Malvani gravy with Salmon and a creepily Moving Finger

Aneela Mirchandani Fish, Goan food Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

— Omar Khayyam

I call bullshit on that. We are in the interwebs, people, and the Moving Finger can do what it damn well pleases. So it did. I used my Malvani spice paste to make a nicely-flavored gravy in which I floated some salmon; but I also used the opportunity to tighten up my ingredients list for the spice paste itself. So a post from months ago has been updated with more precise amounts and, ahem, better formatting. Check it out. Take that, Omar.

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I also made another discovery — this spice paste that we had used at home forever, taught by our Malvani cook, is actually none other than the famous Goan Xacuti masala; which in turn is none other than the Portguese Chacuti — but apparently not the Portuguese from Portugal, but the Portuguese from Goa when it was colonized. Learn something everyday. Also enables me to correctly tag this post.

Malvani gravy with Salmon (Goan Salmon Xacuti)

Now anything can be put into this gravy; usually some kind of flesh; but I don’t see why vegetables or paneer or tofu might not belong either. I used salmon and this made enough for a dinner for two along with white rice.

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 pound salmon (steak or fillet)
  • 3 tablespoons Malvani masala
  • 1 small onion
  • 2 medium tomatoes
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt

Method:

Slice the onions thinly and fry in the oil until somewhat browned. Read this for the proper method. Put in the Malvani masala at this point and stir and cook it on medium heat for a few minutes. Dice the tomatoes and put those in. Let them cook to the point they liquefy and dry up.

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Now this base must ‘lose its raw smell’ as my mother said; which means, must be boiled with about 3/4 cup water added in. Boil it on a simmer for about 5 to 7 minutes.

Now the salmon makes its entry. Sprinkle the salt over and cover with the gravy. Keep the gravy at a low simmer, cover and cook for about ten minutes.

Any greens might work for garnish but I used basil.

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15 Ways that Indians and Americans Eat Differently

Aneela Mirchandani Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 14 Comments

I think about food a lot. I don’t have a huge appetite, and I wish I could grow it so I could think about food even more. But I do spend a lot of time thinking about food anyway.

So you can imagine that out of the first 24 years of my life, which I spent in India, and the next — well, many years — that I have spent and am spending in the United States, a good part of that was spent thinking about food. The flavors; the ingredients; the cultural differences.

So my point is — there is not much I can claim expertise on, but this is probably it. It’s inconsequential, it’s fluff, but I’m an expert in it. How do eating styles differ between India and America? Sorry — I meant to say that in a more catchy way. The 15 Ways that Indians and Americans Eat Differently. Looky here, BuzzFeed!

1. Carnivorous v/s herbivorous:

This is no secret but Americans are more carnivorous than Indians. Way more. Way, way more. Ten times more, as a matter of fact, per person.

Global meat consumption per capita

Clearly the fact that India is not as economically developed as the United States is big a factor, and all experts agree, meat consumption in India will go up with GDP. But not as much as you would naively expect. You see, there were these guys some time ago — you might have heard of them, or might not — by whose influence Indians gave up meat almost altogether. One’s name was Siddharth, he was a prince, but you might know him better by his other title: The Buddha. The other was an emperor. His name was Ashoka, but most people know him better by his symbol, the wheel in the middle of the Indian flag. And then there was another prince, Mahavir by title, who created the Jain religion, about the strictest in the world in its edicts to cause no harm to other creatures.

2. Sugar and spice:

Another non-secret is that Americans consume a lot more sugar than Indians.

Global sugar consumption per person

A typical breakfast for an American might include pancakes, maple syrup, jam, or muffins. A typical breakfast for an Indian might include a number of different things depending on the region, but would include chutney or chilies. Indian desserts are very sweet indeed, but one has less of it, and not with every meal.

3. Industrial grease v/s elbow grease:

Good old fashioned American ingenuity extends to food: Americans eat way more processed food than most other countries. I had never heard of recipes that included Campbell’s chicken soup and Dorito chips as ingredients before I came to America. Factory-made cheeses in America must by law be called ‘cheese food‘ to distinguish them from the real thing.

4. Ingredient List Length:

In America a typical ingredient list is about four items long. This includes the main item — say fish. The four ingredients might be, fish, salt, pepper and olive oil. The typical Indian ingredient list for say, fish, to compare apples to apples, is about 15 items long. About half or more items might be spices.

5. Time Spent Cooking:

Because of the above, in America dinner is ‘prepared’ or ‘fixed’: doesn’t that give a sense of some pieces being put together? The fish is dressed simply and put under the broiler; meanwhile the bag of green beans is snipped at the corner and nuked; the dinner rolls are wrapped in a napkin and stuck in a still warm oven. Stuff is brought to the table. In India, food preparation starts in the kitchen at least an hour before the meal, possibly the night before, with the soaking of beans. I’ve often spent two hours before dinner chopping, sauteing, stirring.

