Jim's Night - Saag, Paneer, Rice, Joy

Greetings, internet!  Alex here, bringing you Jim's inspirational Indian food.  We recently had a home cooked Indian meal, made by an actual Bengali Mama, and Jim wishes to recreate it.  Tonight's menu features...

Peach Lassi
Saag Paneer
Vegetable Chop
Tofu Tikka Masala
Rice Pudding

So delightful!  Deb just dropped this little nugget, which is really representative of the perception altering properties of supper club...

"Remember when we made Thai food and it was better than any Thai food we've ever had before?"

Hungry and optimistic, the wild Deb recalls all of our successes while omitting our disasters.  Anyway, faced with this optimism, I have no choice but to feed her Indian snacks!  In this case...

Mint Potato Sticks

Masala Plantain Chips

The beast is getting sated.  Very...slowly.

Anyway, internet, this week heralds the beginning of the football season, and also, because it is the future, the highlights get automatically turned into animated GIF files.  Yessss.

Let me share this one with you.  This gentleman, #12, Jacoby Jones, is about to return a punt.  He is waving his arms, which means in NFLSL (NFL Sign Language): "I am going to catch this ball, and I promise not to run.  Do not touch me."  Then, Brynden Trawick, a member of the same team, barrels into him.  This is the most spectacular fail ever!!!  And now, an animated GIF, just for you!  Enjoy!

Anyway, I'm going to try this neat game where I write all the fluff outside of the cooking process.

Sara and Janet arrived, and brought treats for us!  And Sara bought a ring for herself, which is made by the Amish to apparently signify the harvest?  When asked to look up whether the Amish have pagan harvest rings, I googled "Amish Ring", only to learn about drug rings.  Awesome.

Sweeeeeeeet.

Anyway, I'm on a very rare lull in the photography, so hey, blogging!

So, right, this guy.  He chops people's beards off when they denounce his authority.  Now that, is an Amish Ring(leader).  Watch yourself, Amish delinquents.

Rice Pudding

Ahh, rice pudding.  Jim began this earlier with cooking some Jasmine Rice.  It has a lovely aroma, and especially so when it's getting prepared by Deb.

Deb brings milk and rice to a boil.

Deb, after I wrote that sentence, immediately said "when did you take that picture?" to figure out how long she's been bringing to a boil.  Awesome.

Then, well, I missed a few steps, but it involved adding cream, coconut milk and spices.

It's cooked and delicious!

Then, transfer it to ramekins, and cover it with saran wrap to chill, otherwise, you'll get a skin.

Also, tape.

Tofu Tikka Masala

Brian is on the tofu tikka masala, which means - make the masala part!  Right now he's assembling the spices laid out in this recipe.

A blur of grating ginger.

Then, you sautee some onions in ghee.  Or, if you don't have ghee (dammit!) you can just do it in vegetable oil.

Onions in ghee

Brian went ahead and added in his pile of spices, and then added in tomatoes.  And how do you add tomatoes?  You squeeze.  Each.  One.  By.  Hand.  And cover yourself in tomato goo.  Yessss.

Awesome.

After it's come to a boil, you can add cilantro and cream.

Anyway, that tofu?  Remember, for the Tofu Tikka Masala?  It's marinating!

For chicken, you marinate in a yogurt spice mixture.  We started with soy sauce and garlic to give it some flavor, and now we're going to marinate it in the yogurt!

Marinated tofu in spiced yogurt

We're going to broil it!

It got broiled!

And then add them to the sauce!

Also, you'll have lots of delicious yogurt sauce afterwards, which you can turn into a dip!

With cilantro garnish

Vegetable Chop

So a chop, in case you're not Bengali, is a vegetable patty that's coated in egg and then deep fried.  Our surrogate Bengali mama microwaved the veggies, but Jim roasted them.  Then, he started to mush them up by hand.

Literally, by hand.

To this, you need to add cooked onions, which you make on the stove with spices.

Featuring harvest ring.

Then, you sautee them!

You can add spices, too!  And cook until they're brown.  Jim added some chili powder, garam masala, cumin...

Once they're brown, you can add them to the other veggies - and don't forget your carrots, which  may have been left in the microwave!

