i.heart.curry

It was this summer that Gob, a Thai intern who worked in the office from June to September, created a curry madness in the office. Turns out Gob, this is not his real name, this is his nickname, I will refrain from mentioning his real name for he is so attached to Gob he actually introduces himself as so. Once, I dared calling him by his real name, and he made it clear to me that if I chose to refer to him as that, I would join the club of 'people Gob doesn't like', yes he refers to Gob on the third person. If you haven't figured it out already, Gob was quite a character, quite a cook as well, of everything Thai, exclusively Thai, and, (lucky for me) he could recite recipes on cue. That's how I learned to make curry. The Thursday before summer break, We had a little potluck at the office, and along with the curry tasting came the recipe. A following came too, and for a few of us, curry is still a weekly indulgence.

Now this is where I am going, curry is by all means an indulgence, sure it is spicy, sure it can squeeze a few tears out of you, but health wise it seems pretty innocent right? WRONG. Two words: COCONUT MILK. (Check out the new addition to the blog! Nutrition Facts!). Coconut Milk is the equivalent of tropical mayonnaise! It's PURE fat! And not the good, make-your-hair-shiny avocado-like-fat, the bad kind! the lard kind. The saturated kind! I was talking to Lisa, another curry groupie, about this today. She actually looked up the nutritional info of coconut milk and was appalled with what she saw. She also helped inspire, along with Eduardo, the new 'eat-your-dinner' nutrition facts label. Which means I'll be crunching numbers to bring you the nutritional information of the recipes we post.

After discussing the un-benefits of coconut milk, I thought I could come up with a version of curry that used the least amount of coconut milk, without compromising the flavor. I must admit it is pretty close, minus the guilt feelings. Before, I didn't usually use the BIG can of coconut milk the recipe called for, but I still used about 3/4 of a cup, which we now know what amounts too in terms of fat and calories.

I say, leave the full fat curry for special occasions, and try the heart happy version, for weeknights. Leave out the fish sauce for a heart happier version, the sodium content in fish sauce is sky high!

R E C I P E

1 tablespoon of olive oil

2 tablespoons of red or green curry paste (green is spicier than red)

1 boneless skinless chicken breast cubed

1 medium eggplant sliced

1 medium zucchini sliced

1/2 cup of water

2 tablespoons of fish sauce

1/4 cup of coconut milk

5 basil leaves (I like to use both cilantro and basil, but that's up to you)

1 lime

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1. Heat a wok or a big pot. Add the oil. When it starts to smoke, add the chicken and the curry paste. Keep moving it, you don't want it to stick.

2. Before the chicken starts to brown, add the water and stir to dilute the curry paste.

3. Add the sliced vegetables.

4. Cover. Let it sweat now. Move every now and then. Careful with the eggplant. You don't want to break it.

5. After a couple of minutes, add the fish sauce. Add more water if it looks like it's drying out. There should about a cup of liquid from the veggies.

6. When the vegetables are ready, add the coconut milk. Cover. Cook for about one minute, only to bring it up to temperature. This is the trick! The more you cook it, the more it looses its flavor. By just heating it you can get maximum taste with the least amount of milk.

7. Squeeze half the lime in the broth. Add the herbs. Serve over rice with a wedge of lime.

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bánh.mì

The first time I mentioned vietnamese sandwiches was on one of my first posts, when i I wrote about pho noodle soup. Our friends Yu and Kurt were the ones to introduce us to these delicious and easy to make sandwiches that are called Bánh mì in vietnamese.

This is one of those things that people don't think of making at home, when we think of sandwiches we usually go with what we already know. But we love these, we don't use pickled carrots, and we have our own version of the spicy mayo, but they still make a great saturday lunch.

Today we made bánh mì gà, the chicken version. The nice thing with these is you can stuff them with whatever you have, whether it's chicken, pork or beef (or even tofu), we tried them with tuna one day and they were excellent (this is the americanized version! but who doesn't like a tuna sandwich?).

Basically what you need is: a fresh baguette (we prefer it on the softer side for this), thinly sliced carrots and cucumbers, cilantro and whatever meat you decide to use, leftover chicken is perfect, all you have to do is slice it. The secret ingredient is the mayo, what I do is mix some mayonnaise with sriracha sauce, a little bit of sesame oil and some black sesame seeds. All you really need is the mayonnaise and chili sauce, but the oil gives it a nice flavor and i just love the way black sesame look. I also like to keep the chili oil that comes with pizza, and just mix that with the mayo. Compose your sandwich with all the ingredients and eat away! I love them!

