Mujadarrah (Jordanian Rice and Lentils)

I borrowed Deborah Madison's ``Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone'' from the library.



This one looks like it might one to snipe off EBay or buy off bestbookbuys.com. I have a number of vegetarian cookbooks, having been raised somewhat vegetarian, but really only Yamuna Devi's Indian Vegetarian seems to have reached this level of depth and taste, and it's not an easy, daily cookbook. Madison has simple, to-the-point recipes that capture the core of a dish, like Elizabeth David, but David is shot through with those occasional, little, ineffable extra gems in her writing.

But even so, I just like reading Madison, maybe more than David. I feel like there's so much to learn, and many of the Cal-world-modern flavors and ideas are new to me, having been schooled by Hazan. This is definitely the first Jordanian dish I've ever made -- and I cooked it entirely wrong, not following Madison at all. But it still turned out tasty, which is a big credit to Madison in my opinion.

The problem was that I didn't have white Basmati rice, only brown Basmati, and I had to made dinner quickly and then leave for a late-evening appointment. And we know that brown rice cooks slowly.

So I put in the lentils, toor daal in Hindi or yellow pigeon pea gram lentils in English, and then the rice, as Madison said, and then I realized the brown Basmati would never finish on time. So I transferred to a pressure cooker. Which cooked the brown Basmati on time but made a slush out of the toor daal. And yet, it was good.

The beauty of Mujadarrah, what separates it from an Indian daal, is that there's no spices, no masala, only olive oil, black pepper and onion as the flavor. It is a simplified, highlighted daal, a simple khicherie.


Mujadarrah

Slice an onion into 1/4 inch rounds. Fry in medium-low in 6 tablespoons of olive oil (you know you can't got wrong now) until its mahogany colored. Meanwhile boil 1 1/4 cup of rinsed, sorted lentils (you can use green, brown, or yellow) in 1Q water and a little salt for about 15-20 min. Then add the rice, brown or white, and much black pepper (to taste). Cook covered until the rice is done, about 15 min for white and 1 hour for brown rice. When you're done, then mix in about half of the onions and use the rest to top the servings.

Simple, uses very few ingredients, and very tasty.

Crab Cakes

Yesterday I made crab cakes for the first time. On Mother's Day when I was leaving the restaurant my sister took my mom and wife, I overhead someone telling the waiter ``Those were the best crabcakes I've ever had.''

I've always loved crabcakes. I never made them myself though. I used to buy frozen Maryland crabcakes from Trader Joe's in Los Angeles and cook them in a little toaster oven in my kitchen-less studio apartment. Trader Joe's was always a little too hectic though.

So anyway overhearing that guy say that triggered my crabcake desire. Then summer vacation started and we wanted to celebrate so we went to a nearby restaurant and ordered.. crabcakes. They were good, but pricey. Then a few days ago we were at Costco and bought a 1 pound can of crabmeat for $15 which is a good price I think.

I started off by reading Jacques Pepin's recipe. He always surprises me with his subtlety and .. artistry. There's really no other word for it. So I made something like this:

1 pound crab meat, store mayonnaise, 3 ounces of white bread, black pepper, a little red pepper, olive oil. Some thyme, dill if you have it. Mix it up, pat into cakes and shallow fry. They are pretty loose.

Pepin recommends a garnish which is lovely: 1 avocado, 1 tomato, olive oil, red wine/balsamic vinegar, black pepper. Chop, mix and serve the cakes on top.

From doing this I learned something. The crab cakes I made were simpler than any I've had before. Not as many spices and flavorings. Not as much bread. What I learned was that Pepin, being a master chef, was just trying to highlight the crab, adding just a few touches here and there. Whereas when you buy crabcakes at a restaurant, they're often trying to stretch the crabmeat.

My crabcakes were better because they had way more crab in them! Even compared with expensive restaurants and Trader Joes.

The only flaw with my crabcakes was that they didn't really hold together that well. They were a bit like a crab hash. Which means add egg. The other thing to do is to make your own Mayonnaise. Next time.

You can buy a can of crab meat or steam a live crab and pick it out yourself --- or you can go crabbing like my friend took me once, but if you get wild crab it's very good just by itself, steamed or boiled.

Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise is easy, you take an electric mixer, beat egg yolks, then slowly dribble in olive oil until it's mayonnaise.

Tartar Sauce

Tartar sauce is mayonnaise, finely chopped pickles (you can use a food processor or grater,) chopped onions, lemon juice, and salt and pepper.

