Breathing Curry Fumes - Comfort Food 4/4

Things are... a little unsettled in The House Of Wen right around now.  There's a new guy on the horizon, for a start -- actually, he's not so much on the horizon as he's some variation on "objects in the mirror are closer than they appear."  

It's making my life difficult, and not just because I find potential relationships inherently scary - it's also that I can't think straight when he's wearing knit jumpers.  I don't know what it is, but it's right there, staring everyone in the face.   A fire-engine-red blush, a burgeoning stammer, and a complete flusteredness that would rival Bridget Jones at her worst.

What do we do when we're spinning out of control?

We play in the kitchen.  If you didn't already know that, I... don't know how you even got here (well.  I do technically know how you got here, and now I also know that you have a dirty mind).

So, I've re-alphabetised the spice rack and cleaned out the fridge and reorganised the pantry and sorted all of the containers by size, shape and type of plastic (cheap or impressive).  I've been to the store sans list, burned through my choice paralysis, and come home with the goodies.  I'm ready to cook something ridiculously comp.li.cated.

OOBA GOOBA, people.  It's ON.  Fire up the backburner and stock up on milk, because we're cooking a curry.  Oh, and you'd better change your top.  Did you know that turmeric helps prevent Alzheimer's and chilli staves off cancer?  I'm just trying to look out for you, but that stuff stains like the proverbial mo-fo.  (no, that doesn't make any sense, but what can you do?  kids these days)(*shakes head sadly*)

you are gonna need bunches of stuff.

3 or 4 chicken breasts, depending on how much people at YOUR place complain that there's not enough chicken

4 or 5 ripe tomatoes, medium dice

one white onion, fine dice

8-10 jalepenos, rounds

4-5 serranos, fine dice

if you can get them, add a couple of haberneros.  Don't cut them.  Just bang them in.  If you can't get them, I recommend The Chilli Factory's jar of TurboCharge Habernero paste.  It's awesome.

2 red or green long chillis (all of this subject to taste, of course), sliced in half lengthways, seeds and pith left in

scads of garlic and ginger - 4 cloves and a thick finger length

juice of a lime, juice of a lemon

2 teaspoons each ground cumin and ground turmeric 

8-10 cardamom seeds (not the pods - there's about three a pod, ime, so three if you get them)

a really decent shake of smoked paprika

a couple shakes each of dried coriander and tarragon (fresh if you can get it/be arsed)

pinch each of nutmeg, cinnamon, curry powder (homemade or store-bought) and pepper

a dash of hp, worcestershire sauce and soy sauce

a decent splash of pickling liquid from a jar of jalepenos (or some white vinegar)

and a teeny tub of tomato paste.

Wow.  That actually looks even more complicated when you type it out.  Mostly it's just a little bit of everything, and I've done it so many times now that I had to think, hard, about how much of everything I use.  

Chuck all of it in the pot except for the tomato paste and the chicken, then collapse the tomatoes on fairly low heat.  It should smell all entirely of awesome.  Hot and red and yellow and... happy somehow.  

Once it's all a big soupy mess, add the chicken.  Stir through to coat, and let it brown (whiten, I guess), then stir through the tomato paste.  Now, add enough water to fill the bignormous stewing pot you've been cooking it all in (I use Captain Anolon.  It's... five litres, maybe?  It's two hands high and two across.  My hands are not huge.  Neither is the pot.  It's an average-to-large pasta pot, I guess.  Oh, here.).  

This simmers for hours.  HOURS and HOURS.  All day, or all night if you've got nothing else on.  I've done it for up to eight, and I've done it in as little as two, but four is about average.  As it goes, you can dip.  Dip bread.  Dip tiny little tasting bowls.  I've gotten so I never eat the stuff with rice any more - I just dip bowls all night, fix the hot/sweet/sour ratios by taste (I have jars and jars of stuff, from fish sauce to a spicy/smoky bbq sauce, and tinkering?  All good), and then give the resulting chicken curry to the freezer.

