One month ago my friends Prerna at Indian Simmer and Barbara at Creative Culinary and I decided to get together and throw a month long Indian food extravaganza which we called #Indianfoodpalooza, because as everyone knows if you add palooza to anything it ups the fun quotient. We asked everyone to step out during the month of March and try their luck cooking an Indian dish. We provided some resources, suggestions, and of course prizes! Because you also cannot have a Palooza without prizes...,probably porta-potties too if I recall, but this is the internet and neither here and certainly not there.
Well, March is gone April's here and it's now time to announce our winners. All the entries looked mouthwateringly delicious, and since licking the screens of our monitors didn't work, we chose our winners using Random.org
Here they are, as the random squirrels tossed them to us:
Congratulations to our winners! Big thanks to everyone who participated. And of course many, many thanks to the kindness and generosity of our prize donors:
Coconut oil, coconut flour and shredded coconut from the good people at Tropical Traditions
If the winners of the Tropical Traditions Coconut products will get in touch with me , I'll get their prizes to them.
If we were playing a "lay on the couch and tell me about your childhood... here, look at these inkblots" game right about now, the doctor would say "Sweet" and you'd say "Sour." The doctor would say "Pickle" and you'd say "Shrimp." At that point the doctor would probably say " I think we need to meet 3 times a week" but the doctor would be wrong. You're not crazy. You're an epicure.
Pickles and pickling is not just for cucumbers and cabbage and cherries anymore. Pickling is a great way of preserving stuff. Even better than botox, and there's the added bennies that the good bacteria that results from pickling, boosts the vitamin B content in foods. If you've never thought of pickling the charming little crustaceans, where have you been?! Pickling some say, started in India about 2000 and change BC. Of course they started with cucumbers native to the subcontinent and moved on to mangos, and onions, and carrots and peppers. And then they moved on to shrimp. And pickled shrimp makes for a damn fine and quick and easy meal.
Some of the best pickles in India come from the South, and these pickled shrimp are no exception. This is a dish originating in Goa and as such it's flavored with that particular Goan touch, vinegar. Coconut vinegar to be more exact.
If you've never tried coconut vinegar, you're not alone. I'd never even heard of it before I was sent a bottle of it from the people at Tropical Traditions , and I've been cooking Indian food now for 22 years. I tried coconut vinegar and I have to say, it totally solved my Vindaloo problem, and if you've ever had a Vindaloo problem you know how serious that can be. I love the authentic taste it adds to dishes. I started buying it on my own and now it's a staple in my pantry.
So now back to this very easy and tasty shrimp dish, This is a new basic for quick dinner parties at our house since the shrimp can be out of my freezer (yes, I keep bags of frozen shrimp from Whole Foods in the freezer for emergency guests) and on the table in less than an hour.
Sweet And Sour Pickled Shrimp
Here's What You Need:
40 medium shrimp. About 1 lb.
1 tsp of salt
A 2 inch piece of peeled fresh ginger roughly chopped
8 peeled shallots chopped
1 tsp of cumin seeds
15 dried red chilies, broken in half
10 whole cloves
A 2 inch piece of cinnmon stick snapped in half
1 tsp of black mustard seeds
1 cup of coconut water vinegar (You can also use malt vinegar, or cider vinegar)
3 Tbs of coconut oli or vegetable oil
2 chopped tomatoes or 1 16 oz can of chopped tomatoes
2 onions finely chopped
2 Tbs of sugar
Here's What To Do:
If you're using frozen shrimp, defrost and clean them.
Put them in a bowl and sprinkle them with the salt. Toss the shrimp once and set them aside.
Put the ginger, shallots, cumin, chilies, cloves, cinnamon, mustard seeds, and vinegar in a food processor or blender and whirl it into a paste.
Set it aside.
Place a skillet or kadhai on the stove over a medium heat and add the vegetable oil to the pan. When the oil is hot, add in the shrimp.
Stir the shrimp around and cook them until they turn a light pink.
Scoop them out with a slotted spoon and set them aside.
Add the chopped onions to the pan and saute them until they're lightly browned.
Add in the tomatoes and cook them down for about 3 or 4 minutes until they're nice and soft and pulpy.
Add in the ground spice paste and cook it for about 3 to 4 minutes. It should be cooked down until the vinegar evaporates. The paste should still be wet
Add in the shrimp and the sugar and mix it into the sauce.
Make sure the shrimp are heated through, be careful not to cook them too much or the shrimp will get tough and rubbery.
When everything is nice and warm, serve it up you're good to go.
This easy, quick shrimp dish is perfect for special nights and "oh-my-god-we've-got-company!" nights. Serve it with rice and a nice vegetable for a Western style dish, or chapatti and a pilaf for an Indian meal. Hot and spicy, sour and sweet, what's not to like?
