Week 22 - Nepalese

My original plan for the Nepalese challenge was to make a paneer curry with some fried potatoes. That would have required a visit to a South Asian grocery store, which wasn't going to happen during the pandemic, so I decided to postpone the challenge. After looking at some more Nepalese recipes in the weeks that followed, however, I decided to just change plans and make something else with ingredients I had on hand or could easily obtain. The less challenges I needed to postpone, the greater chance I'd actually finish them when I was able to.

My new plan for the Nepalese challenge was to make vegetable tarkari, a traditional curry filled with vegetables and usually served with rice. The curry often contains potatoes, peas, carrots, and other vegetables, but in ours, I substituted tofu for potatoes. We were having some home issues at the time which meant we couldn't really leave food out on the counter, so potatoes were not an option, sadly. I don't know if tofu is typically used in this type of dish, but while googling, I did find a tofu tarkari at a Nepalese restaurant in San Francisco with tofu and green beans. To make the curry, I decided to use a recipe on Sareta's Kitchen as a starting point.

The ingredients for our version of tarkari were:

- 1 yellow onion ($0.60)

- 5-6 carrots ($0.59)

- 1-2 tbsp of chopped garlic ($0.20)

- 1 bag of frozen petite peas ($1.59)

- 1 block of firm tofu ($1.99)

- about 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.20)

- about 1 tbsp ginger paste ($0.20)

- about 1-2 tsp ground cumin ($0.10)

- about 2-3 tsp ground coriander ($0.10)

- about 1 tsp ground turmeric ($0.10)

- 1 can of diced tomatoes ($1.50)

- 1 cup of rice, uncooked ($1)

The total cost of dinner was about $8.17, and it made enough for the three of us for dinner, plus leftovers for another day of lunch. Very economical recipe!

The steps for our version of vegetable tarkari were:

1. Prep - dice onion, peel and chop carrots, chop garlic, thaw peas (mostly) under cold water, slice tofu.

2. In a large skillet over medium heat, add oil, and then cook the onions until softened. Add the garlic and ginger, and cook for a couple of minutes.

3. Add the carrots, and cook for a couple of minutes before adding the spices and stirring well to make sure everything is well-coated.

4. Add the tofu, and then after a couple of minutes, the peas and diced tomatoes (with juice). Stir well so everything is mixed together.

5. Cover and cook on low heat until vegetables are fully cooked, about 20 minutes. Add additional seasonings if needed. [I added more cumin and coriander.]

The vegetable tarkari was simple to make, but it just felt like it was missing something. I added more spices than the recipe called for to start with, and then added even more, but it still felt like it was on the blander side. It wasn't bad, as it mostly tasted like the vegetables it contained (which is a good thing), but I just thought it would have more flavor from the spices, especially since I tried it prior to adding the peas and tomatoes and the spices were very present. The spices didn't get much stronger the next day either when reheating the leftovers. B really liked it though, so I consider that a win.

Week 24 - Black and White

The Week 24 challenge, black and white, was a repeat of one that I did back in 2017 when I made oden. I love having color in our meals, so I wasn't really that excited about this challenge and considered skipping it, but then decided to just have black and white be one portion of the meal alongside some more colorful items.

The black and white ingredients, purchased and made pre-White House Goya visit

I decided to make black beans and rice, following a simple recipe I found on Allrecipes. In addition to the black beans and rice, we rounded out our summertime meal with some easy BBQ chicken (just canned chicken with store-bought BBQ sauce) and braised vegetables (green beans and carrots). The ingredients for the black and white portion of the meal, as adapted from the original recipe, were:


- olive oil ($0.20)
- 1 onion, chopped ($1)
- spoonful of minced garlic ($0.25)
- 3/4 cup uncooked basmati rice ($0.87)
- 1.5 cups vegetable broth ($1)
- ground cumin ($0.08)
- 2 cans of black beans, drained and rinsed ($1.75)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.02)
- garlic powder ($0.03)

The total for the black beans and rice portion of dinner was about $5.20, and when added to the rest of what we ate, the dinner total was approximately $8.65. Quite affordable for a filling meal for three.


Making the black beans and rice was pretty easy. First, you make the rice by heating some olive oil, sautéing the onions and garlic for a few minutes, then sautéing the rice for a few minutes, and then adding the broth, bringing it to a boil, covering and simmering it until it's cooked through, about 20 minutes. Then you just add all the black beans and spices, and mix it together.


Very simple and very easy, and other than the time it took to cook the rice itself, very quick. We thought it had a lot of flavor from the spices and the broth, although a bunch of commenters thought it needed other (more colorful) things that I skipped because they wouldn't fit the black and white challenge. Would make again if we were in the mood for black beans and rice instead of using our rice cooker.