Trust me, lining up almost every spice in your rack, mixing almost every teeny little jar of sauce through the diced veggies, waiting out the collapsing of the tomatoes and the interminable simmering time - this is order from a prodigious amount of chaos, and excellent eating to boot.  There's nothing more comforting to my addled, control-starved psyche, and even if it turns out inedibly hot, it remains my recipe of choice at the end of my longest days.

 

Comfort Food 3/4 - Risotto

I have, on occasion, been known to get somewhat overwhelmed by life, the universe and everything.  When I get like that, I cook - because cooking is, at heart, an organised activity.  No matter how much mess you make, or how much you improvise, cooking is about combining things that always react the same way, for a (somewhat) reliable result.

Exerting control over a chaotic kitchen works for me.  It's soothing, distracting, and has the added bonus of feeding people I care about.  

Risotto, for me, is the ultimate caring/comfort meal.  It takes a lot (a LOT) of stirring, but something about the gooey, buttery goodness just makes people feel warm inside.  When Becs couldn't get out post-car-accident, I filled her freezer with risotto.  When Lisa was pregnant?  Risotto.  When Vic asked me to teach her a couple of dishes?  We started with risotto.

It's almost always awesome, and though it's high in effort, it's low in actual difficulty.  I've got about four bog-standard risottos, and one or two experimental ones (...and we won't talk about the red wine one.  It freaked me out).  If we're talking comfort food (and we are), we need to be talking sweet potato and mushroom and baby spinach.  No spice, all warmth, and, at last count, 37 types of awesome.

you will need

let's say two medium-large sweet potatoes, diced into cm cubes

8-10 cup mushrooms, sliced

one french shallot, diced as finely as you can manage

one cup of arborio rice

one lemon, juiced

about 3/4 ltr chicken stock (I get reduced salt if I'm using store-bought)

butter - lots and lots of butter.  Sorry. (this means about 100g, I'm afraid.  I know)

couple of pinches of cinnamon and nutmeg

3-4 basil leaves, finely shredded

2-3 garlic cloves

half a thumbtip of ginger (I have large thumbtips, what?)

a dash of HP & worcestershire sauces

cracked black pepper

the tiniest splash of the pickling liquid from a jar of jalapenos

a bag of baby spinach

depending on how decadent you're feeling, a teaspoon or two of goat's cheese.

you're going to

Chop.  A lot.  And stir.  Smile.  Look, I'm going to be upfront, here.  I cheat a little.  I bang my sweet potatoes into the microwave for a little while to soften them up.  That way, the only danger is in smushing them to the sides of the pot, and not that you'll bite down on a piece that is not cooked all the way through.  I add a couple of drops of water, cover with glad wrap, and let them go for five mins, or until they're easily pierced with a fork.  And taste awesome.  

Now, you're going to need one small pot, and a large-ish pan - I will call it a Boyfriend Pan, but you can call it a saute pan if you'd like.  If you want to be all technical, and stuff.  

Into the little pot go your mushrooms, garlic and ginger, a pinch of your nutmeg and cinnamon, all your splashes of sauce, half your lemon juice, pepper to taste, and about a finger's width of all that butter.  Melt the butter, add your sweet potatoes, then cover and leave on the backburner while you're doing everything else.  If it looks low on liquid, you can add some water or a splash of that wine you're drinking.

You ARE drinking white, right?

Into your Boyfriend Pan goes the shallot, the rest of the butter, another splash of wine, and the rest of your lemon juice.  

Once you've melted the butter, add your rice and stir to coat.  Yep, that's it.  Keep stirring.  Now some more.  Now, add a little splash of stock.  Stir.  Are you adding goat's cheese?  You should totally do that now.  Because then the end flavour will be more intense.  Because I said so.  Do it.  Now stir.  And now some more stock.  See how that's absorbing?  No, no, stir and look at the same time!!

