Triple-dairy dal

I checked an Indian cookbook out of the library a few months ago hoping for some new dal ideas, but the recipes are way too rich. Their recipe for this dish calls for 1/2 cup butter (that's an entire stick), 1/2 cup cream, and 1 cup yogurt. I followed the "make it the way the recipe says the first time" rule, and I ended up making another cup of lentils to add to the sauce because it was way too rich. This time, I eighth'd the amount of butter and cream and quartered the amount of yogurt, and it worked a lot better. I made a few other modifications, like adding chard and ginger, and I think those modifications helped too. If you've never tried toor dal, also known as split pigeon peas, it's got a great flavor. I can't describe it very well, but it's a disctinctive nuttiness and richness. I'm really glad we got some back in September on our Indian grocery expedition.

We served this with broccoli we had cooked with mustard, cumin, and coconut. Next time, some rice or naan would be great to soak up the extra sauce, but I didn't think of it until the meal was almost ready.

Triple-dairy dal

1 cup toor dal (split pigeon peas)

3 cups water

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 clove garlic, minced

1 1/2 tbsp butter, divided (1/2 tbsp and 1 tbsp)

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 tsp fresh ginger, minced

1 tbsp cream

1/4 cup yogurt, plus more for serving

2 leaves Swiss chard, finely sliced

Place the toor dal, water, turmeric, chili powder, and garlic in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer until dal texture is to your liking.

In the meantime, melt 1/2 tbsp butter in a small frying pan. Add cumin seeds and about 30 seconds later, add onion and ginger. Saute until onions are soft.

After dal is ready, turn off heat and stir in 1 tbsp butter, cream, and yogurt. Bring to a simmer and cook for another five minutes or so. Then add chard and stir to wilt. Serve with a dollop of yogurt on top.

Yogurt ice cream

Jon and I made two batches of ice cream this weekend! Both were great. The first one was Jon's choice, lemon ice cream. It turned out really well, but the second one, a yogurt ice cream recipe from last September's Bon Appetit, took the cake. It also keeps a really great texture even after being frozen, something some homemade ice creams, like our lemon one, don't do as well. I would post the lemon ice cream recipe, but I'm going to hold off in case we refine it. The yogurt ice cream needs no refinement, although Jon thinks it would be better with another flavor, maybe lemon or blueberry, in it. I say he's crazy. It is rich, sweet, and slightly sour.

Yogurt ice cream

The Bon Appetit recipe calls for Greek yogurt. I used my own homemade yogurt and drained it until it was about 2/3 of its original volume.

1 cup whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup sugar, divided

3 egg yolks

1 cup thick yogurt

Combine milk, cream, and 1/2 cup sugar in a medium saucepan. In a heatproof bowl of volume at least a quart, combine egg yolks and remaining 1/4 cup sugar.

Over medium heat, stir milk and cream mixture until all sugar has dissolved. Slowly pour milk mixture into egg yolk mixture, whisking to combine. When all the milk has been stirred in, pour entire mixture back into saucepan.

Over medium heat, stir constantly until mixture reaches 170 degrees or coats the back of a spoon. Remove from heat, pour into bowl, and allow to come almost to room temperature. Stir in yogurt.

Chill until chilled, then freeze in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions.

The simple things

This is what I had for dinner on Saturday night. Well, this times three. I had put some milk up for yogurt in the morning, and when dinner time came around, it was freshly fermented and still warm. With some chopped pistachios and a drizzle of honey, it was breathtaking.

Sweet potato soup

I got the idea for this recipe from the inside of a Dannon yogurt container foil, but the foil accidentally got thrown away before I made the soup, so I had to wing it on the amounts of everything. Sweet potatoes were only $0.19/lb the week before Thanksgiving, so I bought a ton of them, and this soup was a very comforting, tasty way to use some of them.

Sweet potato soup

2 tsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced (about 1 cup)
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp chili powder (by which I mean the spice blend containing cumin, oregano, and ground chiles)
3 medium sweet potatoes (about 10 oz each), cut into 1-inch cubes
1 qt vegetable broth
Pumpkin or squash seeds for garnish, optional
Yogurt for garnish, optional

Saute the onion in the oil until translucent. Sprinkle spices on top and saute another 30 seconds. Add sweet potatoes and broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook about 20 minutes, or until sweet potato is soft. Use an immersion blender to make it nice and smooth, or process it in batches in a food processor or blender. Garnish with pumpkin seeds and yogurt if desired.

