Posts

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11 days to launch: What’s a food you learned to like?

GIVEAWAY! 11 DAYS TO LAUNCH, and we’re launching daily giveaways for these two weeks! Congratulations to yesterday’s winners: Amalia Veronika, Anna Guevarra, and Lenore Jean Jones!

Today’s question for the comments: What’s a food that you didn’t used to like, but now you do like — or even better, love? Tell us about it! (Enter here: https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj/posts/10160558536114616)

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Every day, I’ll be giving away three (3!) gorgeous eBooks of Feast, perfect for referring to while cooking, using a tablet stand in the kitchen, or just browsing curled up on the couch. ($24.99 value!)

So that’s 42 chances to win! 42, the perfect number, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. How could you not enter? And if you already have a copy, think what a lovely and unique gift it would make…

(You can only win once in this two-week period, but we encourage you to keep answering questions and joining in the fun regardless.  )

I’ll post by 8 a.m., and you just have to comment on the post by midnight CST to be entered to win. I will try to make it slightly fun, if I can, by coming up with a prompt, although if you really can’t think of anything relevant, you can just comment something random, and you’ll still be entered. 

(Enter here: https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj/posts/10160558536114616. If you feel motivated to share, I’ll be grateful. Right now, it’s all about building visibility for the cookbook; people can’t buy it if they don’t know it exists…)

Stephanie will be tracking, and will randomly pick and announce the 3 winners the following day.

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Dragon Fruit Nebulae chocolate

I was experimenting with powdered dragon fruit (pitaya) this weekend — fun, and so easy. Just melt white chocolate chips in the microwave (1/2 power for 2-3 minutes, stir), and then stir in some of the powdered dragon fruit (intensely purple!) to make a truly beautiful natural chocolate. If you’re going for an all-natural Easter table, this would be a great addition.

I’m really happy with the decorating here. I used two different molds — one that makes little crystal shapes, and one that gives a geometric breakaway surface to a bar, both good. I don’t love having the dried fruit in first, though, as it makes a lot of holes in the cool geometric surface; for the next one, I’m pouring in the chocolate, and then adding the dried fruit to what will become the base of the bar.

I brushed some more dragon fruit powder over the top, and followed that with edible gold dust, and I really love the resulting look — I’ve already decided to call the final bar my Dragon Fruit Nebulae chocolate, because look how cool and space-y! 

The flavor, though, is quite faint; dragon fruit just doesn’t have a strong flavor. Nice, but barely there, and adding more dragon fruit powder doesn’t do much to boost the flavor.

I tried adding in some chopped dried pineapple — not bad, definitely more interesting chocolates with the dried fruit, but dried pineapple is too sweet to really contrast with the sweetness of the white chocolate. I thought candied ginger might work, but when I dipped a piece in and tasted it, the result just didn’t seem happy to me. The ginger itself was too assertive and interesting, and everything else disappeared. I prefer dark chocolate to play with candied ginger, I think.

Then I thought about adding a bit of citric acid to the chocolate to bring out some tang; I also thought about trying some white pepper for a bit of a surprise. But instead, decided to try dried cranberries. Those are setting now; fingers crossed!

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Sunday dinner: serving

Anand had so much fun setting the table creatively, I had to share. 

The leftover pasta looks a little dull on the plate next to the brightness of the steak and broccoli on the plate, but it was super-tasty, so we’ll allow it. Tasty > pretty. Kevin had made simple sautéed chicken thighs with bacon, served with buttered spinach noodles the night before. It was fine, but I had some leftovers to use up.

I ended up re-doing the dish after Saturday’s dinner — I put a little olive oil in the pan, added a bit of flour, sautéed for a minute, added cream, salt, pepper, to make a nice sauce. Then lemon juice (careful that the cream wasn’t too hot at that point, so it wouldn’t curdle), because I was craving a bit of tang. Added in his chicken with a bit of bacon, also the leftover sautéed onions and mushrooms from the fridge, also the leftover roasted brussels sprouts from the fridge, plus the cooked spinach fettucine.

Just stirred it all together for a minute to blend — didn’t want to make the pasta mushy — and then grated in about 1/2 a cup of fresh Parmesan, stirring. Mmm….refrigerator pasta. It’s the best, esp. if you’re the frugal sort who hates wasting food, and the easily-bored sort who doesn’t want to eat exactly the same thing as you’ve eaten for the last three days….

It came out so well that on Sunday, I had to stop and ask Anand if he *really* wanted thirds of the pasta, if he was actually still hungry, or if it was just tasty. He paused, and admitted that it was just tasty. I told him to slow down and drink a glass of water, see if he wasn’t actually full. He was, as it turned out.

I mean, not too full for dessert, but that’s a separate stomach anyway.  We just did Italian cookies (that a kind soul had brought to the garden club meet-up we’d hosted earlier that day) and Mommy’s failed chocolates. They were fine, just not quite as delicious as I’d hoped. Failed chocolate is often still tasty.