Week 23 - Crunchy

The Week 23 challenge came up as crunchy, and my first thought was spring rolls. B loves the spring rolls we get from Costco, and making some of our own, full of lots of healthy vegetables, sounded like a great idea. Unfortunately, the only spring roll wrappers I could find were made on shared equipment with eggs, so I didn't really want to do that. My next idea was baked onion rings, even though that didn't go so well the first time I attempted it, but I needed to find a good recipe for egg-free ones. After searching through some vegan onion ring recipes, I found one for crunchy baked onion rings on Shane & Simple, and they looked delicious.

The ingredients for our onion rings, adapted slightly from the original recipe (they're not vegan as we didn't have any non-vanilla plant-based milk and we added tzatziki), were:

- 2 large onions ($1.08)
- 2/3 cup milk ($0.25)
- 1/2 cup chickpea flour ($0.50)
- 1 cup panko bread crumbs ($0.40)
- smoked paprika ($0.10)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- salt ($0.02)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.02)
- tzatziki for dipping ($2.30)

I didn't end up using every ring that came from those two onions, because (1) I only wanted to make one baking pan full of onion rings, and (2) I didn't feel like breading all the tiny rings in the center. I probably could have just used one onion, but the recipe used two so I started there too. The rest of the onions went into our other side of zucchini, so they didn't go to waste. The onion ring portion of dinner came out to about $4.72 (including the dip), and the entire dinner came out to about $10.59. Not bad at all considering the protein was fish.


The steps for making the onion rings were:

1. Slice onions into rings.

2. Make batter by combining milk and flour. Make bread crumb mix by combining panko with spices.

3. Using a fork, put each raw onion ring into the batter, shake off the excess, coat in bread crumbs, and then place on parchment paper-lined baking pan.


4. Bake at 450 degrees for 25 minutes.

5. Serve with dipping sauce.


We ate our onion rings with some tzatziki on the side, sautéed zucchini and onions, and salmon burgers for a healthy, light dinner. So, how were the onion rings? Crunchy, for sure, so they definitely achieved the goal of the challenge. Probably needed a little more seasoning, but I didn't measure that and just eyeballed it. Also, since I am terrible at breading and dredging (as established multiple times on this blog), they were a little unevenly crispy and crunchy, and not as good as fried onion rings would be. I don't know why, when I try to make stuff like this, the bread crumb mixture always ends up really clumpy after the first few and then nothing sticks. There must be some simple, essential thing I'm missing here, but I haven't figured it out yet. I'm sure the recipe is fine; there is just something wrong with the execution on my end, because it's the same flaw every time that I can't seem to fix. Maybe I'll keep trying, or maybe I'll just keep waiting (in vain) for the day when Trader Joe's brings back their amazing frozen sweet onion rings that were so delicious and convenient out of the oven.

Week 18 - Ginger

I'm a little picky when it comes to ginger. I love the flavor ginger adds to dishes, especially in Chinese cuisine, but I am not a fan of big chunks or slices of ginger showing up on the plate. That super-strong concentrated ginger flavor just overpowers everything, and it can be very sharp. I don't even really like the pickled ginger you get on the side of sushi (although I do find that more tolerable on yakisoba). Ginger candies for nausea are sometimes too much. I usually give most of the ginger of that type that I get to A, who loves it. On the other hand, I'm completely fine with ginger if it's finely chopped, ground into a paste, or in any form where it isn't so strong that it overpowers everything it's served with. I guess in time we'll see where B falls on the ginger-loving spectrum.

The Week 18 challenge, ginger, therefore was going to require me to choose a recipe very carefully. I needed to find something where ginger was a star ingredient and a predominant flavor, but one that wouldn't make me wince from how strong it was. It didn't take me long to find a recipe for ginger scallion ramen noodles on Bon Appetit, a recipe I think I bookmarked some time ago but never made.  (This was back before I learned about Bon Appetit's treatment of its BIPOC contributors; I don't look for recipes there anymore.) I do like the ginger scallion sauce often served with chicken at Chinese restaurants, so I felt confident that this recipe would work to both showcase ginger and be something I could tolerate (and hopefully be not too strong for B either).

