Yay! Spring is here and it’s warm enough to grill already! To celebrate, we grilled salmon burgers from Whole Foods (some day, i am going to make burger patties at home, I’ve decided!) for dinner this evening.
Mine was served with whole wheat bread, fresh basil from the indoor potted basil plant (pictured in a previous post) and, goat cheese. I thought about the sort of cheese we should use, and decided I would give goat cheese a try. So I used soft, fresh goat cheese.
Mmmm! Despite some opposition to goat cheese that my friend offered, the burger turned out well and went perfectly with a Belgian white beer. The beer had notes of coriander and a citrussy flavor as well, so it was very fresh and went with the ‘spring is here’ theme of the evening.
The truth is, the burger was so good that I ate two! I also drank 2 beers. It didn’t help that I’d had a pre-dinner snack that consisted of Denali Extreme Maximum Fudge Moose tracks ice cream with hot fudge on top. I felt bloated and ill for 2 whole hours after dinner. I am a disturbingly greedy person. Sigh.
Anyway, I can’t wait for the summer! More burgers, salmon steaks and, most importantly, I can make paneer tikka, achaari fish tikka and tandoori fish again! You can make these awesome Indian dishes indoors in an oven, but they just don’t taste right that way. They need to be grilled in a type of Indian oven- a tandoor, and I it turns out a BBQ grill is the next best thing! So, for the summer I can hardly wait!
Remember my earlier post about how to cheer yourself up on a cold gray winter afternoon by eating some delicious pierogies? In that post, I suggested heating up some classic pierogies on a pan and topping them off with some irish cheese and oregano. Well here is an alternate way to be lazy AND eat pierogies that proved to be equally delicious:
If you want to re-create this, here’s how you go about it. First get your polish Nana to make you some pierogies. If you don’t have a polish Nana, and your best friend or partner doesn’t either, go buy some from an eastern European store. Alternatively, figure out how to make some (or wait until I write about it) and then freeze them (by individually wrapping them in plastic/cling wrap and then throwing them all in a big freezer bag).
Next, melt some unsalted butter in a pan and heat the pierogies up. I recommend covering the pan at first and setting the flame on low so that the insides of the pierogies can cook. Then take off the lid and raise the heat slightly to toast the outsides of the pierogies a little. Place the pierogies on a plate and then caramelize some thin slices of white onions in the same pan.
The next step is garnishing the pierogies. Begin by sprinkling some freshly ground pepper on top followed by the caramelized onions. Then grate some Irish Dubliner cheese on top. I know, it sounds odd and inauthentic, but it works very well, better than parmesan, cheddar or pecorino (I tried all three). This cheese is sharp, so it complements the relative blandness of the pierogies. And anyway, anything Irish and anything with potatoes go together in my book 😛 The final touch was a sprig of basil freshly picked from our indoor herb garden:
Here’s the end product:
Again, I feel I must clarify that I don’t generally take short cuts like this. This dish was something I resorted to on the day I returned from Panama. I’d been on a long flight and I was far too exhausted to cook up something; this was an extenuating circumstance. Normally, I tend to cook up fresh meals from scratch and have been known to make Paneer butter masala, brownies and even truffles in the wee hours of the morning. But we all have those days when we need to cut corners and this post is about how to embellish even a short cut meal so it tastes and looks delicious 🙂
Spring is finally here! I happened to be in Ann Arbor today and was overjoyed when I saw the sun out and shining with a little touch of actual warmth. Even this evening was gorgeous! The light was absolutely beautiful at sunset and dusk so I took some pictures around town while I ran errands.
I thought they turned out very well considering I used an iPhone and took them from a moving car while my friend was driving.
Spring Sunset in Ann Arbor, MichiganAnn Arbor on a Spring EveningA shot of the sun setting on the first spring day of the year, in Ann ArborDusk ahead of us and sunset in the rearview mirror.
