Week 8 - Flu Remedies

They just announced Week 8 of the 2023 challenge, so I better start getting these 2022 posts done...

Khichdi is one of those comforting dishes, kind of like congee, that are so soothing when you're sick. I am so slow at recapping that I made this almost a year ago now, and as a result, my memories, other than what I wrote in our cookbook, are a little hazy. One of my resolutions this year is to be better about these recaps and catching up, because otherwise I won't remember what I liked and how I made it! (Note: I wrote that in the beginning of January, and I have been better about this year's posts but just haven't put them up yet.\ because I'm not done with 2022!)

I found this recipe for dal khichdi on Indian Healthy Recipes, and liked that it was a quick Instant Pot recipe. The ingredient list was long, including rice, moong dal, lots of spices and seasonings, and vegetables (tomato, green beans, potatoes, and spinach for us). We had most things in the pantry already, just not the moong dal and the asafoetida (I had recently gotten rid of our old one, since we bought it in London back in 2015), so it was also a convenient meal to make.

Gathering the ingredients and measuring things was probably the hardest part of this recipe, and even that wasn't very difficult. For prep, the rice and dal soaked for a little bit, the only thing I had to chop was an onion since I used a bunch of cans, and then it was just measuring things out. Ingredients got added to the Instant Pot a little at a time while sautéing, and then once the water went in, that was it. Set the Instant Pot to go, let it cook on high pressure for about 8 minutes, release, and done. I love easy meals like that.

The khichdi was really warming, comforting, and tasty. It was also great timing for this challenge, as I was actually sick when I made this. Seemed to help!

The Last Third

Time for a group challenge post for the last third of the year! Skipping weeks 40, 41, 45, 47, and 51 because they're also for the AtWCC and week 49 because I already wrote most of that one separately. Not sure if I'm going to get all these posts done before the end of the year, but I'm going to try my best!

Week 36: smashed

My immediate thought when hearing "smashed" was smashed potatoes, probably because A makes them so often (and so well). With A's help, I put together loaded smashed potatoes (based on a recipe from Budget Bytes) topped with cheddar cheese, (vegan) sour cream, bacon bits, and red onions. We don't usually top them with more than garlic and herbs (and they are delicious that way), but it was nice to try something different, especially that tasty melted cheese.

Week 37: honey

I stumbled upon a honey butter biscuit copycat recipe on Let's Dish when doing research for this challenge, and they sounded like a good thing to try since I'd never been to the Texas-based Church's Chicken chain before (and A had never had the biscuits). They apparently sell millions of biscuits a year and have even trademarked the term "Honey-Butter Biscuit" (not sure how since that sounds like a generic description to me, but I'm not a trademark professional). The biscuits were good, although I think I might have cooked them too long since the honey butter browned a bit too much on the bottom, and I personally prefer my drop biscuits not so sticky. Maybe we'll give these another try for the Texas part of the AtWCC.

Week 38: cultured

They announced the week 38 theme far in advance for people who wanted to do things like culture their own yogurt, but that was still far beyond my comfort level for safety reasons, so I figured I would just stick to using a cultured product like yogurt. I went with Molly Yeh's yogurt-marinated chicken skewers which were flavored with ras el hanout and harissa, and skewered with peppers and onions. These came out good, but probably not something I would make regularly at this point considering the marinating time and how long it takes me to skewer things.

Week 39: soaking

I like having overnight oats for breakfast, but they've become a bit of a running joke in our household because I'm always talking about them and rarely making them because I forget to set them up at night. This challenge was the perfect motivation to actually make them, and this bowl was overnight oats with almond butter, oat milk, chia seeds, flaxseeds, cinnamon, maple syrup, and topped with blueberries and blackberries. I really do need to make them more.