Ingredients:

Being able to make this recipe hinged on one important question (since this was back in April when grocery stock was far less reliable and consistent). Would our Whole Foods delivery include ginger, or would we have to postpone the challenge until we could get some? Most of the other ingredients we already had, other than toasted sesame oil (but we had regular), but considering ginger was the star of the recipe, there was no way around it. Luckily, ginger was not one of the out-of-stock items from our delivery (just no scallions, but thankfully we already had some, or yeast), so we were able to proceed. Our modified ingredients list was:


- 4-5 inches of ginger, peeled and finely chopped ($0.42)
- 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped ($0.20)
- 1 small bunch of scallions, thinly sliced ($1.29)
- just under 1/2 cup grapeseed oil ($1.20)
- 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce ($0.40)
- 1 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar ($0.20)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.02)
- 1 tsp toasted sesame oil ($0.59)
- small squeeze of agave ($0.15)
- 4 packages of ramen (each about 3.5 oz) ($3.50)

A few ingredient notes:
- We used just under 1/2 cup of grapeseed oil (the recipe called for 1/2 cup) because we used less scallions and less ramen (by ounce) than the original recipe, but we probably could have used the whole thing (or even slightly larger quantities of that and the other liquid ingredients) to make more sauce. Interestingly, the comments to the recipe say that most found it too greasy and too oily, but it didn't seem that way for us. Maybe it was the noodles we used that soaked everything up better?
- We only had a small bunch of scallions left, some of which were already wilted because they were old, but would use a bigger batch next time. Would also use more garlic.
- We used the A-Sha Tainan-style noodles because it was what we already had at home, but the slightly thicker, more wavy ramen noodles might be a better fit because they might hold the sauce a little better. We bought them so long ago that we don't actually remember what they cost, so I just guessed.
- The approximate cost of the noodles was $7.97, and we ate it with some vegetable spring rolls, so dinner probably cost $10.37 total. Not bad for a tasty, filling dinner for three (no leftovers and still ate dessert later).

Steps:

We followed the recipe fairly closely, and the steps were:


1. Prep - finely chop garlic and ginger, thinly slice scallions. [I probably chopped more finely than necessary, but I wanted to make sure the raw ingredients weren't too crunchy for B.]

2. Put the chopped garlic, ginger, and 2/3 of the scallions (including all the whites) in a large bowl.

3. Heat grapeseed oil over high heat until shimmering (hot but not smoking yet, doesn't take very long), and then pour hot oil over the mixture in the bowl. Stir to make sure everything is coated by the oil.

4. Wait 5 minutes and then add the rest of the scallions. Stir well.


5. Add soy sauce, vinegar, black pepper, sesame oil, and agave. Let mixture sit for about 15 minutes, and adjust for taste (didn't need any adjustment).

6. Make ramen noodles.

7. Drain ramen noodles, mix in ginger-scallion sauce (reserving a small amount in the bowl), and mix well so all the noodles are coated by the sauce.

8. Serve ramen in bowls, and top with some of the sauce and infused oil.

Conclusion:


This turned out really well! When I tasted the sauce on its own, the ginger flavor was strong, but not unbearable. Mixed in with the ramen, the ginger flavor was more subdued, far less sharp, but still very present. The overall flavor of the sauce was great, and we all liked it, including B. Just kind of wished there were more of it to mix in with the ramen. We would definitely make this again!

Week 15 - Beans

We eat a decent amount of beans in this household, and our pantry is stocked with lots of cans of different types of beans, so I wasn't sure what to make for this challenge. I did want to try something new, so I searched online until I found a recipe on BBC Good Food for kidney bean curry. That sounded like it could be a good addition to our beans rotation.

The ingredients for the curry were:

- grapeseed oil ($0.20)
- 1 onion, chopped ($0.79)
- handful of garlic cloves, finely chopped ($0.20)
- 1 tsp ginger paste ($0.20)
- about 1 tsp ground cumin ($0.10)
- about 1 tsp smoked paprika ($0.08)
- about 2 tsp garam masala ($0.10)
- about 1/2 tsp ground ginger ($0.05)
- 1 zucchini, chopped ($0.76)
- 1 can diced tomatoes (undrained) ($0.99)
- 1 can kidney beans (rinsed and drained) ($0.89)
- 3 scallions, chopped ($0.32)
- 1 tbsp chopped cilantro ($0.75)
- 2 cups (uncooked) brown rice ($1.50)

The total cost for this recipe was about $6.93, less than half the cost of a lot of our meals lately. Working with a minimal amount of fresh vegetables and a couple of cans was definitely more affordable than some of our other meals.


The steps for making our version of the curry were:

1. Add oil to pan over medium heat. Add onion and cook for a few minutes until translucent.

2. Add garlic and ginger, and cook for another minute or so.

3. Add the spices and stir well so onion mixture is well-coated with spices.

4. Add zucchini and cook for a few minutes. If the pan starts to get a little dry from the spices, add a little water to deglaze the pan so the spices don't burn.


