The Lady of Shallots

Neither Suriani banana jelly nor Guatemalan banana jelly contain shallots. 

The choice of Burma by Naomi Duguid for my next book was poorly timed, as tackling two shallot-based cuisines in a row is sapping my cooking spirit. I just have to read the words "heaping cup of thinly sliced shallots" and my eyes start to sting. I need goggles.

Last week, I made the chicken salad from Burma,  which consists of chopped rotisserie chicken tossed with lime juice, sliced raw shallots, fried shallots, shallot oil, and toasted chickpea flour. It was great. Strewing toasted chickpea flour over a salad seemed bizarre, but made perfect sense after the first bite as the chickpea flour serves the role of a crouton, but a crouton that has been powdered and dispersed over every morsel of salad. In other words, a perfect crouton. The following day I ate leftover chicken salad in a sandwich with lettuce and mayonnaise and it was fantastic. Isabel ate the chicken salad wrapped in a cold flour tortilla. Big thumbs up for Burmese chicken salad. You can find the recipe here, although I would skip the chicken breasts and use a rotisserie chicken.

The next night I served Duguid's pork sliders (i.e. meatballs) which are flavored with garlic, lemongrass, ginger, tomato, and minced shallots. Recipe here. They were too pungent for me, but popular with the others. To accompany the sliders I made eggplant delight (mashed eggplants, minced shallot, and egg cooked in shallot oil) which was too eggplanty for the others, but popular with me. I have also  braised a pot of  Duguid's sweet-and-tart pork belly (pork, hibiscus flowers, a generous cup of  shallots) but we aren't going to eat that until tonight so I can't tell you anything about it except that it is murky and full of wilted purple hibiscus flowers.

Burma is wonderful and exotic, but I'm just not feeling energized. I think I need a palate cleanser between South Asian cuisines. Suggestions please! I have pre-ordered Smitten Kitchen, but that won't arrive until next week. I'm going to buy Jerusalem at the Omnivore Books event, but that's next week, too. What should I do in the meantime?

To try to answer that question I went to the library the other day and walked out with two books, neither of which is going to work for the blog:

-Fannie's Last Supper by Christopher Kimball is what book critics like to call a "slim volume," words I must have used 450 times in a national magazine, but somehow can't employ in my little blog without wincing. Why is that? The bok recounts Kimball's attempt to recreate a 12-course Victorian feast using Fannie Farmer's 1896 cookbook as his guide and it is hilarious and smart and eccentric. I started reading it before I fell asleep and finished when I woke up, which is the beauty of a slim volume. But there was not a single dish in its pages that I wanted to cook. I wanted to make the soup that involves boiling down a whole calf's head and garnishing it with "brainballs" least of all.

-I haven't read Michael Ruhlman's Twenty yet, so can't offer an opinion. Not that I would offer any but the most glowing opinion after stumbling across this thread. Ruhlman's rebuttal puts me off Twenty more than the review that inspired it. Later, I looked for more reviews of Twenty and found this delightful cookbook blog. She rambles so much less than some cookbook critics I could name who often seem to forget why they started a blog in the first place.

And on that note: The final dinner I cooked from The Suriani Kitchen by Lathika George was a thick stew of beef, coconut, shallots, and tapioca.

tapioca

I had to make this dish because I had to try cooking fresh tapioca. I did not know that tapioca was the same foodstuff as yuca, the tasty spud-like starch I enjoyed when I was a high school exchange student in Costa Rica, but now I do. I liked tapioca/yuca then, I like it now, and I'm glad I had the experience of cooking it at least once in my life. Tapioca is cheap, easy to peel, easy to chop, and has the mild flavor and texture of a slightly fibrous potato. It is even less nutritious than a potato.

The other dish I knew I had to make before I closed the Suriani chapter was banana jelly, as I am a little bit hung up on bananas. To make Suriani banana jelly you briefly cook bananas in water, pour the mixture into a sieve and let the juice strain off overnight. (You mustn't press on the fruit, George warns, lest you release solids that will cloud the jelly.) The next day, cook this clear fluid down with sugar and eventually you end up with a delicate, translucent preserve that is very sweet and faintly banana flavored. We liked it. Didn't know quite what to do with it after enjoying a little on toast, but definitely liked it.

