Aloo Paratha (Potato Stuffed Flatbreads)

I took an Indian bread making class at a local community center about a year and a half ago. My friend Amina talked me into taking the class with her and I agreed mainly because I wanted to learn how to make naan. We did not learn how to make naan. The woman teaching the class was great - she was preparing chai for us as we walked in, and she showed us how to make a chickpea curry so we'd have something to eat with all the bread we were making. Unfortunately for me, she started the class by saying, "I bet you're all here to learn how to make naan. We're not going to make naan." She says non-commercial ovens can't get hot enough to cook the naan properly and that it's not worth trying at home because it will never be as good as you get in a restaurant. Bummer. 

But the breads we did make were delicious. Roti, paratha stuffed with a spicy potato filling, deep-fried poori - they were all so delicious we almost didn't need the chickpea curry. Almost. That was really good, too! I came home with no leftovers for Matt, and to make up for it, I promised him I'd recreate some of the magic at home. Lucky for us, there are two Indian grocery stores within a half a mile of our place so I was easily able to pick up the Indian whole wheat flour that my teacher insisted was necessary, as well as some of the harder to find spices I'd need. 

I told Matt I'd make him Aloo Paratha - potato stuffed flat bread. It's a simple dough, rolled thin with a spicy potato stuffing and pan-fried on a hot griddle. It seemed so easy when my teacher did it - she rolled the dough into perfectly round circles, stuffed it, and was somehow able to roll it paper thin again without the stuffing poking out. And, under her tutelage, I was able to do it, too, while I was there. I haven't had as much success at home. I'm doing something wrong, but I'm not sure what. I think it might be the 30+ years of experience making these that my teacher has on me. Mine are still good, they just look less attractive. I think I'm getting better, though. I've made them a number of times since my class, and I think they're getting better. 

The Indian whole wheat flour is different from American whole wheat flour - it's a much finer grind, almost powdery, and it makes a softer dough. It's mixed with oil and water - almost too much water, you want the dough to be very soft - and left to rest for a while. The stuffing is mashed potatoes mixed with minced onion, a jalapeño, some spices, cilantro, and lime juice. I'm thinking next time I'll grate the onion to help it mix into the filling a little better. My teacher was adamant that we use Indian chili powder, not the American kind. The Indian kind is just powdered red chile peppers, with none of the additives in chili powder. It definitely has more of a kick, so be careful how you use it! For my money, the lime juice is what makes the stuffing. Yum! 

So you roll the dough into little circles, put a bit of stuffing in the center, and seal up the edges and roll it thin again. Without tearing the dough so the stuffing comes through. Somehow. The breads are fried on a hot skillet or griddle using a generous amount of ghee (clarified butter). I've never actually used the ghee at home, I just use vegetable oil. My teacher said that was an acceptable substitute, and that means I don't have to worry about the jar of ghee going bad before I can use it all. 

The only downside to these is that it's kind of a labor of love to make them. I suppose you could make the stuffing ahead of time, but the real time sucker here is rolling all the breads out individually and then cooking them individually. I keep the cooked ones in a warm oven until they're all done. And if you want, you can skip the stuffing and just cook the dough as is (that's what roti is). 

Garden Party!

Every year we start a garden, and every year it gets slightly better. Don't let that fool you - I am far from being good at gardening. But the garden is progressing. It started out in the little patch of dirt in front of our place, but it's really shady there thanks to the neighbor's beautiful dogwood tree so the garden didn't really do much. Nothing died, but nothing really grew either. Last year we set up a container garden on our deck since we get the most sun there. That worked better, and the zucchini plants grew really well and flowered constantly, but alas, no actual zucchinis grew. I learned a lot about zucchini flowers last summer - there are male flowers and female flowers and you need both to make a zucchini. My plants had only one kind of flower (I think they were male) and so nothing ever grew. They looked good, though, until they got hit by some kind of zucchini fungus and died really quickly. 

The seeds of our future harvest

Cookie Quest - Chess Pie Cookies

I've been trying to organize all my recipes lately - seemingly an insurmountable task - and in going through all of them, I found this one from my mom that I hadn't made in a long time. And that's the beauty of recipe organizing - we've been trying a lot of new recipes lately, some good, some not so good. This one isn't a new one, per se, since I can remember my mom making it when I was a kid, but it's definitely new to Matt.

Looks like the cookie monster's been here.

Part of the inspiration for making these cookies came from paging through a copy of The White House Cookbook by Janet Halliday Ervin that was given to me by my mother-in-law. This cookbook was published in 1964 and includes the entire text of the original White House Cookbook written in 1887 by Mrs. Fanny Gillette and Mr. Hugo Ziemann (then White House steward). The 1964 version contains not only the un-updated original text, it also contains a section on each of the First Ladies and a few recipes that they liked to serve during their time in office, ending with Lady Bird Johnson. This part was particularly interesting to me, both in terms of learning about the former First Ladies and because it put a lot of recipes into context. It was interesting to watch how the American palate evolved (at least through the '60s) and to see the strong British and French influences that remain. There are a lot of recipes that I want to try, including one for Maids of Honor, a treat that Matt and I tried for the first time during our visit to London over the summer. One of the last recipes in the book is for Chess Pie from the LBJ White House.

