Explosive Chewing Gum?

A new terrorist weapon?

Nope. Just a new method of winning a Darwin Award.

What next?

Sweet Curry Something

It's a dip. It's a spread. It's a relish. It's a dressing. It's...whatever you need it to be. Best of all, it's easy.

I don't usually measure by regular teaspoon/cup kind of volumes. I eyeball it, and if it looks good, I use it. But that doesn't translate well for most people, so I'll use various types of balls for measurements and see how well that works. And keep in mind that my method of cooking is open to interpretation and the personal touch.

First, you really need a heavy-bottomed pot with a tight fitting lid. And wooden stirring impliments.

a golf ball of finely chopped red or yellow onion (not sweet)
oil/ghee to cover bottom of pot
two baseball sized tomatoes, finely chopped
two heaping coffee spoons of masala*
a golf ball of honey

Heat the dry pot to medium, then add oil when pot is hot. Add onion immediately, stir with wooden spoon, and keep stirring occasinally until onion starts to caramelize and turn brown.

Add tomatoes, cooking and stirring for about five minutes, until the tomatoes start to break down and go mushy.

Add the masala. Cook and stir another five minutes until the mixture feels thick and smells wonderful.

Add the honey. Mix well. Wait till it starts to bubble, then put the lid on, turn the heat down to the lowest setting, and let simmer about forty minutes without peeking. It's not going anywhere.

After forty minutes, do a taste test. If it's too spicy, add a little more honey to adjust the flavor. If it's too sweet, add a little more masala (but if you do this, you need to let it keep cooking at least another ten minutes; raw masala is not recommended for your digestive system).

It should be thick-ish, and dark red/brown in color. If you think it's too thin, you can let it cook a little longer with the lid off to reduce it; but it will also thicken a little more as it cools.

You can use it hot or cold on meat, vegetables, rice, pasta, bread -- just about everything except ice cream (and I won't make any bets about that, either).

*Masala is an Indian spice blend. You can get powder blends and paste blends; and they come in hot, medium, and mild. Which one you use is up to you. For my first batch, I used an MDH brand powdered chana masala blend (it's fairly hot). You can also use any of Patak's curry paste blends.

This "recipe" is only a guide. Adjust it to your own tastes.

Enjoy!

Vindaloo...

...and how I make it. Hint: I take short cuts. You can, too.

The word "vindaloo" actually comes from Portugal, like the original dish. It means, "cooked with wine and garlic." Several decades and added variations from local cooks later, it has come to mean much, much more than that. These days, it means intense, concentrated, and focused flavor, full of wonderfully aromatic spices.

And you can get those spices in a jar. At least, that's where I get them.

Patak's brand is a friend of mine. Most grocery stores with international clientelle will stock them. There are verly likely other brands. This is the one I like. You can use the one you like.

So, on to cooking...

You really do need a dutch oven with a heavy bottom and tight-fitting lid. If you don't have one, you might try using what you've got, but be prepared for some burning and bitterness.

While you're rough-chopping a couple of medium-sized cooking onions, start the heat (medium) under the dutch oven. When it reaches temperature (and not until then!) cover the bottom with a cooking oil that has a high smoking point. I use olive oil exclusively. You use whatever you like, including ghee, which is traditional. (I do not recommend using canola or corn oils!) Dump the whole pile of chopped onions into the pot immediately after the oil -- do not wait for the oil to heat up. That would cause burning.

Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon until they start to go golden brown. Meantime, chop up some fresh tomatoes (about four to six medium) and set them aside. Then chop some vegetables. I generally use carrots, rutabaga, and potatoes. Sometimes broccoli, green beans...whatever is handy and fresh and fairly firm, anything that can stew over time without falling apart (squash, for example, would not be something I'd choose to put into it, but cooking is an individual thing, and if you like squash, go ahead and use it).

How much? Oh...that's the part that's gonna be totally up to you. I used four large carrots, half a fairly large rutabaga, and two really big baking potatoes, cut up in bite-sized chunks.

If you don't like rutabage, you can leave it out and add more carrots or potatoes or something else entirely. Ignore what your mama told you: PLAY with your food!

So. The onions are turning golden brown, and it's time to add the spice paste. For a full batch in a dutch oven, I use about half a jar. That makes it fairly hot without being impossibly hot. Use less if your mouth isn't acclimated. Add the paste and mix it really, really well with the onions and oil for a couple of minutes. Inhale the steam and appreciate what your nose tells you. Aaaaaaahhhhh...

Now add the veggies, a little at a time or all at once; it's up to you. I generally chop and add as I go -- carrots first (because they take longer to cook), then rutabaga, then the potatoes. Mix well to coat everything thoroughly with the spice mix.

Then add the tomatoes. Stir to mix. Then, when it's all covered with that wonderfully aromatic blend, add only enough water to barely cover everything. Turn up the heat to high in order to start it boiling. When it reaches a boil, put the lid on.

Now...this is the reason for the tight-fitting lid...spin the lid. If it does not spin freely, wait a few seconds and try again. Keep trying until that lid spins freely, riding on a cushion of steam generated from the boiling liquid inside the pot. Then, and only then, turn down the heat to a minimum simmer and go do something else for an hour.

After an hour (and leave it alone until then), test the veggies for doneness. I usually find them to be al dente, which is fine. If you prefer them to be softer, continue cooking awhile longer.

At any rate, this is the stage where I dump in a can of drained and thoroughly-rinsed chick peas, and just let them continue to cook for another half hour or longer. You can skip this, if you like. You're the cook, which means you're the boss.

