cooking

Black bean millet patties

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Last year, a few times, I made some black bean millet sweet potato burgers. I do not have the patience for this (mostly the sweet potato part since you need to fully bake the sweet potato first), especially when just cooking for myself, so today I attempted something similar – Sunday dinner. Not pretty but relatively tasty. It’s missing something I cannot pinpoint but is still quite edible.

1 cup cooked millet
1.5 cups drained and rinsed black beans
1 small red onion, shredded
1 small red onion, chopped
2 cloves crushed garlic
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
pepper, to taste

Cook the millet, or use leftover millet. Slightly mash the black beans. Mix the spices together in a separate bowl. Mix everything together, mashing slightly. Form patties and cook on a medium-high griddle or pan in olive oil or another preferred oil.

Naturally you can experiment with the spices and with a topping (tomato salsa? guacamole? mango salsa?). I just used a blob of slightly spicy mustard to dip it in.

It’s vegan and it’s easy.

One-pot spaghetti wonder

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I suppose I am like a lot of people who know they must eat but don’t want to spend a lot of time cooking. I’ve been pretty obsessed lately with wanting spaghetti squash, which I have never seen to buy in Sweden and have not had the foresight, motivation or green thumb to grow for myself. Instead, I will for now stick with regular old spaghetti. Pasta is not my favorite thing, but sometimes it’s a quick fix.

And it’s an even quicker fix when you can whip up the pasta and the sauce all at once in one pot. In 15 minutes, you’re in the money.

You can experiment with what works for you, but here’s my attack plan:

Chop two onions, saute in a generous amount of olive oil. Let them caramelize before throwing in two cloves of sliced garlic and two cloves of crushed garlic. Let this saute for two minutes while stirring, throw in two chopped tomatoes or half a can of crushed tomatoes (whatever you have). Throw in a good amount of salt and pepper, rip up some fresh basil leaves and throw them in. Throw in some spaghetti (uncooked) and then add boiling water and let the whole thing simmer for about ten minutes. Obviously you will need to work out the ratio over water to pasta depending on how much you cook, but it turns out pretty well – is easy, quick and not too bland. You can add more herbs, spices or some parmesan, but I am trying to stay on the vegan side of things in my own cooking/consumption.

 

Homemade paneer – experimental dinner

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Ready to eat

Ready to eat

When I hosted a guest at my place recently, I made my own paneer hoping to make this experimental pseudo-Indian dish. I always overestimate how much food I will need when people visit. I plan for breakfasts, lunches and dinners but prepare such elaborate breakfasts (a nice way of saying that I overdo it in a big way usually – even though I get better all the time), no one wants lunch.

Finally I got around to making this potato-paneer filling for red peppers, cooked in a tomato-curry sauce, accompanied by basmati rice and fried onions. Oh, how I love onion rice.

How did I do this? Well, I started a few days ago by making paneer. How do you make paneer? It’s pretty easy.

You need:
1 liter milk
1/8 cup lemon juice
Cheesecloth for straining

Put the liter of milk in a heavy saucepan, stirring every couple of minutes while you wait for the milk to come to a boil. Once it reaches boiling point, remove from heat and add the lemon juice in slowly until the milk completely curdles.

Line a strainer with the cheesecloth and drain the milk-lemon mixture. The liquid will drain away and you will be left with the thick curdled milk. Twist the cloth tightly and squeeze repeatedly from different angles to ensure that the liquid completely drains.

Turn the cloth over and place about one kilo of weight on top of it and leave for several hours to really make sure the liquid drains. This will create a solid paneer block, which you can use immediately or refrigerate for a few days – be sure to cover with water in a container if you are keeping it to ensure it does not dry out.