Life is harder in India, but somehow we have more leisure time; a lot of that is spent in the kitchen over the minimal two-burner stove. In America, kitchens are palatial and magnificent and six-burner stoves are a maintstay of the foodie (we have a four burners ourselves), along with two ovens and a microwave, but we don’t seem to have much time to spend in food preparation. This is true especially for lunch, which in America always seems to be a quick meal. In India, there is hardly any distinction between lunch and dinner — both are equally elaborate.

6. Who does the cooking:

In India: mothers, grandmothers, the Brahmin family cook, or maids. In America: sometimes mothers and sometimes fathers. And sometimes no one.

7. Doneness:

Steak doneness chart

Steak doneness chart

This is a concept that I learned only after coming to America. People are such connoissuers of meat here, and meals are simple so that each ingredient matters more, so there is a lot of stress on when exactly food is considered ‘done’. Ten seconds too early, and it might be too rare and could kill you. Ten seconds too late, and the meal is rubber. Finicky, finicky. I never used the thermometer while cooking until I came to America.
In India, warmth is felt on the wrist; steaks are never eaten, so the question of rare or medium doesn’t arise; most other meat is prepared in the pressure cooker with spicy gravies around it; and it is ‘done’ when you hear two whistles. Possibly three, or four.


8. The Sandwich:

The American sandwich

The American sandwich

The Indian sandwich

The Indian sandwich

The American sandwich is the Incredible Hulk while the Indian sandwich is Tintin. It’s no wonder that sandwiches are a staple lunch food in America, while they are considered a snack in India.


9. The Salad:

This is another area where the typical American ingredient list is way longer than the Indian one. Americans have taken salad to a high art; can we say, also a high-calorie art? The variety in dressings alone is enormous. About fifteen types of premixed dressing are available on any typical grocery shelf; another fifty can be concocted at home. The variety in greens has exploded to include reds (radicchio) and bitters (endives). The American salad welcomes any type ingredient, be it chicken or bread or beans.

The Indian salad on the other hand may be a few leaves of lettuce or some sticks of cucumber. There you go, there’s your salad. If you get lime juice on it you’re lucky. Remember to spit out the stems!

10. Attitude towards chili heat:

Another quirk of Americans is to get into a bit of chest-thumping over being able to eat hot chilies. This may be a misconception on my part (I am a furriner after all) but it seems like in America the hotter the food you can stomach, the more macho you are. While in India I have seen old, frail grandmothers chomp on fresh green chilies straight with only raw onion as an occasional crutch. In my family it is the women who can eat hotter food (in fact, they need heat, without which they can taste nothing); and the men who shy away. Without feeling like their machismo has been questioned.

11. The Convenience Racket:

Have you ever opened a coconut to pry the flesh out? I had occasion to do this yesterday. This is not easy. Breaking it requires a hammer and a hard floor. While prying the flesh out I feared gouging my palm several times. When it splits, if you haven’t had the presence of mind to sip out the water, which by the way needs a screw-driver, you have a wet mess on your hands. Meanwhile, the counter is covered with brown coconut fibers, and the floor needs sweeping too.

Now think about how things would be different if the coconut was an American fruit. They would have engineered a shell that came with a zipper that neatly opened. The shell would be shiny smooth, there would certainly be no fibers — they would have been harvested for cattle feed already. The flesh would peel out in neat portion-sized strips by a mere touch of a finger.

Do you get my gist? Somehow Americans manage to genetically or otherwise engineer food to be incredibly convenient. Rough edges are smoothed out. Fruits like custard-apple (cherimoya) or pomegranate that serve a hefty dose of seeds with each bite don’t catch on.

Dirt — dirt is washed out at the farm. When we purchased lotus root at home, there was no mistaking the fact that someone had to wade into a muddy pond to get it. Garlic cloves were so small that you needed to peel about a hundred for a meal.

What is the problem with convenience, you ask? Nothing! If you had asked me yesterday, when I was struggling over my coconut, I would have said, I love it, bring on the magic zippered coconut! If you ask me on the days when I desperately miss the starchy, small-grained Indian corn that one roasts over coals to a char; or when I miss the crunch of seeds when I bite into watermelon: I say, perhaps we lose something in the Convenience Racket?

12. The Squeamishness Differential:

Americans are squeamish about fruits and vegetables they have never heard of; spices; textures of food. Pulpy — no good. Slimy — no good. Too mixed up together, ingredients not separate enough — no good.

Indians, on the other hand (including me), are squeamish about pungent cheeses, and meats that are prepared too plainly.

13. Health advice fads:

Food and health, of course, are intimately related; there have always been dozens of oughts and ought nots thrown around in any culture. Health advice also tends to run in fads. One year beans are a hit, another year they are the worst thing you can eat, filled with toxins. I tend to like Michael Pollan’s advice on this, to eat real food, mostly plants, and not too much.

But then the giant health food industry would grind to a halt, and we can’t have that, can we! In my years in America I have seen two sea-changes in health advice: from low-fat to low-carb; and innumerable other food-villains have been first villified and then, reluctantly, brought back to the plate. Eggs are one. Butter is another. I think gluten will return too, or perhaps that is my love for bread talking.

