2. Combine the chiles, fennel seed, garlic and and ginger, and blend to a smooth puree. Transfer the puree to a bowl and stir in the coriander, cumin, cloves, cinnamon and fenugreek until well blended. Stir in the vinegar to form a paste.
3. Heat the ghee or butter in a saucepan. Add the spice paste and cook, stirring constantly, for four minutes. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are soft.
4. Add the beef and stir until it’s no longer red. Pour over the beef stock, bring to the boil, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 2 hours or until the beef is tender. Note that as the beef breaks down, the sauce will thicken and start to stick and possibly burn, so stir about every 15 minutes during the the first hour and every 10 minutes thereafter.
I love miso, although to be honest don’t know many uses for it. Of course there’s miso soup, a staple in many a sushi adventure and indeed in my kitchen; I use it in salad dressings; and somewhere have a recipe for Miso-Roasted Pork, which is delicious.
There are two varieties of miso that are easy to find: aka (white) miso and shiro (red) miso, both of which are (very) thick pastes, usually in small plastic tubs, in the freezer section of your favorite Asian market. One nice thing about miso is that it will keep indefinitely (literally for years) in the freezer, with little degradation in its flavor.
Miso is another Asian ingredient based on the fungus/mold Aspergillum oryzae, also a key component of things like sake and soy sauce. Making miso is pretty easy: first you grow the mold on rice/grain/soybeans; then dry and optionally grind them and mix with cooked, mashed soybeans and lots of salt; then keep it weighted while the fermentation happens. It’s the last part that’s the most difficult, because you have to wait many months, or a year or more.
The aforementioned misos both use rice as a substrate for the mold, and are ground to a smooth paste. Unsurprisingly, there’s a much wider variety of misos available in Japan, such as soybean-only and chunky grain-based versions.
It’s worth noting that although the supermarket versions are true to their names, i.e. “white” miso is indeed whitish, and “red” miso is darker and reddish, the names are more indicative of style than color. Basically, “white” misos are made with less salt and fermented for a shorter time, maybe three to six months, so they have more “delicate” flavor (insofar as any miso could be considered to have a “delicate” taste.)
I have been a complete failure with growing the mold on rice, but successful with grains and beans. Barley is traditional, but I didn’t have any at the time, so my first miso adventure was with its cousin rye.
Later on I made some with barley and beans, and may have gotten a bit carried away (but they will last for years):
I ran out of appropriate containers, so ended up using some sturdy bags, with plastic bags of pebbles as weights. Here is my first reveal, a chunky rye white miso:
Hmmm, doesn’t look much like the supermarket version. Maybe after a bit of blending?
Ah, that’s better.
But, you ask, how did it taste?
Surprisingly good. Not quite like the supermarket version of white miso, maybe a bit mellower and with a sweeter (despite the salt) flavor.
But the proof is in the pudding. I made a miso dressing for cucumbers:
And the gold standard, miso soup. I didn’t have tofu, so I used some parboiled carrots:
This was very good (with a hit of sansho), and if I hadn’t known better, probably wouldn’t have known that it wasn’t commercial miso. This batch of miso has gone in the fridge, whereas the rest will continue to ferment in my basement, so I’m looking forward to (in a few months) trying out the next one.
I used to feel sorry for my Indian colleagues, especially the vegetarians. Each day for lunch they would eat a bowl of what looked like mush.
“Poor creatures,” I said to myself. “All they can eat is lentils.”
Then I tried a few Indian “lentil” recipes, and they were delicious. That opened up a whole new avenue and aspect of Indian cooking that I didn’t know about, and continues to fascinate.
First I learned that dhal (or dal) isn’t just lentils. It’s the Hindi word for legumes/pulses, so that includes lentils, peas, and beans.
I’m going to jump in to the six most popular forms of dhal, with some pre-notes, some inter-notes and lots of post-notes.
The Six Most Popular Types of Dhal
A note about names: some types of dhal have different names, presumably because of which part of India you’re from. The Internet isn’t especially helpful in this respect, so I’ve included alternative names, but not minor spelling variations, e.g. “kabli channa” = “kabuli chana.”
Most dhal are used in their hulled/husked and split form, but some are used whole. These pics are all about the split varieties, with the exception of sabat urad dhal.
Clockwise from top, the first two are lentils:
1) Yellow lentils, toor/toovar dhal.
2) Pink lentils, masar/masoordhal. Pink lentils unfortunately when cooked lose their lovely pink/salmon color and turn yellow. They are interchangeable with yellow lentils in cooking.