1 cup chopped pecans, ready to go

There is a note below the recipe stating that it is an old recipe, and inviting the reader to compare it to an even older recipe for Chess Cake dating to 1879. Chess pie is a Southern specialty - apparently originally from England - that seems to me to be pretty similar to the sugar pie of French Canada (except I think that one has cream in it). Lady Bird Johnson's recipe is: Mix 2 cups sugar with 1 heaping Tbsp flour, and add to 1/2 pound butter. Blend until light and fluffy. Add 4 eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add 1/2 tsp vanilla and pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake in 300 degree oven until knife inserted comes out clean - about one hour. (The White House Cookbook p. 488). The older recipe is similar, but uses six egg yolks and no flour and calls for adding "some pretty jelly into the center" of the pie (p. 489). When I first read the older one, I wasn't sure why it's called Chess Cake. Bill Neal, Chapel Hill chef extraordinaire, can answer that question. His version of Chess Pie is slightly different than Lady Bird's - his is flavored with lemon rather than vanilla. What's interesting, though, is his note before the recipe: "In Tennessee, as many as six or seven of these pies, baked and cooled, are stacked on each other and sliced as a cake" (Southern Cooking p.191). The White House version said nothing about stacking them, but the recipe did imply that more than one was being made at a time, and maybe everyone just knew that you were supposed to stack them into a cake. I can't even imagine eating a slice of that cake - it must be super rich.

Ready to go in the oven!

Anyway, bringing this all back together, when I saw Lady Bird's Chess Pie recipe, I remembered that I had recently seen the Chess Pie cookies recipe from my mom, and decided to make those. Matt had never heard of chess pie in any form, but was sold on the cookies. The cookie recipe comes from the mother of a friend of mine from elementary school, and is a less egg-y version of the filling of a chess pie with some pecans thrown in. They're actually pretty similar to blondies - in fact, they're basically identical to my blondie recipe with only slightly less flour. The main difference, of course, is that chess pie cookies have chopped pecans in them while the blondies have chocolate chips. "That's a completely different thing," Matt says. Like the blondies, they are easy to make and very delicious. And also like the blondies, I feel a little silly that I haven't made these very often.

Chess Pie Cookies
From Mrs. Hackney

1/2 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13x9 pan and set aside. Melt butter over low heat, add brown sugar. Remove from heat, and stir in eggs, one at a time. Add in vanilla. Mix flour with baking powder and salt. Stir into brown sugar mixture and combine well. Add nuts. Spread into prepared pan and bake 20-25 minutes or til browned. Let cool before cutting into bars.

Cookie Quest - Raisinless Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I have a killer Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe from my mom. I don't know where she got it, but I do know that it's a recipe for deliciousness. I've altered them endlessly over the years - subbing out the raisins in favor of various dried fruits, nuts, and chocolate - always with success. I'm now married to a man who does not like raisins (or any other dried fruit), so when I decided to make these cookies the other day I knew I'd have to switch it up. Also, I'm out of raisins and I was determined to make cookies with only ingredients I already had on hand.

Bet you wish you were here now.

Kind of a Bust - Roasted Garlic and Butternut Squash Cassoulet

I'll start this by saying that not everything can knock your socks off. If everything is fantastic, then nothing is, so I guess it's important to have something pretty average every now and then to remind yourself what a truly delicious dish tastes like. Right??

Bean and squash cassoulet

Oatmeal Batter Bread

My mom sent me a whole bunch of batter bread recipes this week - thanks, Mom! Batter breads are kind of a cross between a quick bread and a yeast bread - they use yeast, but they come together really quickly, require no kneading, and usually only have one short rise rather than the standard two. So they're pretty easy, and relatively quick to make. I made a dill one a few weeks ago from James Beard's Beard on Bread, and it was delicious. But that's neither here nor there. The selection of recipes that Mom sent had four recipes, including one for a beer bread that is essentially just beer and flour. I was torn between making that one and the one that I ended up making, but decided to go the oatmeal route since I am planning on using the bread for my lunch this week and beer bread seems like it would be a better soup bread than lunch bread. Anyway.

Oatmeal bread - yum!

Pretzel Rolls - a test drive

It seems like pretzel bread is everywhere these days - maybe it was always there and I never noticed, but I'm noticing a lot more pretzel-based foods lately. Not that that's a bad thing. A good soft pretzel is pretty amazing. So here I am, part of the pretzel bread craze due to my husband, who is from the Philadelphia area. Apparently, Philly is known for its pretzels. This was news to me when we started dating, and now I've just accepted it. A Philly pretzel seems to me to be just a soft pretzel in a squished pretzel shape, and not unlike the Katie's pretzels I ate through high school. One of the great uses of the Philly pretzel, I'm told, is to make pretzel dogs. And so we are. Or at least, we will be.

Philly pretzels (from nj.com)