Surprise! I’m back. Yes. Back. Actually, I’ve been here all this time, just not writing, because I’ve been busy doing other things.

“Like what?” you may ask. Well, you may ask it, and I’ll even answer it.

I’ve been cooking, and I’ve even been good and photographed the bounty of my kitchen, but have not gotten around to recording the recipes because–Kat started kindergarten, so our family has had to adjust our schedule. Seems like I finally got used to the way it worked with her in preschool (after only a year–I’m slow on the uptake sometimes) and BAM! The kid’s in kindergarten, in real school, doing real school things.

And Kat loves kindergarten. She’s already been learning to read–Zak and I have been teaching her, and I’ve been teaching her elementary addition and subtraction, as well as how to count all the way to 100, but now she has continual classroom support on these subjects, and she loves it. LOVES it. She is so happy to go to school in the morning and happy to come home and tell us what she’s been doing. And she’s so much more mature as well.

AND, she’s turning five at the end of the week. Five. It’s been a long, wild five years, let me tell you, but it is so wonderful watching her grow and change so quickly each day of her life. Truly, our whole family is blessed.

AND, Morganna has finally gotten her driver’s license and is now the proud owner of our old Subaru Outback, Big Blue. The process of getting the car fixed up to be safe for her to drive all over creation, and of her getting that license was long and arduous–as a person who was seriously phobic about driving and had PTSD flashbacks to the horrific drivers in my past, I never believed I’d be able to teach someone else to drive. But, I did. I realized as I did so that I’m not afraid of cars anymore, at all. In fact, these days, I’m pretty fearless.

So that’s a great thing, but teaching someone to drive, as well as carting them to and from work and home is a time consuming process.

And then there’s the documentary. It gets its own post, mind you, but Dan and I have been out filming hither and yon, and our team has added a third person, sound technician and foodie Heather, who was one of the originators of the idea of a documentary in the first place. So the three of us are always out and about carting equipment, setting it up, asking questions, falling over from heat prostration, and filming, always filming and it’s just a lot of fun. But also a lot of work.

Especially the behind the scenes work that I get to do, being the producer. I set up filming schedules, keep the clearances and waivers and other paperwork straight and filed, buy equipment, figure out locations and take care whatever physical needs and transportation needs our crew might have–it’s a lot of stuff to keep track of. But, it’s fun, and I have to say–it’s almost as much fun as running a restaurant kitchen. And it uses similar skill sets….but more on that later.

And then, there’s the volunteer work I’ve been doing for the CFI. That’s Community Food Initiatives for those not from here in Athens. In short, it’s a volunteer organization that combats the issue of food security (that is, in a word, hunger) on multiple fronts. More on the CFI in a post of it’s own. It’s too much to explain in a single paragraph, and the work that all of us in the organization is doing is important and worthy of a proper introduction and explanation.

Let it suffice to say that the CFI allows me to feed people who REALLY need good, healthy wholesome food on a larger scale than any other way I’ve done before. And it makes me happy to feed folks who really need it.

But enough about me. I didn’t come here to write about me.

What I want to write about right now are zucchini-carrot muffins.

Why in the world do I want to write about zucchini-carrot muffins? Why? I mean, really, why? Don’t muffins like that just suck? Aren’t they either dry and crumbly and rather cardboardy in texture and listless in flavor, or worse, greenish and goopy-sticky and sickeningly sweet?

Well, yeah, most vegetable-based muffins fall into one or the other of those less than enticing categories, but this recipe is different.

Why is it different?

Because I made it up, that’s why. If readers haven’t figured out by now that I utterly refuse to make and eat or feed others repugnant food, I don’t know what to say.

And why zucchini-carrot muffins? Why not something else?

Well, because I’m in charge of bringing Kat’s class their classroom snack for the next couple of weeks and while I want to make them tasty stuff, I also want to bring them stuff that’s good for them, while I’m at it. It’s part of my mission to educate not only the minds of children while they are at school, but their palates as well.

The first day of my reign as Sultana of Snacks, I brought blueberry mini-muffins that Kat and I made together. From my usual blueberry muffin recipe, though I did modify it a bit–instead of using sour cream, I used all Greek yogurt with an additional 1/8 cup of milk. And I used white whole wheat flour in place of the all purpose flour and whole spelt flour for the white whole wheat flour, and I did replace the melted butter with canola oil and then didn’t coat the top of the muffins with melted butter dipped in sugar. And no white sugar, but only raw sugar.

Let me tell you–those were some good muffins, and by damned if they weren’t also pretty darned good for the wee schoolkids. (They were popular, too. Each kid ate two muffins–which I didn’t expect.)

After two days of fresh fruits and vegetables, I decided it was time to bake again, and this time, Kat asked for zucchini muffins. Yeah, she asked for them by name.

So, zucchini muffins it was to be, though I decided I wanted to add carrots, too, so that the color would be more varied and interesting. I also ended up adding some golden raisins and dried cranberries, because if some vegetables make muffins good, some dried fruits will make it better. Kat did reign me in when it came to the walnuts, though, citing that lots of kids don’t like nuts.

One flavor at a time, said I to myself as I reluctantly set aside the walnuts.

