Monthly Archives: August 2012

Ethiopian Peanut Curry

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After a recent visit to Abay, where I had the good luck to arrive on a day (for the second time) when chicken with peanut butter sauce was on their specials list, I found myself bit by the bug to attempt cooking some Ethiopian cuisine. My previous attempts to educate myself in Ethiopian cookery failed by virtue of the poor Ethiopian cookbook selection within the wider Carnegie Library borrowing system, and so I took to the internet in search of recipes. Chicken with peanut butter sauce was at the top of my list.

Ethiopian cuisine was fresh on my mind when Sabrina and I went to Tamarind’s Greentree buffet (keep your eyes peeled for a future blog on that experience) for lunch. Sabrina has already attempted delving into Ethiopian, but the persistent difficulty she reported was in creating a good berbere. For those who may not know, berbere is an Ethiopian spice mix, occupying a place in its cookery not unlike garam masala does in Indian cookery. That is to say, it is persistently mysterious, as seemingly everyone and every region does it differently, and yet it is ubiquitous as practically every recipe calls for it. Sabrina reported special difficulty making her own berbere because most of the recipes she found called for an inordinate proportion of paprika over other spices. Now, I’m a firm believer in the ethic that everything tastes better with paprika, but I believed Sabrina when she said that these recipes called for so much, that even such a mild, sweet spice overpowered most other flavors in the berbere. All in all, she found that her attempt to cook Ethiopian turned out edible, but no where near the flavors she had come to expect from Abay.

In the past, I have often made and enjoyed African peanut soup, which calls for no spices at all, let alone berbere, so I had confidence that I could find and make a peanut curry that would be tasty, whether or not it stood a chance against Abay’s chicken in peanut butter sauce. In my search, I found, as expected, many different variations on berbere, from spice mixes that were simple and straightforward, to mixes comprised of a laundry list of ingredients. After combing through a number of recipes for peanut chicken and berbere, I finally found one that looked intriguing and came with a relatively simple berbere recipe. Simple was definitely a selling point here, as I was looking more for a recipe that wouldn’t scare my parents (I mentioned in some recent recipe postings that I have been attempting to introduce my parents to recipes containing ginger, as it is purportedly of specific health benefit to my mother) than I was for a recipe that could stand up to Abay (two goals that might be mutually exclusive). Heeding Sabrina’s warning, I adjusted the proportions of the spice mix to be lighter on the paprika and heavier on the other spices than I originally found it.

SIMPLE BERBERE

2 tablespoons paprika (or hot red pepper)
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Toss all spices together in a plastic bag or sealed container. Store with your spices, enjoy in your recipes.

I mixed this simple berbere at home and took it over to my parents’ house to tackle the rest of the recipe.

AFRICAN PEANUT CURRY

3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 onions, chopped
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon berbere
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 lb chicken pieces, tofu, vegetables, etc.
1/2 cup chicken stock
3 oz. tomato paste
1/3-1/2 cup peanut butter
3-4 hard boiled eggs
extra water

Hard-boil the eggs and set aside.

Melt butter in a medium saucepan or large skillet. Saute the onions, garlic and ginger for a few minutes until onions are softened. Add berbere and pepper and cook at least five minutes longer, adding a splash of water if the ingredients in the pan get too dry. If using chicken or other meat, then add the chicken pieces, the stock and enough water (or additional stock) so that the meat is submerged. Extra liquid may be necessary for stewing, and because this recipe contains ground nuts, it will thicken up easily later on. Still don’t go crazy; we just need enough to stew the meat. Tomato paste can also be added at this stage. Cover and simmer long enough for the meat to reach desired doneness. Follow the same procedure if using fresh vegetables, but go easy on the extra liquid.

Add the peanut butter, and stir in until combined. Heat through; sometimes it takes a little heat for the peanut butter to get thoroughly stirred in. Add extra water if the sauce gets too thick. Cut the eggs into halves or quarters. Pour the curry into your serving dish and arrange the eggs on top. Serve with rice or flatbread or all on its own.

This recipe does not taste like Abay’s chicken with peanut butter sauce, but it was quite tasty in its own right, and was enjoyed by all three of us. I especially liked the use of hard-boiled eggs as a curry ingredient, as I’m frequently looking for low-cost, low-carb items on which to enjoy curry sauce (and meat unfortunately doesn’t fall into low-cost). I enjoyed this recipe so much that I made it again for myself the next day, this time using chopped cabbage instead of chicken, a combination that also turned out swimmingly. I also attempted a recipe for Mesir Wat, Ethopian lentils in a more complex berbere sauce, but the consequences of that recipe will have to be a topic for another day.

Vegetable Pakora

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Pakora VegetablesI’ve been meaning to try making a Pakora recipe for quite some time, but seeing that fried appetizers always call for a bit more work than the average recipe (and come with a much smaller margin for error) it took me some time to work up the ambition to give them a try.

