Spicy Mango Chutney

This chutney comes from Indian Home Cooking.  It is very much like the pear chutney I blogged about a while back, with a few differences (this one adds cornstarch--mangos probably have less pectin than pears--and uses fennel rather than fenugreek).  The flavors are great together, but it's rather syrupy sweet.  I think some lemon juice might be a nice addition.

Spicy Mango Chutney

(from Indian Home Cooking)

Ingredients

4 unripe mangos, peeled and diced

salt

turmeric

water

1 green chile

brown sugar

2 TB cornstarch + 2 TB water

*

oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 tsp fennel seeds

1/2 tsp nigella seeds

3 whole dried chilies

1 tsp cayenne (or to taste)

*

lemon juice?

Instructions

1. Bring water to boil.  Add mangoes and chile; reduce heat and simmer until mangos are soft.  Add sugar and cornstarch mixture; simmer.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in a small frying pan.  Add spices and cook until fragrant.  Remove from heat.  When mango mixture is just about done, add this tempering oil mixture.  Makes about 3-4 c.

Tamarind-Apple Chutney

After months of dithering about whether to buy the whole tamarind pods at my neighborhood grocery stores--which seemed like a lot of work to prepare--I stumbled upon this paste at Whole Foods.  While I dislike how this episode makes me sound like a lazy white person (some of the things WF sells are ridiculous--peeled garlic cloves?!), this stuff is really fantastic.  The flavor is really strong and DELICIOUS; it tastes like the best sour candy you ever had.  And a tiny bit goes a long way, such that the $4 I spent on this will go very far.  What else should I do with it?  I would love ideas...

Paru's, one of the several amazing recipes within blocks of my house, has a mauve-colored chutney that I've always wanted to replicate.  I'm not sure what's in it, but it tastes like magical applesauce.  What I came up with here is very delicious, though more gingery than the original.  I wasn't going to add any sugar, but the tamarind is so tart that it seemed necessary.  The spices aren't overpowering, but they, too, balance out the sweetness and tartness of the chutney with the smoky-savory thing they have going on.  I made this to serve with a bunch of Indian food, but it's good with other stuff, too, like grilled tofu.

Mm.  Now I have to make applesauce [sin tamarindo], too.

Tamarind-Apple Chutney

Ingredients

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 tsp fennel seeds

*

2 apples, peeled, cored, and diced

about 1/4 c water (or more as needed)

2 tsp finely minced or grated fresh ginger

*

1 TB turbinado sugar

pinch cayenne pepper

*

pinch salt

1 TB tamarind paste

Instructions

1. Toast cumin and fennel seeds.  When cool, grind and set aside.
2. Place apples, water, ginger, and ground/toasted spices in a small saucepan.  Cook over low heat until apples are quite soft (about 15-25 minutes).  Add sugar and cayenne, cook a few more minutes, then remove from heat and allow to cool.
3. In a food processor or blender, blend saucepan mixture with salt and tamarind paste.  Adjust seasonings to taste, then reheat and transfer to a sterile jar.  Makes about 1 1/2 cups.

Indian Feast Pt. 4: Pear Chutney

This chutney is so beautiful!  The bright yellow from the turmeric, the sheen from the oil, and the little round black mustard seeds, all call to mind jewels.

Although the chutney mostly smells like pear, its flavor is much more complex.  I tasted pear, then mustard, then fennel, in that order, followed by a little bit of heat (which builds up with consecutive bites).  This is the first time I've felt really positive about using black mustard seeds, and I think it's partly because I've been burning them up until this point.

I got the recipe from Vegan Thyme, and I followed it pretty closely.  I did, however, halve the mustard and the salt, and double the lemon juice.  The chutney still doesn't taste explicitly lemony, but I think adding more juice at the end helped cut the sweetness a bit.  Before that final move, however, I was worried that the chutney was too runny, and so I boiled it a bit longer with the lid off in order to evaporate some more of the liquid.

