Lifespan of a Chennette

I clearly have not been a prolific blogger so far for 2008, but I have stuck to my intention to cook more, read more food blogs and where possible combine the two activities. This all became easier once I settled into my new apartment and more convenient spaces. I suppose it has helped that my travel schedule has been extremely light. When you’re in one place for 2 consecutive weeks (and weekends) you can actually plan meals, shop and buy food in advance. Even prep meats and veggies to cook meals during the work week. Who knew? And I drew inspiration for many new meals from those foodie bloggers who are far more knowledgeable and dedicated than I. I just haven’t posted because of various technological issues, but more about that in a non-food related post…

This post is meant to highlight some of my favourite dishes made from recipes created, posted or tested by cool food bloggers, which inspired me to get cooking:

Irish Soda Bread, Hyderabadi Mutton Biriyani, Kerala Fish Curry and Pretzels!

Irish Soda Bread

It’s hard to say which blogger, and which recipe inspired me as when I made this bread (twice) there seemed to be a convergence of suggestions coming at me. One day, I had pepperpot from my brother-in-law and needed bread to eat it with, and that same night friends of mine in Glasgow were making (yet again) Trini Beef Stew with Dumplings (from Sweet Hands: Island Cooking from Trinidad and Tobago) and Irish Soda Bread to accompany it. A couple days before I’d been browsing For the Love of Baking (a wonderful food photographer and blogger in Indonesia), amused at her frantic Ramadan tale, with time to break fast approaching, starting to make bread and no yeast. The result? Irish Soda Bread. Well, I also thought I had had yeast… I started looking for recipes and reading up on this Irish bread, realising that in the US, Irish Soda Bread has transformed from this plain, baking soda and buttermilk bread, to something more like a sweet, fruit-studded baked good. Not good with pepperpot I would imagine…

Fortunately, bureka boy (an extremely diligent step-by-step recipe poster, with photos and gems of information both helpful and entertaining) had a recipe that seemed more like the real thing. And equally as fortunate, I hadn’t moved from the old apartment with the Le Creuset pots, and was able to produce a light, fluffy, crusty and lovely-flavoured baking soda bread that was perfect with pepperpot. I don’t have a picture of the bread I made from his recipe on this computer, but it did inspire me to try it again. A version with bran and oats for Irish Brown Soda Bread. It was delicious with an egg and cheese sandwich on the weekend. This is definitely a quick recipe with great results, but keep in mind it is not a yeast bread. It has a different flavour and texture which, to me, was more noticeable in the white bread version. That being said, it did indeed go very well with a meat stew or toasted with the usual suspects.

Hyderabadi Mutton Biriyani

I have always wanted to try a biriyani in the oven; the process always fascinated me. Baking rice. I know, there are probably lots of dishes and cuisines that  cook the rice in the oven, but I had never made one. And I love biriyani, especially since the days of my Gujarati landlord in Barbados who made a chicken biriyani with peas and lots of fried brown onions. Lots of great spicy flavour. And Mom makes a great biriyani, also stovetop. Oh, yummy. Once I started trying to find out how to make a “real” biriyani, I of course discovered the baking method and was hooked.

I can’t recall exactly how I stumbled upon Nabeela’s blog, Trials and Error, but it must have been during Ramadan or just after. I loved reading about other people’s Ramadan experiences and cultures. And she was a graduate maths student. That’s practically like family in my household! So when I came across her recipe for Authentic Hyderabadi Biryani, when I had some mutton in the freezer, I had to try it. She had step by step instructions and pictures. Some of you may recall my blogging while cooking this, and it’s taken me almost 3 months to post about this. Sigh.

Anyway, I was so happy I made this. I did everything as instructed…almost. Word to the wise – when she says “Check the salt amount. It should be really salty“, believe her otherwise, your rice would be somewhat bland – the salt has to season the raw meat AND the rice and gravy. Don’t be too shy with it. Also, if like me, you’re using say, jasmine rice instead of basmati, don’t. Or cook for shorter time or with less liquid, because jasmine rice cooks really fast and it got mushy, not nice and separate grains like in her pictures. But we live and learn.

Kerala Fish Curry

I know how I discovered Kitchen Mishmash – through Nabeela’s blog. I’d bought some slices of trout and wanted to make some sort of curry, but something different, new. And so I decided to try her Fish Curry – Central Kerala Style. I had everything. Coconut milk, ginger, turmeric…well, except for the curry leaves and kudam puli (gamboge), but I figured I could still try it. She’d mentioned a couple times that the sourness from the gamboge is quite different from tamarind, and I decided that meant I could substitute tamarind. Well, it was a lovely curry, but as it simmered with the coconut milk and the tamarind and ginger, I was strongly reminded of Thai curries. She has since sanctioned for me, the use of green green mango to add the right sourness (which I should have known since we use mangoes in Trinidad and Guyana to add sourness to fish curry, but I only had ripe mangoes anyway!). I enjoyed this curry and was told it looked authentic enough, so I cooked Kerala-style. I did. You know, with my usual caveat.

Pretzels!

One of the most recent cooking-from-blogs ventures was also one my most successful. I made pretzels! In the midst of creating chennette.net, I woke up on New Year’s Day to find that bureka boy had posted a recipe for pretzels. I hadn’t had soft, chewy pretzels in years and years and the recipe actually looked easy. It didn’t require pre-boiling the pretzels (although it is an option) and I thought, “I could do that.” And I did. They really didn’t take a lot of work or time and they were great! I made smaller pretzels than the recipe, because I didn’t want to be rolling long long ropes. I didn’t take any pictures of the dough, or the knots, pre-baking, because I thought they looked rather ungainly. But the rising and baking process evened it out and I think perhaps they were gorgeous (if I do say so myself).

The key to the pretzel flavour is the baking soda wash. This also browns it perfectly in the very short baking time. Brushing on the baking soda wash substitutes for the boiling process (also using baking soda) and seems to have produced authentic results. Yay. I even had the sea salt recommended for sprinkling. Except my sea salt tends to be a bit moist and hard to sprinkle and I ended up overdoing it. While pretzels are meant to be salty, I can’t enjoy that much saltiness, so next time I plan to carefully press a smaller amount of salt onto the pretzels. I also liberally added sesame seeds, which was a great addition – except where it was mixed in with the salt and when I brushed the excess salt off, goodbye sesame seeds. Next time, different, salt-free toppings will be tried. Don’t make too many – these are extremely chewy the next day and not quite as enjoyable, although the flavour is still there.

And that my friends, is my update on my forays into the kitchen, as inspired by some of you who may very well be reading. I really will blog regularly, otherwise, what really would be the point of all this cooking, and photos? However, my laptop monitor died and although I have the office Dell at home semi-permanently, it doesn’t feel like mine and I am reluctant to do normal photo-processing and blogging on this computer. But I am working through that. Eventually.