This seemed like the moment to also try making the Guatemalan banana jelly from Copleand Marks's False Tongues and Sunday Bread, a recipe that caught my eye years ago. For this more primitive jelly you just boil bananas with sugar and orange juice for an hour or so until you have a cloudy preserve that resembles apple butter, but tastes like banana baby food. I love banana baby food, so I was pleased. Of the two, I would make the Guatemalan jelly again because of its more emphatic banana flavor, but probably won't because there is just no demand in this household for banana jelly. 

The only other sweet I made from The Suriani Kitchen was mango mousse, and it was probably my favorite recipe in the whole book. George doesn't call for whipping the cream, which I think is a mistake, and I added twice as much chopped mango as she called for and omitted the cinnamon which she uses as a garnish. This was absolutely delicious, almost worth the price of the book.

2 cups mango puree
1 cup Greek yogurt (or strained homemade)
1/2 cup cream, whipped
1/4 cup sugar syrup, cooled (boil together equal parts sugar and water and chill)
1 cup chopped mango

1. Mix together the first 4 ingredients and chill.
2. Fold in the chopped mango. Serves 4. 

And there you have it.  I made 23 recipes from The Suriani Kitchen:

worth the price of the book -- 0
great -- 9 (fish molee, mousse, toddy pancakes)
good -- 5
so-so -- 9
flat out bad -- 0

Clearly The Suriani Kitchen is not a shelf essential, but if you're ever in the Indira Gandhi Airport at 9 p.m. and have extra rupees to unload and happen to come across a copy. . .  

Back into the Suriani Kitchen

a butte of puttu.

"Out of curiosity I asked a hundred Syrian Christians what their favorite food was, and it was no surprise that more than eighty of them said -- 'puttu!'" -- Lathika George, author of The Suriani Kitchen.

I knew I couldn't move on to a new cookbook until I had made puttu, which sounds like a dirty word but is just one of many pasty rice dishes in George's book and apparently the most special.

Only diehard cooks will find this fascinating, but here's the full puttu report:

To make puttu per George's recipe, you mix roasted rice flour with salt and water to form a crumbly dough which you then push through a sieve to work out any lumps. This takes an eon, after which you alternate layer of crumbs with spoonfuls of grated coconut in a cylindrical puttu kuti and steam your puttu. (Lacking a puttu kuti, lightly greased ramekins work.) In pictures on the internet, puttu appears to be pasty tubes of firm white carbohydrate, but my puttu immediately collapsed into a pile of crumbs. These crumbs were quite pleasant to eat, like couscous with the flavor of unseasoned rice, if you can imagine such a knockout dish. I was not convinced I had done puttu justice.

On Sunday, I tried again. This time I aimed for a wetter batter and I used coconut milk instead of water to provide the coconut flavor. I then omitted the grated coconut because I am tired of coconut whiskers in everything I eat. This second puttu steamed into a cohesive puck of bland starch, as you can see in the photograph at the top of the page. Perfectly edible, but I don't understand how something so innocuous could possibly be anyone's favorite dish. I suspect it's one of those comfort foods you just have to grow with to love, like grits or mashed potatoes or poi. 

Both times, I served the puttu with a spinach thoran and you don't have to grow up with spinach thoran to know that it is a delicious, easy, and unfattening way to get more leafy greens into your diet. 

Spinach thoran, barely adapted from The Suriani Kitchen by Lathika George.

1/ 2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1 serrano chili, sliced  (seeds removed if you don't want the dish to be too spicy)

1 teaspoon fresh ginger, chopped

2 cloves garlic

6 shallots, sliced

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

4 cups spinach, chopped into 1/4-1/2 inch shreds

1 teaspoon oil (or slightly more -- but you really do just want a tiny amount)

1/2 teaspoon black mustard seeds

6 curry leaves

2 dried red chilies, torn in half

1. In a food processor or powerful spice grinder, grind the first 7 ingredient to a paste. Mix with the spinach, massaging it into the leaves with your hands.

2. In a big skillet, heat the oil. Add the mustard seeds and when they burst, add the curry leaves and chiles. Saute for a minute or two.

3. Add the spinach and sprinkle with a little water. (Very little. The first time I added too much and the dish was a bit soggy. The second time I added maybe a tablespoon and the dish was perfect.) Cover and cook for a few minutes, until the spinach is soft and hot. Serves 2.

Does this pizza oven make me look fat?

Now those are some arms!

I looked stout in that photo in the last blog entry. I winced when I saw it, but posted it anyway. Monday night, a friend emailed me:

that is one impressive oven! unbelievable. not my favorite picture of you ever.

