tomato soup + avocado, corn, cucumber salad + strawberry smoothie [Florida]

I got a blender (Breville Fresh and Furious) and was able to try it out with these recipes! It was my first time doing three dishes in one night, but thankfully none of them were too much effort that it was overwhelming (that's the nice thing about making soup -- you can do other things while it's cooking).

*** Tomato soup ***

I used the recipe here. I got tomatoes from a local farmer's market. They aren't Florida tomatoes, but they *are* local tomatoes! Though, I regret buying the first substantial tomatoes that I saw. It was very smoky outside so I didn't want to spend too much time perusing the booths. After I bought plain beefsteak tomatoes I saw many more vendors had giant colorful heirloom tomatoes, which probably would have made this taste even better. Oh well.

The carrots were also local, bought a few weeks ago. The half onion was left over from a few weeks ago. In fact, the basil was also from a few weeks ago. It's doing well in my windowsill; I just have to water it a bunch. Now, when I'm gone for the next week and a half...

I didn't have crushed red pepper, so I used two dried cayenne peppers instead. It definitely made the soup spicier than other tomato soups I've had. It was a great addition! 

The blender worked super well. I just blended it in halves. 

Verdict: really delicious! I should get a soup spoon sometime (currently working with small teaspoons). 

*** Avocado, corn, and cucumber salad ***

I used the recipe here. I originally wanted to find frozen avocado chunks, but couldn't find them anywhere so just used a ripe avocado instead. I also didn't use corn off the cob, just frozen corn. 

I tried out my new citrus juicer for the first time this week, too. Unfortunately it juiced the lime a bit *too* well because the salad came out very lime-y and wet.

Verdict: with less lime juice, it could be really good. But it's just a bit too wet for my taste. 

*** Strawberry smoothie ***

I used the recipe here. I used a frozen banana and strawberry mix rather than fresh fruit. I also used whole milk instead of skim, and local plain sheep's milk yogurt. The blender worked very well here too! It only took a few seconds to fully blend.

Verdict: very good and refreshing! It's hard to go wrong with a smoothie though. I only had half of the batch the first day, so kept it in the fridge in the blender the second day. It was a bit too liquidy when I had it after a day. So I'd probably blend it a little less, or use a higher fruit to liquid ratio next time. Using whatever the local yogurt is was a good idea -- it is similar to Greek yogurt and so it has a bit of a bite to it, which really added to the taste.

All three dishes! I apologize for the presentation. I have very little dishware with me here x)

rice sevai upma [Jharkhand]

This recipe was originally found at this link. I was originally also going to make paratha and a vegetable korma, but I don't have a mortar and pestle or rolling pin yet, so I just had this dish.

I've never cooked with rice vermicelli before, and besides my stove taking 45 min to boil a very small amount of water, it was pretty easy!

All of the other parts of the recipe were easy to follow.

Verdict: The final dish was very tasty! It has a mild taste (there isn't any chili at all). The pulses have a great toasted taste to them.

fajeto + vagharela bhaat [Gujarat]

The second meal I cooked alone included fajeto (soup?) and vagharela bhaat (rice). I cooked the fajeto first; it got late and my kitchen is tiny, so I ended up making the bhaat the next day.

*** Fajeto ***

I love how this recipe site gives step by step instructions with photos. It's so helpful!

This is a mango / yogurt dish. The recipe says it's best to make when mangos are ripe; well, mangos don't grow in Seattle, but I can get decent (... decent, not good, passable, I guess) frozen mango. I ended up straining out a lot of tough mango chunks because I didn't use pulp or puree (I tried to mash them a bit before putting in the pot...). 

For the yogurt, I just picked up a 2c jar of sheep's milk yogurt at the farmer's market and let it sit on my counter a few hours before using (as the recipe suggests). I finally cleaned out the jar so I have to remember to return it on Sunday...

