potato carrot curry and rice

Ingredients

• 2 russet potatoes, chopped
  
• 2 sweet potatoes, chopped
  
• 3/4 cup carrots, cut into rounds
• 1 white onion, chopped finely
• 1/2 green apple, chopped finely
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup skim milk
• 2 tbs butter/margarine
• 1 tbs brown sugar
• salt and pepper
• 3 tsp red curry paste
• 1 tbs sweet curry (or a mixture of cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, turmeric, clove, coriander, fenugreek, ginger, numeg, fennel, white pepper, black pepper, red pepper)
  
• vegetable oil
• garlic chili sauce
• any other hot sauce you want
• 1/2 cup raisins

Sautee onions with veg. oil until brown/translucent.
Add some sweet curry. Stir.
Add all the chopped potatoes, carrots, and apple.
Add 1 tbs of red curry paste.
Add milk, butter, and water. Stir and cover. Cook until potatoes are tender, about 5-10 minutes.
Add the remainder of seasonings and sauces, plus brown sugar.
Add more seasonings if desired.
Add all raisins.
Season with salt and pepper.

To make sticky rice:
Rinse rice and soak for several hours (preferably over-night (we did not do this)).
Line steaming basket with cheesecloth, coffee filter, or thick paper towel. Drain rice and add to basket. Place basket in a pan filled with 2-3 inches of water. Turn to high heat and steam for 20-25 minutes. Serve

Thoughts: Delicious, I think. Dan doesn't think it looks like curry. If you want something more curry-ish, cook it less long. We cooked it such that the sweet potatoes got quite mushy. I personally enjoyed it, but I'm not too familiar with what curry should look like. This would probably be better with coconut milk, but it was delicious as it was. Dan is going to try mixing some curry with plain yoghurt. He'll report back.
We didn't follow traditional procedure for making sticky rice. We soaked it for about 15 minutes instead of several hours. As a consequence, it took forever to steam the rice, and even after 30 minutes, the rice was still crunchy. Dan decided to take it out of the steamer and cook it in a little bit of boiling water. After 4-5 minutes the rice became moister and sticky. So we worked that out.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Triple French Toast

This is a recipe for when you just can't fail enough.

Ingredients

• Bread
  
  
  
  • 2.5c enriched unbleached white flour
    
  • 2.25tsp yeast (1 packet)
    
  • pinch salt
    
  • ~1tsp sugar (approximate)
    
  • warm water
    
  
  
• Custard
  
  
  
  • 1 egg
    
  • 1/2c mlk
    
  • pinch of salt
    
  • 1tsp sugar
    
  • 1/2 cap vanilla extract
    
  
  

Okay, first you make the bread. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Add water and mix until you get a dough, very slightly damp. Flour the counter and knead it for a few minutes until it's smooth. Set it aside and let it rise until doubled, about an hour. Preheat the oven for 400. Take risen dough and pat it out into a rectangle about 3/8in thick, and then roll it into a log shape. Make slits in the top (optional, really). Cover and let rise for another hour. This is the step I skipped, so if you want "Triple French Toast" to come out the way I made it, don't let it re-rise. Bake until it looks done and the top is golden.

Slice the bread. If you DIDN'T let it rise a second time, it's probably way too dense. Not really good to eat. Here's what I did:

Make about 4 "batches" of the custard (4 eggs, 2c milk, etc). Pour the custard over the bread in a big baking sheet and let it sit covered overnight to absorb the custard. In the morning, make it into French toast.

Now again, I messed this up. The bread was fresh, so it didn't absorb enough of the custard. Also, I forgot the salt, so it was pretty flavorless. Damn it. French toast was supposed to be my fix for my LAST error. So I proceeded a third time. I made YET ANOTHER three "batches" of custard, but this time with a little extra salt. I cut the french toast into cubes and put them in a bread pan. Then I sprinkled cinnamon and sugar over them along with some raisins. I poured the custard over them and let it sit for a while. Then, I put it in the oven set at 350, covered in tin foil. After about 30 minutes, I took the tin foil off and put a baking sheet in the bottom of the oven filled with water. The steam it produced gently cooked the custard around the French toast. It's hard to overcook, but check in on this mixture after about fifteen minutes, and then every five to ten minutes after that. Take it out when the custard looks pretty set on top and the bread pudding just BARELY jiggles when you shake the pan.

Thoughts: Nobody is ever going to make this. But I needed to put it up for two reasons: 1) It is really delicious. How many people have ever made bread pudding out of French toast? 2) It demonstrates an important property to remember when you're baking bread: it's easy to mess up, but it's not the end of the world.

I thought this was great. I'm going to be eating it with maple syrup tomorrow morning. This is also the first time I've ever gotten bread pudding to come out correctly - the baking dish with water was inspired and worked. On a disaster index, this can't really be a 1, because it was actually two consecutive disasters followed by a genius cover-up. Also, it would be a little better if I'd used a little salt in the first batch of French toast custard and then, after preparing the bread pudding, if I'd sprinkled just a little brown sugar over the top (to caramelize).

Disaster Index: 2-3/10.

Pasta with Mustard Greens, Tomatoes, and Feta

So the title is pretty self explanatory.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 lb part pasta
  
• 1/2 lb mustard greens, ribs removed and chopped coarsely
  
• 1 medium tomato, chopped coarsely
  
• 1-2oz feta cheese, crumbled
  
• some olive oil
  
• salt and pepper
  

Boil water. Throw in some salt, and put in the pasta. In a separate pan, sauté mustard greens and tomatoes in the olive oil with some pepper. When it starts to get a little dry, add about 1/2c of the pasta water and let it cook off. When pasta is cooked, add cooked pasta to greens and tomatoes, reserving water. Add feta and about 1/4c reserved pasta water, plus or minus. Stir to combine.

