let's not try to figure out everything at once | baked polenta with tomato

There are many things in life you can't control. Sometimes I find it best to deal with these things by distracting myself - with work and cooking and people and food. This works for a while, and then there's a week where everything catches up with you.... I had that week last week. But even though there were many moments when I questioned my sanity or purpose - it all worked out in the end.

Now I'm feeling a little burned out, but looking forward to less chaotic June filled with winter dinners and lab work. As it would happen, the other morning we woke up to silence - true silence.. and a blanket of snow covering our hill and city. It's an unusual enough occurrence to spell a snow day for us - so we made porridge this morning and ate that in our pyjamas, before venturing the long way into town to look at the snow.

After a few slips and slides down the hill, I purchased a few more onions and made french onion soup to warm us up - I used red wine this time, as it was all we had, and it made a hearty, salty broth. It warmed us up - especially needed as that day the temperature didn't get over four degrees!

This time of year can be hard - it's dark when you have to get up, dark when you come home from work, difficult to get out of bed in the mornings, and there's still another month of the days getting shorter to get through before the solstice. Also, it can be cold - the kind of cold that settles in your bones and stays there all day; the kind of cold that requires thermals underneath your pyjamas and at least two hot water bottles ... the kind of cold that requires a hot, warm, easy to eat dinner.

This dish is perfect for those times where you feel a bit unnecessarily irritable, or flighty, or unsettled. When all of a sudden there's a wind through the house, slamming doors and making maracas out of the leaves. When there's so much to do you don't really want to spend time cooking but you don't have the money or inclination to go out. When it has been cold for a while and, despite loving soup, you're a bit tired of it. You can make it any time of year, it's gluten free, and you could easily make it to be dairy free too. It's hearty, filling, and simple to make.

baked polenta with tomato

You won't believe how little this recipe requires in terms of effort. It's inspired by this recipe with just a few changes.

2 cups coarse polenta/cornmeal

1.5 L water

1 tsp salt

50g butter

1 tsp chili flakes

1/2 cup grated, or about 50g cheese - any kind, the stronger the better! 

2 onions

3 cloves garlic

1 tsp cumin

1 can tomatoes (or fresh, if you've got them)

1 tsp chili flakes

bay leaf

optional - other grilled vegetables like aubergine, olives, mushrooms, courgette.. 

Pour the polenta into a large, oven-proof dish, large enough to contain 1.5 litres of water. Add the salt, and water, and stir until the water goes a bit cloudy. Bake at 180ºC for 45 minutes.

While the polenta is cooking, make the sauce. Lightly cook the onions, add the tomatoes and chopped garlic and spices, and let reduce for a while. If you have some red wine handy, you could add this in for a heartier flavour. Keep warm until the polenta is ready.

After 45 minutes, take the polenta out of the oven and stir through the butter, cheese and chilli flakes, and cracked pepper if you like. Return to the oven for another 15 minutes. It will be done when the top is dry, and the polenta doesn't wiggle too much. The polenta will hopefully be the consistency of a thick porridge, creamy and delicious.

To serve, spoon the sauce over the polenta. Eat with grilled vegetables if you like, and you can add extra cheese to the top if you so desire as well. Enjoy!

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I've been finding myself thinking lots of India recently - perhaps because I am in the process of finalising a different trip overseas - this one is a lot more unexpected and I am feeling very lucky to have the privilege of travel.

When I think of India at the moment, I think of sounds - a camel braying at a camel farm just outside of Bikaner. The hauntingly beautiful Muslim prayers broadcast into the desert air five times a day - the first thing I'd hear in the morning and the last thing I'd hear at night. The soft whumpf-whumpf of the pigeons that nested under the windows in the guest house we stayed at in Pushkar. The deep and sustained snoring of one of the most obnoxious men I've ever had the (questionable) privilege of sharing a sleeper car with. The chai-wallah's particularly unique way of offering their wares. The cracking sound of a stick on a dog's back. Horns, of all different timbres, usually all at once. The loveliest Japanese man playing ravanahatha so beautifully on the first morning of the New Year... so many sounds I'll always remember.

