Vankaya gasagasala kura

or eggplant poppy-seed curry. This strikes me as an odd combination, but it is, aparently, a standard Andhra-syle dish.

Indian poppy seeds are a different sort than the European variety we use in the U.S. For starters, they're white and, although it's tough to tell scale from the pictures, I think they're bigger. That's why the dish can call for grinding them to a paste when all my efforts to grind my poppy seeds came to naught. I have no idea if they taste any differently. Or, now that I think about it, if Indian eggplants taste any diferently from what I'm using. In any case, the dish turned out OK even if it's entirely different from what the author (Sailaja of the Sailu's Kitchen website) intended.

Ingredients:

3/4 pound eggplant, peeled, halved and sliced 3/4-inch thick
2 Tablespoons oil

3/4 teaspoons whole mustard seeds
3/4 teaspoons whole cumin seeds

1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander powder
1/4 teaspoon fenugreek powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin powder

2 cloves garlic
a knob of ginger of similar size to 2 cloves of garlic
pinch salt

2 cups water
4 1/2 Tablespoons poppy seeds, toasted and a good-faith attempt made at grinding them into a paste
2 Tablespoons light brown sugar or that solid chunk sugar if you've got it
2 inch diameter lump of tamarind pulp, dissolved

1. Heat half the oil to shimmering over a medium-high heat and add the eggplant slices, in batches if necessary. Cook on both sides until well-browned and translucent. Set eggplant aside.

2. Meanwhile, mix the cayenne, coriander, fenugreek and cumin with a judicious amount of salt.

3. Grind the garlic and ginger into a paste with a bit more salt.

4. Reduce heat to medium low and add the rest of the oil to the pan. When the oil shimmers again add the mustard seeds. When they pop add the cumin. When those pop add the garlic/ginger paste. Cook, stirring, until fragrant or the garlic threatens to brown whichever comes first.

5. Add the mixed spices, stir and cook until differently fragrant. Add the water, turn the heat back up to high, and bring to a boil. Add the poppy seeds and sugar. Strain in the tamarind. Cook for 8 minutes, stirring every few minutes to ensure nothing sticks to the pan. Be skeptical that this could possibly turn into a proper sauce.

6. Return the eggplant to the pan, turn the heat down to medium-low and cook for 15 minutes until the eggplant is falling apart and, wonder-of-wonders, the sauce has thickened to a gravy-like consistancy.

Serve with rice, roti, or, if it's all you've got, naan. Possibly you could get away with flour tortillas.

Not the world's most attractive dish, but curries rarely photograph well. The eggplant is meltingly soft in a thick gravy. The rich flavors of sweet tamarind and mellow spice dominate but the eggplant adds earthiness and the poppy seeds give a toasty aftertaste. Using a piece of naan as a scoop brings out the toastiness and rebalances the flavors nicely. It also hides the gritiness of all those unground poppy seeds. Also, it's pretty cool how the dish makes its own spice-oil condiment as the oil absorbed by the eggplant in step 1 are released, pick up the oil-soluble flavors and float to the top.

So, overall, tasty, but not really presentable to company.

Goan shrimp and vegetable curry

Suvir Saran, the author of the recipe I based this on wrote "I associate this dish's flavors with Goa" and "feel free to add whatever vegetables you want" so I'm guessing that this is not so very traditional. But it uses up three sprigs of the curry leaves, which is a lot for 4 servings, and "whatever vegetables you want" means a bunch of CSA vegetables I have so that's convenient.