Stirring the yogurt into the soup yields beautiful patterns and reminds me of a scene in "Arcadia."

Blueberry-thyme frozen yogurt that is almost awesome

The new HEB had blueberries at an amazing 97 cents a pint last week, so we bought three of them. I had been wanting to try to make frozen yogurt, and I thought blueberry would be a good flavor for that. I didn't want to use any sugar, so I decided to add an herb flavor to make it a little more sophisticated. A quick taste test on the balcony showed that thyme was the right herb for blueberries.
I think I've gotten a little cocky lately. Most of my recent culinary experiments have been smashing successes (chickpea flour crackers, red pepper-tangelo sherbet, eggplant basil, oversalted kasha stirred into scrambled eggs, etc.), so I decided I didn't need no stinkin' recipe or any guidelines for making frozen yogurt. I made up a recipe, using just a tiny bit of sugar, and froze it. Unfortunately, it didn't freeze very well in my little ice cream maker, so I had to put it in the freezer for a while, take it out and crank it, etc. After eating dinner, we dug into the yogurt, and it was great. It was pleasantly tart, the blueberry flavor was rich, and the periodic bursts of thyme flavor were lovely. Next time I might steep the thyme in simple syrup to increase both the sweetness and the thymey-ness, but overall it was very nice. After we ate our dessert, we froze the rest like we usually do.
Unfortunately yesterday when I got it out to have some, it was as hard as a rock. I'm sure it would have softened in time, but I had to leave again before it was soft enough to eat. I was able to scrape a few spoonfuls off the top, and they were quite tasty, but I couldn't get very much. I have some theories on what went wrong and how I might fix it next time.

1) I didn't use much added sugar or fat, which lower the freezing point, so the mixture is too much like ice. To fix this I can add more sugar and maybe some cream next time, or use thicker yogurt, which has more fat and less water.
2) The way I froze it, taking it in and out of the freezer, didn't incorporate enough air into the mixture, so it froze too solidly. To fix this, I can make sure the freezer isn't too full and the little cannister that's supposed to go in there gets cold enough. I can also try to whirl it in the food processor and see if that breaks it up and adds some more air.

Have any of you had this problem, or do you know more about frozen dessert science than I do? Any tips would be welcome.

Blueberry-thyme frozen yogurt
1 1/3 cups fresh blueberries, rinsed
2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, thick stems removed
1 tsp sugar
About 1 cup plain yogurt

Puree blueberry, thyme, and sugar. Pour into 2-cup measuring cup and add enough yogurt to equal 2 cups total. Mix thoroughly. Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.

Mango-lentil-yogurt salad

Sorry about the blurry picture. I can't always tell on my camera screen whether something is in focus. This one wasn't. A few days ago I had two friends over for a goodbye dinner before they moved to San Antonio. My initial plan was to serve spanakopita and carrot salad. They seem like good company food. But the day before they were going to come over, I found out that one of them is avoiding dairy, so I had to change my plan. The salad had been on the menu for later in the week, so I bumped it up a couple days and also made a spinach-chickpea-tofu skin curry, which will get its own post. The yogurt is not integral to the salad, so the non-dairy guy didn't have any, and the rest of us were happy.

I based this salad on something I saw in the most recent Bon Appetit. The original recipe calls for roast chicken, but I decided to recplace that with French lentils. They are smaller and darker than regular lentils, and they keep their texture better. Any bean would probably work, but I thought the lentils were perfect. Unusually for me, I used a purchased mango chutney in the dressing, and I was really glad I did. It had just the right blend of flavors and was basically no work. I felt so semi-homemade! (Maybe the completely homemade yogurt made up for it.) Also, the original recipe calls for arugula, which isn't our favorite green, so we just used red-leaf lettuce and supplemented it with fresh herbs and baby greens from my garden. You'll probably have some leftover lentils. I have been using them in green salads at lunch. They are very lightly spiced, so they shouldn't ruin any other flavor profiles. They would probably also be good in a pasta or grain salad. And just in case you aren't an Indian spice expert, kalonji are also known as nigella or black onion seeds. They are small black seeds that often top naan. They kind of look like black sesame seeds and can be found in Indian and Middle Eastern grocery stores.

