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.

December 29th

December 29, 2007

I’m a huge fan of Indian food, although you may not realize it from reading this because it seems I don’t cook as much of it as I used to and, except for a few mentions of vindaloo, I haven’t written about any Indian recipes that I’ve made. It seems to me that Indian food isn’t as popular as it used to be and that other SE Asian cuisines, like Thai and Vietnamese, get more attention these days, which is ashamed because Indian cooking is widely varied and dramatically different throughout the various regions of the country.

I had a craving for Beef Saag, which is chunks of Beef braised in a spinach sauce. It’s one of the great dishes of Mogul cooking but if you haven’t had it, it may sound a bit unusual. Like all braises, you need to brown the meat first and then remove it from the pan. This builds up a fond in the pot, which helps to build flavor, and also caramelizes the meat. The sauce is made by sautéing onions, garlic, and ginger until browned and then adding coriander, cumin, turmeric, cardamom, cloves, dried red chile and a few other spices into the pot and then adding some blanched cut-up spinach and a little tomato. Cook the sauce a little bit and then add some yogurt or sour cream and puree the sauce. Turn the heart down low, and add the meat back in and braise it slowly until the meat is tender. At the very end add some garam masala which is an aromatic spice blend, and let it simmer for about another 5-10 minutes.

It’s the type of recipe that works best with a tougher cut of meat, like beef chuck, but all I had was some petit sirloin, which gets incredibly tough if you try to braise it. So I browned the meat, made the sauce and let the sauce cook slowly without the meat and then added the meat to the pot when I added the garam masala. This ensured the meat didn’t overcook and was still red in the middle when I served it. OK, it didn’t stew and add flavor to the sauce, but sometimes we work with what we have. The whole thing was served on steamed basmati rice.

Beer is the obvious choice with Indian food because the amount and types of spices will kill any wine. Although I love Belgian beers, I find most of them aren’t as good with spicier food as a lower alcohol maltier style of beer, like less hoppy pale ales and brown ales. I had brewed a brown ale earlier in the day, but ti wouldn’t be ready for about 10 days so the choice was more of the English bitter I had. It’s fairly malty, but still low in alcohol (about 4.5%). I wish it had a tad more malt to it, but it’s very good, and was made using a London Ale yeast strain (which is purported to be the house yeast of Youngs). The aroma was caramelly with the slight fruity esters you expect in English bitter and a fair hint of Goldings hops. There was also a slightly tea-like note to the aroma as well. Because the beer had a lighter body, it was very refreshing with the food, but ti still had enough to stand up to the onslaught of spices.