Week 43: punny names

"Punny names" is the type of concept challenge that I'm not good at picking recipes for. I spent a long time googling punny foods, punny recipes, and all variations of that, but found very few things that interested me. Eventually, I got attached to the idea of doing pizza for "pizza my heart," but at the end decided on "little pizza my heart," which made more sense because I was making little flatbread pizzas. The pizzas were topped with artichoke pesto sauce, mozzarella, provolone, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses, and a pancetta and mushroom heart. I was actually really happy with the combination flavor-wise, and the hearts, while more difficult to make than I thought they would be, kept their shape thankfully.

Week 44: Greek

The country weeks are usually a no-brainer for doubling up with the AtWCC, but I wasn't in the mood for trying regular spanakopita when this challenge rolled around. I don't know why, but I was really fixated on making it into a Christmas tree. (Note: It was not Christmas or December, not even Halloween yet.) I followed the recipe on Dimitra's Dishes for the spanakopita Christmas tree, and with a little help from A for making the tree "branches," it turned out pretty well. Probably more time-consuming than making regular spanakopita, which I'll likely do next time instead, as fun as this was.

Week 48: leaves

There are lots of things you can do with leaves, but I naturally gravitated toward salad. Now, if I had been doing these in order, you would have known that I made at least three other chicken-based salads in the second half of the year. I can't explain why, but my brain just really wanted salads like this, so I just went with it. This one was very loosely based on a Food52 recipe for a farmhouse chicken salad, and the leaves I ended up using were arugula, parsley, tarragon, chives, and thyme. I also made some tarragon radishes on the side. Good salad, but a ton of work with all those fresh herbs, so this is probably a one-time thing if made exactly like this.

Week 50: rosemary

Last one for this batch! I thought I might end up using this for the AtWCC too, but it was not meant to be. I chose rosemary aloo paratha based on another Food52 recipe, since I'd always wanted to try making paratha and rosemary and potatoes were such a good combination. (I didn't want to make more smashed potatoes since I had just done that for a challenge recently.) Unfortunately, there was something wrong with one of our potatoes and it just would not get soft enough for mashing despite being fork tender when boiled. I should have just used instant mashed potatoes but I was trying to do it the "right" way. That meant that the chunks of potatoes that wouldn't mash broke through the dough, and the whole thing was a mess. I'll try paratha again for the AtWCC, and hopefully it'll come out better next time.

Week 51 - South Indian

I was thrilled when I saw that the Week 51 theme was South Indian, because as a family, we love South Indian cuisine. I was also a little intimidated though, because some of those recipes are a lot of work! Making dosas can take hours sometimes. In the end, I decided on rava dosa (adapted from a recipe on Indian Healthy Recipes) with some aloo masala from the same site. Did I pick rava dosa because it looked doable and wasn't an hours-long process? Maybe...

The first step was making the batter out of semolina, rice flour, all-purpose flour, salt, cumin seeds, black pepper, finely chopped onion, finely chopped curry leaves, finely chopped cilantro leaves, and ginger, with enough water to make it runny. The batter only needed to rest for 20 minutes before cooking, which was great. I had never bought fresh curry leaves before, but I made a special trip for them so I could make this (and some other Indian dishes), and I think I'm going to need them whenever I make South Indian food in the future. There really is just no comparable ingredient (that I know of).

The recipe instructions said to start with a hot pan, and to add just a few drops of oil and grease it with a sliced onion. I feel like I've seen them do something similar at restaurants, but had never tried it at home. Wow, that was a revelation. I used so little oil to make each one of these dosa, but they came off the pan so easily thanks to this onion trick!

The batter gets poured into the pan starting from the edges and then filling in the gaps. That reminded me of banh xeo, and it hadn't occurred to me before making this that they are both thin, crispy pancakes, so why wouldn't they be made similarly? The dosa toasts on low until the edges come off the pan and it's cooked through. I did flip them to finish cooking them, but might not be necessary. The one thing I didn't plan on was that each dosa takes a long time to cook (again, I wish I had thought of the banh xeo connection earlier, because it's the same thing there), like maybe even 10 minutes type of long. For multiple dosa, I hadn't budgeted in that type of time, and it made for a very late, kind of stressful dinner rush. The dosa were excellent though, and I would make them again. I would just budget more time than I did for them.