Mango-lentil-yogurt salad
This recipe will make 5-6 salads.

Lentils:
1 cup French lentils, rinsed
Splash of red wine
1 tsp curry powder

Dressing:
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp mango chutney, large pieces finely chopped
Juice of 1 lemon or lime
1 tbsp curry powder
1 1/2 tsp water, or more

Salad:
2-3 large lettuce leaves for each portion, rinsed and torn
Fresh herbs, such as basil, Thai basil, mint, and oregano, if desired
2 mangoes, peeled, pitted, and sliced
Plain yogurt
Kalonji and/or cumin seeds to garnish, optional

Cover the lentils in plenty of water in a medium saucepan. Add red wine and curry powder. Bring to a boil and lower to a simmer. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 20 minutes. Drain and reserve lentils.

Whisk together the dressing ingredients, adding a little extra water if needed to make a nice dressing. To assemble the salads, put the lettuce and herbs in bowls. Top each with several mango slices and about 1/3 cup of lentils. Pour 1-2 tbsp of dressing on each salad and top with a dollop of yogurt. Garnish with seeds.

Raspberry yogurt cake with orange glaze

Jon and I aren't big dessert people. The main exceptions are ice cream for Jon and dark chocolate for me. But neither one of us is much of a baker. However, I've been seeing a lot of really nice-looking dessert recipes recently, so I think we might be indulging a little more this summer. This is the first dessert I've made in a while. I got the recipe from the July 2008 issue of Bon Appetit, and we both thought it looked good. Raspberries are my favorite berry, and I make yogurt all the time, so it was a logical choice. The only thing I didn't have was a Bundt pan, so I made it in my heart-shaped cake pans because we love each other. (And because those are the only cake pans we have.) We decided to make it into two small cakes rather than one two-layer cake. We are having friends over for dinner tomorrow, and the layer we haven't cut into yet will be perfect for them.

I don't know if I will make this cake again. It is very good, but it is very sweet. I know that it's a cake, but it was a little too much for me. The glaze is also quite sweet. Next time I will use lemon juice instead of orange juice in the glaze. (The original recipe just called for water. I used orange juice because there was orange juice in the cake batter, so it seemed to make sense.) I ended up squeezing a little lemon juice onto mine, and it really helped cut the sweetness.

The texture was also more muffin-y than cakey. I like muffins, but I was after cake. It was a lot denser and moister than most cakes. I might use this as a really indulgent muffin recipe. If I do use it again, I will cut the sugar dramatically. Since it was a cake recipe, I didn't want to mess with the chemistry before trying it once. I think of cakes as being very fussy about the wet/dry/fat/whatever ratios. But muffins are more forgiving, and I think I could decrease the sugar to 1 cup and be fine. It sounds like I didn't really like it, but that's not true. It tasted really good, and the raspberry-almond combination was superb. I would just change a couple things in the future. But I am publishing the recipe as I made it because you might like it that way.

Close-up so you can see the texture

Raspberry yogurt cake with orange glaze
This is my version of the recipe. The original can be found here.

3 cups flour, divided (2 1/2 cups and 1/2 cup)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 tbsp orange juice, divided (2 tbsp and 2 tbsp)
1 1/2 tsp almond extract, divided (1 tsp and 1/2 tsp)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
3 eggs, room temperature
1 cup plain yogurt
2 1/2 cups frozen raspberries (most of a 1-pound bag), or fresh if you're super-rich
1 cup powdered sugar
Lemon wedges, optional

Butter and flour two small cake pans. Preheat oven to 350° F.

Mix 2 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar by hand or with an electric mixer until creamy. Add 2 tbsp orange juice, 1 tsp almond extract, and orange zest and beat together. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add yogurt and mix together. Pour in the dry ingredients and beat just until blended. Combine raspberries and 1/2 cup flour in the medium bowl you just poured the flour out of. Toss until raspberries are coated in flour. Fold into batter. Pour into prepared cake pans and bake for 40 minutes or until a knife or toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool for 30 minutes if you can stand it.
While the cake is in the oven, make the glaze. Combine powdered sugar, 2 tbsp orange juice, and 1/2 tsp almond extract and whisk together with a fork (or whisk) until a thick glaze forms. Add more juice if you need or want to.
To serve, cut a slice of cake, pour some glaze on, and squeeze a little bit of lemon juice over it if it's too sweet for you.