Here's my version:

herb paste:
2 sprigs curry leaves, removed from stem
1 1/2-inch piece ginger, peeled and chopped
zest and pulp from 1/4 lime (substituting, poorly, for 1 Tablespoon lemongrass)
1/2 cup cilantro leaves and tender stems
1/2 hot pepper, chopped

1. Blend all that with a few Tablespoons of water into as smooth a paste as you can manage. Set aside.

Curry:
1 1/2 Tablespoons cooking oil
3/4 teaspoon whole cumin seed
1/2 teaspoon brown mustard seed
1 sprig curry leaves, removed from stem and roughly chopped
2 dried chile peppers
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
3/4 pound assorted vegetables, prepped (I used 1/2 pound green beans plus 1/4 pound baby bok choy)
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined. Brined wouldn't be a bad idea either.
3 Tablespoons more cilantro, chopped
salt to taste

2. Put oil into a large pot over medium high heat. Add seeds. When they start popping, add curry leaves, peppers and turmeric. Stir and cook 1 minute.

3. Add the herb paste, reduce heat to medium low and cook 2-3 minutes more until fragrant.

4. Add the heartiest of the vegetables (green beans in my case) and some salt and cook until about half done, adding other, more delicate vegetables as appropriate.

5. Add coconut milk and cream plus some more salt. Turn heat up and bring to a boil. Return heat to medium low and simmer until vegetables are done to your liking.

6. Add shrimp and simmer 1-2 minutes until just cooked. Stir in cilantro, adjust seasoning and serve with rice.


And here it is:


All the sauce drained into the rice. Here it is still in the pot:


So, not bad. Not as intensely flavored as you'd expect given all those herbs and spices, but nicely fragrant of curry leaves. The coconut milk really takes on the cumin and mustard well and there's a little spice to it. My problem is just that the flavors are too distinct. The green beans taste like green beans and the shrimp tastes like shrimp. The sauce is nice but the rice soaked it all up. I think this is going to be one of those better the next day dishes. The flavors will blend with a good long soak.

Serving with some other starch instead of rice might be a good idea too. Chapatis maybe.

Saag aloo

Back in February I made aloo palak which is pretty much the same dish, at least in concept. That recipe and this one use the same ingredients, but combine them in interestingly different ways, particularly creating the sauce out of onion instead of spinach. Seemed worth a try.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound potatoes, cut into 1 1/2-inch diameter pieces
1 pound spinach, cleaned well
1 large onion (or one small onion plus some garlic and some shallot)
1 1/2 Tablespoons cooking oil
1/4 teaspoon whole coriander seed
1/4 teaspoon whole cumin seed
1/4 teaspoon cayanne powder
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fenugreek
4 ounces canned tomatoes

1. Heat a medium pot of lightly salted water to boiling. Add potatoes and cook until just tender, 10 to 15 minutes

2. Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add the spinach with a little water from the cleaning. Cover and cook for 3 minutes. Remove from pan, let cool to handling temperature and squeeze out most of the moisture.

3. Slice the onion. Clean any spinach juice out of the large pan, add the oil and heat over medium heat. Add half the onion and sauté until golden brown. Add the whole coriander and cumin and cook for 1 minute more. Remove to a food processor.

4. Add the rest of the onion, shallots and garlic and blend until smooth.

5. Return to the pan and cook over low heat for 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, spinach and spices. Cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Add the tomatoes (the original recipe called for half as much tomatoes, but 2 ounces is barely any at all so I doubled it.), stir well, cover and simmer 10 minutes more.

Serve with rice or roti and a dollop of chutney.

The spinach is well overcooked, of course: on the verge of falling apart and a little mushy but the stems still have some texture. There's a bit of spinach flavor left plus mild spiciness, but the flavor is dominated by the onions and potatoes (which add welcome textural interest). It's all rather sedate so the spicy tangy bite of the chutney is a welcome addition. The amount of chutney in the picture is rather too much, but once I added another scoop of the saag aloo, it evened out nicely. It doesn't much resemble any restaurant saag aloo, I don't think, but it's been a while since I've had it. I wonder if this is a typical recipe or some weird aberation.

CSA week 20 - Suwa bhaji

Dill with garam masala. Garam masala with dill. I've got to say I'm a little skeptical about how this is going to turn out. But it isn't some avant garde experiment; this is a traditional north Indian dish. Search for dill bhaji or dill curry and you'll get lots of variations. And I'm not one to doubt the collective wisdom of a cuisine so I'm going to give it a try. OK, here goes nothing (but a perfectly good bunch of dill).

