Flash Gaajar Halva

The traditional version of this recipe involves large quantities of dairy, huge tubs of sugar, and ages of time spent in boiling, reducing, and stirring, along with plenty of anxiety about not burning the whole mess. This version takes about ten minutes or so. My friends Anjali and Rehmah were at my house, eating lunch. Someone mentioned sweets of some sort, and Rehmah instantly got a craving for some kind of sweet. I didn't have much else in the house, so I knocked this version out very quickly, both to calm Rehmah's cravings, and to make sure that Anjali got to taste some too (as she was about to head out for a hot date that night).

The name was not my idea. It was Rehmah's.

For the record, you had a Pakistani lady (Rehmah) and a Punjabi lady (Anjali) who loved how the dish turned out. That's how I knew it was a keeper.

1 pound carrots, grated
1 TB neutral flavoured oil (peanut, canola, corn)
2 cardamom pods, crushed
3 TB granulated sugar
1 1/2 TB cornstarch
2 cups coconut milk

In a pot, combine the carrots, oil, and cardamom. Sautee the carrots over high heat, until they are softened. While the carrots cook, whisk together the cornstarch and the coconut milk.

Once the carrots are softened, add the sugar, and stir it through. The sugar will melt rather quickly, and get caramelised. The carrots will turn a slightly darker colour too. This is what you want to happen, so don't worry when it happens.

Once the sugar is caramelised and lightly browned, add the coconut milk and cornstarch mixture. Bring the liquid to a full rushing boil, and continue to boil for one minute with constant stirring. Turn off the heat, and allow to cool down to room temperature before serving.

I can see the sun!

It's been an atrocious winter thus far, and I'm so glad to see the sun out again. It gave me such a boost this morning. And then, to be able to open up the windows wide, and let the fresh air in was even nicer. I didn't have to wear that heavy winter coat I've been running around in for the past six months.

Until I moved up to the North, I never understood why people got into such a funk around the end of the year. I loved it. It meant cooler weather, lots of vacation time at school, and plenty of friends around (when you live in Florida, people come to your state for vacation, not the other way around). Then my first winter hit, which I thought was bad. It was all over by late February, and I thought I'd never see sunlight again. The winter didn't even start in earnest until late November, and it ended in February. I thought I understood what winter really meant.

And then we got hit with that snowpocalypse in 2009 AND 2010. Yipes! And then this year hit, with the hurricane, snowstorms, and relentless cold. And I do mean relentless. I would spend weeks without seeing the sun, because it'd be all overcast and gloomy out. The weather would plummet to below freezing temperatures, the wind would blow, and it just seemed to go on and on. March rolled around, and I thought I'd have a moment of respite. No such luck. It kept being cold and gloomy.

On Friday, I headed out to Virginia to see Amma, my brother, his wife, the nephews and niece (Amma brought my sister's son along with her on this trip, so he was there too), and their friends who also popped in for a visit. It was sunny and beautiful the entire weekend, even though none of us could be fussed to leave the house. Instead, we rested, cooked, and talked. It was nice. I came back to New York, after sitting in traffic for two hours (seriously, Baltimore, where did you all need to be that everyone was on the road!?) really late at night, so it was already a bit nippy out. But this morning, I woke up, and the sun was streaming in through all the windows. It was glorious.

Yeast Belgian Waffles

Makes about 3 1/2 Belgian waffles

2 cups all purpose flour
3 TB cornstarch
1 cup water, microwaved for 1 minute
3/4 cups soy OR almond OR coconut milk, microwaved for 1 minute
1/2 packet (2 tsp) yeast
3 TB sugar
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 tsp salt

SET ASIDE
1 TB vanilla extract
2 tsp baking powder

In a bowl, combine the water, almond milk, and sugar. Whisk until the sugar is dissolved. If the liquid is body heat, whisk in the yeast. If it's too hot, add the canola oil, and then add the yeast. Either way, get the yeast dissolved. Then, add the flour, cornstarch, canola oil, and salt. Let set covered with plastic wrap for 1 hour, in a warm place (or over a bowl of warm water, if you don't have a warm place). The dough will have doubled in size. If the dough is not doubled in size, let it hang out a bit longer, until it is.

Once the dough is doubled in volume, heat your waffle iron. When the iron is hot, spray it with cooking spray, or brush on some oil. Then, dissolve the baking powder in the vanilla extract. Beat the slurry through the dough. Then, ladle on however much waffle batter your waffle iron needs. Mine needs about 3/4 cup. This will rise a lot, so don't overfill.

Bake on medium heat, if your waffle iron lets you set the heat. Serve piping hot.

These are very easy to split in half, and slather generously with jam, peanut butter, melted chocolate, or whatever combination you can come up with. Eat it like a sandwich. This way, the crispy part on the outside remains crispy, while the pillowy fluffy part inside gets soaked in delicious sweetness.

Quick Guest-Pleasing Pantry Staples

There's a few things that I like to keep on hand at all times, in case of unexpected visitors (or, in some cases, visitors that I forgot we're having). Today's podcast explores that.

So they want me to speak.

IN MADISON!
I don't know what prompted it, but apparently, there are people out there that enjoy my food so much that they want me to appear in person to talk about it. In person! So they're flying me out to Madison, Wisconsin for their Mad City Vegan Fest (this is their third year doing the 'fest). They want me to do a cooking demo. I'll get to stay with a local person who doesn't mind having me hang out there (I prefer to stay in a home versus a hotel, because something about a hotel feels so sterile and distant), for which I offered to cook in return. Hopefully my food makes the space I take up worth their while (I'm guessing that it will).

I'm speechless (not for the demo, just in general). Seriously. Being the weird kid at school, who brought smelly food (it smelled amazing to me, because it was redolent with spices, garlic, onion, and ginger, instead of that horrible meat smell that everyone else had from their tuna sandwiches or lunch meat on white bread), and sat alone at lunch will never prepare you for being that guy whose house people want to come visit, because he cooks so well. Puppy said the other day that he had a friend ask him, "So what would it take to wrangle an invite to your house for dinner?" I was pleasantly shocked.

I'm looking forward to going to a new city in a state that I've never visited before. This will be my first time in Wisconsin, and I look forward to it. From what I can see from the emails I've gotten from fans in Wisconsin, as well as the emails from the organisers for Mad City Vegan Fest, the people are really friendly (I guess that's why they call it America's heartland, right Greg Proops?) and welcoming. If anyone's going to be in the area, I'd encourage you to check out the festival. It looks like lots of fun!

Most of all, I'm looking forward to getting the word out there that vegan food can be interesting without fake meats and the like. It relies on fresh produce, whole grains, seeds, nuts, spices, herbs, and lots of lovely colour and taste. Even if I don't get anyone on board completely, I do hope to encourage people to try something a little different.

Now. The most important question. What should I make?

Now I want to know who was this Mary who would be upset at getting a second hand book.

Self Call-out

I knew that this was coming, so I shouldn't exactly be surprised. It's filthy outside, between the blistering cold and the overcast days. The sun hasn't properly shined in longer than I care to remember. As the wind blows harder, I turn more inwards. It's like clockwork. The cold weather hits with a vengeance, and I start going into full hermit mode.

And it's not that I dislike being with people. I'm generally happy when I'm around people whose company I enjoy. It's why I love working where I do--I genuinely like the people I work with, and being there is a pleasure and not a pain. Same thing goes for visiting my friends, having friends come visit me, being close with my husband, spending time with him, and doing things people-related.

All those feelings are fleeing. I'm finding reasons to cut things short. To go home early. To get off from work at the very moment that I start feeling a little shaky. The worst is that I know there's more to be done, and I'd like to have a few minutes at the end of the day to review with my boss, but I feel so frayed at the edges that I just want to be out of there as fast as I can, so I can huddle under my covers and pretend that I never woke up. I can even feel the threads of my grip on things start to come unravelled, and I know that if I don't make a quick exit, I'm going to have some kind of emotional, sobbing meltdown.

I get home, I make dinner, I talk to my husband for a few minutes, and then I retreat from everything. Either I'll read or do something else that doesn't involve being with others.

To get past this, I'm really pushing myself to have people over. Last week, we had friends from the neighbourhood come to hang out on Thursday. Then on Saturday, my boss and his son came over to hang out for a bit. So far, this week has been more or less solitary, but Saturday I'm going to teach a cooking class to a very lovely lady. Then next weekend, starting Friday early in the morning, Puppy and I are going to Virginia to visit my brother and sister.

I'm hoping really hard that it ends up being sunny out there, because these overcast days have me in a pretty nasty funk that I'm really ready to be over already.