Crab Cakes from Jamee Ruth (whom I've never heard of)

1 pound of crab meat, chopped onion, 1/4 cup mayonnaise chopped cilantro, 3 tablespoons breadcrumbs, 1.5 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning, chopped jalapeno pepper, salt, white pepper, 1 egg, 5 tablespoons olive oil, 1/4 cup all-purpose, tartar sauce. Also a baking sheet and wax paper.

Pick any shell from 1 pound of lump crab meat. Gently blend the crabmeat, onion, mayonnaise, cilantro, some of the breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs, the Old Bay, jalapeno, salt and pepper, but don't overmix. Stir in the beaten egg. Add breadcrumbs until the mixture holds together as cakes. Make 4-8 cakes on wax paper, saran wrap and chill for 30 minutes to 24 hours.

Mix the remaining tablespoon of breadcrumbs and the 1/4 cup of all-purpose. Heat oil in a frying pan. Coat each cake with the flour mix and put into the frying pan for 3 minutes each side.

Pasta alla Mafia

As I said in my last post, I've been cooking from Anna Del Conte's Portrait of Pasta, a nice book. I borrowed it years ago from the library, made the Horace pasta and another one, both were excellent, then returned the book and didn't make the Horace pasta for a while. I didn't know I copied the recipe into a file on my computer. So recently I checked and found the file. I like chickpeas, and leeks are nice because they keep for a while in the fridge. Then just a few days ago I saw a copy online for $1.25 shipped so I bought it.

The recipe I made last night is in del Conte's ``modern'' recipes section. She calls it Pasta alla Mafia because of its Sicilian origin but doesn't explain the title beyond that. I've always had a fascination with the Mafia, with all gangsters. Three of my favorite movies are John Woo's ``A Better Tomorrow'' trilogy.



(3:03 is a classic shot. But looks like you can watch the whole thing on Youtube now. Which I might do. A Better Tomorrow has scenes in Hong Kong restaurants, it makes me want to make Chinese food again. But I'm prevented. Maybe I should go through that list of recipes that don't use many Chinese ingredients from Dunlop a little more tonight.)

So back to Pasta alla Mafia. I visited Sicily once, I kept thinking whether to go to Corleone or not, in the end we didn't. Not that anyone would mistake us for Mafiosi. But many parts of Sicily were beautiful. I remember walking around in Palermo behind our hotel, which near the Quattro Canti, trying to reach the harbor to get on a hydrofoil to some island, the buildings were old, run-down, but full of character. A little like Napoli --- the pizza in Napoli was monumental.

For this Sicilian recipe you need anchovies. Anchovies have been defamed in the United States. This is probably due to incompetence. Anchovies are probably awful if you don't know what to do with them; I know what to do with them, and because I learned from Hazan, I've never tasted a bad dish with anchovies in it --- in fact I've tasted few bad dishes at all. But I remember when I was a kid and would've parroted the idea that anchovies are awful to anyone who asked me. Only the UK eats worse than us here in the US --- the Italians and French know what to do with anchovies. But ignorance is hard to overcome. If you don't want to use anchovies in this recipe, leave them out. Put in canned tuna instead if that makes you feel better. If you want to learn to use this fine ingredient, then my advice is to get a glass jar of imported Italian anchovy fillets in olive oil. I keep mine in the fridge but I doubt it's necessary.

Pasta alla Mafia

You need anchovies, pitted olives, chilies, citrus rind/zest, spaghetti, garlic, olio. You take the citrus rind and zest and put them in a saucepan with the olio and let it mingle. Bring the pasta water to a boil. Chop the chilies, garlic and olives. Add the chilies and garlic to the oil. Throw the pasta into the water, take out the citrus rind and heat the pan. When the oil is hot, add the anchovies, and mash them up with a wooden spoon until they're just a paste. Add the olives. When the pasta done, toss everything together.

Mangiare.

Indian Chappali Kebabs

I grew up on my Mom's Indian vegetarian food. Indian food is not the easiest to get off the ground, because most dishes require a mixture of spices from tray of about 8 spices: turmeric/haldi, coriander/dhania, cumin/jeera, pepper/mirch, garam masala, poppy seeds, mustard seeds/rai, cardamom/elaichi. (Recipedelights has a nice translation of more ingredients than I have heard of.)

But once you have these spices, then you can make Indian food. The easiest starch that goes with Indian is basmati rice, but I've been trying to use up my Jasmine rice and that's good also.

I don't make Indian food much --- though I grew up on it, because my Mom lives nearby so whenever I want something I phone her --- and because once I learned a little bit about how to make it, I settled for making passable dishes without much work. But the thing is, I've never learned the art of flavoring Indian food by fine tuning each spice to each dish, nor have I learned any non-beginner dishes.