We’ll see how these muffins go over. I baked them in regular sized tins, but they would have made perfectly fine mini muffins as well. Kat sure liked them–she had one for dessert after dinner tonight and pronounced them to be, “Supendous.”

Yeah, she’s got a great vocabulary for a five year old, even if she spoke while she was chewing and left the “t” out of the word. (I choose to believe that lost “t” came about because of that little issue of “talking with the mouth full of muffin.”

At any rate, here are some mighty fine vegetable and fruit-based muffins, perfect for using up the late summer bounty of squash and carrots that are pouring in from a garden near you. These bake up to be moist without being soggy, flavorful without any of the spices dominating, with cute little flecks of dark green and orange suspended in a light brown matrix of spongy cake-like goodness and little chewy amber or garnet colored fruit bits that give a burst of concentrated sweetness that is neither cloying nor insipidly distracting.

These are just damned fine muffins, that’s all there is to it.

Kat’s Zucchini-Carrot Muffins

Ingredients:

2 cups white whole wheat flour or all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole spelt or regular whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini (DON’T peel it! You’ll lose the pretty green flecks if you do!)
1 cup coarsely shredded carrot (peel that one, though)
1 cup packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs, beaten well
1/2 cup canola or other vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 drops orange oil (optional)
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 cup chopped walnuts or black walnuts (optional)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line muffin pans with paper liners–you will need enough pans to make 24 muffins, though to be honest, you may end up with only 21 muffins, depending on how well you fill the cups.

Whisk together the dry ingredients (from the flours to the cardamom) until they are well combined in one bowl.

In another bowl, whisk together the vegetables, sugar and eggs until well combined, then stir in the vegetable oil, extract/orange oil, and buttermilk, and whisk lightly. Then stir in the fruits and if you are using them, the nuts.

Sprinkle the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients bowl, and stir until well combined. Don’t beat the batter and don’t even stir more than you absolutely need to–you don’t want to encourage gluten formation here–that makes for tough muffins. And no one wants a tough muffin. No one.

After you have it all mixed together, spoon the batter into the lined muffin cups and bake for between 15-20 minutes. Muffins are done when lightly browned on the top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for ten minutes then remove from pan and finish cooling on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container and serve within 24 hours.

Makes 21-24 muffins.

The very first chapati I ever had was not very good.

Mind you, it was made by an American friend whose cooking skills were less than impressive, from a recipe from an American vegetarian cookbook (one of the older ones where the recipes tended toward the “less-than-delicious vegetarian glop dishes” that used to be the norm way back in the day) by a cookbook author whom I am certain probably never tasted a well-made chapati in her life.

The first one I tasted I ate out of politeness, because it was a dry, cardboard-like affair that I could not imagine ANYONE in her right mind liking–much less an entire subcontinent of people not only liking it, but eating it often. I didn’t even get why anyone would call it a bread–it was more like a somewhat pliable cracker.

So that experience kept me from trying a proper chapati for years.

When I finally did try one, I had already fallen under the spell of naan, bhatura and pooris, so I was still somewhat skeptical of something as simply made as a griddle-baked flatbread being good.

But, the chapati I had made in the hands of a good cook was pretty good, so I could at least see why people liked them. However, compared to the glories that were naan, bhatura and poori–I didn’t find myself craving chapati.

Until I had a truly flakey, tender and delicious version, one that was subtly scented with spices and had an elusive nutty flavor that I soon recognized as coming not only from the usual whole wheat flour, but also some besan–toasted chickpea flour.

After tasting those chapati–I changed my mind about the formerly humble griddle baked flatbreads and decided I had to figure out how to make ones that tasted just like the ones at my favorite restaurant.

And so, I did.

My first task was to research recipes.

I looked online, but found no recipes that sounded exactly right, so I started digging through my three shelves of Indian cookbooks.

I found what I was looking for in one of oldest cookbooks–Julie Sahni’s Classic Indian Cooking, which is one of the cookbooks that taught me many of my first Indian recipes. Copyright 1980, this older book with very few illustrations and no photographs is truly a classic in the best sense of the word–and Sahni, the author, is not only very knowledgeable about Indian cookery, she is deftly able to put her knowledge onto paper in the form of step-by-step instructions easy enough for a beginner to follow without the benefit of illustrations.

What I found in Sahni’s tome is a recipe for “Besan ki Roti”, or chickpea flour flat bread. The spices she used in her recipe were not what I was aiming for, and the method she used for rolling out the dough would not result in as flaky a bread as I wanted (but I wasn’t worried about that as I had a pretty good idea as to how to make the breads flaky my own self–because I knew how to make flaky Chinese scallion pancakes, and was going to use the same technique here).

I also ended up adding a little bit of yogurt and ghee to the dough itself to tenderize it further–according to Sahni, the besan makes the dough stiffer and chewier than just using the usual durum atta flour that most cooks use to make chapati. Knowing well the tenderizing properties of fats and dairy products in bread dough, I decided to add some–and it turned out to be the correct decision.

Finally, instead of the usual method of cooking a chapati, which consists of baking for a few seconds on a flat, hot cast iron griddle, then passing it over on an open fire, I added a third technique–a short steaming (about 10-20 seconds) wrapped in a napkin in the microwave.

