(no subject)
Recipe for the yellow stew from last night, as taeli requested. If anyone wants recipes for anything else from last night (or, really, anything I’ve ever cooked for you ever), just let me know.
Also, there are way too many notes at the bottom because I’m crazy and love cooking and am anal.
I’m not so much with the measuring out things when I’m cooking, so I tried to recreate measurements, but I make no grantees. These are the approximate amounts I used for the giant batch yesterday; scale as suites your needs.
1 can coconut milk
1 stick butter
1 tsp turmeric
½ tsp cayenne pepper
2 chili peppers
3 roma tomatoes
salt
tons or garam masala… probably at least 2 tb
1 bag mung beans
water
1) Soak the beans. They should come split in half, which means they’ll absorb water more quickly, but they’ll still need at least a few hours. I usually just set them to soak the night before.
2) You’re going to want the tomatoes and peppers cut up ahead of time (once you’re done with this, everything is just add and stir. Yay easy!). Roughly chop tomatoes, might want to dice peppers.
3) OK, actually start cooking! Melt the butter! And, OK, if you were being strictly accurate you would actually want to use either animal fat or ghee, so you can go ahead and clarify your butter into ghee if you want. I don’t usually bother-the broth is going to be rich enough that you won’t notice any muddy taste from non-clarified butter. You want the heat to be sufficient to melt the butter but you don’t want to actually boil it.
4) Throw in your spices and let them cook in the butter (while stirring constantly) for sometime between 30 seconds and a minute (ish); you want to get your butter all crazy fragrant.
5) Now add your chopped tomatoes and peppers. Let them cook for a few minutes while stirring. Note that the mixture should be wet, and the tomatoes should start to break down fairly quickly and make a gooey sauce. If the mixture is dry enough that it looks like you’re frying or browning the veggies, your heat is too high; turn down the heat, and probably add some water for damage control.
6) After your tomatoes have had a couple of minutes and are getting nice and gooey, add basically everything else-the beans, coconut milk, salt, and water. I would start with 2 cups of water, but you may need to add more later; at this point, you want to cook the stew until a. the beans are soft and b. the sauce has thickened. The beans you get in the US are often older, which means they need more cooking time in order to soften up enough to eat comfortably, in which case you’ll need to add more water to prevent it from drying out. It should cook for at least 20 minutes, but don’t freak out if it takes up to 45 or so… Just keep checking the forkability of the beans and make sure it doesn’t dry out.
OK, yay, you’re done!
Notes on ingredients:
a. Beans: I have sometimes seen the green mung beans in with other eaten-by-anglo foods, but I’ve never seen the yellow ones outside of an ethnic food section. These are eaten by people all over Asia, East Africa, and the Arab peninsula, so there’s lots of non-English names that they’re called by; because I know what they look like I often just trawl ethnic food aisles looking for the right back without paying attention to names. Woodmans West had them in one of the ethnic food aisle near the various asian noodles; the green and yellow mung beans were right next to each other, and I used the entire bag. Unfortunatly, I’ve since thrown the bag away, so I’m not sure how much that was… So just go buy one of those yourself and use it as the measure :)
b. Spices: my guesses on these measurements are really rough-but you want your butter to look fairly thick and brown with spices. Cayenne pepper isn’t necessarily part of the recipe, but I couldn’t find the peppers I actually wanted (here I often sub jalepenos or habeneros, depending on how spicy I’m feeling-Woodmans was out of everything but chili). Garam masala is actually a mixture of spices that are roasted and ground together; I sometimes make my own, but it’s becoming easier to find pre-made in the US. Individual recipes for garam masala can vary widely, so if you don’t like the way your stew turned out, this may be why-let me know and I can give you my recipe or some of my masala.
c. Salt: I really don’t know how much salt I used because I added it at several times throughout the cooking… But I love salt and used tons. I highly recommend kosher salt; I tend to use enough salt in Swahili food that table salt would cause it to start taking on a slightly sweet tone.
d. Butter: yes, you could probably get away with using less butter (although, with all the coconut milk in this recipe it’s never going to be precisely low fat.) If you do use less, be very careful not to burn the spices, and you might want to add some water when you add the tomatoes. DO NOT SUBSTITUTE MARGARINE in this recipe; it doesn’t carry the spices well. If you want to substitute, you could use palm or coconut oil. Olive oil might also work, but you may want to throw in some extra masala to cover the olive taste.
e. Tomatoes: these provide the primary “heartiness” to the taste. If your tomatoes are weak/watery, you might want to throw in some bouillon or use broth instead of water.