I ladle this stew over a pile of rice and serve with any kind of bread, salad, and condiments happen to be available.

Enjoy!

Afterthought: Yes, you can use meat. In fact, most people do use meat. I made this for a potluck where food sensitivities can sometimes be an issue. If you do use meat, add it right after you put in the vindaloo paste and just before you add the vegetables.

Remembrance

A new ballad by Shelley Rabinovitch, paying tribute to those who have gone before:

Is there someone who still speaks your name with regret?
Are there flowers for you on this shore?
Is your name whispered soft on Remembrance Day?
I swore then he'd lie lonely no more.
Crosses on stone, tears mixed with bone.

Go. Read.

Wear a poppy until 11:00 am on 11 November, then retire it to a field of honor.

And thank your ancestors in whatever manner your heart tells you. Thank all of them. Even the ones you didn't like or those with whom you disagreed. Because without them, and what they did with their own lives -- whether they did good or bad -- you would not be here as you are now.

This One's For You, Suzanne

Suzanne, over at Big Blue Wave, is one of those people who gets easily sucked in to all kinds of propaganda -- as long as it's being perpetrated by those who have declared war on a woman's right to choose her own body's reproductivity.

She likes to publish posters and pictures of "aborted fetuses."


Maybe this article -- with accompanying photographs -- will wake her up to the fact that she is being used.

Three Sisters

Three Sisters is the collective name for basic food crops that were planted by American Indians long before industrialized food production and farm factories came into being. The three foods were corn, beans, and squash. And these were the staples of life.

Clearly illustrated instructions on how and why to plant your own Three Sisters garden can be found here, along with a list of the optimum varieties of each Sister.

Heritage varieties, as well as history, can be found here. And, of course, good old Wikipedia.

I've made a couple of different versions of Three Sisters stew/soup. The first time, I made a soup stock from a smoked picnic bone with a fair amount of meat left on it and all the skin, as well. Lotsa minerals in the bone. And lotsa gelatin in the skin. Making the stock was no more complicated than putting the bone and skin into a kettle/cauldron/stock pot/dutch oven, keeping it covered with water, and simmering the hell out of it all day, while I did other things. Multitasking: I can do that.

Once I figure I've got every ounce of soluble nutritional benefit from the bone and skin, I discard them. Oh, you could give the bone to the dog, if you have one, but he won't thank you for it -- there's nothing left for him, not even flavor. It's all in the stock, where it belongs.

To this nice, richly flavored stock, I add: three 19-ounce cans of beans*, drained and thoroughly rinsed (this is important)**, about half a medium buttercup squash, seeded, peeled, and cubed, and some frozen kernel corn, using one of the empty bean cans as a measure. I also add a couple of chopped medium cooking onions, and maybe some celery, if I've got it. Yes, all at once.

That's it. I bring it to a boil, turn the heat down to simmer, and let it stew merrily away for about an hour, stirring occasionally, when I think about it.

Don't look for measurements. The kitchen is my playground, and I never measure anything.

The second version involves a vegan stock: cut the root end off a couple of cooking onions (red, yellow, or white, it does not matter which), leave the skin on, and cut them into quarters; put them in the stock pot. Follow that with a whole head of garlic, cut in half through all the cloves, and leaving the skins on. Add celery, carrot, wilted greens, whatever is in the fridge. If it's in your fridge, you must like it, so pop it into the pot. You can even add apple cores; I did -- I cut the core out of a quartered apple I was going to eat and just tossed it into the stock pot without thinking. It worked out just fine. Cover with water, bring to a boil, and turn down to a simmer. I added a few sprigs of fresh rosemary, basil, thyme, and parsley, and while it was making stock, it drove me and my neighbors crazy! About the only things I do not use for making stock are potatoes and other flavor-deadening vegetables like broccoli, beans, and cauliflower. I might put them in the soup or stew, but I never use them to make stock.

Vegan stock takes much less time than a meat stock -- about an hour, no more. Discard all the semi-solid vegetable matter (if you compost, it's perfect for that), and your stock is ready for use.

Then add the beans, the squash, the corn. If you like, you can also add freshly chopped onion and celery.

The number of combinations and varieties of the Three Sisters you can use are pretty much endless. And the amounts of each ingredient you use are pretty much up to you.

And it's always better the next day. If it lasts that long. Always.

*****


*I use canned beans for two reasons. The first one is that it saves time and it's convenient.
The second reason is that with dried beans, their age will determine how long they need to soak and how long it takes them to cook properly, and there is no way to tell how old those beans are. I once tried for three days to cook some red kidney beans, before I gave up.

**Canned, dried beans like kidney beans and chick peas and others like them contain an enzyme that makes the beans ferment in the gut instead of digesting properly. This can produce the most excrutiating pain while it's on its way to producing the most obnoxious gas known to chemical warfare! Pour the canned beans into a colander and rinse thoroughly under running water until they stop foaming. Seriously. Your gut will thank you. So will your neighbors.

Death Care In Canadeath

I dunno 'bout everyone else, but I'm more than a little astonished that American opponents of universal health care and access to doctors and medicine and stuff like that there are actually pointing fingers and calling it "Death Care."

Like if you go to a doctor on a socialized medical plan, his sole aim is to kill you. And you had better not protest it, because somebody else is being forced to pay for it.

Blogger Audrey II, with her tongue firmly in her cheek, expands on that theme.

We "live" in Canadeath. Being born only to finally die. Wonder what people in other countries do when they're finished living?