Sambar (Indian Lentil Soup)

Sambar is a spicy south Indian lentil soup, usually tomato based. Lentils are boiled till done, then various vegetables are added. Turmeric, tamarind, Sambar powder and a masala are added as a flavoring agent. It is a stable of south Indian cuisine and really reflects the conditions of living in south India. The climate is hot and muggy, so having a hot soup will cause you to sweat more, thus regulating your body temperature. The main base of the soup are lentils, which store very well for long periods of time in a tropical environment. As you boil both the lentils, water and vegetables, the dish is naturally clean, virtually eliminating the chance of any kind of food contamination. When I was living and working in Chennai, I would have Sambar daily--it was cheap, nutritious and I knew I wouldn't get sick from it.

When I was growing up, my mom would make Sambar for my dad daily. We would have are weekly portions on Sunday, with Dosa and Idly. I hated it as a kid, and would much rather have had pancakes and sausages.

When I went to college is when I really began to miss Sambar, and appreciate my mom's sambar- my mom makes really good Sambar, not bad for a Scottish girl from Chicago! She swears her secret is Brahmin's Sambar powder. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to find any sold here in the US. She usually brings back a suitcase full when she visits India and that will last her to the next trip. I have asked around various Indian grocery stores here in the Bay area, but no one seems to carry it. You can check out there add on YouTube here

There are lots of different recipes out there for Sambar. I have been experimenting around with a number of them.

One of the major breaks I have make has been to use Vietnamese Tamarind. When I was traveling in Vietnam, I had a tamarind tomato soup with fresh coriander, onions, tomatoes and fish. It was really delicious, but what really made that dish for me was the Vietnamese tamarind. I have switched from Indian Tamarind to Vietnamese Tamarind. Indian tamarind is dark and has a slight smokey flavor, whereas Vietnamese tamarind is bright red and is more tangy. I find that I like my sambar better with Vietnamese tamarind.

Another major way to differentiate sambar is the amount of water you use to cook the lentils. I prefer to have my sambar a little bit more soupy than thick, so I add more water.

Ingredients
A mix of yellow and red lentils (dahl) 1 cup total
Salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
3 teaspoons sambar powder

A walnut sized piece of Vietnamese tamarind (if you like tamarind, you can make it a lime sized amount)
2 tomatoes, diced
1 yellow onion, diced
1/2 cup of red potatoes, skinned and diced (optional)
6 leaves of kale or collard greens, cut into slivers (optional)
A handful of Okra, sliced

 For tempering (Masala)
1.5 teaspoons oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp asafoetida powder
10 fresh curry leaves

2 green chilies  diced  (you can add more to make it spicier. If you want to decrease the spice, you can remove all of the seeds and just have the chili flesh).

For Garnish
1 small bunch coriander leaves, chopped (for garnish)
1 lemon, squeezed

Boil 1 cup of water. Add turmeric and sambar powder and stir till powder is dissolved. Add lentils, Stir occasionally, so that the lentils do not stick to the pot.

In the meantime, take an additional cup of water and pour it into a cereal bowl. Add the tamarind and soak. You can also squeeze the tamarind to extract the juice. There is usually a seed or two in the tamarind that you need to remove.














Make the tempering Masala. Heat oil in a small nonstick pan. First add the asafoetida powder. Then, as the oil heats up, almost smoking, add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds begin to pop, add the green chilies and continue to stir for a few seconds. At this point, you need to add the curry leaves. If you have curry leaves that are old and dried out, add them to the masala and stir fry for a few seconds. If you have fresh curry, leaves, hold out on them for a few minutes. Remove the masala from heat and add to the lentil pot.

Add the tamarind water and any remaining pulp to the lentil pot. Add the tomatoes and the onions. If you are using potatoes and kale or collard greens, add them to the lentil pot at this time. Stir to incorporate. Add fresh curry leaves if you have them.

At this point you want to check on the lentil to see how well cooked they are. You can really boil the heck out of lentil and have your sambar as more of a mush, or you can boil them a little bit so they retain their structural integrity and give you a little bit more texture. Personally, I like mine with a little texture. Continue cooking until the lentils, potatoes and kale (or collard greens) are cooked.

Serve into individual bowls and garnish with freshly cut coriander and a juice of lemon or lime juice. I usually have mine with Rasam, rice and a little lemon pickle!