Also, there are way too many notes at the bottom because I’m crazy and love cooking and am anal.
I’m not so much with the measuring out things when I’m cooking, so I tried to recreate measurements, but I make no grantees. These are the approximate amounts I used for the giant batch yesterday; scale as suites your needs.
1 can coconut milk
1 stick butter
1 tsp turmeric
½ tsp cayenne pepper
2 chili peppers
3 roma tomatoes
salt
tons or garam masala… probably at least 2 tb
1 bag mung beans
water
1) Soak the beans. They should come split in half, which means they’ll absorb water more quickly, but they’ll still need at least a few hours. I usually just set them to soak the night before.
2) You’re going to want the tomatoes and peppers cut up ahead of time (once you’re done with this, everything is just add and stir. Yay easy!). Roughly chop tomatoes, might want to dice peppers.
3) OK, actually start cooking! Melt the butter! And, OK, if you were being strictly accurate you would actually want to use either animal fat or ghee, so you can go ahead and clarify your butter into ghee if you want. I don’t usually bother-the broth is going to be rich enough that you won’t notice any muddy taste from non-clarified butter. You want the heat to be sufficient to melt the butter but you don’t want to actually boil it.
4) Throw in your spices and let them cook in the butter (while stirring constantly) for sometime between 30 seconds and a minute (ish); you want to get your butter all crazy fragrant.
5) Now add your chopped tomatoes and peppers. Let them cook for a few minutes while stirring. Note that the mixture should be wet, and the tomatoes should start to break down fairly quickly and make a gooey sauce. If the mixture is dry enough that it looks like you’re frying or browning the veggies, your heat is too high; turn down the heat, and probably add some water for damage control.
6) After your tomatoes have had a couple of minutes and are getting nice and gooey, add basically everything else-the beans, coconut milk, salt, and water. I would start with 2 cups of water, but you may need to add more later; at this point, you want to cook the stew until a. the beans are soft and b. the sauce has thickened. The beans you get in the US are often older, which means they need more cooking time in order to soften up enough to eat comfortably, in which case you’ll need to add more water to prevent it from drying out. It should cook for at least 20 minutes, but don’t freak out if it takes up to 45 or so… Just keep checking the forkability of the beans and make sure it doesn’t dry out.
OK, yay, you’re done!
Notes on ingredients:
a. Beans: I have sometimes seen the green mung beans in with other eaten-by-anglo foods, but I’ve never seen the yellow ones outside of an ethnic food section. These are eaten by people all over Asia, East Africa, and the Arab peninsula, so there’s lots of non-English names that they’re called by; because I know what they look like I often just trawl ethnic food aisles looking for the right back without paying attention to names. Woodmans West had them in one of the ethnic food aisle near the various asian noodles; the green and yellow mung beans were right next to each other, and I used the entire bag. Unfortunatly, I’ve since thrown the bag away, so I’m not sure how much that was… So just go buy one of those yourself and use it as the measure :)
b. Spices: my guesses on these measurements are really rough-but you want your butter to look fairly thick and brown with spices. Cayenne pepper isn’t necessarily part of the recipe, but I couldn’t find the peppers I actually wanted (here I often sub jalepenos or habeneros, depending on how spicy I’m feeling-Woodmans was out of everything but chili). Garam masala is actually a mixture of spices that are roasted and ground together; I sometimes make my own, but it’s becoming easier to find pre-made in the US. Individual recipes for garam masala can vary widely, so if you don’t like the way your stew turned out, this may be why-let me know and I can give you my recipe or some of my masala.
c. Salt: I really don’t know how much salt I used because I added it at several times throughout the cooking… But I love salt and used tons. I highly recommend kosher salt; I tend to use enough salt in Swahili food that table salt would cause it to start taking on a slightly sweet tone.
d. Butter: yes, you could probably get away with using less butter (although, with all the coconut milk in this recipe it’s never going to be precisely low fat.) If you do use less, be very careful not to burn the spices, and you might want to add some water when you add the tomatoes. DO NOT SUBSTITUTE MARGARINE in this recipe; it doesn’t carry the spices well. If you want to substitute, you could use palm or coconut oil. Olive oil might also work, but you may want to throw in some extra masala to cover the olive taste.
e. Tomatoes: these provide the primary “heartiness” to the taste. If your tomatoes are weak/watery, you might want to throw in some bouillon or use broth instead of water.