Greens Mixed Rice

Kalantha saadam (literally "mixed rice") is a delicious group of South Indian dishes, that include lemon rice, tomato rice, coconut rice, and tamarind rice. This one isn't quite so common, but I still found it to be delicious. If you're looking to develop your own type of kalantha saadam, here are some considerations:

1) The rice should be separate and fluffy. It's why I frequently call for basmati rice in these specific recipes.
2) The dish itself should end up dry. Even in the case of tomato rice, where you have a fair bit of wet ingredients (i.e., fresh tomato), you still want to cook the spice mix down until the liquid evaporates enough to make the rice stay fluffy, dry, and separate. Mushy or wet kalantha saadam is an embarrassment. If it ever happens to you, add a bunch of other vegetables, and call it something else.
3) Nuts are always appreciated. No exceptions (unless you have some kind of horrible allergy).
4) Curry leaves are nice to have, but aren't strictly required. If you can't find it, leave it out.
5) You're focusing on the /rice/ and anything else that is with it is a condiment. That is, the bulk of the dish should be rice. The spice blend is a seasoning.
6) These are all my own opinions. If you show this to another Indian, they'll likely nod along to a couple of points, and then scream and rage with fury at the rest. This is the beauty of the food of my country. It's varied in the extreme, while still being delicious. Everyone who cooks (and frequently, even those who eat) will have strong opinions on how it should be done. That is OK.



This is a picture of what it looks like. (Please click the small picture to see the bigger version.) Notice how the rice dominates the whole thing.This is good. This is but my own version; where you can substitute, I have made notes. In this version, I skipped the nuts, but I added a large handful of curry leaves, and a few heaping tablespoons of dried fenugreek leaves. You may also add dill, cilantro, parsley, basil, or any other fresh herbs you like.

4 cups cooked rice
1 bunch collard greens (you can also use kale, any fresh herbs of your liking, or spinach. if using spinach, don't microwave. I used collard greens, curry leaves, and fenugreek leaves)
1/3 cup water
1 onion
1 TB canola oil (peanut, or other vegetable oils are fine too)
1 tsp mustard seed
1 tsp urad daal
1/2 tsp cumin seed
3 tsp sesame seed (optional)
1/4 cup roasted nuts (optional)
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp turmeric

Chop the greens (but not the herbs) roughly. In a large microwave safe container, add the water and the greens. Microwave for 6 minutes, until lightly wilted.

While the greens cook, chop the onion, and gather your spices. Heat up your wok over high heat. Add the oil, and let it get hot. Add the mustard seeds, and let them pop. Add the urad daal, cumin seeds, and sesame seeds. Let the cumin and sesame seeds pop. You might want to use your lid, because they will violently pop all over the place. Once the popping subsides, add your onions, and drop down the heat to medium (so the onions don't burn).

When the greens are wilted, chop as finely as you can with the chopping blade of your food processor. Don't add the water from the steaming unless you absolutely need it. Because they've wilted down, you should be able to fit the entire bunch of collard greens along with any herbs you like into a 7-cup food processor (which is the kind I have). This will make short work of the greens. Chop until finely processed.

Crank up the heat of the wok to as high as it'll go. Add the greens, some turmeric powder, red pepper flakes, and the roasted nuts. Toss to combine with the spices, and continue to cook for 2 minutes. Turn off the heat, and toss the greens with the cooked rice.

Serve piping hot, with any vegetable side that you like.

Sprouts

I don't have cheesecloth. I don't have a large jar. I do have plenty of tupperware though. Not the cheapo kind that's "disposable" (and there's a misnomer if ever I heard one; you go to any thrift store or yard sale, and I guarantee that you'll find actual tupperware cheaper than that stuff they sell as disposable), but the actual kind with those lids that are flexible. This is important, so stay with me.

What I did was that I started with 1/2 cup of mung beans, and soaked them in 3 cups of water overnight (8 - 10 hours). The next morning, I drained off the liquid, and rinsed them well under running water. Then, I threw it into a square tupperware container, and only locked down two corners of the lid. I kept the other two open. This will work with pretty much any container you have. Just leave the lid propped open somewhat. I used a tupperware, but you can use a pot with a slightly ajar lid. For the next three days, you'll need to rinse your sprouts at least once a day. You'll want to keep your container in a warm place that won't see much light. I used the cupboard under my sink. I vaguely recall that when you do expose them to light, you'd get some pretty foul smells going.

Anyway. Once all that's done, you'll have beautiful long sprouts from your beans. The point is that regardless of whether or not you've got the things lying around that most people say you need to make sprouts. When I read those instructions online, I tend to mentally shut down, and say "Well, that's me then. No cheesecloth, so I don't have to bother."

But you should bother. In the winter, when the days are all short and horrible, and it gets dark by 5:00, you need things in your diet that are rich in nutrients. Take the mung bean sprouts. A cup of the stuff has like 30 calories, and has all kinds of vitamins and minerals in it. It's got fibre, it's got protein, and vitamin C. Seriously, you can't go wrong. That said, if you really can't be bothered to sprout your own beans, even though I've just told you how easy it is, just go buy them. Eat your sprouts either way.

Bean Sprout Salad

1 cup of bean sprouts, rinsed
1 lemon, juiced (or 3 TB lemon juice)
1/2 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp sesame seeds
Big pinch cayenne pepper
Salt, to taste

In a skillet, heat the oil over high heat. Add the mustard seeds, and allow them to pop. Add the cumin seeds and sesame seeds, and turn off the heat. They will pop in the residual heat. Add the bean sprouts, lemon juice, and cayenne. Toss to combine with the seasoning and juice.

This dish is done lightning fast, and tastes very good. Because the sprouts are so tender, they don't really need to be cooked. A gentle warming through does the job.

Quick "Tomato Sauce"

Yes, I'm using scare quotes around tomato sauce. Why? Because I don't want to get (1) angry letters from chefs or (2) death threats from Italians who know what real tomato sauce is. Why am I posting it then? Because it's really really quick, and still serviceable. I noticed one day that I was looking for a cheap tomato sauce in a jar, because I was tired after work, and wanted to make a quick dinner. However, I read the ingredients, and they were water, tomato paste, spices, modified food starch, high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated cottonseed, canola, or soybean oil, and salt. I have no objection to salt. I love it. I also like tomato paste. But what the heck is modified food starch? Why are they using partially hydrogenated oil? And why the heck does my savoury tomato sauce need high fructose corn syrup? I HATE sweet sauces for pasta.

So, I got to thinking that if I were to make my own version, I'd use real tomatoes (or tinned diced tomatoes) along with the tomato paste, some spices, a bit of oil, and corn starch to thicken it up if necessary. Fast forward to tonight, when I opened the pantry to see that there was no diced tomato to be found. Drat. Also, I'm out of olive oil, and I'm not about to buy any more in the near future. Double drat. Also, it was past 8:00. I didn't want to make a trip to the store, because I was hungry right then, and didn't want to put back on my shoes and coat, go all the way down the four flights of stairs, and walk across the street to the dollar store to grab some tinned diced tomato. So I improvised.

I will repeat myself: this is not authentic tomato sauce. It most closely resembles a flavourful version of the jarred stuff. It's also really quick. The gin was there because I have it around the house. I don't care for vodka, and generally, wine doesn't last but a day, because if I have a bottle of wine, I'm calling friends over to help drink it. Also, gin has all kinds of botanicals in it, giving the final sauce a really nice flavour. Trust me. Use the gin. All said and done, this barely took 10 minutes or so, including chopping time. It's a lot cheaper (for me) to buy a large can of tomato paste, and make this sauce at home than it would be to spend $3+ for a jar of the sugar filled one from the store. It was also really quick.

1 TB vegetable oil of your liking
1 medium onion, diced
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/3 cup gin (substitute water if you don't have gin)
1 cup water
2 tsp cornstarch, dissolved in 1/4 cup of water from the ingredient above this one
1 tsp salt
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp thyme
1 tsp garlic powder

In a pot, heat up the oil and the onion. While the onion cooks, add the oregano, red pepper flakes, and thyme. When the onion cooks through and is softened, add the tomato paste, and stir well. Cook over high heat for about two minutes or so. You want the raw taste of the tomato to cook out, and the paste itself to lightly coat the bottom of the pot.

When you have some coating going on, throw in the gin. The tomato and gin will smell pretty great. Add about 3/4 of the water (using the last 1/4 cup or so to dissolve the cornstarch). Add the garlic powder, and stir well. Let the water come to a boil, and let it boil for about five minutes. Keep boiling, and add the cornstarch dissolved in water. Let the whole sauce come up to the boil for about a minute, until it thickens to your needs. Toss with 1 lb of pasta.

