This time we made curried cashew couscous, a recipe from Vegan Express by Nava Atlas.  I am a HUGE fan of Nava Atlas’ The Vegetarian 5-Ingredient Gourmet, so when my husband and I went vegan, I had to check out her vegan cookbook.  I’ve been wanting to make the couscous dish and it is recommended to serve it with an Indian dish like chana masala, so I made both.  I followed this super easy recipe from Serious Eats.

While the chana masala was not bad, the couscous was very much the show-stealer.  I didn’t even use the fragrant nut oil, and I’m sure you can improvise with ingredients based on what you have.  You can serve it with anything you like, too – chicken, fish or other vegetable dishes.  Despite the curry powder, I don’t believe you have to serve with Indian dishes only.

Super yum and super quick.  Very little actual cooking involved!

Cooking is not always fun. Sometimes it is, but other times it just feels like a chore. I like to play music while I cook to make it a bit more fun. You know what else helps? Cooking with friends!

One of my nearest and dearest friends came over the other night. She wanted to try making IKEA Vegetable Medallions. This confused me because I have never been to IKEA and thought that they only made furniture, but my friend informed me that they also serve food and they’ve got some good medallion action going on.

We followed a recipe that we found online at Gratinee: Musings on Food and Culture (what a cool theme for a blog).  She sat on one of my bar stools at the kitchenette counter and we caught up while I peeled potatoes.  Prosecco added a nice touch to the evening (that makes cooking more fun too!).

The medallions came out pretty good, although I found them a little bland.  That might be from getting my palate used to spicy Indian food all the time now.  We had a bit of the mix left over and I put hot sauce in it before baking it up.  I also dipped it in tamarind chutney before eating. (What has this beautiful subcontinent done to me?!)

What I liked about this snack is that it is almost all vegetable.  It tastes sort of like quiche but there’s no flour.  The bulk of what’s keeping it together is potatoes, eggs and some bread crumb.

Note: It’s vegetarian but not vegan.  I am now self-identifying as vegetarian with vegan tendencies.  About 70% vegan.

My friend was kind enough to make her classic guava and cheese empanadas before she left!  This is not her recipe, but I found one online for you all.  She can likely correct me as needed

Happy group cooking!  What are you and your friends cooking up this week?

The success of your no-muss-no-fuss meals depends very much on what you keep in the house.  Fortunately, I live right above a robust market, so I can generally grab most things, but even so, it is MUCH easier to motivate yourself to cook when you already have the ingredients and can just get down to business without a store run.

We all have ingredients that we keep on hand almost all the time.  They vary from household to household.  In my apartment, we almost always have bread, whole wheat pasta, brown basmati rice, bags of frozen vegetables and a package of tofu.  We also have cabinet drawers full of Indian spices.

The other night I was downstairs in my local market checking out what I could buy that would make a quick and easy meal.  I figured I should buy a few different things that I could whip up in a jiffy so that I wouldn’t have the laziness excuse not to do it.  I spied a jar of Maya Kaimal Coconut Curry sauce and decided to give it a try.

I put some rice in the rice cooker, dumped some frozen vegetables and cubes of tofu into the curry sauce and simmered it for about 10 minutes.  Dinner was done.  That was it.

It was very tasty. I personally have never had a coconut curry that was Indian (only Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan) and didn’t really know it existed.  The curry reminded me of some Thai dishes I’ve had.  It was so easy and yummy, and you can feed 4 people from a single jar.  There are also directions on the jar for making the curry with meat, for the non-veg among us.

I got myself the Tikka Masala one too, but haven’t tried it yet.  To be clear, this may or may not be satisfying for an actual Desi person who knows their way around a kitchen or has been fed by someone who does.  I haven’t tested it on the husband yet.  But let’s be honest – Desi’s aren’t reading my blog anyway, unless it’s to chuckle at how cute I am at botching their cuisine.  So for the rest of us – enjoy!

Addendum: Tried the Tikka Masala but not really a fan.  Too tomato-intense and rich for me.  But you might like it, you never know.

On the other hand, maybe you’re lazy (like me) – you pick up takeout, you order in, you make your spouse do the cooking because you’re tired from your workday/the kitchen is daunting/you can’t boil water/insert-excuse-here.

Yes friends, I do vacillate between both worlds (though I spend a hell of a lot more time in the lazy one) so I understand that some nights, you just don’t want to cook.

But your New Year’s resolution is to eat out less to save money, or to cook at home so you know what exactly you’re eating and you know that it’s nutritious.  And it’s only January 20th!  What a bummer for you, then.