* For the tuna version we just mixed the tuna with the mayo before hand.

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black.soup

I’ve decided to open this post simply with: ‘this one’s for Jono’. As you know, I have been struggling with the opening line for my posts; this line even comes up as ‘fragment’ on my spell check (or grammar)! I’m going to ignore it and tell you the story, a few weeks ago we had a mini farewell dinner party for Ceara, a girl from work, who was here for the summer. Turns out Ceara, being from California, really missed Mexican food. So I compromised and offered to make her a Latin American themed dinner party instead. We had ‘sopa negra’ or black soup in english as a starter, and they loved it! (especially Jono). Sopa negra is a black bean soup that takes some time, but it is well worth it. I just remembered my 9th grade English teacher explaining to me how I had a problem with ‘run-on sentences’, I wonder why.

The four things you must remember about beans are, one – soak them over night, two – don’t boil them, they don’t like it, they’ll just stay hard, three – you need to sort and wash them BEFORE you soak them (by sorting I mean looking for tiny pebbles disguised as beans), and four – canned beans are just nasty, so use the real thing. Also very important, where do you find them? In France, Asian (not Japanese though) and African markets usually carry them, Indian stores too. And if you live in Paris, there is a store that sells beans behind ‘La Bourse’, where they have every imaginable type of grain.

The reason this one is ‘for Jono’ is because he asked me for the recipe one of these days and I said – ‘I’ll make the soup, post the recipe, AND I’ll bring you some’- turns out I calculated the amount of beans wrong and we ate most of it, so I didn’t bring any soup to Jono and forgot to say anything about it, and for all I know he thinks of black beans everytime he looks at me, so Jono, I hope you like it, and next time I promise I’ll bring you some. And for the rest of you here it is!

R E C I P E

2 cups of black beans ‘sorted, washed and soaked in water over night’
1 quart of water
2 tablespoon of olive oil
½ an onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon of chopped red sweet pepper
2 tablespoons of chopped cilantro
1 red chili pepper chopped (no seeds!) or more than one that's up to you!
Salt

-Toppings –

Diced tomatoes
Sour cream
Diced avocados
Chives
Hard-boiled or poached eggs
And/or anything else you like!

Recapitulating, this is how you deal with the beans:

1. Measure the two cups.
2. Go through your beans and take out discolored/shriveled beans and the occasional pebble.
3. Wash them with water.
4. Rinse them.
5. Place them in a container or pot with four cups of water. (use a big pot, it’s better).
6. Cover them and, leave them over night.
7. The next day the beans will have absorbed a fair amount of water, and the water will be a dark purple, it’s ok! you’ve washed the beans, that’s the bean’s own pigment. Cook them in this water and the result will be a ‘blacker’ BLACK soup.
8. To cook them add a couple more cups of water to the beans, place your pot on the stove on high, and once the water is boiling lower the temperature to the minimum. Cover and let simmer until they are soft.

* All beans are different, the cooking time always varies, so keep an eye on them, check them every hour or so, and make sure they don’t run out of water. Also, if the beans have been sitting on the shelf for a very long time they will take more time to cook.

Once the beans are done, chop all your vegetables finely, and cook them over medium heat with the olive oil. While your vegetables are cooking, mash some of the beans (if you like a thicker soup) with a food processor or blender (I just use the bottom of a heavy mug, and do it in the same pot), if you use a food processor of blender, take about a cup of beans with some of the liquid (add more water if you need to), and return it to the pot. At this point the vegetables should be caramelized, add them to the soup together with the cilantro. Season with salt. Let the soup simmer for half an hour, and serve.

* The mashed beans have a grayish color, when you put them in the pot with the rest of the soup, if it doesn't look black (as black soup should), don’t despair, this is the reason you need to simmer for an extra half hour. Beans are not hard to make, you just need to know the tricks. (Jono is learning to cook, since this recipe IS for him I’m being thorough).

You can top this soup with anything you like, in Costa Rica, if the soup is not too thick, they poach some eggs in the soup and serve one egg per person, this is really good if you want add MORE protein to this dish (beans a great source of protein on their own). I served mine, with tomatoes, avocados, and sour cream. Buen Provecho! (enjoy! or bon appétit! in spanish).


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