January 20th - Vegetarian Indian Food

January 20th – Vegetarian Indian Food

After eating a fair amount of pork the last two days, I decided I wanted something vegetarian. I still had some of the Palak Paneer from earlier in the week. I wasn’t sure if it was enough for an entire meal but decided to make a few other dishes. I had bought a couple of heads of cabbage because I decided to try and make homemade sauerkraut (much to my wife’s terror). I couldn’t get as much into the bucket I was using as I thought I could, so I had some cabbage to work with.

There is a great cooked cabbage salad recipe in Mangoes and Curry Leaves by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, which consists of cabbage, shallots, curry leaves, turmeric, cumin seeds, green chilis, coconut and lime juice. It’s easy to make and straight forward, and although it’s spiced, doesn’t mask the naturally sweet flavor of the cabbage. It doesn’t require any sautéing. You cut and wash the cabbage and put it in a pot with the other ingredients (minus the coconut and lime juice) and cook it on high for about 2-3 minutes and then turn it down to a simmer for about 10 minutes. The water that clings to the cabbage is enough to cook the whole dish. At the end you add the flaked coconut which absorbs any liquid left ad then squeeze lime juice over it. You can make it start to finish in about 20 minutes and it’s a great side.

The other dish was a cooked carrot dish from Kerala. For this dish, you sauté cumin seeds, black mustard seeds, onion, garlic, green chili, and curry leaves briefly. When they’ve softened but not browned, you add a bunch of grated carrots and toss it all together. Let it cook for about 30 seconds and then turn the heat off and stir in some yogurt. The carrots should be partly cooked, but not completely. As simple as it is, it’s something that never fails to blow me away. It’s another dish that you can throw together in a few minutes, but is substantial and satisfying.

I made some basmati rice and mounded that in the center of the plate and put a portion of the other dishes around the rice. Between the palak paneer, the cabbage and the carrots, we had an incredibly filling meal. The colors were beautiful as well. The carrots were deep orange, the cabbage yellow from the turmeric, and the palak paneer was a deep bright green.

A couple of the dishes were hot and I was ready to try out my newly kegged brown ale with it, but had picked up a bottle of the Deschutes Buzzsaw Brown Ale and wanted to try that. It’s a very nice brown. It’s 30 IBU’s and only 4.8% alcohol. It’s very clean with a decent malt backbone. It’s a terrific session beer but lacks some of the malty sweetness I like in brown ale. Theirs is a different interpretation of brown ale than mine. Mine is sweeter than Newcastle Brown, but theirs is less sweet. When you bit into the chilis, I preferred the sweet malt of mine instead of the Buzzsaw Brown, but the Buzzsaw Brown is a well made and delicious beer (and probably better with a host of other things where you don’t want or need a sweet malt finish). With the recent hype over Deschutes’s Abyss Barrel Aged Imperial Stout on my brew clubs list serve, the Buzzsaw Brown seems to have gone completely unnoticed, which is a shame because it’s a beer of great subtlety and finesse.

January 15th

January 15th

I went shopping on Sunday and was looking for collard greens, and had to go to my local natural supermarket to find them. I also picked up a few other odds and ends including tempeh (because it’s actually cheaper there than at the Asian grocer). They have a great cheese counter so I decided to look for paneer, the firm and bland Indian cheese. It’s a fairly easy thing to make at home (it’s whole milk that’s curdled with vinegar or lemon juice and then strained and pressed) but we hadn’t had time recently so I looked for some on the off chance that they had it. They did so I picked some up because we love Palak Paneer, which is essentially paneer in a saag-like spinach sauce.

If you have paneer, palak paneer is quick enough to make on a week night. The meat saags benefit from longer braising, but once the spinach sauce is made, the paneer only needs to sit in the sauce long enough to heat through. The beauty of the dish is that the paneer is very mild tasting and offers and excellent rich counterpoint to the spicy spinach. We’d been doing the hot and spicy thing for several nights now and my wife had requested it a little milder than I normally would have made it, but I added a little bit of crushed red chile to mine at the end to get a bigger punch of heat and therefore a better contrast between the paneer and the sauce. The store bought paneer was good, but not as good as homemade, plus it was expensive (about $8 a pound). You can make about a pound of paneer from a gallon of milk, so it’s worth it both from a taste and cost stand point if you give yourself enough time. Paneer can be made in one day, but you need to start it early. Most of the time is spent letting it drain and then pressing it under a weight until it’s firm enough to cut and to hold its own shape. But knowing that you can buy it is a nice backup for the times I’m too lazy to make it.

The palak paneer sauce is made of sautéed browned onions, chiles, ginger, garlic, coriander, cumin, turmeric, and bay leaves. I also add small amounts of clove and cardamom and then give it a little garam masala at the end. I have seen recipes which use fewer spices, but I like complexity of this blend and like the sweeter spices in the mix. The sauce is thickened with yogurt and then pureed (you may need to add a little water to it as well). You can make the sauce in about 30 minutes, including the simmering time, so it’s not too bad. Yes, it could cook longer and would likely be better. Yes, it’s better the next day, but it’s nice to know that I can cook one of my favorite Indian meals on a weeknight. All you really need on the side is some steamed rice, but naan or chapattis would be nice as well. I normally keep a variety of jarred chutneys around for things like this as well.

I wished I had more of the Widmer Crimson Wheat but made due with some homebrewed bitter. I could have done a lot worse.