Keema Matar

I am in love with this dish. I am so in love with it that I want to marry it, except that I am already married. Well, that and I like having an attractive husband and as my father would say about this dish, "I've thrown up better looking things than that."

But he eats Twinkies dipped in catsup so what does he know?

This dish is minced beef or lamb with peas and mint. It sounded like a really bad idea when my husband first asked me to make it. I was of the opinion that mint is strictly for chocolate, ice cream, and bourbon, not freaky meat dishes. But I decided to try it anyway.

And that was just the beginning of the rest of my life.

I serve Keema Matar with plain yogurt (Horizon Cream Top is my new favorite) and naan bread that we buy at the Indian grocery, but you could serve it with basmati rice or Hunza rice.

Keema Matar (Collected from trial and error with several different recipes)

1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 two inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon salt
2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 1/2 pounds ground beef, lamb, or a mix of both
10 baby carrots cut into quarters
1/2 cup of green peas
1 tablespoon chopped mint (I use dried)
a generous handful of chopped cilantro


In a deep pan heat the oil over medium heat.

Add the onions and ginger and fry until onions are slightly golden.

Add the garlic, turmeric, ground coriander and salt. Fry for a minute or so.

Add the sliced tomatoes and fry for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly so the spices do not burn.

Add the minced meat and carrots. Brown the meat, breaking up any lumps. This takes about 10 minutes and also breaks your tomatoes into tiny pieces.

(At this point try not to faint from delight at the great smell coming out of your pot.)

Add the fresh cilantro and mint. You can also add a diced fresh green chili now if you like spicier foods. We have a toddler so I skip the heat.

Voila! Keema Matar! It's so easy and quick that it has become our go-to busy night dinner.

Nobody's Gruel

Gruel has a really bad reputation. It sounds like something that is a mixture of pig slop and horse puckey that you could use for Spackle. In literature and movies, we feel sorry for kids like the young Jane Eyre and poor little Oliver Twist because they are so starving they're willing to eat gruel but can't even get more of that horrible mess.

But thanks to my friend Susan, Super-Mommy to Thom-O and Sugar Magnolia, I have discovered that I love gruel. Gruel is nothing more than real oatmeal. "Real" meaning not the rolled oats two minutes in the microwave stuff that comes in an envelope with a ton of weird powder at the bottom. No, real oatmeal is that stuff that is teeny little bouncy, pearly, and shiny whole grain. When it is cooked properly it is chewy and nutty tasting and is a great breakfast.

I make mine on Sunday night and then microwave it all week long. It's really good enough to serve as a bread-pudding type of dessert if you add enough brown sugar - not that I would do that...very often.

We have a large gigantic ridiculously over sized slow cooker because some chick at a party once told my then-single husband that slow cookers are great as long as you don't buy a small one. So he went out looking for the largest slow cooker available. I think it is probably big enough to feed China and still have leftovers, so you might need to adjust this recipe to your cooker.

Here's a funny thing I noticed recently about buying steel-cut oats. If I buy the McCann's Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal it costs about $9 per can at Whole Foods. But if I buy the Whole Foods brand of organic steel-cut oats it is $3 per can. Why? I have no idea because I haven't opened my can of Whole Foods brand yet. Just something to ponder.

Obviously you can add any fruit that you want to this as long as it is a dried or hard fruit. Bananas would not do well in the slow cooker for 8 hours but apples do fine. Nuts are best added after cooking.


Slow Cooker Real Oats Oatmeal (Collected from trial and error)

2 cups steel-cut oats
8 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon of apple pie spice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped dried apricot
2 apples, peeled and chopped
1 cup raisins

Some slow cookers need to be sprayed with non-stick spray first. I've found that if I use enough water mine does not.

Mix all ingredients into slow cooker. Give a stir. Set on low heat and cook for 8 hours. Keep in mind that I have added one cup of water for every hour that I plan to cook the oatmeal. So if you want to let your slow cooker do its thing for more than 8 hours (i.e. you're sleeping in) add another cup of water for each extra hour.

