This is a favorite meal of ours for those nights when we don’t have a lot of time, we hardly have any fresh vegetables in the house, and we want something with a lot of flavor and a definite comfort factor. Kheema is like the Indian equivalent of chile con carne, or sloppy Joe mix, or spaghetti sauce. There are many different versions – probably as many as there are cooks who make it – and it can be tweaked to accommodate whatever you have in your pantry, as long as you have 1. ground meat 2. chile peppers (fresh or dried) 3. canned tomato and 4. spices. Onions and garlic are helpful, but not absolutely required.

My favorite kheema recipe for when we have no fresh chiles in the house is from Madhur Jaffrey’s first book, An Invitation to Indian Cooking. It’s warm with onion and whole sweet spices as well as dried red chiles, and tastes wonderful. But our current favorite kheema is from the Parsi cookbook My Bombay Kitchen. It uses whole slit green chiles as well as cayenne pepper, so it has a complex spiciness, and it can be made as thick or soupy as you like, depending on how you’re serving it. We usually ladle it over white rice, but the last time we made it I griddled some fresh chapati and we spooned the kheema into the breads with yogurt and chutney. It could also be eaten straight out of a bowl, maybe with tortilla chips. Why not? Not to mention the possibilities of using it for stuffing samosas, or topping pizza.

And for breakfast, I can recommend making a sort of huevos rancheros with leftover kheema and runny fried eggs over sourdough toast or chapati or tortillas. Oh, yeah.

A note about the recipe: there are a few odd ingredients here, but please don’t be scared off by them. We keep curry leaves in our freezer, but the kheema will be perfectly fine without them. And don’t worry about the dhana jiru or the sambar masala – we happen to have both of those, because Jon loves to make spice blends at home, but you can either leave them out, or do what I do, which is to look up the blend, see what the major flavors are, and just add a few of the more important-sounding ones. I’ve indicated a few possible options in the recipe.

Kheema
Adapted from My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking by Niloufer Ichaporia King

• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 pound ground beef or lamb
• 2 green chiles
• 5-10 curry leaves (we keep these on hand in the freezer)
• 2-3 whole cloves
• 1 onion
• 1 small clove garlic, minced
• 1 tsp ginger, minced
• 1 tsp Dhana Jiru or garam masala or ground coriander (optional)
• 1 tsp Sambar Masala or ground fenugreek and mustard seeds (optional)
• 1/2 tsp cayenne
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, plus more for garnish
• 1 can diced tomato
• 1-2 cups water
• 1 tsp salt

First, get your mise en place ready – you don’t want things burning while you measure spices. It really helps to have everything chopped and standing by before you start cooking.

Slit the green chiles from the tip up to the stem, leaving the stem end intact, and put them in a bowl with the curry leaves and whole cloves. Measure the various dry spices into another bowl. Dice the onion.

If you have fresh cilantro, chop up the leaves (some stems are fine) and set aside. We have cilantro in our garden right now, but if we happen to be out it’s not the end of the world. I love the flavor it adds, though.

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the curry leaves, cloves and chiles. When they have sizzled for a minute or so, add the onion and cook until soft. Add the ginger and garlic and cook a minute more, then add the dry spices and most of the chopped cilantro (remember to save a little to add at the end).

Add a can of diced tomatoes and stir well. Cook for a moment more.

Add in the ground beef and stir it into the sauce, breaking up all the chunks into small pieces, then add as much of the water as you like (you can always add more later to make it soupier). Mix in the salt. Bring it all to a boil, cover, and turn down the heat so it simmers. Cook about half an hour, stirring occasionally. This is a good time to make rice or bread.

The kheema is done when the meat is tender and the oils have separated out of the sauce. Sprinkle on the last of the cilantro, taste for salt, and serve!

Homemade chili oil is one of the those things where once you’ve made it, you wonder what on earth was stopping you making it. It’s so easy, and so good. All you need is a saucepan and a decent thermometer, and you can adjust the flavorings however you like.

We used to make flavored oils more often, but would make too much at once and have them go rancid when we couldn’t use them up in time. We’ve learned our lesson now, I think – small amounts only. It’s not like it’s hard to make more.

All of our chili oil recipes are from the wonderful China Moon cookbook by the incomparable Barbara Tropp. This one, which we made over the weekend to use in a noodle dish (coming soon to a blog near you), is basic enough to use in all sorts of things, but complex enough to really add a ton of flavor. You can use either just the flavored oil, or spoonfuls of the “goop”, depending on what you want. I also highly recommend her recipes for Chili-Orange Oil, Chili-Lemon Oil, and Ma-La Oil. And if you don’t have her book already, I strongly urge you to pick up a copy. This stuff is liquid gold.

