Baked Sweet Potato Fries

Ever since I saw a sweet potato fries post on Foodgawker, I wanted to try my hands at making them at home. So, looking around on the Net, my version is an amalgam of this and this recipe. The original recipe is great, but adding garlic just makes a good thing even greater. I didn’t have garlic powder, so just used freshly minced garlic.

Sweet Potato Fries

Ingredients:

• 1 large sweet potato
• Teaspoon of rock salt
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• 1 teaspoon of paprika/chilli powder
• Handful of corn starch
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil

To make:

Preheat your oven at the highest temperature available for 10-15 minutes.

Peel the skin off the sweet potato and slice the potato into French fry-sized slivers.

Smash up or grate the garlic into very tiny pieces.

Combine the oil, garlic, chilli powder, and salt to make a batter.

Dip each potato chip into the batter, coating well.

Lay the chips on a baking tray.

Dust some corn starch on top.

Bake the potatoes for 25-30 minutes or until the potatoes are done.

 

Pak Choi and Bean Sprouts Salad

Nature’s Basket this week had Pak choi (or Bok Choy), which is Chinese cabbage, as well as the Korean Kimchi-making cabbage. Since the latter was twice the size of my head (and refrigeration is a problem for me), I decided to lose my virginity with Pak choi.

Pak Choi and Bean Sprouts Salad

Ingredients:

• 5 big leaves of pak choi
• 1 1/2 cup bean sprouts
• 1 cup red and green peppers
• Handful of spring onions

Dressing:

• Juice of one lime
• ½ teaspoon of black pepper powder
• Dash of olive oil

To make:

• Tear up the pak choi leaves and chop up the peppers into slivers.
• Rinse the bean sprouts under running water to get out any muddy remnants.
• Mix all the salad ingredients.
• Make a dressing using the lime juice and the pepper powder (the pre-ground powders – not the freshly ground up pepper, which gives a different flavor).
• Pour over the salad.

Coconut Rice and Carrot Sambal

Continuing with my South Indian culinary adventure, I made carrot sambal and cocunut rice for dinner last night.

Coconut rice is typically made in the south of India, where coconuts are aplenty. There, they typically add coconut milk or shards of fresh coconut to rice and cook the rice as usual. I had neither fresh coconut shavings, nor coconut milk. But I did have plenty of my coconut chutney from my morning order of dosas and wadas. Seemed like a shame to toss out the perfectly good coconut chutney that came with my order.

To make your own coconut chutney, blend together one cup fresh coconut, 2 green chillies, piece of ginger. Temper mustard seeds, chilli, and curry leaves for a minute and add that mixture to your coconut paste.

Since I did use more coconut than rice, the result was more a coconut risotto with a creamy texture and very heavy to eat.

I am especially proud of my carrot sambal, which is unbelievably easy to make and tastes great! Indian Sambals, unlike their Thai cousin, are not a sauce, but rather a dry condiment-like addition to a dish. The sweetness of the carrots, combined with the mustard and chillis in the sambal go really well with the heavy creaminess of the coconut and starchiness of the rice.

Coconut Rice

Ingredients:

• ½ cup rice
• ¾ cup coconut chutney
• Tablespoon of coconut oil
• 1 cup water

To make:

Add all the ingredients in a pot and cook for 15-20 minutes, or till the rice is done. I stopped cooking when the rice was done but there was still a little liquid left in the pot.

Carrot Sambal

Ingredients:

• 1 carrot
• 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
• 1 green chilli
• 5-10 curry leaves
• Teaspoon of oil

To make:

• Grate the carrot and chop the chilli finely.
• In a small pan, add a little oil.
• Once the oil is heated, add the mustard seeds, curry leaves, and the chilli.
• Temper for one minute and then add the carrot.
• Turn off the gas after a minute. Mix well and serve hot.

