Indian food Recipes aka Adaptions from hard to simple.

 Cucumber Raita Wannabe. (Should include mint,but the store was out)

• 2 cups unsweetened greek yogurt
• 1 cucumber diced small
• 3 tsps lemon juice
• salt to taste
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Mix that stuff together. This is to eat with your curry to help cool/cleanse your pallet.

Cauliflower attempting to be Aloo Gobi(the yellow stuff on the left)
Adapted from :http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Gobi-Aloo-Indian-Style-Cauliflower-with-Potatoes/Detail.aspx?evt19=1

• 2 small sweet onions diced
• 4 cloves garlic smashed/diced
• 1 Tbs ginger powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp tumeric
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp garam masala
• salt to taste
• 1 large cauliflower head (or a pound of frozen stuff) cut into bite sized pieces
• 3 medium unpeeled red potatoes cut into bite size pieces
• 2 Tbs Butter
• Dash of milk
• Half cup of water(unless using frozen cauliflower)
• Handful of diced Cilantro

Start by heating a pan on medium, throw the butter in there with the onions, once they start going translucent, add garlic. Cook until garlic is browned. Throw in all the spices minus the Cilantro. Then add the Potatoes. Mix up and cover for 7ish minutes.

Add in Cauliflowe, water and milk. Cover again, turn heat down to medium low.  Cook until the cauliflower and potatoes are nice and cooked. Throw in dat cilantro.


And lastly, the least easy of those recipes

Spicy Indian Style Steak Curry (yeah I know people in India are less inclined to eat beef)
Adapted from: http://www.food.com/recipe/spicy-indian-beef-curry-351311

Marinade:

• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 1 Tbs Garam Masala
• 4 Tbs Yogurt

Everything else

• 2 Pounds Decent quality Steak diced into bite size pieces (the shitty the steak the longer you should marinate it!)
• 2 yellow onions diced
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 Tb Sugar
• 1 Spicy Chili Pepper of some sort
• 2 Tbs Olive Oil
• 2 Tbs Ginger powder
• 2 Tbs Cumin
• 2 Tbs Coriander
• 1/4 tsp fenugreek
• 3 Tbs Curry Powder
• 1 small can of tomato Paste
• 2 cans of diced Tomatoes
• 1.5 cups Water (or beef stock)
• 1 TB Beef bouillon  (if water, if beef stock nope)

Marinate the meat for 2+ hours

After meat has marinated you can start cooking.

Sautee Onions in 2 Tbs olive oil... add sugar to start carmelizing the onions. Add garlic and chili pepper. Once the garlic is browned and onions carmelized add ALL the spices and the rest of the olive oil.

Next add and brown the meat in the spice mix.

Once the meat is browned a bit, add in tomatos and stock.

Cover and simmer for 30 minutes or longer if needed to get the meat nice and tender.

Eat over rice.

Homemade lasagna

To start, I am sorry for no picture. I had not eaten all day and my phone is dead... so it just did not happen.

So. Here is my recipe for homemade lasagna.

Whatcha are going to need:
1 box of lasagna noodles(I got mine at the dollar tree because I am cheap)
1 50oz package (or a package w/ three scoops removed) of ricotta cheese
1 ball of fresh mozzerella
Some parm cheese (amounts may vary)
2  eggs
1 T Basil (fresh, frozen or dried)
2 cloves of garlic 
1 T of Italian Seasoning
1 Can or Jar of Pre-made tomato Sauce(unless you are not lazy and want to make your own)
1 Onion

Ok, so to start you need to get those noodles cooked. Boil water and cook it. Once it is cooked, drain it and VERY IMPORTANT. DRY those noodles. (For many years my mom would make nasty lasanga that was watery because she would not DRY THE NOODLES)

For your sauce. Dice that onion, sautee it in a bit of olive oil and add the garlic cloves squeezed or diced or however you like making garlic flavor come out. Once the onions start going soft, add your cheap sauce because you are a thrifty mother fucker. Now make it taste better with that basil and italian seasoning. If you always have a bottle of open going bad red wine sitting around... like I do...splash some of that in there too.  Let this mixture cook and thicken.

Now for the cheese sauce. Toss all the ricotta, the eggs, a few tablespoons of parm, and shred about 2/3rd of that parm ball into a bowl. Mix it up!.