In America these health fads have proper names, and often have books, videos, or meal plans associated with them. I’m thinking Weight Watchers; Atkins; Paleo. I don’t doubt that each one is a profit-making machine in its own right.

India has its health advice fads too, but here is the difference — these fads are mostly hundreds of years old. They never seem to go away. One is the fad of ‘heating’ and ‘cooling’ foods from Ayurveda. This is almost like gender — each food is assigned to be either ‘heating’ or ‘cooling’ by the ancients. Too much of the heating type and you come out in pimples, sort of like a volcano, I guess? Too much of the cooling type and you might have aching bones. Forgive me, this gendering of food has no basis in science as far as I know, and is necessarily vague.

Another is to do with food combinations. One is never supposed to have milk with fish. Or water after eating cucumbers. My mother warned me that if I broke these rules I would get ‘vaaee’.

Hm. I have broken these rules a number of times now, so I guess I am now cursed with the mysterious ‘vaaee’…looking at my situation in life I take it that ‘vaaee’ gives you slowly graying hair and weight in unwanted places.

14. The Vegetarianism Differential:

Vegetarianism is relatively new in America; and tends to be chosen by people who care about health, animal welfare or the environment. More power to them, I say. The braver among them might choose to go vegan and avoid all animal products entirely (including leather).

In India though, vegetarianism is thousands of years old and is often demanded by religion, if not, by culture. Entire families and castes might never touch meat. But here’s the difference — no matter how ‘pure’ the vegetarian family is, veganism is pretty much unknown. In fact, cow slaughter is forbidden partly because we obtain milk from the cow and that makes it a somewhat maternal animal. The pure vegetarians, on the other hand, might avoid onions and garlic.

15. The Backlash!

Americans spent the fifties discovering processed food. Feminism swept over the land at the same time; none of it was inevitable, but the two movements colluded with each other to take people out of their kitchens into the aisles of corporations.

But now — now is a wonderful time to be a foodie in America. All those years of convenience and gradually deteriorating food quality have led to a backlash. America taught me to honor my ingredients like I never did before. There is a huge amount of respect for the craft of cooking as well.

I often get anxious about my home country’s trajectory in this arc. My peers are already cooking less than families did when I was a child. Options for eating out have exploded. Women are working out of the home in larger numbers, but men have not turned to the kitchen in equal numbers. Is the simple act of rolling a roti destined to become an exotic craft? I hope not. Time will tell.

Disclaimers:

This reflects my own experience and your mileage may vary. Please tell me in comments, agree or disagree! Did something strike a chord? Make you mad? Extrapolating from your own experience is always dangerous. But, extrapolate we must.

‘Extrapolating’ — from xkcd

A meditation on tempering and a good-tempered moong dal

Aneela Mirchandani Basic methods, Mung beans (moong dal) Tags: , , , , , , , 17 Comments

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Very little meat is eaten in India; many families are entirely vegetarian, but even the others (like mine) hardly got around to buying meat for the dinner table once or twice a month. I have met a lot of people in the United States who find that hard to believe. In this country all three meals are sometimes centered around meat. In addition to forming the main course, meat products are used to flavor the food: whether it is the use of chicken broth, or bacon cooked into the sauce base or thrown on salad, or ham hocks as a base for tough greens like collards.

Many modern cooks here are learning to leave aside the bacon in favor of aromatics like onion and garlic. In my mother-in-law’s generation people were a little afraid of these ‘strong’ and ‘aggressive’ flavors; nowadays, they generally lead to a flurry of swooning.

But what if you were to leave out the meat, leave out the eggs, then in a fit of pique throw out the onions and garlic too?

What would food taste like then? Is one supposed to develop a taste for grass? Well it turns out that this type of cuisine is one of the most flavorful in the world. Jain food, which is pretty much synonymous with the Sattvic or ‘pure’ food of Hinduism, leaves out any foods that might cause harm to other creatures; clearly this is an extremely high bar, but in practice, that means no meat, eggs, fish, onions or garlic.

That still leaves the wide world of vegetables (including my beloved cauliflower), all kinds of lentils (dals), grains from wheat and rice to millet and sorghum, the nutty fragrance of ghee, and of course what India is famous for, which is spices.

Tempering

My personal opinion — the ingredients are great and all. But really what sets apart Sattvic cuisine and Indian cuisine in general is the technique of tempering. Known by various names — tadka, chhaunk, bhagaar or vaghaar — this is the method of heating fat and throwing in whole spices until they release their essential oils.

Most non-Indian people ask me if I grind my own spice mixtures for Indian food. The answer is yes, I do. But for most everyday food, I don’t need to — because I just use them whole while tempering.