The result is a very flaky, tender, delicious chapati, just like the title of this post says. They are nutty, subtly scented with fenugreek and cumin and have a delicious nutty flavor and aroma, thanks to the small amount of besan. They taste perfect with any Indian dish–but I particularly like it with channa masala and safaid keema mattar.

The truth is, these chapati would be good with ANY Indian dishes. And even though my explanation of the technique is going to sound long, involved and difficult–it really isn’t. It takes longer to explain how to make these flatbreads than it does to make them. After I got the hang of it, I could cook a chapati, from pinching the bit of dough from the ball to rolling it out, rolling it up, rolling it out again, cooking it on the griddle, then over the fire, then in the microwave, in two minutes flat, give or take a second or two. One the rhythm is established, your hands will be able to go fast as lightning, and you will find yourself able to make a pile of these little breads for your friends and family in no time.

Flaky Chapati
Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat chapati flour or regular whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup besan flour
1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek seeds
1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ghee
1 tablespoon Greek style yogurt
1 1/8 cup to 1 1/4 cuo warm water (start with smaller measure, use more as needed)
all purpose flour for rolling out
melted ghee for rolling out

Method:

Either the morning of the evening you want your chapati or the night before, mix together the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Oil your hands with a small amount of canola oil or ghee so the dough will not stick as you mix and stir the dough.

Stir in the ghee and yogurt with your fingers until mixture is crumbly, with a few little lumps like happens with a very shaggy pastry dough before you add the water. (Alternately, you can use a fork to mix in the ghee and yogurt, but I find it easier to just use my fingers to rub it in.)

Slowly stir in the water, mixing with your hand until the dough firms up enough to knead. Once the dough is firm, yet still slightly sticky, begin kneading with both hands until the dough is elastic and and smooth, yet still a bit tacky to the touch. (Not so sticky that it clings to your fingers, just not dry and silky like most yeast doughs are supposed to be after they are kneaded. It should just feel like it wants to grab onto your finger, but it doesn’t actually do it.)

Put the dough into a ziplock bag, and place in the fridge to rest for at least three hours, though, I like it best if I make the dough the night before and let it rest until lunch or dinnertime the next day. For whatever reason, the dough rested longer is much more pliable and soft when baked up than the fresher dough made just a few hours before and rested at room temperature.)

Remove the dough from the fridge about a half hour before you are ready to cook some chapati, then turn the dough out onto a flour-dusted surface, and knead it gently to warm it up and to dry up any surface moisture with the extra flour.

Now, there are two ways you can go about dividing the dough into little balls ready to be rolled into flatbreads. The way you are supposed to do it is to roll the dough in your hands into a big ball, then cut that in half. Set aside one piece of dough and seal it back up in the ziplock to keep it fresh and moist. The other piece of dough, you roll into a snake about 15 inches or so long and cut that into 12 equal pieces. Then you roll each of those pieces into a perfect ball and cover the ones you are not working with to keep them from drying out.

Or…you could be lazy like I got as I experimented with a couple of different batches of dough and just pull off a chunk of dough and roll it into a ball in your palms and call it good, while leaving the rest of the big dough ball covered. Having done it both ways, it works fine either way.

Then, you take your dough ball and flatten it into a disk between your palms. Make it look like a little UFO. Very cute, right? Then, you dust flour onto the rolling surface and set your disk down. Dust your rolling pin with flour and roll that disk out into as perfect a circle as you can manage, as thin as you can manage. Turn the dough a quarter turn between rollings if you want a perfect perfect circle, if you don’t care, just roll it out in different directions until you get a very thin (less than 1/8″ thick) roundish sheet of dough.

Brush with a little bit of melted ghee. Please do not go overboard with this. Just use a little bit. (In your head, or out loud, sing the backup singers’ part of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,”–”Just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit–sockittome,sockittome….” etc. This helps you remember to go easy on the ghee.)

Then…start rolling that flat bread dough disk into a cigar or another snake like shape with your fingers. It won’t want to do this easily–ignore it and endeavor to persevere, and you will end up with a cylinder of dough before you know it. Stretch that dough out by pulling at either end and then spiral it inward upon itself into a snail or rosette shape, making it a flat disk once again, but this time, with a spiral design on it. Pinch the end to and along the spiral to hold it together–just nip the edges together with your fingers.

Then, dust it and the rolling surface with flour, dust your rolling pin and roll it out flat again.

Now, that all sounds very hard, but really, it takes much longer to explain and write it down than it does just to do it. Trust me. If you want more explanations of the technique, read my recipe for Scallion Pancakes.

Set your pancake aside on a lightly flour dusted surface and roll out another one. While you are rolling out a second chapati, start heating up your griddle.

Now, in India, these are cooked on a flat, round cast iron griddle called a tava. Not having one of those, I used a heavy cast iron skillet. You could also use a cast iron griddle, or even a cast iron Dutch Oven if that’s all you have, but whatever you use, make it a heavy, well-seasoned cast iron pan. If you don’t have cast iron, you should–go out and get a cast iron skillet and season and treat it well and your cooking will improve vastly. They aren’t that expensive, and if you’re lucky, you can find an old, blackened, well seasoned one in a relatives cupboard, forgotten and unused, or you can get one at a yard sale.