Mexican Chayote Latkes

Because that's exactly what you think of when you think of latkes, right? Mexican food? No? I wanted to keep them gluten free. If you don't care, you can use whole wheat flour.

1 cup chickpea flour
2 heaping TB rice flour
1/2 tsp cumin seed, crushed lightly (do not substitute cumin powder; if you don't have any, substitute your favourite chili powder blend)
1/3 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
1 chayote, grated
2 medium carrots, grated
1 small red onion, grated
Salt, to taste
UP TO 3/4 cup of water
vegetable oil, OR cooking spray

In a bowl, toss together the chickpea flour, rice flour, cumin seed, red pepper flakes, chayote, carrot, and onion. Coat all the vegetables with the flours. Then, a little at a time, add the water until you have a batter going. You're looking to have the flour combine with just enough water that it just comes together. You don't want too much water, or else you'll end up with ugly looking latkes like mine. You're going for pancake batter consistency.

In a large nonstick skillet, lay down a thin coat of oil. I use nonstick, because these don't stick hard, but they're heartbreaking to lose because they're so tasty. Heat the skillet over medium heat. Add, by 1/4 - 1/3 cupfuls, the batter to the skillet. Fry on one side, until you see the edges of the latke dry up. Then, using a plastic turner, flip each latke over to cook on the other side. Press down gently to get some of the liquid to leech out of the chayote, and prevent too much sticking from going on. If it looks sticky, pour a bit more oil around the edges.

Then, flip over once more to see how the bottom is coming along. If it's beautiful golden brown like mine are in the picture, remove from the heat, and serve.

Quick Daikon Pickle

There are times when I want something to go with my beans and rice, but I don't quite feel up to making a whole vegetable dish. There are other times when some pickled daikon will hit the spot. These aren't really the sour type. Instead, they're more salty. I eat them like snacks all the time.

1/4 Daikon, peeled
Salt

Slice the daikon into 1/4 inch slices. Stack up three of the slices, and slice them into 1/4 inch sticks. Sprinkle generously with salt. Toss to combine, and let sit for five minutes. Rinse off, and eat immediately. They're so delicious!

The charm of this dish is that it happens so quickly, because of the small size of the daikon.

Cabbage

There are nights when I crave cabbage. These are frequently those nights when I'm home late from work, and already have some beans cooked up in the fridge, and some rice. I'm usually happy with just daal and rice, but on those occasions that I want a bit of vegetable to go with it, Cabbage Curry does the job admirably well.

This is the version I make when I'm in a hurry, and want something done cheap. The same recipe works for those bags of pre-washed spinach, kale, or collard greens, but I use cabbage, because I can find it really cheap most of the time. Also, I find that cabbage doesn't shrink down like spinach, which is why I like to use it when I want something cheap.

½ head cabbage, shredded (or 1-lb bag of shredded cabbage & carrots)
2 TB canola, peanut, or vegetable oil
½ tsp black mustard seed
½ tsp cumin seed
1 tsp urad daal
2 pinches asafoetida (optional)
1/3 tsp turmeric
Salt to taste

In a large frying pan or wok, heat the oil over high heat. Add the black mustard seeds, and allow them to pop. Add the cumin seed and urad daal. When the cumin seeds pop as well, add the asafoetida, and stir once. Add the sliced cabbage, and the turmeric. Vigorously stir the cabbage to combine it with the spices and the fat. When all the cabbage has turned a beautiful shade of yellow, let the cabbage sit for a minute or two. Stir again, and let it set for another minute. You’ll notice the cabbage begin to caramelise.

The trick is to not crowd the pan. Add the salt at the last minute, and taste for seasoning. You may want to add some red chile powder (cayenne pepper works great here). If you do, please turn off the heat before adding the heat of the chiles. Why? Because the smoke bomb of pain and burning that will happen if you try to add ground red chiles to a hot pan will burn your insides.

Pongal, the lazy way

So Thai Pongal is coming up. It's a Tamil harvest festival, where we celebrate the sun, the harvest, and delicious food. Traditionally, white rice and yellow lentils are cooked together with ginger, black pepper, mustard & cumin seed, asafoetida, and curry leaves. Nuts are added if you can afford them, and the whole thing is sort of the ultimate comfort dish. It's a bit mushy, and creamy. It's got this real stomach-filling, comforting feeling whenever I eat a bowl. Think of it like the South Indian answer to macaroni and cheese.

I don't quite have the patience, however, to fiddle around with white rice, and its propensity to stick to the bottom of any cooking pot I put on the stove. I also don't much care for the long cooking time. When I want pongal quickly, I cheat. I use cooked rice, and cooked mung daal (the split one).

4 cups cooked brown rice
2 cups mung beans, soaked for 1 hour
4 cups water
3 TB vegetable oil (preferably a mix of peanut and sesame oil)
1/2 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp cumin seed
1/8 tsp asafoetida
1/4 tsp turmeric (optional; I like a bright yellow pongal, but you may prefer yours more light coloured)
1/4 cup grated ginger (do NOT substitute dried or candied ginger)
2 stalks curry leaves (if you can't find them, substitute 3 leaves of sage for a wonderful flavour)
Salt, to taste
Generous grindings of black pepper
2 cups water, reserved

In a pot, add the vegetable oil, and let it heat over high heat. While the oil heats, drain off the mung beans. Add the mustard seeds, and allow them to pop. Add the cumin seeds and asafoetida. Wait 5 seconds. Sprinkle in the turmeric, and stir well. Add the ginger, curry leaves and a generous bit of salt. Add the drained mung beans, Add the 4 cups of water, and allow to come to the boil. Because the stove is so hot, the water should take about a minute flat to come to the boil.

Let the beans boil for a good 7 minutes. They should be mostly cooked by now. Stir around, to make sure nothing is sticking to the bottom. In another 5 - 8 minutes, the mung beans should be cooked through. Add the cooked brown rice. Stir well to combine.

Keep cooking over high heat. Once the pot comes to a boil, you'll notice the brown rice try to absorb all the liquid remaining. Pour in some of the reserved water, and let it come back to the boil. Let the brown rice and beans cook together for another 5 minutes. By now, you'll have likely used about 1 cup of the reserved liquid (or more, if your stove is very hot, or your brown rice was on the firm side).

Once everything is boiled together, check for salt. Add generous grinds of black pepper, and serve piping hot, with coconut chatni, kootu, sambhar, or green beans curry.

Ten Minute Chili

There are times when you need a small quantity of a dish, quickly. This means that you're not trying to cook for 10 people at once. Instead, you've already got a meal set out, and need an extra dish, because a guest just let you know at the last minute that there will be an extra person coming. Rather than trying to stretch out what you already have, just make an extra dish, even if it is in small quantity, and the food will stretch further.

There are nights when you need something fast, because you got home from work really late. However, you still want it to have vegetables in, and be relatively healthy. The Minute Meals tag is meant for such dishes. This is the first of what I hope will become a series of recipes.

1 TB vegetable oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds (the whole seeds are important)
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 onion, diced
1 clove of garlic, sliced
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 zucchini, sliced lengthwise, and cut into half-moons
2 cups cooked beans of your choice (I used canned black beans)
1 cup frozen corn (or canned is fine too, if you drain the liquid)
Pinch of salt to taste
Cayenne pepper, to taste

In a pot, add the oil, and heat it on high heat. Add the cumin and coriander seeds. The seeds will toast and pop. Add the onions, garlic, paprika, and oregano (in that order). Stir well. Drop the heat to medium. While the onions and garlic cook down, chop the zucchini, open the can of beans, and measure out the corn (I usually just dump in a couple of handfuls, but some people like to measure). Add the tomato paste after the onions have had a chance to cook for a couple of minutes, and stir well. This will cause some sticking. This is OK. Essentially, you want to add the onions, chop the zucchini, add the tomato paste, stir, and then open up the cans/measure the corn.

Once the vegetables are chopped, the beans are opened, and the corn is at the ready, crank up the heat to as high as it'll go. Stir vigorously, until the onions are browned slightly, and the house smells awesome. You should hear the onions sizzle loudly by this point, and the bottom of the pot should start catching some of the spices and making it sticky. This is good.

Add the zucchini, and stir completely until the zucchini is lightly browned. Add the beans, the corn, and the cayenne pepper. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil. Turn off the heat, and taste for salt. Because you're using canned beans, which contain a fair bit of salt, you might not need to add any salt. If you do, feel free to adjust as necessary. For better flavour, you can use soy sauce instead of salt.

