Epic Cooking Adventures!
Friday nights are when our timing is most flexible, and thus tends to be when we do more complex cooking projects, including, occasionally, multi-course meals. This week's meal was epic. I was in the mood for Indian. We started with a very simple Chilled Curried Avocado Soup from Sundays at Moosewood, which I found while looking for a recipe for this week's Cookbook Challenge. It's from the wrong Moosewood cookbook, but I'm not terribly excited about any of the chilled soups from The New Moosewood Cookbook, so I'm going to call that assignment done. That was the easy part. Before making the main course, we made Kheer for dessert, since it was going to need to chill. Now comes the insanity. We made Lamb Shahi Korma, and I adapted the recipe for mushrooms instead of lamb. doctorconquest got to my house at about 6:00 PM, and dinner wasn't entirely done until 10:30.
The avocado soup was the easy part: put six ingredients (including the salt, pepper, and curry powder) into a blender and whir. Chill.
Curried Avocado Soup
Recipe By : Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant
2 avocados (medium ripe) -- dark skinned
2 1/4 cups vegetable stock
1 -1 1/2 tsp curry powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 to 1/4 tsp white pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (I used the juice of one lime)
Split the avocados in half with a knive and remove the pits. Set aside one half. Scoop out the insides of the other three halves with a spoon and blend with 1 cup of the stock in a blender until smooth. Stir in the curry powder, salt, pepper, cream and remaining stock. Chill. When ready to serve, garnish the soup with thin avocado slices that have been cut from the remaining avocado half and dipped in lemon juice. (Rather than merely dipping the avocado, we chopped it into bite-sized chunks, and covered it in lime juice. We set the bowl of avocado & lime in the fridge while we prepared the next bit. By the time we served the soup, the avocado had been marinating in lime for a good long while, and the saturation was very nice.)
We stuck the soup in the fridge to chill, and started the kheer.
Kheer
Serves 6-8
1/2 cup white basmati rice
2 cups water
1/2 gallon 2% or whole organic milk
5 green cardamom pods
1/2 to 3/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup slivered blanched almonds
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon rose water
pinch of nutmeg for garnish
Rinse rice thoroughly.
Boil rice in 2 cups water over medium heat for 5 to 6 minutes, until the rice is one quarter done. Drain in a colander.
In a saucepan, bring the milk and cardamom pods to a boil over medium heat. Add the rice and cook for 40 minutes, until the rice is soft and the milk is very thick. Stir occasionally at first and then constantly when the milk begins to thicken, after about 30 minutes, to prevent the ingredients from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Add the sugar, almonds, ground cardamom, and nutmeg and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and set aside. Stir in the rose water.
Transfer to a serving dish. Garnish with nutmeg. Serve warm or chilled in dessert bowls.
When I went to pull out the rice for the kheer, I realized something hilarious. I didn't have the right kind of rice. I have seven different kinds of rice. (I counted. It's actually nine, if you count wild rice and the brown/wild mix.) I do not have white basmati. So I decided to use Forbidden Rice. It's purple. It's tasty. It's totally the wrong consistency for rice pudding. It was still delicious. It was not, however, without adventure. I did the pre-cooking in a three-quart pan. It's only half a cup of rice. That's plenty of room. Then I started pouring the milk in the pan. Wait. I'm going to be boiling two quarts of milk. Milk bubbles pretty seriously when it boils. A three-quart pan is not nearly big enough. I transferred it to a five-quart pan, and put the lid on while waiting for it to boil. We got the brown basmati (for the curry) started at the same time. Then the milk boiled. I had forgotten just how suddenly milk boils. If you've ever exploded oatmeal or cream of wheat in the microwave, you know what I'm talking about. Milk suddenly everywhere. Once we got that under control, I started paying much closer attention to the pot of boiling milk and rice on the stove, which occasionally bubbled up and looked like a big scary pink brain. As the kheer was getting towards done, I thought to check on the basmati. Which was burnt. Ok, maybe some of it is still fine. Umm... no. It is all pretty much charcoal. Yuck.
In the interest of not having our brains eaten by hungry villagers, we decide the thing to do is to get everything mise en place for the main courses, take a break, and serve the soup course. We announce the soup is ready, and get entirely ignored. They are too busy rocking out for food. Well, at least our brains are safe. doctorconquest and I eat our own servings of soup (which is fantabulous), rest for a little bit, and get started on the shahi.