This is the basic process of tempering. Heat oil or ghee in a thick-bottomed small pan. When it shimmers (in case of ghee it should completely melt and a fragrance arise) the spices are put in. There is a certain sequence to the introduction of spices to the oil. There is, I admit, a bit of magic to this. Asafetida, if it is used, usually goes in first. Dry red chilies, if used, go in next. Mustard seeds (for me) usually go in last because they will pop with a vengeance. In between come the other whole seeds. Then in go the aromatic vegetables, such as garlic, ginger, chilies, onion, if any, that the recipe demands.

Tempering can be the first step of the recipe. Or it could be the last, as in the one below. The tempered oil is poured over the completed dish and stirred in.

Now spices are great even if you prepare them in the more well-known way — which is to grind them up into a mixture. I’m not going to run this method down (a classic of many cuisines, including Indian) but here is the difference from the tempering method. When you grind the spices, you are pulverizing every bit of them into the food. This includes the essential oils but also the fibrous seed-coating and other parts. Yes, there is a bit of the cardboard taste in most of the fibers. When you have a strongly flavored meal with onions or meat and so forth, you don’t notice this powderiness. But in a delicately flavored dish where the highlight is a lentil or a vegetable, the ideal method is to draw out the spice flavor into fat, leave the seeds whole where they add a bit of crunch, leaving the tastes pure.

And if you think about it, purity is what the Sattvic type of food is centered on.

Moong dal tempered with whole spices

This dish uses a mix of the dehusked (yellow) moong dal and the split but skin on (green) moong dal. Moong dal, of course, is a synonym of mung bean. It is one of the fastest cooking dals and needs no pre-soaking. This makes enough for a dinner for two.

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Ingredients:

  • 1/2  cup moong dal split and dehusked
  • 1/4 cup moong dal split but with skin on
  • 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
  • 1/2 teaspoon asafetida (hing)
  • 1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon ajwain (carom) seeds
  • 1 teaspoon cumin (jeera) seeds
  • 1 teaspoon black mustard (rai) seeds
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 2 cups water
  • For garnish: dry mango powder or lemon juice, more red chili powder, minced cilantro.

Method:

Rinse and drain the mix of dals in plenty of water. Put the dal in a pot along with 2 cups water and the turmeric. Bring it to a boil with the lid off; once it foams up heartily you can lower the heat to a simmer, partially cover with a lid and leave it for 35 to 45 minutes. At this point it should be softened. Add the salt.

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Heat the oil in a thick-bottomed pan. When it shimmers add the asafetida and the red chili powder; when they foam add the cumin and the carom seeds; when they sizzle add the mustard seeds; when they pop turn off the heat and pour the oil into the dal.

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Stir and taste for salt. At this point your dal is ready, all that is left is the garnish. I have suggested some but feel free to experiment!

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Bloggy Love

Aneela Mirchandani Uncategorized Tags: Leave a comment

In the six months that I have been blogging I’ve found so many unique, interesting and authentic food blogs, that I wish I was the Nobel committee for Food Blogs and I could nominate some of these for the Nobel prize for Food. But alas, I’m not, I’m just a food blogger, and what I can do is showcase them on my front page.

These are the blogs I go to often, to find ways to use unusual ingredients, or for tips from a regional cuisine, or tips from a grandmother, or just for inspiration. I will add more as I follow more. Have a look at the blogroll down the left side. Enjoy and give them some clicks.

Salmon in a package

Aneela Mirchandani Fish, Western food Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment
salmoninpackage

I admit that nothing sounds less appetizing than salmon cooked in a package. It arouses images of cardboard boxes bound with duct tape, spiders crawling all over it while it is left on the doorstep. Perhaps I should name this recipe Salmon a la Amazon?

But I assure you, no other process is as frugal with flavors as this method. If it makes you feel better think of it the French way:  ‘salmon en papillote’ is what they call it. Whether or not the French make better food, they have certainly cornered the market on making it sound better.

In this method, the salmon or the thing being cooked is wrapped in a package made of foil or parchment paper. Here’s the thing about it:

One, since it is paper, one can wrap the thing being cooked rather tight, and the thing can be very snug indeed. Most vessels are going to have a rather large air space around the thing being cooked — which means, the aromas emanating from it, which one ideally wants to conserve as much as possible of — have a large air space in which to escape to. In contrast when you cook it in a package the aromas stay close to your food, deep inside the package, forming a sort of aroma bomb, waiting to explode when the package is unwrapped at the table. A good sort of bomb, that is.

Two — these are the type of stiff papers than one can crimp into a rough air seal. So not only are the aromas staying close by your food, they aren’t leaking out either. The evidence of that? Most of the time when you have salmon or something baking in the oven, your kitchen gets quite suffused with the smells. Normally one swoons over this, but, as the ‘package’ method of cooking sternly reprimands us — the more suffusing into your kitchen that is going on, the less the aromas are sticking around where they belong — right by your food.

Three — it is not just the aromas, it is the natural steam that leaves the food as it cooks. Normally this creeps out into the aforementioned large air space, drying out the food stuff; but if you cook in a package, the steam is imprisoned inside, and perforce has to suffuse the food, which then remains moist.