Now you can cut it into cubes, as many recipes call for, or use it the way I used it in my potato-paneer experiment.

potato paneer spice filling mixture

potato paneer spice filling mixture

Boil four small, peeled potatoes until soft. Mash them together with one cup of crumbled paneer. Mash in the following mixture of spices:

¼ teaspoon red chili powder
½ teaspoon cumin powder
¼ teaspoon garam masala
1 tablespoon of chopped cilantro
salt and pepper, to taste

Mash all of this together and then hollow out a couple of red peppers, discarding the insides and seeds and slice rings you can fill with the potato-paneer filling.

Pepper rings, ready to fill

Pepper rings, ready to fill

Filled pepper rings, ready to grill

Filled pepper rings, ready to grill

Set aside the filled pepper rings while you prepare the easy curry sauce and sauté the onions for the rice. (Prepare the rice at the same time in a separate pot.)

Nothing like onions the spice up rice

Nothing like onions the spice up rice

For the curry sauce… there is no exact recipe here, and you can adjust spices and heat levels to your own taste buds. I erred on the side of too spicy this time, but it was still quite tasty.

Sauce:
2 tablespoons oil
1.5 chopped onions
1 tablespoon garlic-ginger paste
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1/8 teaspoon chili powder or cayenne pepper (I accidentally added far more than this)
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
about 20 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
about 1/2 cup of tomato passata
salt and pepper to taste

How?
Sauté the onion for about 20 minutes on low heat, add the ginger-garlic paste and heat through. Add the spices. After a minute or two, add the tomatoes and passata. Let cook for about five minutes on low to medium heat. Add a tablespoon or two of cream or coconut milk. Puree in a small food processor and return to oven-safe cast iron skillet to keep warm.

Saucy!

Saucy!

Now put the stuffed pepper rings under the grill and brown them and warm them.

Add the pepper rings to the sauce and heat on the stove or the oven.

Fluff the rice and add the fried onions on top.

The finished products

The finished products

Having completed this experiment once, I know where I went wrong and where I can improve. My next guest will benefit from my learning…

Recipes – Cooking for guests

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I never seem to cook except when guests come to visit. In addition to making a new attempt at black bean-corn-sweet potato-millet burgers, I also made a roasted garlic-Guinness-brown sugar pot roast in my slow cooker, shredded it and made sandwiches from it. I also make big breakfasts – my friend/guest’s favorite is rye toast, cream cheese, smoked salmon and scrambled or basil-poached eggs and roasted asparagus. I made that but also made a very American breakfast of fluffy American pancakes with real maple syrup, scrambled eggs and chicken sausage patties. I am not really big on the idea of sausage, but I had a package of ground chicken that I had planned to do something else with (and didn’t) and wanted to use it. I decided breakfast sausage was worth the experiment and it turned out really, really – surprisingly – well.

Slow cooker Guinness pot roast

2 pound (1 kg) beef pot roast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 cup brown sugar
30 cl Guinness (or beer you prefer)
1 head roasted garlic
Rolls or buns you prefer, toasted

Sprinkle both sides of pot roast with the spices and place in the slow cooker. Put the brown sugar on top. Pour the beer into the slow cooker. Cook on low for 8 hours. Near the end of cooking time, roast head(s) garlic in the oven, mash up garlic and add to the cooked pot roast, finish cooking.

When finished, remove pot roast from the cooker and shred the meat on a separate plate. Meanwhile you can thicken the liquid in the cooker with a bit of flour (this created a thicker, gravy-like sauce, which is nicer for a sandwich). Return the shredded meat to the cooker and cook for another 20 to 30 minutes on low heat.

Chicken sausage patties

2 pounds (1 kg) ground chicken
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon dried sage
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Mix spices together, then mix into ground chicken. Form into patties and fry about 7 to 10 minutes on each side.

Shedding layers part seven: Books

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Cookbooks! Yes, why do I have so many cookbooks?

Long, long ago, in an era long before the internet existed and everyone had five devices to search for internet content, including recipes, people exchanged recipes on little designated notecards made just for recipes. Or they collected recipes and published them in books. Some were generalist in nature, some were very specific (for example, vegan desserts, which, contrary to what some might say, are not only sorbet related, or vegetarian Indian cooking).