Lamb Shahi Korma
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 pound boned leg of lamb, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1″ cubes
1 pound boned lamb shoulder, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1″ cubes
2 bay leaves
1 stick cinnamon
1 black cardamom pod
3 whole cloves
water as needed
4 tablespoons canola oil
4 cups thinly sliced peeled yellow onions
1 teaspoon salt
2″ cube fresh peeled ginger
6 cloves peeled garlic
1″ stick cinnamon
6 whole cloves
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 dried Indian chilies
6 whole green cardamom pods with seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 teaspoons Aleppo pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 cup toasted almond butter
1 cup toasted cashew butter
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
2 teaspoons paprika
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup full fat yogurt with the fat stirred thoroughly into the yogurt
salt to taste
toasted sliced almonds, cashew halves and pistachios for garnish
roughly chopped cilantro and mint for garnish
very finely diced red onion and sweet bell pepper for garnish
Method:
Heat canola oil in the bottom of a pressure cooker or Dutch oven on medium high heat. Pat lamb meat dry with a paper towel, and add them to the pot and brown them on add sides. Add the spices and enough water to cover the meat by one inch. If you are using a pressure cooker, bring to a boil, lock the lid into place on highest pressure setting. Bring to pressure, and turn heat down and cook on high pressure for twenty-five minutes. Allow pressure to release naturally, and open the lid of the cooker. Make certain that the lamb is tender. Remove the lamb from the broth, and set it aside. Put the broth, either in the pressure cooker, or another container, into the refrigerator, so that the fat will congeal on the top of the liquid-it makes it easier to remove most of it. (This portion of the recipe can be done a day or two before you serve it. Just refrigerate the meat and the broth separately.)
If you do not have a pressure cooker, cook the meat until it is tender, but not totally falling apart tender. You want it to still be a bit stiff so that it won’t totally fall apart when you cook it in the sauce later.
In a deep Dutch Oven, put the second measure of canola oil, and heat it on medium high heat. Add the onions, and spread them out into as thin a layer as possible, and sprinkle the salt evenly over them. Cook, stirring until the onions turn a deep reddish brown. When they are done, scrape them out of the pot into the bowl of a spice grinder or blender. Add to them the ginger, garlic, and spices, and grind into a thick paste.
Skim most of the fat from the lamb broth and strain it to remove the whole spices. Discard the spices.
Put the pot you cooked the onions in back on the stove on medium heat and deglaze with one cup of the lamb broth. Add the spice paste, and cook, stirring, until it is fragrant. Add the nut butters, and continue cooking, stirring, for another couple of minutes. Stir about two cups of lamb broth, and simmer to reduce by half. Add the cream, and the lamb, and cook, stirring, until the lamb is heated and the sauce is thick. Add the yogurt, in two tablespoon increments, stirring thoroughly between each addition. Allow each addition of the yogurt to incorporate fully into the sauce before adding the next addition.
After the yogurt is added, you can hold the korma at serving temperature (141 degrees F) for several hours before serving to let the flavors meld, or you could cool it, and store it in the refrigerator for a day or two before reheating it to serve. In either case, it will taste lovely, though I prefer to make it a day ahead so that it goes beyond lovely into sublime.
Serve over plain basmati rice, garnished with a sprinkling of the toasted nuts, some roughly chopped herbs and if you like, the very finely diced onion and pepper for added color and crunch.
This recipe serves 8 people as part of a full Indian meal - 12 if it is part of a full Indian feast with six to eight more dishes.
Reading through the recipe, it seems fairly complex, but the directions look pretty straightforward. Until you realize that there are actually three groups of spices, two of which are simply referred to as "the spices," and the directions never actually say when to add the third. There is a point in the directions where you are instructed to grind the spices, and a few lines later, to strain out the whole spices. I added about a tablespoon of cacao nibs to the second group of spices, and reduced the Indian dried peppers to one half per pot of food. We made two full recipes of the shahi, one with lamb, and one with mushrooms. Had I realized the sheer volume of food we were going to be making, I would have used a whole pepper in each, possibly one and a half.
Around 9:30, I was feeling a bit defeated. "Maybe it'll be done before Doctor Who is over..." It wasn't. We encouraged everyone else to put in a DVD and watch another episode while we finished cooking. It was almost 10:30 before we were ready to call it done. I was exhausted. astridsdream had long since conked out, and was asleep enought not to even be interested in food. I honestly think I would have cried had it been anything less than amazing.