I followed the aloo masala recipe fairly closely, other than leaving out the chilies because of little B, and they were delicious. Not sure what more to say here about well-seasoned mashed potatoes, but I would make this again too.

With all the work going into the dosa and the potatoes, I didn't make any of the other sides that you normally get with dosa at restaurants, but I just didn't have the capacity to. Maybe next time, I'll buy some pre-made chutneys at the store when I get the curry leaves for a more full experience, but we were still really satisfied with this!

Fiery Chicken Curry

I'm generally a big fan of the Indian food at Trader Joe's, as that's the section where you can often find some of the more interesting, flavorful, and balanced single-serving frozen meals. Recently, I spotted something new to me that seems to have debuted over the summer - a Goan-inspired fiery chicken curry with a side of turmeric rice ($3.49).

On the chicken side of the meal, you have a few pieces of chicken breast with a sauce made with onions, coconut milk, tomatoes, vinegar, garlic, ghee, tamarind, green chilies, and some other spices and seasonings, and on the rice side, basmati rice with turmeric and spices. I was expecting a mild heat even though it said fiery, but I was wrong. There was quite a decent amount of heat, but unfortunately I found that the heat masked the flavors of the spices and seasonings in the curry. Most of the flavor I got was just acidic tomatoes and heat, so much so that I preemptively took an antacid immediately after eating. With that overpowering heat, whatever seasonings there were in the rice were also impossible to taste, and the whole dish was pretty much "fiery" without any corresponding bump-up in flavor. Just hot for the sake of hot, in my opinion.

Buy again? No. There are so many good Indian dishes in the freezer case (thinking about the lovely korma fish curry, for one) that I don't feel the need to get this again. I love Indian spices, and I'd rather forgo the heat and taste those in a milder dish.

Korma Fish Curry

I regularly read the Trader Joe's threads on Chowhound, and recently I saw a lot of people recommending the frozen fish curry. It costs a little more than some of the other frozen lunch options since it's fish, but it made for a nice end of year "treat" lunch.

Product name: Korma fish curry with basmati rice

Price: $3.49

Quick review: This was exactly as advertised, fish in curry sauce with rice, which meant that one of the big drawbacks for me was that it was a lunch without vegetables. But the dish itself was good - swai fillet in a curry made with onions, coconut milk, tomato puree, cashews, spices, tamarind, cilantro, garlic, turmeric, sesame seeds, coconut poppy seeds, fenugreek leaves, onion seeds, and bay leaves, with a side of basmati rice that was speckled with mustard seeds (and apparently curry leaves according to the ingredients but I didn't notice those). The flavor of the curry was excellent, the fish wasn't tough or dry, and it all worked well together. If there were some vegetables with it, then it would have been better, but they didn't misrepresent that on the box. It was 380 calories but felt more filling than the salad I ate the other day which had more.

Buy again? Yes. Probably not every visit, but once in a while as a treat.

Uttapam Hopes

I was going through some of the old drafts in the archives and stumbled upon this one for Trader Joe's uttapam with coconut chutney, when it occurred to me that I hadn't seen that on the shelves recently. Usually I'm at Trader Joe's at one of two times: (a) when it's really busy and I'm rushing through the aisles snapping up stuff on my list as fast as I can while trying not to get smacked with carts in every direction, or (b) late at night when a lot of stuff is out of stock. So usually I assume if I don't see something, it's probably sold out or I just missed it in my haste. But once that happens for a few months, I start to worry. Unfortunately my worries were justified when it came to the onion rings (I still check their "spot" every visit) and the spinach and kale pie (I am SO SAD that the guy confirmed on our last visit that it was discontinued; it was seriously the best "too busy to cook" dinner and I bought it all the time), and after reading a couple of tweets just now, I'm concerned that the same fate has befallen the poor uttapam.

I used to pick this up fairly frequently for lunch. It was only about $2.50, and in each little green box, there was a plastic bag with 4 uttapam inside and also 2 pouches of coconut chutney. I could usually make that last for 2 lunches (or if A and I ate it together for lunch, one box worked for both of us). It wasn't super filling, but it was a satisfying amount of food.

