Week 28 - Soul Food

I never would have predicted that the Week 28 challenge, soul food, would have been one of my hardest to complete. The challenge was announced during the height of the protests for Black Lives Matter, and since it was important to me that the source of my soul food recipes for the challenge be from Black chefs, I chose to take a few volumes out of the library to look for something to make. I started with the wonderful book by Dora Charles, but I didn't think I could finish reading the book in its entirety to choose something by the time the challenge rolled around, so I put it aside for another time (probably whenever we choose to do the Georgia part of the AtWCC).

We haven't made it very far in our Savannah road trip posts, but this was a side of stewed tomatoes and okra we got on our trip

Next, I picked up Sweet Home Cafe Cookbook: A Celebration of African American Cooking, the book put out by the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I learned so much from that book that reading it almost felt like a visit to a museum with curated exhibits about food. It was so hard to choose recipes from the book to make since so many things sounded good, but in the end, I decided to make some hot water corn bread with stewed tomatoes and okra, and maybe also some stewed black eyed peas.

Who knew frozen okra was so hard to obtain? I had it in our carts on both Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh, and over the course of a week, they went from available (but other stuff we needed wasn't at the time, so we waited) to completely gone. They didn't return by the time we ordered the groceries (and are still out of stock as of the time of this writing), and Trader Joe's has never carried okra (that I know of), so I had to change plans.

I had heard people rave about the mac and cheese at the museum's cafe (what the book was based on), so I decided to make that instead. To balance out the meal, I wanted to make some vegetables too, but considering there was no okra (or black eyed peas) to order online, I had to search elsewhere. If we couldn't make okra, green beans were my next vegetable of choice, and a search for "soul food green beans" led me to a recipe for exactly that from Divas Can Cook. Perfect plan B.

The night before I was going to make our soul food meal, I was writing out my cooking plan, and realized that the mac and cheese required not only 1 cup of whole milk but 3 cups of half-and-half. I had been planning to make a substitute for half-and-half using milk and butter, but that would have required nearly 4 cups of milk total, and that milk should really be for B, not dinner. (I also wasn't sure we even had 4 cups of milk left in the carton.) Not only that, but it required mustard, and the only mustard we had was one that we're not sure if B can tolerate, so there went plan B.

I looked through Sweet Home Cafe some more to find something else I could make with what I had at home, and I found myself right back where I started among the corn bread and johnnycakes. Finally, our meal was set - johnnycakes (aka hoecakes) plus green beans, with some easy BBQ chicken on the side (just chicken with store-bought BBQ sauce like from the black and white challenge, really not worth mentioning again other than to figure out the total cost of dinner). It may have taken a long road to get there, but I was happy with our end result.

Johnnycakes

I actually made the johnnycakes second, but since I've spent most of this post talking about Sweet Home Cafe, I'm going to start there. I pretty much followed the recipe from the book except that they used white cornmeal and all we had (and all the stores had) was yellow cornmeal. I also skipped the butter and syrup for serving, since we were eating them with chicken and green beans.

The ingredients for our johnnycakes were:

- 2 cups cornmeal ($2)

- 1 tsp salt ($0.02)

- about 1/4 tsp baking powder (didn't have a 1/4 tsp to measure exactly) ($0.05)

- 1/2 tsp sugar ($0.06)

- about 1.25 cups water ($0)

- 1 cup whole milk ($0.38)

- butter for greasing the skillet ($0.18)

Coming in at approximately $2.69 (or possibly less, since I can't remember where the cornmeal came from or how much it was exactly), the johnnycakes were filling and affordable. Definitely a good budget meal.

The steps for making the johnnycakes were:

1. Combine the cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and sugar in a medium bowl, and mix well.

2. Heat 1 cup of water and 1 cup of milk over medium heat until simmering.

3. Remove from heat, and add the cornmeal mixture, stirring until the batter is smooth. [This is where I ran into a problem. I added the cornmeal mixture. I stirred it around. There wasn't enough liquid, and all I had were clumps. There was no smooth batter, and there was no more liquid to make it smoother. I added hot water, a little bit at a time, probably somewhere between 1/4-1/3 cup in the end, until I had a somewhat smooth batter. I expected it to be thinner like pancake batter, but having never made this before, I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be that thick.]