Sorry about the analysis but it is nice to know why one does what one does. Or, we could just say ‘en papillote’ and consider the point made.

Cross-section of salmon cooking in a package

Salmon en papillote

In this recipe, I allow the flavors of onion, garlic and basil to combine with that of salmon. These items are tightly wrapped together so they have nowhere to go except into each others’ arms. This recipe makes enough for a dinner for two.

Ingredients:

  • 2 salmon fillets — total about 3/4 lb.
  • half a teaspoon of salt
  • 1/3 cup finely chopped onion
  • 2 cloves garlic, sliced or minced, your preference
  • A few large leaves basil, rolled up and sliced to chiffonade
  • 1 – 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil

Method:

Lay out a piece of aluminium foil 18 inches wide and at least twice that long. Spread a teaspoon of oil on it, then place the fish fillets on, side by side. Spread the rest of the oil on the fillets evenly, then salt them both evenly. Now spread the onion, garlic and basil on the fillets evenly; and then the lemon juice.

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Now make your pouch. I apologize I forgot to take pictures of this process but you basically fold the edges in, then take the long overhang of the foil over, to cover the salmon completely and fold it under to make a sealed package.

Put it in a 400 F oven. In 20 minutes the fish should be done to medium-rare, translucent inside but cooked to a safe 140 F. If you like it cooked more, leave it in for at most 5 more minutes. At this point the fish should be opaque through and through but still flaky.

You will know what I mean by ‘aroma bomb’ when you unwrap the package at the table. Here is our dinner with a side of wild rice and broccoli.

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Avocado Relish

Aneela Mirchandani Avocado, Cucumber, Fruit, Salads Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

There are some Westerners who go to India and fall in love with being Indian. They make all sorts of claims about their souls being Indian, or having been Indian in some previous life time; and, if you think about it, there couldn’t be a better proof of feeling Indian than throwing around claims about previous life times. Some start to wear rudraksha beads and saffron robes. The more extreme among them might take on a Hindu name.

We have all met at least a couple such people; if not, visit your nearest ISKCON and you will. But today I will introduce you to one such friend of mine — the avocado.

This fruit with buttery green flesh is native to Mexico. To me, the taste of the avocado has always been reminiscent of the flesh of young coconut: the kind you stick a straw in first to drink up the water and then the coconut-wallah scrapes the flesh off from the inside and hands it to you, using the shell as a bowl.

But stick it in a saffron robe and you would think this fruit was born and raised in India. It takes well to a number of Indian preparations. Mix it with yogurt to make a raita. Stick in a paratha. Spice it up to make chutneys. As I experiment I will be blogging about various Indian treatments for the avocado. But today, I will make that quintessential fresh accompaniment to rich and heavily spiced food — the kachumber.

Kachumbers are little salads or relishes that emphasize freshness and coolness. A bite of this is supposed to freshen your mouth during the meal. It usually consists some combination of onion, tomato, cucumber with lime juice. Try it with avocado, as below; it brings the taste of kachumber up to lusciousness.

This makes enough as a dinner side for two.

Avocado Kachumber

Ingredients:

  • Half an avocado, large, diced
  • Quarter cup finely diced red onion
  • Quarter cup finely diced tomato
  • One third cup finely diced cucumber
  • 1 green chili, serrano or jalapeno, finely diced
  • 1-2 teaspoon minced cilantro
  • Juice of one lime or lemon
  • Half a teaspoon salt

Method:

Couldn’t be simpler. Mix it all up! We had this as a side to fish and rice.

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Post script: Although I first tasted the avocado only after I came to California, where it grows easily even in home gardens, it turns out that avocado grows in India as well, under the guise of butter fruit. It seems to be known mostly in the south, and is only available during August and September. It also has trouble hitting that right moment of ripening — sometimes the fruit rots before getting there. But if you see it, do purchase it!

Curds and whey

Aneela Mirchandani Basic methods, Dairy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments
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I have before rather blithely thrown around assertions about how easy it is to make yogurt at home. Room temperature, time, blah. blah. So, madam, how about you put your money where your mouth is, hunh? Hunh?

Fine. Let’s do it. And in the process, get answers to a few persistent questions.

Those of you who hire a house cleaner — you know how easy it is to have your house cleaned, right? You prepare the house and leave. They come over, do the job while you are out working, whooping it up, or waiting watchfully outside the door. Come back home and enjoy your clean house.

Did you do any hard work? No — you waited. Of course, you had to hire the cleaners and set things up for them. But you didn’t actually dust a single chair or sweep a single room. Someone did though.

Delegation! That is what making yogurt is about. We delegate the making of yogurt to the lactic acid bacteria. We ourselves do nothing but wait while they are about their task. Of course my analogy breaks down somewhat because the lactic acid bacteria are not really hard at work with their dustpans and brooms, but rather simply enjoying a meal. It is as though you hired house cleaners to come over and dine at your house, and magically when they were done eating, your house sparkled.