Five-spice beet soup

I made this beet soup as part of Jon's birthday feast. I got the recipe from the February 2009 issue of Bon Appetit. I have not made any other beet soups, but I can't imagine a better one. It's warm and comforting but spicy and interesting. It calls for five-spice powder, a common Chinese seasoning. I didn't have any the first few times I made it, so I made my own version on the fly, just adding a bit of ground fennel seed, ground pepper, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and a piece of star anise, which I then retrieved from the soup before pureeing. Now I have "real" five-spice powder, and the effect is about the same. The recipe as written is very gingery, which is nice. If you don't like ginger that much, you could cut back the amount but not eliminate it entirely. The beet-ginger combination is excellent, and it might grow on you. If you don't have fresh ginger, you can substitute about 1/2 tsp of ground. It's not the same, but it works.

I don't know what you do for broth. I am a big fan of Better than Bouillion brand concentrated vegetable soup base, but if you make it as strong as it says on the package, it's usually way too salty, at least for my taste. For this recipe, Iused about 1 tsp of the base in 3 cups warm water, and I could have gone with less. That's 1/3 strength. If you use canned broth, you might want to dilute it with water. If you use homemade broth, you probably don't need my suggestions on whether/how to dilute it.

One last thing: Wear an apron! Or clothes you think are not pink enough.

Five-spice beet soup (adapted from Bon Appetit)
Beets: about 3 1/2 cups' worth, trimmed, scrubbed but not peeled, and quartered or eighth'd. If you get big ones, it's about four beets. Smaller ones, a lot more.
3 cups vegetable broth
1 tbsp neutral oil
1 medium onion, diced (about 2 cups)
1 celery stalk, chopped
2 tsp peeled fresh ginger, minced or grated
1/4 tsp five-spice powder
Yogurt or sour cream for garnish

Bring the beets to a boil in the broth. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until they are soft all the way through and easily pierced with a sharp knife. If you use smaller beets, they will be done sooner. Marvel at how pink your broth is. In the meantime, saute onion and celery in the oil until they are soft and translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the celery and onion to the beets when they are done and let them cook together for about four minutes. Add the five-spice powder and ginger and combine. Puree. I use an immersion blender, which is really fun, but you can also transfer it in batches to a blender or food processor. You'll probably want to let it cool a bit before you do that. Serve with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream. I'm partial to my homemade yogurt.

Chocolate crepes with fruit and yogurt

I got a crepe pan in November from an aunt. At first I thought it was kind of silly. I had never minded not making crepes. But it works really well, and I have had a lot of fun with it. I have made regular savory crepes, chickpea flour crepes, garlic scape crepes, regular sweet crepes, and now chocolate crepes. We had a lot of fruit salad left over from Jon's mom's visit, and I thought this would be a good way to use it up. I accidentally forgot to add the water, and the batter didn't spread as well in the pan as I would have liked, but they tasted pretty good anyway. Also, the recipe calls for 1/4 cup powdered sugar, and I used 2 tbsp regular sugar. It was not very sweet at all, which was fine with me since I was putting fruit in it.

Chocolate crepes, from Crepes by Lou Seibert Pappas
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
1/3 cup water
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp liqueur, optional (I used Grand Marnier, although I didn't get much of the flavor)
2 tbsp butter, melted.

Mix everything in a food processor. If you don't have one, mix the wet ingredients and dry ingredients separately and then whisk together. Cover and refrigerate 1-24 hours. (I don't know whether that is essential, but I always do it.) To make the crepes, stir the batter just to make sure nothing has separated. Then heat up your crepe pan over medium to medium-high heat. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto the pan, tilting to let it spread. Cook until mostly dry on top, usually under a minute. Then flip over and cook for 15-30 seconds on the other side. Fill as you see fit.

In case you were curious, the fruit salad contained apples, bananas, clementines, pineapple chunks, strawberries, raspberries, and sliced almonds. I thought the almonds were a stroke of genius. It's nice to have that little crunch every once in a while. And of course, the yogurt I used was my homemade plain stuff. I added 1/3 cup of powdered milk to the last batch, and I think it helped make the yogurt nice and thick.