It was late enough that we decided not to serve the kheer that night. We saved it for last night, when it got a generally very positive reception. It was incredibly rich, entirely the wrong texture (purple/black/Forbidden rice being much more solid and chewy than white basmati), and absolutely delicious.
UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention, towards the end of the cooking, we added about a pound of fresh chopped spinach to each pot. Somewhere in there, we also added about half a pound of panir to each pot.
The avocado soup was the easy part: put six ingredients (including the salt, pepper, and curry powder) into a blender and whir. Chill.
Curried Avocado Soup
Recipe By : Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant
2 avocados (medium ripe) -- dark skinned
2 1/4 cups vegetable stock
1 -1 1/2 tsp curry powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 to 1/4 tsp white pepper
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (I used the juice of one lime)
Split the avocados in half with a knive and remove the pits. Set aside one half. Scoop out the insides of the other three halves with a spoon and blend with 1 cup of the stock in a blender until smooth. Stir in the curry powder, salt, pepper, cream and remaining stock. Chill. When ready to serve, garnish the soup with thin avocado slices that have been cut from the remaining avocado half and dipped in lemon juice. (Rather than merely dipping the avocado, we chopped it into bite-sized chunks, and covered it in lime juice. We set the bowl of avocado & lime in the fridge while we prepared the next bit. By the time we served the soup, the avocado had been marinating in lime for a good long while, and the saturation was very nice.)
We stuck the soup in the fridge to chill, and started the kheer.
Kheer
Serves 6-8
1/2 cup white basmati rice
2 cups water
1/2 gallon 2% or whole organic milk
5 green cardamom pods
1/2 to 3/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup slivered blanched almonds
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon rose water
pinch of nutmeg for garnish
Rinse rice thoroughly.
Boil rice in 2 cups water over medium heat for 5 to 6 minutes, until the rice is one quarter done. Drain in a colander.
In a saucepan, bring the milk and cardamom pods to a boil over medium heat. Add the rice and cook for 40 minutes, until the rice is soft and the milk is very thick. Stir occasionally at first and then constantly when the milk begins to thicken, after about 30 minutes, to prevent the ingredients from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Add the sugar, almonds, ground cardamom, and nutmeg and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and set aside. Stir in the rose water.
Transfer to a serving dish. Garnish with nutmeg. Serve warm or chilled in dessert bowls.
When I went to pull out the rice for the kheer, I realized something hilarious. I didn't have the right kind of rice. I have seven different kinds of rice. (I counted. It's actually nine, if you count wild rice and the brown/wild mix.) I do not have white basmati. So I decided to use Forbidden Rice. It's purple. It's tasty. It's totally the wrong consistency for rice pudding. It was still delicious. It was not, however, without adventure. I did the pre-cooking in a three-quart pan. It's only half a cup of rice. That's plenty of room. Then I started pouring the milk in the pan. Wait. I'm going to be boiling two quarts of milk. Milk bubbles pretty seriously when it boils. A three-quart pan is not nearly big enough. I transferred it to a five-quart pan, and put the lid on while waiting for it to boil. We got the brown basmati (for the curry) started at the same time. Then the milk boiled. I had forgotten just how suddenly milk boils. If you've ever exploded oatmeal or cream of wheat in the microwave, you know what I'm talking about. Milk suddenly everywhere. Once we got that under control, I started paying much closer attention to the pot of boiling milk and rice on the stove, which occasionally bubbled up and looked like a big scary pink brain. As the kheer was getting towards done, I thought to check on the basmati. Which was burnt. Ok, maybe some of it is still fine. Umm... no. It is all pretty much charcoal. Yuck.
In the interest of not having our brains eaten by hungry villagers, we decide the thing to do is to get everything mise en place for the main courses, take a break, and serve the soup course. We announce the soup is ready, and get entirely ignored. They are too busy rocking out for food. Well, at least our brains are safe. doctorconquest and I eat our own servings of soup (which is fantabulous), rest for a little bit, and get started on the shahi.