China Moon Hot Chili Oil

Adapted (and very scaled down) from China Moon by Barbara Tropp

• 2 ½ Tbsp chile flakes (we ran out, but made more by running whole dried chiles through a spice grinder)
• 1 Tbsp fermented black beans, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, smashed
• ½ Tbsp minced ginger
• ½ cup peanut oil
• 1 Tbsp sesame oil

Combine everything in a heavy, non-aluminum saucepan. Bring to a burble over medium low heat – use a thermometer to get it between 225°-250°, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool, and scrape everything into a clean glass jar. Store at room temperature.

We had been doing so well on our self-imposed mission to eat tofu once a week. Not that I really think soy is particularly beneficial (the jury still seems to be out on that one), but we do eat a fair amount of meat, and I try to work in other sources of protein when convenient. Besides, tofu is cheap. We recently discovered silken tofu in boxes that keeps on the shelf for several weeks, so now we can stock up and have it ready to hand. Lately, though, we’ve slacked off on our tofu consumption.

After a few weeks of somewhat disorganized menu planning, I remembered that there was a box of silken tofu in the cupboard getting past its sell-by date, and a recipe for Ma Po Tofu in our Sichuan cookbook that hadn’t yet been tried, so that’s what we had for dinner one night after work. It was incredibly quick and easy, so I suspect we’ll have it again before too long.

Ma po tofu, or Pockmarked Mother Chen’s Bean Curd, is a famous Sichuanese recipe, and is usually just tofu in a spicy and numbing chile sauce, topped with a sprinkle of ground meat. I’ve never ordered it in a restaurant (we have a real dearth of Chinese restaurants around here, and my favorite Sichuan place in Seattle just burned down, darn it), but it’s a classic and very cheap to make, as long as you have a few key ingredients on hand. And the advantage of making it at home is that you can make it as spicy or mild as you want.

I made a few changes to the original recipe, mostly due to laziness. I added more beef than the dish called for, because I didn’t feel like breaking up a pound (we also wanted plenty of leftovers). I also cooked the leeks with the beef instead of adding them at the end as instructed, because I don’t think uncooked leeks are a good thing (if I had used scallions, they would have been the last thing to go in). I also completely forgot to add Sichuan pepper at the end, so it was spicy, but not numbing. Whoops.

Ma Po Tofu
adapted from Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop

• 1 package silken tofu
• peanut oil (she calls for 1/2 cup, I used a bit less)
• 1 pound ground beef
• 2 leeks, thinly sliced
• 2 heaping Tbsp Sichuan chile-bean paste (there’s really no substitute for this – look for it in Chinese groceries)
• 1 Tbsp fermented black beans (ditto)
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp ground Sichuan pepper

Put on a pot of rice to cook.

Cube the tofu and pour very hot water over it. Leave it to steep while you do other things.

Slice the leeks into very thin rings, working at an angle.

Heat peanut oil in a large skillet or wok and add the beef. Stirfry until cooked through and beginning to get crispy. Add the leeks and continue to stirfry until they are softened. Add the chile bean paste and stir it up well with the beef and leeks, then add the fermented black beans (you can add a teaspoon or two of ground chile at this point if you want it hotter). Cook for another 30 seconds.

Pour in the stock, stir, and add the drained tofu. Stir carefully (silken tofu breaks up easily). Add sugar, soy sauce, and salt if needed. Simmer five minutes or so. Add the Sichuan pepper and serve with rice. Stir-fried cabbage or other greens make a nice side dish.

It’s been a fragrant week around here.

First, I was walking home for lunch, and was waylaid by a neighbor who was engaged in cutting down several large white lilac bushes that had been attempting to take down some powerlines behind her house. The lilacs were in full bloom, and she insisted on cutting me a large bouquet to take home before they wilted on the downed shrub. I put them on the kitchen table, and every time the evening sun hits them the room fills with the scent of lilac.

Then, of course, the daphne odora is in bloom by the front porch steps. It’s old for a daphne, and beginning to list alarmingly to starboard (I may have to attempt some pruning this year), but when it blooms the smell is an astonishing sugary explosion, drowning out all other scents within a fifteen foot radius.

And finally, we made pork vindaloo. The house smelled wonderful for days.