---

I don't typically encourage you to use canned beans, which is why I've included the measurements of beans rather than a particular can size. However, the charm of this recipe is that you can run to the local bodega, grab one or two ingredients, and have food done fairly quickly. If you have a well-stocked pantry, you probably won't even need to hit up the store. If you don't have zucchini, any quick-cooking vegetable will do. Kale would be great. Cauliflower would be lovely too. If you had any leftover cooked vegetables from a previous night, this is a great time to use it up.

The point of this recipe is that you'll have exactly enough food for two people, done very quickly. While the water comes to a boil (in the last step), you could warm up some corn or whole wheat tortillas in a skillet to serve alongside the chili. If you have a pot of brown rice on, that's even better. If you want something fresh on the side, just do a quick salad of a sliced cucumber tossed with a few slices of onions, and a squeeze of lemon juice. If you drain the beans, and add a minimum of water, you'll have a lovely burrito filling.

I'm going to try to post more of the things that I cook during the week, when I'm tired, and it's late. Hopefully, you'll also get inspiration to try something out, and post your results.

50% off my book (until 31 December 2012)

Buy it here.

So PM Press, the publisher for The Alternative Vegan, is offering 50% off all their books and E-Books, as long as you act before 31 December 2012. Just use the code "Holiday" at checkout. If you haven't been able to swing the cost of the book so far, because it was out of your price range, this would be the time to snag it for less than $10 USD (the list price on PM is $17.95). Since they're offering the deal for all their books, this would be a great time to check out some of their other titles if your so inclined.

Make your food taste restaurant quality delicious.

The food you get in a restaurant tastes the way it is for various reasons. One is the seasoning. Another is the collaboration. Another is the presentation. I'll get into each, so that you all can dish out a very festive meal when the time comes for it.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of seasoning your food. I'm not even talking about herbs, spices, or anything fancy or esoteric. Just plain salt will ensure that your food tastes right. When it comes to seasoning starchy foods (rice, pasta, potatoes, etc), season as they cook, so that they have a chance to get the salt into there. If it's vegetables and the like, feel free to season once it's done cooking, so that you don't end up with over-salted vegetables. In cases of soups and stews (and especially daal), I tend to wait until the last minute to salt my food, because I don't want to have to account for evaporation and the like throwing off the amount of salt that I've added. Unless you have a recipe that specifies an amount, wait until the end, add a bit of salt, see if that improves things, and keep adding in small amounts until you get to where you're comfortable.

Some people argue that it's better to leave the food unsalted, so that the folk who like more can add more, and those who don't like as much can leave it out. This is good in theory. Unfortunately, in practise, it makes it so that you have the person who's eating leaving things alone to be polite, and quietly choking it down, even though it's bland as hell. I don't know where the stigma behind salting at the table comes from, but it runs pretty strong. Even at home, when my husband and I are having something quick, under-salting is a problem. Rather than adding enough salt to his liking in a dish that's unsalted (which happens by mistake from time to time), he'll flat out avoid it all together until I add some salt to the dish. Then, once he's seen that it does taste good, he's able to adjust up if he wants more than that.

In other words, you need some salt to get the party started, so that people don't avoid the dish all together.

In a good kitchen, there is no space for ego. Yes, there is one person in charge of the whole meal. So what? Everyone can teach you something. No matter how new someone is to cooking, that person still has her/his own opinions on what tastes good. That's why, when we're in a restaurant kitchen, we don't work in a vacuum. Everyone, from the dish person, to the waitstaff, to the line cooks, and the management tastes a new dish. We all give feedback (more salt, too spicy, not enough pepper, not creamy enough, needs more fat, is a bit greasy, odd texture, needs crunch) based on what we like. The person making the dish will incorporate that into the recipe to improve it. It's why a restaurant is able to turn out delicious recipe after delicious recipe.

We're obsessed with food. We talk about it all the time. When we find a new method, or an interesting recipe, the first thing we do is share it with each other. Bossman likes to read magazines and newspapers. He's especially a fan of the food columns in the New York Times, because they provide such a varied set of people with different inspirations. Even if the recipe isn't vegan, we can easily make it vegan. I like YouTube. I like it a lot. My mother and I will watch those cooking channels made by individuals. They've frequently got recipes just as good (if not better) than cookery books. Because they're working in kitchens that are similar to mine (actually, their kitchens are much larger than mine; my home kitchen is tiny), with similar tools, and similar concerns, they'll often come up with neat ideas to do the same thing that I've done a million times. I also enjoy online cooking forums. They'll frequently have other food nerds around, who enjoy eating and cooking. It's a wonderful thing to bounce recipe ideas off a group of people you trust, who will then come back with suggestions to tweak or improve what you've started with.

The point is that even if you don't work in a restaurant kitchen, with multiple brains around you, you can still reach out to others to get that same feedback we get. If you have anyone at all who's interested in food who's helping you to cook, let them taste everything. This is especially good if you have children underfoot. They love to help out (if they're like the children I've met), and are usually thrilled to be asked their opinion on something that you're cooking for a large group. A simple "Hey, can you please check my food for salt", will often be greeted with enthusiasm.

More so than the recipe development or tasting collaboration, a restaurant kitchen has work collaboration. Rarely will I have to make a recipe all by myself, from start to finish, without someone helping me out. Whether it's our amazing dish person, who swoops in and clears off dirty dishes to be cleaned immediately, or my fabulous coworkers, who offer to knock out vegetable chopping tasks, it's a lot more enjoyable to cook when you have help.

Nobody who is helping you is doing an unimportant job. My job would be impossible without someone to help me clean up. I worry about the dish person if he's a little late, because it will bring our production to a screeching halt if we don't have someone who's around to enthusiastically keep the place sparkling clean. Similarly, at home, I really like it when there's someone who's there to keep the dishes from piling up (and pile up they do!), so that at the end of the night, it's a question of just washing the serving plates and the eating plates, rather than the myriad preparation bowls and cookware. If your guests offer to help you clear up, take them up on the offer! If someone offers to help you out in the kitchen, have them do something that will let you concentrate on other tasks that only you can do.

There are times when my boss and I will head into the kitchen together to make something. It's not that the other cooks don't know how to do the tasks I'm doing. It's not even necessarily that they're so busy that they can't lend a hand. Sometimes, the two of us just need some time by ourselves, to talk and get work done at the same time. This happens at home too. When I cook with someone, we tend to talk about things that won't come up in regular conversation. There's a bond that we form over that food preparation that isn't quite the same as any other bond. Something about working together to reach a specific goal just makes that task fun, and meaningful at the same time.

Either way, the point is that if you can get (or recruit) help when you're cooking, by all means, take it.

Finally, there is the point that in a restaurant kitchen, common tasks will be done en masse. If we need to have peeled onions (which we do), we'll peel a 50 pound bag at once, so that the next person going in to reach for onions has some already peeled. If we need chopped ginger and garlic, we'll make 5 pounds at once, so that we'll have chopped ginger or garlic ready and waiting (although here that 5 pounds will only last a day or two tops, you can keep about a couple of heads of chopped garlic, and a palm-sized knob of chopped ginger around for about five days in the fridge). We keep bunches of parsley already chopped, and waiting to go into things as a garnish. In other words, we do the boring bits during the slow times, so that when the crazy times hit, we aren't wasting needless steps on preparing the starting ingredients. It takes me just a few seconds to roughly chop an onion. Once that's done, and I already have chopped garlic and ginger, along with my salt, oil, and a pot, I can get pretty close to any recipe started with the sauteeing or sweating of the onions within a minute or so of prep time (especially since the onions are already peeled). Once those onions go into the pot, it's just a few more seconds of gathering additional ingredients to make my food.

In other words, if you're about to embark on a major holiday spread, have those recipe starters (onions, garlic, chopped celery and carrots, chopped ginger) ready and waiting for you. If you are doing the prep work just a day or two before, feel free to chop the onions, and put them into a zip top bag. Then chop your root vegetables, and soak them in cold water. That way, when the day of arrives, you just have assembly work to do.

Finally, at a restaurant, we pay attention to how your food looks. This isn't just about plating things beautifully. It's about the entire dish itself. For example, if you make a stew or soup, and everything is brown and dark coloured, we'll frequently put something in there to break up that colour monotony. If you have millet, sweet corn, and squash, you're going to end up with something that looks monochromatic. In cases like the millet example, I'll throw some kind of green vegetable into the mix (maybe some broccoli, or chopped kale). If I'm making something of any green, brown, or yellow, I'll generally throw some red in there. There's a reason that so many restaurants will have red peppers in the food: it really pops with red without bleeding onto anything else. When you have beets, or tomatoes, it tends to leak onto other foods. When you have bell peppers, however, you have a sharp blast of colour that's self-contained.

