My wife and I took an Indian cooking class last year in Cambridge MA - I made a vegetarian chickpea dish, and while I don’t have any photos, this is the best thing that I consistently make, and it’s super easy:
3 T oil - I use Coconut
2 medium onions, dicde
2 T julienned ginger
1 T minced garlic
1.5 t tumeric
0.5 t ground pepper
1.5 t ground coriander
0.25 t ground cardamom or 1 black cardamom pod (I used the pods)
0.5 t amchur powder - this is dried mango powder, I ordered from Amazon
1 cup crushed tomatoes
1 cup water
30 oz can of chickpeas, drained
0.5 t salt
minced cilantro
Heat oil in a medium saucepan. Add the onions and cook over medium low heat until tender and gold. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the tumeric, pepper, coriander, cardamom and amchur powder and cook for 1 minute or until fragrant. Add the tomatoes, salt, water and chickpeas and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes. Stir in the minced cilantro and serve.
Another thing that doesn’t look great but it’s the best thing I personally know how to make. I usually add more ginger. Photo from while it’s cooking.
Wow really interesting idea there. Reminds me of something - - One of my favorite Persian dishes is fesenjan, which is a stew/sauce of pomegranate and walnut usually with chicken in it. Pomegranate syrup has a similar profile to rhubarb - - sour and astringent.
So try this imo - - grind walnuts (not too small, bigger than grits, more like grape nuts) , cook down with rhubarb and sugar (maybe equal volume whole walnuts and raw rhubarb idk) , maybe need some water too idk. Sautee chicken pieces with onion and salt & pepper, throw it all in the walnut/rhubarb thing, serve over rice.
I tried to make ricotta gnocchi for the first time for lunch today. Since I decided to skip the ‘drain the ricotta through a cloth overnight’ step, I a now the proud owner of 12 ricotta pancakes.
Many straightforward recipes depend on good equipment. I think good cooking is broadly accessible, but not everyone can afford a good cast iron pan and gas stove, etc.
I agree with your sentiment, but a 12 inch cast iron pan is like under $50, and the cheap models perform pretty much indistinguishably from more expensive ones. Good stainless steel pans, among other equipment, can be expensive, though.
Sort of i guess. Really great gas hobs arent cheap but cast iron skillets aren’t much and I’ve been getting by with electric for a couple years now. Technique is by far the most important thing imo. If you know well how to do a few things and understand seasoning and how stuff cooks you can get 95% of the way there with just about anything and your intuition imo. Oh, good ingredients, though.
I had some relatives from Aleppo and they used a ton of pomegranate syrup in their dishes. My favorite was a dish called Kabab Karaz (they pronounced it Garaz).
[never tried this recipe, it’s just for reference]
Quick dinner tonight. Meatballs in an Indonesian (inspired?) peanut sauce, very spiced Rice and a simple salad. Decent IPA (Stones).
First time I made this peanut sauce. Fairly simple recipe. Fried fresh garlic and chili in some oil, added a can of coconut milk. Brought to a simmer. Added 3 spoons of unsalted/unsweetened peanut butter. Some soy sauce, fish sauce, ginger, lemon juice and a bit of brown sugar. Mixed for a while till it thickens.
It was good but lacked a kick. Probably need more chili, ginger and acid.
Plating sucks but I was eating with a 3 year old, so any plate is a success.
As much as I love Chinese food, their approach to butchery can get bent, imo.
Me: That’s a beautiful looking roast bird you got there. You going to carve the meat off and serve it to your customers?
Chinese chef: No.
Me: Oh, so you’re going to separate out the various pieces at the joints so that your customers can gnaw or slice the meat off as they wish?
Chinese chef: Also no! I’m going to slice THROUGH all the bones, chopping the whole thing into bite size pieces full of sharp bone shards and little rib needles that my customers will have to pick out of their mouths.
Me: …
Chinese roast duck is delicious enough to be worth it, but man, carving a whole breast off the rib cage is not hard! It’s just one extra step.
That’s not bent, it’s just a different culture not being anally retentive about slurping noises. The same goes for how Chinese people eat noodles. It’s Western culture that’s bent.