Coming up next, a chocolaty treat for V-Day. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori
Happy Thanksgiving week. For those of you eating at relatives.. I feel you, and watch your blood pressure! For those of you who are cooking at home, I salute you! I'm not going to be cooking this Thanksgiving as my parents decided that we're all going out to a restaurant this holiday. This is also the time of year when I'd be trawling the cooking magazines looking at friends' blogs, and perusing my cookbooks searching for something interesting to put on this very traditional table. Over the years I've come up with a lot of good stuff, so In the spirit of wishful cooking I thought I'd pass along some recipes that we've loved.
I held a drawing this morning to give one person a chance to trysomevegan palm shortening courtesy of the folks at Tropical Traditions . They were nice enough to let me sample their productwhich arrived just in time as I was doing some cooking for a friend who was on a medically enforced vegan diet. Believe me, it really came in handy.
The winner drawn by random.org is Monique!
I really like this shortening and I hope you do too, I'll be sending our winner Monique an email and will get this shortening right out to her just in time for holiday baking. Thanks to everybody who entered and to those of you celebrating, have a great Thanksgiving week.
Coming up next..a dip in the cocktail pool and we go goat again. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori
I'm happy to Announce the Winners for my 2nd Blogiversary Giveaway.
1st prize to Asan Khana of Not Yet 100
You'll be receiving a copy of one of my personal all time favorite cookbooks : Mangos and Curry Leaves from @WorkmanPub
Thanks to everyone who participated, and thanks to Workman Publishing and Tropical Traditions for their generous donations of prizes!
If the winners will send me an email with their names and info, I'll get their gifts right out to them.
We live in a virtual reality a great part of the time. We go by avatars and twitter names and who knows who we are really talking to, tweeting at or friending out there? We have whole existences within the confines of our laptops, our smart phones and or iPads, We may have laughed our asses off at all the doofuses who've devoted their lives to World of Warcrack but face it dude, we are living in the Matrix.
So, if we are living in The Matrix, what happens when we unplug and step out into the "Real World"? What happens when people one only knows as "@bayareaglutton" "@endivechronicle" "@FoodAperture" and the ghost of the great Horror Producer "@billcastle" show up in a real place, at a real time for some very real food? I had to find out. I had to mess with the primal forces of the internet universe and bring these entities together. To do that, I needed bait. But what sort of bait?
Cypher: "I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."
Okay, so scratch the steak. I'd dangle a very very real Lamb Biryani and see what happened.
I knew I needed to cook a very, very special dinner with only the best ingredients, so I took myself off to my local organic paradise, Oak Hill Farm which is just down the road apiece and happens to be a little piece of heaven. Every time I shop there, all the thoughts I ever have of missing the convenience of late night spots in LA and being able to get the most exotic things whenever I want them easily, just fly out of my brain. If only all supermarkets looked like this.
I shopped for all I needed and then looked for something beautiful to grace the table. Wild dill and Amaranth seemed to fit the bill and really looked great when I got them home.
I I carried all my stuff home and started cooking. But as I cooked, I wondered what would these people be like outside the limitations of 140 characters? We do a lot of entertaining around here and most of the time when we have a party, someone at least knows one other person who's attending. Yesterday was different. This was going to be a flashmob of an event with @endivechronicle (Erin) and @FoodAperture (Phil) writer and photographer from Mutineer Magazine.
Our friends Tom and Terry drove up from Marin County...
...and of course the guy who's tweets teasing me about goat meat started this whole thing off, Foodbuzzs' own BayAreaGlutton and his son the charming Oliver.
When one invites a pack of virtual strangers into the real world, it's a total crap shoot as to how they're going to get along; anyone one of us might have turned out to be a crazed serial killer. I withdrew into the kitchen and left our guests and Alan out on the deck with wines and a bowl of boondi chaat.
When I went out to call everyone in to eat, to my delight they were all enjoying themselves. Seven people who had never met each other before, getting along great. Who says we can't have world peace? All we need is a little bit of Biryani...
...a spinach and corn dish and some mango salad,
Eggplants with peanuts and coconut,
And wines galore...
...made everybody happy.
And who doesn't like cookies and ice cream?
And the primo caramels that BayAreaGlutton brought along.
And a few Leggos didn't hurt.
Did it work? You betcha! Out of the ether of virtual personalities, real people (and one ghost) emerged. It was one of those classically great days with friends, that went on into the evening, and it was amazing that people who had never met before that afternoon got along as though they had known each other for years.
If you haven't tried one of these virtual/real meetups it's worth thinking about. Life is short, the internet is vast and there are so many great people out there that we only "know" virtually, it's worth it to bring some of them into ones' real world.
Meanwhile I'm celebrating my 2nd Blogiversary (yes, that is a weird word) this month, and I've decided to celebrate it with some great gifts from the very generous people at Workman Press, and Tropical Traditions.