4. Melt a little butter in a skillet over medium heat. Spoon the batter onto the hot skillet without crowding the pan, and cook for a few minutes per side (turn once). [I used a 1/3 cup measuring cup to scoop out the hot batter, but no idea if that was right since they said to form cakes about 3 inches.]

5. Move the cooked cakes to a plate and keep warm. Add some more butter to the pan to grease, make the cakes again, and repeat as much as needed.

Not being an experienced pancake maker (that's more of an A thing, and I think the only ones I've posted about here are zucchini pancakes and carrot pancakes, which are completely different), I didn't realize that their instruction to form cakes probably involved a little bit of flattening them down as well. As a result, all of our cakes, except the last one that A made since I couldn't see the bottom of the pot with the batter to scrape it clean, were thick and dense. They tasted good, but could have used some work on the texture. I'm not sure if the batter was supposed to be so dense either or if there was something I did wrong, so I'll have to look into that some more too.

Green Beans

We love green beans in this household, but I usually use canned because they're faster to cook and easier to eat for B. For these stewed green beans, I decided to go with frozen whole green beans instead, since they were more economical and would last longer than fresh (and we didn't know how long until we were making this meal since it was pretty much a pantry meal). I mostly used the original recipe as a guide, because we made quite a few modifications to fit the groceries we could get. Among other things, I omitted the red pepper flakes, added a red bell pepper (for color, a little accent, and because we had one), and substituted bacon for the smoked turkey leg, because I'm not even sure where I would get one of those here.

The ingredients for our green beans were:

- 1 bag of frozen whole green beans ($2.29)

- 1 strip of bacon, chopped ($0.45)

- 1 tbsp of butter ($0.09)

- 1 onion, chopped ($0.79)

- about 1/4 cup of garlic, finely chopped ($0.33)

- 1 red pepper, sliced ($0.99)

- 1 cup of chicken broth ($0.50)

The green beans cost approximately $5.44, and when combined with the johnnycakes and the chicken, the total for dinner was about $9.33. I love when we can do dinner for 3 under $10.

The cooking time for this recipe is long, but there isn't too much active time. The steps for making the green beans were:

1. Prep - chop bacon, chop onion, chop garlic, slice red pepper, take green beans out of freezer to thaw a little while prepping.

2. In a large, deep skillet, add the bacon to a cold pan over medium heat and let the fat render. Once the bacon is mostly cooked, add the butter and melt the butter.

3. Add the onion, and cook until softened.

4. Add the garlic, and cook for another minute or so, and then add the red peppers.

5. Cook for a few minutes, and then add the chicken broth.

6. Add the green beans, and mix everything well.

7. Cover and simmer (low and slow) for about an hour, stirring once or twice.

The last step is supposed to be to taste, and to add salt and pepper if needed, but it was late and I forgot about that. In hindsight, I would have added a little black pepper at the end.

We loved these green beans, and would absolutely make them again. Although I'm sure the smoked turkey leg would have given it more depth of flavor, I liked how it turned out with the bacon, and bacon is far easier to get here than some of the other meats I often see in soul food recipes, like turkey legs and ham hocks. The red pepper was a good addition (and actually B's favorite part). Really glad to have found this recipe so we can add another delicious vegetable recipe to our rotation.

In the end, our soul food exploration was fun and delicious. We didn't end up making this until weeks after the scheduled challenge (good thing I'm not officially participating), and the actual dinner ended up being a last-minute change of plans, but it worked out well!

Miss Lily's

Seven years ago today, we were off on a WorldEats exploration at Jamaican restaurant Miss Lily's. At the time, we were trying to visit places one country at a time, and this was our last planned stop for Jamaica. We were excited to try some things on the Miss Lily's menu that we hadn't found anywhere else we'd gone that summer, most notably ackee.

It was a gorgeous summer evening on West Houston Street seven years ago, when you could gather on the street or inside a dining room without thinking about social distancing...

We decided to order three appetizers and one entree to split. (Remember, when reading this, that we went seven years ago. The menu is almost entirely different now. Also, if the description of the first dish sounds much more detailed than the rest, that's because we wrote that part in 2013 and everything else is relying on our fading memories and the notes we took at the time which consisted of one line per dish.)