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title from the national - fake empire

there is time, so much time | "in the interests of full disclosure"

 

 

 

The second part of the title of this post is a pun really - because to me, it's almost ludicrous to think that a blog ever could be "full disclosure" in the truest sense of the word. This past week.. well, I hate the word busy as applied to a person's life - isn't busy something to do with lots of colours? - but to be a bit of a hypocrite, it's definitely been busy. In the colour sense maybe, in the literal sense, definitely.

This weekend I am doing nothing. I wrote on Friday into my diary for the weekend "hill time" but then learned that actually hill time can just be lying in the garden with part of a Murakami book and the cat empire playing in your ears.

For a while now I've been meaning to sort through my thousands of pictures from India. It is something that I'm glad it's taken me this long to do. Maybe because India finished abruptly with an illness, I'm not exactly sure. I do know that of C and me, I have the majority of pictures ..and I know she'll remember looking through them too. Not ones of the taj mahal (although it is beautiful) .. not ones of being on a camel (although it is nice) ... but ones like these. So in a way, this post's for her: my maharani. All these pictures are taken in Pushkar.. the place we stayed for a week rather than continue on through. Was it because we were so thankful that rickshaws couldn't make it over the hill? Quite possibly ..

1. View from the walk into town (that one day we had to walk back yelling because it was a bit late and the dogs were out...)
2. The crazy pigments/paints. Especially in Pushkar, it seemed every tourist operator offered pigments to sell..
3. Man reading the paper in the sun, Pushkar's 'main' street.
4. Train to Ajmer, view out the window. It was damp and cold.
5. Chittogarh station. A half an hour stop on the way from Udaipur to Ajmer. On reflection I think that I sometimes take photos to have something to do.
6. We are freezing cold, and I am reading a poem. I'm glad I took this picture because I don't have that book anymore.
7. Pushkar hotel balcony.

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I haven't cooked in at least a week - can you tell? Next time... it'll be a recipe. I promise.

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title from grizzly bear - fine for now

a little river to the golden ground | dal makhani

It's cold here. I know, I was just talking about the heat. Last week was a heat wave, and now we are plunged back into winter - it's currently 9ºC. I'm wearing woolen socks and slippers, a coat over my legs, two layers of merino, and a silk/wool blend scarf. And I'm only just not cold. Would you believe it, I'm sitting inside. The weather forecast says it'll be warm again soon, possibly even tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm putting the kettle on for hot water bottles. Coincidentally, the cold is the perfect time to share this curry recipe: dal makhani (pronounced mahk-ni)

"My wife makes the best dal makhani," says the Indian man who runs the spice shop on Hanover St. Since visiting India I like going there. Even though the aroma is a very dilute version of Delhi's spice markets, and the pre-weighed and priced bags a far cry from the newspaper parcels - I always think of India. The man thinks it's funny when I try and remember bits and pieces of Hindi. His shop is the only place I know that stocks urad dal - whole black lentils traditionally used in dal makhani. If you can't find them, you could use puy lentils (also called french green lentils), as I did when I made this for my family back in Wellington.

dal makhani

1 cup urad dal/puy lentils/brown lentils

1 cup rajma (red kidney beans)

2 tsp cumin seeds

8 garlic cloves

2 medium onions (red or brown)

thumb-sized piece of ginger root

2 tsp garam masala

2 small red chilli peppers

30g butter

1/2 cup/100mL cream

2 tomatoes (optional)

420g can whole peeled tomatoes

1 tbsp high heat oil (I use coconut, but canola or rice bran could be substituted)

salt

fresh coriander for serving

Substitutions:

1. You could use canned kidney beans instead of dried ones. This will reduce the cooking time significantly. You could also use canned lentils but I think it's nicer to use dried ones for their better texture. 
2. Instead of cream, you could use a can of coconut milk. It doesn't taste of coconut!
3. The garam masala can be substituted for 1/2 tsp curry powder, 1/2 tsp ground chilli, 1 tsp ground cumin.
4. The chilli peppers can be substituted for ground red chilli - add this to your desired spice level. 
5. Coconut or sesame oil can be substituted for the butter to make this recipe vegan. 
6. I love rajma so I make this with a half:half dal:rajma ratio. If you like you can decrease the amount of rajma, just increase the dal by the same amount. 