I haven’t eaten a lot of vindaloo in my life, generally gravitating towards things like butter chicken and large bowls of creamed eggplant in Indian restaurants. But we’ve been getting more diverse in our Indian repertoire at home, and have recently discovered the joys of vinegar-based curries. I love how the sharpness of the vinegar heightens the effect of the chiles, producing a truly nose-clearing dish. (Plus it makes me think of the memorable scene in Red Dwarf: “lager – it’s the only thing that can kill a vindaloo!”) 

This particular curry is pork vindaloo #3 in Rhagavan Iyer’s 660 Curries (which, dare I say, everyone should own a copy of). It’s not too complicated, and it strikes me that you could simplify even further by using ground spices to make the marinade. I have absolutely no complaints about the final product, however.

If you’re afraid of chile heat, I should say that this wasn’t nearly as hot as it sounded. The okra dish we made to go alongside turned out to be much hotter (woo! We went through a lot of kleenex at this dinner). Just make lots of white rice and have some yogurt handy, the pungency is worth it.

Pork Vindaloo

adapted from 660 Curries by Rhagavan Iyer

• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 1 Tbsp cumin seeds
• 8 slices ginger
• 8 garlic cloves
• 8 dried red chiles
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 pound cubed pork
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 2 Tbsp canola oil
• 2 Tbsp chopped cilantro

In a blender jar combine the vinegar, cumin, ginger, garlic, chiles and cinnamon. Puree into a rough paste.

Mix the pork with the paste in a bowl and add in the salt and turmeric. Refrigerate at least half an hour or overnight.

Heat the oil in a skillet and add the pork with its marinade. Cook uncovered until the liquid evaporates and the meat begins to brown. Add 1/2 cup of water, scrape the bottom of the pan, reduce the heat to medium low and cover. Let it cook 15 minutes, then uncover and stir in the cilantro.

Serve with plenty of white rice and a vegetable. Have kleenex handy. And probably a lager.

A couple of months ago we had a nice splurge at Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks. One of our more exciting acquisitions was a copy of Greg Malouf’s Turquoise, a gorgeous production that immediately made me want to go to Turkey (not something that had ever happened to me before). Despite its beauty, I had completely failed to make anything out of it until this week, when I was suddenly feeling adventurous.

We decided to try two new side dishes during the week: a salad of grated celery root, peppers and mint, and a dish of baked mushrooms and chiles in a paprika sauce. I thought they both sounded interesting, and used vegetables that are at least somewhat in season.

The salad came first, alongside a straightforward roast chicken. It was easy to pull together, especially using a food processor to grate the celery root. It also had red onion, red hot pepper, yellow bell pepper, fresh mint, and fresh parsley, all of which I sliced by hand. It  was dressed with olive oil, garlic and white wine vinegar, then tossed with a bit of crumbled feta cheese. The end result? Not bad, like a refined coleslaw with a hint of spiciness.

It held up pretty well. Two days later I improvised a lunch by combining some of the salad with some of the shredded chicken and a spoonful of mayonnaise, piling it on a whole wheat English muffin. Not bad at all.

The mushroom thing was a bit more of a production, but still not difficult. I cooked some chopped red onion in olive oil, stirred in cumin, sweet paprika and hot paprika, then arranged whole button mushrooms, halved and seeded red and green chile peppers, and tomato wedges on top. This was all sprinkled with thyme and salt, then I added a bit of water to the pan and baked it for about half an hour. Once the mushrooms finally began to soften (I spooned some of the pan liquid over them to speed it up) I took the pan out and put it over high heat to boil down the sauce.

The finished dish was interesting. The mushrooms were firm and meaty, but the tomatoes and peppers had gotten very soft, and the sauce was extremely perky (the chiles were perfectly edible, having leached their heat into everything else). We served it as suggested, with some rare steak laid in slices over the top of the vegetables, and I found that I was desperately craving mashed potatoes to soak up the sauce. I liked it better several days later, when I took some to work for lunch along with a small container of crumbled feta. The flavors had mellowed, and the feta provided a much-needed counterpoint to the sauce.

My current feeling is that this cookbook might be more for eye candy than for recipes, but both of these dishes were simple to make and nice enough to eat. I’ll definitely try some others. Does anyone else have a copy of Turquoise? Have you tried any recipes that turned out really great?

