Spicy!

Get ready for...
a Culinary Adventure!

This will be my first of what should already be my fifth post on Indian cuisine. I have been an Indian food maniac forever and just now got to cooking some real Indian food. But since its been so long now lets take a trip back in time….

I took a car ride down to the good ol’ bookstore at the mall at least a month ago and got to flipping through plenty of cookbooks. Of course went through the usual; Japanese cuisine, food journals (whatever is not a “pure” cookbook but also maybe a book about food and travel), and whatever else caught my eye. But browsing through the books I always spot the Indian and Moroccan cookbooks next to the Japanese ones, and then I reminisce on the good times and good food at the local Indian restaurants.

Weeks pass…I want to visit the local Indian market but am much too busy. Weeks pass…

Finally make it down tot the Indian market and purchase pomegranate molasses, rose water, dried chick peas, and paneer cheese.

The delicious paneer goes quick after I borrow a great cook book from the library India's VegetarianCooking by Monisha Bharadwaj and I mess around with different recipes.

After plenty of experimenting I have even furthered my interest in Indian cooking. I will continue to explore and post on my findings!

I figure it would be pointless to provide ALL the recipes as I am lazy but these are the pictures and the recipes names from top to bottom

1. Slow Cooked Mushrooms; Dum Ki Khumb, (I left out the yogurt), my favorite of the bunch cause I love mushrooms and I LOVE the spices used.
2. Indian cheese with peppers, onions, and tomatos; Paneer Jalfrezi, (nummy! Though I woulden't try grating the onion I would lightly carmelise them insted...I love onions )
3. Spinich with Cheese; Palak (or saag) Paneer, not the best looking but a great source of iron with the tomatos, and mighty tasty too!
4. This is from a box, though I don't remember the name, it was really spicy and great with couscous!

Catering

I am ALL over the catering business right now. Tomorrow I will be "shadowing" a Seattle catering company called…for school. Its called shadow day, but in essence it’s virtually career day. I am SO glad I got this opportunity to do this God has pulled through again! I was about to be stuck with shadowing my mother (accountant for Bank of America) when my dad pulled the stops and got this connection through one of his friends.

What’s funny is that not only do I need a caterer for my schools prom (called JSB for Junior/Senior Banquet) but I just went to my first wedding yesterday (and caught the bouquet!) and got a taste of some fancy catering. I am in charge of organizing the prom as president of my class and therefore head of prom committee. I’m not really president…we are more of a…I don’t know, but I’m defiantly not head. But the Presidential status does look better on an application then the position I was going for (secretary, I think).

Once I do some reasearch and am through with the big day I'll tell you all about it.

More dairy induced goodness

I’m back on the Ice cream train, just getting over the mountain that is the mastery of the art. Its hard work to make good ice cream. It’s no stir fry. I recently tried a list of things including pudding, jell-o, and yogurt. All can bring great results if done well.

Most of the time gelatin and pudding play second string…and I don’t mind one bit. Gelatin is much better suited to play a texture enhancer, plain and unflavored, in ice cream or frozen yogurt (my case), then to play full flavor lead (lime was my case, possibly the most artificial jell-o flavor ever, and doubly artificial in ice cream). Pudding is the same. Most popular use is plain vanilla or pistachio pudding when used in ice cream. I also did a lot of frozen yogurt. I think frozen yogurt might be ever harder than milk/cream based ice creams. This is due to the fact that without sugar or other forms of sweetening, the plain yogurt is very tart. This wasn’t great when I tried to make mocha frozen yogurt, but great with sour cherry. Mmmm…cherry.

I am currently intrigued by a vegan ice cream blogspot and “stole” (my slang for take, most always legally) some recipes. One for vanilla (as a base for a lavender ice cream) and one rum raisin. I am very exited about getting to use my lavender which I will of course use to make cookies, spices, and the like. I am planning to make lavender pancakes tomorrow (…well today, as its past 12 am)…I need sleep; I’ll tell you how the ice cream turns out!