In the morning, wake up starving because you have smelled this goodness cooking all night. Don't stop to pee or brush your teeth. Just head straight for the slow cooker and dish up some oatmeal. Add milk or cream (to thin), some banana slices and a few chopped walnuts. Eat.

Oh and be sure to drink plenty of water all day long because real oatmeal is packed with fiber. Without tons of water you might find yourself in an uncomfortable situation later.

Before.

Cheese Buttons

Cheese Buttons are a great party nibble. They are small enough to tote around on a cocktail napkin with a green-apple-tini or a fancy umbrella-laced drink, easy to make, unusually delicious, and will make your guests think you are a very talented gourmet who spent forever slaving in the kitchen.

In reality, we never have parties and I just make these for us to keep in a cookie jar to nibble on at will. I don't even like martini's apple or otherwise; but IF you are the type to have parties with martinis and fancy umbrella drinks, cheese buttons would look nice with your spread.

I make mine in the food processor and doing so creates a light, smooth dough. The texture would be more rustic without a food processor, but I believe they would still taste great.

Remember that you can easily change quantities in this recipe.

Be careful not to "whiz" (the scientific term) the dough for too long in your food processor. You want to whiz it long enough to form a lump of dough. If you keep whizzing it after that lump forms the dough will get hot, melting the butter and cheese and creaming everything together. Then it is a mess to work with. So be careful.

Cheese Buttons (Collected and adapted from Southern Living - I think)

1 small package extra sharp shredded cheddar cheese (2 1/2 to 3 cups)
1 cup flour
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 stick of butter (margarine isn't great but is okay. It makes a different texture and taste)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whiz together all of the ingredients in your food processor. When a lump of dough forms in the bowl it is ready. The lump should form in about a minute. If it doesn't then you need to add a tiny bit more flour. Do so a LITTLE at a time until the lump of dough forms.

Drop rounded teaspoon-full balls onto a greased cookie sheet (or use non-stick aluminum foil). Do not press flat. Bake for 10 minutes. They will stay a yellow-orange color when baked so don't wait for them to turn brown. Brown cheese buttons are like yellow snow - yucky to eat.

Gobhi Alu

I always get this name wrong. It is one of my husbands favorites so I make it a lot but I can never quite remember the name. Golbi or Gobhi? Alu Gobhi? Gobhi Alu? Does it really matter? I don't think my poor pronunciation and spelling makes much of a difference to the taste. So forget about it and eat!

Gobhi Alu is another one of those easy to make dishes and is best served with Basmati rice or Hunza rice. It's best to make this in a stockpot unless you just have a really big skillet with a tight lid. I now make mine in my brand new, beautiful, awesomely worthwhile Le Creuset French Oven that my husband bought me at the Le Creuset outlet in Golden, Colorado for a quarter of the retail price. The retail store sells seconds but I can't see anything wrong with my pot. It's red and perfect.

A note about spices: I buy my spices at the Indian or Middle Eastern grocery store. Shan is the brand I typically buy because that is the brand my husband grew up with and I feel like I can trust it. Usually these spices come in bags so I save mayonnaise, spaghetti sauce, jelly and other jars and use those to store my spices. I just cut the label out of the bag and tape it to the jar.

A lot of Indian cooking calls for garlic and ginger. I usually buy garlic/ginger paste at the Indian grocery, as do a lot of Indian cooks. In this recipe I use my paste but you can certainly use fresh ingredients. Just vary according to your own tastes.

Usually in Indian dishes you "fry" some of the spices lightly before adding all of your other ingredients. This awakens the spices and gets their oils going. It also makes your kitchen smell better than a Yankee Candle.

Sometimes when I taste this dish during cooking I decide it needs more of one spice or another. The great thing about Indian cooking is that you can add more of whatever you want. So feel free to be heavy or light-handed with any of these spices.