Curried carrot raisin salad

I don't have a picture of this because my camera batteries died last night and I couldn't find another charged pair. But it's not much to look at anyway. I have always quite enjoyed Luby's cafeteria-style carrot raisin salad (shredded carrots, raisins, mayo, maybe some pineapple). The latest issue of Bon Appetit had a more mature carrot-raisin salad recipe, and I really like it. First of all, I prefer raw carrots to cooked, but they can be hard on the jaw. Shredded carrots are the way to go. Also, the mint really makes it sparkle, and the yogurt and lemon juice balance the sweetness of the carrots and raisins. I used to be somewhat against mint in non-dessert foods, but I've been coming around (having a ton of mint in my garden doesn't hurt), and I really like it in here. I don't think the amount they recommend is enough. Maybe just add that amount and keep adding more until you're happy with it. I think this salad would also be good, albeit very different, with any fresh-tasting herb in place of the mint. Parsley and cilantro are the obvious choices, although maybe basil or Thai basil could work too. I would like to experiment with it, but I like the mint so much that I might not be able to bring myself to try something else. I added a sprinkling of whole cumin seeds because I love cumin and can't get enough. The first time I made it, I added a little too much curry powder, and I think I added too little this time. But it's easy to just sprinkle a little more on at the table.

Curried carrot raisin salad, with my modifications in italics:
3/4 cup plain yogurt
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp fresh mint, minced (I would use about twice that much, or to taste)
3/4-1 tsp curry powder, or to taste
1 lb carrots, peeled and grated (food processor is best for this)
1/4 cup raisins, or more to taste
Healthy sprinkling of whole cumin seeds, maybe 1/2 tsp

Whisk first four ingredients together in medium bowl. Add carrots and raisins and mix thoroughly. Sprinkle with cumin seeds and serve.

I served it with tortellini with a creamy, cheesy pea sauce. They didn't go together at all, but it was just what I wanted. That's why I love cooking at home. Restaurants would never serve curried carrot salad with tortellini and peas. They're bullies.

My homemade breakfast

I had an excellent breakfast today, and it was almost all homemade:

1 slice of homemade yogurt bread with (not homemade) butter
Fresh homemade yogurt with homemade granola and (not homemade) dried raspberries

Homemade fruit smoothie: banana, orange juice, carrot, frozen strawberries, frozen raspberries, and frozen pineapple.

In case you're wondering, yogurt is easy to make. Heat 1 quart of milk on high heat, stirring constantly, until it gets really steamy and foamy. When it comes down to about 110 F, add it to a bowl with a couple spoonfuls (spoonsful?) of yogurt with live cultures (Dannon has worked best for me) and keep in a warm place 8 hours or so. I kept mine in the oven with the oven light on, and by the morning, the temp in there was 116 F, which is a temperature that makes the little lactobacilli very happy. Homemade yogurt is super-delicious just after you make it, before refrigeration, so it was a real treat to have some of that this morning.

My granola contains: oats, dried cranberries, dried cherries, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, and honey. I'm not going to put up the recipe because, although it's pretty tasty, I am still trying to figure out an ideal cooking time/temperature. My oats didn't get very cooked when I made it, so it's somewhere in between granola and muesli.

2nd bread machine loaf: a success!

Yay! My second loaf of bread machine bread rose and tasted fantastic! I made a white yogurt bread. Because I am ridiculous and cheap, I elected not to buy new yeast and instead increased the yeast. I used 2 3/4 tsp instead of the 2 tsp in the recipe. In order to increase my chances of success, I also decided to go with a white loaf and didn't use the delay timer. I will branch out a little more now that I know that success is very possible. I may have used too much yeast, as the bread is a little spongy, but it really is delicious, so I am not at all disappointed. The recipe is from the instructions that came with the bread machine (Hitachi D-102).

1/2 cup tap water
1 cup plain yogurt
3 cups bread flour
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp sesame seeds
2 tsp dry yeast (I increased to 2 3/4 tsp)

Put ingredients in breadmaker in the order suggested by the manufacturer (in my case, in the order shown above). Press "Start".