On the Move

The Gourmand & the Peasant are on the move, so if it seems that we are a little quieter than usual, well, our kitchen is literally in boxes. We’re living on pizza and Chinese, so subscribe to the email and I’ll send you an update as soon as I have one. In brief, we are going to a kitchen with a counter long enough to lay down on. With multiple outlets! an ice maker… a microwave… a window…

Curried Fish with Peach and Heirloom Tomato Salsa

Another Mahi-Mahi recipe. Hooray! You could use any firm fish like striped bass, fluke, you could try shrimp too. I bet that would be good. For the salsa, make sure the peaches and tomatoes are super ripe. Its actually a good way to use up overripe fruit, when you’re sick of pancakes or tomato sauce. The fish recipe is adapted from the New York Times’ Florence Fabricant. The salsa is all ours.

Curried Fish
2 mahi-mahi fillets (about a pound)
2 Tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp mustard seed 
1/2 cup onion, chopped fine
1/2 Tbs ginger, chopped fine 
1/2 jalepeno, chopped (or more if you like it hot)
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp tumeric
1/2 Tbs tamarind paste, dissolved in 1/4 cup water
1/2 lime juice and its zest
1 tsp brown sugar 

(As you get used to a recipe you can tweak the amounts of spices. In the making of this meal, I had a heavy hand with all the ingredients. )

In a pan large enough to hold all the fish, heat the oil on high. When it start to shimmer, add the mustard seeds and heat until they start to pop. You can’t miss it – its like popcorn. Immediately add the onion and toss with the mustard seeds. (This cools off the oil so it doesn’t burn.) Cook the onion until it starts to brown. Turn the heat to medium-low and add the ginger, jalepeno, coriander and tumeric. Stir and let cook 3 minutes. Add the diluted tamarind to the pan and simmer 3 minutes more. 

Add another 1/2 cup of water and stir to combine. Add the fish fillets. Cover and simmer 5 minutes. Take off the cover and spoon the juices over the fish. (You’re not going to flip the fish, so be generous in your basting.) Cover again, and cook until the fish is cooked through, about 5 minutes, but this depends on the thinkness. Check its doneness by stretching out your thumb (seriously) and poking the meaty part where the base of your thumb meets your palm. When the fish feels that firm, its done.

Move the fish to a warm plate and cover loosely with aluminum foil. Add the lime juice and zest to the pan of juices. Simmer to reduce the liquid to saucy consistency. Don’t worry too much here. You’ll know when it “looks right.” Trust yourself!

Peach and Heirloom Tomato Salsa
3 overripe peaches
3 medium-sized heirloom tomatoes (or enough to be an even amount with the chopped peaches)
1 jalepeno, minced
1 medium red onion, chopped fine
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup olive oil
juice from the other half of the lime
really good sea salt to taste

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl. Let sit 20 minutes. Taste for saltiness. Too salty? Add more lime. Not salty enough, add more salt!

Plating
Any starch will do here, depending on your mood. We used basmati rice. Any rice would work. Try quinoa, barley, couscous, noodles, or boiled little potatoes. Place the fish and top with the salsa. Pretty!

Ginger Curry Lentil Soup

I have an enormous collection of cooking magazines. Sometimes I think I should hire someone to type all the recipes into a program like iTunes, so that I could search for a particular ingredient or season, but that would take all the fun out of looking for a particular recipe, flipping through well-worn and dripped-on pages, only to get completely distracted and end up making something completely different from what I’d originally set out looking for.

That is true 99% of the time. There are some recipes however that I keep losing inadvertently. Such is the case with Fine Cooking magazine’s curried lentil soup. I cannot keep my hands on that recipe, and I can’t find it right now in my um, library. You see, the Gourmand & I are moving (more on that later) and things have gotten more disorganized than usual. Also, because we are moving, we are trying to eat up as much of our pantry as we can, so as not to have too much food to move. So! I had cause to recreate the curried lentil soup recipe from memory, and came up with something completely different, but equally creamy and delicious. This recipe cooks up quick, so its great for a weeknight dinner, served with good bread, or pita and hummus.