It was also a matter of occasion and audience. To make a more-ambitious-than-usual recipe happen, I need time to do it with the necessary ingredients on hand. It’s also helpful to have someone to make it for. I can, and do, often enjoy cooking for myself, but that little extra motivation of social cooking is sometimes what I need to talk myself into those more ambitious recipes.

Ordinarily, my parents are a terrible audience for so-called “ethnic” food. They tend to be wary of dishes that stray too far from the ingredients and seasonings they grew up with. Lo and behold, though, my mother’s research into natural health and homeopathic treatments has led to the revelation that *shock* some of these “exotic” spices have unexpected health benefits. Batter in vegetablesHaving discovered that turmeric, and more recently ginger, are potentially beneficial to some of her specific ailments, my mother had taken sometimes to eating these spices dry on her finger, just to get a little in her system, not knowing what else to put it in. This method was ultimately far from pleasant. My challenge then became to show my mother that there are tasty recipes containing at least one, if not both, of these spices, while at the same time not sending her running from the dinner table at the sight and smell of a pungent, spice-rich curry. To keep my parents’ skepticism from rising as they saw and scented peculiar goings-on in the kitchen, I had to assure them that I was using no ingredients beyond what they might consider using in their own cooking… except for the ginger and turmeric, of course. Luckily, my mother had previous experience with besan in her search for flours low on the glycemic index.

Pakora FryingPAKORA BATTER

1 cup besan (i.e. chickpea or gram flour)
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons corn starch (optional)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
salt, to taste
1/2 cup water

PAKORA VEGETABLES

10oz spinach
1 lb. cauliflower, chopped
diced onion
scallions
1/3 to 1/2 cup cottage cheese, optional

oil, for frying

Combine all the dry ingredients for the batter in a medium bowl. Chop the vegetables, if desired. Whisk the water into the dry batter ingredients until smooth. Stir batter into the vegetables until well-coated. Heat oil in a deep fryer or in a skillet. Drop small balls of the vegetable mixture into the hot oil to fry to a golden brown. Serve with raita or chutney.

Vegetable Pakora with RaitaThe vegetables in this recipe, of course, can be changed. These were simply what I had on hand, but this recipe is open to a lot of variation in content. I don’t have a deep fryer and so I always do a shallow fry (i.e. inch or so of oil) in a non-stick skillet. That method worked out pretty well for these pakora, but the batch turned out very large and I was a little impatient so I make the pakora a bit larger, probably, than they should have been. Next time, I’ll make smaller fritters so they get fried through a little better. I also had to add some extra besan because my vegetables had been frozen and released some liquid while defrosting. If using frozen vegetables, make sure your vegetables are thoroughly thawed and dry, or else extra flour may be in order.

All in all, though, these fritters were a hit with my parents, and I quite enjoyed them myself. Definitely a recipe I will make again, and hopefully improve upon in the future.

Around the House Raita

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I had a burst of cooking inspiration this weekend. Having been on vacation all week, I did a bit more culinary exploration of local restaurants than normal. I went to a couple Indian Buffets with Sabrina (not really new ones… but you may still be hearing more about them), and I got a chance to go back to Abay, which I had thoroughly enjoyed once before, and now have thoroughly enjoyed a second time.

Tomatoes, Mint, ScallionsAdd to this all a peculiar imperative to find opportunities for my mother eat more food with ginger (also more on that later), and I had an intensive weekend of cooking experiments. As part of the experimentation, I decided to make some Pakora, that is, Indian vegetable fritters, because I had been enjoying them all week at our Indian Buffet trips. I was enjoying them more than usual also because I had taken to dipping the pakora in the raita (a yogurt-based condiment) provided by each buffet. I don’t know if such practice is authentic, or just some spontaneous innovation of Americans at the India Buffet, but I found it tasty and so decided to make a raita to accompany the pakora fritters.

Problem was, I didn’t find all of the ingredients I had hoped to find at my parents’ house. In fact, after scouring many raita recipes online, I found that I couldn’t put together any one recipe in its entirety. I scoured the recipes, getting a feel of what ingredients seemed often to go together and what didn’t. I quizzed my dad on what he had available in the fridge and in his vegetable garden. There was no plain yogurt to be had in the fridge, but my suspicion was that sour cream would do just fine in a pinch. My impression from the recipes I found online was that no particular spices or herbs where standard, and so I put together a raita based on what my parents’ had around the house and in their garden:

RaitaAROUND THE HOUSE RAITA

cherry tomatoes, chopped
fresh mint
scallions
sour cream or yogurt
sprinkle of cumin
sprinkle of paprika
salt, to taste

Combine ingredients and chill.

Obviously, this is not a precisely measured recipe. Nor, I believe, should it be. It should be noted that the cherry tomatoes I found in my dad’s garden were especially small, and having only quartered them, I felt like even then, they could have been smaller. The scallions and fresh mint leaves were easily snipped small. The sour cream was stirred in to the fresh ingredients to create a dip-like consistency without overwhelming the fresh ingredients (I even added a little milk to make it a little saucier). The spices were simply to taste. I did not add salt to the initial batch, for the sake of my dad’s dietary restrictions, but I added some to my own portion.