I Have Returned

I want to thank everyone who has written me messages on my blog, sent email, and tracked down my husband on LJ to express concern, encouragement and good wishes. Your love and thoughts meant a great deal to me while I was recovering from the surgery, and I cannot really express how much it means to me that people from all around the world have been thinking of me while I was recuperating.

Let me tell you how I am doing.

Physically, I am absolutely great. I look better than I have in years (that would be the gallbladder diet, I expect), and for the first time in over three years, I have had a cessation of the nausea that plagued me off and on, as well as the phantom fevers which would come and go like heat lightening in summer. Both my GP and my surgeon think that my gallbladder was acting up for a long time, it was just that until the upper-right quadrant pain started, there was no reason to think that my symptoms had diddly to do with my gallbladder. The nausea was attributed to various medications, anxiety and post partum depression, and everyone just shrugged about the fevers, since they were low-grade and never lasted longer than a day, usually less than that. But I feel amazingly fine. I’ve lost enough weight to wear size 12 jeans again, and for the first time in years–I can eat anything with impunity.

I am back to having a cast iron stomach, it seems. Well, I still don’t eat shellfish, being that allergies can kill, but other than that, I can eat whatever I want and I don’t get sick. Lots of folks who have their gallbladders removed are not so lucky, and I feel for each and every one of them and I thank God every day that I was so lucky. No pain. No nausea, no intestinal issues, no gas–that is the best–I can eat beans, dal, broccoli–tons of onions–and nothing gives me gas. Nothing. I am eating dal like a madwoman!

But what is interesting, is I don’t eat nearly as much as I once did. I eat smaller portions, and am perfectly satisfied. I am wondering if my stomach shrank down to a more normal size for the month when I was living on basically rice, lettuce apples, and crackers. (At the end, it was just the crackers. And water. Nothing else but coffee. That, I refused to give up.) Whatever the reason, I just do not eat as much. My stomach tells me when it is full, and I stop, and all is well. For a long time, I had been having trouble knowing when I was full, and so I would eat more than I needed and that contributed to weight gain.

But I guess not anymore.

Emotionally–well that is another issue.

See, the truth is, the reason I didn’t write for so long is that I am going through really heavy therapy right now to help me get over the trauma that happened nearly twenty years ago during my divorce and custody battle with my ex-husband. Things go so scary and screwy and messed up that I now have two highly qualified therapists telling me that I have post traumatic stress disorder. And–they are right. I can read a textbook–and I know my symptoms, and yeah, yeah, it’s there all right.

A few months back, I had a breakdown and ended up with a friend helping me find a good therapist who specializes in trauma cases and women’s issues, and so I have been seeing her once a week for a couple of months. And we are dredging out the painful memories and slowly, going back and letting me feel the emotions that I could not express then, and express them now in a safe situation. And, in turn, we are disconnecting the emotional content to these memories so that when I remember–I do not have to relive the situation.

So, right before the gallbladder surgery, the therapy also got very intense, and so, frankly, that is what I have been dealing with. The holidays always make everything worse for me, and so that was where I was. In a not so pleasant place in my head, and in no way, shape or form, was I up for writing about food, or really, much of anything.

But–I am back. I am feeling much better emotionally, and am on a much more stable footing. I feel stronger than I have in, well, forever it seems, so I am back on duty, and will be blogging at least three times a week for the rest of the year, and hopefully, even more when the new year rolls around.

Once again, thank you all so very much for your kindness. It has blown me away.

Love and peace to you all.

The Gallbladder is Gone, Gone, Gone!

I am home, with three kitties curled up in bed next to me, and am feeling really pretty good. The percoset has kept the pain at bay, (though it is doing diddlybupkiss for the caffeine headache, unfortunately) and I have slept most of the afternoon away. Kat and Zak are napping downstairs, the house is quiet, and I can rest and heal.

Thank you all for your support while I have struggled to write about foo:, the topic had become next to impossible for me to care about. At the end of this ordeal, nearly everything I ate caused pain or nausea, or on lucky days, both. But thanks to you all who stuck with me through the long stretches of silence with a recipe here and there.

From here on out, things will improve.