If you're using dried dal and rajma you will need to soak them first. I soak them in separate bowls, with at least 4x as much water. You want them well and truly covered because they will swell up! Soak for 8-12 hours. Usually, I put them onto soak one night ahead, and then when I get home around 6pm, they're ready to be cooked.

Rinse the dal and rajma and boil in fresh water. Add some of the ginger, in large pieces so you can easily remove it and 1 chopped red chilli (no seeds)/a pinch of chilli flakes/1 tsp ground chilli. Simmer for 40 minutes - 1 hour, or until the rajma are soft. If you're using canned rajma, just boil the dal and spices together. They will only take 30 minutes maximum.

Prepare the vegetables: dice the ginger and garlic, chop the onions and tomatoes finely. Heat the butter and oil in a heavy fry pan - using both helps to stop the dal catching on the pan. Add the cumin seeds. When the pan starts to crackle - it will also smell amazing - add the onions and fry until they're browned. Add the tomatoes (canned and/or fresh), garlic, ginger, and spices. Sauté until they meld together into a sauce.

When the dal/rajma are done, drain and keep the water aside. Add the boiled rajma and dal to the tomatoes. Mash the dal with a potato masher/bottom of a ladle. This gives the dal its charateristic thickness.

If your dal is looking bit thick, add a little of the water the dal/rajma were boiled in. It probably won't be clear anymore, but that's ok! Let simmer on a low heat for 10-20 minutes - the longer the better. Add the cream/coconut milk and stir whilst heating for another five minutes.

Serve with some fresh coriander on top and some roti; or if you like, rice. I don't overwhelmingly love rice so I like to serve this by itself with roti, just like the norm in Rajasthan (north-west state of India). To be truly authentic you'd eat this without a spoon, using only your right hand. As we learned, you tear the roti with your right hand and fold it into a sort of scoop, then scoop up some dal and consume. In the beginning, we asked for spoons, but after seeing someone search through dirty dishes, then polish them "clean" on their dirty apron we learned to fit in and eat sans spoon pretty fast. I tried to find a picture of one of the many dal makhani I ate in India - but I barely took any pictures of food.

Instead I'll show you where I purchased spices in Delhi. I'd asked one of the lovely Kashmiri brothers who sold me almost my entire Indian scarf collection if he knew a good place to purchase spices. "Yes," he said, "I'll show you. It's hidden one, they have another place on Pahar Ganj, but it's more expensive. For tourists. But you're my friend, I'll show you. Come," he said, and I followed him in the slightly dubious way that's normal for foreign single women in India. My maharani/travel partner C was elsewhere. He lead me through extremely narrow spaces between buildings, and just when I was beginning to wonder when we were ever going to find this spice place, or if it even existed, we came around the corner to this. 

The woman whose hand you see is mixing masala spice mix - a fiery mixture of red chilli, cumin, garam masala and tumeric. When she realised just how much I intended to purchase, she made me chai and onion pakora. "Sit here," she said, "You sit. You hungry. Good." On my last day in Delhi I was quite seriously sick and largely unaware of the extent of my illness. I felt very faint and cloudy at times, and sweet spicy chai handed to me was just what I needed. 

I sat and observed this view while she served other customers, blended my spices, and hand ground masala chai for me to take back to New Zealand. Somehow she knew I needed a seat, and she gave me hers for a while. Sometimes language is unnecessary.