One of the appetizers we had picked out in advance was the jaquitos (Jamaican-style mini tacos), because the fillings listed on the online menu included the national dish of Jamaica - ackee and saltfish - which we really wanted to try. Unfortunately when we got there, the menu didn't match the online menu and there was no ackee and saltfish anywhere on the menu. Since this was supposed to be our last Jamaican spot for WorldEats and we were planning to move on to Haiti after our visit to Miss Lily's, we were sad that we would be concluding our Jamaican exploration without trying their special national dish. But since we've revamped how we approach WorldEats to any time, any place, with no order, we can still try to get ackee and saltfish sometime!

The menu had three types of jaquitos listed - spicy beef, jerk chicken and avocado, and the one we ended up getting, the callaloo and plantain jaquitos, which came with a very hot pepper relish on the side. Eating it in the tacos was fine, but on its own, it really packed a punch. The tacos were fine, although probably the least exciting of the three appetizers. If you're not familiar with callaloo, it's a green leafy vegetable, somewhat similar to spinach, so it made sense that the filling tasted like creamed spinach once the tender callaloo greens mixed with the soft plantains. The biggest issue was that the tacos were super tiny, only one or two bites each.

We also got the fish tacos, which were escovitch fish over jicama with a watercress salad. Unfortunately, seven years down the line, our memory of this dish has evaporated, and the only notes we have say that the fish was served on sturdy pieces of jicama with a salad of arugula and peppers. (But the menu says watercress, so perhaps we just misidentified it in the dark.) Looking at it now, the pieces of jicama don't look big enough to hold an entire piece of fish with salad to be eaten as a taco, but it sounds like we liked the flavoring of the dish since we thought it was better than the jaquitos. To add some sort of value to this paragraph, if you're unfamiliar with escovitch fish, it's a Jamaican-style fried fish with spicy sauce and pickled vegetables, packed with lots of different flavors and so tasty.

The last appetizer we got, kind of hidden by this massive pile of plantain chips, was ackee dip. If we couldn't order ackee and saltfish, at least we could try ackee! Ackee is one of those things that you sometimes find on "world's most dangerous foods" lists, because if you eat it unripe, it can be poisonous and even fatal. Raw ackee is banned from being imported into the US, so you can only get it canned or frozen, which should be safer and more regulated (one would hope). We had never had ackee before, and all we knew about it was that it was a fruit and that you shouldn't eat it unripe, so we were really interested in this dip.

The dip, in addition to ackee, seemed to have scallions and tomatoes, and texturally, it was really creamy, a perfect pairing for the crispy, crunchy plantain chips. It was our favorite appetizer of the three. As for the ackee itself, we couldn't place the flavor, but it was so familiar. We were pretty sure we had never had ackee before, but it tasted like something we had. The familiar taste notes were so hard to describe though, that we could never figure it out by searching. Guess we'll just have to try ackee again sometime!

The entree we shared was the jerk chicken, slow-cooked and grilled, which came with a marinated cucumber salad and rice and peas. (This is the only thing from our entire meal that is on their current menu.) The chicken was delicious, perfectly grilled and incredibly juicy, even the white meat. The sauce tasted similar to the jerk BBQ sauce that was in bottles on the tables, sweet and smoky with a little peppery zing in the aftertaste. It wasn't as spicy or stewed as the one we got from Freda's (which, by the way, we still haven't written about, even after a return visit so that we could write about it when "fresher"), but it was still delicious. 

The cucumber salad was two big pieces of pickled cucumbers with some other pickled relish, and the other side was the rice and peas. Both were tasty, but the star of the entree was definitely the chicken itself. Overall, we had a great meal at Miss Lily's to "end" our Jamaican WorldEats exploration, and now that we've expanded our journey, we would definitely return to try some more, including ackee and saltfish if it stays on the menu this time!

Week 27 - Retro Recipes

What does retro mean to you? Merriam-Webster defines it in relation to styles of the past, suggesting any time in the past, but to me, retro feels like the '50s, '60s, '70s, maybe the '80s. For the Week 27 challenge, retro recipes, I had no idea what would qualify for the various decades, so I combed a bunch of lists until I found something I wanted to make - Swedish meatballs! Apparently, Swedish meatballs were popular in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, although I also remember them from my childhood in the '80s and '90s. Not just at Ikea, but I remember Costco selling bags of frozen Swedish meatballs with sauce that would make for tasty holiday and party appetizers. That seemed to fit the definition of retro, and I decided to try that out by modifying a recipe for Swedish meatballs from Damn Delicious.