In a previous post about Panama I wrote about Isla Grande- this beautiful island in the Caribbean. When it was time to leave Isla Grande, we took a boat to the coast (to La Guaira) and then got on an another quintessentially Panamanian bus to Portobelo. Portobelo is a picturesque, sleepy, colourful (literally) town in Colon Province. See how brightly coloured the houses are:
It’s also full of adorable little dogs:
But what it’s really famous for are the following:
– The Black Christ
– Gold; and
– Pirates
1. The Black Christ
A famous statue of the black christ or El Cristo Negro is housed in a church called Iglesia de San Felipe in Portobelo.
Inside the Iglesia de San Felipe in Portobelo
Legend has it that the statue of the black christ was carved in Spain and was being taken to Colombia, but the crew decided to leave it behind in Portobelo because it was bringing them bad luck. Portobelo is now the site of an annual festival called the Black Christ Festival.
2. Gold
Apparently, one third of all the gold in the world passed through Portobelo. All this gold was processed in this spanish customs house built in 1630:
Customs house Portobelo.Close-up of Spanish Customs House, PortobeloAngled Profile of Spanish Customs House, Portobelo
3. Pirates
Because there was gold, obviously there were pirates! Apparently, Portobelo was attacked repeatedly by pirates. The most famous one to attack and sack the town was Captain Morgan! As a result, the Spanish fortified the port. The beautiful forts are now in ruins.
Batteria Santiago, Portobelo, Panama.Cannons lined up and ready to fire! Batteria Santiago, Portobelo, Panama.
Now, I’ve seen plenty of forts in India and Europe, but I found two things to be particularly striking about these forts. First, dead coral was used in the walls!
Coral Forts, Portobelo, PanamaClose-up of coral in the walls of forts, Portobello, PanamaClose up of walls of a fort (Batteria Santiago) in Portobelo
The other thing that was absolutely magical about these forts was the unparalleled beauty of the Caribbean; I’ve never seen a more gorgeous backdrop to a fort in my life! Here are some of the vistas I am talking about:
View from Batteria Santiago, Portobelo, PanamaCaribbean waters, Portobelo, PanamaOcean-view from Batteria Santiago, Portobelo, Panama
What made the forts absolutely gorgeous in my eyes was the contrast between the coral and the Caribbean blue-green; the ocean was such a striking and wonderful backdrop to the textured off-white of the coral walls of the forts.
I can honestly say that Portobelo is one of the cutest, prettiest, sleepiest little towns that I have ever been to. As I said, it was indeed full of beautiful colours.
Normally, my posts are about things I make at home like chocolate, fish curry and body butter; I like using fresh ingredients and where possible homemade ones. So for instance, when I made chocolate brazil nut truffles, I made the brazil nut butter for the filling at home. Today, however, I am doing something entirely different. I am going to write about an unhealthy, commercially made, probably very-processed and nevertheless utterly delicious food, namely: Denali Extreme Maximum Fudge Moose Tracks.
This is not to be confused with ‘Denali Extreme Moose Tracks’. Oh no, these are two entirely different things- like apples and chocolate. If you like chocolate and are prone to excess, go that extra mile for the ‘extreme maximum fudge’ version, it IS worth the effort.
This ice cream is FULL of chunks of chocolate and this chocolate has a slight salty taste to it that balances its sweetness oh so perfectly. Mmmm.
In the photo below, that chocolate chunk you see is actually a giant rock of chocolate. Apart from the little bit of ice cream you see stuck to its surface, the rest of what is in that bowl is solid chocolate! When I saw that chunk I squealed in delight, it was like finding pirate treasure, except better. If it had been treasure I would have had to convert that treasure into money and then traveled to an American grocery store to buy this ice cream and then dug in the tub with a spoon for chocolate, whereas now, I had a big chunk right here on my plate!
And another example of this wondrous chocalatey stuff:
Whoops, I just realized I ruined this photograph with my thumb. This is what happens when one takes photographs whilst simultaneously squealing.
And a shot of the inside of a half eaten tub of the stuff:
It’s absolute incredible that this ice cream isn’t available everywhere. It’s even difficult to find in the US. The only places that I have found it in so far are Kroger and Meijer. If I haven’t said this before, here it is: this ice cream is unparalleled in its chocolateyness and really is my favourite kind of ice cream ( just a clarification, gelato is a whole different thing, I am talking about ice cream here). So if it’s available in your grocery store, I say go ahead and try it! But, be warned, that stuff is probably stronger than you are and isn’t for the faint of heart.