Then, mush them all up in to balls!

And then, you do egg yolks and bread crumbs.  It takes some panache, which we...well.  Yeah.

And then, once you've made a million of them, you fry them!

Apparently, you can deep fry them, but we're just shallow frying them.  Make sure to drain them on paper towels when you're done!

Then, they're done!

Saag Paneer

How do you make Saag Paneer?  You start with spinach!  We have frozen.  It almost got boiled, but we saved it!  Hooray!

And...you use paneer!

Fresh from the Indian market.

And then...fry it!

Deb, fryer and stirrer!

It gets nice and brown!

Once it's fried, you can chop it up.

Chopped, fried paneer.

Once the paneer is ready and the spinach is thawed, you chop onions and fry them, too.  Add in spices, and tomatoes.

Tomatoes, do your thing!

Once tomatoes cook, add cream.

And finally, the paneer!

We kind of forgot to blend the saag mixture, which isn't terrible, but isn't really Jim's preference.  Also, the tasting committee decided that we need more cream, so, hey, more cream it is.  Also, lemon juice is added.  We had a little discussion about whether that means that curdling will happen - apparently, super high fat dairy (like heavy cream) makes it way harder to curdle.  Here's way more information on that then you wanted.

Peach Lassi

Well, I don't know if peaches are authentically Indian, but they are authentically New England delicious, so we are using them in a lassi!

Step one of lassi adventure, measure yogurt.

We have fresh peaches, which Janet is going to chop up and maybe precook?  We will see.

Janet is also going totally rogue, and now adding extra cardamom to the lassi.  I'm...uh...not enthusiastic about cardamom.  But, hey, not my night.

Cooking peaches to sweeten

Unfortunately, these peaches need to be cool before blended into the yogurt.  Does Janet have a plan?  I don't know, but the peaches are getting mushy!  Well, add some sugar, and then blend it!

Janet says it...uh...tastes like a smoothie.  Since the yogurt isn't tart enough.  We shall see!  After this happened, Janet also added some greek yogurt and some salt.  Tart enough?  I SAID WE'LL SEE OH MY GOD WAIT.

Grades

Chops

Bri - A- without the sauce, A with the sauce.  Tasty?  It kind of fell apart...

Jim - A-.  The sauce was delicious.

Sara - B.  But like Brian, better with the sauce.  Something in the spices I didn't like.

Janet - B+ without the sauce, A with the sauce.  It fell apart, and I was like, ok cool!

Deb - B.  It didn't really have a strong flavor at all.  It was kind of fried vegetables.

Alex - B.  Exactly the same as Deb.

Saag Paneer

Bri - B.  The cheese never really...it felt separate from the spinach.  It didn't melt and mingle.  And the spices were...I was surprised by heat!

Jim - C.  I thought it was too spicy!  I don't know if I put way too much spinach in or what, but it just wasn't what I wanted.

Sara - B.  Puree!  More salt.

Janet - B-.  It needed way more salt, which was easily fixable.  It wasn't like saag paneer, but I thought it was quite, quite tasty.  I liked the spicy!  I liked the creamy.

Deb - B.  It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't as good as restaurant food.  The spices weren't quite right.

Alex - B.  I liked the spicy, I think the puree would have helped a lot.  I also wonder if enough cumin went in?

*Note: Jim forgot the fenugreek altogether.

Tofu Tikka Masala

Bri - A.  I...I mean...it has to do a little with me cooking it.  The rice wasn't as fluffy as it can be, but it was awesome.

Jim - A.  Solid A.  I thought it was really good.

Sara - A+++.  I loved everything about it, especially how good it was.

Janet - A+.  So good, so good. It's like...no, that shit was just really good.  I think the rice is a separate not county thing.  And I can't taste the soy sauce.

Deb  - A.  It was a standout.  It really went well with everything!

Alex - A-.  In my world, I imagined the chicken part, which the tofu definitely did not replace.  Still, delicious.

Peach Lassi

Bri - A-.  It was tasty, I personally had trouble with it because it all wanted to be soaked up by my mustache.

Jim - A.  I thought it was nice and bright and tasty.  I thought I never liked lassis, but maybe I don't like salty and mango.