The main changes I planned to make for our meatballs were to use ground turkey instead of beef and pork and to substitute the egg yolks with flax eggs, so our modified list of ingredients for egg-free Swedish meatballs was:

- olive oil, about 2 tbsp divided ($0.40)
- 1/2 onion ($0.40)
- 1-1/3 lbs ground turkey ($4)
- 1/2 cup panko ($0.20)
- 2 flax eggs ($0.16)
- about 1/4-1/2 tsp ground allspice ($0.05)
- about 1/4-1/2 tsp ground nutmeg ($0.05)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- 4 tbsp butter ($0.36)
- 1/3 cup flour ($0.08)
- 1.5 cups chicken broth ($0.75)
- 2/3 cup sour cream ($1)

The total for the meatball portion of dinner was approximately $7.48, and we made this alongside mashed potatoes (probably about $2) and some mixed vegetables (probably another $2) for an approximate total of $11.48. Not bad for a filling dinner.

The steps for our egg-free Swedish meatballs were:

1. Prep - chop onion. Make 2 flax eggs (2 tbsp ground flaxseed + 6 tbsp water).

2. Heat olive oil (about 1 tbsp) in skillet, and cook onion until softened.

3. In a large bowl, combine the turkey, panko, flax eggs, allspice, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and cooked onion. Combine well (tried using a spoon but hands always work better for me), and then roll into meatballs.

4. Preheat oven to 250 degrees, and line a baking pan with parchment paper.

5. Heat olive oil (about 1 tbsp) in the same skillet, and cook the meatballs in 2 batches until browned. Once each batch is browned, put into the parchment-lined baking pan in the oven until ready for step 9.

6. In the same skillet the meatballs were cooked in, melt the butter. Add the flour and stir until browned.

7. Add the chicken broth gradually, stirring the entire time. Keep stirring and cooking the sauce until it becomes thick. Scrape any of the browned bits from the meatballs off the pan, and combine into the sauce as you stir.

8. Add the sour cream, and continue stirring the sauce until well-combined. Add salt and pepper, and season to taste.

9. Add the meatballs back into the pan, coat well with the sauce, and cook for about 10 minutes.

10. Serve meatballs covered in sauce with sides of your choice. (Ours were mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables, so I was running those two pots of food alongside the meatballs which was more chaotic than I had anticipated and not really sure why. It was our first time having mashed potatoes with oat milk, and they were pretty good.)

These were tasty meatballs, and the sauce was creamy and delicious. It didn't taste exactly like Ikea for us, but we did use turkey instead of beef/pork and made some other changes, so we weren't expecting it to. I'm curious how this would taste with Impossible Burger in place of the meat, but given that B wasn't a huge fan of it in turkey form and hasn't loved Impossible Burger in the past (really thinking this kid might be mostly pescatarian or vegetarian, which is just fine with me, given that I didn't eat red meat for ~15 years), we may wait a little bit before trying that. I did like this recipe, and I love meatballs, but if we want a super quick Swedish meatball night, still might just buy the frozen (chicken or veggie) ones with cream sauce from Ikea.

Week 25 - Australasian

Australasia was the focus of the Week 25 challenge, focusing on the area of Oceania comprised of Australia, New Zealand, and the neighboring islands of Melanesia (Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea). Since I've made Australian food for two other challenges before (here and here), I thought I would focus on an area I haven't really explored before and try making some Fijian dishes. After researching for a bit, two recipes stood out that I really wanted to try: lolo buns and ika vakalolo (coconut-style fish).

Lolo Buns (Steamed Coconut Buns)

Lolo means coconut milk, which you might have been able to figure out since it appears in the names of both things we made for the challenge. Lolo buns are basically coconut buns that can be either steamed or baked. Most of the recipes for baked lolo buns included an egg, so I gravitated toward a recipe I found on Nom List that was steamed and required zero eggs. We've never been to Fiji, so another reason I liked this recipe was because the author learned how to make them in a cooking class while in Savusavu, Fiji. They also mentioned that Fijians prefer the buns boiled/steamed compared to baked, and if that's true, then I saw no reason not to make them that way!