Get the picture?  Everyone seems to hear something different about risotto, but the word that I heard is that you get a creamier result the more constantly you stir, and it's always worked for me.

Once you've got pretty much all of your stock in, you can add the mixture from the small pot.  There should be some liquid in it, so don't fret that your rice seems only half done.  

If you get to what looks like an end product, and your rice is not cooked through, add more water, just a little at a time.

The very first time I cooked risotto, I used packet instructions.

They read "cook until done."

I was livid until I tried it, and found they were right.  You cook it until it's done.  You can taste it, or you can watch for it, but you can tell when you've hit it.  It'll be done.  I generally turn the heat off when my rice is still a (very) little hard, then let it sit for ten minutes before serving.  Just before you're ready to turn it off, stir through your baby spinach, making sure you turn off the heat as it starts to wilt (the buggering stuff goes bitter if you overcook it, but until that point?  Made of awesome).

You can serve it with bread, or with a salad, but the important part is that you serve it to as many people as possible.

Comfort Food - 2/4 - Warm Spinach and Chorizo Salad

Part Two of the TNS Comfort Food Series.

This dish was first encountered  - wait.  This is way too big.  Better.  Ok, we first had warm spinach and chorizo salad from a place at Fed Square.  For anyone who knows, it's the one at the top of the hill, right opposite ACMI.  [No, not the one with all the cocktails.  Opposite that.]

We ordered this, thinking it sounded interesting, and some sort of pizza that came with goat's cheese.  I don't recall what else was on the pizza, and I'm pretty sure we didn't even finish it.  Spinach and chorizo salad is made of pure awesome - large chunks of tomato, big ol' garlic undertaste, lemon juice for zing, plus smoky chorizo and plenty of sauce to mop up with turkish bread.

I looked at Aims, Aims looked at me, the notebook came out, and a new staple was added to the kitchen.  Aims loves it bestest, because it's the only time she's allowed to break down and eat real bread.  I love it bestest because it's cheap, it takes about ten minutes, and everyone loves it.

you will need

two sticks of chorizo, sliced on the diagonal into rounds

two or three large vine-ripened tomatoes (but not too ripe - you don't want to collapse them) in medium chunks

a bag (aw, about 100 grams, maybe?  two, three large handfuls?) of baby spinach leaves

one red onion, sliced into rings

2-3 cloves of garlic

a thumb of ginger

juice of a lemon

pinch of pepper and smoked paprika

a dab of butter

turkish bread, to serve

you're going to

melt the butter and fry up with everything except the spinach.  Cook it until the sauce is tacky - you've got to wait through the liquid that's going to come out of the tomatoes, but not long enough that they collapse.  Add baby spinach, and mix it in on high heat until it wilts.  Serve. 

No, really.  That's it.  Bang into pot, cook, add spinach, enjoy.  You can choose your own adventure on how liquidy you like your sauce, you can add chilli to it as required, you can improvise to your heart's content, but at heart this one's about good produce matching up well.

Yeah.  I should NOT have started typing these up tonight, because I'm making myself hungry and dinner feels like long ago.

Comfort Food - 1/4 - Meatballs

Thursday Night Smackdown has had an attack of the self-proclaimed crazies.  I am not unfamiliar with this phenomenon.  Many of my (three or four) readers will be aware that I am often somewhat loose in the screw department (d'ya see what I did there?)(I will wait while you giggle).

TNS has asked for links to Most Comforting Food recipes, and my mind has, of course, exploded.  There's the food I cook when I am upset, which is COMP.LI.CATED (and also impractically spicy)(for certain values of the word impractical)(those values = inedible).  

There's the obvious risotto, with all its buttery goodness, which warms your insides with the dual awesomeosity that comes from (a) tasting good and (b) knowing that I've been stirring that bastard for 45 mins.  