Lamb Shahi Korma
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 pound boned leg of lamb, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1″ cubes
1 pound boned lamb shoulder, trimmed of excess fat and cut into 1″ cubes
2 bay leaves
1 stick cinnamon
1 black cardamom pod
3 whole cloves
water as needed
4 tablespoons canola oil
4 cups thinly sliced peeled yellow onions
1 teaspoon salt
2″ cube fresh peeled ginger
6 cloves peeled garlic
1″ stick cinnamon
6 whole cloves
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 dried Indian chilies
6 whole green cardamom pods with seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 teaspoons Aleppo pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 cup toasted almond butter
1 cup toasted cashew butter
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
2 teaspoons paprika
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup full fat yogurt with the fat stirred thoroughly into the yogurt
salt to taste
toasted sliced almonds, cashew halves and pistachios for garnish
roughly chopped cilantro and mint for garnish
very finely diced red onion and sweet bell pepper for garnish
Method:
Heat canola oil in the bottom of a pressure cooker or Dutch oven on medium high heat. Pat lamb meat dry with a paper towel, and add them to the pot and brown them on add sides. Add the spices and enough water to cover the meat by one inch. If you are using a pressure cooker, bring to a boil, lock the lid into place on highest pressure setting. Bring to pressure, and turn heat down and cook on high pressure for twenty-five minutes. Allow pressure to release naturally, and open the lid of the cooker. Make certain that the lamb is tender. Remove the lamb from the broth, and set it aside. Put the broth, either in the pressure cooker, or another container, into the refrigerator, so that the fat will congeal on the top of the liquid-it makes it easier to remove most of it. (This portion of the recipe can be done a day or two before you serve it. Just refrigerate the meat and the broth separately.)
If you do not have a pressure cooker, cook the meat until it is tender, but not totally falling apart tender. You want it to still be a bit stiff so that it won’t totally fall apart when you cook it in the sauce later.
In a deep Dutch Oven, put the second measure of canola oil, and heat it on medium high heat. Add the onions, and spread them out into as thin a layer as possible, and sprinkle the salt evenly over them. Cook, stirring until the onions turn a deep reddish brown. When they are done, scrape them out of the pot into the bowl of a spice grinder or blender. Add to them the ginger, garlic, and spices, and grind into a thick paste.
Skim most of the fat from the lamb broth and strain it to remove the whole spices. Discard the spices.
Put the pot you cooked the onions in back on the stove on medium heat and deglaze with one cup of the lamb broth. Add the spice paste, and cook, stirring, until it is fragrant. Add the nut butters, and continue cooking, stirring, for another couple of minutes. Stir about two cups of lamb broth, and simmer to reduce by half. Add the cream, and the lamb, and cook, stirring, until the lamb is heated and the sauce is thick. Add the yogurt, in two tablespoon increments, stirring thoroughly between each addition. Allow each addition of the yogurt to incorporate fully into the sauce before adding the next addition.
After the yogurt is added, you can hold the korma at serving temperature (141 degrees F) for several hours before serving to let the flavors meld, or you could cool it, and store it in the refrigerator for a day or two before reheating it to serve. In either case, it will taste lovely, though I prefer to make it a day ahead so that it goes beyond lovely into sublime.
Serve over plain basmati rice, garnished with a sprinkling of the toasted nuts, some roughly chopped herbs and if you like, the very finely diced onion and pepper for added color and crunch.
This recipe serves 8 people as part of a full Indian meal - 12 if it is part of a full Indian feast with six to eight more dishes.
Reading through the recipe, it seems fairly complex, but the directions look pretty straightforward. Until you realize that there are actually three groups of spices, two of which are simply referred to as "the spices," and the directions never actually say when to add the third. There is a point in the directions where you are instructed to grind the spices, and a few lines later, to strain out the whole spices. I added about a tablespoon of cacao nibs to the second group of spices, and reduced the Indian dried peppers to one half per pot of food. We made two full recipes of the shahi, one with lamb, and one with mushrooms. Had I realized the sheer volume of food we were going to be making, I would have used a whole pepper in each, possibly one and a half.
Around 9:30, I was feeling a bit defeated. "Maybe it'll be done before Doctor Who is over..." It wasn't. We encouraged everyone else to put in a DVD and watch another episode while we finished cooking. It was almost 10:30 before we were ready to call it done. I was exhausted. astridsdream had long since conked out, and was asleep enought not to even be interested in food. I honestly think I would have cried had it been anything less than amazing.
It was late enough that we decided not to serve the kheer that night. We saved it for last night, when it got a generally very positive reception. It was incredibly rich, entirely the wrong texture (purple/black/Forbidden rice being much more solid and chewy than white basmati), and absolutely delicious.
UPDATE: I completely forgot to mention, towards the end of the cooking, we added about a pound of fresh chopped spinach to each pot. Somewhere in there, we also added about half a pound of panir to each pot.