It came to a point where I was eating scoops and scoops of this stuff with Sanders dark chocolate fudge on top. I knew it was going to make me obscenely fat, but I felt like I couldn’t stop! In fact, recently, scientists at the Oregon Research Institute have claimed that in some ways one’s reaction to ice cream can be like that of an addict’s to her drug of choice. Reportedly, their studies show that people who eat a lot of junk food can be experiencing cravings similar to what dependent drug users experience. They used Haagen Dazs in their study as a sample of high-sugar junk food.
So kidding aside, I recommend moderation! If you eat it in small, controlled portions, at regulated times, you will enjoy it’s deliciousness in all it’s glory. Don’t go down the dark path that I have gone down multiple times, eating sickeningly large quantities of the stuff and then feeling sick- both metaphorically and literally.
Apparently, old American school buses are shipped over to Panama and used for public transportation. This is the most sober specimen of such a bus I could find.
Most of them are brightly coloured and decorated. I rather liked the art-work on them.
There is even a gallery in Panama City’s historic Casco Viejo neighborhood called Diablo Rosso gallery that sells painted bus doors by one of the more popular red devil artists.
I wish I’d taken better pictures of them. They are not only done up on the outside but also decorated inside with all sorts of coloured tape and some sort of furry banners. They also play incredibly loud music inside these buses, mostly spanish hip-hop and Reggae-tone.
I think they’re unique and an interesting addition to the roads, so much better than the usual boring buses we see on the streets. Unfortunately, these red devils are apparently extremely dangerous and have caused many accidents. Not only this, they cause a lot of pollution. As a result, they’re on their way out, being replaced by Government owned, clean, modern new buses.
While these new buses are more environmentally friendly and less likely to causes accidents, I think phasing out the red devils entirely would be a travesty. Perhaps the solution is clean, environmentally friendly buses, driven by well-trained, careful drivers, which are also decorated creatively with wild colours. It isn’t my place to say though. I don’t live in Panama and know very little on the subject, it’s just that I thought they were full of character and quite iconic even.
I’ve been missing in action for over a week now, and the reason for this is that I have been away in lovely, warm, sunny Panama. I enjoyed all of my trip, but I would have to say that my favourite bit was visiting the Caribbean coast and some islands around it. This is why my first post is going to be about the beach part of my vacation.
To get to the coast one has to travel by road from Panama city to the Panamanian province of Colon, up until a little port on the coast called La Guaira. From there we took a boat ride to Isla Grande, an island off the coast. We spent two days there; it was both a beautiful and puzzling little place. It was an extremely laid-back and sleepy town, and people seemed somewhat erratic in their niceness and willingness to serve customers. (I feel I must clarify here that we visited the island during the week, and apparently, it gets much busier during the weekends.)
There were for instance, little stores on the island that sold snacks, toilet paper, water, alcohol etc., Now these stores seemed to keep arbitrary timings and on top of this, the store-keepers also randomly, decided not to sell a customer things even though they were seemingly open. On second thought, their decision not to serve you wasn’t random, I think that if you asked too many questions they decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and refused to deal with you. Now, this didn’t happen to me, but it happened to my friends, and I have it on good authority (my friends who actually live in Panama) that this isn’t out of the ordinary at all. One morning for example, two of my friends went over to a store/café and asked if the Cafe was serving breakfast. The lady behind the counter asked what they would like for breakfast. My friends said they weren’t sure, “how about eggs?”, they casually asked. She then promptly told them that both the café and store were closed and wouldn’t even sell them bottled water.
Despite the island’s eccentric (but also friendly) inhabitants, all in all, I enjoyed myself and really liked the place. I would even recommend it to anyone who wants a relaxed Caribbean vacation. It isn’t crowded, it’s fairly inexpensive and there aren’t a lot of resorts, relatively speaking. This is a good thing in my opinion because the place was empty and peaceful. There are also very few foreign tourists here, and most visitors were Panamanians. I would recommend however, that you go during the week, rather than the weekend.
