrong with eCurry)
Dash sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt, 1 tablespoon

Mix your marinade and taste. You want a little heat, a fair amount of salt, and a bit of sweet. Add more sugar, red pepper, and salt until it tastes balanced and strong.

In several large plastic bags, separate your veggies. Pour a third of the mixture into each bag, seal well, and squish, gently, to coat your veggies. Put the bags aside at room temperature and let marinate for at least 3 hours (we went to 5 on ours).

As your briquettes are briquette-ing, skewer a piece of each of your veggies on either bamboo or metal skewers, starting and ending with a hearty vegetable (like cauliflower or squash, saving your tofu and peppers for the middle). Careful! The marinade makes things slippery. I punched a couple of tiny holes in my thumb with the sharp end. D'oh. 

As soon as you see mostly gray on your charcoal, it's time to grill. Highest heat possible is ideal. If you have concerns about the tofu sticking (which it likes to do) wipe your grill down with olive oil ahead of time. Put your kebabs on and close the grill, letting them cook for 2-3 minutes per side. Keeping the grill covered helps to steam the veggies, so they cook all the way through. Using tongs or a spatula, flip the kebabs, and cook about 3 minutes. Edges should be charred, colors bright.

Serve with a tamarind chutney (recipe below) or another sweet dipping sauce. Yum.

Tamarind dipping sauce:

1/2 cup tamarind puree
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tsp Sriracha (hey, nobody said this was authentic!)
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt to taste

Mix it all together and heat, either in a non-reactive pan or the microwave, until warm enough to melt the sugar. Taste and adjust salt. Chill.

Fried green tomatoes

I have an irrational desire to capitalize the letters of green and tomatoes. Thanks a lot, Jessica Tandy.

The secret is soaking the freshly sliced 'maters in, basically, Ranch Dressing for a good hour before coating/frying. Buttermilk base, little mayo, herbs and salt (my recipe is here).

1 cup ranch dressing

5 medium or 10 small green tomatoes

1/2 cup fine white cornmeal
1/2 all purpose flour
Dash each: cayenne pepper, black pepper, onion and garlic powder
1 tablespoon freshly minced chives

Vegetable oil, for frying

After your tomatoes have soaked in their ranch batch for a good hour, mix your flours, powders and chives in a large plate pan or plate.

Heat your oil in an iron skillet to medium-high.

As you fry, you're going to lose cornmeal to the oil. Since you'll be doing 4-5 batches, every batch or two, wipe the cornmeal out of you skillet and replace the oil. Otherwise, you'll end up with very burnt taste tomatoes and a kitchen full of smoke.

Shake a little dressing off your tomato round and plunge it into the flour. Press gently to coat one side, then flip and press again. I like to let the tomato sit there until I have a panful ready to fry - so you can cook them all at once.

Gently place each tomato into the oil and fry until golden on one side, about 2 minutes. Do not move the tomato, as you'll loose your crust, if you do. Carefully flip by getting all the way under the tomato with your spatula, scraping the crust off the pan if needed. Fry the other side another 2 minutes. Drain on paper towels.

Serve with more Ranch, for dipping. Mmmmm.

So THAT'S why it's always 2 bucks more.

There was no immediate need for me to try my hand at Malai Kofta, since we have some really great Indian joints in CLT. Nevertheless, I made a big batch yesterday and discovered a few things:

Time intensive. Just the dumplings take an hour to prepare, pre-fry.

Cranky materials. Oil has to be a very specific temp and small batches are KEY, otherwise you end up with exploded koftas. Which, unfortunately, aren't very nummy.

Not healthy. In the slightest.

But delicious! Really, really good. I'll admit that I've had better than the batch described below - prepared by other, more experienced Kofta cooks. My theory is that at, say, Woodlands, they make a batch a week and freeze the dumplings ahead of time, and just fry them to order. Still, if you're in the mood to try this most-challenging of Indian dishes, give it a whirl - you'll understand why it's always the most expensive choice on ze menu.

Malai Kofta (Cheese and Vegetable Dumplings in Creamy Tomato Sauce)
serves 4-6, or about 24 dumplings

I went tastespottinghunting and found this extremely detailed recipe. I followed the techniques for the koftas but shortened the sauce instructions. Check it.

For the dumplings:
3 small-medium potatoes, boiled and peeled
14 oz paneer cheese, grated
1/4 cup cornstarch
Salt to taste - about a teaspoon, based on how salty your paneer is
2 tablespoons curry powder of your choice - I used some delicious Garam Masala 
1 carrot, grated, blanched
1 cup nuts (I used cashews and almonds) soaked in hot water
1/2 cup raisins
Splash cream
1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 small knob fresh garlic, grated


Mash the 'taters until smooth, adding salt, pepper, and curry powder. Grate your cheese into another bowl, toss with cornstarch. Mix potatoes and cheese. Set aside.

Toss carrot, nuts, raisins, cilantro, garlic and ginger with a little cream in another bowl. Throw it in a food processor or blender for a few pulses - you want the stuffing to be fine mince.

Grab a slightly-smaller-than-a-golfball sized hunk of potato, and press it into your cupped hand, forming a bowl shape. Press a teaspoon or so of stuffing into the center and carefully close your hand a bit, smoothing the potato around the filling until totally surrounded and the dumpling is "closed". Gently roll the ball in your hand until the surface is smooth. Set aside on a plate until ready to fry. Make the rest.

Heat your oil until hot! and fry your koftas, 6 or so at a time. This is important - they must be able to move freely in the oil without touching each other. If they do, they tear themselves apart (which happened to me, luckily on my last, toss-em-all-in-there batch). You want a dark exterior - this'll take 4-6 minutes to achieve. Carefully remove to paper towels to drain.

Now for the sauce!

Since it's tomato season, I went the extra mile and peeled some fresh garden tomatoes. This is not essential - you could easy use canned 'maters instead.

4 cups fresh tomato puree from 5 medium 'maters
4 cloves garlic
1 small knob ginger, grated
1 stick cinammon
4 black cardamom pods
4-6 curry leaves
1 tablespoon powdered fenugreek
3 tablespoons ghee
Masala powder to taste (I used a tablespoon or so)
2 bird's eye chilis, sliced in half lengthwise, seeds removed
Salt to taste (about 2 tsp here)
1 cup heavy cream
Milk, to thin and serve

Melt your ghee in a wide saucepan and add your garlic, ginger, fenugreek and masala. Fry until fragrant, about 4 minutes. Add tomato puree, cinnamon and cardamom pods, salt, and curry leaves, stir well, and cover. Simmer the sauce for about 20 minutes. Add your cream and a little milk (you want enough sauce to cover your dumplings), stir and remove cardamom and cinnamon stick. Carefully place your dumplings in the sauce and simmer 5 minutes more.

Serve with Basmati rice. Garnish with chopped chilis and cilantro, if you so desire.