Gobhi Alu (Collected from youtube videos and my readings on Indian cooking)

1 head of cauliflower chopped into big pieces (it's going to cook down)
2 potatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons garlic/ginger paste
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon red chili powder
2 teaspoons coriander powder
1 teaspoon dry mango powder (also called amchur - a unique almost bitter spice)
1/2 teaspoon garam masala (Target's Archer Farms is my favorite brand)
Cilantro to garnish

Heat the oil in your pan over medium heat. Add cumin seeds, turmeric powder and garlic ginger paste. When the cumin seeds start to pop add cauliflower, potatoes and salt. Cover but stir regularly. Cook until the potatoes start to get soft. At that point add the rest of the spices and turn the heat down to low. Let this cook for an additional 10 minutes. Garnish with cilantro.

You can add the powdered spices earlier but know that doing so will make your dish more likely to burn if you don't keep up the stirring. Also if you do this you might need to add a little chicken broth or water. This would change the taste a bit but it would still be great.

Easy Chick-Peasy Hummus

Hummus is delicious and it is so easy to make. In fact, the hardest part of making hummus is cleaning up the food processor when you are finished. This is especially true if you have the same KitchenAid food processor as me. The blade tends to get food stuck underneath and is a pain in the patoot to clean. But, it is still my favorite kitchen gadget.

So hummus is super easy to make and you can be very creative with your ingredients. I make it in a big batch and then my husband takes it to work all week long and I snack on it whenever I walk by the refrigerator. Because our refrigerator isn't on the main path to anywhere I have to purposefully walk by the refrigerator in order to snack, but that's neither here nor there. Except that it is there. And the hummus is really good.

I make my hummus with tons of garlic and cumin. You could go light on either of these and even eliminate the cumin altogether. You could also make this hummus with black beans instead of chickpeas. Tahini paste is essential to hummus and is made from sesame seeds. You can buy it at Whole Foods or an international market. The inital cost is often higher than buying store-bought hummus but it takes me about 3 months to go through a jar and I typically make hummus one to two times a week. I paid $5.99 for the last jar at a Middle Eastern grocery store. It is usually a bit higher at Whole Foods.

Hummus (Collected from a bunch of different ideas added together to make this one)

3 cans of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 tablespoon minced garlic or as many cloves as you want
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1-2 tablespoons ground cumin
3 tablespoons tahini paste
Olive or sunflower oil
Fresh cilantro

Mince your garlic in the food processor, if it isn't already minced. Add chickpeas, lemon juice, cumin, salt, and tahini paste and mince. When a paste begins to form open the food chute on your food processor and slowly add your oil. When your hummus is nice and smooth you have added enough oil. Be careful not to add too much oil because you can always place a little on top when you serve it. This is how it is served in Middle Eastern restaurants. Garnish with a bit of fresh cilantro.

Punjabi Chhole Revised

Last night I was searching for something quick and easy to make for dinner when I came across a chick pea curry spice packet from Arora Creations called Punjabi Chhole that had been in the cabinet for a few months. We eat a lot of chick peas in our house so I knew that this curry with some Hunza rice would make a perfect meal.

Many people wrongly assume that curry is a spice and that all curries taste the same. This is not accurate at all. I am not sure how my Pakistani husband would describe a curry, but to me a curry is sort of like a pot of beans with a lot of juice that you can serve with cornbread to sop up all the juices. That is exactly how most people in the world eat curries, only with naan bread instead of cornbread and all sorts of vegetables, meat and spices instead of just boiled beans.

You can certainly make your own spice mixes for curries and I like to do that but it does take a little time. I will post more about these later because I think it is fun to do a little experimenting with spices.

The coolest thing about this spice packet is that it is from Arora Creations and they are an organic company. So, I probably do not have to worry about having scary stuff in what I am feeding my family.

I did not follow the instructions listed in the link above because I was feeling lazy, but it still got two thumbs up from Ishtiaq and Liam even sampled a little with his spaghetti.

Punjabi Chhole (Collected and Revised from Arora Creations Spice Packet)

3 cans of chick peas (garbanzo beans are the same thing)
1 packet of Punjabi Chhole spice mix
1 pint of cherry tomatoes, cut in halves
1 can of chicken broth
1 bunch of cilantro, or to taste
1 small onion, or to taste
salt
pepper
olive oil

Drain and rinse your chick peas. Over medium heat, add a dash of olive oil to a non-stick skillet and when heated, add the chick peas and onion. Let that cook a few minutes and then add the spice packet. At this point I added salt and pepper but you can omit it since there is probably some of both in the spice packet. Let the spices and the chickpeas cook a bit over medium heat. Spices in Indian cooking need to bloom on the heat for a bit to fully release their flavors.