Next is layering time.

Start with a layer of sauce, just enough to lube the pan.
Then a layer of noodles. Overlay them a bit so there is no space in the pan. Now take 1/3 of your fancy cheese mix and spread it over the noodles. Next add some sauce over that.... then noodles again... then cheese... then sauce... then noodles.... then cheese. Then sauce and that should fill your tray. I used a 9 by 12 pan myself.  If not keep going until you A:Run out of ingredients or B: run out of  space.

Now it is time to cook!
350 degrees. Cover your lasagna and cook for 45 minutes.
After 45 minutes pull it out, uncover it. Shred the rest of your mozzarella on top, and cook for another 15 minutes covered. You should be all set. Dinner time!

Notes: I never cook with salt, you might want to add some.
Moar sauce is better than less.

National Grilled Cheese Day

April 12th, as some of you may, or may not know. Is the day of Grilled Cheese. Now when I think grilled cheese two flavors come to mind. The first is the horrors of plastic American singles slices on nutrition less white bread slices. This appalling tragedy seems to be a common placed food for American children, and truly I pity them and my past self. I remember going to expensive fancys venues as a little girl, and seeing my mother eating exquisite delicacies, and having a plate of badly baked fries and a this pathetic excuse for grilled cheese on my plate.

Later in life my family decided to get healthy. The only bread we bought was crunchy wheat bread that tasted like saw dust. This bread is NOT CONDUCTIVE TO GRILLED CHEESE. It should never be used for this purpose. My mother also was only buying provolone(ass) cheese and sawdust and ass should NOT be mixed.

There are good memories of grilled cheese, to counter the bad, fortunately. My work place 'The Natural Cafe' in mid college served delicious grilled cheese... or at least when I ordered them for myself they were delicious, topped with grilled onions and red bell peppers ^_^.

My creation for this holiday was surprisingly delicious as well! Taking a few slices of roasted garlic bread from Cosco, and a couple gobs of fresh Tillamock cheddar cheese from this very valley, and the right application of time on the forum grill, this grilled cheese sandwich was D-licious. The cheddar was cooked long enough to seep out the sides a bit and get crunchy. Perfect grilled cheese combo. A++

"Fudge" Popsicles

Further adventures in Popsicle making... This time we have CHOCOLATE!. I think I used too little chocolate because my Fudgesicles came out weird and cracked looking. I also think my chocolate chips were not real chocolate. They refused to melt properly in my double boiler. Sometimes I really wonder what I am doing making these Popsicles. I am making them in a very anti-intuitive fashion. I never would imagine HEATING ingredients to make Popsicles. Because... I am going to freeze them... and it takes longer for hot things to cool down. So maybe my mistake was pre-making the hot part of the batter before hand. On taste, it was very sweet and milky, and you could almost taste the caloric overload explosion in your mouth. At 140 calories each, their taste was just not worth it. Never again.

Chocolate Kimberleys

There's a biscuit out there, a biscuit that many are yet to taste and experience. It's the kind of biscuit that completely alters your biscuit eating habits. It's the kind of biscuit you'd like to think you could imagine, but could never exactly conjure up in your head. It's the the kind of biscuit you pine after once you've let it pass down your throat, hoping that today might be the day you get sick, so, at the very least, you might grab a little taste of this wonderful biscuit once more, as your chunder flows from your mouth (hopefully into a sink or toilet, or somewhere that won't be too troublesome to clean as long as you can hold your breath for a sufficient amount of time). This biscuit is the Jacobs Elite Chocolate Kimberley.

Forgive the gruesome imagery I used, which, in retrospect, was a little extreme, but I used it only to try put forth my great love for these biscuits. And I suppose I should address a notable point to begin with: this biscuit describes itself as a cake, a "Milk chocolate covered mallow cake" to be exact. While I would, in a casual setting, around fellow lovers of the Chocolate Kimberley, treat it more as a biscuit, nibbling eagerly on a few while I occasionally sipped a cup of Earl Grey tea, the cake description isn't wrong. I don't want to get into the semantics of the legal differences of a biscuit and a cake (i've hijacked too many talk-radio shows about that already in my lifetime), so I won't be addressing those, just to be clear. The reason I say it's not an ill-fitting description is because, like a cake, the Chocolate Kimberley is, for the majority of times while being eaten, something that bit more special than another custard cream or some other blandly uninteresting biscuit. I think we can all agree that cake is great, and the Chocolate Kimberley is a bite-sized piece of cake-ish wonder that goes that bit beyond being merely "great".