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Wrappers for chocolate bars

EDIT: Solved! See comments on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/mary.a.mohanraj/posts/10160558926189616)
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I am feeling REALLY dense here. These seem to be standard molds for chocolate bars, and these seem to be standard wrappers for chocolate bars — all the Amazon descriptions seem to indicate that. But I cannot see how these wrappers can possibly be large enough to fit these molds. They don’t even meet at the edges when I fold them over. GAH. What am I doing wrong?
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Lamb curry, saag, and paneer pizza

The finished Valentine’s Day pizza (I’m a little behind on posting! Too much cooking!) — one for Kev, one for me, very romantic. When we were living together in Philly, lo, these many ages ago, we used to go get saag at this one food cart, and it was delicious; I was thinking of that when putting this recipe together.

It was pretty filling, so we ended up splitting one, and having the other one for lunch the next day. (Which is actually what we usually did with the food cart saag too.)

Just made it on naan, which was great, though the TJ’s pizza dough would also work fine. Sri Lankan spinach curry for the base, curried lamb with tomatoes, homemade paneer. Mmm…

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Lamb curry

Hm. I thought I’d posted all the components of the pizza before posting the finished pizza, but I now see I didn’t. Well, here’s the lamb curry. I basically took a deboned leg of lamb, ground it in the food processor (pulsing lightly, so as not to turn it to paste), and then curried it using the same recipe I’d use for any basic meat curry (see my cookbook  ). Well, I wanted pieces of tomato for the top of the pizza, so I used chopped tomatoes instead of ketchup, but then it wasn’t tangy or sweet enough, so I added a bit of extra lime juice and some jaggery.

Apparently I am feeling lazy about writing recipes out today, because that’s what you get. Plus pictures!

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Giveaway question: is a samasa a sandwich?

GIVEAWAY! 12 DAYS TO LAUNCH, and we’re launching daily giveaways for these two weeks! Congratulations to yesterday’s winners: Amalia Veronika, Anna Guevarra, and Lenore Jean Jones!

Today’s question for the comments: Is a samosa a sandwich? Yes / No / Discuss!

Bonus question: What would make for a fabulous South Asian sandwich? (No extra points for answering it, but thought it would be fun….)

*****

Every day, I’ll be giving away three (3!) gorgeous eBooks of Feast, perfect for referring to while cooking, using a tablet stand in the kitchen, or just browsing curled up on the couch. ($24.99 value!)

So that’s 42 chances to win! 42, the perfect number, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. How could you not enter? And if you already have a copy, think what a lovely and unique gift it would make…

 

(You can only win once in this two-week period, but we encourage you to keep answering questions and joining in the fun regardless. 🙂 )

I’ll post at 8 a.m. (generally — later today, as I was hosting an event, sorry!), and you just have to comment on the post by midnight CST to be entered to win. I will try to make it slightly fun, if I can, by coming up with a prompt, although if you really can’t think of anything relevant, you can just comment something random, and you’ll still be entered. 🙂

(If you feel motivated to share, I’ll be grateful. Right now, it’s all about building visibility for the cookbook; people can’t buy it if they don’t know it exists…)

Stephanie will be tracking, and will randomly pick and announce the 3 winners the following day.

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Launch event for Feast at the new Cards Against Humanity cafe

Chicago gamer (and eating) folks, please save-the-date for a launch party at the new Cards Against Humanity gaming cafe (1965 N. Milwaukee Avenue). We’d going to do a launch event there for Feast! Thursday, April 2, 4-7 p.m., South Asian-themed board games (I’m going to bring my big carrom board!), and I’ll provide delicious treats.

It’s going to be capped to around 50 (maybe a bit more with staggered entry), so watch this space for details. Well, watch my wall generally.  Free to enter, but you’ll need a ticket. Books for sale, of course!

(Hm, we’re going to use their ticketing system, so I think the actual plan will be something like I post to my people first (my newsletter, Patreon, FB), letting them have first dibs to grab tickets, and then Cards announces it more widely. I’ll have to confirm that that’s okay with them.)

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Paneer

I had this sudden brainstorm that I wanted to make Kevin a spinach curry and lamb curry pizza for Valentine’s Day (see next post), and I really did want paneer on it, but I also didn’t have any paneer on hand — not fresh, not in the freezer. Very sad. On the other hand, I had a quart of whole milk, a lemon, cheesecloth, and 30 minutes to spare.

So before long — paneer! Way better than store-bought too, delicate and lovely, reminiscent of burrata in texture and flavor (not quite as rich, though, since there’s no cream), and so easy. I should make paneer more often.

Recipe courtesy The Kitchn: https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-paneer-cheese-in-30-minutes-cooking-lessons-from-the-kitchn-57008

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Date night with Kevin

Date night this week was date lunch on Thursday, and we were both harried and only had 45 minutes to spare. But we pulled French bread pizza out of the freezer box and lay in bed and talked about book production plans and ate together and it was better than not eating together, so we’ll call it in a win.

Kevin asked how it tasted — we haven’t bought these in a long time, but somehow he decided to try them again. I told him: “Good — tastes like college.” We can both make much better pizza now, but there’s something to be said for tradition. 🙂