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Category: Food (page 16 of 30)

Pamela’s Delicious Ginger Cookies

Combing through the shelves at the new Whole Foods store opened in our neighborhood, I chanced upon a black-green box of Pamela’s Ginger Cookies with Sliced Almonds. And they were wheat-free, gluten-free and dairy-free. If I remember right, they were priced at $4.99 for a 8-piece box.

Ginger and molasses… Hmmm, you cannot mess up this combination. This is one delicious cookie. Molasses imparts a subtle sweetness, a little like jaggery does. Plus it works very well with ginger.

Ginger Molasses Cookie (Dairy-free, wheat-free, gluten-free)

The cookie is nice and crumbly. It isn’t as crisp as a ginger snap neither does it have the sharp flavor. This one is milder although it contains allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg as well. Oh, it contains sliced almonds too. And it’s a nice sized big cookie… 🙂

Hoping that more of these products find their way to the shelves at our local stores!

Steaming + Butternut Squash Soup + Hello Curry Powder!

Picked up a butternut squash at Sandy Springs Farmers Market last week.

This Saturday is the last one for the market this year. It’ll be almost six months before we see these folks again selling their produce, lovingly harvested, fresh and local, awkwardly shaped (sometimes!) yet delicious. I believe there is another market that stays open year round but it’s nowhere close to where I live or work. So winter seems set to be a period of deprivation… sigh. Access to local farmers markets year round may be the #1 reason I would like to move to the West Coast. We get delicious weather here in Atlanta as well, so sunny blue skies and cool breezes are not top of my list. Well, the grass is greener and all that stuff.

P has developed a taste for steaming vegetables as opposed to eating them sauteed, roasted or any other way. I understand that the scientific reason as to steaming being a better way to cook vegetables is that steam packs a wallop of heat at the same temperature, thus cooking the food faster at a lower temperature. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about steaming.

I would have liked to roast the butternut squash and then make soup out of it. Instead, I skinned the squash, cubed it and steamed it. I began steaming in the cute little IKEA steamer but had to move to a larger one since all the pieces didn’t fit in.

Skin, Cube, Steam

In spite of the squash being ripe and soft, I wasn’t able to cut into it myself. So that’s P’s hand you see slicing the squash. That you can see the peel stuck on the steamed squash says a great deal about my impatience… c’est la vie.

As the squash is cooked, it becomes very soft and the color turns into a lovely orange. Let it cool a little.

Another useful device I acquired on the last India trip is the Preethi Eco Chef Mixer + Grinder Set. I use it to puree soups, dals, milkshakes, smoothies, chutneys, wet masala mixes, etc. There is a set of 3 jars, each one with its own locking lid. The blades are super sharp, very easy to clean and they do a great job with all kinds of blending, mixing, grinding. I totally recommend getting this brand of mixer+grinder. Preethi is an established brand and I have seen it in the kitchens of other Indian friends too. That, I think, says a lot especially if you consider the heavy-duty grinding, mixing, blending action that one sees in a typical Indian kitchen.

Preethi Eco Chef Mixer+Grinder

Pureed Butternut Squash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blend the steamed squash into a homogeneous puree. Pour into a pan, add water to achieve your favorite soup consistency and turn on the heat. You might need to add water while pureeing the squash also.

I added salt, grated fresh ginger, a few sprigs of thyme and a teaspoon of curry powder, the latest addition to my kitchen.

As all Indians would confirm, there is no such thing as curry powder in Indian cuisine. My guess is that this is a catch-all term invented during colonial times by the British to give a name of the various spice mixes used in Indian cooking. In the most general sense, curry refers to the sauce or “gravy” in the dish. Potato curry denotes a potato preparation in a wet spiced gravy, that’s that.

As the Food Network Star Aarti Sequeira puts it, “See, “curry” means nothing more than “gravy”. There isn’t one formula to a curry. That would be like saying, there’s only one sauce. There isn’t. Every curry in the Indian repertoire has a different, specific blend of spices that go into it.” Well said, Aarti!