Anyway, I digress. Put your cast iron cooking surface on the burner and turn the heat up to high. Let it heat. Then, turn on the burner next to or behind that pan and just let it go. If you don’t have gas–you can still do this with electric, but it won’t have that fire-cooked aroma. But it will still work, so long as you have your burners on high.

Now, you need two other cooking implements. A spatula for flipping the chapati over on the griddle or skillet surface, and a set of tongs for picking it up and holding it over the live fire or the naked electric burner. Have these ready to hand. Also have a plate with a cotton napkin (or a paper towel) on it big enough to fold over the chapati at the ready.

After you’ve rolled the second chapati, put the first one right onto the pre-heated cast iron cooking surface. Do not use grease, ghee or oil. Just the hot pan. In mere seconds it will cook on the first side. Flip it over with the spatula and you should see speckly brown spots on that side as pictured above at the beginning of the recipe. Leave it on the other side for a couple of seconds and then use the tongs to pick up the chapati and hold it over the flame or the hot naked burner. Flip it back and forth, this way and that, and watch in amazement as it finishes cooking and even puffs up in places. Isn’t that the coolest? It is.

After flipping it around over the fire for a few seconds–about ten or so total–don’t drop it in the fire and let it burn! After that, put it on the plate, fold the napkin over and microwave it on high for a mere 10-20 seconds. Remove, unwrap, brush one side with melted ghee and fold into quarters than put in a basket lined with a napkin and cover it up to keep it warm.

Continue cooking, then rolling and etcetera until you have enough chapati for a first serving for your family and friends. After that, turn off the burners and serve everything hot–it’s easiest to put the rice, curries and raitas and whatnot on the table first, have everyone fix their plates and sit down, then go and cook the chapati and bring them out all at once. If, after eating one chapati, folks want more, you can go and cook more, or teach them how to do it. You can roll, they can cook and everyone can be fat and happy.

That’s it. I promise that it sounds harder to do than it is–and the results are so worth the trouble of learning how to make these lovely little flatbreads that are nothing like the first unfortunate example I ate nearly twenty years ago in a friend’s kitchen.

Yeah, I know that the title of the recipe involves beef and pork, but really those aren’t the stars of the show. The stars of the show are all of the local vegetables and herbs that go into the bowl on top of the steamed broken rice, long before the grilled beef and pork even come into the picture.

What vegetables, you ask? Well, some of our very own radishes, for one thing. Aren’t they the prettiest things? All shades of pink, rose, purple and carmine with icy white. Kat got to pull some of them her very own self–her favorites so far are the long narrow fuchsia and white ones called, “French Breakfast.” Mine are the large round violet ones: “Plum Purple.”

But those radishes only tell part of the story. Please note the plethora of mixed baby greens we sheared carefully from our salad bed in our community garden plot.

Purple mizuna, various baby lettuces and burgundy colored tatsoi are included in the big pile of salad greens Kat and I cut for dinner. Two days later, you could barely see where we had harvested–the plants grew that fast.

We also picked a great many herbs from the bed dedicated to them in the garden: spearmint, cilantro, basil, lemon basil and lovage.

And then, in addition to our own herbs and vegetables, we had fresh local tomatoes, (From Star at Shade River Farm–she starts them in the middle of winter in her solar greenhouse) cucumbers, turnips, red cabbage, carrots and scallions from the farmer’s market. Counting all of that and the steamed broken jasmine rice, this dish is way more vegetative than its name would imply.

But, it is based on the classic Vietnamese dish, Lemongrass Beef. Which, again, is a name that is somewhat misleading because the name doesn’t really tell you what all is going to be happening in your bowl, so maybe it’s traditional or something to just not talk about the rice, vegetables and herbs that outweigh the meat in the dish by many ounces.

When I say based on, I should clarify–it’s loosely based on Lemongrass Beef. The meat is grilled instead of stir-fried, and while the rub contains lemongrass, there is a finishing sauce I made to use while the meat is sizzling on the fire that contains very little that resembles the original recipe.

The sauce is made of a combination of fish sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice, honey, whiskey, vegetarian (or if you aren’t allergic to seafood like I am, regular) oyster sauce, and Thai sweet chili sauce.

A word about that last ingredient–it’s meant to go on grilled chicken and it’s lovely that way. But, I like it even better with pork, and it’s really good on top of a bowl of Lemongrass Beef. The sticky-sweet, lightly tangy and fiery scarlet sauce is so good that it is addictive–which is why we gave it the nickname, “Cracky-Crack Sauce” at our house.

The marinade/barbeque sauce really made the grilled meats taste fantastic. Don’t get me wrong–the rub I put on the beef and pork made them tender and taste fantastic–I mean, it’s fresh lemongrass, lemon juice, garlic, ginger and scallions–how can it make anything bad? But the sauce when added at the end, really gives it the extra added oomph that tips the meat over the top.

Finally, you need to make nuac cham–a spicy, fragrant Vietnamese sauce that is like one of the best salad dressings in the world. As the final touch, it enhances not just the grilled meats, but the rice, the vegetables and the herbs. It’s great stuff. AND, it’s easy to make and keeps nicely in the fridge for about a week, though I like it best the day it’s made or the day after. Also, before serving, I like to bring it to room temperature so that the fullness of flavor is expressed.