Yogurt-making process

Yogurt-making process

The picture above describes the process.

  1. Milk is full of two kinds of proteins floating about in the liquid — casein and whey.
  2. It also has a special type of milk sugar called lactose
  3. We add in yogurt starter, which contains lactic acid bacteria. They simply love to dine on the lactose
  4. As they do so, they give out lactic acid
  5. The lactic acid amount in milk builds up over time, turning the whole thing somewhat acidic (sour) — you see how it turns yellow?
  6. In that acidic (sour) environment, the casein knots of protein relax and spread out into long strands. Once they are all open they knit with each other into a web that traps the whey proteins and the liquid in milk. This is why the curds are jelly-like.

The experiment

Enough theory. Let’s get to action. In my home in Bombay we made a batch of yogurt every night. Most times it was delicious but every once in a while we would have a runny mess that us kids refused to eat. What went wrong? I have also made yogurt at home in California many, many times. Sometimes with spectacular success. Other times not. Why?

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The ideal yogurt recipe is this: Heat milk to 185 F (scalding), wait till it cools to 110 F (warm). For each cup of milk, add a tablespoon of whipped yogurt and stir. Keep it warm for about 8 hours.

But what happens if you add less starter? What if you skip the step of heating to scalding first? Will room temperature work, just take longer? Time for…

The experiment! I made 7 cups of yogurt:

Cup 1: Left at room temperature to set, not scalded first, one tablespoon starter

Cup 2: Left at room temperature to set, scalded to 185 F first, half tablespoon starter

Cup 3: Left at room temperature to set, scalded to 185 F first, one tablespoon starter

Cup 4: In warm oven to set, not scalded first, half tablespoon starter

Cup 5: In warm oven to set, not scalded first, one tablespoon starter

Cup 6: In warm oven to set, scalded to 185 F first, half tablespoon starter

Cup 7: In warm oven to set, scalded to 185 F first, one tablespoon starter

The Results:

The most important factor that good yogurt depends on is warmth while leaving it out to set. In my home in San Francisco room temperature is around 70 F. The first 3 cups, that were left out on the counter to set, turned out terrible. It took 2 – 3 entire days for them to set, and those that eventually did, had by then developed off flavors. Cups 1, 2 and 3 ended up down the drain. To avoid that fate, yogurt must be set in a warm environment!

The second factor that mattered was whether milk was scalded up to 185 F first, then cooled, or was it just warmed up to 110 F directly. Funny thing is, yogurt formed either way. But the yogurt that formed when milk was scalded first was firmer with a more even texture. The reason for this is: when milk is scalded, some of the whey proteins get relaxed (denatured), and they help the casein proteins form a more even web, rather than clustering together. The actual effect of this is that when milk has been scalded first, the yogurt is firmer and more even, while if it hasn’t been scalded, the curds are more clumpy and separate from the whey.

The third factor — whether we used one or half tablespoon of starter, hardly seemed to matter at all. If the other two things were done right, you could not detect a difference. For the borderline cases, one tablespoon helped it some. It did not solve all problems though.

The Ideal Yogurt:

Now I am equipped to give you the most ideal yogurt recipe as tested by my household.

Start with whole milk. And if you are starting with store-bought yogurt, make sure it says ‘live cultures’. Warm up an measured amount of milk till the point it starts to rise and foam up. Turn it off. Wait till it cools down to just lukewarm. If you want to be precise, the first temperature is 185 F and the second temperature is 110 F.

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Fine. Turn on the oven to about 150 F or so. Turn off as soon as it reaches that, and turn on the oven light. Leave it on. Put the milk in the jar that you want the yogurt to set in. For each cup, put in a half tablespoon of stirred yogurt and stir to meld. Cover and leave in the warm oven for at least 6 hours. In 8, 10 or 12 hours, it will turn more and more sour, so it depends on your preference. Store in the fridge thereafter.

I have often woken up in the morning and, completely forgetting I have yogurt setting in the oven, turned it on with melted plastic lids, ruined yogurt and other disastrous results. So now, I use oven-proof glass Weck jars, and put a sticky note on the oven to remind myself.

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No more accidents. Just good creamy sour yogurt which is not accidental at all.

Pomo tofu

Aneela Mirchandani Indian Chinese Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment
Pomo tofu with fried rice

Pomo tofu with fried rice

Long, long ago, there lived a pockmarked old lady in Sichuan, China who came up with a good tofu dish. Lest you think I’m being rude by calling a poor senior citizen names, I assure you, I have no choice in the matter. My hands are tied; that is what the dish is named!

The dish of course is ma po tofu, a luscious tofu-blocks dish with a spicy brown gel around it, flecked with red chili and other unidentifiable stuff. ‘Ma’ = pockmarked and ‘po’ = old lady. I have eaten and enjoyed this dish at many restaurants (some more than others) and tried to recreate it at home. The problem of course is that not being Chinese myself, my usual skill at recipe-divining that works fine for Indian food, flops miserably for Chinese food.