There's spinach and chorizo, I am reliably informed, that is warm and zingy and comes with Turkish bread (that's Aims' contribution - methinks she's having an America's Sweethearts moment due to her gluten allergy, and spin/chor is the only thing I consistently serve with bread).  

And, you know, there's meatballs.  I mean, come on.  MEATBALLS, people.  They are meaty.  And bally.  And they are cooked special in the Mum Pot.

I figured I'd write them all up, because that's what I do - write up recipes and send them on.  I have no interest in winning the Jamie Oliver cookbook on offer, because (1) I already own it and (2) it currently lives in America while I live in Australia, and I've played that postage game before (ow!  my hip pocket just twinged!).  

So... this will be kind of long. And random.

MEATBALLS

I nicked this recipe from a tiny Italian cookbook Kel sent me, and I am pretty sure I either loaned it to someone or lost it in the move.  Distressing, but the only recipe I cooked more than once was this, and I somehow managed to write all over the book while glueing the pages together.  I'm special like that.

you're gonna need

half a kilo of mince

one long green or red chilli

one white onion

one egg

about eight basil leaves

a jar of passata (or, I guess, eight to ten really ripe tomatoes and more time than I've got)

3-5 cloves of garlic, depending on how big they are

about a thumb's worth or ginger (or less if you're not a fan)

one lemon 

2 pinches each of nutmeg, cinnamon, smoked paprika and cracked black pepper

some butter.  Just to melt into the pot at the start.  A dab, I guess.  Not much, or the ptbs yell at me.

then you'll

Well, first up I mix the meatballs.  Finely dice half the onion, the chilli (with or without seeds, depending on personal preference), shred half the basil, mince (or crush, or grate) half the garlic and ginger, and mix with the egg, one pinch each of the spices, the mince, and the juice of half the lemon.  I often add some fresh breadcrumbs here, too, but it sticks together ok all on its own, so that's optional.

Roll into balls (if you're making Spaghetti Madness, make 'em huge, if not, well, don't), and fridge them for at least half an hour.

Meanwhile, start the sauce.  Dice or shred or mince or mash everything you've got left (...except the jar of passata)(and you should probably juice the lemon, too) and bang into a (kind of large) pot.  Melt the butter and fry everything off, then bang the passata in, too.  I usually just fill the empty jar up with water, and use that as my guide to how much, but I'd say a litre of water.  Let's be frank, over-simmering this stuff is not going to be a problem.

When your sauce smells awesome (this should be quite soon), you should start thinking about sealing your meatballs.  I've got to be honest with you, I don't think too hard about this part.  I just kind of show them a hot pan, let them roll around a little, and splash them into the red sauce.  The Amazing Buffman seals them properly, and I can taste. no. difference.  Cook's choice, I guess.

Once you've "sealed" all your meatballs (in small batches, unless you've got the world's largest frying pan) and dropped them into the sauce, the waiting begins.  And by "the waiting," I mean "the dipping of bread."  This can simmer for up to four hours, if you've the time and inclination (...and no objection to your meatballs kind of falling apart).  I'd never simmer it for less than an hour (adding more water if it seemed necessary).

Serve with pasta, or, if you're feeling particularly lazy, in bowls accompanied by sliced turkish bread.  It's warm, and buttery/gooey/meaty/awesome.  It's Buff's favourite indulgent, comforting dish, and has the added bonus of a massive payoff for very little effort.  You're going to have to use your imagination on what it looks like, though, because (a) I am mildly technologically impaired and (b) there's never anything left.  

Quick Poll: Will My Heart Explode?

...if I eat my lovely golden crumpet with the leftover goat's cheese? Because it's looking at me.

Beej is a legend. And so am I

Well, we played Christmas, y'all, and I can speak from experience, Aims' chocolate-chip cookies are, in fact, da bomb.