When we arrived, I was disappointed because much of the shore was either rocky or had restaurants and hotels built on it. The town seemed somewhat disorganized and it seemed as though the bars, restaurants and hotels were not making the best of the wonderful natural beauty around them. Most importantly, there didn’t seem to be a nice, sandy beach about, except for little sandy bits between hotels and houses. But after lunch we went out wandering and found a lovely, deserted beach on the other side of the island.
Isla Grande, Panama (Photo: Matthew Snyder).
There was a part of the beach that looked like a Peninsula; waves broke on either side of it. You can see it more clearly in the picture below:
Isla Grande Beach, Panama (Photo: Matthew Snyder)
It was empty and beautiful, as you can see:
Deserted beach stretch, Isla Grande, Panama (Photo: Matthew Snyder)
There was a café right on the beach, but oddly it had only one type of beer and only served fried plantains. It didn’t even open until about 4 p.m. This was another example of the inexplicable moodiness of the service industry on the island.
So the next afternoon, we went back to this beach with supplies of our own. We had snacks, pineapple juice and this insanely cheap Panamanian rum called Seco. As we were walking to the beach, we ran into a sole and very out-of-place looking vendor who was trying to sell fresh coconuts on an almost-empty beach. We bought some and while we were sitting on the beach sipping fresh coconut water, my friend Andrea pondered aloud if it would be weird for her to put some rum in the coconut. No it wouldn’t Matt and I exclaimed! The next thing we knew, we were making impromptu pina-colada inspired beach cocktails. Here’s how YOU can do this too, the next time you’re on the beach. (That’s my friend Andrea in the photos.)
First, take a fresh coconut and drink up some of the coconut water in it, to make space for the other ingredients:
Then, add a few generous ‘glugs’ of rum:
Next, add some Pineapple juice to taste:
The best beach cocktail ever!
Swirl everything in the coconut about. Lastly, drink up!
An alternate but equally fitting title for this post would be: How to Cheer Yourself up on a Cold, Wet, Gray Winter Afternoon. You’ll see why if you read on.
I was at home, sitting on the couch, trying to bring myself to work, do some yoga, or just be productive in some way. And I just couldn’t. It was dreary outside; we’d had snow early in the morning, but by now all the snow had melted into sludge. The sun was nowhere to be seen and I was generally feeling bloody awful, pardon the cussing. I hadn’t even the energy to cook! Can you imagine that? “I ALWAYS have the energy to cook, bake etc” I muttered to myself, half heartedly. I was, you see, even too tired and bored to be dramatically panicked by this laziness; I was also too tired to be dramatically panicked by my lack of dramatic panic. This, when I am the sort of person who uses exclamation points more than any other form of punctuation! See what I mean!
Anyway, I found the answer! Delicious homemade pierogies! You see, pierogies freeze well and I happened to find a couple in the freezer. They were basic or classic pierogies, stuffed with potatoes and cheese, made by a friend’s super sweet and part-polish Nana. So I promptly melted some unsalted butter in a pan and heated the pierogies up. I covered the pan at first and set the flame on low so that the insides of the pierogies could cook. Then I took off the lid and raised the heat slightly and toasted the outside a little.
Finally the garnish: I sprinkled some freshly ground pepper on top and then grated on some Irish cheese, Dubliner to be precise. I know, it sounds odd and inauthentic, but it works very well. This cheese is sharp, so it complements the relative blandness of the pierogies. And anyway, anything Irish and anything with potatoes go together in my book 😛 The final touch was a sprig of fresh oregano.
Here’s the end product:
I shall make pierogies myself one of these days, mushroom and cheese ones, and then I shall write all about it.
I spent much of this past week writing a long note on copyright theory. I had a deadline to meet (as I mentioned, in my previous post about sunbathing kitties) and I found myself working pretty much around the clock. So I ended up eating out quite a bit. 4 days out of the past 7, I walked out in the snow, slush, gorgeous winter sun, or whatever else this bizarre winter threw at me, and got takeout. Finally, yesterday, sick of all this, I decided to make myself some good, comfort food. I needed something that was simple, fast and healthy; especially something ‘fast’ because I wanted to send off the note to my supervisor before the end of the day. “What should I make?” I pondered, and then it struck me! I was going to make Khichdi!