Thank you all again–you are the best!

Surgery is Scheduled for Tomorrow

So, the gallbladder surgery that was scheduled for earlier this month is actually happening tomorrow morning.

Wish me luck and look for more posts on more fun topics like food in the future.

Meatless Monday: South Indian Style Aloo Mattar

Recently, I have been delving more deeply into the cuisines of the southern states of India. I had eaten in a couple of South Indian style restaurants once or twice, but I was not impressed with the food. However, after following the blogs of so many talented Indian cooks, and reading Cooking With Pedatha, I have become convinced that the restaurants were not very good, and have become inspired to learn more about the beautiful foods from the southern regions of India.

I mean, really, I already like vindaloo, which is from Goa, which is in the south. And I cook a mean vindaloo myself–filled with the delicious combination of garlic, onions, mustard seed and chilies–and when I realized that, I began to rethink my whole avoidance of South Indian recipes. I thought about the flavors prevalent in these cuisines and realized that I was being completely silly, because I -liked- all of those flavors already!

One of the favorite spices of the region is mustard seed, and I have found in my cooking, that nothing beats mustard seeds fried in ghee or oil for giving a dish a nutty flavor and a satisfying “pop” when the cooked seeds are crunched under the teeth. And chilies–I am not afraid of chilies–on the contrary, I crave them. And while I am still somewhat sensitive to black pepper, I can eat it in judicious amounts, and black pepper is used commonly in the south. And coconut–coconut has been one of my favorite foods since childhood!

And then there are the curry leaves.

Oh, the curry leaves.

I have loved them since the first time I bought them in a lovely little Indian market in Columbia, Maryland. I had picked them up from the produce case and sniffed them curiously and a dear little grandmother in a gorgeous green and amber-colored sari stepped up to me and asked if I knew what they were. I did know–but I had never used them, though I was finding myself intrigued by their musky, seductive scent. She smiled, and told me all about how to use them, so of course, I put them in my basket.

The little lady (who had the most amazing hair–a long, thick braid of shimmering white down her back all the way to her waist) was very pleased, and waved goodbye to me as I paid for my purchases and left. I never saw her again, but I rather think of her as the Fairy Godmother of Curry Leaves, because she introduced them to me so graciously, that I feel as if she must of come from heaven to put on the path to more delicious Indian food.

I generally had confined my curry leaf use to dal, however, because Zak was not partial to the flavor and fragrance they imparted to any dish I cooked them in. Since he doesn’t like dal (I know, how can that be?), I would use them with profligate abandon in my dal and eat it to my heart’s content, until my very skin smelled like curry leaves.

However, with my new explorations of South Indian curry, I have been using curry leaves in many dishes–including the one I am going to give to you here. And guess what–Zak has decided that he loves them, too! Everyone who tastes these dishes loves them–and cannot get enough of them–so, in my house, South Indian cooking is here to stay, and I will likely always have a supply of fresh or frozen curry leaves on hand from now on.

So, now, let me tell you about this very picturesque dish, which is a combination of two of my favorite vegetables: potatoes and peas. (Yes, I have finally decided that peas are one of my favorite vegetables. I can hear both of my dearly departed Grandmothers up in the aether somewhere, laughing with delight, as I refused to eat them through most of my childhood, much to their mutual dismay.)

Specifically, tiny fingerling potatoes–including little blue ones–and frozen peas, as they are a really delicious and nutritious vegetable to eat all winter long. Not to mention their emerald green color looks stunning paired with the burgundy red skin and creamy white flesh of fingerling potatoes and makes pretty blue potatoes look even bluer.

This is a very simple dish, really, and no, you don’t have to use blue potatoes in it at all if you cannot get them. They just look so very pretty, and I love the colors of Indian foods so much–they remind me of the vivid colors of silk and cotton saris and the exuberant polychromatic style in which many popular depictions of Hindu gods are painted.

But what you do need to do to make this dish taste great is this–you need to use curry leaves, you need to be certain that you cook your mustard seeds in the oil or ghee until they sputter and pop, and you need to brown your onions very well. (If you do not fully cook your mustard seeds until they sputter and pop, they will be underdone, and instead of popping under the teeth in a way reminiscent of caviar, they will have an unpleasant gritty texture, and worse than that, underdone mustard is very bitter with an acrid feeling on the tongue.)