I'm giving away 2 great gifts: The first is a Copy of the fabulous cookbook Mangos and Curry Leaves
The other prize I have is Organic Coconut Water Vinegar from the nice people at Tropical Traditions. This vinegar is great and what can I say, a must have for old skool Indian cooking!
So how do you get this stuff???? Here's what to do? 1.) Follow @WorkmanPub and @Troptraditions on Twitter 2.) Follow @kathygori on Twitter or follow my blog The Colors Of Indian Cooking 3.) Tweet about the sponsor and my giveaway or mention it on your blog 4.) Let me know you've done so
The drawing is going to be conducted on Random.org. It starts today July 1st and ends on July 14th. Thanks again to everyone who helps make this blog possible, especially my husband Alan Berger for his great photographs.
Coming up next, I go Gluten Free with an answer to the regular wheat chapatti. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori
Well, it's that time of year again. Actually if you want to be technical, it's waaay past that time of year. I missed my blogiversary. Yes, I did. And I thought I loved me too. I thought I cared. That's what I get for all the sweating over hot clay pots, and cooking and dicing, and chopping and peeling. That's all the thanks get. I forget??!! My own blogiversary??? I should make myself sleep on the sofa in the guest room for a few days. Then I should come crawling back to myself with one of those dressed up teddy bears, flowers, chocolates and lingerie. I'd like to come up with some great excuses. I was shopping for goat and I got really caught up in all the glamour????? The dog ate my clay pots? Alas, I have none. I screwed up. I lost track of time. I forgot. So here I am two weeks late to the party but at least I haven't come empty handed. I come bearing prizes!
I can't tell you how much fun this blog is for me. As someone who spends her life writing for a living, if anyone had told me that after working on a script all day I'd love to just sit down and write about the big mess I made in the kitchen earlier that day, I would have thought they were nuts. When I'm done writing comedy for the day, I want to sit down, put my feet up and watch some dark, depressing Icelandic cop movie. Something about a guy eating a sheep's head for dinner every day, (Jar City) and not just your ordinary sheep's head... this is Iceland, they have take-out sheep's head.
Or maybe I'm, in the mood for a good old fashioned down home cat-fight with the Real Housewives of Wherever. But writing for fun?? Hey, I'm a pro. Do movers like to schlep pianos around after hours for the hell of it? Yeah, you see what I mean? But something happened when I started writing this blog. It went from something that I did to augment the podcasts I was doing for "A Million Cooks," to a big big part of my life.
Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love what I do for a living and count myself lucky in the extreme that I have been able to earn my living as a screenwriter. But screenwriting is only one part of the process. There are directors and studio execs and actors and producers and agents, so it's collaborative in the extreme. Hey, you've seen "Entourage," you get it. The cooking however, is all me. I am the auteur of my kitchen. There is no one telling me "make the cilantro sexier", or "the beets wouldn't really do that in real life, would they? " or "the goat needs an arc. " Well, maybe the goat might.
An actor cannot leave my vindaloo on a plane and I have to get him a fresh pot. No director insists his girlfriend come and chop mangos with me while I'm trying to make chutney. I am the queen of my kitchen, I am the master of my domain.
I so appreciate all the friends I've made while doing this blog, and look forward to actually getting together with some of you one of these days at some of these blog events I'm always hearing about. I'm getting a pair of stilettos all ready since that seems to be required wear.
Anyway, I can't believe another year has passed, and to all who've helped "The Colors Of Indian Cooking" grow, thank you. I don't know where I'm going with this quite yet. But I'm serious about getting there. My friend Paula Wolfert has encouraged me to do a book, and since I'm a writer and I certainly have reams of material, that's something I'm working on.
But on to the prizes.
I have two prizes this year:
One of my favorite and much used source cook books is Mangos and Curry Leaves Culinary Travels Through The Great Subcontinent .
The good people at Workman Press have been generous enough to give me a copy to give away to one of you. I love this book and I know you will too. It is worth it's weight in gold and that's saying quite a lot 'cause this is a big book!
The other prize I have is a new discovery. Organic Coconut Water Vinegar from Tropical Traditions. I use their products in most of my cooking because when I cook, I cook old skool and I want the best most authentic flavor I can get.
They sent me a bottle of Coconut Water Vinegar (which I'd never heard of before) to test, and I tried it in my goat vindaloo. It turns out that coconut water is what is intended for use in the recipe, and the flavor it added was over the moon perfect. They have been kind enough to offer to share a bottle of this great vinegar with one of you.
So how do you get this stuff???? Here's what to do?
The drawing is going to be conducted on Random.org. It starts today July 1st and ends on July 14th. Thanks again to everyone who helps make this blog possible, especially my husband Alan Berger for his great photographs.
Coming up next I go #goaterie ..see what coconut water does to Goat Vindaloo! Follow along on Twitter @kathygori