Ginger Curry Lentil Soup

1 Tbs. coriander seeds*
3 Tbs. olive oil
1 medium white onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 Tbs. curry powder
1 1/2 cups lentils (Use whatever color you like. Lentils come in pink, yellow, orange, and brown.)
6 cups water
Kosher or sea salt
Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Place a small sautée pan over medium heat. When the pan is hot, add the coriander seeds and gently shake them in the dry pan to toast. This takes about 2 minutes. Be careful not to let the coriander burn. As soon as the seeds are lightly toasted, pull the pan off the heat and pour the seeds into a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle. Grind until the coriander is a fine powder. Set aside.

Place your soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil. When the oil begins to shimmer, add the onion, celery, carrot, garlic, ginger, curry powder, salt and reserved coriander. Stir occasionally and sweat the vegetables (which is what you’re doing by cooking them over medium-high heat and stirring. That’s what “sweating” vegetables means, because they are giving up their water and their vegetable flavors are concentrating.) for 3-5 minutes until they just start to tenderize. Stir in the lentils and cook, stirring regular and another minute or two to lightly toast the lentils. Make sure you scrape along the bottom of your pot to prevent the lentils from sticking. Add the water and bring to a boil. Immediately reduce heat so that the soup is gently simmering. Cook for about 30 minutes. Check the lentils, by tasting your soup. They shoud be tender. Add more salt if necessary. Turn off the heat.

You can eat your soup at this point. However, a final step gives that creaminess I was referring to and it requires either a blender (not ideal) or a hand-held blender. If you don’t have a hand blender, and you like to cook, buy yourself one of these gadgets. Dunk it into your soup, push the button and whir your lumps away. If you have to use a stand up blender, pour 1/3 of your hot soup (see why this isn’t ideal?) into the blender. Blend until smooth. Pour smooth soup back into pot and stir. Repeat the pour-blend-pour-stir steps until your soup is smooth. Then, make plans to go buy yourself a hand blender.

Enjoy!

*Coriander seeds come from the cilantro plant. So versatile a plant!

Ikea Meatball Stroganoff

Ikea recently opened its doors on the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn. While there are some downsides, namely, the view of the Statue of Liberty from Sunset Park is now obstructed by a giant, blue and yellow, admittedly well-designed billboard, and no press has covered this eyesore collateral damage, overall, it is a well-received addition to the neighborhood.

Here’s the big upside for me: 2.5lb bags of frozen Swedish meatballs. 

I’m getting up the chutzpah to defrost the meat and do something more adventurous than, say, Swedish meatballs for dinner. But they’re just so easy. Perfect little bite-sized rounds, bake ’til done, boil some potatoes and violà! A dinner a Swedish-by-heritage husband can enjoy.

Tonight I got a bit more adventurous:

Swedish Stroganoff*:

Enough frozen Ikea meatballs for the number of people you’re serving. The package recommends 6 per person. I do eight.

a packet of Ikea Food Brand Gråddsås (Cream sauce mix) made to packet instructions

1 bag extra broad egg noodles

1 bag frozen peas and carrots

Bake the meatballs. Boil the noodles. Make the cream sauce in a pan large enough to hold noodles, veg and meatballs. When the sauce is done, according to packet directions, add the noodles, veg and balls. Mix well and serve.

The perfect Wednesday night, husband has final test, kind of meal.

*I’ve never actually had Beef Stroganoff. My mom hated it so she never made it at home, and I haven’t had the first hand pleasure, so this is my approximation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t tell me I’m slumming. On a Wednesday, slumming is just fine by me.

New Email Subscription Link!

So those close to me know that I have been in the market for a new computer since I realized all sorts of technojumbo that is totally uninteresting unless you are a computer geek.

However! I discovered a solution that allows the Gourmand and I to keep our circa 2000 iMac G4, which Apple no longer supports, but is like an elderly pet to us. We know its time to put her down, but we just aren’t ready yet. (Read: We broke.)

So, in the meantime, Feedburner will collect your email address and everytime we post a new delicious recipe or informative review, you’ll be notified. No more having to apologize at family functions for falling off the In the Making wagon. The link is right there in the upper right corner.

We have big stuff planned for this site, so sign up today, keep in touch, and remember that all the fun is in the making!

Can’t Make it to Beijing? How About Chinatown?

Last night, the Gourmand & I had a genuine date night. Our friend was performing the opening night of his Fringe Festival show, and the curtain wouldn’t rise until 9:15pm. This is usually my bedtime. So, we decided to plan a date night, including the show, which was to be held downtown, in New York City, at Pace University’s theater. (Actually, there are two theaters at my alma mater, and with 7 minutes to spare, M realized we were in the wrong audience and we made a mad dash to the other theater that starts with an “S.”)