And, yes, the pasta water necessary.

Thoughts: I pretty much made this up as I went along. The bitterness of the mustard greens balances nicely against the sharp flavors of the feta and the sweet and sour of the tomatoes. Next time, I'm going to add more greens and tomatoes per pasta.

Disaster Index: 1/10 - Would cook again.

Chicken Coconut Curry Noodle Soup

This is adapted from a couple recipes. When we make it, it's sort of "until it tastes good," so this is really just a general guide to how to make it:

Ingredients:

• 4 cups chicken broth
  
• 2 (14-ounce) cans unsweetened coconut milk
  
• 1/2 tablespoon (sweet) curry powder plus or minus a tablespoon to taste
  
• Sriracha to taste
  
• 3-4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
  
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (say 1 squeeze of half a lime)
  
• 1/2 cup chopped green onion
  
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro (to taste, we prefer more toward 1/2)
  
• 2 packages ramen noodles (just the noodles! Not the flavor packets!)
  
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  
• Fish Sauce to taste (we go about 1/2tsp, or you can substitute with mushroom sauce or just leave this out entirely)
  
• salt and pepper to taste
  

Bring the broth, coconut milk, and curry powder to a simmer in a soup pot. Add chicken and simmer until it's just barely cooked through, about four minutes. Add the ramen noodles and cook until they're tender (about another minute). You may need to add a little more water at this point. You decide. Now, take it off the heat and add everything else (lime juice, green onion, brown sugar, fish sauce, salt, pepper, and sriracha or other hot sauce, and cilantro). Taste it. Adjust seasoning as you desire. We usually use a lot of curry powder.

Thoughts: This is very good, and hard to mess up. Problem is that it's kind of annoying to cook with meat sometimes. There's a lot of room in this recipe for adjustment to your own taste, as well. Don't be afraid of over-seasoning (except maybe with the salt) - you can always add more stock or water.

Disaster Index: 1/10 - good, hard to mess up.

Mexican Hot Chocolate

Ingredients

• 4 cups skim milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 capful of vanilla extract
• 1 cinnamon stick
• pinch of cayenne pepper
• pinch of black pepper
• 3 oz. bittersweet chocolate (we used 60% cacao), chopped
  

Combine milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, cayenne and black pepper in a heavy-ish saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove pan from heat.
Cover the pan and let steep for 15 minutes.
Strain the milk (we used a paper towel and a colander, which works well if you don't have cheesecloth or an extra-fine sieve) and discard the cinnamon stick.
Return milk to pan. Over medium-high heat, add the chocolate and stir until melted and completely incorporated.
Drink.

Thoughts: This is absolutely delicious. It is a little spicy, but that's why they call it Mexican hot chocolate. It's pretty thick, so don't use whole milk (the original recipe called for whole milk. Seriously?? Christ). It takes a while for the milk to boil, even over medium-high heat, so be prepared to spend a long time whisking. I'm trying to find out if one can turn it on high heat without burning the milk. We'll see.

Disaster Index: 1-2/10

Brussels Sprouts with Toasted Walnuts

Another Martha favorite


Ingredients

• several frozen brussels sprouts
• 1/4 cup walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup parsley
• romano cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Place walnuts in single layer in a baking pan and toast for 5-10 minutes. Let cool. Chop coarsely.
Place frozen brussels sprouts in a pot of boiling water and simmer for 5 minutes, until almost tender.
Place brussels sprouts and walnuts in a small pan with some olive oil and heat on high. Add the parsley. Add the lemon juice. Add the salt and pepper. Cook until brussels sprouts are tender (stick a knife in them to check).
Remove from heat, add romano (as much as you want).

Thoughts: This was a little lemony for me. I would recommend just sprinkling a little bit of lemon juice over the sprouts. The romano wasn't in the original recipe, but it should have been. The parsley wasn't either, but I think they were helpful additions.
Be careful that you don't get too happy with these walnuts - they are 200 calories per fourth cup. Christ. So use them sparingly. Otherwise the brussels sprouts were cooked perfectly, so that was a plus. Maybe add garlic?

Disaster Index: 3/10

Waffles

These waffles were... basic. I'll leave it at that.
Ingredients

• 1/2c white flour
  
• 1/2c wheat flour
  
• 1tsp baking soda
  
• a pinch of salt
  
• 1 egg
  
• 1c buttermilk (we used skim milk with a little lemon juice in it)
  

Mix the dry ingredients together. Crack the egg into the buttermilk and whisk lightly. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir. Put in waffle press. Try to get waffles out after a little while. Cry.

Thoughts: These waffles sucked. Some notes for next time: 1) add sugar to the batter. 2) check to make sure you have something to put on TOP of the waffles before you make them. 3) have a waffle iron that won't try to devour your waffles whole. One option to prevent stickage is to liberally oil the grids, but on my iron this takes a lot more oil than I want to think about. I've had success with recipes that have oil in the batter, which somehow prevents stickage as well as creates a nicer texture. The addition of sugar (to caramelize and improve the interior strength of the waffle) might also help prevent the iron from tearing the damn things in half when you try to remove them.

Disaster Index: 8/10 - I mean, I ate them. But it wasn't a good time. It was a bad time.