Sara - B-.  Meh.  I wanted it to be more sour.  Additionally, more smooth.

Janet - C+.  It was a tasty smoothie, but not remotely a lassi.  I thought it was too thin.  Maybe there's no such thing as a peach lassi, but we didn't have the right kind of yogurt.  You can also just buy a thing called "lassi" in a bottle.

Deb  - C+.  It was a good smothie, but not really a lassi.  I'm also really full.

Alex - B+.  It was a good smothie, but not really a lassi.

Rice Pudding

Bri - C+.  It was heavy on the rice, low on the pudding for me.  Moist rice in a bowl...?  But tasty, for what that is?

Jim - A.  I like that it wasn't super sweet!  I thought the bursts of golden raisins in my mouth were just...nice!  Delightful!

Sara - A.  Light, delicious!  I enjoyed raisins?!

Janet - A-.  I thought it was remarkably similar to the rice pudding from a restaurant, which is pretty much the only rice pudding I've ever had.  I was sad it lacked nuts.  A little more spices would have been good...really, mostly just right on.  Perfectly sweet.

Deb  - C.  Edible but I wouldn't want to eat it again ever...I think it needed more spice, and the creamy texture was not there.

Alex - B.  I think maybe I don't like cold rice pudding that much.  I also apparently want my desserts to be crazy sweet.

Bri's Night - If it ain't homemade...

Greetings, internet.  It is I, Alex, blogging from My Little Pony Headquarters, aka Brian's kitchen.  Tonight find me learning a whole host of new things.  First off, I learned that My Little Pony, in an effort to reach out beyond fans of Ponies, has jumped the shark, and turned the ponies into humans.

Uh...yeah.  It's kind of irrelevant, but hey, maybe I can use it as a metaphor to describe tonight's meal?  Yeah, sure, welcome to...

My Little Homemade Vegan Hot Dog
Vital Wheat Gluten is Magic!

Oh yes, reader(s), this is a real anthropomorphic giant lizard hot dog logo from a food truck in Seattle, Tokyo Dog.  We're honoring this Dogzilla today by making the "Shinjuku Dog", an apple sage sausage with butter teriyaki onions, wasabi mayo and nori.  We're going to to use some tips from one of Deb's favorite blogs, Vegan Dad to create the sausages, mostly relying on the power of vital wheat gluten to proteinize.

Buttah.

Brian also found this ingenious technique for infusing potatoes with as much butter as possible.  It requires slicing the potatoes so that they stay together, but leave little gulches for the butter to flow through.  This also, by the way, has me imagining a sweet fucking cookbook called "butter gulch".  Anyway!

Jim, in creating the hot dogs, made rather a big snafu.  Vital wheat gluten, when blended, goes from having, like, a little holding power, to OH MY GOD, NEVER LET GO!  So...we kind of had to start over.  Nevertheless, we had enough to start from scratch, and use a fork to mix things rather than a mixer.  What's crazy is that after we mix this dough, we are going to put it into "sausage casings", which in this case are aluminum foil sheets.  We're going to wrap it in the sheets, and then steam them.
 

Homemade buns!

Brian is also taking this homemade everything opportunity to make homemade buns (yesss) as well.  These will hold our vegan hot dogs, and thus give us triple points for phallic foods.  To complete our sophomoric trifecta, we're also making NUTella.  Heh heh heh.  No, seriously, homemade nutella.  I am so pleased by this.  It requires toasting hazelnuts, peeling them, then pulverizing them into a kind of nut butter.  Then, sugar, vanilla, salt and chocolate, and...voila?  We shall see.

Proto-nutella, pre-blender.

In the meantime, back in butter gulch, Deb is putting cheese on each halfway baked potato so that we can melt them into the delightful crevices.

"Do you want to stuff the cheese in the cracks?"

Heh heh heh.

Jim is on to making the teriyaki buttery onions, and I'm trying to help the nutella along.  Fortunately, Deb has a vitamix, which I think might be necessary to translate the nut powder to a creamy paste.  It's kind of crumbly and not spreadable, but hey, what do you want?  It's still delicious, so I'm pretty happy.

And finally, the steaming and baking are complete, and it's time to whip some wasabi into the mayo and make our beautiful photograph...