Shanghai Café
If you’ve never had a soup dumpling, plan on it for dinner tonight. Seriously. Its a food that I’m not sure I’d ever make myself, for fear of third degree burns from any one of the production stages involving blazing hot soup or steam. Here’s how it goes. Shanghai Café is located at 100 Mott Street in Chinatown, NYC, just north of Canal on the west side of the street. I give such detailed directions because I want you to find the place and because Chinatown can be, well, a little overwhelming.

Take the Shanghai Café. Its decour is like a greek diner (pink and purple neon tubes on a mirrored ceiling) meets the kitchen of the grandmother of your foreign exchange student from high school – can’t understand a word she says but everything smells delicious.

For $8, order the Soup Dumplings with Crab and Pork. The soup comes inside the dumpling. The soup dumpling starts life as a paper thin disc of noodle, then gets a crab-and-pork meatball and a large spoonful of soup. The edges come together and twisted, so the dumpling looks like a little beggar’s purse. The chefs steam the dumplings, eight per order, in a bamboo steamer lined with cabbage. To eat them, use your chopsticks to grab them by the gather at the top, and place in the wide, flat-bottomed spoon. Poke a whole in the side of the dumpling to “let the juicy out” into the spoon and slurp it away as it cools and eat the remaining dumpling.

We ordered some other assorted dim sum, none really worth mentioning. When you come here, come for the soup dumplings. 

Chinatown Fair Video Arcade
When I was a kid, the arcade seemed so cool, like the mall: a place I saw on tv and got to visit on the occasional vacation, but did not exist within the grasp of my dirty, rural fingers. So, when last night we had some time to kill before the show, M mentioned that he knew of an arcade in the neighborhood, I was immediately struck with the familiar butterflies of entering a forbidden, cool-kid domain.

Aside from the fact that I now am the age of a chaparone, the arcade has the same thrilling, loud energy of teenage girls and roaches crawling up the walls while the boys compete in Dance Dance Revolution drenched in sweat. There is no natural light passed the front door, and despite the “No Smoking” signs, there is the distinct smell of late-night rule breaking. A round of Ms. Pac-Man and a driving game later, we reemerged onto the city street.

Monsters in the Wood
Brad is my friend. One of our very best friends actually. That aside, I can say with absolute objectivity: go see this show. Well, let me clarify that. Monsters in the Wood is one man telling the story that will make you reconsider whether your family deserves the label “dysfunctional.” (Mine still does.) Its dark, very dark at points, but I like dark. Its honest and raw and emotional and hysterically funny. Near the end, Brad talks about being a pallbearer for his sister murdered in a drug deal gone bad. “In life she came it a 315lbs, and now, that’s all dead weight.”

Go and see this show to confront your mortality and that of your fucked up family. Brad’s already done the hard part and I left feeling ever so slightly more prepared.

Savory-Sweet Watermelon and Pink Grapefruit Salad

I made this for a Hootenanny this weekend. After lots of smoked pork butt, ribs, beans and greens, its a refreshing dessert alternative to all the red velvet cake and beer.

Savory-Sweet Watermelon and Pink Grapefruit Salad

1/2 a large watermelon, scooped out with a melon baller into a separate bowl, reserve the watermelon shell for festive presentation
3 pink grapefruits, peeled, cleaned of all pith and seeds and cut into small pieces
1 small jalepeno, minced
1 small red onion, minced
a handful of mint leaves, no stems, chopped, or chiffonade*
a handful of basil leaves, no stems, chopped or chiffonade
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup seasoned rice vinegar
juice of 3 limes
high quality sea salt

Scoop out the watermelon into a large bowl, add the remaining ingredients. Mix well, and check for seasoning (Meaning, is it salty enough? Too little salt? Add a little more. Too much salt? Add a little more lime juice.) When the salad is well combined, scoop it back into the reserved watermelon shell (or a pretty bowl which is what I used) and refrigerate until cold. The longer the fruit sits, the more water it will give up. If your fruit is floating, you can drain off some of the liquid.

*It appears that the video I had linked to for a demo of how to chiffonade has been removed. I’m asking Santa for a digital video camera so soon I can put up my own videos! In the meantime, to chiffonade, lay all your basil (or whatever) leaves on top of each other in a stack. Then, roll them up like a… cigarette! Then slice thinly across the tube you created. Fluff up to separate the pieces, et viola!