The most gorgeous pan in all my days...

maries ops 638
Originally uploaded by javakat343

Finally went to Daiso for another trip. This time I had a few kitchen aids in mind. First off I wanted a tamagoyaki pan, (checked off my list at the regular dollar fifty price) next I needed a cooking grill for making yaki onigiri (also $1.50) and finally the tamagoyaki pan…

No go. They sell out like, like, like…oh I don’t know, the sell out like anything on sale on the day before Christmas. They are never there. They are SO not in stock that I doubt the store ever had them in the first place…Anger.

So after much online searching I decided that 20 dollars was a suitable price…even though if I had waited a week I could have got one for 9 dollars on Amazon…but I am not that patient. Besides! I have wanted a takoyaki/abelskever pan FOR-EV-ER! I waited for an opportune moment but I could never get the 3 (under line the 3 five times won’t you?) dollar pan at Daiso. Okay! Do We Understand the Frustration? I payed 20 instead of 3!!! WTF!

But this really is the wrong attitude. I mean I have the freaking pan now. I should be, like, grateful. I’m so grateful I have already said the word “like” 5 times already. Bad form, bad form…ah well.

I am already scheming ways to use this pan. I have already made spherical crab cakes (yummy!) and will make cherry jam filled pancakes and lavender sugar pancakes tomorrow morning.

Lavender is Purple!

maries ops 473
Originally uploaded by javakat343

So I try (but fail) to keep my goal of keeping my blogs equal in posts, but recently I have been falling behind. Right know the toll is 33 to 22 so as you can see it has been easier for me to keep track of food rather than anime. Can you blame me? NO! I have very little time to watch anime and while food is necessity anime really just…*gulp*…isn’t. But I have like a BAZILLION things to talk about, SO! I have plenty of fun reading coming your way.

FOOD
• Library books! = Cooking fun!
• Facing my fears: all you can eat sushi and seafood buffet
• Lavender the color of…Purple?
• Annatto, Now you know.
• New Diet,Low Iron! So much for giving blood!
• Grow your Own Dinner
Both
• Daiso raid

SUTEKI DA NE???

But another problem is when I’m so behind on posting I tend to blend all my posts together for example I can’t seem to just discuss one item in my blogs I commonly have to refer them for later.

But lets talk about something else shall we? My hell week is finally over so Friday I found myself with the desire for a mini shopping spree. I headed done to the mall to check out the site as “they” have been doing a lot of revamping to the Northgate mall. They already added plenty of new restaurants BUT they have an especially interesting one that I will gladly review for you later: All you can eat sushi and seafood buffet!! It’s pricy as all buffets are but SUSHI?? How insane is that? It’s called Bluefin. You can read about it at http://bluefinseattle.com/ . But I’ll give you a review later (I told you!) . For now I have to tell you all about what I bought (Oh joy). I have been desperately searching for a takoyaki pan to buy without having to pay 30 dollars for a “Puffy Pancake Pan” at the Seen On TV store. The cheapest was Target at 20 dollars but I was assured that Daiso had a 6 dollar one that goes quickly and that’s why I never saw it…I did pick up this “Patty Trio” which is good for making speedy empanadas, ravioli, wontons, or wannabe UncrustablesTM. It’s defiantly not a unitasker! But all this stuff (takoyaki, sushi reviews, and wontons) is another post (Got you again!).

FOR NOW, I have major ultra colossal news. Before I left the mall I FINALLY picked up a bottle of culinary lavender from a mall stand there. It was ridiculously expensive (at 7 dollars for a 1oz bottle, the bottle it self costs like 3 dollars) but sooo worth it. I have been dying to experiment with lavender lately and haven’t had the time.

My ideas for future lavender based culinary exploration are;

• Lavender lemon spice seasoning
• Lavender cookies with Lavender sugar
• Chicken with Herbs de province
• Lavender lemonade
• Lavender jelly (I’ll have to do a post on herb jelly later..dangnabbit!)