Pear Chutney
(from Vegan Thyme)

Ingredients
3 pears peeled and chopped into 1/2"
juice of 1 lemon, divided
*
2 TB canola oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
*
fresh ginger (about two inches long), chopped up
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds, ground
3/4 c water
*
1/4 tsp garam masala
1/4 tsp ground tumeric
1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
4 TB sugar

Instructions

1. Peel, core, and chop pears.  Pour half the lemon juice over them and set aside.

2. In a medium sauce pan, heat the oil over medium-low heat.  Add mustard and cumin, and cook (partially covered) about a minute.  Add ginger, fennel, ground fenugreek, and water.  Be careful!  Hot oil, water, etc...Simmer mixture, covered, over low heat for 15 minutes. 

3. Remove lid; add remaining spices, salt, sugar, and pears.  Simmer 20 minutes more.  If chutney seems particularly liquidy, cook a bit longer.  Then remove from heat and allow to stand.

4.Stir in remaining lemon juice before serving or canning.  Serves about 4-6 as a condiment.

*

Preserved lemons

More adventures in pickling and preserving... Today I decided to make preserved lemons in a last-ditch attempt to avoid lesson-planning. In a few weeks, these babies should be salty, tangy, and spicy, and should take my dishes (for example, couscous) places they've never been before. Updates to follow. If these turn out well, I will post the recipe, which comes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (yes, I just bought another cookbook).

Preserved Lemons

Things green and spicy

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Today, better success with the roasted brussels sprouts! I steamed them for over 10 minutes--until they were effectively completely cooked. Only then did I toss them in olive oil, salt, and pepper and roast (this time in the toaster oven!), uncovered, until they got noticeably crispy/chewy on the outside (under 10 min). Yum!

Broiled Tempeh over Short Grain Brown Rice
with Green Tomato Chutney and Avocado

Thanks to a CSA box, I was also saddled with some green tomatoes. I don't even like ripe tomatoes. What, I lamented, can I possibly do with these besides bread and fry them? Yet I was browsing through Vegan Fire and Spice (definitely not as good as Vegan Planet) and found a chutney recipe that actually called for green tomatoes in abundance. Fortuitous! I cut back on sugar and vinegar, and upped the heat and the ginger. It's delicious--hard to place, somewhere between apple pie and salsa (and more than a little bit like fried apples and onions)... I've put it on flatbread (recipe below) and tempeh. The tempeh-rice-avocado-chutney combination was, I'll admit, a bit geographically incoherent (and created on the basis of what was in my fridge, what would be balanced, etc), but I like to think that maybe you could eat it in Jakarta or somewhere. In any event, it tasted pretty good. For broiled tempeh: cut smallish pieces of tempeh in half so that they are only 1/4-in thick. Oil lightly and broil (I use the toaster oven for small things like this) until golden brown, turning once.

Green Chutney
(adapted from Vegan Fire and Spice)

Ingredients
2 green tomatoes
1 pear
1/3 c brown sugar
1/4 c apple cider vinegar
1/2 yellow onion, chopped
1 green jalapeno
1-2 TB fresh ginger, grated
1 TB lemon zest
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

Instructions
Cook in a saucepan over low heat for up to one hour.

Green Chutney on Whole-Wheat Cumin Flatbread

This flat bread was delicious! Mostly because it had a lot of oil in it, but also because of cumin seeds and the texture of whole wheat flour. It's an adaptation of my grandma Nellie's pie crust recipe.

Whole-Wheat Cumin Flatbread

Ingredients
1/2 c white flour
1/2 c whole wheat flour
1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt
3 TB cumin seeds
2-3 TB oil
water as needed

Instructions

Mix together flour, salt, and cumin seeds. "Cut in" oil (it's not quite enough to be distributed evenly). Slowly add water until you have a dry dough. Form the dough into tennis-ball-sized balls and roll them out between two sheets of waxed paper, or (better) on a floured surface. Cook the flatbreads in a lightly-oiled cast iron skillet over medium-low heat until golden brown (each side). Makes about 4 flatbreads.