It sounds like lots of work–making two sauces, a marinade/rub, grilling meats, making broken rice or plain jasmine rice, and prepping the vegetables and herbs. But, really, the vegetables and herbs can be cleaned and cut a day before, the nuac cham can be made a day before, and the marinade and finishing sauce can all be made up to two days before. That leaves just the grilling, rice cooking and assembly for the day you serve the meal. That isn’t so bad, and the payoff is you get lots of fresh local vegetables and herbs, some rice and really tasty grilled meat in amounts that feed a whole crowd of your friends and family. The finished dish looks impressive and theirs something to please everyone.

Vietnamese Style Grilled Beef and Pork
Ingredients for the Marinade/Rub and Meat:

4 stalks of lemongrass, bottom third only, tough outer leaves removed and sliced thinly
3 cloves fresh garlic, peeled
1″ piece fresh ginger, peeled
1 fresh Thai chili
2 scallions, white and light green parts, sliced
juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon fish sauce
pork tenderloin, trimmed and cleaned of excess fat and silverskin
1 1/2 thick piece of top sirloin/ London Broil

Methods:

Grind all solid ingredients into a paste, then mix with lemon juice and fish sauce.

Rub onto meats, then lay the meats into a shallow pan and seal with plastic wrap. Allow to marinate for at least three hours, preferably more, up to overnight.

Ingredients for Grilling Sauce:

1 tablespoon high quality fish sauce
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 tablespoon bourbon or whiskey
1 tablespoon vegetarian or real oyster sauce
2 tablespoons Mae Ploy sweet chili sauce

Method:

Whisk together and allow to sit at room temperature for at least an hour before use–if you make it a day or so ahead, warm up to room temperature before using it.

To grill the meats–prepare a charcoal grill for very hot indirect grilling, and cook the meats in the section not directly over the flame, turning at least twice until they are nearly done. At that time, move them closer to the actually burning coals, and brush several times on both sides with the sauce, allowing the outside of the meat char and crisp up a bit.

Ingredients for the Vegetables, Herbs and Rice:

3 cups broken jasmine rice
a big pile of mixed lettuces and other salad greens–at least 8 ounces, cleaned, dried and chilled
whatever fresh vegetables you want to use such as carrots, radishes, baby turnips, snow peas, cucumbers, and tomatoes, all cleaned, dried and chilled.
1 cup of cilantro leaves
1/2 cup of mint leaves
1 cup Thai basil leaves
1/4 cup lovage leaves
1 recipe nuac cham
sweet chili sauce

Method:

Cook the broken rice: In the rice cooker, put 3 cups of rice and water. (Always use equal parts rice and water for broken rice.) That is that. You put it in the rice cooker, shut the lid down on it, push the button and walk away.

If you are cooking on the stove top, the proportion of broken rice to water is exactly the same. Put the rinsed rice into a pot with three cups of water. Bring to a boil, give it a nice stir, clap a tight lid down on it, turn the heat down to the lowest setting possible setting and cook for twenty minutes. Let it sit for five minutes off heat, then fluff with a fork.

The lettuces and greens should be torn into bite sized pieces. Choose greens that are a good balance of color, texture and flavor. I like to add some baby bok choy or tatsoi and mizuna to the greens because they are very flavorful and have great textures.

The root vegetables should be peeled if needed, if not, they should be well scrubbed, and then cut into a thin julienne. Snow peas should be stringed and then cut into julienne to match the root vegetables. I like to peel the cucumbers and seed them, then cut into julienne. Tomatoes, if they are full sized, I just cut into thin wedges, while cherry tomatoes get simply sliced in half.

To serve, I slice the meats thinly on the diagonal and set them on platters on one end of the serving surface. I leave the rice in the rice cooker, with the lettuces in a large bowl near it on the other end. Then, the vegetables and herbs are in separate bowls arrayed in between the two ends, with the nuac cham and chili sauce after the meat.

Pass out bowls and let your guests fill them as they see fit. I find it’s tastiest to put the greens in first, then the steamy rice, then the vegetables and herbs covering the rice, with the meat on top, and the sauces drizzled joyfully over the top.

If you have leftovers, and that’s a big if, you can make a cold salad out of everything with a big dose of cold nuac cham as a dressing the next day. I ate it for breakfast and it was a delightful eye opener.

I know that I’ve already posted one recipe for bhatura, and a recipe for channa masala, but these are completely different versions which everyone in the family has decided we prefer.

The bhatura recipe is more authentic than the one I wrote about before–there is no yeast in it at all; instead it is leavened with a starter made from equal parts all purpose flour and yogurt. It is based on Yamuna Devi’s recipe from Lord Krishna’s Cuisine with the exception that I used Greek yogurt in the starter and substituted whole meal spelt flour for some of the all-purpose flour.

This version of bhatura is thinner-walled and flakier–more delicate than the yeast-raised version I posted previously. But the dough is no harder to work with, roll out or fry, so there is no reason not to try making it.

As for the channa–I think that there are about a thousand different ways to make channa masala. Probably more than a thousand–for every household or restaurant where it is eaten, it is cooked slightly differently. I based this version on the one they serve at Udipi Cafe in Columbus, Ohio, which is my favorite vegetarian restaurant ever, hands down.