But do I give up that easily? Not I, she said evenly. Here is my version which has actually turned out to be a easy and yummy option for week night dinners, that according to my husband tastes quite Chinese, but also quite Indian, but not Burmese at all (Burma — which lies between India and China — often has cuisine that tastes like a cross between both). This dish is from quite a different border between India and China, very far away from Burma indeed; a nexus, if you want to call it that. Geographically that nexus lies in California.

It is very good but not too much like ma po tofu at all. It is all in the perception. In that sense this dish is quite postmodern. Therefore I call it

Pomo Tofu

Ingredients:

  • Firm tofu block, about 14 oz — I use Wildwood sprouted
  • 2 – 3 tablespoons oil
  • 1 oz mung bean thread noodles, dried (about half a bag)
  • Quarter cup raw peanuts
  • Half cup chicken broth
  • Quarter cup rice wine, sherry, vermouth or white wine
  • 1 tablespoon cornstarch
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon chili-garlic sauce, I use Lee Kum Kee

Method:

Dry the tofu block with a paper towel and cut it neatly into blocks. To do this, stand it on one edge, and make two vertical cuts first, to divide the tofu into three equal slices. Then place the slices horizontally on a cutting board, stacked one on top of the other, then give it three vertical cuts to divide the tofu into four longitudinal sections. Now give the tofu block a quarter turn and repeat the three vertical cuts to make blocks.

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Heat two tablespoons of oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the tofu blocks on medium-high heat, about 3 minutes on each side. I needed to do this in two batches; one doesn’t want to overcrowd the tofu in the pan. Ideally one crisps up each block on all 6 sides; but two be honest I only have the patience to crisp up the two widest faces. That seems to be quite enough.

For the second batch, you may need to drizzle another half to one tablespoon oil on the pan. Remove the crisped up tofu blocks onto a plate. In the same pan, roast the peanuts for a few minutes till they look a little browned. Remove onto the same plate.

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Meanwhile, soak the mung bean threads in hot water for five minutes to soften them. Also prepare the sauce thusly: In a bowl, combine the following ingredients: chicken broth, wine, soy sauce, chili paste, cornstarch. Stir it well to dissolve the cornstarch.

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Now that your three-legume brigade is ready (tofu, peanuts and mung bean threads are all derived from legume seeds), put all three of them into the pan, pour the sauce around, and heat while stirring till the mixture gels and turns shiny. Coat all ingredients with the sauce. Garnish, if you like, with any green herbs — I have used scallions, basil, cilantro; but in this example I went with arugula.

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A method to the meadness — Update after 6 days

Aneela Mirchandani Alcoholic Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The first post in this series is here. Six days in, our mead-to-be is bubbling along nicely. We have reached peak bubbling of about a bubble every two seconds in the airlock, look:

Bubbles in jug and airlock

Bubbles in jug and airlock

To recap, we have put yeast into a solution of honey and water, shaken it, and waited. What is going on in there?

My friend Saccharomyces cerevisiae ICV D-47

Let us get to know this worthy fellow — Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Out of the many single-celled yeasts out there, that is the one we humans have chosen to adopt. This is the yeast that brewers and bakers cultivate; we see it sold on grocery shelves under various labels: active dry yeast, instant yeast, bread-machine yeast, wine yeast and so on.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae -- the brewer's and baker's yeast from MicrobiologyOnline.org

Saccharomyces cerevisiae — the brewer’s and baker’s yeast from MicrobiologyOnline.org

What is so special about it? Beats me, but I got some clues from my obsessive googling. It reproduces quickly — in an hour and a half, it can double its population. It can ferment both in the presence of oxygen and outside it. In the presence of oxygen it ferments faster. Without, it goes slower. But ferment it does. As for reproducing — it can blithely switch between simply diving into two, like a plant, or having male and female babies that have sex to produce babies, the familiar way.

Yes, all of this parade of life is going on in the glass jug while it ferments.

Actually seeing a microbe with a naked eye is not something one usually aspires to (you could fit about two hundred of these, end-to-end, within a single millimeter of your tape measure). But one of the talents this yeast has is to ‘flocculate’. What that means is that individual creatures come together into a ‘floc’, which sounds conveniently like ‘flock’. If only all science words were so conveniently named. Now a flock is actually visible, it looks like brownish residue — as you see below in the picture:

Floc of yeast

Floc of yeast

Another way you can actually see it is: next time you buy some red grapes at the store, dust off the whitish powder that you find on its surface. This is nothing but our friend Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

In fact the exact strain of this yeast that we used — ICV D-47 — was dusted off grapes originally in France by a man named Dr. Dominique Delteil, somewhere in the 1980’s.

Airy fermentation

I think of fermentation as ‘incomplete eating by a microbe’. ‘Incomplete’ because even after the microbes have had their fill, there is plenty of stuff left over for you to enjoy, whether it is wine, beer, bread or dosa. ‘Eating’ because that is what the microbes are doing, gorging themselves silly on your sugars, gaining energy enough to meet, marry and multiply. Why only microbes? Because clearly, you would not look very kindly at bigger creatures gorging on your food — we would call them pests.

