Potato Leek Soup

This soup was made for me first by my talented awesome-o husband, its easy and delicious.

Leeks in this soup are a revelation, they lighten the soup and add a delicate flavour.

The real trick here is the sour cream added in the end. It adds a slight acidity that really lifts the flavours in the soup. The idea for the sour cream addition came from the best potato-leek soup I I have ever had - from a great little take-out place called Gregoire's in Berkeley, CA. Their version had truffles which put it over the top.

Ingredients

Leeks
Potatoes, cooked and peeled
garlic
sour cream

(Yes, just four ingredients!)

Method

The main thing to be real careful about with leeks is that they tend to have a lot of sand trapped between their leaves. So chop the white parts of the leeks roughly (discard the green parts) and thoroughly wash them. And I mean thoroughly.

Add butter, garlic and leeks to a pan and cook till the leeks are softened. Chop the potatoes roughly and add to the pan. Season with salt and pepper, add some water and stir everything together. Let it simmer for a few minutes.

Transfer to a blender and puree till smooth. Return the soup to the pan and stir in a few tablespoons of sour cream to taste. Thin out the soup with milk/water to the desired consistency. Serve hot.

For two big leeks, use about one big potato. The potatoes should not overpower the leeks.

Bacon and Chanterelle Salad

I rarely make salads - just not part of the Indian food ethos, but I do enjoy them immensely when I have them in restaurants. I tried to rectify this for last friday's stay-at-home fancy dinner. I was inspired by the chanterelle salad in Saveur cooks Authentic French, a very lovely cookbook with a to-die-for tarte tatin recipe that I have to try someday.



Chanterelles are a "wild" mushroom that have a chewy meaty texture that goes really well with bacon. I almost regard bacon as the equivalent of ghee, cooking anything in its fat makes it taste better.
I hate iceberg lettuce in salads, I just feel they taste of water and even worse, remind of me all the worst salads I have had the misfortune to consume. Using a good quality mix of greens is key to a salad.
The dressing is a warm vinaigrette flavoured with bacon fat.


Ingredients

chanterelles
bacon
salad greens

olive oil
mustard
shallots


Method


Mushrooms cannot be washed as they get waterlogged and wont brown. So, wipe them gently with a damp kitchen towel. Cut the mushrooms into biggish pieces. Heat butter in a pan and toss the mushrooms in. Season with salt and let the mushroom brown on medium heat. Once they have been sufficiently burnished, remove from the pan and reserve.

For a handful of mushrooms, I used two rashers of bacon. Dice the bacon, a biggish dice, and add to the pan. let them render their fat and brown on medium heat. Once they are done, remove the bacon pieces from the pan and reserve. Pour off most of the bacon fat except a small little bit ( this is not for health concerns, but because you don't want the salad to be dominated by bacon). Reserve this pan as you want to use it to make the dressing.

When ready to serve, heat the mushrooms and the bacon in a separate pan. Mince the shallot very fine. Add the shallots to the bacony pan and heat gently. Add the vinegar and stir vigorously. Remove from the heat. In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard, oil and shallot-vinegar mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Taste and adjust the various ingredients till you have the right mix.

Toss the greens with the above dressing and put into serving plates. Mound the warm mushrooms on top, sprinkle with the warm bacon and serve.

Camp Food #2 : Paneer Kebabs

On our camping trip to Limekiln SP (see my last post), my veggie dish for dinner was these Paneer Kebabs. The recipe is courtesy of my lovely friend Nija, inspired by kebabs she made for my graduation party.


Again, like with the chicken, its super easy, I marinated it in ziploc bags the previous night and carted it to the camp in my trusty cooler.

Ingredients

paneer

Chile pickle

yogurt

lime

tomatoes, onions

Method

Use a good brand of Chile pickle - Pataks or Mothers Recipe. Puree a tablespoon of the pickle with a couple of tablespoons of yogurt. Adjust seasoning, adding lime juice for a bit of acidity.

Soak the paneer in this marinade for a few hours or overnight. Skewer with tomatoes and onions. Grill in an oven or on a bbq till charred in spots, about 5 minutes or so on a hot fire.

Yum.

Camp Food #1 - Chipotle Chicken Skewers

We camped a while ago at Limekiln State Park in Big Sur, CA and it was truly beautiful. It is a magical campground with redwoods on side and a beach on the other. We had a site next to a burbling brook and under the redwoods.