There are many things you can do at home to make your food look and taste as good as the food you get outside. For sure, some restaurants that you go to will bump up the fat content of any meal that they serve you. This is especially true of fast food or chain restaurants. There are diners where they bring in pre-made, mass-produced frozen meals, which they just heat up to serve you. However, people still cheerfully eat them. This is not the sort of "nicer tasting at restaurants" food I'm talking about. I'm talking about those places that make healthy, delicious food, consistently. That's why I didn't just tell you to throw fat at your cooking until it yields.

If you don't have local friends or family who are interested in food, find people online. They exist! If your children are uninterested in helping you cook, at the very least get them into the kitchen with you to taste the food as you cook, so that they get an idea of how a recipe can be tweaked to make it work for you. Especially in the case of massive parties and festivals, have multiple people give you feedback on your dish, until it's exactly where you'd like it to be.

And finally, know that even when you make mistakes, you learn something new. That in itself is a valuable enough reason to get into the kitchen and get to cooking. 

Quit Smoking

To actually manage to quit smoking, the most important technique is to actually want to stop smoking. No amount of smoking cessation is going to help if the will to do so isn't present. Once you've got that sorted, there's a couple of methods out there available to you. Please bear in mind that everything I'm saying here is strictly anecdotal. It's based on my own experiences and observations. Your results will vary, because addiction is a highly personal thing, and will work on different people in different ways, depending on your life situation, environment, encouragement from casual acquaintances and friends, and your support network.

For whatever reason (my reasons were financial, because the cigarette tax had gotten so burdensome that I was about to have to spend on my weekly cigarettes what I'd spend on food for a month), figure out what those reasons are, and genuinely reflect on what that all means. I wasn't much bothered about the social aspect of it, because my husband didn't mind the smoking. My friends would often join me if I had to step out for a smoke. A couple of them didn't even mind my smoking in their cars, as long as we could keep the windows down. However, once it got to the point where we were only earning one income, and that one income would have to stretch to make us both comfortable, I knew that I had to stop for good. I talked it over with my husband, and he agreed that my math was accurate. Once we both made that commitment, I called the New York City quits hotline, and asked them to send me nicotine patches. Once I made the final decision, I moved onto the next step.

Aside from desiring to quit, breaking my patterns really helped to prime me to put out my last cigarette. For example, I was never an all-day long smoker. Yes, I'd power through the cigarettes fairly quickly, but I never bothered smoking first thing in the morning. 

First thing in the morning, all I want is a tall glass of water, and a couple of minutes to wake up fully. I'll maybe read for a while. When I'd walk to the subway, however, I'd take the stop that runs express (rather than using the local stop across the street from my apartment and transferring to the express 3 stops later), which would give me a five minute walk in which to finish a cigarette. When I'd walk to work from the subway station downtown, I'd light up another. After a big meal, I'd always have a cigarette. If I was drinking, I'd have a cigarette. So far, we're up to maybe five or six. Then I'd get home, pour myself a drink, and light up a cigarette immediately. I'd either park myself in front of the TV, or pick up the phone to call my mother or a friend, and I'd relax that way. Throughout that time, because I wasn't focusing on the actual act of smoking, I'd idly burn through the remainder of the packet.

When I made my decision to stop smoking, I had to begin breaking my patterns. I started taking the local train across the street, so that I wouldn't have time to smoke through a cigarette. I stopped eating large meals (which I was never a fan of to begin with). I stopped watching TV. I stopped talking on the phone for more than a minute or two at a time. If I wanted a drink after coming home, I'd make sure that it was something that I would want to really enjoy, like a glass of wine or a nice cocktail, rather than something that was there to just get me drunk. (The difference being that I wouldn't dream of having a cigarette with a nice glass of wine, because I want to actually taste the wine.) I started reading a lot more than I already was doing. I hated smoking while reading a book, because I didn't want to get cigarette ash onto my book or the computer (depending on what I was reading on). 

My brother took the lighter attachment out of the cigarette lighter in his car. What's the typical ritual for a smoker who drives? Get into car, turn on car, press down on the cigarette lighter, buckle up, turn on radio, when the lighter pops, light the cigarette. If you're with another friend, let them light theirs too. It's another pattern that's easy enough to break. You maybe don't have a cigarette as soon as you pop into the car. Maybe you wait until you hit a long traffic light to allow yourself one. And if the light changes before the cigarette is lit, just delay it a bit longer. 

These weren't sudden changes. It was a process of genuinely sitting myself down, and asking myself when my cravings were at their worst, and trying to interrupt those habits with new habits.

Once I'd managed to break my patterns, I had it down to where a package of cigarettes would last me three days. This took about four or five days. It was work, but it was worth it. I would not have been able to make the leap from smoking a pack a day to smoking nothing at all immediately. For me, it would have been too jarring, and everything I did or was used to doing would make me want to smoke. Breaking the patterns really forced me to examine what it was about cigarettes that I enjoyed, and taking the time to enjoy them, rather than mindlessly pounding through them. That was when I was finally ready to try the patches. By the time I'd winnowed down to three or four cigarettes a day, I was ready to try the patch.

It does help to have a quitting buddy, to whom you can turn when the cravings get bad. Since s/he is also going through the same things, s/he can commiserate with you about it, and help you find something to distract you from lighting up another cigarette. My friend Dan did a combination of Chantix and self-help book. I'll get into both later on. Either way, around the time that I quit, about four of my friends (two of whom I knew in person, and the other two online) were quitting at the same time. We'd complain to each other when times got rough, and helped each other with techniques to get through the tougher cravings.

I started with the nicotine replacement patch.

Quitting Cold: For my brother, this was the most effective method. He'd decide that he didn't want to smoke anymore, and would stop smoking. And that would be it. However, my brother has an inherent stubbornness (OK, willpower, if you're being kind) that won't let him bow to someone else's pressure. If he has someone or something telling him that he has to do something, he'll find a way to not do that thing out of pure spite. If you've got that particular bent, and are willing to give it a shot that way, by all means give it a shot.

The Patch: This was, for me, the worst of all, next to quitting cold. I had horrible side effects, from shaking to nausea to dehydration. I felt horrible all the time. I got very violent, disturbing nightmares that I couldn't explain. I don't watch violent films, I don't watch violent TV, I don't read violent books, and I try to avoid violence as much as I can. Where were these disgusting, gory, horrible nightmares coming from? The box said that this is normal, and that I should just stop wearing it at night if I get nightmares. Should have thought of that first. Who the hell smokes while they're sleeping?

I did stop wearing it at night, but the symptoms never got any better. I was still having horrible shakes throughout the day. I couldn't hold my knife steady at work, so I had to go at a slower pace. I was drinking those sugar and salt mixtures to rehydrate myself, and it still wasn't working (it didn't help that I embarked on this journey in the summer, where I was sweating already, due to the heat). When I ran out of the patches, I decided to try something else instead.

Chantix: My friend and his wife were on Chantix to stop smoking. Essentially, it works by blocking the nicotine receptors in your brain, so that even if you have a cigarette, you don't get the pleasure from it. Any lingering nicotine in your system doesn't have any more effect on you. Initially, you take two a day, and then ratchet down to one a day.

If this were a birth control pill, I'd be pregnant with a large family by now. The problem for me is that I can't remember to take the thing every day. I would set an alarm, I would write myself notes, I would carry the thing in my bag so that I could take it in case I missed a dose at home. So a one month supply took me about three months to work through. It did help to get that last bit of cravings out of my system, however. For me, it was effective, as it was for my two friends who tried it. We were all quitting at the same time, and the Chantix helped us all to clear it out.

It's not for everyone, because it will interfere with other medications you're taking, so it's important to know what the complications are if you are on any kind of medication, to prevent drug interactions. Either way, it's prescription only, so talk to your doctor before you try the stuff.

Self Help Book: I hate self help books. They come off as smug and annoy me to no end. They're featured on certain talk shows who shall remain nameless, which are also filled with smug and annoying people. I'm sure there are some folk who are helped by self help books. Bully for them. I hate them.

It is with that in mind that I was bowled over by how useful this one self help book was. It's called The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, by Allen Carr (ISBN: 0615482155). Like Chantix, the book works with you while you're still smoking. For me, it was mainly to understand the process of addiction and how to break it. Either way, it is highly effective.

Smoking is a weird addiction, in that the high, or the comfort, or the pleasurable feelings, only come from satisfying the withdrawals to the drug. The second you put out your last cigarette, your body starts screaming for the next one. It's not loud at first. Initially, it's just a whisper. Then it becomes more and more urgent as more time passes. Finally, when you're ready to break, you light up a cigarette, and feel this rush of pleasure. That's your body telling you that you've fulfilled its need for more nicotine. Allen Carr explains this a lot more eloquently, and it's what really helped me to break the hold that cigarettes had over me.