I also suggest you use ghee in this dish, but if you are a vegan and you want to use canola or another vegetable oil, I do understand. But the ghee adds a voluptuous flavor and mouthfeel to the dish that I think is very appealing.

At any rate–here is a vegetarian dish that my non-vegetarian friends and family adore, which means that most omnivores would like it.

South Indian Style Aloo Mattar
Ingredients

1 pound mixed fingerling potatoes, including some blue ones if you can get them
3 tablespoons ghee or canola oil
2 cups thinly sliced red onions
1 teaspoon salt
1-3 fresh red chilies (I used serrano), thinly sliced on the diagonal
5-8 curry leaves
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
4 large cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seed
1/2 teaspoon cumin seed
1 tablespoon coriander seed
1/4-1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2″ piece of cinnamon stick
2 cloves
water as needed
1 pound frozen peas, thawed if you wish
salt to taste
1/4 cup chopped mint for garnish
1/4 cup whole cilantro leaves for garnish

Method:

Scrub the potatoes well, and put them in a pot of cold water. Cook until tender, drain and allow to cool. Cut them in half longitudinally once they are cool enough to handle.

Heat the ghee or oil in a heavy-bottomed, deep skillet and add onions, then sprinkle with the salt. Cook, stirring, until the onions are a nice medium golden brown. Add the chilies, and curry leaves, and cook until the onions are a deeper golden color, then add the mustard and cumin seeds. Cook until the mustard seeds sputter and pop, stirring constantly.

Add the potatoes to the pan, and cook, stirring, until the cut sides of the potatoes brown lightly.

While the onions cook, grind the garlic and the remaining spices into a thick dryish paste. Add the spice paste to the pan, and cook, stirring, until the spices brown and begin sticking to the bottom of the pan. Deglaze the pan with as little water as possible–start with 1/3 cup and work up from there, being certain to scrape up all the browned bits.

Add the peas, and cook, stirring, until most of the liquid is boiled away and the spices cling to the vegetables. Add salt to taste.

Stir in the mint and cilantro just before serving.

Bohti Gosht: Delicious Cubes of Meat

This is one of my favorite meat dishes from India to make in the late fall and winter.

Why?

Because my very favorite garnish for it is pomegranate seeds. Don’t they look lovely, like sparkling garnets sprinkled over that steaming pile of meat cubes coated in a tingly spice paste? And they add crunch and flavor, too, a tangy sweetness that is a perfect counterpoint to the spices and the musky fresh green cilantro. And, of course, lemon juice–as little or as much as each diner wishes–gives the perfect acidic bite, a top note that makes your mouth want to dance and sing and shout with joy all at once.

I learned this recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s wonderful book, Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, which was one of the books I used to teach myself how to cook Indian, way, way, WAY back in the day. The recipes in this book are simple and very tasty, and it gave the first instructions I ever had on how to use a pressure cooker to make Indian food. And learning how to use a pressure cooker revolutionized my cookery immensely–and I ended up making curries on a much more regular basis than before, because I learned that even if I had to come home from work and cook dinner in an hour or two, with a pressure cooker, I cook beautiful dals, curries and stews, beans and soups that all tasted like they had simmered for hours and hours.

I liked that.

In fact, bohti gosht is the very first Indian recipe I ever made in my very first pressure cooker.

Bohti Gosht is an interesting dish, because it is not what most Americans would think of as a curry. It has no sauce–the meat is cooked in a minimum of water in the pressure cooker, and when the meat is done and the pressure is normalized, the cooker is opened, and the fire is raised to high again and the remaining water is boiled away, leaving the masala paste clinging to the braised cubes of meat.

Because it is dry, you really should serve bohti gosht with wetter dishes. A raita is lovely, as is a nice liquidy dal or a creamy vegetable curry like mattar paneer. You can also serve a wet chutney with bohti gosht–I love green cilantro and mint chutney with it myself.