The uttapam was basically like a mini Indian pizza or pancake with dough made from rice and lentils, and it was topped with lots of onions, cilantro, and green peppers. I love onions and cilantro, so it was like this was made for me to eat for lunch. On top of the great flavors, it was super easy to just pop it in the microwave to heat up. The coconut chutney, which you would heat up by just letting it sit in hot water while the uttapam cooked, was so full of coconut, chiles, and spices. The whole thing was just packed with flavor, definitely not for people who prefer more bland food. It was so good.

I hadn't picked up the uttapam for at least a few months, mostly because I had been buying it a lot for lunch and wanted to take a little break and eat different things. When I started looking for it again, I didn't see it, but I never had it specifically on my list so I don't really know how long it's been gone. Sitting here now thinking about this, I'm concerned about some of our other favorites. We've already lost things like the nasi goreng and biryani that were our staple dinners 10 years ago, and countless other favorites have gone missing over the years. (I've been tormenting myself by reading all the Trader Joe's "discontinued" tweets while writing this post, and was just reminded of the jalapeño cheese crunchies and informed about the charmingly chewy chocolate chip cookies. Sigh.) How many boxes of something do I have to buy to stop something from getting discontinued?!

I'm hoping that maybe it's just a temporary supplier issue or maybe someone got the wrong info from whoever it was at their Trader Joe's and the uttapam aren't really gone, but I know that's unlikely. (But if it's like the soy chorizo, it can always come back!) If anyone knows for sure if the uttapam are gone, please tell me. I'll be sad, but at least it'll be closure.

Week 52 - Cookies

The last cooking challenge for 2015 was all about cookies. Most people doing the challenge did some sort of sweet cookie, but I really wanted to do a savory cookie because I wanted to make cookies for dinner. I found an option for a ham and gruyere thumbprint but that was a lot of work, so when I found this recipe for savory masala cookies, I decided to do that. Unfortunately, getting this challenge completed really wasn't as simple as it should have been.

First, I planned to make the cookies along with the Indian chickpea salad. I scheduled it for the Tuesday before Christmas, but then we had to change the day/time of our haircuts to Tuesday night, so no cooking on Tuesday night. So I decided that even though it would be a ton of food, I'd just make it an Indian night on Monday instead, and make the dal (I would have pushed the dal off to another day, but it had already been soaking overnight) along with the chickpea salad and the cookies, and have lots of leftovers for lunch for the week. But when I went to take out the ingredients for the cookies, I realized we didn't have any flour, or at least not enough for the cookies. Who plans to make cookies and then forgets they're almost out of flour?

We bought the flour over Christmas weekend (after having to go to 2 stores to find some), so I planned to make the cookies the day we returned. The only problem was that I didn't have any cilantro. The last time the cookies were on the schedule, there were other recipes with cilantro that week, so I had plenty of cilantro on hand. This time, no cilantro, and of course I didn't realize that until dinnertime when I was about to make the cookies. You would think I would have learned from the flour incident. Since we had already bought ingredients for every other meal this week, now the cookies were just going to be an add-on and not dinner. At this point, I might as well have just made sweet dessert cookies - except I had already bought the onions and jalapeños for these cookies. What a mess. If I didn't actually like the cookies as much as I did, I would call this the PITA cookie challenge.

The ingredients for the cookies (mostly following the recipe) were:

- 2 cups flour ($0.22)
- 1 tsp baking powder ($0.10)
- 2 tsp sugar ($0.05)
- 1 tsp cumin ($0.05)
- 1 tsp salt ($0.05)
- 2 onions, finely chopped ($0.70)
- 2 jalapeños, finely chopped ($0.26)
- 1 bunch of cilantro, leaves finely chopped ($1)
- 1/3 cup coconut oil ($0.65)
- 4 tbsp butter, melted ($0.37)
- 1/4 cup water ($0)

The total cost of the cookies was approximately $3.45. That would have been a pretty cheap, under $10 dinner if I had combined that with the chickpea salad like I originally planned.