Grilled Salmon with Jalapeno Pepper Puree

This is a super simple dish that you can whip up in minutes and is delicious! It works equally well with Tuna or Salmon. This can be cooked on a broiler inside, or if weather permits, grill it up outside on the barbeque!

If you are grilling, make sure that the grill is sufficiently oiled, as the fish will have a tendency to stick.

This recipe was adapted from Susanna Foo's Chinese Cuisine. 

Ingredients

2 salmon fillets, de-boned and scaled or 4 8 oz tuna steaks, about 1 inch thick 

3 Tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon Vodka

1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons miso (red or yellow)

1 tablespoon Jalapeno Pepper Puree

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh lemon grass

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 lemon, sliced thinly

2 tablespoons corn oil

Mix the olive oil vodka and pepper in a small bowl. Transfer to a plastic bag. 

Add the fish, tie up the bag with a little air and gently toss the mixture, so it coats the fish. Marinate at room temperature for around 10 minutes. By having all the marinade in the bag, it will concentrate the flavor and insure that the whole fish gets some of the flavoring agent. 

Meanwhile, mix the miso, jalapeno pepper puree, lemongrass and lime juice in a small bowl. Separate this mixture into 2 equal parts: one you will use to baste the fish while it is cooking, the other you can use as a dipping sauce after it is cooked. 

Preheat a broiler, with the rack 4-6 inches from the heat source. Place some aluminum foil on a cookie sheet. Pour a thin layer of olive oil on the aluminum foil. Lay the fish on the cookie sheet, skin side down (the orange flesh will face you). Salt and pepper the fish well. Place 6 or 7 thin lemon slices on the fish.













Gently flip the fish over, so the scale side is showing, with the lemons on the bottom. The lemons will help prevent the fish from sticking to the pan. Dabble some of the jalapeno pepper and miso mixture on the scales and, with a grilling brush, gently smear it all over the fish. Be sure to rub in the direction of the scales.  Broil for 3 minutes or until the skin is charred.

Now, this is the hard part. With 2 pancake turners, gently roll the fish over so it is flesh side up. Do this very carefully, because the fish can fall apart quite easily. Try to get your pancake turner under the lemons, as this will make it much easier.














Dollop some more of the jalapeno pepper and miso mixture on the flesh side of the fish, and spread it around with the basting brush. Make sure you are dipping into the same container that you previously dipped your brush into (you do not want to contaminate your jalapeno pepper puree).


Put it back in the boiler and broil for another 3 minutes.

The mixture should caramelize a bit and the fish should looked cooked on one side. 

Remove from oven and serve with the second portion of the jalapeno pepper puree. 

Canned Tomato sauce-Doctoring it up

Making homemade tomato sauce is a labor intensive production. The quality of the sauce you get is unsurpassed. If you have the time, the patience, the tomatoes and the extra hands, by all means go for it! But is it really worth it? I think it is, but you have to get tomatoes when they are fresh and cheap (usually towards the end of summer). And you have to have a lot of tomatoes, I mean a lot.
You can make a huge batch of tomato sauce in summer and then store it in the freezer as needed. But that takes up valuable real estate in your freezer.

Two other options you have: 1) boil a few fresh tomatoes to get their skin off, dice them up and cook them down for a quick tomato sauce

2) Use commercially available tomato sauce. Ordinarily, I am not a big fan of commercial tomato sauce. But, sometimes, you just don't have the time to make your own sauce. I have found that commercial tomato sauce tastes almost as good, and is much easier. I use a brand called Classico, and it works great! Besides, they have cool jars which can be used for bulk spices.

I will usually spice the sauce up a bit. I will either add meat to it, or keep it vegetarian.


Ingredients
Meat (Pancetta, bacon, ground beef, ground lamb or ground turkey)
1 yellow onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 can of tomato sauce
Day old red wine
a pinch of Harrisa
a pinch of Paprika
Chicken or vegetable stock
Green peppers, diced (optional)
Roasted Red Peppers (optional)

If you are making this sauce non vegetarian, start with browning the meat.
Add oil to a stock pot and add some harrisa and paprika. Next, add the meat and saute until brown. Some fat will come out depending on the type of meat you are using.

 When the meat is browned, add the onions and saute for a few minutes until golden brown. Next add the garlic  cloves and saute for 1 minute, making sure not to burn the garlic cloves.