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"winter meals & spring tunes" was only ever meant to be an interim title - and when I started this blog we were eating winter meals and listening to spring tunes. But seasons change and names don't - so I finally got around to designing a proper header, and giving this space a bit of a spruce. What do you think?

day 10/365
grateful (strangely) for the iciness of Southern air and that I beat the urge to turn on the heating with multiple merino layers, a spot of baking, and a hot water bottle for my lap.

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title from the tallest man on earth - little river

light the carnival | mango lassi at home

I have never experienced culture shock like the culture shock I experienced when I landed in New Delhi. Tired after 17 hours of air travel through the night, emotionally exhausted after farewelling family and friends and life I knew in New Zealand, we arrived at a strangely empty airport, dazed but awake in the only way you can be after long distance flying and a completely unfamiliar time zone. My passport was stamped by a customs man with a large double chin who didn't say a single word and we were also silent as we drove through Delhi, taking it all in with wide eyes.

In Delhi, and in fact, all of India, there are a distinct lack of road rules. In lieu of rules, everyone uses their horn excessively. Roads are shared with pedestrian traffic, motorcycles, camels, donkeys, rickshaws and bicycles. It seems chaotic and shambolic - and it is - but somehow it also seems to work.

One of the things we didn't frequently eat in India was lassi - a thick yoghurt drink. Lassi can come sweet, salted, or with fruit flavours - mango is perhaps the most common. We tried to avoid eating too much dairy that had not been sufficiently heated, in order to prevent food poisoning, but one of the places where we just couldn't resist was "the blue lassi shop" in Varanasi. It is tucked away in the old part of the city and to find it you have to walk up from the ghats that line the Ganges, through streets just wide enough for pedestrians, past houses, hidden temples, and small markets and restaurants,  until you come to a blue hole-in-the-wall shop. One man will be chopping and smushing fruit and mixing it with curd, the other will be taking orders and delivering the lassi.

And the lassi - oh my, it was delicious. Made with fresh mango pulp and fresh curd, served in a small clay pot which was discarded after use, a wooden spoon and a newspaper napkin it was completely unpretentious, cost 150 rupees (NZ$4) and was easily the best lassi I've had in my life. I knew that no other lassi would live up to this standard, however, I decided to attempt to make a lassi at home. Part yoghurt drink, part fruit smoothie, not too sweet but gently spiced, I think this makes a pretty good substitute.

maitland st mango lassi

1 tin (400-500g) sliced mango in light syrup (or mango pulp if you can find it) or fresh mango if you're lucky!
400g plain unsweetened yoghurt
pinch sea salt
500mL whole milk (preferably raw)
8 cardamom pods
8-10 saffron threads (if you have them)
natural sugar such as rapadura or muscovado, or honey

Give the cardamom pods a bash with a mortar and pestle (or flatten them with the side of a knife) and remove the seeds. Put the pods in the compost and grind the seeds into as close to a powder as you can get in the mortar and pestle. They should smell very fragrant. Add the saffron threads and smush a little more. Add a little of the milk and let sit for five minutes to infuse, then stir again. The milk should take on a lot of the saffron colour.

Drain the mangos, and smush the mango slices in a bowl. If you are lucky enough to have a kitchen blender (we don't), you could blitz them in the blender instead. Strain the saffron infused milk into the mango pulp, add the rest of the milk, the sea salt and the yoghurt. Blend, or whisk. I used an electric hand-held beater for ours - if you do this, be warned, you will need a clean tea towel to cover the blender as it will splash everywhere! 

Strain through the sieve that still contains the saffron - I found that the tinned mango was quite fibrous so I strained it again to keep the stringy fibres separate. Sweeten with honey/rapadura - it won't need very much, and drink cold. This made about 750mL of lassi - so we had one cup as a taste tester before dinner and then a full 600mL milk bottle for breakfasts this week. I'm thinking mango lassi over whole oats soaked overnight will make a pretty delicious breakfast! 

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title from grizzly bear - all we ask