ND Food & Travel Posts

For Part 2, four months later, I'm reorganizing my post into Meals, Fails, Asides, and Food Goals Update.

Meals

Aloo Gobi

https://www.teaforturmeric.com/aloo-gobi/

It's spicy but also light (as it's cauliflower and not a creamy curry). Maybe meant as a side dish.

Butter Chicken Burrito

https://www.thecookingguy.com/cookbook/2023/6/9/indian-butter-chicken-burrito

Via a YouTube channel. I substituted paneer for chicken, and finished the garlic butter rice in my rice cooker.

Made a half-recipe and it made a lot of burritos. Probably needs bits of bell pepper or something in there for some crunchiness.

Chicken Madras

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-7-iBRjJcg

South Indian recipe (Madras == Chennai, Tamil Nadu). Another recipe that I made with paneer instead of chicken. It was tricky getting the onions to brown for whatever reason (first time using the broiler below my regular oven).

The recipe doesn't have exact times so you would need to be ready to play this by ear.

Chicken Manchurian

https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/chicken-manchurian-recipe/

Saw this Indian take on Chinese food, in Beryl Shereshewsky's Eating the Alphabet in India.

I intentionally didn't deep-fry the chicken, and mixed the sauce stuff together a little early. When the sauce thickened it was appealing, similar to General Tso. The leftovers didn't appeal to me so much, so I'd say this was mid.

Chile Crisp Fettuccine Alfredo With Spinach

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023609-chile-crisp-fettuccine-alfredo-with-spinach

Creative use of my jar of chile crisp. I did about half-Romano half-Parmesan for the cheese. The spinach got absorbed nicely. I didn't get a sense of "wow this is super-spicy" ? so maybe I could've added more/spicier chile crisp or paid more attention to the timing of those flavors.

Cookies and Cream Ice Cream (Dairy-Free)

https://urbanblisslife.com/cookies-and-cream-ice-cream-dairy-free-vegan/

This was not a healthful choice, but I recently got an ice cream maker. The recipe takes a can of coconut milk, and a sprinkle of Oreo crumbs (you can buy these at different crumbliness; mine are small). I also added about a 1/4 teaspoon of mint extract, which makes this VERY minty.

Creamy Whole Wheat Orzo With Orange And Spinach

https://mycuratedtastes.com/creamy-whole-wheat-orzo-with-orange-and-spinach/

I impulse-bought a container of whole wheat orzo from Whole Foods, and started looking up recipes. Most follow this general form.

Ethiopian Yellow Split Peas Curry

https://foodaciously.com/recipe/ethiopian-yellow-split-peas-kik-alicha

Enjoy split peas and red lentils (from previous post) with your injera. The split peas need to soak overnight. Recipes are particular about using the yellow peas, which I ultimately ordered online.

Gochujang Tempeh

https://www.lazycatkitchen.com/gochujang-tempeh/

An addictive Korean fried chicken place (CM Chicken) moved into my neighborhood in March. I've decided to order takeout there only once each month, so I started looking into a possible replacement.

The tempeh frying and baking was spot on. I didn't do so much with the salad part, cut up a radicchio.

Khachapuri (Arthur's Version)

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/khachapuri-georgian-cheese-bread-recipe

This was in the previous recipe post, but now trying a King Arthur recipe. I continued to use farmer's cheese and blended in some baby spinach (after wilting in a pan) based on other recipes.

Matar Paneer

https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/matar-paneer-mutter-masala/

Pretty straightforward, and a good way to eat my frozen peas.

I also made a vindaloo recipe, and my Tamil friend in Malaysia asked "what's vindaloo" so always good to learn that I know nothing. The internet suggests that vindaloo is a newer, Goan/Portuguese dish.

Some Fails

• Canned Huitlacoche - I've eaten huitlacoche in tacos and liked it. I went to Amazon and got some that were dented, around their expiration date, and more of a goo.

• Roasted Red Kuri Squash - found this odd squash at a Whole Foods, Googled that it was edible, kept it at home a month, chopped it up and cooked it. Turns out I don't like squash that much?

• Pumpkin Spice Bagels - I made a half recipe, using a pumpkin pie spice shaker from Target instead of individual spice amounts. Dough came out like creamy peanut butter. With more flour it was a little shapeable, but unlike other bagels that I've made. Also as stated earlier, don't like squash so much.

• I got a kit to make tempeh at home, but it's just packets of spores, which people seem to be fermenting in their oven for 24-48 hours? The packets advertise that they allow you to make soy-free tempeh but then recommend soybeans anyway? Huh. I tried with a rice cooker but it gets way too hot.

Asides

I heard about Zero Acre Oil (vegetable oil cultivated from sugarcane harvest byproduct) in a story about Shake Shack. Bought some for me and one of my brothers. Their website has a lot of material about seed oils and nutrition and carbon footprint, but basically if you considered avocado oils, this might be interesting, too.

Piroshky Piroshky (famous Seattle bakery) is starting a national "pop-up" model which I'd describe more as "partial shipping". I ordered $50 of goods, picked up an airmail box at a brewery in Evanston (a bit of a walk and a train ride, but nothing crazy), and put everything in the freezer.

There's a dulce de leche version of cinnamon toast crunch cereal, on Amazon! I should try making these into an ice cream.

I impulse-bought Heyday's canned chickpea curry from a gourmet grocery store. I'm not sure how I feel about the business model of prepared-and-seasoned meal in a can. It is nice to have all of the spices packaged in one product. I plan to make roti jala sometime and have this as a side.

Food Goals Update

• I made ice cream, fresh pasta, and dulce de leche at home!
• Poached eggs, added rendang and K-Pop spicy mayo, and invented the rendang benedict:

Still in the todo column:

• Making chocolates from scratch
• The Tom Cruise white chocolate coconut cake
• Full katsu curry rice