E-Cigarettes: I have a friend who's been on them for over a year. That's all I'll say about them.

Gum: Ew.

I'm sure there are other methods, but these are the ones that I've explored myself. There are other methods out there. If you've got your own stories, feel free to share them. Again, your results will likely be different from mine. Again, these are purely anecdotal, and are shaded by my own experiences and prejudices. Take it with a grain of salt.

Before you try any method, however, give yourself permission to be human. I had managed to stop smoking for about three or four days before lighting up a cigarette again. This happened more than once. Clearly, for me, quitting cold was not an option. However, I didn't let myself get discouraged. It's an addiction. That means that there are physical and psychological ramifications to it. If you don't genuinely allow yourself the permission to be a human being, and try again if you don't meet your expectations on the first try. Notice how I didn't say "when you fail". Failure is giving up.

Failure is never trying in the first place.

Curry leaves & ginger adai

It's so green because of the amount of curry leaves and the skin on the moong beans. I used moong beans, split peas, Tuvar daal, urad daal, masoor daal, and a few spoons of sprouted brown rice. I ground the batter with as much ginger as I could get my hands on. It's almost spicy from the ginger. Very tasty.

Edit: The first image shows how brown the back of the adai should be. Do not try to cook adai or dosa over high heat. Use medium heat at the most.
Serve with cabbage curry.

Lunch time!

Puri, chana masala, raita.

Wash your beans!

I've always been pretty careful about washing veg, rice, and other things before using them. However, I never gave beans a second thought. Why? Because I soak them (for the most part) and then discard the soaking liquid. Until someone mentioned to me all the lovely places that beans sit around in before getting to you, and how most of those places are dirty or dusty. It's not a problem of the plant being unsanitary, but just a function of how beans get packaged and the rest. It's nobody's fault.

But it's plenty disgusting.

This morning, I was about to put a few cups of pinto beans to soak for a chili. I gave them a thorough rinse. I scooped out the beans, and found a layer of dirt along the bottom of the container I'd used to hold the beans while running them under water. I was absolutely disgusted. I gave the beans a few more rinses, and only put them to soak when the water ran clear.

I'd assume that this goes double for hulled or split daals, like urad daal, red lentils, chana daal, etc. I never gave it a second thought, but I think I will from now on. I really don't want that stuff in my food.

Sprouted Corn & Brown Rice Blinis

EDIT: I thought that my mother would be horrified, but it looks like she's proud! 

another version of adai. but definitely different. kudo MY SON. i keep doing stuff like this to traditional recipes. go dinu.
love you
amma

I love you too, Amma! 

I learnt about blinis while watching this English cooking show called The Two Fat Ladies. Anyone who's lived with me for any length of time will tell you that I obsessively watched cooking shows, and between Julia Child and The Two Fat Ladies, I was fairly happy to while away hours upon hours of time in front of the television. Fortunately, my mother classed cooking shows under "Educational TV", so she didn't really bother much while I would spend all that time watching those shows.

You see, I was always more fond of reading than watching TV, and what TV I did enjoy watching generally involved nature documentaries on PBS, cooking shows on PBS (both Julia Child and Lydia Bastianich were favourites), and when we finally got cable, cooking shows on the food channel. I loved watching the Discovery channel, and looking at all those exotic places that the crews would go to, and watch the narrator quietly explaining what was going on.

So, while we were limited to 2 TV shows per day, there was no limit to the amount of educational TV we were allowed to watch. And, of course, no limit to how much reading we were allowed to do. Even while grounded, my mother would never curtail my watching of documentaries. There's a reason why my mother rarely resorted to grounding. She found that assigning extra chores was a much stronger deterrent.

But I digress (as usual)! On the episode where they were doing this cocktail party for the Brazilian ambassador to England, Clarissa did blinis. She had these darling little miniature pans that she fried them up in, and at the end, served them with sour cream and caviar. I never did get around to making them on my own, because they involved buckwheat flour, which I couldn't easily get my hands on at the time. Fast forward to a few years later, and I'm in New York, living as a vegan, working in a vegan restaurant. I thought back to that episode, and watched it again, thinking to make something interesting and vegan for a special.

It involved large quantities of butter (melted, so I could easily use oil), then milk (soymilk), then eggs with whipped egg whites. I stopped myself, because it was getting to the point where half the recipe was being substituted, and just watched the show, and let the matter drop. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I started seriously thinking things over. What is a blini, in essence? It's a slightly fermented batter, made of buckwheat and all purpose flour, combined with some kind of fat, and pan-fried. Easy, right? So what makes the eggs and such necessary? Buckwheat flour and wheat flour will have a tendency to not form a firm cake on its own. It should have bubbles in, because it's fermented overnight, but it wouldn't have enough structure and body to stand up on its own.

What does have enough structure, that is also fermented, and doesn't require binder to stay together? DOSA. The South Indians have been making fermented batters since time immemorial. In fact, they even make unfermented (but sprouted or soaked) bean batters to make various pancakes. Why couldn't I just use a base of a fermented bean and rice batter, stir in cornmeal for structure, let that all ferment for a very short time (enough to rehydrate the cornmeal), and then fry it off? It should work, right?

Off I went.

6 cups brown rice
2 cups urad daal
3 cups chickpeas
2 TB fenugreek seeds (WHOLE)

In one bowl, soak the chickpeas in 12 cups of cold water. In another, soak the brown rice in 9 cups of cold water. To the rice bowl, add the fenugreek seeds. Soak the rice and chickpeas overnight. The next day, soak the urad daal for 2 hours in cold water. While the urad daal soaks, drain the chickpeas and rice, and let them hang out in a bowl, drained. Two hours later, when the urad daal is soaked, drain it as well, and let it sit as well. You'll want your beans and rice to hang out for four or five hours so that they can sprout. That evening, grind SEPARATELY the chickpeas, urad daal, and rice, with enough water to get them down to a fine paste.

Don't worry about how much water you're adding. The batter will not end up watery at the end, because you're going to add other stuff to this as well. Once the three pastes have been formed, mix them together thoroughly with a few pinches of salt. Then, in a warm draft-free place, let the batter ferment (covered with a towel) overnight. If your oven is empty, and turned off, just leave it in there. Make sure to put it into a container large enough that if the mixture expands, it has plenty of room to expand. You want a container at least double the size of your batter.

On hot days, you'll only need about four hours to ferment the batter. On colder days, like in the winter, you'll need overnight at the very least. This is OK. If it IS a hot day, and you won't have time to get to the batter by the time it's done fermenting, feel free to refrigerate it, and ferment it for a day. It'll take longer, but you won't harm the taste any.

Then, when it's all fermented and bubbling away, you'll want to add your additional ingredients, based on what you have. For this particular recipe, I had some good quality stone ground cornmeal. I added that, along with ginger, garlic, salt, black pepper, and sweet corn kernels. I mixed everything together until it was a the consistency of a loose dough. Then, I thinned it out with water enough to get it to pancake batter thickness. You want it thin enough that the batter will spread when it hits the griddle, but not so thin that it becomes a crepe.

This is the most important step, after the fermentation of the initial batter. Because you've added fresh ingredients, you need to give the batter a second ferment, and a chance for the cornmeal to rehydrate in the batter. This way, when you cook it, you won't wind up with overly crunchy bits of cornmeal. It's not pleasant, trust me.

Let the batter ferment and rehydrate for at least four hours. This will get the cornmeal completely hydrated and make the eventual product have a light and fluffy inside. Finally, you're ready to go. Unlike blinis, which will spread on you (and therefore require a small pan in which to fry them) this batter will stay coherent. Heat up your largest griddle to about 400°F, and add some fat of your choice (I used Canola oil). Spoon the batter onto the griddle, spacing them about 2 finger's width apart. You want them a little spread out so that they have a chance to cook up on their own, and not meld into one giant mess. When you see the bubbles forming on the top of the cake, and popping, you'll notice the colour change from a milky white to a pale yellow. That's about when you're ready to flip. Carefully flip the cakes over (stabilising them with your hands, as necessary), and cook on the other side.

Much like a traditional blini, you'll see little holes forming on the cakes, and you'll have a very crispy inside with a light and slightly sourdough tasting inside. They will get more and more crisp as you fry them longer and longer.

If you want a thinner blini, with a more crepe like taste, feel free to grind the feremented batter (containing the corn kernels) in the blender until it's smooth, and spread the batter down with your spoon so that it's thinner.

I feel like the combination of the corn, with the corn kernels, and the ginger and garlic, and the black pepper and salt just have an amazing taste. You bite in, and you get a little hint of sweetness from the corn, a bit of sourness from the fermented batter, and that wonderful garlic and ginger.