Over the years, I have adapted the recipe to the point that my ingredient list looks nothing like Madhur Jaffrey’s. For one thing, hers contains curry leaves, which when I first started making this dish, I could not find anywhere. And now that they are available, my family is so used to the way I make bohti gosht, I believe they would rebel if I messed with the recipe and added curry leaves! I also use more spices than she suggests in her recipe–she calls only for commercially made garam masala, turmeric and some ground cumin, along with fresh ginger and garlic, but I never made it that way. I never liked commercial garam masala (though that changed after I discovered Penzey’s–BUT I still tend to grind my own garam masala for every day use), so I used cumin, coriander, cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon stick, green cardamom, a tiny bit of fenugreek seeds and a single black cardamom pod. I also use more garlic and ginger than she calls for, and much more than the single fresh green chili in Madhur’s recipe. I use both fresh and dried chilies, because I like the different flavors they each bring to the dish.

I like to make bohti gosht for every big Indian feast I create, because it is so different from the saucy curries that most Americans think of when they are told that they will be eating Indian food. I like to tweak with guests’ expectations, and beguile their palates with new textures, flavors and aromas. I want them to come away from my table not only with sated bellies, but with minds alight with curiosity and wonder–I want to inspire them to try ever more new and interesting foods, not only at my house, but out in restaurants and especially, at their own tables.

What sort of meat should be made into bohti gosht?

Madhur’s original recipe calls for boneless shoulder of lamb or pork, cut into 1″ cubes, but I have only made it with beef or lamb. I would dearly love to make it some time with venison, but I haven’t had a chance to try it that way. I suspect it would be divine, especially if I devised a blackberry sauce or chutney to go with it.

At any rate, here is my recipe for bohti gosht, an absolutely delicious dish that never lets me down.

Maybe someday I will try making it with curry leaves and see what happens….

Bohti Gosht
Ingredients:

4 tablespoons ghee or canola oil
2 pounds boneless stewing or braising meat, cut into 1″ cubes I prefer beef chuck or lamb shoulder
2″ cube fresh ginger, peeled and cut into chunks
6 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
1-3 green chilies–to taste, depending on how hot you like your food
2-3 dried red Indian chilies–once again, to taste
1/2 teaspoon peppercorns
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seed
2 teaspoons coriander seed
4 whole cloves
1″ stick cinnamon
6 green cardamom pods
1 black cardamom pod
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
water as needed (this depends on what the smallest amount of water your pressure cooker can handle)
salt to taste
pomegranate seeds, roughly chopped cilantro leaves and lemon or lime wedges for garnish

Method:

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet, or in your pressure cooker over medium high heat.

Add the meat, and begin browning, stirring as needed.

Grind together all of the rest of the ingredients into a fine paste except the water, salt and garnish.

When the meat is nearly completely brown, add the spice paste and cook, stirring, until the paste just begins to stick to the bottom of the pan or pressure cooker and the meat is fully browned. Deglaze the pan or pressure cooker with the smallest amount of water your cooker needs to operate. (Some models take up to three cups of water to work, while others can work with as little as a 1/2 cup of water. Mine takes 1 1/2 cups to operate properly.)

If you are browning in a pan, scrape the meat, water and spices into the pressure cooker. Bring to a boil over high heat, and close the lid on the cooker, lock it and bring it to full pressure.

Turn the heat down to low and cook for forty to forty-five minutes on high pressure for beef or venison. For lamb, cook for fifteen minutes, for pork, cook for thirty minutes.

Allow pressure to release naturally by taking the cooker gently off the heat and allow the temperature to drop on its own. When the pressure normalizes, which takes from 15-20 minutes, open the cooker, and put it back on high heat.

Bring to a boil, and cook, stirring gently, to remove the remaining water from the dish. Stir gently to avoid breaking up the meat cubes into shreds. (Though this will happen to some extent, anyway.)

When the water is boiled away, remove from heat and add salt to taste. Transfer to a heated serving platter and garnish with plenty of pomegranate seeds, cilantro and lemon or lime wedges. (I also pass bowls of the three garnishes, so diners can add as much as they like to their own portions.)

Eat with plenty of lemon juice squeezed over it, basmati rice and a saucier, wetter curry.