Their version has no tomatoes in it, or very few, and is yellow with turmeric instead of red with tomatoes and paprika. It is redolent of cinnamon and fenugreek, and liberally flavored with toasted whole cumin seeds and black mustard seeds. Oh, and it is fiery with chilies both dried and fresh–I should have mentioned that. Mmm… chilies.

You will also note that I served a dry version of aloo methi with this meal. Some of the versions of aloo methi are damper than others–aloo methi tamatar is by its nature wetter, being that one of the main ingredients is tomatoes. I sometimes add yogurt and spinach to it, which makes it saucier. But I have found that the textural differences between a dry curry and a wet one, served with bread and yogurt is most pleasing.

Every piece of bread was eaten–and most of the channa and aloo as well. I have enough of them for a light lunch left over, but nothing else. That’s how I know that dinner was appreciated highly–very little of it was left. I suggest doubling the channa and the bhatura recipes if you have more than five or six people eating, especially if you want anything left to munch on for lunch.

Flaky Bhatura
Ingredients:

1/2 cup whole milk or 2% Greek yogurt
1/2 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole meal spelt flour (or chapati flour or whole wheat flour or white whole wheat flour or kamut, take your pick)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon raw sugar or honey
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons melted ghee or butter
about 1/4 cup warm water–use more or less as needed
canola or other vegetable oil for deep frying

Method:

First, the night before you want bhatura, make the starter–take your yogurt out of the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature. Then, preheat your oven to about 100 degrees F. by putting it on the lowest heat setting and turning it off just as it reaches that setting. Open the oven door, and place an oven thermometer on the rack, and when the temperature dips to 100 degrees F, close the door and keep it closed.

Stir the 1/2 cup of all purpose flour into the warmed yogurt, until a smooth paste is formed. Cover lightly with a warm, damp towel or plastic wrap and set inside the prepared oven. Leave the starter undisturbed for eight or ten hours or so.

Make the dough–put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and stir to mix it well. Add the starter and the melted ghee, and the honey if you used it instead of raw sugar. Rub your hands with oil or ghee (ghee is really good for your skin, btw–I used ghee when making the bread yesterday to oil my hands and today they are amazingly soft and silky. On the other hand, it is pretty expensive as hand cream……) and start mixing the dough with your hands. Add as much water as is needed to make a smooth, reasonably stiff, pliable dough.

Knead it for eight to ten minutes or until the dough is springy–a fingerprint pushed into it will start springing back almost immediately when you have kneaded it enough.

Gather dough into a ball, rub the outside with ghee or oil, and put into a small bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for at least 1/2 hour, or as long as 3 hours.

When you are ready to roll out the dough, cut the ball into two equal pieces and roll one into a thick log about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.

Cut this log into seven equal pieces, and roll each of those into smooth balls. Flatten each one with your hand into a disk about 2 inches in diameter.

Dust your surface very lightly with flour, place a disk into the flour, turn over and shake off the excess. Using a rolling pin, roll evenly into a thin 4 inch diameter circle, and set aside until all the other disks are rolled. Do the same with the other half of the dough–roll into a log, cut it into seven equal pieces, roll each into a smooth ball, flatten into disks and then roll out into 4 inch diameter circles. Lay them on a plate and cover with a very lightly dampened towel.

Heat your cooking oil in a wok, karahi or deep saucepan over medium high heat. Test the oil with a dry bamboo chopstick by simply placing it into the oil. If tiny bubbles immediately start traveling up the chopstick tip, the oil is ready.

When the oil is ready, carefully slip a single dough disk into the oil so that it goes in flat, not folded. It will sink to the bottom, and immediately the oil will bubble and foam. After a few seconds, the dough will start to rise at the top. Using a slotted spoon or a mesh skimmer, gently hold the dough under the surface of the oil so that it puffs up into a little bready balloon.

As soon as the bhatura puffs up, hook your spoon or skimmer under it and gently flip it over. Let it brown very gently on the other side–not too much–it will only take a few seconds–then take out the bhatura with your spoon/skimmer and let it drain on layers of paper towels.

Serve immediately, before the bhatura cool and deflate.

Now this means that you should have everything ready–channa, potatoes and garnishes–and -THEN- start frying the bhatura. You can either serve each bhatura as it comes out of the oil to each diner, or you can fry half of the dough–seven portions–serve that, and turn the heat off on your oil. Sit down and eat that, and then, when (note I do not say, “if,” but “when”) your family wants seconds, go back, turn the heat back on under the oil, test with a chopstick and then start cooking the second batch.

These breads cook very quickly–in a matter of seconds, really. I haven’t timed them, but I suspect that they each cook in under a minute. That is indeed, how fast they go.

They get eaten nearly as quickly.

Channa Masala II
Ingredients:

1 pound dried chickpeas
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 bay leaves
2-3 tablespoons ghee
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
5-6 dried thin hot chilies
1 large cinnamon stick
5 whole cloves
8 whole green cardamom pods
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
2 fresh long, thin green chilies, thinly sliced on the diagonal
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced very finely
1″ cube fresh ginger, peeled and minced very finely
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
2 cloves
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
water as needed
2 tablespoons pappulu podi
1 1/2 teaspoons tamarind concentrate
salt to taste
roughly chopped cilantro leaves for garnish

Method:

Sort through the chickpeas and remove any suspicious looking (shriveled, black or moldy) beans and any small stones or dirt clods. Rinse well with cold water, then put into a large bowl. Cover well with warm water–the water should stand about an inch over the top of the beans–and cover the bowl and let stand overnight.