5. Add canned tomatoes and kidney beans. Stir well, bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.

6. Add scallions and continue simmering for another 5 minutes.

7. Add chopped cilantro and remove from heat. Serve over rice.


This was an easy recipe to make, vegan, healthy, and tasty. I had been a little worried the smoked paprika would be too much heat for B, but he seemed to like it. Overall, we thought it was a pretty good curry/stew, but not especially memorable or different from things we had made before. I had picked it for bean week because it was called kidney bean curry, but it was more like a curry/stew that contained kidney beans. We didn't really feel like kidney beans were more central to the dish than the tomatoes or the single zucchini we added, and they were just a part of the whole thing. We might make this again if we were looking for something hearty and healthy.

Week 14 - Alphabet

The Week 14 challenge was alphabet, which had so many interpretations. You could make actual letters of the alphabet. You could challenge yourself to use one ingredient from each letter of the alphabet (no thanks). As a casual viewer of Guy's Grocery Games (great background show), I was pretty familiar with the ABC Game, where every ingredient had to begin with the same letter of the alphabet picked at random. Rather than leave it to RNG and end up with, say, Q or Z, I decided to just find a bunch of things that started with the same letter.

Looking at that plate, you might be thinking that it's not possible that all of those things started with the same letter of the alphabet. You might be right, except, taking precedent from Guy's Grocery Games, starting with the same letter is kind of a flexible concept. It would always amuse me just how many things could fit into the letter G when you count every "ground" spice as G, no matter what it was. Thinking about it that way, here you had:

- chicken stuffing (Stove Top)
- chopped turkey meatballs (didn't have any chicken ones available)
- carrots
- canned green beans

A meal for the letter C! I didn't apply the rule to seasonings, because I couldn't find a way to make freshly ground black pepper and garlic powder fit, but didn't want unseasoned vegetables. We eat some variation of this meal fairly regularly, since stuffing is one of my favorite foods that B seems to enjoy as well (and Stove Top is just so easy for a quick dinner), but it was nice to be able to use it for a challenge.

Week 12 - Peppers

I love stuffed peppers, so when the Week 12 challenge came up as peppers, choosing what to do for the challenge was so easy. We've had some amazing stuffed peppers (and other vegetables) at restaurants, especially the ones we had in a small village in Greece, but the only ones we had at home before this challenge were the ones we bought at Costco, in which the peppers always came out underdone and not soft at all (but the filling was good). I quickly found a delicious-sounding recipe for turkey stuffed peppers on Skinnytaste, and the thing I liked the most was that people commented about how soft and juicy the peppers were. Exactly what we were looking for.

The ingredients for the stuffed peppers were:

- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.50)
- olive oil ($0.20)
- about 6 cloves of garlic, minced ($0.30)
- 1 small onion, chopped ($0.79)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- cumin ($0.10)
- salt & freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- oregano ($0.05)
- 4 bell peppers ($5.34)
- 1.5 cups of chicken broth (bouillon + water in our case) ($0.50)
- about 3/4 cup of tomato sauce ($1)
- about 1.5 cups of cooked brown rice ($1)
- canola oil spray ($0.03)
- a few handfuls of shredded cheese ($1)

The total cost for the stuffed peppers was approximately $14.89 (right on par with so many of our challenge meals). We've made it a few times since then, and the price might have been slightly less those times since we only used three peppers instead of four. (The prices fluctuate so much though, and depends on where we can get our groceries from!) For a meal that's just the right size for our family of three, that works for us.


The steps to make the stuffed peppers were:

1. Prep - Mince onion and garlic. Wash peppers and chop in half from top to bottom, pulling out the seeds and ribs.

2. Add olive oil to skillet, and cook onions and garlic until soft.

3. Add turkey, garlic powder, cumin, salt, black pepper, and oregano, and cook, breaking up the turkey as it cooks, until meat is fully cooked. Adjust seasonings if needed, to taste.


4. Add tomato sauce and 1/2 cup of chicken broth, and simmer for a few minutes. Adjust flavors to taste.

5. Add rice to turkey, and mix well. [Note: We used some rice that had been thawing out in the fridge for a few days, but was apparently still frozen. Make sure the rice is fully thawed out (or never frozen) or this will add a significant amount of time, as we learned the hard way...]

6. Spoon meat and rice mixture into the bell pepper halves and place in baking dish that has been sprayed with canola oil. [We used two 13x9 baking dishes for 4 peppers (and still do even with less peppers).] Top with cheese.

7. Pour 1/2 cup of chicken broth into the bottom of each baking dish. Cover with aluminum foil (making sure it's tight, but also not resting on the cheese), and bake for 40-45 minutes.