The next two are beans:
3) Mung beans, moong dhal. Unsplit and sprouted, they are mung beans commonly used in Chinese food.
4) Sabat urad/maan/kali dhal. In their husked and split version, they’re known as urad dhal. In their whole form, they’re know as “special” dhal. Recipe will follow.
Again from top and clockwise, two of these (top and left) are peas.
5) Chana dhal. These look remarkably similar to split yellow peas, but aren’t. I don’t think I could tell the difference (and they cook the same), but others could.
5a) Your basic supermaket green lentils, an unhulled and unsplit version of what? I don’t know, so I don’t use them in Indian cooking.
6) (cooked) Kabuli channa/aka chickpeas or garbanzos.
Post-notes:
1) This post has been a bit dry, no pun intended. I can only encourage you to explore the wonderful world of dhal, maybe starting with the Masala Dhal recipe, one of my faves, that I posted previously.
2) There are three basic ways to cook dhal: cook them until they turn to mush and/or puree them, then at the last minute stir in tadka (spiced ghee, butter or oil); soak them, then cook them so the individual grains remain separate and whole; or as part of a stew with other vegetables or chicken/meat/fish.
3) Of course you can mix it up, vary the spices, and I often add vegetables like cauliflower florets or chopped summer squash.
3) Don’t try to cook any sort of dhal quickly. If you use a high boil, you’ll end up with a mixture of mushy outsides and undercooked and grainy insides, which is unpleasant. This applies especially to the larger types like kabli channa, but works well for all.
I first tried cooking an Indian dish when I was a teenager, and it was an unmitigated disaster. Despite that early and unpleasant experience, I’ve really enjoyed cooking Indian food for some years, and thought I’d share some of my wisdom, such as it is :).
What’s comforting about making Indian food is that the meats and produce are pretty much the same as what we have in the West, and that the cooking techniques are basic, if sometime tedious, like stirring onions continuously for 20 minutes.
To my mind, there are four principal differences between Indian and Western cooking: (1) spices and how they’re used, (2) the use of dhal (legumes/pulses), (3) the breads, and (4) sweets. This is a long post about spices………..
One note about spices in general: If you can, buy whole spices and grind them yourself. Whole spices retain their flavor much longer than ground spices, and it’s easy-peasy to grind them — just use a coffee grinder:
And two notes about Indian spices:
(1) If you can, buy them at an Indian market. Not only are they likely to be fresher (who knows how long that bottle of ground cumin has been sitting on the shelf at Safeway), but also significantly cheaper. I did an informal survey, and the spices at Safeway were between five and 10 times as expensive.
(2) Indian spices want to be cooked. That is, they’re rarely used raw. Most Indian recipes call for the spices (whole or ground) to be cooked in oil as one of the preliminary steps in the recipe, and when they’re not, the spices should be dry-fried. One example is garam masala, a spice mix which is sometimes used during the cooking process, but is sometimes sprinkled over a finished dish.
These are mostly pictures of Indian spices, which I’ve put into categories from “Must-Haves” to “Exotic,” with a few categories in-between, and “I Forgot These,” with a few notes. My notes are limited to clearing up things that the giant ball of confusion aka The Internet wasn’t helpful for. I’ve looked up the Hindi names for most of them.
1) Must-Haves: These are the Big Five — most Indian dishes will use at least some of these, although most will also call for other spices. Clockwise from the top, coriander seed/dhania, dried red pepper/lal mirch, ground turmeric/haldi, fennel seed/saunf, cumin seed/jeera.
Notes: Although some other Asian cuisines use fresh turmeric root, Indian cooking doesn’t that I know of. As for the dried red peppers, they are just for heat and not so much for flavor, so you can substitute red pepper flakes or cayenne, or probably Tabasco, although I haven’t tried that 🙂
2) Tier Two: These are almost as commonly used. Yellow mustard seed, black mustard seed (both rai), cardamom seed/elaichi, cinnamon/dalchini,
Notes: I can’t tell the difference in a dish between yellow and black mustard seeds….some recipes call for one, others call for t’other, and some don’t make any distinction. Mustard seeds are always used whole and fried in oil, and they have to be added to the oil before any other spices, and be cooked until they pop. Be careful because as they pop they will cause the oil to splatter.
Indian cinnamon is “false cinnamon” or “cassia”, the bark of Cinnamonum cassia, in contrast to “true” cinnamon from Cinnamonum zylanicum, but it makes no difference.
Cardamom seeds…..see below.