The steps for making the cookies were:

1. Prep vegetables - finely chop onions, jalapeños, and cilantro leaves.

2. Mix dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, sugar, cumin, and salt. (NB: The original recipe said dry ingredients, but had listed the cumin and salt in a separate section under spice blend instead of with the other dry ingredients, so I missed them until I was ready to put the cookies into the oven (will address that later). If I make these again, and I might, then I would put the cumin and salt into the mixture at this point, so that's why I'm listing them here now even though it's not what I did.)

3. Add onions, peppers, and cilantro to the dry ingredients, and mix well.

4. Add the coconut oil and melted butter and stir well. (It was all very crumbly and dry at this point, but I think it's supposed to be.)

5. Add water to create the dough. Cover for about 30 minutes. (Mixing the dough with the water at this point almost felt like mixing mashed potatoes. It certainly looked like mashed potatoes.)

6. Uncover dough and roll out cookies. (The dough at this point had the consistency of stringy white cheese.) The first section of dough that I picked up, I rolled it out and then picked up sections to create cookies. Considering I wasn't using a cookie cutter and was just putting them together in clumps anyway, I just decided to make cookies with my hands after that. They weren't all the same size, but that was okay with me.

7. Put cookies on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. (It was at this point that I started wondering where the flavoring of the cookies would come from. The onions? Cilantro? Maybe, but I realized the cookies didn't even have any salt. Then I realized I hadn't made the spice blend and didn't remember it being in the recipe. So before I put the cookies in the oven, I mixed up some cumin and salt and sprinkled it on top of all the cookies.)

8. Bake for about 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

I wasn't sure if these cookies would be any good when they came out of the oven, but when I tried them, I really liked them. It probably helps that onions and cilantro are 2 of my favorite ingredients, and I love cumin. The cookies were really soft, not like most cookies we bake (well, A does most of the baking, but it's not like eating one of his chocolate chip cookies). They kind of reminded me of eating a baked mashed potato cookie with onions and herbs in it. I would try this again - but for dinner.

Indian Chickpea Salad

The second time we made the chana dal recipe, I made a chickpea salad to go along with it. I may have mentioned on the blog that I love chickpea salads, so I was excited to try one with an Indian twist to it. I mostly followed a recipe for Indian-spiced chickpea salad with yogurt and herbs by Chef Jerry Traunfeld that I found on Food & Wine, making just a few adjustments.

The ingredients I used were (amounts from original recipe here, but I mostly eyeballed it):

- 2 cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed ($1.56)

- 2 spoonfuls of coconut oil ($0.20)

- 1 tsp brown mustard seeds ($0.20) *

- 3/4 tsp cumin seeds ($0.05) *

- 3/4 tsp fennel seeds ($0.20) *

- 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes ($0.05) *

- 3/4 cup whole milk yogurt ($1.50)

- 1 tbsp lemon juice ($0.15)

- 6 scallions, finely chopped ($0.43)

- handful of chopped cilantro ($0.40)

- handful of chopped mint ($0.90)

- salt to taste ($0.05)

With estimations for the approximate amount of the spices, the dish was approximately $5.69. We ate it with the dal and a little bit of rice for a tasty, affordable dinner. Compared to the original recipe, I swapped out peanut oil for coconut oil (since we don't own peanut oil) and used a lot more scallions (since ours were nearing the end of their life and I wanted to use them up). Otherwise, I mostly kept to the original other than not measuring amounts. In the future, I would use more of the starred spices (see last paragraph of this post), so the price would be slightly more, but not dramatically so.

The most time-intensive part of the salad was the washing and chopping, which I expected, and the fact that I was trying to do all that while working on the dal at the same time. Anyway, the basic steps were:

1. Drain, rinse, and dry chickpeas.

2. Make spice oil in small skillet. Heat coconut oil. Add mustard seeds. Cover skillet with a splatter guard and heat mustard seeds until they stop popping. Add cumin seeds, fennel seeds, and red pepper flakes. Cook until fragrant (but not more than 30 seconds). Remove from heat and pour on top of chickpeas.