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon cumin seed
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, diced
1 hot chili, diced
1 large potato, peeled and diced
1 CSA-sized bunch of dill (the original recipe I based this on called for 4 bunches and I don't know how large a bunch of dill is in north India. But the CSA gave us quite a lot of dill so I figure I'm probably in the ballpark.), cleaned and roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon garam masala (there's a good bit of variation in the three garam masala spice blends on sale at Whole Foods. I picked the one with the most pepper since "garam" means hot. If yours is less spicy or is just faded since you don't use it too often, you might want to add more than the 1/2 teaspoon of pepper called for to compensate.)
salt to taste (probably more than you think you need since the potato just soaks salt up)
1/3 to 1/2 cup water

1. Heat the oil in a large pan or dutch oven over medium high heat. When it's shimmery add the cumin and garlic. After a few seconds, when they've become fragrant, add the onion and chili. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onion becomes translucent and lightly browned.

2. Add the potato and cook, stirring frequently, until the potatoes get a little browned. Turn up the heat if necessary.

3. Add the dill stems, cook briefly and then add the leaves. Cook briefly to wilt. Add the salt, cayenne, garam masala and the water. Mix thoroughly, scraping up any bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Turn down the heat to medium and cook until potatoes are tender and the sauce has cooked down and thickened.

Serve with rice or if you're rather less tired than I am, phulkas. Some chutney or yogurt or something would probably not be bad either. I actually bought both and then forgot to use them. Whoops.

And that looks...kind of odd. And it tastes...not bad. Takes a little getting used to, tasting the dill against the cumin, but the sweet heat of the spice against the particular taste of the dill works. It helps that cooking the dill tones down the grassy aromatic edge and lets it play better with the other flavors as a vegetable. I'm halfway through the serving and now I'm starting to actually like it. Then I hit a little raw dill (I reused the bowl) and I'm not liking it so much any more. OK, so, not a revelation, but interesting. I'll try adding those forgotten condiments when I have the leftovers and put some notes in the comments to tell you how it went.

CSA week 11 - Aloo palak

So my third thought for using the spinach and potato together was an Indian curry. There are lots of recipes for aloo palak out there, but almost all are basically the same: shred some spinach and cube some potatoes, put them in a pot with a little water and cook until done. Yeah, 15 minutes of cooking will turn spinach into a sauce of sorts, but that's an awful thing to do to an innocent vegetable. Better to take another approach that I've seen in Indian recipes--cook the elements separately and then combine them just before serving.

Ingredients:
1/2 onion, chopped
1 mild green chili, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed (garlic is rare in the recipes I saw, but I included it anyway)
1-inch knob ginger, crushed
1 large bunch spinach, roughly chopped

4 medium new potatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
turmeric

1 Tablespoon ghee (or failing that, butter)
whole cumin
ground coriander
salt

cilantro, chopped
tomato, chopped
lemon
cream

1. Add onion, chili, garlic and ginger to a medium pot along with a quarter cup of water. Simmer over medium heat a few minutes until onion and pepper soften. Add the spinach in batch, adding more as previous batches wilt to make room in the pot. When all of the spinach is cooked, pour everything into a food processor or blender and process until smooth.

2. Return the pot to the heat, add the potatoes, water to cover, generous salt and a bit more turmeric than you think you need (since most of both the salt and turmeric will stay in the water). Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are tender, around 10 minutes maybe. Drain potatoes in a colander.

3. Return pot to heat, turn heat back up to medium and add ghee. When it finishes sizzling add a few dashes of cumin seed. Cook briefly until it becomes fragrant and add spinach. Add coriander and salt to taste and a little cream if needed to loosen the sauce. Then add the potato. Stir to combine and heat through.

4. Serve with rice and/or Indian bread, garnished with cilantro, tomato a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of cream.