I should insert a little back story here: i'm from the Republic of Ireland, and Chocolate Kimberleys are a relic from my time there. My parents will travels back to that often soggy, lilted-accent land every so often, and when they do my siblings and I utter one word over and over to them upon their departure: "Kimberleys". And for the most part, they haven't failed us in bringing back some of the biscuits in question. Sometimes they even bring back a whole pack for each of us! But as time has gone on, locating Chocolate Kimberley biscuits in Ireland is, apparently, becoming increasingly difficult. Why, I recall upon the return of one trip from leprechaun land, after ignoring the polite formalities such as "How was you trip?" and "Hello", and searching through their hand luggage in a bid to find the expected gifts, we were informed that yes, Kimberleys had been obtained, but only luckily in the petrol station in Northern Ireland! I didn't worry about it much at the time as I had Kimberleys to eat. But I realized subsequently that the days of enjoying a Chocolate Kimberley may well be a scarce treat in the future.

Anyway, I should probably pass comment on what these damn things actually taste like - this is a food blog, after all. But deary, deary me! Much like the fact that one does not simply walk into Mordor, one does not simply describe the taste of a Chocolate Kimberley! The experience of one of these treats passing your through your mouth (pausing to chew, of course), is such an ineffable one that words seem lacklustre. Stephen Fry once said:

"You cannot explain a work of art in words. A painter makes a painting out of paint - paint is its language. If you can describe it, nail it, comprehend it in words then something is rather wrong. A work of art is precisely that which remains when you have run out of words to describe it."

Eating a Chocolate Kimberley is akin to taking in a piece of art. Although the purple outer wrapping of each Chocolate Kimberley is enticing and almost regal, admittedly the biscuit held inside isn't something that will strike your upon your first glance (the main result of a Google Image Search is a rather unflattering and poor example). It's only when you've partook in one that the sight of it becomes something else, something illustrious, something tempting, something you want.

But the sight is not important. Restaurateurs and other sorts might well state that presentation is everything, but it's not. You're not going to being eating one of these in a high class establishment where you've had to put on your best shirt, and shine your shoes to enter. No, you'll be sat with your family, joking about how the  youngest sibling, even at eighteen years old, still can't say the word "Birmingham" correctly. Or you'll be sat in front of the television, watching a classic Bill Forsyth film as the evening light fades away outside. This is a biscuit for a real person, not some overtly fancy overdone chocolate dipped piece of half-baked shortbread that you'll feel guilty about spending more than three pounds on, and only be left disappointed with afterwards. The Chocolate Kimberley makes you feel good about yourself. Yes, they aren't cheap (especially if you choose to import them from Ireland), but they warrant the reasonable price-tag put upon them. You eat one and you might suddenly realise that you don't have to spend your life going to bed at a reasonable hour, or adhering to every pointless rule set by the money-hungry company that employs you. If there ever was an epiphany biscuit, then the Chocolate Kimberley would surely be a front runner in the race.

Okay, so even though I did say that describing the taste of a Chocolate Kimberley is near enough impossible, I will make a modest attempt. And similarly, this biscuit is equally modest upon first bite. Your teeth go past the chocolate and you discover a two biscuit bases sandwiching a simple marshmallow centre. It goes down easy: soft but delightfully so; chewable but never a struggle, even for a pair of worn dentures; moreish but not in an instantly addictive fashion. The whole thing might well be gone in a matter bites and a matter of seconds, and you might wonder what the fuss was all about. But that's when the ginger after-taste comes in. Your tongue licks your upper teeth, and you remember that light milk chocolate covering that you bit through moment ago. You smile, and realise, "that was actually a really nice biscuit". Then you ask if you can have another one.