---

You could, if you have it, use chives, parsley, chopped leafy greens, or whatever other vegetables you like. I just used corn, because summer is almost gone, and I want to enjoy corn while I can. Instead of cornmeal, grits work just as well, as does semolina. It's really important to use the brown rice, because it actually does sprout, and gets improved with the long fermenting. And chickpeas give structure very well, without resorting to weird egg replacers and the like. The fenugreek seeds help the batter to ferment, as does the urad daal. After that, the cornmeal gives the texture a really nice boost, and keeps the cakes high enough.

QUICK Pickled Daikon

Yesterday was Steve's birthday luncheon. I made obscene amounts of food. I might be compelled to share the recipes for all the food some day, but there are no pictures to go with any of them, because we ate everything by the time I thought to take a picture. One dish that requires no picture (because it's so simple and no-fuss) was a daikon pickle that I made. It takes minutes to throw together.

The reason I wanted it is because I was making spicy food. I didn't want to cook the daikon, because it was so fresh and tasty. I couldn't serve it outright raw, because it's still got that radish-y sharpness to it. So I salted it. It was so delicious! People kept asking me what I did to it to get it to taste like that. I smiled, and said, "Salt!" They were all amazed, and kept munching on it as a snack.

My friend Frances said that it was (to her) like a healthier version of potato chips, because you get the saltiness, and mild starchiness, but none of the fat. And, since it was in little pieces, it was easy enough to pick up, and munch on.

1/2 daikon radish (about 500 g of daikon in total)
1 tsp salt

Take the daikon, and peel off the skin. Stand it upright, and take off one thin slice (vertically). This will help you have a stable base for the rest of your slices. Lay the daikon on its side, cut-side-down, and make thin (as thin as you can get it) rounds. Stack 5 - 10 of the rounds atop one another, and make thin slices to make little strips. Throw the strips into a bowl, and sprinkle generously with salt. Toss to combine, and let sit for 10 - 15 minutes in the fridge. Serve as a side dish to spicy food. It makes a very refreshing counterpoint to your spicy food, or a delicious low calorie snack.

Flowers for Algernon

I just finished reading Flowers for Algernon, a book written back in the 1960s by Daniel Keyes. It is not for people who don't like an emotional (as well as intelligent) story. In it, we meet Charlie Gordon, a man in his 30s who works as a janitor at a factory. He has an IQ of 68, and struggles with reading and writing. In that struggle, however, he strives to better himself by attending reading and writing classes for adults. He is chosen as the subject of an experimental procedure designed to tripe the IQ of the person through brain surgery. The story doesn't get into the specifics of the operation, because it's not important, and because it's written as Charlie's diary.

Essentially, the operation is a success, and you see Charlie's diary getting more introspective, and the grammar, punctuation, and diction improving exponentially. You see him realise that all those people who were joking around and laughing with him at the factory were actually laughing at him. When he comes to that realisation, it hurts, and he talks about his feelings, now that he can look back on his former life.

At one point in the story, you realise that as rapid as his progress was, his decline on the other side happens as well. It almost feels like the author suggested that the accelerated learning happened at the expense of "using up" your brain's lifetime, which means that because you progress much faster, your eventual demise comes rushing at you equally quickly.

In a heartbreaking turn of events, you see Charlie losing things that he has grown to love. He loses languages he understood fluently. He no longer understands scientific papers he's written himself. His own progress reports become indecipherable to him. What's even more heartbreaking is that he thrashes around (mentally), desperately trying to hold on to those memories, those experiences, those joys he had.

It was all the more sad, because I myself do enjoy my intellectual pursuits. I love to read. In books, I find escape, I learn things, I dream, I become. Above and beyond that, however, I love learning new things. Whether it be about food, or science, literature, or minor trivia, I take pleasure in absorbing new knowledge. I can so identify with Charlie, as he struggles to grasp things that seem just out of his reach. Even though he finds it difficult, he keeps trying, because he has this inner drive to push himself to become better.

More than that, I enjoy writing. I love being able to get my thoughts down into words, and get them out of my head. It means that I don't have to sit around with those thoughts. They can be committed to paper (frequently) or the Internet (less frequently, but still enjoyable), and I no longer need to hold on to them. When I write for myself (in my personal diaries), or for myself and others (like on my blog), or for my husband (in the goofy little love notes I leave hidden in his bag, or his wallet, or other random places he will get surprised with), it's like I'm reaching out to a part of myself that would otherwise languish without the attention. It's almost like writing is healing.

Without those pursuits, I feel like my mind would be a dismal place.

What are some of the things that you hold dear?

Learning

I had a teacher in 10th grade, who taught English. She was one of my favourite teachers of all times. She not only loved reading, but also writing, and obscure words. She loved going to England every year, and would show us pictures of her travels. She frequently asked us to read, and  to encourage it, she would offer extra credit to anyone who chose a book from her personal bookshelf (kept behind her desk), and come back and discuss it with her. The beauty of the deal is that she didn't make more work for herself by having you write a report on it. Instead, it was more like an informal discussion that you'd have with your friend about a book that she enjoyed, and that you enjoyed.

I remember being in her class, and having the infinite pleasure of meeting another book addict. I took her up on her offer. When my 2 books per semester ran out I asked if she didn't mind if I just kept reading, just for the hell of it. She had an extensive collection of Sidney Sheldon, Jeffery Archer, Ken Follet, and a bunch of other contemporary writers. They weren't High Literature, because she knew she was dealing with high school kids. Instead, they were just fun reads.

During this time, when I was enrolled in honours and AP classes, after school activities (AKA, drama club, track, and weekly prayer meetings with my parents), I still managed to read through one novel every day. The best part was her delight in giving me a book, having me read it, and discussing it with her the very next day. It's like instant gratification, because often when I reccommend a book to a friend, it takes them however long to read it, and we don't discuss it until weeks or months later. So to have another book addict to chat with was amazing.

She kept giving me thicker and more complex books. Jeffery Archer's As the Crow Flies, and Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth were two such examples. I knocked out As the Crow Flies in a day and a half, and Pillars of the Earth in three.

There was this lady, intelligent, talented, and lots of fun to hang out with, teaching a class of honours English to students who frequently didn't appreciate reading. year after year. I remember asking her one day how she could keep up. "Aside from finding other book addicts like you, I find that every year, I learn more from my students."

I was floored. Here was this woman, who was so intelligent and varied in her interests (and books), who said that she was learning from her high school students! Ever since then, I have made it my personal mission to see to it that I strive to learn from everyone I meet, even when it's me who's the teacher in that situation. One of my cooking students, Ari, mentioned that she hates to wrestle with a butternut squash, because she's not got the arm strength for it. So, she just throws the whole thing into the oven like that, and roasts it until it's tender. This is something she  taught me after I'd spent day after day in the restaurant kitchen, wrestling enormous piles of butternut squash, and cursing every minute of it (they really are stubborn). Here's someone who was asking me to teach her to cook, teaching me a new technique to use in my own life!

Never discount the lessons that you learn from others. Even those who are younger, or less experienced, or less talented. All of them have something to teach you.

Thank you, Mrs. Deshong. You are a wonderful teacher, and I hope that wherever you are today, you're enjoying a good book.

How to land that job.

1) Don't use a generic "Objective" statement. We're all well aware that you're trying to get this job to use your skills that you've learned. Instead, tailor the objective statement on your resume to suit the job you're seeking. For example, if you're looking for a job in a store, as a cashier, you might say something like, "To ensure that every customer who walks past my cash register feels important, and cared for." In other words, tailor each resume to the job you're looking for, based specifically on each company you send it to. If you're sending a generic resume to everyone, you haven't spent any time on it, aside from the initial writing of said resume.

If you're not going to spend any time on writing the resume, why should I spend any time reading it?

2) Proofread any written communications with your future employer. Yes, even if you send it from your phone. Glaring grammar or spelling errors make you look careless.

3) Show up on time. I cannot stress this enough. Nothing short of the second coming of Jesus should delay you on your interview date. Leave your home two hours earlier than you think you'll need to get there. Why? Traffic delays happen. Spills happen. Rips and tears to your clothes happen. Subways get held up for train traffic, or lost power, or idiots holding open the door. You show up to the area that your job is going to be at very early, and you now have a bit of time to chill out, and relax. If you're late, someone else who wants the job badly enough to show up on time will win out over you. Even if your excuse sounds valid, the employer will still be thinking, "Well, how many other excuses will they come up with if I hire that person?"

4) Even if you get another job before your interview date, send a communication to that person who arranged it. It's a bad idea to burn bridges. No job is ever 100% certain. If you leave a good impression on the person in charge of hiring and firing, you have a chance of getting that job later on, should the one you got right now not pan out.