Pretty good. It's just spinach and potatoes so it's not spectacular, but both flavors are brought out well so: pretty good. The garlic, ginger and spices add a bit of interest but don't overwhelm the basic flavors. It could use a little acid, but I left my last lemon at work to fix up my ice cream. Maybe a little white vinegar...yeah, that's not bad. The sauce is creamy (cream will do that) and the potatoes soft. Not a whole lot of textural interest; I should have pulled the potatoes out a minute or two earlier.

The dish isn't entirely satisfying. Some paneer wouldn't have hurt. Or maybe a second dish with some contrasting flavors. A fine side component of a meal, let's say.

Mamidikaya Kobbari Pachadi

[Hi,
I've noticed that people are finding this post through Google recently. If you're looking to reproduce a well-made version you've had, please look at my pictures and description down at the bottom of the page and let me know if I got in the neighborhood. I like what I made, but it may not be in any way "right" and I'm curious. Thanks much.]

Here's another recipe without much of a story behind it, I'm afraid. I just picked up a coconut, some mangoes and curry leaves from the CSA, and hunted until I found a recipe that used substantial amounts of all three. This is a raw mango-coconut chutney from, according to Sailus Food's website, Andhra which is a state in southeast India.

I found a fair number of variations on the dish, mostly varying the coconut to mango ratio and the spice level. This is about average in the ratio but it's tons spicier than most.

This was my second time opening up a coconut and my first time dealing with a fully ripe one. The husk was a lot more dried out and fibrous this time around which made it rather easier to deal with. I was able to get it all off without breaking open the hull. For opening the shell, I used the technique I've seen of striking the coconut along its equator with the back of a hatchet, rotating between blows and continuing until it splits. It worked pretty quickly and made a surprisingly clean split. I'm taking an inordinate amount of pride in an accomplishment monkeys and crabs manage daily; I'm not really sure why.

Some recipes specified using a green mango for sourness, but the green mangoes to get around here are just bland so I went with a more ripe one. I got lucky that the one I picked was fairly tart. I didn't think it was tart enough, though, so I used the standard Indian technique of adding tamarind to supplement.

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon cooking oil
1 1/2 Tablespoons whole coriander seeds
3/4 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
whole dried red chillies to taste (I used 5 arbols for a good bit of heat)
8 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 stem curry leaves, removed from stem

1 cup freshly grated (or processed) coconut
3/4 cup raw mango, peeled and chopped
1-2 Tablespoons tamarind paste, loosened in 1-2 Tablespoons water and strained
salt to taste

1/2 teaspoon cooking oil
1/2 teaspoon whole mustard seeds
1 stem curry leaves, removed from stem
2 dried red chillies, seeded and torn

1. Heat the teaspoon of oil in a small frying pan over medium heat. Add coriander, cumin and chiles and fry for two minutes until aromatic, reducing heat if the spices start to burn. Reduce the heat to medium low, add the garlic and curry leaves and fry for another minute until the curry leaves become aromatic. Remove to a small bowl to cool slightly.

2. Once the spices are cool enough to deal with, add to a food processor and process for a few pulses. Add the coconut, mango and tamarind and process for 2-3 minutes until it forms a coarse paste. [Looking at it at this point, I have little faith that this is going to result in anything edible.]

3. Clean out the small frying pan, add the 1/2 teaspoon of oil. Heat briefly over medium heat and add mustard seeds. Cover with a splatter screen and heat until the seeds pop. Add the curry leaves and chiles and cook for just a few seconds to bring out the flavors. Stir into the mango-coconut paste.

Serve over white rice topped with a couple spoonfuls of ghee.



Once again this is not a particularly visually attractive dish, but it's actually really good. It's creamy (no doubt from the coconut oil) --a little gritty, but without that unpleasant dried coconut chewiness. The flavor is complex: aromatically spicy, toasty and sweet. The coconut and garlic are prominent, both pleasantly toasty, but I'm not getting any mango flavor beyond the sweetness and not a lot of tanginess from the tamarind either. Still, they must be adding to the gestalt. There's surprisingly little heat considering how many hot peppers went into there, but there's a nice warmth in the aftertaste. I'm sorry I can't explain the flavor better; it's not quite like anything I've had before. Really good, though; I stand by that.

