First Picture of Kat

Hello, everyone.

This is Kat, in the hospital in Columbus, getting treatments to make her lungs stronger, and her breathing better.

No pictures of me yet, however!

I am going up to Columbus tonight to be with her; Zak came and brought Morganna back so she could go to school tomorrow, and is picking me up and heading back out this evening.

We’ll stay up there as long as it takes.

Until then, Tigers and Strawberries will be quiet–go to visit Habeas Brulee and see what the next Spice is Right challenge will be–and when I can get to it–I will post the roundup for challenge six here. But, right now, I have been concentrating on healing myself and making colustrum and milk for Kat, and tomorrow, I will be concentrating on holding her and loving her.

I figure you all understand.

Thank you for all of the positive comments and energy–it has meant a great deal.

News Flash!

This isn’t Barbara, but Zak.

Barbara went into labor prematurely this morning, and, at 11:20am, after a less than 2 hour labor (!) Kat entered the world. Since Barbara was only 34 weeks or so along, the docs are concerned about Kat’s lungs, as she’s having trouble breathing on her own. They transferred her to a larger hospital, and Barbara is home now. I’m going to be heading out in a short while so I can spend the night by Kat’s side.

She’s beautiful.

Both Kat & Barbara.

I’m sure Barbara will give her own views — as always — as soon as she can.

Back to School With Black Cardamom: The Spice is Right VI

Black Cardamom (Amomum subulatum) is one of those spices that I use rather often, but about which I don’t know much.

I first encountered it in the kitchen of the Pakistani/ Bangladeshi couple who were my first personal chef clients. The box was marked in Hindi and transliterated Hindi (Hindi in English letters) as “Kali elaichi” and for a time, I only knew it by that name. I finally found a photograph of the big, hairy-looking seedpods in Monisha Baradwaj’s excellent book, The Indian Spice Kitchen in the same entry as true cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum).

From my first experience with this spice, I was captivated by its smoky scent and medicinal flavor. I used it with a spare hand in meat dishes for my clients, and then, after finding them at the local Indian market, in meat dishes in my own home. I really love the sharp smoked savor it gives bhoti gosht, a simple dish of meat (I usually use beef, but lean lamb is also delicious) cubes braised with spices quickly in a pressure cooker with minimal liquid. After the meat is tender, the pressure is released, the lid is removed and the water is boiled away, leaving only the meat cubes coated in a paste of wet and dry spices, including black cardamom.

According to Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages, like true cardamom, black cardamom is a member of the ginger family, and is used all over Northern India. Many books consider it to be an inferior substitute for the more familiar, smaller green cardamom pods, but both Katzer and I agree that this is not so–the spice is used in its own way and in its own right in different dishes than green cardamom.

For example, green cardamom is used in both sweet and savory dishes, particularly the refined dishes of the Mogul tradition, while black cardamom is used exclusively in savory foods, and it tends to be used in more rustic, homestyle foods where its camphorous aroma enhances the strong flavors of ginger, garlic, chiles, cloves, cinnamon and black pepper.

I was excited, years later, to find out that it is also used in the cuisine of Sichuan. When I joyfully got my hands on a copy of Fuchsia Dunlop’s excellent Sichuan cookbook, Land of Plenty I was thrilled to discover a recipe for a dish I had eaten several times and enjoyed immensely as a waitress at Huy and Mei’s restaurant, Red Cooked Beef with Turnips. Every other red-cooked beef recipe had not included the black cardamom, which in Mandarin is called “Cao guo,” and when I tried them, they never tasted right! I had despaired of ever tasting that beloved homestyle dish again, until I tried Dunlop’s recipe and as the beef slowly braised over the course of the day, the scents that had lingered in my memory for over a decade began wafting through my house. I knew before I even bit into my first taste of it, that Dunlop had guided me to Huy’s recipe and I was intensely grateful.

In Chinese medicine, Black cardmamom is used to alleviate cold and damp in the digestive system, particularly the spleen, and is used to help prevent pregnancy induced nausea. (That is good for me to know!) It is also used to prevent miscarriage.

For my recipe using black cardamom, I present to you Fuschia Dunlop’s Red Cooked Beef with Turnips–one of the very first recipes I presented on this blog, months and months ago. It is a very warming dish, and in the coming days of autumn, will be very welcome again at my table, when I can stomach the strong smell of beef again!

A Quick Health Note

Things are quiet here at Chez Barbara, as I am camped out on the couch, “relaxing.”

I had my now biweekly prenatal checkup yesterday, and after months of my blood pressure being on the low end of normal, it hiked up alarmingly.

So while I am not on official bedrest as I was the last month of my pregnancy with Morganna, I am supposed to take it easy, which means no cooking.

Which also means less posting, most likely.

I will probably be back later today with a post about food in the news or some such, and I will start thinking of essays to write for a while to keep everyone informed and entertained, but for now, I am stuck on the couch and should probably rest some more, in the hopes that the blood pressure will chill out.

The Spice is Right Reminder: Back To School

This is just a quick reminder to all those spice bloggers out there that the deadline for The Spice is Right VI: Back to School is coming upon us fast. This time around, the challenge is to pick a spice that you have either never used, or know very little about, and learn about it. Find out what it is used for, where it is from, who originated its use, what its main culinary uses are, if it is used medicinally or aromatically, and what the folkloric and mythic connotations, if any, are.

And then, write us a post about the spice, reporting what you have learned, and feature it in a recipe that you have never cooked before, preferably one that is from a different cultural or ethnic background than yourself.

The full rules and how tos of entering are here.

The deadline is September 15th at midnight EST.

And, once again, I would like to thank Danielle of Habeas Brulee for stepping in to host The Spice is Right for the next few months while I am busy giving birth and getting back into the swing of being the mother of a newborn again. She will be posting the next theme at her blog after I post the roundup for this month here, and I really hope that all of you wonderful spicy folks flock on over and check out what she has planned. I think that the challenges she poses will be fun and fascinating to one and all.