We started the lolo buns first since they were going to need to steam in the pot for half an hour, giving us time to work on the fish. The ingredients for the lolo buns were:

- 5 cups flour (plus extra for kneading, probably ended up being 6 cups) ($1.20)
- 5 tbsp brown sugar ($0.30)
- 2 tbsp yeast ($0.39)
- 2.5 cups warm water ($0)
- 5 tbsp butter, softened to room temperature ($0.45)
- 1/2 can full-fat coconut milk ($0.85)

The total cost for the lolo buns was approximately $3.19, and it made a lot of bread.


We tried to stick close to the recipe, but our time spent ended up being way more than the recipe. The steps for making the lolo buns were:

1. In a big bowl, mix 5 cups of flour with the brown sugar and yeast. Mix lightly.

2. Slowly pour up to 2.5 cups of warm water while mixing with a spoon. Mix well but don't overwork the dough. [I should have stopped pouring water before I did. My instincts told me to stop, but I think I had somewhere between 0.5-1 cup of water left, so I thought I needed to use more because that's what the recipe said. I should have listened to myself, because it was too wet.]

3. Knead the dough for 1-2 minutes, folding and pressing it together, sprinkling it with flour between steps. [It looked like pancake batter at this point and couldn't form any shape whatsoever, so we probably kneaded it more than we should have, and we used a lot more flour, probably another cup.]

4. Take 1 tbsp of softened butter and knead into the dough.

5. Grease a deep pot with about 3 tbsp of butter (or more if needed).


6. Rub butter on your hands, and then take chunks of dough, shaping them into circular buns and putting them in the pot. [Once we added all that extra flour, they sort of resembled buns until they went into the pan, and then they just all melted together.]

7. Pour coconut milk over the buns until almost completely covered. [The original recipe said 3 cups, but the buns were almost completely covered with half a can of coconut milk, which was a little confusing. But this time, I told myself to listen to myself and not pour in 3 cups. In our case, this step also included using a chopstick to try to make holes and divisions so the coconut milk could get inside and around the dough in as many places as possible.]


8. Cover pot with a lid and cook over low flame for 30 minutes.


This was our first time using yeast, and I knew the bread was going to end up rising, but I was surprised at how much it had ballooned to the top of the pot when I opened it after 30 minutes. Despite my best efforts to separate the dough into buns, it came out looking like a well-formed cake. While the shape may not have been what was intended, the bread/cake itself turned out pretty well. There was a light flavor of coconut (more would not be bad, but no idea how it would have turned out completely covered in coconut milk; maybe an experiment for another day), and it was just really soft, tasty bread. We all liked it, and I think it ended up being the majority of B's dinner as he kept asking for more (not surprising; the kid loves bread). I would definitely try making this again. Maybe when we get around to our Fiji exploration in AtWCC, or maybe earlier, because that could be years from now.


Ika Vakalolo (Coconut-Style Fish)

Part 2 of our Australasian dinner was ika vakalolo, or fish cooked in coconut milk. I found a bunch of different recipes for this online, all making the fish slightly differently. Some fried the fish first and then simmered it in coconut milk with some vegetables. Others cooked the vegetables in coconut milk first and then added the fish as one of the last steps. I liked the idea of pan-frying the fish a little bit, but I also wanted our vegetables to be softer and less crunchy, so I decided to adapt a recipe I found on Fiji Vacations from the Flavors of Fiji Cooking School to do just that.

The ingredients for the ika vakalolo were:

- 1 lb boneless skinless cod ($7.91)
- about 1 lb bok choy ($4.98)
- 1 yellow onion ($0.79)
- 1 small container of grape tomatoes ($2.69)
- 1-2  tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.20)
- 1 can full-fat coconut milk ($1.69)
- juice of 1 lime ($0.49)
- salt ($0.02)

The original recipe called for 12 stalks of Chinese cabbage, 1 onion, and 1 tomato, but I used a lot more vegetables since that's how we like to eat at home. I also swapped lime for lemon, since we had a bunch of limes left over from key lime pie, the internet said both limes and lemons are found on Fiji, and at least one recipe said you could use either. The last big change was to skip the chilies so B could eat it too. The total cost for the fish portion of the meal was $18.77, and we also split a microwaved rice packet, making the total for the entire meal, with the lolo buns, approximately $22.96. Not a cheap dinner, but we did have a pound of cod, plus bok choy is much more expensive outside of an Asian grocery store.