Chicken 65

Back to the curry leaves one more time. This is a recipe from Hyderabad in southeast India. The name is, you might have noticed, kind of weird. There are a bunch of different stories about how it got the name--it originally had 65 ingredients; it was popular in 1965; truckers on Route 65 liked it--all implausibly reasonable. It's a general rule of thumb in etymology that if a word origin story makes any sort of sense, it's not true. Name aside, there's a good bit of variation in recipes and the one I picked was on the more complicated side but is still pretty easy. This version was posted to recipezaar by one Sarah Kamal who says she got it from a Hyderbadi neighbor. She posted it in hard-to-parse texting shorthand so I've reworded things (and made a few changes) for your convenience.

Chicken 65

50 min | 5 min prep

SERVES 4

1-2 cups oil, for deep frying
4 chicken breasts or thighs, sliced into strips

MARINADE FOR CHICKEN
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon red chile powder
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspoon garlic, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 Tablespoon soy sauce

BATTER FOR CHICKEN
1 egg, beaten
3 Tablespoons corn flour [I used plain-old wheat flour. I should buy some masa if corn flour is going to keep popping up in recipes I'm making.]

YOGURT MIX
500 grams yogurt, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon red chile powder
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspoon garlic, finely chopped

FOR TEMPERING
3 Tablespoons oil
5-6 small hot green chiles
2 sprigs curry leaves


1. Mix the marinade ingredients, grinding the ginger and garlic into paste with a pestle. Add the chicken, mix well, and let marinate for at least an hour.


2. Mix the batter and add to the marinating chicken. Mix the yogurt mix ingredients. Heat oil and fry chicken until golden brown. When removing chicken pieces, drop them right into the yogurt.


3. In a small pan heat tempering oil over medium high heat until shimmery. Add chiles and curry leaves and they start to shrivel and color.


4. Pour oil, chiles and curry leaves into a large pan or pot over medium low heat. Add chicken and yogurt mix. Cook until the yogurt reduces, dries and forms a coating to the chicken. [Theoretically, anyway. I got worried when the yogurt started to stick to the bottom of the pan and threatening to burn so I stopped cooking it a little early.]


This manages to look even worse than the mango curry, but it's not half bad. The flavors are brightly spicy, tangy and tart. Some recipes specify sour yogurt in the ingredients so I have some confidence that that's intentional this time around. On the other hand, it's seriously lacking in bottom notes so it's not an entirely balanced dish. But you're supposed to eat it with naan and booze which probably would help with that.

The chicken is tender and moist, the yogurt coating creamy in a curdled sort of way. If you do a Google Image search you'll find a lot of pictures of much better looking Chicken 65, but if you click through you'll that those recipes use a Tablespoon or two of yogurt in the marinade, deep fry the chicken and serve. The ones with a cup or two of yogurt generally look just as unpleasant (although they usually add red food coloring which I left out). I really have no good reason for thinking that this sloppier version is any more authentic or any tastier. It was just more interesting to try making. The simpler ones do have a ring of simplification about them though, so I'm happy with my choice despite the unaesthetic results.

Shrimp and mango curry

I was searching for "shrimp" and "curry leaves" when I came across quite a few mango curry recipes. I had no idea such a thing existed and I've got to admit to being skeptical. The shrimp and mango curries were the oddest of the lot--the others were really more glorified chutneys--so that's what I decided to try. But most of them called for ingredients I didn't have or I just didn't like the look of so I added shrimp to this vegetarian mango curry instead:


Mango curry
by Madhur Jaffrey

Serves 4-6 Vegetarian

mango
Preparation time less than 30 mins
Cooking time 30 mins to 1 hour

Ingredients

3 medium ripe mangoes, peeled pit removed and flesh cut into 1cm/½in pieces
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1-1½ tsp salt
55g/2oz jaggery or brown sugar, if needed
310g/11oz coconut, freshly grated
3-4 fresh hot green chillies, coarsely chopped
½ tbsp cumin seeds
290ml/½ pint natural yoghurt, lightly beaten
2 tbsp coconut oil or any other vegetable oil
½ tsp brown mustard seeds
3-4 dried hot red chillies, broken into halves
½ tsp fenugreek seeds [I'm all out. I need to restock.]
10-12 fresh curry leaves, if available

Method

1. Put the mangoes in a medium-sized pan. Add 250ml/9fl oz water. Cover and stew for 8-10 minutes over a medium-low heat. Stir occasionally. Add the turmeric, cayenne pepper and salt. Stir well. (If the mangoes are not sweet enough, add the jaggery or brown sugar to make the dish sweeter.)

2. Meanwhile, put the coconut, green chillies and cumin seeds in to a blender. Add 250ml/9fl oz water and blend to a fine paste.

3. When the mangoes are cooked, mash them to a pulp. Add the coconut paste. Mix. Cover and simmer over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture becomes thick. This should take about 10-15 minutes. Add the yoghurt and heat, stirring, until just warmed through. Do not let the mixture come to the boil. Remove from the heat and put to one side. Check for seasoning. [I didn't get the fine paste required in step two so I used a stick blender to smooth things out at this point.]

4. Heat the oil in a small pan over a medium-high heat. When hot, add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds begin to pop (a matter of a few seconds) add the chillies, fenugreek seeds and the curry leaves. Stir and fry for a few seconds until the chillies darken. Quickly add the contents of the small pan to the mangoes. Stir to mix.

For the shrimp, I peeled and deveined them (some of the shrimp curries left the shells on) and tossed them with the salt and spices to soak in some flavor as the mangoes cooked down. It's a good technique to bring out the shrimp's flavor and a lot faster than brining. I'll have to remember that.



And the end result is just as good as it looks: really awful. It's warm, vaguely sweet grainy gritty yogurt. You can't really taste the mango; you can't taste any coconut and there's barely a hint of spice. Strain it and cool it and you might have a decent lassi. But as dinner? Feh.

So what went wrong here? First off the mangoes. They were under-ripe and not very flavorful. That's my fault there. A lot of mango curries did call for green mango so I thought it might work, but I should have stopped the moment I cut into the first mango and found out how mild its flavor was. Also, these are probably the wrong sort of mango. From what I've been reading I gather that Indian mangoes are rather tart and even if these were ripe, they weren't tending in that direction. And third, how large are Indian mangoes? I may have used far too much or far too little fruit. I dunno.

Second, the coconut. There was way too much of it. I suspect a mistake in the original recipe. Maybe if the water to coconut ratio was higher it would have actually blended into the paste it was supposed to. Or maybe freezing does something to coconut that keeps it from doing that. And it was quite tasteless. I'll bet real freshly grated coconut would worked much better. You'd think I could get that more easily around here.

Third, the yogurt. Is Indian yogurt thick like Greek or thin? Is it supposed to be tangy or mild? I'm guessing thick and mild since thin and tangy sure as heck didn't help. ...I've just done a little more research and confirmed that. I'll have to strain the remaining yogurt to get the right consistency for the next dish I'm using it in. But I think I'll cook something without curry leaves first. I'm getting a little sick of them at this point.

Mussels steamed with white wine and curry leaves

After my last post I started searching around for recipes using more than a single sprig of curry leaves. I didn't find many; curry leaves are pretty powerful and you generally don't need a whole lot at a time. This recipe, though, called for a full quarter cup. Also, I've been looking for an excuse to have mussels again. They're pretty expensive here in Miami so I'm not buying them on a regular basis like I was back in New York.

This recipe is an Indian-fusion variation on how I, and everybody else, prepare mussels. Fry up some aromatics, add white wine (or beer you're Belgian) and mussels and steam until they're done. I usually used French herbs, Italian if I was adding tomatoes. Really, the only change this recipe makes is to switch the flavors to south Indian.