We made our periodic pilgrimage to Uwajimaya last weekend, partly to shop for tacky Christmas presents but mostly to restock our supply of noodles, tea and chile-garlic sauce. We went to Samurai Noodle for lunch (the new Extra Pork Fat option is astonishing), then spent the next two hours battling our way through all the other people milling around trying to figure out which small red jar might hold the correct form of soybean paste or pickled turnip, or stampeding through the narrow aisles between the Hello Kitty stickers and the Daruma keychains.

The funny thing is, we came home with all this new stuff, all jazzed up about doing some new Chinese dishes or something Indonesian, and the dinner we ended up making didn’t use any of it. How silly. We were going to make a side of stirfried ong choy (water spinach), which we haven’t found anywhere else, but it started to compost itself before we could cook it (drat). We had to have plain spinach instead. And for dinner I made bao, one of my favorite things to eat in the world, with a new filling out of Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Plenty, which turned out to be the easiest bun filling I’ve ever made and used ingredients we already had around. Go figure. But never fear, we’ll get around to the soybean paste and pickled mustard greens later this week. Stay tuned!

Concerning bao: I love pretty much any kind of bread or dumpling with a savory filling, and bao are even more wonderful made fresh at home than they are off a street vendor’s cart. I’ve made bao with the classic char siu (Chinese roasted pork) filling, cabbage and mushrooms, curried gluten, spiced ground chicken, and whatever else – but this Sichuan filling is not only one of the tastiest I’ve made, it’s also the simplest. You just need a jar of chile-bean paste on hand, and I promise it’s worth hunting down. The dough is the recipe my mother has always used – I don’t remember where it’s from, but it’s the perfect bao dough, lightly sweet and addictively spongy, and I’ve never made any other.

Bao with pork-bean sprout filling

Dough:

• 4 cups unbleached white flour
• 1 Tbsp dry yeast
• 1 ½ cups warm water
• ¼ cup sugar
• 2 Tbsp oil
• 1 tsp salt

Filling:

• 1 pound ground pork
• 4 Tbsp oil
• 2 Tbsp chile bean paste
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp sherry
• 1 tsp salt
• 8 oz bean sprouts, roughly chopped
• 8-10 good grinds from a pepper mill

A couple hours before dinner, start the dough: combine the water, yeast, and sugar in a bowl or measuring cup and let it start to foam. Put the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. Add the oil to the yeast mixture, then dump it all into the flour and stir well. Knead 10 minutes or until smooth and resilient. Wash and oil the mixing bowl, put the dough back in, cover with a damp towel and let rise 1 ½ hours or until doubled.

While it rises, make the filling: heat a wok over very high heat and add the oil. Put in the pork and stirfry, breaking it up well, until the meat is cooked and the fat has separated out. Stir in the chile-bean paste, then add the soy, salt and sherry. Add the bean sprouts and stirfry briefly, grind in the pepper, then remove from the heat.

Cut sixteen squares of parchment or wax paper and set out a couple of baking sheets. Divide the bun dough into sixteen pieces. Take a piece and roll it out into a disk about 6 inches across, leaving a slightly thicker area in the center (Barbara Tropp called this the ”belly button”). Place a spoonful of filling into the center, then gather up the edges of the circle and pleat them together. I like to give them a twist, then place the bun gathered-side-down on the sheet, but you might like to leave the twist pointing up. Set each bun on a parchment square. When the sheet is full, lay a towel carefully over the buns and let them rise twenty minutes.

You can steam or bake the buns – I usually do a mix of both, since I don’t have enough room in my steamers for sixteen buns at once. If using a bamboo steamer, find a pot that the steamer fits on snugly. Put in a few inches of water and bring to a boil. Lay the risen buns into the steamer, making sure to give them a little elbow room (otherwise they’ll rise into each other and stick). Cover and place over the boiling water, let steam 12-15 minutes. I don’t recommend checking on them, since sometimes removing the lid too soon makes them collapse.

To bake, just preheat the oven to 350° and stick in the sheet with the risen buns on it. You can use a glaze or egg wash but I don’t care for the effect, myself. Bake until just golden, 12-15 minutes.

Peel off the paper and eat, preferably with a bit of stirfried spinach or cabbage alongside. These make great leftovers – the steamed ones microwave really well, and the baked ones can be wrapped in foil and reheated in the oven. You can never have too much leftover bao – at least, it hasn’t happened to us yet.

We managed to slip out of town for a day last weekend, and spent a happy afternoon in Vancouver, B.C. It’s strange that we can live so close to Canada, but make it up there so seldom. Every time we go, we tell ourselves “We should do this more often!”

