Kitchen Sink Cashew Curry

For this month's ingredient - ginger - I wanted to use it in typical Indian fashion, freshly grated and sautéed with garlic, onions and spices. The trouble was that I didn't quite know what dry spices I wanted to use. So while the result is decent, it's not a "wow, I'm definitely making THAT again" recipe. My goal was to keep it relatively healthy overall, feature veggies and non-meat proteins, and use some whole wheat noodles b/c I wasn't in the mood for rice or naan.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp whole coriander seeds

1 tbsp whole cumin seeds

oil for sautéeing

1/2 tsp turmeric

salt

4 large cloves of garlic, minced

2 inches of fresh ginger, grated

2 small/medium onions, chopped

2 serrano chilis, minced

8 oz. fresh green beans, trimmed and cut in half

6 oz. baby bella button mushrooms

2 cups small cauliflower florets

14 oz. package of extra-firm organic tofu

1 3/4 cup plain fat-free yoghurt

7/8 cup light cream

1 cup (or more) roasted and salted cashews

fresh cilantro

I served it with Ronzoni whole wheat linguine (6 oz), prepared al dente.

Directions:

In a dry frying pan, roast the whole spices. When fragrant and toasty, remove from heat and grind in a spice grinder. (I keep an inexpensive hand-held coffee grinder specifically for this purpose). Heat oil in a large (12") frying pan. Add ground spices, turmeric, ginger, and garlic, and sauté for a minute or so, until fragrant. Add the onions and chilis, and sauté until the onions start to get soft. Add salt, vegetables and tofu. Cover and let steam for 5-10 minutes, until the veggies are crisp-tender. Add the cream and yoghurt and let simmer, uncovered, until the sauce is a bit thicker and veggies seem done. Stir in a bunch o cashews. Adjust salt to taste. Sprinkle with cilantro to garnish.

The result:

Well, it was tasty, but it felt like it was lacking something. I don't know if it's acid (a lot of curries have tomatoes), or more hot chilis (I can barely taste any heat- maybe my chilis were too mild), or if the cream or yoghurt needed more fat, but it's not quite where it should be. The sauce was a bit watery, too. I was worried about simmering it down even further, though - I didn't want to overcook the veggies.

I think that next time I wouldn't use cumin, either. Maybe I'd do curry powder and coriander instead. I think coriander and cumin go better when you're also using warm spices like garam masala, and in the dishes that include raisins and things. Using noodles - especially whole wheat linguine - isn't exactly traditional, either. But I was in the mood, and the noodles seemed to go well with the the stuff.

Overall it was decent and quite healthy (I think it was, at least), but I'd make some changes to the spices and heat next time.

January: Ginger

Fresh, dried or pickled, in sweet dishes or savory, it adds a lot of flavor and interesting twists. Happy recipe creating!

Cheesecake w/ Cherry Crust

Better late than never, right? There are four hours left this month and year, and I'm finally posting my recipe. I had the idea a few weeks ago, but hadn't the time nor the audience to test out this recipe.

As I have before, I used a recipe from Small Batch Baking for this month's recipe. I chose a generic cheesecake recipe to get the idea on how to make it, but of course put my own twist on it.

With dried cherries the ingredient, my idea was to make a cheesecake, with crushed dried cherries as part of the crust. The easy thing to do would be to add the dried cherries to the cheesecake batter, but that just ain't me. Instead, I added it to the graham cracker crust.

Ideally, the cherries would be ground up fine, incorporated smoothly in the crust. I tried freezing the cherries and grinding them in a coffee grinder to no avail. I even went on a hunt through Erie, PA for some dry ice. No dice. So I just chopped them as fine as I could and mixed them with the crust, and it worked well!

Having never made a cheesecake before, I am pleased with the result. The chunks of cherry in the crust were noticeable enough to work well, and I'm glad I wasn't able to grind them any finer. Since I'm inexperienced, I turned the small-batch cheesecakes face down on plates and called it good enough. They certainly tasted good, and the audience (wife and in-laws) was pleased. I had planned on making a chocolate whipped cream to put on top, but time was running short. Again, there are only four hours left this month! But the dessert definitely needed a sauce of some sort. Next time.

Duck in Red Wine Cherry Sauce

Watching Julie and Julia inspired my choice of dishes for this month. I adapted a "Two Fat Ladies" recipe for duck, reducing the amount of fat they used, and adding this month's ingredient, dried cherries. This is a delectable dish, recommended for a holiday dinner. The best part is that you can make it the night before, and just heat it when ready to serve- the flavors intensify when you reheat the duck. This makes it the perfect dish for a fancy holiday dinner when you'd rather spend time with your guests than at the stove.