Mussels Steamed With White Wine And Curry Leaves
Adapted from Raji Jallepalli, Restaurant Raji, Memphis

TOTAL TIME: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
* 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
* 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
* 1 cup finely chopped, seeded plum tomatoes
* 1/4 cup fresh curry leaves (sold in some Indian markets) or cilantro leaves [despite my desire to use a whole bunch of curry leaves, I used three sprigs of each for a little extra complexity.]
* 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds, crushed in a mortar
* Salt to taste
* 2 pounds scrubbed, debearded mussels
* 3/4 cup dry white wine

Preparation:
1. Heat the oil in a large lidded saucepan. Add the onion, tomatoes and curry leaves or cilantro, and cook, stirring, over medium heat until the vegetables soften.

2. Stir in the cumin, and cook a few minutes longer, until the onion starts to brown. Season with salt.

3. Add the mussels and wine, cover and cook over medium heat until the mussels open, about 8 minutes. Serve at once.

YIELD: 2 servings

* Originally published with American Palates Awaken To the Bold Tastes of India; As the latest fusion star, creative Indian cuisine vies with its Asian rivals.
* By FLORENCE FABRICANT, New York Times, March 25, 1998



I recall the European version of this dish as hearty and rustic, but I think I used a lot more chunky vegetables and went heavy on the basil, hot pepper and oregano. Here, the broth is light and the curry leaf, cumin and cilantro float aromatically above. I neglected to pick up naan so I served it over rice which may have been a mistake as it holds on to a lot of the broth making it hard to get a spoonful of it with a bit of mussel. I had a second riceless bowl and found that the flavors do match well. Specifically, there's a slightly challenging funky edge to both curry leaves and mussels that blend nicely together. If you've had both separately, you know what I mean.

I don't think you could make a satisfying main dish out of this no matter low large the serving or how much rice or bread you served with it. The flavors are too delicate and it leaves you wanting something a bit more substantial. Still, this is a lovely elegant appetizer.

CSA week mainly 18 - Fragrant beetroot and vegetable soup with spiced lamb kubbeh

This is a recipe from the cookbook Sephardic Flavors by Joyce Goldstein. It comes from the Jewish community that used to be in Cochin in south India. Now they're nearly all in Israel or New York City.

While poking through the other cookbooks my sister brought to Passover I found a surprisingly similar (if rather simpler) recipe for a beet soup with meat dumplings from Iraq called Kukkah Adom. A quick search online turns up that at least one family of the Cochin community emigrated from Iraq so this must come from that tradition.

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 onion, finely chopped
6 garlic cloves
1 carrot, diced [or two of the small CSA ones]
1 zucchini, diced [the pieces of zucchini I froze defrosted a little mushy, but otherwise intact]
1/2 celery stick, diced
4-5 cardamom pods [I seem to be out of whole cardamom so I used the powder]
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
4 vacuum-packed beet root, finely diced and juice reserved
[I've never seen a vacuum-packed beet so I have no idea how big they are. I used the full 1 1/2 pounds of CSA beets which, in retrospect, was way too much. I presume the packed beets are pre-cooked, given how they're used in this recipe, so I simmered my raw beets for 20 minutes. The picture in the cookbook had rather large pieces of beet so I went with that. If you go for the fine dice, 10 minutes will probably do. Also, I substituted 1 cup of the boiling water for the packed beet juices.]
4 cups vegetable stock
[or 2 cups beet boiling water and 2 cups chicken stock]
14 oz can chopped tomatoes
3-4 Tablespoons chopped cilantro
2 bay leaves
1 Tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper
1-2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar, to serve

for kubbeh:
2 large pinches of saffron threads
1 Tablespoon hot water
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
9 oz lean minced or ground lamb
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 bunch fresh mint, chopped

1 cup plain flour (semolina better)
1-3 pinches salt
1/2 - 1 teaspoon turmeric
4-8 Tablespoons cold water

for ginger and cilantro paste:
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1-1 1/2 Tablespoons chopped fresh ginger
1/2 - 4 fresh mild chillies
1/2 large bunch fresh cilantro [stems included since you're going to puree everything]
2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar
salt
extra virgin olive oil

1. To make paste, put garlic, ginger and chillies in food processor and process. Add rest, process to puree. Start with a little olive oil and add more with processing until you get a nice smooth texture. Set aside.