Neither my or my partner had experience cooking with more authentic Indian ingredients. I think he mostly just used whatever we had in the pantry. But I decided to stock my pantry with more authentic ingredients (e.g., actual red chili powder rather than the kind you'd get at a typical grocer). I used Desi Basket to order a bunch of dry goods. It was great! It's just incomparable to how expensive grocery store spices are. The whole order was like $80 and I got multiple pounds of pulses, flours, rice; I probably got like 1600g of various spices. There was only one fatality when it was shipped; the mustard seeds had leaked a bit. Also, unsurprisingly mostly everything comes in plastic bags rather than glass jars, so you have to have your own storage. That's fine with me though; I planned ahead :)

I don't have a mortar and pestle yet so I couldn't really paste-ify the ginger. Oh well, I think what I did still worked (chop it up really finely and then strain it at the end). 

My major complaint when cooking (not about the recipe) is that I have a crappy electric stovetop now that's very small. It took probably *half an hour* for the fajeto to start simmering after I started it. 

Tadka / tempering was also new to me. I found it quite fun! 

This is the fajeto immediately after adding the tadka to the liquid part.
 

*** Vagharela bhaat ***

This is a spiced rice that seems to usually be made with leftover rice but I decided to use fresh rice. 

I was really impressed with my rice cooker's basmati! I just set it on "mixed" setting to cook. It was so fresh and fragrant when done.

I didn't use any cilantro. I'm hoping to figure out if I actually have the cilantro soap gene sometime soon. If I do, maybe I'll just swap it out for culantro in the future.

The only annoying thing about this recipe (and this was true of the ulam rice too) is that mixing rice in takes a while and it gets kind of chunky. 

The bhaat and reheated fajeto.
 

Verdict: This was a lovely meal! I will say, I didn't adjust the recipes at all, and to my unaccustomed palate the fajeto was quite spicy. The rice helped with that a bit, but it is also relatively spicy. I probably should have had yogurt on the side like the bhaat recipe suggested.

The rice has a wonderful toasted taste to it. I also really like the mustard seeds in it. 

Both dishes reheated really well.

First post + ulam rice [Indonesia]

Hello to the void!~

I'm creating a new blog to document my experiences re-learning how to cook.

Background: I've somehow managed to avoid really learning how to cook until now, through various circumstances (parents who cooked, living in dorms, soylent v1.0, free lunches and dinners at the workplace, somehow sustaining myself on sauteed vegetables for six months in my first year of grad school, and a partner who is an amazing amateur cook). But now that I'm living by myself again and my partner's ~3k miles away, I figured I'd actually learn now.

I always found meal planning really overwhelming. Especially when I was in college, it was almost impossible finding a lunch to pack that didn't need to be microwaved or refrigerated. Being (mostly) vegetarian at this point, it's even harder. I've experimented a few times with cooking foods from around the world, and it never really worked, partially because my source for recipes was Wikipedia and I wasn't selective enough with choosing recipes. Some of the recipes that came from those experiments were quite tasty, like koshari; some became ... interesting memories, to say the least (don't use the "shred" option on a blender if you want to shred a potato).

Anyway, this time I'm actually doing it! And it's been great so far. I've cooked a few meals now, and it's actually very enjoyable. I *think* I have a good strategy for meal planning. We'll see how well I can keep it up!

(Also, if anyone does happen to see this blog and I'm cooking your food wrong, I'm so sorry! I don't mean to. My family is white and Midwestern so most of my meals growing up were things like spaghetti, chicken sandwiches, pork chops, taco night tacos, etc. I don't have a lot of experience with food cultures around the world.)

*****

The first meal I made was ulam rice! I believe it is a Betawi recipe. 

It looks a bit unappetizing because the lighting in my apartment sucks.

I used this to try out my new Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker. I really love this rice cooker; it does take longer to cook than the Instant Pot we have in NYC though.

I wanted to find some pre-frozen fresh coconut. It was somewhat hard to find (weirdly enough specialty organic stores in Seattle didn't have any) but H-Mart had it. I used coconut oil as the cooking oil. 

I didn't use dried shrimp; I also didn't use anchovies. I instead used some "vegan fish sauce" from Ocean's Halo. I'm guessing this made it far from authentic-tasting but it still tasted good. 

I also got a bunch of "living basil". ~2 weeks later, it's still doing okay in my window, but it's finally starting to wilt. I'll have to use it soon.

Verdict: this was so tasty when it was fresh! Coconut is really delicious. My partner told me that I probably cut the cucumbers wrong (apparently you're supposed to skin this kind of cucumber). It didn't reheat very well; the rice was quite dry.