5) Know about the company you're applying to. I'm not saying that you need to go spend money there, but it helps to do some homework on the place you want to work at.

Hunger

I have an innate terror about feeling hungry. Call it childhood trauma (NOT from my mother, for the record; she made sure that the house was perpetually stocked with good things to eat) or what have you, but that feeling of knowing that there is nothing for me to eat gives me severe anxiety. I make sure to eat well before leaving my home.
Anyone who's watched me eat knows that I generally eat very frequently. I could have just eaten a very short time ago, but we pass another bit of food I want later, and I've got to stop and refuel. It's like that initial anxiety you get when you first have your new mobile phone. You're not comfortable with its battery life yet, so you charge it too frequently for that first month. You hate knowing that you'll be without charge at a critical moment. In reality, it's probably not that huge a deal. If the thing is running low, you can really just turn it off and turn it back on when you need it. But until you learn that, you're still in dread of the battery running out.

I guess that because I'm a vegan, my lack of food anxiety tends to be pronounced. I have been places where the only option is a cup of black coffee with some sugar. And no, there isn't bread that I can trust. You see, it's been such a while since I've had dairy, that even a small amount in my food (even when I don't know it's there) sends my digestive system into a violent protest. Eggs can sneak by without my notice. Honey doesn't actually do anything. But dairy, when I accidentally ingest it, has me wrapped around the porcelain overlord, sweating profusely, and blasting from every orifice. Not a pleasant feeling.

So it's especially a nerve-wracking experience to leave my little vegan bubble. You see, I work at a vegan restaurant, am married to a committed vegan, and keep a vegan house. The friends that I socialise with on a regular basis are at the very least vegetarian. Those who aren't generally tend to be respectful omnivores, and are happy to wait until leaving my presence before settling down to animal flesh and the rest. Pretty much every restaurant in my city (including the steak houses, I found out on one particularly annoying night) can and is often happy to serve me something not only filling, but delicious. If I call ahead, I even sometimes get a fairly excited chef, who'd like to try out something experimental to see if I like it. At the local Chinese food delivery place, they have a selection of veggie meats to go with all their dishes. And they know what I mean when I ask for vegan.

When I leave my bubble, however, it's not so easy. These are often places with no mass transit, and I don't drive, and everything is spaced out really far apart. On those occasions, I'll end up at a convenience store or pharmacy, and grab some cashews, or crackers. But frankly, after a few hours, crackers and cashews don't really feel satisfying, dense in calories though they be.

All of this has done nothing at all to relieve my anxiety around hunger. I hate feeling hungry. It's one of those things that I've had to experience so rarely that to actively get myself into a situation where such is the case infuriates me.

But if I stop to think about it, I realise that I'm really being silly. Being hungry is not the worst thing in the world, especially considering that I live in a country where food is readily available to me when I want it. So what if I do have to skip a meal once in a while? More will be waiting later. And maybe letting myself get hungry once in a great while will make the meal at the other end of the experience taste all the more delicious.

It's something I'm working on, and I know I can get through it if I try.

I'm still going to carry a bottle of water though. 

Allergens

When I started working at the restaurant, I began noticing that in nearly every item on the menu, there were little symbols, like "gf", or "ns", or "sf". Bossman and I talked about it, and I mentioned how amazing I thought that the convention of marking clearly on the menu what is and isn't safe for the big allergens was. It's the same reason that we get the restaurant Kosher. Same reason that we try to aim for making specials that are safe for as many people as possible: it's just good hospitality.

My mother has been cooking for years. She's been cooking for so long that she does little things without even realising that she does it. For example, when it's a new person coming to her house, she quickly assesses who they are, where they're from, what kinds of things they may enjoy, and their level of spice tolerance. She'll still make one or two things suited to the rest of the family. However, for the guest, she'll make sure that the food is accessible to as many people as possible. She won't use the weird, bitter, or strangely textured vegetables. She'll avoid anything too spicy, or too difficult to wrangle. She'll stick with things that have excellent flavour, but don't have loads of hot peppers or black pepper.

Then, once the person has come over a few times, she'll adjust as necessary. However, for large groups of people, such as when she makes food for the temple potlucks, or for large gatherings of friends, she'll still stick to those basic rules: no major allergens (dairy, gluten, soy), no challenging flavours (very bitter, or very hot and spicy), and lots of flavour.

So when I came to Chow, it was like coming home. When I have guests coming over, I do the same thing. I'll ensure that I make something that everyone can enjoy. If a friend of mine is gluten intolerant, I don't make just one thing for that person. I'll try to make the whole meal gluten free. Why? Because to see that look of happiness when they can eat (almost) everything on the very well-filled table is gratifying. You feel good, knowing that you've made that person feel special. Meanwhile, the people who aren't gluten intolerant can still enjoy gluten free food! Everyone wins!

When you do have a friend with a* diet issue, please just challenge yourself to do everything in your power to cater to that person, and have the whole meal follow that plan. At the end of the day, what does it hurt to just try it out for a bit, and see where it leads you?

*Notice the "a" diet issue. I'm not asking you to turn into a hospital, where folks who are deathly allergic to soy, gluten, nuts, grains, raw vegetables, coconut, spices, oil, and herbs ALL AT THE SAME TIME feel like they need to have you jumping through hoops. There comes a point where someone just starts making stuff up, or where you're just not able to accommodate them. If your body hates you that much, I can't really help you. I'm willing to learn, of course. So if you are one of these folks, let me know what you eat, and I'll see what I can do.

Adai

2 parts toor daal
1 part barley
1 part brown rice
1 part mung beans
1 part masoor daal
3 dried mulato chiles
3 dried ancho chiles
3 dried pasilla chiles
2 dried chile de arbol
1 TB fenugreek seed
1/3 part urad daal

Soak overnight. Using the soaking liquid, grind to an absolute paste along with 1 part grated ginger, a generous sprinkle of salt, and 1 part curry leaves loosely measured. Fry off in your favorite pancake skillet and eat with great gusto.

Happy Birthday, Amma

Amma (mother, in Tamil) and I have had a long-standing tradition that on my birthday, we celebrate both the person who's been alive another year (the birthday boy), and the person who got him there in the first place (the mother). It's a good tradition, and one that the ravages of distance and time have not managed to kill off. Now that my mother is on the other side of the country (and for anyone who's familiar with the sheer size of the USA, will know that it might as well be the other side of the planet), we continue the tradition over the phone, which is just as nice, because there are fewer distractions.

That being said, I'm preemptively making this post, because I know Amma reads this thing, so that in case the unthinkable happens, and I manage to astoundingly bungle what really is my favourite part of my birthday celebration (due to being too tired after work, or not charging the phone, or something else equally annoying and dumb), I will have at the very least made it clear that the first thing I thought about when I woke up this morning at 5:30 (after the initial thoughts of "ACK! BATHROOM!") was indeed my mother. However, because she's like three hours behind, I'm not about to wake up the entire house to call her at that ungodly hour. Especially not when my nephew is likely sleeping, and getting woken up by the phone is Not To Be Considered.

It's strange. I've had an inexplicable dread of hitting this particular milestone for a while now. I'm 30. Ugh. Even writing it makes me uneasy. But here it is, and I might as well admit to the old age that I've been cultivating since the age of 5. One of my aunts mentioned (in an amused tone, for the record), ages ago, that I was in equal turns an unabashed young child, and a 75 year old man at the same time. So. Here I am. 30 years old.

I've met (and married and stayed together with) the sort of man who I used to think only existed in sappy romance novels. I've written and had published my first book. I'm working at a place where I enjoy the fruits of my labour, and the challenges excite rather than drag down. I've got some pretty close friends who enjoy spending time with me. I've got a comfortable little home in a city I love dearly. I've managed to get rid of most of my major vices, and have reeled in any that I haven't given up completely (I'm not trying out for sainthood).

There are definitely things that I still want to do, that I still look forward to being able to do. But I've got plenty of time for those. It's not like I'm 30 or something.

Oh wait.

If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, the outpouring of love and good wishes from family (my sister called and left a voicemail at 12:30 AM last night, while I slept, and thereby managed to be the first to wish me, which she promptly followed with an email; her husband emailed shortly after that) really is life-affirming. I love that I inspire good feelings towards me, and that people want me to be happy. I've also gotten some lovely emails from fans who've been around since day one, from the before time when I was just a voice on a podcast, or a few words on the screen.

Thanks to Amma for my birthday, as always. Thanks to all my friends and family and fans who have sent over their lovely words of support and love. Thanks to my angel husband who still somehow enjoys my company. It's a good time to be 30.