When you are ready, or at least after about a minute, add the chicken broth and tomatoes. Lower the heat and let this simmer for about 8-10 minutes, adding water or more chicken broth if necessary. You will want a gravy with this so don't let it get dry. Add the fresh cilantro.

Eat with basmati rice (like Hunza rice from my lamb chops post) or flat bread.

More Than Quiche Lorraine

I love quiche. It is so easy to make and you can put nearly anything in it, making it a perfect dish for those Old Mother Hubbard days when the cupboard is mostly bare. Today I woke up wanting to make a quiche and while I was considering what to put in it I realized that all I really had was some frozen asparagus stalks that I had saved to flavor soups and stews, some goat cheese crumbles, a jar of Parmesan cheese (the real stuff, not the powdered stuff), onions, two tomatoes from my patio, garlic from a jar, and carrots. So this is what I used.


I think that all quiche needs a green vegetable, onions, garlic, carrot and cheese. Because Ishtiaq is Muslim, we don't eat pork meaning bacon is not an option for us. Bacon is probably the most popular quiche ingredient in the world but it isn't necessary as long as you have something else salty and savory to take its place. If you look at quiche recipes you will see that they vary widely in ingredients, measurements, and cook times. This recipe is influenced by my reading of many different recipes and then just inventing one that is easy for me. You truly can put whatever you want in quiche.

In regards to eggs and milk, we get our eggs from a local farmer and they are really strong. So I only use about four. I've seen recipes that call for six but that's too many for us. Also, I find that quiche is better is you use a mix of heavy whipping cream and milk. I keep heavy cream on hand because my son really likes scrambled eggs and adding a dash to the eggs before scrambling makes them nice, light and fluffy. You could certainly use Eggbeaters and milk instead of cream. Again, quiche is really forgiving and versatile.

I use a store-bought, deep dish pie crust because I am terrible at making them. Recently I was visiting Boot Hill in Dodge City, Kansas and an old woman who runs a gift shop there told me that the tricks to a great pie crust are vinegar and ice cubes. Maybe so but I am currently content to let the nice people at the grocery store provide me with my pie crusts.

My ingredients are going to be estimates only because I just tend to dump things into my pan and bowls during preparation. Don't let that throw you because exactness also isn't necessary when making quiche.


Quiche Bercha (Collected from Lots of Different Places)

Remember that all of these ingredient measurements are to taste.

4 large eggs
1/2 cup heavy cream (heavy whipping cream is heavy cream)
3/4 cup of milk
2 ounces of goat cheese crumbles
1/3 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon of chopped garlic
1/4 teaspoon salt
8-9 cranks of black pepper from the pepper mill
1/4 teaspoon of Tabasco sauce
1/4 cup of asparagus, diced
3 cherry tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup carrots, diced
1 very small onion
A few splashes of chicken broth (optional)
1 deep dish pie crust
Olive oil


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a skillet heat olive oil and add carrots. Add salt and pepper. Cook until slightly soft, add asparagus and onion. Cook until all vegetables are soft and add garlic. During the cooking process I like to splash in a little chicken broth to keep my vegetables from getting too brown. This also deepens the flavor.

While vegetables are cooking, place pie crust on a cookie sheet for support and to catch bubble-overs while baking. To pie crust add the cheeses, tomatoes, and, when cooked, the vegetables.

In a bowl mix Tabasco sauce, eggs, milk, and cream. Mix well and pour over the things in the pie crust.

Bake until set. Mine took about 25 minutes to bake. It is set when it no longer jiggles. Quiche needs to sit before cutting for about 15 minutes at the very least or it will fall apart. My husband usually cannot wait that long so we cut our after about five minutes and eat it as a casserole instead of a pie. But it's quiche! You can do what you want!


(I am still figuring out how to get photos set into these blog posts so figure my poor layouts.)