Coconut Potatoes

A few weeks ago I wanted to make something with potatoes and coconut milk. A google image search produced this Indian casserole (after sifting through all the mashed sweet potatoes with coconut milk). I omitted the mushrooms, simply because I didn't have them, but otherwise, I made it as recommended. They turned out really good - spicy and creamy, and they go well with naan.


Here's how it was done:
You can get the chili-vinegar paste from an Indian grocery store, but it's a lot more fun to make it yourself. Just put the following ingredients in a food processor:

• 1/4 c dried red chilies
• 2 T wine vinegar
• 1 t tamarind paste
• 1/2 t cumin seeds
• 1/2 t peppercorns
• 1/2 turmeric
• 1 t roasted garlic
• a small chunk of ginger (~1 cm)
• a sprinkle of cinnamon

Puree everything, and your casserole is pretty much done!
Next you will need potatoes (I used about 6 medium to small potatoes), and some green onions (I used 4 big ones from our garden). Amounts may vary according to your needs and taste.

• Mix 1-2 T of the paste with a can of coconut milk, add some salt to taste.
• Layer potato slices in a casserole dish
• Sprinkle chopped green onions
• Pour 1/3 of chili-coconut mix
  
• Repeat twice more
• Bake at 350 degrees F for about 1 hour

A few days ago I made a summer version of this dish -- a lot less baking time -- by dicing the potatoes, and cooking them in the microwave for about 5 minutes in a covered bowl with a few drops of water. Then I cooked them on the stove with the coconut-chili mix and the green onions in a large pan for a few more minutes. It was much faster, especially since I already had prepared chili paste.

Candle Nuts

Mark's recent visit to Tempe -- and thus to our favorite Asian market -- resulted in a small bag of weird nuts - candle nuts. We tried them - they didn't taste very good. So I looked it up and found that they are mostly used as a thickening agent in Indonesian sauces. The most appealing - and least meaty - recipe I found was that of egg sambal. It seemed simple enough and didn't require too many weird ingredients. Still I had to modify it, and the result was very tasty.



Here's how I made it:

Put 4 eggs to boil.
In a medium pan I heated up 2 T peanut oil, and sauteed:

• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 1 t roasted garlic (can substitute with some crushed garlic)
• 1 t grated ginger (instead of the galanga root)
• 1 T vegetarian red curry paste (figured it would be an excellent substitute for shrimp paste and red chilies)
  
• 1 t tamarind paste (instead of sugar and lime juice)
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 6 candle nuts, ground (I used mortar and pestle, and it worked wonderfully!)

That's it! It's ready in minutes. The only thing that took too much time was peeling the darn eggs!
To accompany the sambal, I made Mark prepare pizza dough, of which he rolled out 5 pita-sized rounds, rubbed them in oil, and I cooked them in a small non-stick pan. They came out so soft and delicious, and were perfect for the sambal.

Best Palak Paneer EVER!

As the title suggests, this is by far the best palak paneer I have ever had. I had a few store bought ones, I had some in restaurants, and it never really appealed to me all that much. There were plenty of Indian dishes far better than this. I even tried making one myself, and it wasn't anything more than blah. But this time - with a food processor on hand, not forgetting to add the cashews, and using our own grown spinach - it came out SO much better!
I followed this easy-to-follow recipe from Mahanandi, with some home-made paneer.
The only thing I was missing was the cilantro-ginger-garlic paste, so I made it from scratch by processing a few garlic cloves, some cilantro leaves, and a small piece of ginger - at rough ratios of 3-2-1, and I have no idea how it compares. But who cares? The overall result was delicious.


Don't put in too many salted cashews!!

Needless to say we had it with yummy fluffy naans that Mark baked.

Wild Thing

We got some wild rice and weren't quite sure what to do with it. So I made something up:



It was very yummy and quite easy to make. Wild rice is good!

Basically, I just cooked the wild rice with some brown rice (added the brown rice about 15 min through). At the same time I cooked whatever veggies I had in the fridge: mushrooms, edamame, corn, green onions, parsley (I think I put a bit too much of the latter) with some spices (I used chicken spice [=oregano, rosemary, marjoram, thyme, black pepper]) and salt and pepper to taste. The nuttiness of the rice perfectly compliments the juiciness of the veggies.

Coco-Lime Cupcakes

Another amazing cupcake from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. Awesome juicy-fresh frosting!

Fennel Awesomeness

When you have a lot of one kind of the same vegetable, you might want to enlarge your repertoire of dishes that contain it. But then you have the one simple delicious dish that you can make over and over again. For example, we had lots of sugar snap peas, which we used for stir fries and cold noodle Thai salads, but mostly, we ate them as a salad, by simply blanching them and then adding salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. They are delicious as they are simple.

We just started exploring the possibilities with fennel, and only used it thrice* so far, but I already know what my favorite fennel recipe is:



Roasted fennel with balsamic vinegar and olive oil!
So simple: just cut the fennel in half or quarters, place it in a casserole dish, spray olive oil on top, smother with drizzles of vinegar, sprinkle some salt, and cover. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes or until nice and soft all the way through. We baked it at the same time Mark's Best Roasted Potatoes Ever were baking, and enjoyed a very yummy dinner.


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* The first time out of the tree was a failing attempt to make this very recipe -- covering the casserole dish is crucial!

Carrot Cake (Low Fat)

A few years ago, while we still lived in NC, Robin brought the most delicious carrot cake I have ever had over to Mark for his birthday. It's his favorite cake, and it's very low fat. Even though I had the recipe (developed by Mark and Robin), I could never make it myself, because I did not have a food processor. But now I do! So I made the cake:



Here's the recipe, which I modified slightly to make it a bit less low-fat, but also a bit less wasteful, as I do not know what I would do with extra yolks:

In a large bowl combine:

• 1 egg
• 6 egg whites (this is where I just used 3 eggs)

Beat, then add:

• 3/4 c granulated sugar
• 3/4 c brown sugar
• 1 1/4 c unsweetened apple sauce
• 2 t vanilla extract

Beat some more

In a separate bowl combine:

• 2 c minus 2 T all purpose flour
• 3 t baking powder
• 2 t baking soda
• 1 t salt
• 2 t cinnamon
• 1 T cocoa powder

Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix only till incorporated, then add:

• 1 lb shredded carrots
• 2 c raisins

Pour into three 8" pans lined with wax paper and bake in a 350 degrees F preheated oven for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Let cool, and in the meantime prepare the frosting:

• 2 8oz packages of fat free cream cheese
• 2 1/2 c powdered sugar
• 1 t vanilla extract

beat well, and spread on cakes.

For decoration, I used solid glaze:

• 2 T butter
• 1 c powdered sugar
• a drop of almond extract

All mushed together with a fork, then colored and shaped as carrots. I got 4 large yummy carrots.