As always with me, food is a big part of any activity and camping gives me an opportunity to cook on fire. Plus everything tastes good around a campfire.
On camping trips, I usually marinate some kind of meat the previous night and seal in double ziploc bags. The meat is perfectly safe stored in a cooler with plenty of ice. This recipe is particularly easy, and the meat being boneless, cooks quickly on the fire.

One thing I have learnt over several camping trips is that the quality of the cooked product really depends on the coals/fire. Use a lot of coals and wait till they get really hot and completely ashy. This takes a good 25-30 minutes. Also, make sure your grill is fairly close to the coals. On this trip, the fire pit was really deep, so we made a bed of rocks in the fire pit and put the coals on top of them to bring them closer to the grill.

Chipotle chiles are basically smoked jalapenos. They are easily available in the US (dont know about India) in canned form, soaking in adobo sauce, which is made up of tomato paste, garlic, cumin and vinegar. The end result is a deep smoky heat that I love.

Ingredients

boneless skinless chicken thighs
chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
ground cumin
garlic
yogurt

cherry tomatoes
onions
green peppers
lemon

Method

Make a marinade by grinding half a can of chipotle peppers with two cloves of garlic and a teaspoon of cumin powder. Salt heavily and taste. If the you've blown the roof off your head, mellow the marinade with yogurt.

Cube the chicken and mix with the marinade. Leave for several hours or overnight.

Skewer pieces of chicken, alternating with tomatoes and chunks of onion and green pepper. Grill/roast till cooked. Serve drizzled with lemon juice.

Bitter Gourd Chips

Bitter gourd to me is a vegetable with a story to tell. A story of some far off women with nothing by way of easy food around and hunger in their children's eyes. Foraging women determined to eke nutrition and taste out anything and everything.

Bitter gourd is bitter- there is no way around it. However, as generations of determined cooks have taught us, the bitterness can be harnessed and converted into something absolutely delicious and addictive.

My ammamma (literally, mother's mother) did it this way.

Ingredients

bitter gourd
salt
chili powder
besan/gram flour -though I dont see why regular flour wouldnt work in a pinch

oil to deep fry

Method

Slice the bitter gourd into coins. (At this point, you can toss them in salt, leave half an hour and rinse to take out some of the bitterness, but I find it unnecessary in this recipe.) Toss them with salt, chili powder to taste and sprinkle a small quantity of the flour over them. You are not looking to make a batter, just a light coating. Leave them to rest for half an hour. The gourds will have given out some water. Toss them again to make the flour coating even.

Heat the oil till a drop of flour lifts to the surface almost immediately. Turn the heat to medium and lower the gourd into oil. Fry till golden brown and crisp.

Easy-Peasy dessert - Profiteroles

So, I had a big lunch party the next day and suddenly felt the lack of dessert in the menu at 11pm. I was looking for something easy and impressive, and believe you me, profiteroles fit that bill. The recipe is from the Gourmet cookbook.

Profiteroles are a traditional french dessert. Add some cheese to the mix and you have gougeres or cheese puffs. I had them for the very first time at the impressionable age of 17 in a hip restaurant in Bangalore, while lunching with my very hip aunt. Oh the hip-ness of the whole thing! Hyderabad, my hometown, felt like the boondocks in 1996 and though I was in my Weekender best, I felt decidedly like a country-mouse.

(disclaimer : this picture is not mine, but do believe me when I say that mine looked similar:-))

Ingredients

3/4 stick or 6 tablespoons butter

3/4cup water

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup flour

2 whole eggs and 1 yolk

Method

Preheat oven to 425F.

Bring the water, salt and butter to a boil, stirring till the butter is melted. On medium heat, add the flour all at once and stir constantly till the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Remove from the heat and let cool for about 5 minutes. Beat the eggs into the dough ,one at a time, till well combined.

Line a baking sheet with foil and butter the foil generously. The profiteroles have a tendency to stick.

If you are the type that has pastry bags lying around, good for you, otherwise use a Ziploc bag with a corner snipped off for the next step. Spoon some of the dough into the bag and pipe about 1.5 inch swirls/circles at 2 inch distance from each other onto the baking sheet. You want to achieve some height so pipe one big circle and a small circle on top of it.

Put the profiteroles in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, till puffed and golden and you cant believe something so simple can come out so gorgeous.

The fabulous thing is that they can be made at this stage the previous night, stored in an airtight container and refreshed the next day with a few minutes in a hot oven.

Serving options basically involve some kind of ice cream and complimentary sauce.

I served them with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. For the chocolate sauce, I melted some dark chocolate with cream and grand marnier in the microwave. Cut each profiterole in two, not going all the way, and put a scoop of ice cream in between. Serve drizzled with warm chocolate sauce.