3) Tier Three: Green cardamom pods/choti (small) elaichi, black cardamom pods/badi (big) elaichi, dried sour mango slice/amchoor, black peppercorns/kala mirch, mace/javetri, bay/tej patta, and nutmeg/jaiphul in the middle:
Notes: Green and black cardamom pods are often used whole, especially in rice dishes like biryanis. They aren’t meant to be eaten, but no one ever died from biting into them. Two green cardomom pods equal one black one for cooking.
Amchoor is used a souring ingredient, similar to tamarind/imli. I don’t know of any recipe that uses the slices as-is….usually it’s ground in the same way you would spices.
Mace/javetri is the outer membrane of the nutmeg seed, and has a similar flavor. Nutmeg is….well, nutmeg!
Indian bay is a completely different species from the Bay Laurel usually used in Western cooking. It’s the dried leaves of cassia. It has a similar flavor, but is much milder than Bay Laurel.
4) Exotics: These are spices that aren’t used in many recipes, but according to what I’ve learned, are essential in the ones that do. Carom/lovage seeds/ajwain, nigella seeds/kallonji, black cumin, and white poppy seeds/khas-khas.
Full disclosure: I bought carom/ajwain and white poppy seeds in anticipation of using them in recipes, but haven’t done so yet.
Just one note: black cumin (which isn’t black) tastes nothing like regular cumin, so that’s not a good substitute. And there’s no good substitute for kallonji, which has a taste all of its own.
5 D’oh! Things I Forgot: My rather pitiful excuse is that these live in a different cupboard. Cloves/laung, asafoetida/heeng, fenugreek/methi seeds, and saffron/kesar.
Cloves, sometimes used whole and sometimes used ground, definitely belong in the “must-haves” category. The rest IME aren’t used as much. How could I have forgotten fenugreek, my favorite Indian spice?
I first started cooking when I was a teenager, out of self-defense. My grandma was a wonderful woman, and could bake a mean pie; but otherwise, cooking just wasn’t her thing.
Occasionally I pull out a recipe from my “teen years” recipe box and try it again. Most of these I haven’t made for decades, so it will be interesting (to me) if they have stood the test of time, and are as good as I remember them.
You do have a teen years recipe box, don’t you?  🙂Â
Without further ado, here is Beefy Bean Soup:
Ingredients:
1) 3 C. coarsely chopped cabbage
2) I medium onion, chopped
3) 2 C. water
4) 1 x 17 oz. can lima beans (Safeway didn’t have either canned or frozen, so I did them from dried, 2 C. cooked beans + 1/2 C. cooking liquid)
5) 1 x 12 oz. can corned beef, diced
6) 1 x 10 oz. condensed bean with bacon soup
I had completely forgotten about corned beef in a can. Appetizing, no?
7) 1 Tbsp. mustard
Method:
1) Simmer cabbage, onion and water for 10 minutes, or until tender.
2) Stir in the beans and their liquid, soup, and mustard.
3) Stir in the corned beef and stir carefully so it doesn’t break up, until heated through.
4) Enjoy!
Comments: This was surprisingly good, with a very hearty beefy/beany/bacony flavor. For me a bit salty from the soup and canned corned beef, so I ate it over rice.
This is a typical Moghul (Northern Indian) dish, so it is delicately spiced and has a creamy sauce. The delicateness of the spicing comes from the use of cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon in contrast to a lot of coriander and cumin. The creaminess comes from the use of almond butter.
If you don’t have almond butter (as I didn’t) grind the almonds as finely as you can, so the sauce isn’t gritty.
Ingredients:
One 3 pound chicken cut up into 8-10 serving pieces
1-1/2 tsp. lemon juice
2 tsps. salt
6 Tbsps. vegetable oil
3 Tbsps. slivered blanched almonds
2 cups finely chopped onions
1 Tbsp. finely chopped garlic
1 Tbsp. finely chopped ginger root
1 stick 4″ Indian cinnamon or 2″ stick Western cinnamon
1) Prick the chicken pieces with a fork and sprinkle them with the lemon juice and salt.
2) Fry the slivered almonds briefly in one tablespoon of oil, and set aside for garnish.
3) Measure out the spices.
4) Stir the onions in the remaining 5 Tbps. oil on medium-low heat until they begin to brown (this will take 10-15 minutes). Add the ginger and garlic, increase the heat, and stir for two minutes.
5) Add the whole spices (cardamom pods, cloves, cinnamon) and stir for two minutes.
6) Add the ground spices and stir for two minutes. Add the chicken, tomatoes and almond butter or ground almonds. Cook for 50 minutes or until the chicken is tender. Remove the whole spices.
7) Garnish with cilantro and the almond slices. Enjoy!