Hot Dogs

Jim
B-.  If we had taken the steamed hot dogs and fried them to give them some crispy texture, then the good taste would have been helped a lot.  I think we overdid it on sides...as one does.
Deb
C-.  I didn't like the taste or the texture.  And yet, I ate the whole thing, so it doesn't get an F!
Bri
B-.  I'm proud of the fact that we did it and it worked out at all.  It's not something I'd go back to on my own with any sense of joy.  The onions were good.
Alex
B-.  The more sauce, the better!  It was really very gluteny, though, and the bun was so big! 

Potatoes

Jim
B-.  Only because my potato wasn't baked all the way.  The taste and idea were really good, but it was a little undercooked.  Also, it was HUGE!
Deb
B+.  I thought it was great, could have used a bit more cheese in the middle.  And could have been cooked a little more - brilliant idea, though, I love it!
Bri
B.  We could have cooked it longer and if we'd had some ranch dressing to pump up the calorie load...
Alex
I agree with Jim on this one.  Great idea, needed more cooking, and more sauce as it was a little dry.

Nutella Sandwichy Thingy

Jim
B-.  It would have been good with something else inside and maybe some egg to soften the bread.  Has potential!


Deb
C-.  If it had been Brioche...and French Toast....

Bri
B-.  It did have potential!  With a different bread...and a hungrier group of people...and a spreadier nutella...it could have been pretty good!

Alex
C+.  Sourdough bread does not really go with chocolate.  Nevertheless, chocolate!  I even like the weird powder nutella.  But I think I mostly just like chocolate.

Soujourn to Portugal

Evenin' readers. Deb here, blogging our Deep Space Cooking Club tonight. This cooking club adventure is going to be a loving ode to Portugal, a place that Alex and Jim just came back from after spending a couple of weeks there, hanging out at surf camp and doing touristy stuff with Alex's parents.  Hi, parents!

We're listening to Portuguese country music (Fadu) which may or may not mean that it's a type of music that people listen to in the sticks in Portugal (no, not Styx, Brian). It is "pandemic", Jim says, like country music here, but more popular. (Ouch.)

For appetizers tonight, Jim fed us bread, olives and stinky cheese. And fish pate that came in cute quarter sized containers and which A&J apparently smuggled into the country.

Brian's having a good time quizzing A&J about the world events that they missed when they were away: royal baby, crazy Hollywood stars who set things on fire and ...as an aside, Brian's new tattoo! Yep, after 4 years of thinking about it and planning it carefully, Brian wandered out one day, found an artist he liked, emailed back and forth with her for a bit and then trusted her with marking up his skin forever.

The Edo period Shinto monkey of Bri's dreams.

Jim's back from a brief foray on the computer to look up Piri Piri recipes. Now he's all business and he's putting Brian to work:

Brian is putting together this sauce.
http://leitesculinaria.com/7745/recipes-portuguese-piri-piri-hot-sauce.html

Jim would like to apologize to the entire country of Portugal for using a Spanish cheese (Machego). He is aware that they are two different countries, but the two cheeses he bought in Portugal, albeit delicious, are not right for putting in the mashed potatoes.  Actually, the mashed potatoes Jim is making is also an illicit variation on the ubiquitous boiled potatoes that you'd find in almost every restaurant meal there.

For this meal, we are using Gardein Chicken that The Conscious Cook recommends so highly that we're all sure he has stock in the company, but whatever. That dude's recipes have (almost) never done us wrong. (There was that one blackberry shortbread dessert that we all thought was atrocious, but other than that, he's aces with us.)

Bri: "With the biri biri under my belty belty, what would you like me to do now?"

Alex: Could you save that scalding milk on the stove?. Then start whisking it?

Bri is whisking the milk into a flour mixture  to make a slurry and after mixing the hell out of it with some fancy hip actions,  he added sugar.  It turns out that he is making the dessert, which is called Pasteis de Nata

http://leitesculinaria.com/7759/recipes-portuguese-custard-tarts-pasteis-de-nata.html

These custards were created in Belim, they say, by the monastery there because the monks had so many leftover egg yolks. Why you ask? Because the egg whites were used to starch their habits, of course.