Our mead right now is in the process of fermenting in an airy way (aerobic fermentation). Remember we shook the jug to allow air to disperse throughout the liquid? Well the yeast is rapidly using that oxygen to produce the bubbles of carbon-dioxide that we see filling the airlock.

These are the same bubbles that we aim to trap inside a loaf of bread to make it rise. In this case, we allow those bubbles to escape. Because what we care about (the alcohol) will come about after all the oxygen has been used up, and we go into the next stage. Stay tuned….

Exercise your right to choose — the chili

Aneela Mirchandani Peppers, Tomatoes Tags: , , , , , 8 Comments

There there, I know what ails you. You love the smoky flavor of dried red chilies, but their heat makes you run for the jug of water. It may also give you the runs. You curse the American continent for inventing these pods of TNT. You wish that you could turn into a bird, not so that you could then fly, oh so free! — but because then you would lack the pain receptors for capsaicin that you share with other mammals.

Don’t worry, I understand! You can cry on the shoulders of Aunt Odd Pantry.

Chili pods drying

Chili pods drying

And still, the flavor of chilies haunts you! How to get one without the other? There is a way! You see, just like some countries invest heavily in defense (like my home, the United States), while others have to expend so much energy to just survive in the desert that they don’t have much left over for defense (like Dubai in the UAE), chilies come in two styles as well. Chilies that grow in wetter climates, where their sworn enemy (the fungus Fusarium semitectum) grows easily, invest a lot in defense and become hotter. While chilies that grow in drought conditions have to be more judicious in how much heat they develop. The arch enemy — the fungus — is less of a problem in drought anyway, because it needs wetness too.

The hottest chilies in the world are the bhoot jholokia from Nagaland, India and the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion — both come from very wet climates.

But then there is the panoply of larger, not-hot chili peppers — the pasilla, the Kashmiri, the ancho — that can be added to the mix to add flavor and color but not the heat. They thought of everything.

Anaheim Chilies from About Mexican Food

Anaheim Chilies from About Mexican Food

This dish in particular is based around that smoky flavor of chilies. Tomatoes and garlic play a supporting role. Yogurt is used to moderate the taste further. Like several of my other recipes, this is a gravy that one can throw anything into. It goes very well over rice, or with chapatis, or dosas, for that matter.

The recipe below makes enough for about 6 people.

Chili-tomato gravy

Ingredients:

  • A few big, mild chilies — I used 4 Kashmiri
  • A few small, hot chilies — I used 5 cayenne
  • 8 cloves garlic
  • Quarter cup cilantro — I used some thick stems I had left over
  • 3 medium tomatoes
  • 1/3 cup plain yogurt
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • Half a teaspoon turmeric
  • 1.5 teaspoon salt

Method:

This proportion of mild to hot chilies gave me a pretty hot gravy. Feel free to use a different proportion, from no hot chilies at all to all hot chilies. You better know what you are doing if you choose the latter.

Heat a roasting pan on medium-high and place the dry chilies on it for a few minutes until they darken. Remove them to cool for a few minutes. When they are cool enough to handle, you can destem and deseed them. Grind them to a fine powder in a clean coffee grinder.

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Make a paste of garlic, cilantro and chili powder, adding as little water as you can get away with.

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Heat the oil in a thick-bottomed pot. When it shimmers put in the paste. Stir and let it cook until it darkens, on medium heat. Soon you will see the oil shimmering and the paste will seem drier and yet shinier. Then you know it is done.

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Now whip up the yogurt and swirl it in. Stir and let that cook as well. In a few minutes, it will have properly merged with the paste and become homogeneous. Now it is time to put in the roughly chopped tomatoes.

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At this point the paste is probably so liquid that you can raise the heat to highish. Let the tomatoes liquefy and boil off mostly. Add the turmeric and the salt. At this point, the basic gravy is done.

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Add anywhere from a half cup to one-and-half cup of water to allow it to boil for a few minutes; also, by controlling the amount of water you are controlling what sort of dish you want it to be. If you plan to add some potatoes to it and have it over rice, for instance, you could make it more liquid, because potatoes will have their own thickening starch. If you plan to add chicken bite-sized pieces, and want a drier sauce around it, you can skip the water entirely — the chicken will let out some of its own liquid.

As you might have guessed, now is the time to make a dish out of it by adding whatever things you want to this sauce. Care must be taken to make sure that whatever you add will have similar cooking times. One trick is to precook the vegetables in a microwave and then add it in to blend.

Here are some ideas:

  • Chicken breast cut up with cilantro garnish
  • The ever-popular paneer blocks with peas
  • A combination of small cut up vegetables: carrots, peas, cauliflower, bell peppers, french beans, potatoes, raisins.
  • Fillet of strong-flavored fish, covered with the sauce, and simmered until done

This is what I did with it — paneer and peas.

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