That being said, curry powder was a good addition to the soup. A little bit went a long way. It added a certain onion-garlicky heat to the soup. Ginger brought its own bright and fresh flavor that was retained in spite of the curry powder. My little spring of thyme also lent the soup its special notes, wow! Gorgeous, huh?

Curried Butternut Squash Soup with Thyme

Ghee, Food of the Gods

In my mind, ghee (or clarified butter) is both literally and metaphorically the food of the gods. Such richness of taste and flavor it has that even a small drop can transform a dish into something else. Drizzle a teaspoon of warm ghee over a simple dish of dal and it becomes luxurious. Slather it over warm toast, sprinkle some sugar and you have a snack that delights the kid in you. Well, it used to be my favorite snack.

Mom used to (and still continues to) make ghee from scratch. In India, the milk we get comes from the local dairy farms. It is non-homogenized and sometimes non-pasteurized as well. So it is as raw as it can get. In places like my aunt’s ancestral home in Kerala, it is at its rawest… We get it straight from the cows after the calves have drunk their fill. Since the milk is non-homogenized, the cream separates out at the top. It is skimmed off and stored separately. After a couple of weeks, when there is a substantial mound of cream, some yogurt is added to it. Thus buttermilk is born. The buttermilk is then churned so that the butter separates out. In my home, this butter would be stored separately. When you have a sizable chunk of butter, you place it in a stainless steel pan on the stove. Warm it. The butter begins to melt, and then it changes color from white to pale yellow to a darker shade of yellow, gold and then brown. The fragrance evolves too, changing from the slightly sour buttery scent to a richer and deeper one. At this point, you can turn the heat off. Keep it longer and it could start to burn. Many people turn off the heat as soon as the color changes to a dark yellow. I suppose this is the clarified butter stage. I like keeping it to the pale brown stage (browned butter) since it has a more toasty flavor that I prefer.

Ghee (picture courtesy website http://www.purityfarms.com/)

Cut to the present day when neither the milk I get is non-homogenized nor do I have the time to skim the cream or churn the buttermilk. So what do we do? Earlier, we used to buy ghee sold by Purity Farms. It is pretty good but I wanted to make my own. So I bought cultured organic non-salted butter from the store and made ghee out of it, as per the process above. It is fairly good ghee and I use it in most Indian dishes I make.

The Kerala branch of Ayurveda also uses ghee as a medium for various herbal formulations and medicines. In the winter, my mother-in-law makes traditional sweets that comprise of ghee, jaggery and wheat, all “heating” ingredients that lubricate the joints, drive out the cold from the system and bring warmth within. One of the traditional desserts in Kerala is Sharkara Paayasam. It involves making a syrup of jaggery and ghee, adding cooked rice to it, and then topping it off with toasted cashews and raisins and fresh coconut. Coconut milk can also be added to this heavenly preparation.

What about the gods? Well, when you perform Homas and other Vedic ceremonies, ghee is offered into the fire along with other substances as dried fruits, nuts, coconuts, etc. It is truly a divine and transforming experience.

1. I use the Organic Valley brand of unsalted organic cultured butter (bottom left).
2. I let the butter sit out for a while so that it’s soft before I turn on the heat (top left).
3. The butter gradually begins melting and bubbles rise to the surface. It turns shiny and golden yellow in color (right).

Making Ghee at Home

4. As the color turns dark brown and the toasty fragrance becomes stronger, turn off the heat.
5. I use a stainless steel sieve to strain out the milk solids.
6. As the ghee solidifies (which happens pretty soon in winter), it acquires a smooth golden sheen.

Voila!

Found an interesting article that describes the benefits of ghee on the Amrita Veda website, Ghee – An Ayurvedic Perspective.

Here is an excerpt, “Although Ghee kindles or increases the digestive fire – Agni, on which all nutrition depends, it does so without aggravating Pitta – the elemental functioning of fire within the body. In fact, Ghee cools the body, essential in much of today’s world in which everything is overheating.”