I must have gone through many phases of wanting a collection of recipe books because… well, over the years I accumulated a whole lot of them. Everyone around me – grandmother, mother, parents’ friends, etc. – also had recipe books aplenty. It never struck me that is was not necessary. Back when I started my own collection, it was kind of necessary because, as I said, there was no internet then.

Moving from country to country, lugging hundreds of (and it used to be over 1000) books along with me, though, it all seemed like too much. Especially as each year saw the internet grow and its cornucopia of content overflow, it made no sense to carry around books I had cracked open maybe once – and never once used to cook with.

That said, I still have a stack of these books and these will be the next things with which I part as I go on shedding extraneous layers of my life.

chicken cauliflower chili

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I like beans so don’t necessarily advocate chili without beans, but I saw a recipe that used a diced head of cauliflower instead. And a slow cooker. The miraculous slow cooker.

I made it as follows:
1/2 head of cauliflower, diced into pieces
1 diced yellow onion
1 diced red bell pepper
2 minced garlic cloves
28 ounces tomato puree
1/2 cup chicken stock
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
chunks of chicken breast or thigh
a tablespoon or two of some Macedonian pepper relish

Add all ingredients to the slow cooker. Cook on low for eight hours. And you are done.

Weekend lunching

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Cooking is not really my thing, especially when hanging out on my own at home. But I become experimental and slightly ambitious when feeding others.

This weekend, it was sweet potato-millet-sweet corn-black bean burgers (with some avocado-tomato cream sauce), mixed potato wedges and chicken cauliflower chili.

Everything turned out really well even if I had no confidence in these items.

Sweet potato-black bean burgers
1 medium sweet potato
1/2 cup dry millet
1/2 cup oats
1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup corn
2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat oven to 200°C. Bake the sweet potato for 50-60 minutes (until soft). While the sweet potato bakes, cook the millet until soft. Bring 1 cup of water to boil, stir in the half-cup of millet, reduce heat on the stove to low, let millet simmer with lid on the pan (this took maybe 15-20 minutes).

When sweet potato is cooled, put it in food processor or blender with the oats, one cup of black beans and all the spices along with a tablespoon of oil (I had to add a bit extra oil because this was very dry). Mix until smooth.

In another bowl, mix the sweet potato mixture with remaining whole beans, corn and cooked millet.

Heat the other tablespoon of olive oil in a large pan over medium-high heat, place patties or large balls of the mixture in the pan and flatten into burger-shaped patties using a spatula. Brown each side.

While burgers are in the pan, toast buns and also make the avocado sauce.

Avocado sauce
1 ripe avocado
3 ounces plain Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Roma tomato, diced

Mash avocado with a fork. Mix in the Greek yogurt, lime juice, and salt. Stir in the tomatoes, and set aside for serving.

Serve burger on toasted bun with fresh avocado cream sauce. I also melted some cheddar on the buns while toasting them.

Mixed potato wedges

Scrub two or three regular potatoes and two medium sweet potatoes and slice into wedges. Toss in a bowl with salt, pepper, paprika and a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Place in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake in a 200C oven for about 40 minutes (turning the potatoes over once at about 20 minutes in).

Chicken Soup

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Something like hopping on a plane and almost immediately succumbing to excruciating stomach cramps and then classic and miserable flu symptoms is about the least fun I can think of. This unfortunate fate happened to Mr Firewall, and I have been trying everything in my amateur first-aid repertoire to help him get well and make him comfortable.

One bit was my first attempt to make standard chicken soup. I am not sure how I got to this stage in my life without ever having made basic chicken soup – it just never seemed like a priority. Not to add that it’s not really my favorite soup, and I rarely have chicken on hand. I didn’t even have a whole chicken – only boneless chicken breast, which is far from ideal for this kind of thing. This time, though, it seemed that when Mr Firewall felt like eating again, chicken soup would be just the right thing.