This time we took advantage of the opportunity to get some good Chinese food. Skagit Valley is a pretty good place for many kinds of food, but good Indian or Chinese restaurants are just not happening. Vancouver, on the other hand, has amazing Asian food of all possible kinds. I wanted to find a place with good noodles, and according to the Chowhound boards, Peaceful is one of the top spots.

When we walked in, it was still early in the day, and the place was mostly empty. We quickly emptied our first pot of hot, weak tea and enjoyed being in out of the rain while we studied the rather huge menu. Everything looked fabulous, which made things difficult. We finally settled on an order of the Peaceful beef rolls, a plate of cumin lamb noodles and some Szechuan stir-fried string beans, then settled in and watched the restaurant fill up.

By the time our food came, the place was packed. Several large parties of insistent customers came in, and the waitstaff was kept hopping shifting tables around. We had to move our table at one point to make room, and soon we were completely surrounded by small children and hungry adults. Fortunately, our food turned out to be so delicious that we were totally distracted from the mob.

The string beans arrived first, and we had demolished much of the plate by the time the other dishes arrived. They were spicy, garlicky, nicely shriveled, and speckled with bits of highly flavored mystery meat.

Then the noodles came. They were excellent, solid, handcut noodles, firm and chewy. They were dry, rather than in a soup, and they were heavily seasoned with cumin and enough hot chile to make our sinuses run. The noodles were mixed with slices of lamb, which was a touch muttony with gristle in places, but very savory.

And to top it all off, the beef rolls: green onion flatbreads, so rich they were like pie crust, rolled around finely sliced beef and hoisin sauce. They were tricky to eat without having the whole middle slide out onto your plate while spreading hoisin all over your face, but oh, were they worth it. I have never had anything quite like these, but I sure hope I have them again soon.

By the time we left, there was a line going out the door into the rain. We will definitely have to come back here, but I’m thinking we should try to come early. This restaurant is not a well-kept secret, obviously.

I may have mentioned my deep and abiding love for the book Flatbreads & Flavors by Toronto-based husband-and-wife team Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. It introduced us to cooking all sorts of ethnic cuisines that we might not have attempted, by making the recipes simple yet authentic. Each chapter has a limited number of recipes, but they fit together perfectly – there might be two different breads, a beef dish, a chicken dish, a vegetable and a condiment. So just from this one cookbook, you could make a feast from Georgia, the Middle East, India or Italy!

I had fallen in love with Ethiopian food from the first time I had it, at a restaurant in Minneapolis, of all places. It never occurred to me that you could make it at home – then I got this cookbook. When I made the chicken stew from it, with its simple combination of chicken, butter, cardamom, berbere paste and red wine, it was like an Ethiopian restaurant had opened in our kitchen. We’ve also made injera at home (with mixed success, frankly) and tibs wett. But our favorite go-to dish is definitely the partially-cooked beef tartare, kitfo lebleb. It’s fast, rich, and very very spicy.           

For this dish J defrosted a sirloin steak and chopped it very finely. You could certainly use ground meat but we’ve always preferred the texture of chopped. The original recipe calls for onions, but we usually leave them out. Adding mint is great if you have it, but I don’t think dried mint is a good substitute – leave it out if you don’t have fresh.

Ethiopian Beef Tartare (kitfo lebleb)

adapted from Flatbreads and Flavors by Alford and Duguid

• 1 pound finely chopped sirloin or other lean beef
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp grated or chopped fresh ginger
• 1 tsp chopped fresh mint or basil
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 4 to 6 chopped serrano chiles

Blend the pepper, cardamom, salt, ginger and fresh herb (if using) in a small bowl.

Melt the butter in a heavy skillet. When it’s hot, add the spice mixture and stir, then add the meat and chiles. Stir to combine, and cook just long enough to lightly brown the meat. We like it very rare, but you can cook it longer if you like. Serve hot or at room temperature.

We always serve this tartare with the next recipe in the book, Spiced Curds. It’s very simple: a carton of cottage cheese seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic, fresh ginger and a grated serrano chile. It’s both fiery and cooling all at once, and is wonderful piled into a flour tortilla or a pita bread (or injera if you have it) with a scoop of the tartare. We had asparagus on the side, just because we had some left over, but I especially like cooked greens to go with this dish, either spinach, chard or kale. A plain vegetable or legume side is a good idea to cool the mouth down! Beer or sweet tea would be a good drink to go with, although I admit that we always have it with a fruity red wine, like zinfandel, or something with a bit of smoke or funk like a pinotage.