The nerve! I fumed. I lost track of what was happening on Homeland and sat on the sofa pursuing a train of thought that belongs on another blog, but since this is the only blog I've got, I will hold forth very briefly before moving on to Suriani cuisine.

After I spent all of Sunday building, stoking, and tending a 1000+ degree fire in an oven I constructed from scratch and singlehandedly carried around loads of firewood, cleaned the house, and made appetizers, pizza, apple pie, and Greek yogurt gelato for eleven dinner guests, my neighbor took a snapshot of me wearing a floral apron and welding gloves and waiting for a pizza to cook. The heat had melted burned off a chunk of my bangs and I'm not at my skinniest. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to love the photo and I was right. I did not look smashing. I decided not to care. How thoroughly annoying that someone had to voice their agreement!

I am 46 and suspect that "favorite pictures" are going to be an ever scarcer commodity and I am going to have to be ok with that and so is everybody else. If we only show the world "favorite pictures" we will all eventually become invisible and when you are invisible you don't get credit for your achievements, and who doesn't want credit for building a weird earthen oven in her yard? There was a picture of me looking plain with the oven and there was a picture of the oven all by itself and I made an editorial decision. The correct editorial decision. Far from making me want to take the dumpy picture down, my friend's offhand remark (I am not holding a grudge!) made me glad I had posted it. I think Lena Dunham's outfits are often awkward and outlandish, but I'm completely down with what she's trying to do.

And without further ado, Syrian Christian food.

My children do not like fish, but I felt I had to make at least one fish recipe from The Suriani Kitchen, given how central seafood is to the Surriani diet. Here is Lathika George on Suriani fish cookery: "Tiny sardines are marinated in spices and fried crisp in coconut oil; chunks of kaalanji (a backwater salmon) simmer with chilli and coccum in earthenware pots over smoky wood fires; whole karimeen is wrapped in banana leaves and roasted in the glowing embers of the hearth; and shrimps are stir fried with slices of tender coconut, spices, and the omnipresent curry leaves."

Just reading this I gained 5 pounds. Not that I would ever care about something like that.

I chose to make fish molee, which George describes as a "creamy fish curry, probably influenced by travelers from Malaya." As Whole Foods did not have any kaalanji or karimeen, I bought cod filets. At home in a big skillet I fried onions, garlic, curry leaves, ginger, cloves and hot green peppers, then added coconut milk and the cod. Twenty minutes later we had a sumptuous stew of tender white fish poached in spicy coconut gravy. It was fabulous -- suave, white, rich, aromatic -- and unlike anything they serve at most Indian restaurants in the United States.

Unfortunately, the accompanying paalappams -- rice pancakes that are supposed to look like this -- failed. The batter stuck like a second skin to the skillet and we ended up with scrambled dough.

That was Tuesday. Last night I cooked a splendid dinner full of exotic delicacies, but an account will have to wait until later as I am all out of vim.

Finally we hit our stride

Would you serve a Suriani dinner to him?

My sister and I host family dinners on alternating Sundays and this past weekend was my turn, which is always both a burden and a thrilling opportunity to show off. I was hesitant about cooking from The Suriani Kitchen because the dishes haven't been universally wonderful, but I went ahead, the stars aligned, everything was outstanding, the kids ate a lot of challenging food, the adults drank just enough wine, and all was well in our little world, despite a loud debate about whether Clint Eastwood's Republican National Convention speech was embarrassing or effective. Those of us who grew impassioned/obnoxious apologized. Again, I am sorry, Dad.

We ate:

spicy beef pot roast
lentils with coconut milk
kallappams
double-decker apple pie

Dish by dish:

spicy beef pot roast -- Lathika George excavated this recipe from the vintage journal of a remote rubber plantation, which made it almost irresistible to me. The dish consists of chuck roast dosed with a truckload of Indian spices and braised for 4 hours. Here's the thing: I couldn't tell the difference between this Indian pot roast and an American pot roast. If pot roast was a person he would be a fat, merry older man with red cheeks who likes a glass of Port after dinner in front of the hearth. He's always genial company and spices can't change his essential nature, which is pleasant and accommodating. This particular pot roast accommodated 3 tablespoons of mustard seeds, 5 dried red chiles, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, and garlic and he was still just an easy-going old pot roast. That is what I love about pot roast.

lentils with coconut milk -- The ubiquitous Indian legume porridge -- which often goes by the name dal -- is also very forgiving, very relaxed and mild mannered. I've made lots of dals over the years and don't think I've ever had a bad one. This version was very good. My 6-year-old niece drank it like soup and asked for seconds, which made me glow, but I think I've made better, richer dals so I will not go overboard and type the recipe.