I’ve forgotten all about khichdi these past few years, choosing to explore more complex and indulgent dishes like dal makhani instead. But today was a khichdi kind of day. Khichdi is the perfect food for when you’re sick, or too busy to make something more complicated. It’s just lentils and rice with some mild spices. You can however, add some vegetables (bleugh! (I am not a huge fan of vegetables, you see)) to it to if you want to.
Here’s how to make some khichdi for yourself:
Ingredients:
1 cup moong dal (you could also use other lentils like Tur dal for instance)
A little less than 1 cup rice
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tsp cumin powder (dry roast cumin seeds and then grind them, or you can buy the powder at the store)
1 tsp coriander powder (dry roast coriander seeds and then grind them, or you can buy the powder at the store)
1/2 tsp haldi (turmeric powder)
3 cloves of garlic, peeled
1-2 green chilli sliced horizontally into two. (You can also use half a Jalapeño).
For the tadka (tempering):
1-2 tbsp of ghee (Indian clarified butter, you can make this at home, or buy some at an Indian store)
1/2 to 3/4 cumin seeds
3 dried red chillies
A few kernels of black pepper
2 pinches of heengh (asafoetida)
3 cloves
Optional Serving Accompaniments:
Yoghurt
Ghee (you can find it in an Indian store; if you’d like to make it at home, here is my recipe)
Indian Pickle (you can make some at home, but this isn’t so easy. You can also buy some at any Indian store. I chose a Andhra-style tomato pickle for today).
Method:
Start by soaking the moong dal in water for about 30 minutes. You don’t generally have to soak moong dal, but it cooks faster if you do. Also, I like the dal to be well-cooked, even squishy in khichdi, which is why I wouldn’t skip this step in this recipe.
Pre-soaked moong dal used in making khichdi
Place a pressure cooker or pot (that comes with a lid) on the stove. Add the lentils, rice, garlic, green chillies and red chilli, turmeric, coriander and cumin powders and stir. Finally, add 2 cups of water, place the lid on the cooker/pot, lower the heat to medium and let the lentil-rice mixture cook. If you’re using a pressure cooker, let the mixture cook until the cooker lets off 4 whistles. If you’re using a pot, just let the mixture cook slowly, stirring occasionally. The mixture is done when it’s squishy enough for you, but make sure not to overdo it or you will end up with a goopy mess.
Now, add one or two tablespoons of ghee (I added two but one will do the trick) to the smallest pot you own, and turn on the heat to high. When the ghee is hot, add the cumin seeds and wait for them to splutter. Then, add the red chillies (torn in half), black pepper, cloves and heengh to the ghee and toss them about. When the chillies darken add this spiced ghee (called the tadka or popu) to the lentil-rice mixture. Your khichdi is done!
Serve with yoghurt and some pickle.
Khichdi- a rice and lentil dish that is great as comfort food, for when you’re sick, busy or lazy 🙂
I like eating south Indian ghee with khichdi, so I served some ghee along with it in a little tart mold. That’s what I placed right on top of the khichdi.
Khichdi tastes best with a generous helping of Ghee- Indian Clarified butter.
If you want to know more about making south Indian ghee, you can read about it on this website. I am sure I will post something about it soon enough though. I LOVE ghee in general and South Indian ghee in particular.
I’ve spent much of the day working; I have to send my supervisor a note on my thoughts on copyright theory. It’s fascinating to think about copyright law and philosophy and I love my work, but the truth is, it can get a bit tiring and I am desperately in need of a good break. When I don’t have the time to make chocolate-related delicacies I unwind by looking at kitty-pictures. I was so tickled by some of these photographs that I thought I’d share them with y’all.
And so, for your enjoyment, I present a small selection from my collection of sun-bathing kitty photographs:
Winter sun-bathing on my lapKitty in the bushes- I know technically this isn't really a sun-bathing photo, but he looked so cute and incongruous in the bushes, I had to include this photograph.
The Life and Times of Choconutmeg 