What I Want Now: Dark Chocolate with Chillies and Cherries

I'm in love! Ever since I laid my eyes on this gorgeous scarlet red bar of chocolate (which was all of 10 minutes ago), I can't stop thinking about it. If any one wants to gift me one for the new year's or my upcoming birthday, I will be more than happy to oblige with my shipping address, etc. :)

But seriously, look how pretty it is! <3

http://boulderlocavore.blogspot.com/

Mid-Monday Shopping @ Nature's Basket

There's really nothing like driving away the blues like shopping. Each new item that you've never tried before and are dying to find out more about. The world of possibilities -A lowly bulb of fennel is just a bulb of fennel on the shopping aisle; but in the right hands they get to live out to their full potential. The temporary feeling of plenty that you get when you mindlessly chug things into your shopping cart without even checking the price, and then finally of putting the tab on Mr. Plastic...Aah!

I used to be such a shopper of clothes and shoes. Fashion is still my passion. But somehow, now, going grocery shopping seems more interesting. That, and the fact that my closet is so jam packed with clothes that I no longer wear (Hey - I could wear them someday. Why toss out perfectly good clothes?!) that getting any more would risk everything just tumbling out, and I'm too lazy to sit and fold everything back into its place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you - Money can't buy you happiness, you say. But look what it can buy you:

• Fruits: Apples, Oranges, strawberries
• Veggies: Fennel, Pak Choi, Iceberg Lettuce, Sweet Potato, Peppers, Carrots
• Other stuff that makes life sweet: Rasberry preserve, prunes, coconut milk, burger buns

It'll be the first time I will have so many of such foods - I'm a fennel and pak choi virgin! And not that I'd eat some, but it's refreshing to see emu meat - much better than the super-farmed/abused beef, mutton, and the ever present chicken on our poultry shelves.

Going Down South

A typical South Indian breakfast: Medu wadas and dosas.

Such a relief to find medu wadas that are crunchy and fresh coconut chutney that actually tastes like...coconut!

Spicy Tamarind Rice

This is my version of Tamarind rice, with only bare minimum cooking time (for the rice), and a lot of heat (one whole green chilli with seeds and all, per person). I also added an equal amount of veggies as the rice and added those only after the rice was cooled down a bit.

Spicy Tamarind Rice

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup rice
• Handful of yellow/orange lentils
• 1 tablespoon of tamarind paste
• 1 large green chilli
• 1 cup assorted veggies - I used capsicum, spring onion and cabbage
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric powder
• Half a lime

To make:

• Cook the rice and lentils along with the tumeric powder in 2.5-3 cups of water for 15-20 minutes.
• Slice the chilli horizontally and then chop it up into large chunky pieces. (Remove seeds if you want less heat)
• Once the rice pot comes to a boil, add the chilli and the tamarind paste. Mix well.
• Turn off the heat when there is still some liquid left in the pan. The rice will continue to cook and will absorb the remaining water even without the heat.
• Let the rice cool down for 5-10 minutes.
• Chop up some veggies and add to the rice. Mix well, add the lime juice, and serve immediately.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Tangy Carrot and Peppers Soup

The tang comes not from limes (my favorite ingredient), but from tamarind paste. Since I did have some lying around the house, I decided to use tamarind and also finish off my, rather crinkly, carrots.

To make tamarind paste yourself, just let the tamarind soak overnight in some water and then squeeze the pulp out to make a thick paste. Something like this:

And as usual, you can have this soup raw. I've just heated it for a minute over the stove - but you can just as easily skip this step.

Tangy Carrot and Peppers Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots
• 1 red pepper
• 1 teaspoon whole cumin
• 2 teaspoons of tamarind paste
• 1 cup water or as per desired soup consistency

To make:
Slice the carrots and pepper roughly.

Add the chopped veggies to a blender. Add the cumin and tamarind paste.  Add the water and blitz until it is smooth.

Transfer to a pot and gently heat it for a minute or two. Serve immediately.