I will try to get Benny to remember what exactly he put into The Incredible Vietnamese Rice Paper Wraps, because wow, were they good. I will try and remember what I put into the For Just Ten More Dollars I Could Do Pork Shoulder pork, because let's just say Johnny Depp would have killed me.

Unfortunately, most of our best work seems to get done when we are both in the same kitchen, throwing spices and sauces from one side of the bench to another, sorting ginger, tomatoes, garlic and chilli into eight different piles and trying to rationalise stealing slivers of spice from the Mum Pile.

All of this happens over bevvies, of course, so we can rarely recall with any accuracy what went where.

Roughly, the rice paper rolls were smoked chicken with slivered carrot, cucumber, capsicum and vermicelli, flavoured by ginger, serrano chillis and a sauce biased towards the sour.

The pork shoulder braised in orange juice, soy, lemon, ginger and chilli, with added everything I could get my hands on, up to and including curry powder and the pickling liquid from a jar of jalepenos.

All of which is rather a long way of saying that this year's kitchen was pretty damn good - a summer-based menu of light items and finger food, plus spinach and chorizo and an eight-and-a-half-hour roasted lamb, shredded, in bread for breakfast.

Merry Christmas to all.

These biscuits are the bomb!

Though Ben is grumpy right now because I ate one but didn't bring one in for him!  They are:

Aim's Amazing Choc Chip biscuits!!!

In other news, I need to get a nifty little catch phrase to introduce myself so you know it's not Wen typing, though I guess one sentence in you can probably tell.

Anyhoo, back to the topic: more accurately they are the chocolate chip cookies from the baking bible which has turned out to be, in fact, quite the baking bible!  Awesome!

So here it is...

things you will need:

125g softened butter 

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup soft brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1 cup plain flour

1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda

pinch of salt

3/4 cup choc chips

Glad wrap (wtf???)

things you can do with said things you will need:

regular flour

cream butter and sugar, then add in egg and vanilla and beat.

sift all the dry ingredients (flour, bicarb and salt) into the mix and give it a stir.  Add choc chips then stir again.  I can't speak for this mixture, but the GF mix will be quite sticky at this point.

Roll mixture into a log - as thick or as thin takes your fancy.  If mixture is sticky you'll need to 'pour' it straight onto the glad wrap (ahhh, it makes sense!).  Wrap said biscuit dough log up and stick it in the fridge for several hours.  I mean that.  Not like the way you put the shortbread dough in, do the dishes, then get it back out.  I'm talking hours.  Christmas shop.  Go to work.  Have a bath and read a book (little known fact:  if you make your bath several hours long it justifies the water usage..) anything that takes hours.  Alternatively put it in the freezer for 1-2 hours.

After hours preheat over to 180, 170 or whatever you like to bake at.  My oven loves 170...  

Cut log into pretty little slices as thick or as thin as you like.  Bake for 10-12 mins.  Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee*

amendments for GF...

As usual... beat egg first, then add sugar and beat like you've never beaten before!  Not really, but stiffer is better.  Then add butter and beat again.

Add everything else as per usual recipe.  However, when you get to the 'get it out the fridge and put it in the oven' bit, you may need to roll it into flattened balls to save it from 'melting'  out of the biscuit shape.

Tips:

I swear by melted butter.  That's up to you though.

We use less bicarb than recommended because Ben is sensitive to it (not like I'm sensitive to wheat, he can taste it a mile off...)  and can't see any side effects to it.

It's bloody expensive to by little choc chip drops to put in.  You get LESS in weight and it costs MORE which is CRAP!!!  I get the big huge round bits of chocolate and then rough cut it.  Cost effective.  I do think though that I do this because it makes me feel like a country baker.  Small things, small minds and all that.

That's all for now,

Happy Baking

A

 *not necessary for actual enjoyment

Best I can give you on the baking bible is this:

recipes compiled by  Lanham, J et al, 2008, Baking Bible penguin books: Victoria

It has no author on the cover, just Baking Bible, ISBN 978-0-14-300825-5