But wait!

I like a good cheat.  I like a good quick fix.  How about recipes that can just be thrown together so that you did, in fact, cook but that it didn’t take you four hours?

–

Last January, my resolution was to learn how to cook Indian food.  I think I fulfilled that to the best of my ability. I generally know my way around some main dishes, provided the recipe is still open in my email somewhere.

This January, I have a new resolution – to cook.

It’s easy to have a cooking blog when you post once a month!    It’s easy to buy a bunch of groceries because you’re going to “eat in” for the week and then watch them go bad in your refrigerator.

This year, I’m going to actually cook at home.  I’m not coming up with numbers (x meals a week, x times a day) but my goal is to increase my in-house or home-cooked consumption considerably.  For all of those reasons you’re thinking.  And probably a few more.

But I am still lazy.  That hasn’t changed just because it’s January.  So I introduce to you: The Eat Cheat Series

I was a kid who never cheated on a test, but I have cheated on plenty of diets, so I know a thing or two.  These blog posts are going to feature fast, easy recipes that anyone can do, sans training, time and willpower.

I will still do regular, effort-full recipes too.  But probably more of these – I mean, let’s be realistic.

Hoping you follow along and enjoy it.

Do you ever have the best intention of cooking but no desire to go shopping for ingredients?  That was me tonight.  Fortunately, I had enough ingredients to put together this coconut curry.  I made a few modifications, though:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup diced onion
1 tbsp garlic ginger paste
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp curry powder
1 bag frozen vegetables
1/2 package extra firm tofu, cubed
1 cup lite coconut milk
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste

Preparation:

In a large skillet, heat the oil and add the onion, garlic ginger paste and spices. Allow to cook for a minute or two, stirring frequently.

Add the vegetables, tofu and coconut milk and stir well. Season generously with 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste.

Cover and allow to cook for at least 10 minutes, or until veggies are fully cooked.

Thanksgiving, Christmas and a trip to Texas, the breakfast taco/queso/Tex Mex capital of the world, really threw me off the vegan wagon.  In the last week or so, I have resumed my vegan lifestyle and paired it with the Serotonin Power Diet, something I have had success with in the past with very little effort (that works best for me).

It is almost time to start making those New Year’s resolutions (God! The holidays crept up on us this year) and the New York Times recently posted an article called, “No Meat, No Dairy, No Problem,” about a great resolution for your health: going “semi-vegan.”

Among your other resolutions — do more good? make more money? — you’ve probably made the annual pledge to eat better, although this concept may be more often reduced simply to “lose some weight.”

If defining this betterness has become increasingly more difficult (half the diet books that spilled over my desk in December focused on going gluten-free), the core of the answer is known to everyone: eat more plants. And if the diet that most starkly represents this — veganism — is no longer considered bizarre or unreasonably spartan, neither is it exactly mainstream.

Many vegan dishes, however, are already beloved: we eat fruit salad, peanut butter and jelly, beans and rice, eggplant in garlic sauce. The problem faced by many of us — brought up as we were with plates whose center was filled with a piece of an animal — is in imagining less-traditional vegan dishes that are creative, filling, interesting and not especially challenging to either put together or enjoy.

My point here is to make semi-veganism work for you. Once a week, let bean burgers stand in for hamburgers, leave the meat out of your pasta sauce, make a risotto the likes of which you’ve probably never had — and you may just find yourself eating “better.”

The article goes on to provide several yummy-looking recipes and it got me thinking more and more about the great options out there for vegans and even for non-vegans who just want to skip the meat/cheese/butter/milk once in a while to be healthier.  It’s not that hard, people… it truly isn’t.

I’ve got plans for some new Meatless Monday posts, trying out new cookbooks, and all kinds of fun, heart-healthy and planet-friendly stuff.  Hoping you’ll come along for the ride.  In the meantime, enjoy this little number from Tumblr:

My friend Kate, author of The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, just posted a link to this great article on what gifts you might consider giving your friends who don’t cook but should (you know, people like me )

New York Times: Gifts for Non-Cooks

Americans spend less time cooking than anyone, and the amount we “cook” — some people count microwaving a pizza — has been on a long, slow decline. The reasons for this decline are varied and complex, but an increase in the average of both hours worked and television watched, coupled with the marketing of “convenience” foods, have turned cooking from a sometimes-pleasurable necessity into, for many people, an ominous-seeming choice.