Ingredients:

3.5-4 lb duck, rinsed and patted dry, then cut into serving pieces

salt and freshly ground pepper

1 cup all-purpose flour

~2 tbsp olive oil

~ a handful of shallots: 1/2 cup chopped plus 8 medium shallots quartered

4 ounces of bacon (about 4-5 slices), cut into narrow strips

1.5 cups dry red wine, like merlot

14 peppercorns

1 bay leaf

6 oz. dried cherries, divided

2.5 cups chicken stock

1 tbsp unsalted butter

1 tsp sugar

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

In a small bowl or pie pan, combine flour and a good amount of salt and pepper. Dredge the duck pieces in the flour mixture. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil. Sauté the duck pieces until gold brown. Remove the duck pieces and place in a large dutch oven or casserole. Drain the fat from the skillet into a separate container.

(Note: I let the duck fat cool and the dark flour solids settle to the bottom, then poured the good duck fat into a separate container. Then I put the duck fat in the refrigerator, saving it for another delicious use later on.)

Swipe out the pan with a paper towel. Return the pan to medium heat and sauté the bacon and 1/2 cup of chopped shallots. Add the wine, bay leaf, peppercorns and 1/4 cup of the dried cherries. Simmer until the wine is reduced by half. Add the stock and again reduce by half. Strain the sauce and pour over the duck in the dutch oven, discarding the solids. Add the remaining dried cherries to the dutch oven, cover, and place in the oven. After about 20 minutes have passed, melt the butter in a small skillet, and add the quartered shallots. Add the sugar, and sauté the shallots until they are brown (about 10 minutes). Add the shallots to the duck, and stir it all up. Continue cooking another 20-30 minutes, or until the duck is cooked.

I served this with rice, broccoli, squash soup, and the rest of the Merlot. The duck was very tender, and just the perfect level of richness. The sauce was savory with just a hint o sweetness from the shallots and cherries, which become tender through the simmering. This is SOOO yummy.

December: Dried Cherries

Hello all. On Scotts and Pans' authority, I have been granted permission to set this month's challenge. Fresh fruits are difficult to find this time of year, so the ingredient of the month is dried cherries. Sweet or sour, dried cherries are readily available and offer plenty of heart-healthy nutrition. They are also a festive holiday red. (Bonus!)

Beer Pickles

While visiting Boston on Halloween weekend, I was telling Scotts and Pans about Kool-Aid Pickles and how gross they sounded. I wondered why they couldn't be made with something delicious, like beer, instead. Well, it turns out they can, but then you have to change the name to beer pickles.

Beer Pickles

1 jar of pickles

1 beer

Drain pickle juice off pickles. Slice pickles in half and return to the jar. Pour beer over them until they are all covered. Refrigerate for 2 weeks. I used Bitburger (because it was that or pumpkin ale and that actually sounds worse than kool-aid pickles).

Clearly these are very simple to make. I had a few questions going in to this like: what will happen to the carbonation? Will they taste anything like pickles at all? How gross will this be? If I can make beer pickles, surely I can make gin olives, right? (coming soon to a blog near you!)

Here are the answers! The carbonation gets absorbed by the pickles - a similar result to making jello with 7-up - and you have a tangy treat. The pickles were not as crunchy as they were in their own juice, but retained some nice pickle flavor. They aren't gross at all, but could be if paired with something non-delicious with pickles (like Kool-Aid, for example). They do take a little getting used to, though.

I decided to make a hot-dog relish from the pickles. I chopped them and mixed them with yellow mustard. A delicious hot dog topping! (and I found New England style buns in Virginia! Who knew!?! Oh, Trader Joe's, you never cease to amaze me...)

Tune in next week for Fried Green Tomato's Martini Tapenade made with Gin Olives!

November assignment: a condiment of choice, from scratch. First thing that popped into my mind was a relish with onions and cranberries. Why not? So I did. But I added other things as well and by the looks of the picture of the empty bowl, I must have hit upon a great combination. I served it to a group of friends along with a chicken casserole. When it was time to clean up, the empty bowl appeared in the kitchen from the table - a sure sign that what I had prepared was enjoyed by everyone. The second picture is a small bowl of what was left that did not fit into the larger bowl, so Jim and I were able to have some with the left over chicken casserole the next night. This recipe is a definite keeper with no changes necessary!

Not only did we have it with a chicken casserole, but Jim and I tried it on top of a slice of Brie on a butter crisp cracker. That was very good. This recipe has potential for being very versatile. I think it would also work as a topping for a cheese bruschetta using either Brie or goat cheese on a toasted piece of a French baguette.

Cranberry Sauce

1 TBSP olive oil
½ cup chopped sweet onion
1 - 12 oz. bag fresh or frozen cranberries
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup orange juice
1/4 cup raspberry jelly
1/4 tsp Saigon cinnamon
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1 tsp orange zest
1 ½ tsp of small slivers of orange peel
1/3 cup toasted, chopped slivered almonds
salt - a shake or two

Heat olive oil on medium in small frying pan. Add onions and saute until light in color. About 10-15 minutes.

In a medium saucepan, place the next 9 ingredients plus the sauted onions and bring to a boil. Turn down heat to a slow simmer and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Add almonds and salt. Let cool. Serve either at room temperature or chilled. Refrigerate the left overs.