(As a side note, after making this, I'm starting to wonder if I was always "under-toasting" mustard seeds. I remember before the first time I cooked with mustard seeds, I had read something which warned about mustard seeds tasting really unpleasant if you heated them for too long. I don't recall them popping as much as they did this time the other times I made them. Now I know!)

3. Add cilantro, scallions, mint, yogurt, lemon juice to the chickpeas. Add salt to taste. Mix together well and eat.

(That's the order you're supposed to do them in. Did I mention we have a small kitchen and not much counter space? In order to get everything chopped, I ended up adding the scallions and cilantro before the hot oil, and then just tried to pour the hot oil directly on the section of the bowl that only held chickpeas. Seemed fine.)

This salad was really good. It was light and fresh because of all the scallions and herbs and yogurt, and the flavors of the spices were a nice change from the chickpea salads we usually make. The only change I think I would make in the future is to use more of the spices, probably double the amount. It was good as it was, but we think that would make it even better. We would definitely make this again.

Week 33 - Indian

Finally... The last overdue post before I'm finally up to date on 2015 cooking challenge recaps! Just in time for the final week...

It was tough choosing what to make for the Indian cooking challenge. The most logical thing to do was to make something with this giant bag of chana dal that I had bought a long time ago from the Indian grocery store. I love dal and for some reason thought that a supersized bag of dal, when I had never cooked it before, was a wise purchase. It sat in the pantry for months and months and months until I finally cracked it open for the challenge (and luckily it was still fresh).

I decided to make a multi-part Indian meal for the cooking challenge dinner (although the naan part of that was going to be store-bought, because I just really didn't have time for that). For the dal, I adapted this recipe I found for easy chana dal, and on the side, chose to make a salad based on this recipe for kachumber salad. Unfortunately I made all this about 4 months ago so it was pretty hard to write a post about what I did. So that this post wasn't completely unhelpful and just full of "I don't remember how I did XYZ," I decided to make the dal again now and then do the write-up while it was fresh in my mind.

The first step for the chana dal was to prepare the dal itself, which needed to soak overnight. I doubled the original recipe and used 1 cup of dal instead. As it soaked, I just kept hoping that the dal wasn't so old that it would screw up the recipe. (I haven't always had the best of luck starting with dried ingredients that needed to be soaked.) When it was time to make dinner the next day, I started out by draining and rinsing the dal, and then adding it to a saucepan with a little over 4 cups of water, and cooking it covered for about 30 minutes over medium heat.

The first time I made this, while the dal was cooking, I worked on the tomato mixture, using the following ingredients (although beware, the spice amounts were estimated by sight):

- 2 tomatoes, finely chopped [or 1 can of diced tomatoes, which is what I used the second time]
- 1/2 head of garlic, minced
- about 1 inch of ginger, minced
- a couple tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp cayenne
- pinch of salt

When I made it the second time, I didn't bother putting together the tomato mixture, but just prepped the ingredients and added them in one by one to the pot of dal after the 30 minute cooking mark.

The instructions in the original recipe noted that all of this should be blended until smooth. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I absolutely hate breaking out the food processor or the blender unless absolutely necessary. (Maybe we should invest in an immersion blender...) Our kitchen is tiny, we have very minimal counter space (barely enough room for a cutting board on the prep side), and dishes pile up very quickly. If I don't have to lug out an appliance, I'm not going to. Would this have been better blended? Maybe. Instead I just chose to chop everything finely, mix it all together well, and then let it cook. If our dal had more "texture," then so be it. I could live with that just fine. Since it worked well the first time, I didn't even bother mixing it the second time. It would all mix with the dal anyway when stirred. Why make more work for myself and waste another bowl?