Drain the remaining water from the beans and discard. Put beans into pressure cooker (or regular large pot) and add water to cover by two inches, one of the bay leaves, the teaspoon of turmeric powder and the powdered cinnamon. Bring to a boil, put the lid on, lock it and bring to full pressure. Turn down the heat, cook on full pressure for fifteen minutes. Then, take the cooker off the heat and allow it to depressurize on its own, gradually. Open the cooker and check the texture of the beans–they should be tender and absolutely done with no crunchy bits. If it is not done, bring to a boil, put on the lid, bring up to pressure, lower heat and cook for another five minutes, then remove from heat and allow the pressure to lower naturally off heat and check again–they should be done at this time.

If you do not have a pressure cooker, put the directed ingredients into a regular deep, large pot, and simmer until the beans are done–about an hour.

Drain the beans, reserving about a cup of the liquid.

Melt ghee in a heavy-bottomed deep frying or braising pan. Add onions, sprinkle with salt and the second bay leaf, and cook, stirring, until the onions turn light golden. Add the whole spices and dried chilies save for the mustard seed at this time, and continue cooking and stirring until the onions turn deep golden brown. Add the mustard seed and the fresh chilies, and cook stirring until the mustard seeds pop. Add the garlic and ginger and lower heat, still stirring, though not as constantly.

Grind the remaining whole spices together and add to the pan with the turmeric and the paprika, and cook, stirring until the onions are a deep reddish brown and everything is fragrant. Add the chickpeas and enough of the reserved cooking water to the pan to deglaze the pan. Scrape all the browned bits up from the bottom of the pan and turn the heat down so it can simmer. Allow to simmer uncovered for 1/2 hour to 45 minutes. Add water as needed to keep the curry moist.

Thicken the curry with the pappulu podi and add the tamarind concentrate. Simmer for five more minutes and add salt as needed to taste.

Remove from heat and sprinkle the cilantro over the channa. Serve immediately with bhatura.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but there is a new tagline for Tigers & Strawberries, right up there at the top of the page, under the title. It says, in somewhat sketchy grammar, “Cook local, eat global.” Obviously, it’s a take on the classic saying, “Think globally, act locally,” which I have always thought was a very sensible philosophy one could easily apply to the practicalities of daily life, but it’s been a bit inverted hasn’t it?

It’s a rather odd thing to be a locavore who touts the delights of locally grown and produced foods and who also happens to be a chef who specializes in cooking foods from nations far removed from her Appalachian roots. Especially when these cuisines generally require ingredients, such as soy sauces, rice and coconut meat, which are quite simply not local to, nor are likely to become local to Appalachia any time soon. I mean, I know we have global warming, but I am not thinking that we are likely to start growing rice and coconut trees in Athens anytime soon.

But stick with me here, because there is meaning to be had in the phrase, “Cook local, eat global,” if one digs hard and long enough. (I just know that the grammar police are going to tear down my door in the middle of the night and beat me to death with dictionaries over the construction of the tagline, but I don’t care. It like the way it sounds.)

That meaning is this–I am not a hard-line, fundamentalist locavore. I never have been and never will be, and I don’t think it is necessary to be one in order to live a good and ethical life where you eat well, support your local economy and make the world a better place in which to live. I’m not a fundamentalist because I have found in my forty-five years on this planet, that is is nearly impossible to change the way humans do anything, much less eat, by getting all moral about it and telling them all the reasons its good for them to do it. It just doesn’t work. It’s proselytizing at its absolutely worst form which can turn into berating your audience into changing their point of view. It risks alienating people, boring them and infuriating them all the same time.

And believe me, alienated, bored and infuriated people are not more likely to change anything about themselves–they are much more apt to dig in their heels and refuse to do anything but the exact opposite of what you are trying to get them to do, if for no other reason than to spite the clueless messenger who, with every good intention in the world, has tried to do a good thing and has made an absolute boor (and bore) of herself in the process.

So, what does that phrase up there under my blog title mean?

It means this–you -can- cook using primarily local ingredients–vegetables, fruits, meats, dairy products and if you are lucky, grain and legume staples–and still eat like a citizen of the world. By using local ingredients for the bulk of your diet, or even, frankly for half of your diet, and combining them with ingredients from elsewhere such as spices, sauces, condiments, some grains and exotic fruits and vegetables that simply will not grow in your climate, you are still making a difference in the world, and a delicious one at that.

Especially when you seek out spices, grains, and condiments from elsewhere which are produced in fair-trade cooperatives which ensure that farmers from across the world are paid a fair price for their products which enables them to make a decent living for themselves and their families. Supporting not only local farmers, but farmers in Thailand or Peru or Mexico is thinking globally and acting locally on a grand scale, a scale that recognizes the common thread of humanity that ties each and every one of us in the world together.

Besides–combining locally sourced ingredients with internationally sourced ones leads to creativity in the kitchen, which is always a good thing.

For example–let’s take a look at Shagbark’s whole spelt berries.

