Curry cheating
Many Indian cookbooks are mostly about Indian home cooking. The food is nice, but it’s not what you encounter in Indian restaurants here.
However, some years ago I bought a most astonishing cookbook: The Curry Secret.
It’s a small paperback without any photos, but is teaches you how to do Indian restaurant cooking at home.
The trick is to make a basic curry sauce (which you can make in huge amounts and freeze in practical amounts) and to precook the meat (which again can be frozen).
When you then want to cook a nice curry, you just fry some of the basic sauce with some precooked meat and/or vegetables, and you add the relevant spices.
For instance, today I cooked both a dopiaza and a korma in less than half an hour. This was possible because I had made the basic sauce and the meat over the weekend.
Both the curries were lovely and very different – you couldn’t tell they were derived than the same sauce!
Cheating
I have been noticing recently that some products in Asda have been labelled as being Delia cheat ingredients.
This intrigued me, so I bought the book on Google.
It’s basically a cookbook for when you’re in a rush, so lots of the ingredients are frozen or from tins or boxes.
Lots of the recipes look really nice, although I think some of them are cheating a bit too much for my taste, such as by using frozen mashed potatoes.
Marcel seems to like the idea, though, so he’s already bookmarked some dishes that he wants to cook. Excellent!
Frankie & Benny’s
Efter at have brugt hele dagen på at bygge et legehus til Léon mente Charlotte og mig, at vi havde fortjent ordentlig pizza til aftensmad. Det lykkedes os at overbevise Phyllis – på betingelse af, at restauranten også skulle servere andet end pizza.
Men det har været en dyr måned – legehus, ny støvsuger, nye bremser til bilen, o.s.v. – så vi prøvede at finde et sted, der ikke ville være alt for dyrt, når man tropper op seks mand høj.
Lidt i blinde valgte vi Frankie & Benny’s i Silverburn efter af have googlet lidt rundt.
Det er en italiensk restaurant à la New York, og måske ikke lige det sted, jeg ville havde valgt, hvis det bare var Phyllis og mig.
Men det var en stor succes.
De havde ikke blot en børnemenu, men også en juniormenu, så Marcel ikke behøvede at spise som en voksen, og begge menuer kom med sodavand ad libitum og dessert, så de tre store var alle glade.
Men det bedste var nu Annas mad: På menukortet stod der, at de serverede gratis babymad, og det viste sig at være en kæmpe skål fuld af hjemmelavet græskarmos. Perfekt – selv om hun nu hellere ville have en slice af Léons pizza!
Apocalyptic burritos
I found this recipe in the Danish newspaper Politiken (22nd October 1995), and it soon became a favourite of both my sister Miriam and myself.
It’s one of those few veggie dishes that you don’t want to add any meat to – it’s perfectly balanced and complete in itself.
Here’s the recipe for two people:
Salsa:
Chop ½ largish salad onion, 2 tomatoes, 1 clove of garlic, 3–7 chilis (according to taste) and 2 twigs fresh coriander. Add 1 tsp ground coriander and 2 tbsp vinegar and a little salt and pepper. Put into the fridge for at least one hour.
Filling:
Grind 1 tsp cumin, 3 cloves, 2 cardamom pods, 4 tbsp sweet chili powder (you used to be able to buy this in Danish supermarkets) and 2 cloves of garlic in a mortar until they form a paste. Heat 4 tbsp of grease in a pan until it almost smokes and fry the spice paste for a couple of minutes. Add one tin of kidney beans and fry them for 10 minutes at a low heat. Mash the beans with a fork.
Burritos:
Chop four tomatoes. Chop about 1 largish salad onion. Chop a handful of fresh coriander. Grate 100 g of cheddar. Heat four wheat tortillas on a pan on both sides – they should be soft, not crunchy. Spread out a quarter of the filling on each tortilla, add tomatoes, onions and coriander and roll up the tortilla. Put them into an oven-proof dish and put the cheese on top and add a few slices of picked jalapeño. Put them in a 200C hot oven for 5 minutes. Then add a bit of creme fraiche and some salsa. Add some more chopped coriander.