Once the tomato mixture was done, it got added to the dal, and then I let it cook some more. I don't remember exactly how long. The recipe said 15 minutes, but I'm thinking it was longer than that, because I thought the dal wasn't as soft as I wanted it to be. Basically you're supposed to cook it (covered) until the dal is tender enough to be mashed up a little bit (and then mash up some of it), and then simmer it until it's the consistency you want it to be. I don't know how long that took exactly.

If I were smarter, I would have watched the clock the second time I did this to see how long I let it cook, but I didn't. I just know I cooked it on medium low to low heat for a while since I was prepping herbs for a salad and also cilantro for the dal. I'd like to say 30 minutes, but it might have been longer than that. At one point, I added about 1/2 cup of hot water since most of the water had evaporated/been soaked up already, and I wanted it to be softer. I forgot to mash it up, but it didn't need it anyway. The more I cook, the more I realize that I cook based on texture and taste (and sound and smell) instead of measuring and timing things precisely. Even though that's not helpful for the blog, I think that's probably a good thing for developing my cooking skills.

While the dal was simmering, the last thing to do was to work on the "tempering." This was a new concept to me. I did this completely differently each time I made this, primarily because the first time I made this I didn't have asafoetida. We bought some in London and I couldn't wait to break it open and try it since it is supposed to make such a difference. I had always heard that asafoetida smelled horrible but tasted good. I didn't think it was that bad when we opened the container. It's not fragrant like sage or rosemary, but it wasn't that awful.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure (but not 100% sure) that the first time I did this, I followed the oil-free option in the recipe since I didn't have asafoetida. I just dry roasted the cumin seeds until they were fragrant and then added them to the dal. This time, I heated up a small spoonful of coconut oil, added about a tsp of cumin seeds, cooked them until they changed color, and then added a pinch of asafoetida and let it cook in the oil for a little bit. Then I added the entire thing to the dal while splashing some of the oil on my shirt (don't do that).

For the tempering, in addition to the cumin seeds/asafoetida, you add about 1 tsp of garam masala and 1/2 tsp of cayenne to the dal as it's simmering. Since I didn't have asafoetida the first time, I added garlic powder and onion powder at this point. Not the same thing, but the best I could do at the time. Once it all mixes together well, you turn off the heat and stir in about 1/2 cup of cilantro (or as I did the second time I made it, a couple of handfuls of chopped cilantro).

The first time I made this, I think (if I remember correctly) that we thought it lacked flavor, so I kept adding more spices to it, maybe during the process of cooking before tempering and then maybe more after. I don't really remember. But the second time I made it, I didn't have to change anything from what I wrote above and it seemed to have so much more flavor. Is that really all because of the asafoetida and doing the tempering with the coconut oil instead of dry? I didn't have to do any seasoning to taste after it cooked for a little bit to meld the flavors. I'm an asafoetida newbie, so maybe someone can tell me if this stuff really has that much awesomeness or if I just cooked this better this time.

I also made the kachumber salad while the dal was simmering (the first time only; the second time I made a chickpea salad - post coming soon). The ingredients I used, adapted from the original recipe, were (to the best of my 4 month old memory):

- 1 onion
- 2 tomatoes
- 1 hothouse cucumber
- 1/2 bunch of mint leaves
- 1/2 bunch of cilantro
- a couple tsp of lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp cumin powder
- 1/4 tsp cayenne

Since this was a salad, the only real steps were to prep and then mix. For prep, I chopped the onion, tomatoes, cucumber, mint leaves, and cilantro leaves, and then I mixed them all in a large bowl with the lemon juice, cumin powder, and cayenne. After that, all that was left was just tasting and adjusting the seasoning (which I don't remember if I had to do any).

It was a very simple salad but I wanted something fresh and clean to go alongside the dal. This definitely fit the bill, and I found myself snacking on it until dinner was ready.

The last part of dinner the first time was this paneer masala naan from the frozen section at Trader Joe's. This wasn't the first time we had gotten the frozen naan from TJ's, but it was the first time we ever tried this version. I don't remember if the paneer masala was new or just new to us, but we were excited to try it.