I happen to really like the flavor and texture of spelt berries, but I didn’t really know that about myself until I bought some of Shagbark’s and cooked them up to use as a replacement for the wild rice in my typical Thanksgiving day dressing which features many native American foods. Spelt isn’t native to the US in the same way that wild rice is, but it was grown right here in Athens county, instead of up in Minnesota, so I wanted to give it a shot and see what it was like.

The flavor of spelt is deep, dark and rather rich. It’s chewier than wild rice, and has more character in every way, and it added a great deal of goodness to my dressing recipe. Spelt, which is a more ancient and some would say, “primitive”: form of wheat, also has more fiber than whole wheat, more protein than wheat, and is higher in B vitamins than wheat. It’s bloody well good for you, but even more importantly is that it tastes nutty and brown and autumnal and good.

So, now that I know I like spelt, I resolved to come up with some other ways to use it.

I decided to give it a shot in an Indian-style pillau, or pilaf, as it is called in the Mediterranean countries. Rice is nearly always used in Indian pillaus, and usually in pilafs as well, but I wanted to see what would happen if I hauled off and cooked up spelt the same exact way I would rice. Don’t get me wrong, I adore rice and always will, but it isn’t exactly going to be growing in my backyard any time soon.

Besides–the South Indian style spices I had in mind couldn’t help but taste divine with the deep, rich flavor of spelt berries. I planned on using onions, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, mustard seed, cumin, dried chilies, fresh turmeric, fresh curry leaves, and garlic, all cooked together in ghee for a tarka. A tarka is a mixture of seasonings cooked in oil or ghee until they are browned and fragrant. When it is finished cooking, the tarka is stirred into a pillau, dal or curry at the end of the dish’s cooking time, and the lid is clapped on to trap the fragrance of the spiced ghee, only to be removed just as the dish is served.

As for cooking the spelt itself, it was simple–I just sauteed one cup of the berries in a tablespoon of ghee in a pot, added four cups of vegetable broth, about a teaspoon of freshly grated turmeric root, and salted it lightly, and brought everything to a boil. The lid went on the pot, the heat was turned down so that the spelt simmered, and I cooked it, stirring now and again for two hours–basically until the spelt berries were tender, but still chewy.

All of the liquid is not absorbed with this cooking method, so before adding the tarka, the excess broth has to be drained off. I saved mine and put it into the freezer for use in a soup or stew later, as it not only has a lot of flavor in it, it has some of the water-soluble vitamins from the spelt that shouldn’t be wasted.

So, how did it end up tasting?

I thought it was delicious–nutty, spicy, fragrant, chewy and just plain old downright good. Paired with a bowl of masoor-moong dal with mushrooms and greens, it was highly nutritious Indian style meal made with primarily local ingredients that was soul-satisfying and VERY filling. And it was very warm, too, which is very important on these long cold winter nights.

Indian-Style Spelt Pillau
Ingredients:

1 cup spelt berries
1 tablespoon vegetable oil or ghee
4 cups vegetable stock
1 teaspoon freshly grated turmeric root (or 1/2 teaspoon dried powdered turmeric root)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons ghee
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
1 3″ long cinnamon stick
5 green cardamom pods
4 whole cloves
5 dried Indian chilies
1 1/2 teaspoons black mustard seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons grated fresh turmeric root (I teaspoon dried if you cannot find the fresh)
12-18 fresh curry leaves
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

Method:

In a medium sized pot, saute the spelt berries in the one tablespoon of ghee or oil. After a minute or so, add the broth, turmeric and salt, bring to a boil, put a lid on the pot and then turn the heat down so the berries simmer, and cook, stirring now and again, for two hours, or until the spelt is tender, but still chewy.

After the spelt has cooked for one and a half hours, start making the tarka:

Melt the ghee in the bottom of a heavy-bottomed skillet. Add the onion slices and sprinkle well with the salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until the onions are a light golden color. Add the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and chilies, and cook, stirring until the onions are a deep golden color. At this point, add the mustard and cumin seeds, as well as the turmeric root, curry leaves and garlic, and cook, stirring until the onions are a deep reddish brown, the garlic is golden, the leaves are a deep green speckled with browned spots and the mustard seeds have sizzled and popped. Remove the tarka from the heat–it should be ready just as the spelt is done.

Drain the spelt, and reserve the cooking liquid for a later use. Return the spelt to the pot it was cooked in, and pop it onto the fire again, and stir, cooking briefly to remove any excess liquid that is clinging to the grains. Then, scrape the tarka into the pot, stir it thoroughly into the spelt and put the lid tightly back on the pot, remove it from the heat and leave it closed until you serve it.

Serve with a dal of some sort, and enjoy.

Note: If you cannot get fresh turmeric root which is easily found in most Indian markets that have a good produce section, go ahead and use the dried. It is still good and good for you, but it lacks the sharp, medicinal, somewhat flowery scent and flavor of the fresh root. The roots should be firm when you buy them, and they are easily peeled with either a vegetable peeler, or the edge of a regular tea spoon. I use a fine microplane grater to grate mine. You might also want to note that turmeric is used as a dye in India and other Southeast Asian countries, so if you don’t want your fingertips stained yellow like mine are in the pictures above, wear gloves when preparing the fresh roots! (Fear not if you don’t have gloves, but want to try the fresh turmeric flavor. The stain wears off your hands in a day or so, especially if you scrub your hands vigorously!)