Serve with beer and a salad.
Vingummidrik
Der var tilbud på to flasker belgisk cider med frugt af mærket Jacques i Sainsbury’s i dag.
Jeg havde set den nævnt i nogle reklamer, og vi besluttede os for at prøve den, så vi købte en flaske rød (”fruits des bois”) og en flaske hvid, og vi drak førstnævnte til aftensmaden.
Jeg véd ikke helt, hvad jeg havde forventet, men i hvert fald en ret voksen smag.
Så jeg fik noget af en overraskelse, da cideren viste sig at smage som flydende vingummi med brus!
Hvis det ikke var, fordi den holder 5,5%, ville den være oplagt at servere til børnefødselsdage.
Periodic table of mixology
This poster (”The Periodic Table of Mixology”) that I once bought for my sister is hanging outside my parents’ bedroom (click on it for a more readable version).
As its name implies, it’s presenting cocktails in a format similar to the periodic table of elements.
When I first saw it, I thought it was great. However, the more I study it, the more annoyed I get.
The real periodic table is systematic, but the only feature resembling a system here is having tequila-based drinks in the first columns, vodka-based ones in the next ones, and so on.
As far as I can see, nothing else is systematic. Column 1 is not different from column 2 in any systematic fashion, and the rows don’t display any regular differences at all.
Somebody should redo this properly.
First of all, I think a higher number should imply a stronger drink. That is, cocktail number 1 should be almost non-alcoholic, number 2 should be slightly stronger, and so on.
Second, there should be similarities both horizontally and vertically. I wouldn’t necessarily order it by spirit, but perhaps rather by appeareance or taste.
It won’t be easy, I realise, but surely it would be a worthwhile research project for some inebriated chemistry students…?
Yoghurt-like products
In Scotland, the only thick and sour milk product I’ve seen is yoghurt (in several variants with varying amounts of fat).
In Denmark, however, there are many alternatives: Ymer, tykmælk, A38, ylette, cultura, and – until recently – gaio.
Tykmælk is the easiest one to make yourself. According to recipes I’ve found, you mix full-fat milk with some cream and buttermilk and put it in a warm location till it reaches the right consistency.
Ymer and ylette differ by having some water removed early in the process.
The rest differ by the bacteria used, see lists here and here.
Pirosmani
Phyllis and I spent the weekend in Paris with Anna.
Close to our hotel, on the Rue Boutebrie, we found a wonderful Georgian restaurant, called Pirosmani (named after the painter, of course).
I had lobio and xink’ali, and Phyllis had ajapsandali and kharcho, but Anna liked the ajapsandali best.
აჯაფსანდალი ajapsandali (recipe here) is diced aubergine that has been cooked till it’s very tender with tomato and lots of herbs, and she just loved it.
Why aren’t there any Georgian restaurants in Glasgow? My lobio was just great, and if Pirosmani had been here instead, I’d definitely go there often.
Food pairing
I found a link on “En chokomans bekendelser” to an extremely interesting Belgian site on food pairing.
I must admit I don’t understand fully how they made it. What they write is this: “By comparing the flavour of each food product eg strawberry with the rest of the food and their flavours, new combinations like strawberry with peas can be made. The way to use is, is just to select a food product like strawberries. You will get a plot where you have strawberry in the middle surrounded by other food products. Take one of those other food products and try to make a new recipe by combining those two. The more flavours food products have in common the shorter the distance between the food products.”
It’ll be fun to test some of the wackier pairings they suggest.
Mojito
Given the amount of mint we’ve got in our garden, I thought it’d be nice to learn a good mojito.
Niels claims to be a mojito god, but he doesn’t seem to be in a rush to visit us.
Fortunately, it turns out the web is full of mojito videos that clearly shows hows to make them. Nice.
Now I just need somebody to pop by with a lime and some soda water. 