Oh My this sounds delicious! Especially with the optional additions – lime and mango chutney. Thank you Mark! More like this, please.

One question: is kitchen paper shiny like waxed paper or absorbent? And one note: most Americans have no idea coriander and cilantro are the same thing.

Lots more where that came from :-). I have decided to make my recipes for one or two people available online over the next few months.

There are lots of recipes for 4 – 6 or even 8 people but relatively few for one. So I’m ransacking my memory and my notebooks and translating them as needed.

My biggest difficulty is that over here we measure and weigh everything so I have to dig out a good converter for the American cup system. (Laura Doty kindly corrected my misconversion of quantities for this recipe.)

I’m finding getting all these ready to be rather a fun hobby which I can do both here and in Irak.

Kitchen Paper = ordinary absorbent paper towel.

Yeah, that weighing and measuring thing is a bugaboo. After a lifetime of cooking, one begins to approximate the measurements – and coming darn close. When it comes time to pass a recipe on, it’s a daunting thing to have to convert the handfuls or pinches into cups or tbsps.

I look forward to your further cooking contributions! Now, off to read the Pat Lang links.

After a lifetime of cooking, one begins to approximate the measurements – and coming darn close.

Yup I can and do guesstimate to within a few grams for lots of stuff .

What’s got me started on this is talking with people of Du and Erdla’s age – (or younger) who are simply lost when it comes to food. So they spend a fortune on buying unappetising crap.

There are also a lot of one person pensioner households. These are people who can cook up a feast for 6 but are lost when it comes to cooking for one…..

I learned to cook watching my folks do things and I can pull together the meal for a half dozen fairly easily, but as a single man who does not like to eat cheese or pizzas or McDonalds all the time, I have learned some tricks.

I make a basic pot roast (chuck roast, potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, carrots), have left overs the next day then freeze the remains in individual tupperware type things for the freezer. When I want something down the road, I take it out of the freezer, into the microwave for 10-15 minutes (on power 5 or 6). It defrosts, re-heats, and the lower power pretty much keeps the potatoes from becoming too mealy.

I’ve also perfected the art of pan broiling a small steak (eye of round are great like this), nuke a small potato and some fresh fruit.

Not always the most healthful eater, but I’ve managed to make it this far without weighing five hundred pounds.

Thanks for this recipe. I will be trying banana curry for my family sometime this week. Looooove cooked bananas, and always looking for simple ethnic fare.

The potroast sounds very tasty and satisfying to me ….

I learnt the same way you did … by watching my mother cook and askingh questions. (Occasionally my father who had a repertoire of some “set piece” dishes would let me in to watch) – then my parents got the idea of actually teaching us to cook and then letting us experiment in the kitchen. Sounds very obvious now but a boy in the kitchen was … unusual … in 1960s conservative Catholic Ireland.

At present, when I’m out for my evening stroll, I notice the same faces in the take-out places every evening and am very grateful that thanks to my parents’ foresight I’m not among them. I eat way better and lots cheaper….

Enjoy :-)

I was born and raised in small town Kentucky and my paternal grandparents ran a road side restaurant. My father did the frying and watching him from beginning to end was how I learned to make fried chicken.

But it was also one of those deals where we (my older brother, sister, and myself) were all encouraged to cook. The deal was if you cooked dinner, you didn’t have to do the clean-up.

And Boy Scouts were also a means of learning to cook, even if over an open fire.

Here’s a handy measure converter.

Those of us on the rapidly descending side of middle age (sigh) I think have a less fearful approach towards cooking than the young uns do, who seem to find it quite daunting. But then, we didn’t grow up in a culture in which food was as over-prepared as it is now, or where going out to eat was such a regular, unremarkable thing. I’m amazed at how the 30s and under I know find even making a sandwich, a salad or a simple soup to be a challenge. ‘Cooking’ is boiling up some pasta and pouring a bottled sauce over it. And recipes are scary.

It’s truly sad, since not only do people seem afraid to cook, they’re often afraid to eat (new foods, or very nutritious foods).

I had a fun time a couple months ago, giving cooking lessons to my niece. She learned how to make chicken marbella, chicken stew, shrimp salad, kabobs, and to roast pepper, eggplant and garlic, all in one day. I took the blitz approach, hoping she’d discover that cooking by hand (without measuring) is easier than she thought. It worked! (She credits it for ‘landing’ her dreamboat guy a few weeks later….ha!)

Do you have a recipe for the tikka masala?

I was looking for a recipe for tikka masala since I don’t have a jar of the stuff handy. Found this on yahoo. I bet it would have to be frozen before the yogurt is added. Hmmm.

MASALA SAUCE:
2 tablespoon butter or vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, de-seeded & finely diced
1 small white onion, finely diced
8 ounces tomato sauce or chopped tomatoes
1 cup heavy cream, 1⁄2 & 1⁄2 or non-fat yogurt
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons paprika
1⁄2 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon fenugreek (optional)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
1 teaspoons salt, or to taste
1 teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
1 teaspoon honey, or to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste

Just pound and mix for example these dry ingredients. (They’re the “Masala”)

I suggested a jar of curry past because jars of curry paste are very easily available over here. But any mix of curry spices will do the job quite nicely for minimal effort.

This is my basic curry spice mix:

5 cardamom pods
5cm (2 inch) cinnamon stick
2 tsp ginger powder minced
2 tsp garlic powder.
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
¼ tsp turmeric powder
½ to 1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp paprika

Plus: 1 tsp garam masala powder if you have it.

Method:

Bash everything together into a powder and saute the bananas and onions in the oil adding the powder to the frying bananas/onions mix.

Garam Masala

(Garam masala is yet another spice blend in fact the term “Garam Masala” means “Hot Spice blend” I think every cook in India has their own version.)

This is the version I was taught by an Indian colleague:

Ingredients

• 1 tbs. black pepper corns

• 1 tsp. whole cloves

• 10 large, whole, cardamoms

• 4-5 dry bay leaves

• 3 inch cinnamon stick or equivalent small pieces

• ½ of a nutmeg, freshly grated. Or use 1 tsp. ground mace

• 1-2 tbs. cumin seeds

Method:

Pound everything together into a powder.

It’s a question of what mix of spices suits your taste so feel free to mess around with proportions … add stuff in … leave stuff out …

That is incidentally a very mouthwatering mix you found there …. Try that with chicken (it will also go very nicely with fish)

Denmark, eh? So how many aebleskiver have you had? (They’re delicious and easy to make. The trick is to separate out the egg whites and beat them to a stiff froth before adding them to the batter.)

Oh, thank you for that spice mix recipes. I love it when I have everything I need to make an exotic spice mix. Hehe. I have not seen indian curry pastes of any description here, although Thai curry pastes are ubiquitous. And, I have had to google garam masala recipes because you have to know where to get the preblended stuff, and I’ve only discovered the places recently. Tikka masala sauce in a jar can be found easily at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.

By the way, it’s Green Banana Curry for dinner tonight!

OK, tried this recipe. The tikka spice mixture was extraordinary. I recommend no one bother with a jar of paste! The onions are totally integral to the success of the dish and add a savory-ness that the dish needs to balance the sweet. Next time I will try chicken.

I will make this again. Thanks!

Æbleskiver are a Christmas thing here so, so far …. none. I’ll be back in Irak by then and suspect they’ll be a bit thin on the ground.

Yay! :-)