But there isn't another one! As I worried, the population of Chocolate Kimberleys has declined. Attaining some to bring back from the magical biscuit-making realms of Ireland has become harder and harder. Or maybe my parents just aren't making a good enough effort. Either way, the supply given to me over the past year has been depressingly low. Sometime last summer I got packet for myself, and I cherished them, only eating one when I needed some great cheering up, or when I'd done something to deserve one, like rescuing someone from a burning building, or haven written a song that will unite countries and bring and end to all wars. My kind-hearted self even took a couple of them to work, so my colleagues could partake in the joy. Predictably, once they had finished their treat, they enquired about the possibility of having another one (an enquiry I had to give a selfish and negative answer to).

And so I sit here, reminiscing over the taste of this wonderful breed of biscuit as my final one stares at me silently. Oh, how I want to tear its wrapper off, like a lover seized in passion wants to undress his partner. Oh, how I want to once again taste the soft centre within. Oh, how I pine after this near-mythical treat! I know there are other versions of the Kimberley. Why, I came across a pack of the unchocolated kind in my local supermarket the other week, and while they were an admirable tribute to the biscuits of focus here, they were no substitute. If anything, it just made me want my last one even more. And defeating the desire to give into temptation is so very, very hard, like a recovering alcoholic would lick his lips at the sight of chilled beer, or a clean, former drug addict's nose might twitch at the mention of some cocaine. That is the power of a Chocolate Kimberley. Once you've had it you will know no better, and want no other.

Buttered Popcorn Popsicles

What was I thinking? Why did I ever think that butter and popcorn flavored Popsicles could be good? I really have no clue. But it happened. I actually made these monstrosities. Biting into them, they had  the flavor of salt and fat women trying for weight loss. I could literally not pallet more than one bite... Never make buttered popcorn flavored popsicles. Just don't do it.

I also tried to make a carmel sauce, but it ended up just being burnt candy bits. It tasted good but was in no way smooth enough to get onto these Popsicle without melting them.

I won't give y'all the recipe, because trying this is cruelty to ones mouth.

Success with Quiche

Hi, I'm Jen. Some of you already know me or have talked to me. I have my own food/traveling blog and JoDee invited me to join this one too, so here I am. I love cooking and baking, and trying food from other places I visit.

Ever since I visited Tartine Bakery in San Francisco last weekend and got a slice of their quiche, I have wanted to make a quiche of my own, better than any quiche I have made before. I wanted to make a really good quiche, so I turned to Deb at Smitten Kitchen because her recipes are excellent. For the custard filling and an idea of measurements to make the size of quiche I wanted, I took the example of a mushroom quiche she recently made, but added in less mushrooms and some of my own vegetables, and using pre-made crust.

Spring Quiche

Ingredients:

2 refrigerated pie crusts
10 ozs mushrooms (you can use a variety of kinds)
4 spears of asparagus
Half a zucchini
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp dried thyme
3/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese (shred by hand, it'll melt in better that way)
6 eggs
2 cups milk (I used soy milk)
2 cups heavy whipping cream
Freshly grated nutmeg
Salt

Instructions:
 0. Preheat oven to 325.
1. In a 9 inch Springform pan, place the pre-made pie dough. You might want to coat the pan with a little olive oil before you put the crust in but I didn't and it didn't stick. Refrigerate for later.
2. Chop up vegetables and cook for 5 minutes in a frying pan with the olive oil. Add the butter, garlic and thyme and cook on medium for 10 more minutes.
3. Whip three eggs in a bowl. Then add 1 cup milk and 1 cup heavy whipping cream, plus some salt and a few grates of the nutmeg, and beat vigorously with a whisk until frothy, 5-10 minutes. This would be a lot easier with a kitchen aid but you don't need one.
4. Take out the pan from the fridge,  add 1/4 cup of the cheese, half the vegetable mixture, and the custard mixture. Repeat the custard mixture with remaining eggs/milk/salt/nutmeg, sprinkle another 1/4 cup cheese ontop of the first custard mixture, add in the rest of vegetables, and pour in the second batch of your custard mixture to fill the pan. Then sprinkle the last 1/4 cup of the cheese ontop of that and bake in the oven for an hour and a half or until a toothpick comes out clean.
5. Let cool on a wire rack or away from the stove for 15 minutes. Place on a baking sheet, unhinge the pan and remove the outer part of the pan to cut the first piece. It's easier to cut after you cut the first piece and you can put the pan back together after that.

It will be so nice to have this quiche for any meal of the day. Glad I decided to make it. :)