minty, fresh

Remember last week's pork kheema? I served this as a side, despite what the cookbook recommended.

Minted rice with tomato and sprouted beans
2 T olive oil
6 green onions, very finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 C cooked, cooled Basmati rice*
2 ripe plum tomatoes, finely chopped
8 oz mixed sprouted beans (you might find these near sprouts and fresh herbs at your grocery.  They're usually a mix of bean and lentil sprouts)
small handful of mint leaves
salt and pepper to taste

• Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet/wok/frying pan.  Add the green onions and garlic, and stir-fry them for 2-3 minutes.
• Add the cooked rice and stir-fry on high heat 3-4 minutes.  Add the tomatoes and beans, stir well, and cook another 2-3 minutes, until everything is warm.
• stir in the mint and season to taste.  Eat it now.  It's really good.

*I somehow managed to make about twice as much rice as I needed for this, despite following the instructions very carefully.  I set the rest aside and used as a base for some shrimp creole a few days later, made entirely from stuff I had leftover from other dishes.  It was the best fridge-cleaning meal I've made in a long time.

kheema get it

In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that I'm a little embarrassed by that title pun.

Each week, I pick an entree, and the Chief Taster picks an entree.  I'm willing to cook just about anything, but neither of us wants to choose dinner all the time.  This is the best system we've devised, and it really doesn't work that well.  Some weeks I'll have five or six great ideas and won't ask her for any.  Some weeks, she keeps putting off deciding, and I have to resort to a fallback position of lasagna, tuna casserole, or reuben soup.  I feel curiously unsatisfied with those first two options, not because I don't think they're tasty, but because I've made them both so often that I don't really need the recipe much anymore, and it feels like a cop-out.  I can't say anything negative about reuben soup.

Given her reticence to choose, I was intrigued when she pulled cookbooks one morning before she left for work.  She may not have known exactly what she wanted, but she had regional flavors in mind; she grabbed the Indian and Mediterranean cookbooks from the shelf.  She stuck to the first volume, and indicated two choices each for entree and vegetable dishes.  I wanted to try the Bengali-Style Mustard Fish, but I don't think fish make good leftovers, so we shelved that one for later.  I'd already made the Spinach, Red Pepper, and Chickpea Bhaji, and wanted to try something new, so our options were thus narrowed to Pork Kheema with Peas (below) and Minted Rice with Tomato and Sprouted Beans (next week. Maybe when I get ambitious, I'll start posting more often, but that time is not now).

It must have been a successful gambit, even though the kheema recipe recommended serving with flatbread or plain rice, because her reaction when she saw the food (and to a greater extent when she started eating it) was what I would expect if she came home and learned I'd bought her a dream home.  I am now even more convinced that my next long-from work should be the cookbook titled How To Please A Woman.

Pork Kheema with Peas

1 T sunflower oil (or vegetable oil.  Or canola.  Whatever's handy)
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 jalapenos, seeded and chopped
1 t ground coriander
1 lb. ground pork
2.5 C fresh or frozen peas (the book says frozen peas are more nutritious.  I find them more handy)
3 T medium curry paste (I used hot, because the grocery didn't have medium)
3 T tomato puree (what the hell is that?  I used tomato sauce, and put the rest of the can in the fridge for later use in pasta sauce)
2 tomatoes, finely chopped
1 t raw sugar (I don't have raw sugar.  I used granulated.  I don't think it matters)
1 C boiling water
2 T plain yogurt
large handful chopped cilantro (the Chief Taster is rabid for cilantro, so I bought a 3/4 oz clamshell of it and used the whole thing)
salt

• heat the oil in a big skillet.  Add the jalapeno, garlic, coriander, and meat.  Stir-fry until meat is lightly browned.
• Add the peas, paste, puree, tomatoes, and sugar.  Stir and cook 3-4 minutes, then add the water.  Bring the whole mess to a boil, then cover it and reduce heat to let it simmer 8-10 minutes.
• Turn off the heat and stir in the yogurt, salt, and cilantro.

She got home while the skillet was covered, offered to stir the rice, and used the opportunity to sneak a peek at the pork.  Then she made various happy noises and professed her undying love, but I was chopping cilantro at the time, so she might have been talking to the greens.  My only beef with this pork is that the water never cooked out, leaving the dish a little soupy, and I wonder whether that weakened the flavor of the curry.  I might try it with less water, or none at all.  The tomatoes were pretty juicy, and that might be enough.

talk nerdy to me

Did you know this Saturday is the Pi Day of the century?  I've marked Pi Day for years, and it cracks me up that Dad is guaranteed to call me on two days each year: my birthday, and March 14, just to wish me a happy pi day.

This year, it's not just 3.14, but 3.14.15, and at 9:26:53 (in the morning, for those of you on a 24-hour clock), Pi Day will carry nine decimal places.  How great is that?!  I suggest you make something round to mark the occasion.  Pie, pizza, perfectly formed cookies, it's up to you.  I've made other plans, but here's a couple pictures to inspire you.

Pecan Pi!

Same dish, less Pi

Bluebird Pi! Pizza with barbecue sauce, Bleu cheese, grilled chicken, caramelized onion, and green bell pepper.

Chicken Pot Pi!

Key Lime Pi!