The steps for our adapted recipe were:

1. Prep - wash tomatoes and bok choy thoroughly. Chop bok choy, onion, and tomatoes. Check fish for bones.

2. Heat grapeseed oil over medium heat. Add onion and the chopped stems of the bok choy, and cook until starting to soften. Add bok choy greens, and after a few minutes, the tomatoes.

3. Push vegetables to the sides of the pan, and add the fish. Cook on each side for a couple of minutes until opaque/almost done.

4. Add coconut milk to mostly cover the fish and vegetables. Season with some salt. [One of the recipes I found also used fish sauce, sugar, and basil, which I seriously considered doing, but I just went for the simple version this time and did coconut milk and salt.]

5. Simmer for a few minutes while juicing a lime.

6. Add lime juice, stir, and remove from heat.


We really liked this dish too! Using just a simple coconut milk, lime juice, and salt broth really allowed the flavors of the fish and the vegetables to stand out, and it just felt so light and summery, perfect for the current weather. Although we made some rice to go with it, I didn't think it needed the rice at all. It worked fine as a stew, and we had the lolo buns to dip into it if we wanted to soak up some of the liquid. My main issue with this dish had to do with the pieces of fish we got, as they were different shapes, one a nice thin fillet and the other, a thick, steak-like piece, but that has nothing to do with the delicious recipe. Would definitely make this one again too, and maybe even try it with some of the extra seasonings. I consider this adventure to Fiji a success, and I'm so glad we did it!

New London Memories

Five years ago today, we were off on a much-needed weekend trip. (We were supposed to write about this a long time ago, but even though so many of our memories have faded, better late than never.) It had been a long summer with zero visits to the beach, and we were just craving some sun and sand so it would really feel like summer. We went to New London, Connecticut, which was close to Mystic if we wanted to go to the seaport, close to the Rhode Island border if we decided we wanted to investigate their beaches instead, and someplace with reasonably affordable, last-minute hotel availability. (It was a very last-minute getaway.)

We started our first day by exploring the area of New London near our hotel and, of course, checking out some of the local food spots. Our research first led us to Kamp Dog, a spot walking distance from our hotel, known for their hot dogs (but which also served burgers and other treats), especially their namesake Kamp Dog with dynamite (a meat sauce), cheese, and raw onions. Considering it was the name of the place, we had to get that. Each hot dog was made by Hummel Bros, "Connecticut's #1 hot dog" according to the sign at the restaurant, and served on a toasty grilled bun. When it arrived, we saw that it was pretty much a chili cheese dog, but an excellent version of one. The hot dogs had a crisp snap to them, the sauce was meaty and tasty, and the cheese and onions just brought it all together. Great start to our trip.

Our next stop before beach time was a place called Fred's Shanty, "famous since 1972" according to their signs, for fried seafood. While we wanted a weekend getaway to get in some beach time, we have to admit that one of the reasons we went up to New England instead of the mid-Atlantic was fried clams. We hadn't had fried clams in a while, and we couldn't stop thinking about clam strips. Fred's Shanty had clam strips, whole belly clams, clam chowder, scallops, and more seafood, and was exactly what you would imagine from a New England seafood shack on the waterfront. We ordered a bunch of things for lunch (although it was only two hours after hot dogs, so we only had so much stomach space), and then grabbed some seating with a view of the marina, and it was just what we were looking for from our weekend getaway.

We shared the clam strip dinner, which came with sides of creamy cole slaw and fries, and also another side of onion rings. We were so happy with everything we got. Sitting outside in the sun, listening to the water and the rocking sailboats, feeling the breeze coming in off the water, eating clam strips and fries and onion rings, that was just such a classic summer meal for us, and we loved the whole experience.

With our bellies full of hot dogs, clams, and more, it was time to head to the beach for the rest of the afternoon!

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.