The stuffed peppers were everything I hoped they would be. The peppers themselves were so soft and juicy, and the vibrant taste of the peppers, plus the seasoned turkey and rice mixture, plus the cheese made for an excellent combination. If we would change anything about the way we made it that time, it would be to add a little more seasoning to the meat, but it was still good as it was. We were so happy with how this turned out and put this technique for stuffed peppers into our repertoire, with the intention of mixing up the fillings depending on what we were planning for the week.

Since the time we did this challenge the first time, we've now made stuffed peppers a couple more times, experimenting with different variations, but each time using only three peppers. The second time, we used beef-less ground beef from Trader Joe's instead of ground turkey, and omitted the tomato sauce (didn't have any) and the shredded cheese (didn't have any open packages). The two ingredients that we were missing seemed to make a difference, so the third time, we used Gardein beef-less ground (no idea if that's the same manufacturer as TJ's, but it's frozen instead and tastes different), tomato paste, and shredded parmesan, and it was much better. Considering the various meat supply issues during the pandemic, we're really glad that all the meat alternative products work so well in these stuffed peppers, and everyone in the family, including B, loves them. Definitely something we're going to keep in our rotation as long as we can get good bell peppers!

Weeks 11 and 20

I knew the day would come when I would need to write this post. As much as I hoped to do the entire 52 week cooking challenge, I had a feeling that not all 52 weeks were going to click with me and that I was going to end up skipping at least one at some point. I gave myself complete permission to do that when I decided to restart the challenge, even if the reason for skipping it was just "I don't want to do it," but I think some part of me, the completionist part, still hoped I could do it all.

Of course, that was in January, before the COVID-19 pandemic, before grocery shortages, back when I thought I could drop into any specialty grocery store in the city to pick up whatever I needed (fully recognize this was a privilege and luxury of living in a diverse urban center with lots of immigrant communities; hopefully those shops will survive this pandemic!). Now, in addition to challenges I just didn't feel like doing, there were challenges that needed to be postponed. I postponed some because of ingredient shortages (like missing yeast), but others because the dishes I really wanted to try required going to specialty stores that I just can't visit right now, like the Week 19 (Sri Lankan) and 22 (Nepalese) challenges.

I'm sure it won't be as good, and probably won't be a pyramid, but how can I not try to make my favorite Sri Lankan dish?

As for skipped (and not postponed), so far there's only two (since I was able to figure out a third). Once I realized I was going to be skipping more than one challenge though, I decided to give myself two more chances to complete each week. Since I had missed the 2018 and 2019 challenges, why not see what the challenges were for the same week during those years? Going forward, the plan for any skipped 2020 challenges would be to first check those years to see if there was a good substitute, and if not, then the week would be skipped without any guilt.

Those two skipped challenges are still skipped, and here's why:

Kawaii (Week 11)

Cute cupcakes at Whole Foods

Week 11 was mid-March, and while the dates of the challenge line up perfectly with when I began self-quarantining for months, that wasn't why this one was skipped. I love looking at photos of meals that would qualify for the kawaii challenge, but I didn't actually want to make any of them myself. Considering the time crunch we're usually in for dinner and all the other stuff we need to do all the time, taking the time to make food look cute just for the sake of the challenge wasn't appealing. I have the utmost respect for people who do make such cute stuff since I love to see it, but it's just not for me, at least not right now. (I had also assumed B would be too young to really appreciate food coming out of the kitchen looking like one of his favorite characters or animals, but then he saw some food on Instagram that looked like dogs, and well, I was wrong.)

The two Week 11 challenges that I missed were Arctic (which sounded interesting, but just making some salmon didn't really feel in the spirit of the challenge), and inspired by video games (which I did in 2016). Week 11, skipped.

Puree (Week 20)

Purees can be really useful in elevating dishes, but I really didn't want to make one. I didn't want to break out the blender or the food processor because they take up a lot of space. Our counters are full because the groceries are in various stages of quarantine, and they just leave so little room for other prep work. (I was also reminded from a later baking experiment that the loud mini food processor terrifies B because of the noise, so another reason not to use these loud appliances!) Also, B spent many months eating purees for every meal, and I don't think any of us really wanted puree for dinner. If it was just a puree for an accompanying sauce, it felt like a lot of effort for something so minor. I just wasn't feeling this one at all.

Similar to Week 11, the two Week 20 challenges from the past year also didn't really appeal to me: lattice (no desire to make a pie right now) or multi-course meal (have I mentioned how slow I am in the kitchen and how little prep space there is?), so Week 20 was skipped.

Hopefully the rest of the year will bring challenges I won't want to skip and less postponements!