Portuguese Spices ...for the "Balls".
Alex: The balls?!
Jim: Yeah, the croquettes... whatever we're calling them!

Paprika, oregano, garlic...  all  of these are going into the mashed potatoes, while meanwhile the onion/corn etc mixture is done frying and Jim is adding it all together.

Deb: You put corn in the mashed potatoes
Jim: Yes. I don't know why. I just thought it would be delicious.
Deb: Good reason. When you think croquettes, you think corn, right? Makes sense.
Alex: Portuguese people like corn...

Jim thinks the potatoes taste too bland and after a bit of tossing around ideas A&J decide to add an old cooking club thing to this new cooking club thing: they're adding the pepper sour cream sauce from the Taco night fame to the potatoes.

Brian is quizzing Alex about the progress of his flash mob preparation. Any day now a group of people is going to descend on Copley Square and do a funny dance, but you didn't hear that from me. If you want to know what day, leave a comment and I'll let you know how you can be one of those lucky people in the right place at the right time.

The perennial potato problem continues. It's still bland. Alex suggests garlic but turns down the cilantro idea.  The three guys love the biri biri sauce, which tastes like a brighter, fresher Sriracha to me. They're all amazed that I don't think it's too salty, because they all do. ( Geez, I've lost my salt-o-meter, maybe. Too many Trader Joe's Salt and Pepper Potato Chips, I bet. I'm all messed up.)

The pastries are out and Alex is disappointed that the tops are not deliciously brown like they were in the restaurants. I point out that we don't have a fire gun (some people call them...) and Jim says that all the pictures of the homemade versions on the internet look worse than ours (or just as bad).

The croquettes are giving us trouble now. The first batch has been pronounced a failure. The second batch seems to be holding together better, after we added some more flour and reduced the amount of
oil.

Progress has slowed down as it turns out that everything this evening is getting fried except the salad. As usual, poor Alex is on fry duty and the rest of us are all hanging out having a good time while he painstakingly fries 4 croquettes at a time. Once he is done with all that, he can then start frying us our tofu.  After that we'll fry our dessert...  Ha, just kidding. Nah, we're eating that. Well, "testing" it. Jim pronounces it as POSSIBLY as good as the one he had in Portugal. POSSIBLY.

Meanwhile, still waiting for dinner...

Time to time travel...

Yay, we've jumped ahead 30 minutes. Brian and I have been out walking the mutt, while the frying has been proceeding. Now the croquettes and tofu are done, the salad is mixed and Brian is taking the pretty pictures since my phone is dead:

The scores:

The Biri Biri Tofu/Gardein chicken

Brian: A The Portuguese know their sauces. The Gardein was not all that great.
Alex : B I was not in love with the sauce. The tofu was surprisingly good and the Gardein tasted like fake meat.
Jim: A for the tofu, B+ for the Gardein chicken. It was a little salty, but I was shocked by how tasty it was.
Deb: B. Agree that the Gardein was rubbery and not very flavorful. The tofu was pretty good but not mind-blowing.


The potato croquettes:

Brian A, maybe A+. The onions and corn went really well. I liked the Manchego taste.
Alex: A-. When they were hot, it's really hard to not like a crispy texture. The flavor was nice, but not OMG.
Jim: A, because I put the poblano creme (from Taco Night). Without that sauce, I would give it an A-.
Deb: B+ Loved the texture. The corn made for really nice chunky bits. Could have used some bright flavor, some herb or jalapeno.

Dessert:

Brian B+ without cinnamon sugar, A- with it. The puff pastry is a bit too puffy. The ratio of pastry to custard is a bit skewed. The pastry was a tiny bit too chewy. A crisper pastry would have been better.
Alex: Brian is totally right about the pastry. The custard is tasty, but the pastry is too big. When we ate them in Portugal, they were hot , and the pastry was crispy, they were transcendent.
Jim: B+. The filling is so good. The pastry needs some work.
Deb: A. Really tasty. Kind of like the egg custards you get in Chinatown, but not so eggy tasting. Sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinammon on top, they were really lovely. Kind of a light dessert. I didn't think the puff pastry was too chewy. Loved the whole thing.

I think we ate them all.