Creamy Cauliflower And Lakers Magic!!

 

   One thing I love about fixing a tandoori chicken lunch is the simplicity. Once the chicken has been marinated, nothing goes better with this dish than a bread some pickled cucumbers and one veg. The most likely vegetable to find on my tandoori table is cauliflower. Especially when I can get a beautiful organic one for 99 cents!
  Usually I fix cauliflower with mustard seed and cilantro with this chicken dish, but this time I wanted to do something different. I had some buttermilk in the house and a cauliflower recipe that I'd yet to try. It seemed like the prefect opportunity to experiment with a recipe from Yamuna Devis book Vegetarian Table:India .
 This is the perfect fast dish for cauliflower sales. Here's how you do it. Take one cauliflower, wash it and break it into small florets.

In a mortar or spice grinder mix:
 1 Tbs of coriander seed
1 tsp of cumin seed
1/2 tsp of fennel seed
 Crush them up.

 In a deep skillet or  kadhai heat 2 Tbs of vegetable oil.
when it's hot, toss in a 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and cut into thin little strips.

Stir fry it for about 30 seconds then toss in the crushed spices along with:
1/4 tsp of cayenne
1/2 tsp of turmeric
1/2 Tbs of sugar and a bit of water to keep things moving.

Quickly add in the cauliflower and stir fry it for a minute or two getting it covered in spices. Then lower the heat, put a lid on things and let it cook for about 15 minutes or so. Give the pan a
shake every now and then to make sure nothing is sticking.

 When the cauliflower is tender, add salt and pepper to taste. Then warm up 1/2 cup of buttermilk and mix it into the cauliflower.

 
Sprinkle the whole thing with a bit of chopped fresh cilantro and you're done!  That is the simplicity of Tandoori cooking. Just think of it as a barbecue, because that is what it is. The dishes should be fresh and complimentary to what you're serving...also easy does it every time.

     Besides how to get my mitts on good tandoori without a "for reals" Tandoori oven, the other obsession around our house is Basketball. If you haven't figured it out by now we love Basketball. Especially Lakers Basketball. I know I must sound like a Northern California traitor to be loving the Lakers. I really shouldn't. All my family history is against it.
    My family came to California in 1848, before it was part of the US. I'm a 5th generation San Franciscan and by rights should only be rooting for  the SF Giants and the 49ers and of course the Sonoma Valley High School teams..Go Dragons!
     However, years of living in Los Angeles turned us into dyed in the wool Lakers Fans. Even though we're now living in the Wine Country of Sonoma..definitely Northern California, the loyalty to LA Basketball remains.
     Of course the greatest rivalry in all basketball is the blood feud between the Lakers and the Celtics. Right now that is the battle that's being fought for the championship,  so we've been riveted to the TV for each and every playoff game.
   When it comes to basketball, my superstitious Guidette kicks in and I get weird about a lot of stuff. What food is served for luck, where I watch the game, and who watches the game with me. Understand, I do have powers when it comes to Lakers Baketball. I feel that I'm controlling the outcome of the game right from my living room.
 So on Sunday, I cooked an Indian dinner for a friend who Alan and I thought brought luck. The last time the Lakers won, he happened to show up at the house unannounced and the Lakers kicked Boston ass! So last Sunday there he was again,  sitting on our couch, and Rajon Rondo hit basket after basket and Ron Artest could not catch a break ! The Lakers were beaten badly by Boston. Obviously it was his fault!
  For last nights' game I felt we needed big mojo. When another friend mentioned that he owned a Kobe Bryant autographed basketball we said...bring it! That would be the totem we needed to insure a Laker victory.

 
 So the ball was placed in a prominent position, I baked some pizzas and it was game on!

The Lakers won by a comfortable margin (22 points!) and now the series is tied and Thursday is Do or Die Day at our house.
  Last night we celebrated with ice cream sundaes, homemade vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and whipped cream out of a can!

 Patsy, who doesn't care when I make real whipped cream, always comes running at the sound of the canned stuff. She was rewarded as were we all in a great victorious mood! It was whipped cream for everybody!!

Our friend Terri was very generous with Patsy. At least she didn't spray it directly into Patsys' mouth, 'cause Terri has class!

 Our friend Chip, who brought the Basketball and Patsy were both happy and blissed out after dessert.
 Tomorrow, the Lakers meet the Celtics in the Final Showdown..I'm already planning the victory feast.
Canned whipped cream for all canids!

A Bollywood Hollywood Oscar Feast! Now With Jackfruit Curry!