2. To make kubbeh filling, place saffron in hot water and leave to infuse. Heat oil in pan and fry onion until soft. Put onion and and saffron water in food processor. Blend. Add lamb, season and blend. Add vinegar and mint. Chill.




3. To make kubbeh dough, mix flour, salt and turmeric. Add water until it forms a slightly sticky but still workable dough. Let rest 20 minutes Knead for 5 minutes, wrap in plastic and let stand 30 minutes.




4. Divide dough into 10 - 15 pieces. Roll each into ball then roll into thin rounds. Place a spoonful of filling in each, dampen the edges, fold over or bundle up to seal. [I started by bundling up, but as I kept going along, I found myself doing more of an envelope fold and making flat square packets.] Set aside on a floured surface. [I made 12 pieces and found I had a third of the filling leftover. I'm not sure what went wrong there. Maybe my onion was too big? I made a dozen meatballs with the extra.]

5. To make soup, heat oil in pan, add onion and fry for 10 minutes until soft but not brown. Add half the garlic, the carrot, zucchini, celery, cardamom and curry. Cook 2-3 minutes.

6. Add three quarters of the diced beetroot, the stock, tomatoes, cilantro, bay leaves and sugar. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

7. Add remaining beetroot, juice and garlic. Season to taste and set aside.

8. To serve, reheat soup and poach dumplings in salted water for 4 minutes. For each bowl, add a dash of vinegar, two or three dumplings [or a dumplings and three meatballs] and a small spoonful of the paste.


OK, this is a strange combination of flavors and they're not immediately gelling into a whole.

The broth is sweet from all that beet water, but not cloying. There's a lot of savory and acid in there too. And heat floating in from the cilantro paste. You can taste the beets and tomatoes in it, both mellowed. The herbs and spices do make it fragrant so the name is accurate enough.

The twenty minutes of cooking wasn't enough to cook the character out of the vegetables. All of them, even the canned tomatoes, keep their individual flavors and textures. Well actually, the beets that cooked for the twenty minutes taste just like the broth now so putting some more in at the end makes sense.

I've tried different combinations of the ingredients and I've decided I like everything but the mint. Maybe if there was just a lot less of it. Mint's supposed to go with lamb and beets, but it's just jumping to the fore and clashing with everything. Or at least with the tomatoes. That definitely doesn't work at all. If you get a piece of kubbeh without much mint, it's not bad at all. It's actually not far off from Ashkenazi kreplach so maybe heavy meat dumplings are a universal of Jewish cooking. The soup itself, when you get used to it, is not a bad chunky vegetable soup with some interestingly unusual flavors, particularly with the cilantro paste added. Not something I'd seek out, to tell the truth, but if you're a vegetable soup fan, worth a try. Maybe it'll be better after a night in the refrigerator for the flavors to meld.

OK, it's tomorrow and I'm trying a bowl without the kubbeh. Just plain, without the cilantro paste, it's extra-sweet vegetable soup. No big deal. With the paste it's a lot more interesting with an odd, but not bad combination of flavors. Oh, I forgot to add the vinegar. ... Now that makes more sense. The tart balances out the sweetness into a more unified whole. It's actually good now.
Hold on again, I'm going to boil up a kubbeh. ... I'm still not sold on the mint, but the acid tones it down a bit so it kind of works. I'm still tempted to open up the kubbeh and extract the mint with tweezers, though.

I strongly considered switching out the mint for something I liked more, but I wanted to make such an unusual recipe as written. But having done that, I have no idea if it tastes anything close to what it's supposed to. And how many people on the planet could answer that? A few thousand? Maybe I should just please myself.