Beet Kimchi Followup

Ten days ago, I made "beet kimchi." After adding the juice from an older batch and leaving the jars out at room temperature for a day or two, I stuck them in the fridge. Every few days I checked a jar only to find that it smelled, well, gassy. But today it didn't-- I don't know if this means it's "done," but a) it tastes really fermented, b) it didn't make me sick, and c) it tastes pretty good, so I'm going to say case closed.

Today, it's a deep purple color, though, thanks to gravity, you get this freaky rainbow effect that needs some shaking:


It actually feels fizzy in your mouth. It tastes primarily of ginger and spicy pepper. Upon eating it, my stomach felt momentarily a little funny: not sick, but it was as if the creatures already in my stomach said to those incoming, "Oh hello! I guess we will have to work together."

Beet kimchi

BEETS! As bloody as my kitchen gets.

Just what it sounds like...Perhaps the logical outcome of splitting my time between adjacent Koreatown and Little Armenia... After noticing how the redness of radishes bled out in earlier kimchi preparations, I made some kimchi with julienned beets (merely added them to the original recipe). I think it will look crazily red as it matures. How does it taste? Only time will tell.

Update: read about the results here.

Kimchi?

I have to admit that I don't know very much about Korean cuisine. However, in all my hippie-dippy macrobiotic, etc., reading, I've become well aware of the supposedly amazing health benefits of kimchi. There's the anti-oxidant power of lots of garlic, and I believe ginger and chili peppers are anti-inflammatory? Plus, there's a great deal of vitamin C in carrots and cabbage. Then there's the dubious fermented magic--like miso, kimchi may introduce friendly little beasts into your intestines to aid you in digestion! This might be especially beneficial to vegans, who can't eat yogurt (unless you're eating soy yogurt, which is a] gross and b] not particularly vegan). Of course, this is all colloquial psuedo-nutrition, so take it with a grain of salt (or a pinch of gomasio?).

Anyway, if nothing else, it's a good way to get more vegetables into your diet. Oh, and it's really tasty.

The following recipe is from The Asian Vegan Kitchen, which is a great cookbook: rather than veganizing traditional dishes, it only includes dishes that are vegan anyway (besides substituting oil for ghee). It appeals to ethnic-cuisine dillettantes in that it's really nine cookbooks in one--it's organized into sections for India, Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea, so it has an incredibly wide variety of recipes.

I used regular cabbage and radishes rather than bok choy, etc. It looks very different than most kimchi I've seen (it's not red!).

Cabbage Radish Kimchi
(adapted from The Asian Vegan Kitchen)

Ingredients

1/2 cabbage, thinly sliced and then chopped
5-10 radishes, very thinly sliced
1-2 carrots, julienned
1 c scallions (green part) or chives, cut into 1-in pieces
1 TB salt
4 c water
*
2-4 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 TB minced ginger
1-2 TB minced chili peppers
1 TB water

Instructions

1. Place vegetables in a large bowl. Add salt to water and pour it over the vegetables. Place a plate and a heavy weight over the vegetables (or just use a big stack of plates). The vegetables should be completey immersed. Let them stand for 4-5 hours.
2. Drain vegetables and discard water. Rinse and drain, squeeze dry.
3. Mix together garlic-chili paste ingredients. Add to vegetables and toss until evenly coated.
4. Place vegetables in large, sterile jars. Place in fridge or leave on counter. Fills 2 large jars.

I think since kimchi was traditionally buried in the ground, it's not at all cheating to put it in the fridge. But, if you leave it out, it will do its thing more quickly. It tastes pretty good after just a few days, but it's even better weeks (or even two months!) later. I don't know--I'm new at this thing...and there are a lot of possibilities!