Yet the benefits of cooking, about which I’ve written before, are many: Cooking gives you control over what you put into your body and it’s cheaper than eating out or taking in. Food you make yourself tastes better, and it’s better for the environment, for your body, for your family. It’s just plain better.

We all know people who don’t cook: not enough time, skill or stuff. Gentle encouragement could change that, and — if it does — it’s no exaggeration to call it a gift of life. So instead of your incredible cookies — or in addition to them — you might consider a gift of the means, encouragement or inspiration for non-cooks. Imagine how great it would feel if, next year, they gave you cookies.

There are some great suggestions in here – I hope you enjoy!

Yesterday I visited my favorite NYC haunt, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with two friends to catch a new exhibition that is getting rave reviews: Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100-1900.

We began our adventure at Mughlai, an Indian restaurant on the Upper West Side.  I ordered a vegetarian thali, which gives you a little bit of everything, while my friends ordered a non-veg thali and a bhindi masala.  Good food, though the decor was not exactly authentic (some Indian art on the walls, but combined with hanging Christmas lights and a menora on the bar).

We then walked across Central Park to the Met, where we headed straight for the exhibition (after making a quick stop at Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine).  It was simply breathtaking.

• NY Times: Putting Names to the Greats of Indian Art with slideshow

One of the trademarks of this exhibition is that art historians have finally been able to identify the artists who have created the masterpieces.  According to the NY Times review, “Their motive has been to dispel the long-held view, especially in the West, that these often small, transcendent works were made by unlauded artisans toiling away in monasteries and imperial workshops.”

Nearly 200 works in six galleries explore the elaborate style wars between the raw vigor and flat color blocks of the indigenous Rajput (Hindu) court manner and the finely calibrated naturalism and delicate patterns imported by the conquering Mughals of Central Asia. Repeatedly fusing, breaking apart and fusing again, these styles percolated throughout northern and central India as the Mughals expanded their dominance over Rajput courts, especially in the late 16th and 17th centuries.

While most exhibitions of Indian paintings include only a few examples whose creators are known by name, this one concentrates almost exclusively on works that are known or thought to be by some 40 individuals. [...]

We encounter families of artists, some of whom worked for successive generations of emperors, most notably the brilliantly cosmopolitan Akbar the Great, who took over the first Mughal court at Delhi in 1556, and his son Jahangir and grandson Shah Jahan, all passionate patrons of painting. Toward the end of the show, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the Mughal courts were in disarray, we see the emergence of Rajput family workshops that catered to multiple patrons, both Indian and European.

If you are in New York at any time before January 8, you must go see it.

Everyone bakes around the holidays, right?  Well, I sure did this year.  Pre-Thanksgiving, I made pumpkin scones, maple walnut muffins, pumpkin spice marble cheesecake and my classic pecan “delight.”

I was really happy with all the yummy baking.  I made a pumpkin swirl cheesecake 10 years ago that tasted great but didn’t have the right, firm consistency of cheesecake.  This time – success!  I’ve also been making pecan delight every year for 10 years – it’s quite popular with my family and now with my husband’s.  So here are the recipes I used, in case anyone else (like me) still has 3/4 can of pumpkin in their fridge that they don’t know what to do with.

Recipe 1: Vegan Pumpkin Scones with Brown Eyed Baker’s Spiced Glaze

Recipe 2: Maple Walnut Muffins

Recipe 3: Marbled Pumpkin Cheesecake

Recipe 4: Pecan Delight aka Ritz Pecan Pie

Everyone I’ve ever met who tastes this asks for the recipe.  I’ve never made it with chocolate – it is perfect without.  Serve with a dollop of Cool Whip!

P.S. Just in case you’re disappointed in a pumpkin pastry post that has nothing to do with desi cooking, I found some Indian pumpkin recipes just for you:

• Indian Food Rocks: Curry that Pumpkin
• The Colors of Indian Cooking: Pumpkin Koftas (Meatless Meatballs for Meatless Monday)
• VaRehVah.com: Pumpkin Masala

Happy holidays!

“Now, British people from all backgrounds will be trained to become chefs specialising in Indian food to combat the shortage of Asian chefs brought on by the government’s latest immigration rules.

…

[The Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles] has a dream: namely to set up a curry college. It combines border control with foreign cooking. It would both help satisfy the apparently inexhaustible appetite for onion bhajis and prawn birianis while also providing justification for the squeeze on visas.”

Indian food without the Indians… those British are so clever, they think of everything.