How did I do it?

Quickly sear both sides of two large chicken breasts in about a tablespoon of olive oil in a large Dutch oven or large, heavy-bottomed pot. Remove chicken and set aside. Now you can either chop it into a few chunks to cook in the soup or cook thoroughly in another pot of boiling water to make it easy to shred.

I chopped up one red onion, one large shallot, one (cleaned) leek, two stalks of celery and two carrots and sauteed these in the pan in which I seared the chicken. Saute for about five minutes, stirring a couple of times during the process. At the very end, throw in about four thinly sliced cloves of garlic.

Add two cups of boiling water. In a separate glass, mix a half cup to one cup of boiling water with two chicken or vegetable bouillon cubes and about 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper – mix that into the sauteed veg mixture and let all simmer. Add the chicken now as well. Simmer for about 10 minutes. (If you are or have been cooking and shredding the chicken separately you can wait to add that until the last few minutes.)

After simmering, I threw the chicken in as well as about a quarter of a head of cabbage chopped into thin pieces as well as a handful of baby spinach, also roughly chopped. I also threw in two more cloves of thinly sliced garlic – and voilà – it turned out pretty well.

And everyone is feeling much better, thanks.

 

Chicken with masala sauce

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The other day I was doing some “prep cooking” – you know, preparing the stuff that could be done in advance before having a guest in town. And one of the things was this sauce.

Masala:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups chopped onion
4 cloves minced garlic
1 1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1 1/2 teaspoon curry
1 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 14-ounce can of diced tomatoes
1/2 cup plain, whole-milk yogurt
Heat oil on medium, add onions and saute until lightly golden (about 20 minutes). Add garlic and all the spices. Stir for about a minute. Cool mixture until warm. While mix is cooling, mix the tomatoes and yogurt together and puree until almost smooth. Add the onion-garlic-spice mixture, and again puree until almost smooth.

At this point, the sauce can now be refrigerated for a day or two before using. (This helps develop the flavors.) I left it in the fridge for two days and used it up today. And here’s how to do it…

When ready to prepare…

You can actually use chicken or prawns here. Normally I use prawns, but the guest was not into shellfish and seafood, so I went for chicken.

I cut chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces, cooked them in a separate pan and then transferred them to the pan I prepared for the rest of the process. If using prawns, which cook faster, you can cook them in the same pan as the rest of the process.

Rest of the process:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Prepared prawns (or cooked chicken)
Half a can coconut milk (about 7 ounces)
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Heat oil in a large skillet on medium high. Add the prawns to cook (about 2 minutes). Or add the chicken you have previously cooked. Stir in the coconut milk, cilantro, green onion, lemon juice.

Chicken + coconut milk, lemon + green onions before adding masala

Chicken + coconut milk, lemon + green onions before adding masala

 

Then add the prepared masala sauce described above. Simmer for about 3 to 5 minutes more.

Chicken masala - final product

Chicken masala – final product

Serve with rice (which I like to make with caramelized onions, but that’s just me!).

At the Souk – pomegranate molasses

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I have previously written about the Souk Market in Charlottenberg in Sweden – a tiny town with a whole lot of very large supermarkets, mostly catering to Norwegians who cross the border to buy stuff in bulk. I had not been there in a while, but I planned to make a recipe that required pomegranate molasses (Persian pomegranate and lamb meatball soup).

Considering that I can’t find normal molasses most of the time, the idea that pomegranate molasses could be had (with multiple brand and container-sizer options) in the smallest of towns in rural Sweden seemed laughable. But having been to – and been overwhelmed by – the Souk Market before, I knew it represented my best chance. Imagine my delight when I found an entire section of the store filled with different kinds of molasses, including pomegranate as well as carob and grape, among others. Amazing.

pomegranate molasses from the Souk Market

pomegranate molasses from the Souk Market

Check out John Oliver‘s new gig on HBO – in the inaugural episode, he goes on a pomegranate-related tirade.