Fun fact: during my first year in college, when I was adjusting to terrible dorm food and really missed Mom's cooking, I sent a postcard home wherein I had filled the message space, in very small printing, with a very long list of foods that I missed.  Every second item in the list was a different kind of pie.

I still miss your cooking, Mom, and I miss you, too.

A conceit of pasta

I hiked the Appalachian Trail last year.  Have I mentioned that?  Forgive me; it's just that I get so many speaking engagements these days that I can't remember who's heard what.

While hiking the AT, you fuel yourself by eating a lot of crap.  Junk I'd never eat in my normal life becomes staple cuisine while backpacking for months on end.  Daily Snickers, Pop-Tarts, peanut butter and Nutella straight from the jar, handfuls of M&Ms, entire pizzas, you get the idea.  One morning I got into a town in Virginia and found one of those Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins hybrid joints, and told them my plan for a new sundae: a banana split on a foundation of three donuts.  They didn't have a dish large enough for my creation, so I just ate the sundae with a side of three donuts.  For breakfast.  That's a normal thing.

During the hike, I learned that I still clung to one of the joys of childhood: mac and cheese.  I hadn't had it in ages, but I learned while hiking exactly how much water to use to cook the noodles so that I didn't have to drain anything, and the leftover moisture made the cheese sauce for me.  Some nights, I'd add chopped summer sausage or torn bits of beef jerky, if I had them, and sometimes I'd stir in some peanut butter, and was always disappointed that I couldn't taste it.  Don't look at me like that.  Peanut butter and cheese WORK together!! (see: Quinn)

Even after the trail, I found that I sometimes craved macaroni, and usually I just wanted that powdered-plastic cardboard box variety I'd eaten on the trail (prefereably in one of the exciting new flavors available that summer.  I'm still sad that I never got to try Three Cheese Jalapeno), but occasionally I'd grow the hell up and decide that if I were going to have mac and cheese, I should put more than seven and a half minutes of effort into it and bake the stuff, with some veggies and other tasty things.

One night on the trail, a few hikers were gathered... somewhere.  I honestly don't remember now whether it was a campsite, shelter, hostel, or even if it was really nighttime.  It might have been the middle of the afternoon.  Point is, we were talking about food, because backpackers always talk about food.  We obsess over it.  We fantasize about it.  We sometimes express our fondness for food by suggesting the performance of really inappropriate acts with it.  Well.  I say "we," but in my experience, it was only that one guy.  Still, the rest of us knew what he meant.  Moving on.  We started talking about macaroni.  I admitted that I craved it, and tried to have it about once a week during the thru-hike, but usually didn't manage that frequency. I also mentioned that I'd tried a couple baked macaroni recipes at home, but hadn't really found one that I liked.  One of the other hikers told me that he liked to layer it in a baking dish like lasagna, with intervening layers of mushrooms, onions, peppers, or bacon.  It sounded amazing.  For the rest of the trip, I couldn't think of macaroni without thinking of it layered with sausage and mushrooms.

When I finished the hike and started cooking in a real kitchen again, I remembered the layered macaroni.  Then I made lasagna, gave it some thought, and decided that I couldn't layer it deeply enough to satisfy my whims, because macaroni noodles take up a lot of space, and my 9x13 isn't deep enough to hold many such layers.

So I did this instead.

Macaryan and Cheese (see what I did there?)

16 oz macaroni (or some other pasta shape.  I don't care.)
good-sized bunch of fresh spinach.  A handful? I guess?
olive oil.  Just a tablespoon.  Two, tops.  We just need it to keep the spinach from sticking to the pan.
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 C red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 C chopped onion
1/2 C butter (that's a stick, unless you buy weird butter.  Or, I guess, weird sticks?)
8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
4 oz can sliced black olives
1/2 C flour
1 T ground mustard (the dry powder stuff)
1/2 T lemon pepper
1 t pepper
3/4 t salt
12 oz (about 3 C) shredded Monterey Jack
2 C milk

• Boil some water.  Cook the macaroni.  While you're at it, get that oven preheating to 350F.
• While your water comes to a boil and your macaroni cooks, get started on the rest of this stuff.  Start by heating the oil in a skillet with the garlic.  Add the spinach, stir to coat, and cover over low heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the green stuff is all wilty.  Move the spinach and garlic to a plate.  We're going to keep using the skillet and oil.  I'm a big damn fan of my Lodge combo cooker, so I used that, and when it came time to bake, I didn't even need another dish.  Which is good, because I'm super lazy, and it meant fewer dishes to wash later.
• Add the butter and the rest of the veggies to the skillet.  Cook them.
• Add the flour, mustard, and seasonings to the skillet.  Keep stirring.  The butter and flour will form a roux, which helps to thicken the sauce.  Toss in the cheese and milk, then remove from heat.
• By now your pasta should be done.  Drain it, and stir it in to the cheese mixture with the spinach.  If you're using a separate baking dish, make the transfer now.  If you're lazy like me, use that time to do a little dance.
• Stick the whole mess in the oven for 40 minutes.  The Chief Taster thinks crumb toppings should be applied whenever possible, so I added that for the last fifteen minutes of baking.  If you want a crumb topping, melt 2 T butter, and mix in 2/3 C crumbs (I bought a carton of panko for the occasion) and 1/3 C parmesan (because why wouldn't I want more cheese?), and apply as directed above.

This version just happened to be vegetarian, but I think it would be good with some ground sausage or cubed ham.