This naan was "stuffed" with paneer cheese, but that wasn't really that obvious when eating it. It just seemed like regular naan but a little bit chewier due to the paneer filling. The texture was pretty nice that way. The naan also seemed to have some onion and garlic flavors, if I'm remembering it correctly. We did like it, but didn't find it as different as we had expected from the other naan types we've had before. At least I remembered to make the naan for this meal unlike the garlic naan I bought and forgot about (until days later!) for a different challenge meal. To make up for that time, I made the garlic naan with the dal the second time. It was good, but not as garlicky as I thought it would be.

Overall, it was a really good and very complete dinner. We put the dal over basmati rice (brown rice the second time) and served it with sides of salad and naan. We don't remember as much about the flavor of the dal the first time, but the second time, it was quite good. The spices were vibrant, there was a mild zing to it from the cayenne, and it was hearty and comforting. It would be a relatively easy dish to make again as long as we had ginger, garlic, and cilantro on hand. I didn't price this out because we made it so long ago the first time, but by my estimation, it would be pretty affordable. Maybe dal will become part of our regular rotation. We certainly have a big enough bag of it.

Week 42 - Whole Spices

I made this ages ago. Not sure why it took me this long to finish writing the post...

When the Week 42 theme came up as whole spices, I immediately knew I wanted to make Indian food. Many of the dishes I've made before with whole spices have been Indian, so that seemed like an easy choice. After searching through the thousands of recipes I saved on my laptop, I found one for chicken jalfrezi that sounded good and decided to adapt that for dinner. (I originally got the recipe from ivillage.com last year, but that link seems to be dead now, so here's a link from a different site.)

The chicken jalfrezi recipe called for mustard seeds, which I already had on hand. I also added in some cumin seeds. The recipe listed ground cumin, so I did use some of that, but I figured some cumin seeds for extra cumin flavor couldn't hurt.

The ingredients I used for the chicken (adapted from the original recipe) were:

- 1 large spoonful of coconut oil

- 2 tbsp garam masala

- 1 tbsp ground cumin

- 1 tsp cumin seeds

- 2 tsp mustard seeds

- 2 tsp ground turmeric

- 1 onion, sliced

- 4 garlic cloves, minced

- 1 inch ginger, minced

- 1 red bell pepper, sliced

- 1 green bell pepper, sliced

- 1 jalapeño pepper, chopped

- 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into small pieces

- 1 can of diced tomatoes

- 1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped

I'm not going to price this one out since it would be a bit hard to calculate the exact cost of the spices so many weeks later, but by our estimates, it was a pretty decent price for dinner for 2.

The steps for making the chicken jalfrezi were:

1. Prep all the ingredients. There was a lot of chopping and slicing to do, and based on the original recipe, it seemed like it would go fairly quickly, so similar to the way I do Chinese stir-fries, I did most of the prep in advance before starting to cook.

2. Heat coconut oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add garam masala, cumin seeds, cumin, mustard seeds, and turmeric. Stir until fragrant (about a minute or so).

3. Add onions, ginger, and garlic. Stir for a few minutes until onion softens. 

4. Add the red peppers, green peppers, and chiles. Cook until the peppers soften. (The recipe said to do this for 5 minutes, but I think I must have had more peppers than the original recipe, so I cooked it for longer than that.)

5. Add chicken and cook until it starts to brown. Then add the tomatoes and cilantro, turn the heat down to low, and simmer until everything is cooked through.

At some point in the process, I also did some tasting to see how it was, and added more of all of the spices. Considering all the spices that were in it, it had been tasting kind of bland, and like it was missing something. It looked nothing like its picture with a thick yellowish sauce that looked like it was full of spice. I'm not sure why mine just looked like Christmas.

Overall, we thought this dish was okay. It tasted fine, and it tasted healthy, and you could taste the spices, but it just wasn't as good as I thought it would be from the pictures and the recipe comments (which I can no longer see). I don't know that I need to make this again, but it was good for the challenge night's dinner.