  Everybody has an event that they love to celebrate with family, friends and neighbors.  It might be the World Cup, The Superbowl, College playoffs, Olympic Figure Skating Finals or the Stanley Cup. At our house it's The Oscars. We're writers, what else would it be?
   Every year whether in LA or Sonoma, we've gathered friends around and partied down on the big day. Every year I've cooked, and usually the cooking involves Indian food.  This year was no different.
  Except for the tiaras. Yes, tiaras. My friend Terri (who also coincidentally won the Oscar ballot derby) suggested we wear tiaras to more fully get into the "Oscar Spirit". She happened to have a nifty tiara left over from her wedding veil that she was just raring to wear again. I however wore flowers in my hair at my wedding so I had to go buy a tiara from our local joke store the Laughing Queen..not exactly Tiffanys'. I suggested maybe we should wear gowns also, as I had a few event gowns stashed here in my Sonoma closet that I never get to wear anymore, but Terri thought sweatpants would be more appropriate. And comfortable. So there was the dress code, tiaras and in my case, yoga pants and a hoodie from Tar-jay. We were gonna be styling.

  When I first got into cooking Indian food 20 years ago I was a vegetarian, and so for the first several years, all I cooked were vegetarian dishes. In the Indian kitchen that's not a difficult thing to do. One of the first cookbooks I ever had was Lord Krishnas' Cuisine by Yamuna Devi. It is a massive collection of recipes, many of which originated in the sacred temple kitchens of India. It had been awhile since I'd prepared a completely vegetarian meal for guests, and so I decided that the Oscars was a perfect opportunity to get back to my Indian cooking roots.
   I also thought I'd try to cook as much of the meal as possible in clay pots. Doing so allowed me to start prep a day earlier, leaving me less to do on the actual Oscar day.

       
   The menu consisted of a very simple moog dal with spices, rice with mustard seed, raita with the inevitable boondi, turnips with nigella and mustard seed, dhoklas with coconut and cilantro, Gujarati carrot salad, saag puree, a fresh pineapple chutney and finally, finally I got to try my hand with jackfruit!

     I'd been waiting for an excuse to make jackfruit curry ever since I'd heard  how good it could be and then finally laid hands on it at a small South Asian market I shop at over in Santa Rosa.
     Jackfruit is also known as the meat vegetable because of it's dense, and meaty texture. It could easily pass for chicken. Now I know a lot of stuff squeaks by as "easily passing for chicken", everything from snake to that guy that's stranded in the snowbound cabin with you. But this stuff is the real deal.
   I'd looked at a lot of jackfruit recipes gotten several from readers and friends, and settled on an Indian temple recipe, that seemed simple, easy and quick to cook.
    The recipe I used also called for green jackfruit as opposed to ripe jackfruit . I used 2 cans of fresh green jackfruit and the recipe served 10 people on a vegetarian buffet.
             Green Jackfruit Curry
1.) Take 2 cans of green jackfruit,  drain it and cut it into bite size pieces. Set them aside.
2.) Peel and cut 2 potatoes into wedges and then 1 inch chunks.
3.) Heat 2Tbs of ghee or butter in a heavy pan or kadhai
4.) Fry the potatoes until they're a faint light brown color
5.) Take them out of the pan and set them aside.
     Then add:
6.) 2 tsp of ground coriander
7.) 1 tsp ground cumin
8.) 1 and 1/2 tsp of turmeric
9.) 1 tsp of kashmiri chili powder or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper mixed with 1/2 tsp paprika
10.)  salt and sugar to taste.
   Fry the spices up, when they change color  add:
11.) 1 cup of water
12.) The jackfruit pieces
13.) The potatoes
   Simmer the mixture gently until the potatoes and the jackfruit are cooked through and the sauce has thickened in the bottom of the pan.
   In a small cast iron skillet heat :
1.) 1 Tbs of ghee or butter.
  When the butter is hot add in:
2.)   3 curry leaves
3.) 1/4 tsp of whole cumin seeds.
   Fry them until the seeds start to sizzle and pour the entire sizzling mixture into the pan of jackfruit and potatoes.

Serve hot!

I put my pineapple peeler from VacuVin to good use again. I can't seem to get enough of that thing. This time I cored the pineapple and when I had the rind poised over the garbage can I thought.. "I can do something with this! Can't I?"
  Voila! A cored pineapple and a serving bowl all in one! At least I didn't pull it out of the garbage to use it...it's all about the quick thinking and the ingenuity.

 Meanwhile the awards ran on, history was made...

    The Dude finally got his Oscar....after the boys in the crime lab had been working on it in shifts for about 20 years. Far out!

And our own personal Dude , Capitaine Leighton  who actually showed up in a tux posed with an old award of mine..(no, not an Oscar) a Clio.

Dessert was served, courtesy of our friends The Other Kathy and Terri who brought yummy concoctions.
Here I am in my tiara (and my stupid reading glasses which I forgot to take off for the picture) trying to wrest the tray away from Capitain Leighton.

  We had Oscar ballots and my friend Terri, who I believe was channeling Secret Radio Oscar Transmissions through her tiara,  got a nearly perfect score! Her prize was a delicious bottle of oilo nouvo that I just happened to have lying around.
 Since I had decided to serve the meal on thalis, clean up was minimal (gotta love the stainless steel) and break-proof. I'll be posting the recipe and directions for making dhoklas in the next day or so. What's not to love about a bread that takes 15 minutes to bake?!
  So now we have another whole year to go before the next Oscars, enough time to try out more jackfruit recipes and maybe try my hand at dosas!