I tried learning some South Indian food but I didn't progress. I never got good and fast at dosas... which is one of my favorite foods. I need to get back on that. Lately I've been working on Madhur Jaffrey's book, and it has some meat recipes.



Since growing up I've been corrupted into eating meat, and so I tried some of these recipes. I've modified her Chappali Kebab a little, because I don't eat 1.5 pounds of ground beef in a sitting, only a half pound between me and my wife. But rather than reducing everything by 2/3, which would then call for 1/6 of an egg, (which I may try at some point,) I instead boosted the amount of chickpea flour. It's not bad, but I think that much chickpea actually changes the taste, and not all for the better. The bitterness of raw chickpea makes an appearance. But they're not bad, and they're fun to make. I think in India these are made with ground lamb or goat, since I never heard of Indians eating beef. But this is what I do:

Indian Chappali Kebabs

Get the rice going (I use a rice cooker.) Thaw .5 pound of beef (I put it in a mylar sandwich bag in warm water.) Brown about 4 tablespoons of chickpea flour (besan) in your iron pan on medium, stir from time to time. Brown a little more than 1 teaspoon each of whole coriander and cumin along with the chickpea flour. Chop a small hot green pepper, put in the mixing bowl (or use powdered red chili,) and break the egg in. Leave the pan off the heat once the chickpea flour is browned. Wait until the rice is done and the beef is thawed. When that's done, then dump the beef into the mixing bowl, and then add the chickpea flour and spices (you don't want to add warm chickpea flour to the egg without the cool beef or it might cook the egg!) Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in the iron pan, form 4 balls from the beef, flatten them into disks, and put them in the iron pan. Flip every 20 seconds, until they're done, about 2-3 minutes.

To get Jaffrey's original, which she claims to have reverse-engineered from a Manhattan take-out, use 1.5 pounds of beef, only 2 tablespoons of chickpea flour, only half an egg, and a little more coriander and cumin.

Supersonic Thai Curry with Jasmine Rice

OK so the cookies are a bit much, I agree. And this is about fast, cheap cooking that is excellent. Well here's a fast, cheap dish that dances in the mouth (not saltimbocca, though)!

I'd always liked Thai curry and Thai food in general. I took a class once at Pasadena City College with Yupa Holzner, and actually made Pad Thai (I haven't really made it consistently since, it seems to me to involve a certain amount of preparation.) She didn't teach me how to make curry either. From Bhumichitra's book, I learned to make a vegetarian curry, and then I simplified it until I've got the cheapest, easiest, and fastest yellow Thai curry. Its a pretty good book but its a little long on ingredients.




If you're in the San Fernando Valley, then most Sundays the Thai Wat of Los Angeles has food stalls, made by members of the Wat. There's some of the best Thai food there, we used to go from West L.A.

So to eat curry, you will need to prepare Thai jasmine rice ahead of time. I have invested in a nice rice cooker, since I eat Asian food constantly. It's a great time saver, especially the programmable timer, but I used to cook rice in a pot for a long time. These recipes are for 1 person. All regular white rices cook according to the same recipe.

Rice in a Pot

Take 1 cup rice into the pot. Pour in water, stir and drain 1-2 times to wash the rice, finally drain it thoroughly. Then add 2 cups water, a pinch of salt, and if you like, some oil. Cover and boil. When it just starts to boil, lower the heat to a very slow simmer. Done in about 20-40 minutes. Check the pot as little as possible --- open it quickly, tilt the pot, and use a spoon to peek at the bottom of the pot, if there's water, put it back, if not, the rice is done.

Supersonic Yellow Thai Curry

You need: a pack of yellow Thai curry, 1-2 cloves garlic, 1-2 potatoes, 2-3 green onions, a can of Thai coconut milk, soy sauce, salt, oil (peanut, canola or olive are best,) sugar

Chop the garlic and fry in oil (about 1 tablespoon) on medium heat. Chop the potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes or smaller. When the garlic is a little transparent and golden, add a tablespoon or so of the curry and stir-fry for 30 seconds --- it may spatter so be careful! Now pour in 1/3 can of coconut milk and let it cook for about 1 minute, then sweep the potatoes in and cook for 5-7 minutes. Meanwhile chop the green onions --- chop the white finely and the green into slanted slices about 1" long or so. Add the green onions to the curry in 5-7 minutes, then sugar, salt and soy sauce to taste. Eat with the rice.