The Yarnarian cooks Indian

I have this immense love of Indian food.  It started many many years ago when friends took me to an Indian restaurant in Kenilworth, NJ.  Oh my gosh!  What tastes!  What textures!

Fast forward to a couple of years ago.  So, now, I can no longer eat anything very spicy.  No chilies, no over-abundance of black pepper, not bland, but nothing that will stir up my miserable GERD.  If I eat something with chilies, no matter how mild, or how much yogurt with it, I will wake up at 2 AM with a massive attack of GERD.  I can't breathe, the bile is scorching as it comes up, etc, etc.  Believe me when I tell you that no chilies are worth that misery.  Yes, I've had an endoscopy.  Yes, I know how to control this illness with diet and a healthy sleeping position.  But I miss Indian food.

If I go to an Indian restaurant, and there are tons of them in my neck of NJ, I can't get non-spicy food.  The waiters always tell me that "It's very very mild".  Yes, for you, but any of the dreaded chilies will do a number on me.  No more Chand Palace with the most amazing vegetarian food in existence.  Bummer.

But I can cook my own food and leave out the offending ingredients.  Nope, it isn't what someone from India would like, no zip, no incredible taste, but I can eat it and enjoy it.  The thing is that chilies have taste, not just heat.  I figured this out a few months ago when I had a teensy piece of a samosa that had a teensy bit of chili in it.  Argh.  But as my mouth dealt with the heat, I realized that there was a smoky pepper taste that I loved.  So, being the daughter of Hungarian Jews, I know my paprika.  Nope, not the spicy one, but the noble sweet one.  Édesnemes in Hungarian stores.  Not the icky stuff you get at the supermarket, but the real bright, very tasty paprika.  If I substitute this paprika for the chilies or cayenne, it gives me a bit of the brightness but not the heat.  Not a bad solution.

I've always had Indian cookbooks, a couple by Raghavan Iyer, Madhur Jaffrey, etc, etc.  I've been adding new ones as I go along.  We bought an Instant Pot back in late December, and now I use it almost exclusively for Indian recipes.

So, after this very long introduction, let me show you what I made an hour ago:

This is Jackfruit with channa dal,  from Manali Singh's Vegetarian Indian Cooking with your Instant Pot.  Left out the chilies, put in a tsp of paprika.  Used whole spices 'cause I now have them.  It is beyond wonderful!  I had some of it for lunch with roti and my tastebuds are still singing.  We went to Patel Bros to buy the canned jackfruit.  Weird stuff but amazingly tasty.  Who knows what I'll make tomorrow.

Shanah Tovah to you and your family!

Or Shana Tova, which ever way you want to spell it.  For non-Jews, a good year to you and yours, also.

Busy, busy.  Gotta make the tejes kolacs, the chicken for tonight, neato meatloaf on a bed of potatoes for tomorrow after synagogue.   Pay bills.  ick, boring.  Stuff.

Sister and niece coming this afternoon.  Elder DD joining us tomorrow.

Totally off topic, but then I've never stayed on topic:  here's what Miss P gave her mom for her birthday.  A spa visit!  Now, you may ask yourselves, how does a 9 year old manage that?  She gave her mom a spa visit at home.  Bubble bath, cucumbers on eyes, foot massage and back massage.  How sweet is that?  What a kid!

Gotta run.  Gotta bake.  Thank goodness, a colleague of the Hubs gave him a challah, so I don't need to bake that.

scrapperjen - She really is a wonderful child.  Very caring, very kind.  And her eyes always dance with mischief and fun.  All the grands are wonderful, each in his/her own way.  She received the latest set of doll clothes and especially loved the ones that I'm most fond of.  Whadda kid!

Scrabblequeen - She is that.  More energy that the other 4 put together, and the brain is constantly going.  

I rise; therefore I am.

The baking/cooking mojo is coming back. Finally. I thought that I would do a lot of fooding when I retired. Not. 10 months after I retired, I'm finally starting to cook again. I think I got inspired during my Minneapolis visit. Maybe it was helping out DD make supper that kicked my butt into gear. Whatever it was, I've made nice suppers every day since I came home.

Before you get excited and say: "Whoa, this woman is making gourmet meals every night", relax. I've made allowances for leftovers. I'm not totally nuts.

So Sunday I made this delicious chicken with avocado dish. Monday it was pasta e fagioli. Tuesday we had the leftovers. And yesterday, I made this amazing meatloaf dish in the crockpot. I'm not from the canned mushroom school of cooking; I like from-scratch food. So this meatloaf recipe has no weird stuff in it except for ketchup, and that's sort of normal food.

Here's the recipe in a nutshell: 3 russet potatoes, peeled and cut up into 1" pieces and then mixed with some olive oil on the bottom of the pot. Make a nice meatloaf mixture and pat it on top of the potatoes. Top the meatloaf with whatever you like. Put lid on, turn on to high, and let cook for about an hour. Then turn heat to low, and cook forever. Wander into the kitchen now and then to smell the deliciousness of this dish. Serve and sigh contentedly. I got the recipe from Beth Hensperger's Not your mother's slow cooker recipes. (No caps on the title because librarians capitalize first word only.) Moist, almost like a meaty bread pudding. And I hate meatloaf. Not any more.

So, what's with this rising thing? I love to bake bread. I started out doing all my kneading from scratch. This was about 30 years ago. (Hey, I'm an old broad.). So then I bought a Kitchen Aid, the big one, and kneaded in that. Then I got a Cuisinart and used that for kneading. Notice the progression here: kneading is very hard on my hands. Then, about 6-7 years ago, after I said that a bread machine was the last thing I ever wanted, Hubbo convinced me to try one. OK, I baked a couple of loaves in it. Eh. Where's the gorgeous crust? the shaping? the patting the thing? the slashing the loaf with my lame? No fun at all. But, does that machine knead. Much better than I ever could do. So now I use it to knead and do my first rise. Then I get onto the meat of the matter: I shape, roll out and fill if I want, rise, slash, spray with water if I want, bake in oven. Go wild over the smell. You get the picture.

I used to bake a couple of loaves every week while I was working. So I retired and have baked bread exactly 5 times since. But the mojo is coming back. Tomorrow I'm going to make up a starter, and off I go into baking heaven. I've been using a biga to add flavor, but Daniel Leader has a new book out, and in it he has a small starter that I want to try. Takes about 10 days to get it going. Levain, biga, sourdough starters all those variations on a theme, add terrific flavor and oomph to the bread. So a nice long rise to aid in that flavor, and I'm baking again.

Now if I can get that gym thing going again... Well, one thing at a time.

Roundabout Socks seems to be a hit. Lots of people messaged me in Ravelry, and on my email. It makes me want to post another pattern. Not yet, though, I started one, and I don't like it. So I'm busily playing with ideas. Eventually I'll post another one.

I'm writing this at 4:18 in the morning. But I can sleep late if I want. Be jealous all you young working chippies. Ah the joys of retirement.