Add the can of tomato sauce. Stir to combine the ingredients.

Take a swig of old red wine and add it to the pasta jar. Swirl it around for a few seconds to mop up any remaining tomato sauce in the jar. Pour it into the pot with the pasta sauce.

Add about a cup of stock (vegetable or chicken) to even it out.

Add the green peppers. Continue to cook on low heat for 15-20 minutes, up to 1 hour or until the flavors are well developed.

If you want to get creative, you can roast some red bell peppers, puree them and then add them to the mix as well.

Tofu Lasagna

In my books, Lasagna, particularly, vegan lasagna, always had two major strikes against it. When I was growing up,  we used to have Lasagna all the time and I hated it.  It was the ricotta cheese. Ordinarily, I am a big fan of cheese, any kind of cheese. But I don't like ricotta.

This recipe replaces the ricotta with tofu, which I must admit doesn't sound very appetizing, but it is actually quite delicious and relatively simple to prepare! This recipe was adopted from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics. And here in comes the second strike against this recipe--I used to hate this book as well. From my freshman to junior year in college, I lived in a vegan co-op, where we cooked our own food. Most of the food we cooked was vegan, or rather, normal food adopted to a Vegan diet. All in all, it was a fairly miserable gastronomical experience. Bad thing too, because it really make me loathe even looking at the Moosewood cookbook.

Flash forward 16 years....(my god has it been that long?) and I am marrying a dietitian with a penchant for vegetarian food. Ah, the things we do for love...

This dish can be made relatively quickly with little prep time. There is no need to boil the lasagna noodles before placing them down in your baking sheet. You can just lay down uncooked lasagna noodles. By adding water, vegetable stock or chicken stock to your tomato sauce, you increase the water content-this will help cook the lasagna noodles while they are baking.


Ingredients
Tomato sauce (vegetarian or non vegetarian)

12 oz tofu (1 package), roughly cut into chunks
1 cup mozzarella cheese (shredded or grated)
Oregano
Dried Basil

Lasagna noodles (about 1 lbs)


Drain the tofu and cut into chunks. Add to a food processor. Add mozzarella cheese, Oregano, Basil and any other spices you want. Blend into a fine puree. There should not be any lumps at all in the tofu puree. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350.































Begin by pouring a thin layer of sauce into a 9"x 13" pan and spread it out till it coats evenly, albeit thinly.














Begin laying down the lasagna noodles. I like to lay the noodles next to each other. Break off the noodles if they are too big for the pan. Use the broken pieces to fill in the nooks and crannies that might appear.














With a spatula, spread a thing layer of the tofu mixture on top of the noodles, covering all of the noodles.































Sprinkle a layer of cheese onto of the tofu.


Continue layering in this order: Sauce, Lasagna Noodle, Tofu, cheese....Sauce, Lasagna Noodle, Tofu, cheese.

I usually do 2 layers of Sauce, Lasagna Noodle, Tofu, cheese, and then my pan is full. You want your pan to be pretty much full with your layers of sauce, lasagna noodles, tofu and cheese.













When you think you are finished, make sure the final layer that is on top is a nice think layer of cheese. This layering method will help the lasagna to fuse together and not fall apart when you cut into it.














Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and put it into the oven. Try and tent the aluminum foil so it actually doesn't touch the sauce. Since your final layer is cheese, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. But bad things happen when tomato sauce come in contact with aluminum foil.












Bake for 1 hour at 350.

Allow the Lasagna to cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Delicious!

Chicken and Butternut Thai Curry

I got this recipe from one of those big cookbooks you see at Costco sometimes, called The Ultimate Thai and Asian Cookbook. It is a really good recipe! The recipe calls for duck breasts, which are rather expensive. The recipe works equally well with chicken breasts.

Ingredients
4 duck breasts or 1-2 lbs chicken breasts (skin and bones removed)
2 tablespoons five spice powder
2 tablespoons Sesame Oil
1 orange, rind grated, juiced
1 medium butternut squash, peeled and cubed
2 tsp Thai red curry paste
2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
1 tablespoon palm sugar or light brown sugar
1 1/4 cups coconut milk
2 fresh red chilies, chopped
4 Kaffir lime leaves, torn
Cilantro for garnish


Cut the duck or chicken breasts into bite size pieces. Place in a bowl with five spice powder, sesame oil, orange ring and orange juice. Stir well with a fork or chopstick. Cover and marinade in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes.













Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the squash and cook for 10-15 minutes, until the squash is tender and a little soft. Drain the squash and set aside.

In the meantime, add the marinade for the chicken to the wok. Heat until boiling. Stir in the curry paste, and cook for 2-3 minutes until the paste is well blended and fragrant. Add the duck or chicken and stir fry for 3-4 minutes, until the meat is browned on all sides.

Add the fish sauce and palm sugar and cook for 2 more minutes.

Add the coconut milk, and stir until the mixture is smooth, making sure not to let the coconut milk boil (reduce heat if necessary).


Add cooked squash, chili and lime leaves. Simmer gently for 5 minutes, making sure the coconut milk doesn't boil.

Serve with fresh noodles or rice.

Tofu Stirfry

This is a really tasty stir fry that you can make with baked tofu! The baked tofu has a chewy texture, so it works well in this dish.

Ingredients
Raiyu  2 tablespoons
Sichuan infused peppercorn oil  2 tablespoons
Leek, minced
Ginger, peel and julienne, about 2 tablespoons
Garlic, peeled and diced, about 4 cloves

1 Squash, sliced thin
1 Boy Choy, diced


1 recipe for baked Tofu, cut into thin stripes
1 tablespoon soy sauce or marinade from Baked Tofu (optional)


Homemade chicken stock or vegetable stock



Prep your vegetables. Be sure to wash the leek out, there is often dirt and other residuals in the leek. When mincing the leek, a useful trick is the make several incisions with the sharp point of the knife around the upper part of the leek, all the way around like in the picture to the right.

It should look something like this:

After making the incisions, thinly slice the leek and you will have a very fine dice.

Add Raiyu and Sichuan peppercorn oil to a wok, enough to thinly coat the wok with oil (about 1 tablespoon of each). Let the oil heat until hot, but not smoking. It should release a pungent aroma!

Add the diced leek, ginger and garlic. Stirfry for one  minute to break up the vegetables.

Move your leek, ginger to the edge of the wok (as seen above) or remove from the work entirely. Add another set of Raiyu and Sichuan peppercorn oil to the wok, again about 1 tablespoon of each. Add the squash and continue to stirfry.

Add the bok choy, continue to stir fry.

Lastly, add the baked tofu, in cubes or julienne. Add a little chicken or vegetable stock. Stir fry gently for 1 to 2 minutes for them to absorb the flavor. Taste. If you need more flavor, add some of the soy sauce marinade from the tofu.

Serve with brown or white rice!

Baked Tofu cubes

My friend Jill is a great cook and cooks mostly vegetarian food. Its rather yummy! She gave me this tofu recipe and it is delicious! It is extremely versatile. I usually use this tofu when I am making a vegetable stir fry, but you can also cut the tofu into different shapes and use in a bunch of different things...Try chucking some in a leafy green salad. Or stir fry them with eggplants and sesame seeds to make another stirfry.





Ingredients
1 16 oz block of extra firm tofu
1/2 cup soy sauce
a dash of brandy or brown sugar

Make a marinade by mixing the soy sauce and the brandy in a bowl.


Drain and rinse the block of tofu. Set it on a clean dish towel (you can use paper towels in a pinch) on a rimmed dinner plate. Place another plate on top. Weigh it down with something heavy--a dumbbell, a heavy can of tomatoes, anything will do. I used a heavy iron skillet and 3 cans of pasta. Let it sit for 15-30 minutes. This will press out some of the liquid.

Cut the tofu into pieces. You can made any shape you want, some of the shapes I have made are:

• Cubes for croutons
• Flat squares for sandwiches
• Thick sticks for dipping
• Thin sticks for stir frys

I usually go with cubes or flat squares (This way I can cut the flat squares them down to strips, or I can keep them as cubes).

Place the cut up tofu in a shallow dish, add the marinade. Let the marinade sit for at least 30 minutes, flipping a few times so that the marinade is absorbed evenly. The longer you let the tofu marinate, the deeper the flavor will be.

Preheat your oven to 350.  Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and coat with oil or a nonstick spray. Cook for 10 minutes, then flip the cubes over and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Continue the cooking and flipping process every 10 minutes until the tofu is baked as you like it. The longer you bake it, the more the tofu will shrink, the texture will become chewier and the flavor will become more concentrated.

Remove from oven and cool.