snow-white kallappam batter

kallappams -- This is where I want to use copious exclamation points, capital letters, italics, hyperbole. I loved the kallappams I made the other night, they are exactly the kind of dish I wanted to find in The Suriani Kitchen: New (to me) and totally delicious. Kallappams are thickish, spongy, coconutty pancakes, nutritionally empty, easy to prepare, and perfect for sopping up rich, spicy gravy. I've since found several recipes in other Indian cookbooks which look similar, and other recipes on the internet. I can only vouch for this recipe, though I would be open to variations. The recipe reflects my adjustments and opinions.

3 cups medium grain white rice soaked in water for 2 hours

2 cups water

1 cup dried, unsweetened coconut
1/4 cup cooked rice (SORRY! OMITTED THE FIRST TIME.)

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

3 tablespoons sugar (I'd cut it down to 2 unless I was eating this in a dessert or snack context)

1 teaspoon instant yeast.

1. Grind the soaked rice with the water in a blender or food processor for a few minutes until it becomes smooth and milky and the rice is broken into small bits. Add the coconut and cooked rice and grind for 2 minutes more.

2. In a bowl, mix the rice batter with all the other ingredients. Cover with a damp towel and let sit in a reasonably warm place for a couple of hours.

3. Pour 3/4 cup of the batter on a hot, lightly greased skillet (you really don't want much oil on the skillet because the pancake will soak it all up) and cook over medium heat until light gold on each side. Don't try to flip the pancakes too soon; wait until they're pretty cooked. Repeat until all the pancakes are done. 

finished kallappams

Double-decker apple pie. There are Suriani desserts I need to try, but it's easy to put off steamed rice paste porridge when hundreds of ripe apples on our tree are yelling at me to make pie or cake. I went with a double-decker pie from Southern Pies by Nancie McDermott: crust filled with apples, topped with crust, topped with apples, topped with crust. It didn't sound promising to me because I'm a filling person, not a crust person, but in fact this pie was terrific.

All day I struggled not to eat the last slice and then, at 8 p.m., I ate it.

Family dinner, volume MDCLVIII

This will be short.

Thursday was back-to-school night at the august local high school where Isabel is a sophomore. A lot of the other parents seem to have aged dramatically since we met them in first grade. I feel bad for them. I'm so glad that hasn't happened to my husband and me.

During his 10-minute presentation, the history teacher, Mr. Chamberlin, told us he regularly posts "homework assignments" for parents on his web site. The homework consists of a question related to the curriculum that parents should ask at the dinner table to "help conversation sprout and spout."

His words. I thought, that's very charming and idealistic of him.

We came home and it was late.

Ordinarily I use back-to-school night as an excuse to go out to dinner, but after India, it's temporarily lost some of its luster. Earlier in the day I'd made beef and potato curry -- cubed chuck, onions, spices, tomatoes, potatoes -- from Suriani Kitchen and I reheated it, along with the leftover rice from the night before.

Here's what the four of us discussed in a very desultory fashion:

-the history teacher's buff suede shoes
-the English teacher's extensive tattoos
-the kindly science teacher's regrettable speech impediment
-what weapons the kids use in Lord of the Flies
-whether Isabel or Owen would get to take the first shower

It's a little embarrassing when I type it out. And the next morning I had to struggle to remember any of it.  I went to the history teacher's web site and the question for Thursday was:

"Are there any countries in the world today that are ripe for revolution?"

What do you think? Not in terms of answers, but about posing such a question at the dinner table? Anyway I'm going to try it. I can imagine the ways an interesting conversation might "sprout and spout" and we can hardly do worse.

About the curry. It was red and spicy, very delicious. I don't understand the nuances of curry, though, and I'm going to try to educate myself. I don't know what the balance of flavors is supposed to be, so I can't tell if it's heavy on the ginger or turmeric-dominant or even what is appropriate. I just know what I like and I liked this. I have a lot to learn about Indian cooking.

Again with the excess water, though. The recipe calls for 8 cups and I cut it down to 4 and cooked it for longer than indicated, but even so it was watery. Isabel doesn't like her foods to touch and the thin sauce ran across the plate, so she had to put up a dam of bread to keep it from touching the rice. Then she ate it all up, curry and rice and bread.

Unbelievably, I got on a plane again yesterday. More on that later. This morning we have a temple to tour.