Chana Masala

Everyone who needs to eat food to stay alive should know about Smitten Kitchen. Smittenkitchen.com, a home cooking blog written by a quick-witted New York mother of one, not only has recipes that actually sound appetizing and fun to make, but photos that will make you drool all over your desk when you’re visiting her blog during your lunch break at work. Not that I… do that…on a daily basis…

Anyway, I stumbled across this delicious looking dish on her blog last week, and the image of this Indian chickpea tomato stew has been seared into my brain ever since. Today, I decided to give it a try.

The Recipe

Chana Masala, smittenkitchen.com

Apprehension Meter

The meter sat around the medium mark for this recipe- mostly responding to some of the ingredients, rather than any special techniques or equipment. In that department, the recipe is very tame.

But let’s start with this laundry list of spices. Eight spices in one dish?! And what the heck is garam masala? Having to buy this many spices for one recipe is typically where I draw the line and move onto the next recipe.

After taking inventory, I found that I already had two or three of these spices in my pantry, which meant not needing to buy as many at the grocery store. Good. But, it still meant having to buy a bunch of new spices that a) I don’t really have room for in my itty, bitty cupboards, and b) I’d probably use once, and then not again for a long, long time. Bad.

Another ingredient that made me sweat a little was the “fresh, hot green chili pepper.” Within the pepper family, I have only ever cooked with bell peppers, and sometimes even that feels a little exotic. I’m not a huge fan of spicy foods, so when I saw that I’d have to buy a hot green chili pepper, my taste buds burned in anticipation- and not in a good way.

And finally, ginger. Doesn’t sound too scary, does it? Well, have you ever seen ginger? Sitting there all mangled and stumpy? I had seen it used a few times on various cooking shows, and knew that it needed peeling at some point, but that’s where my ginger knowledge ended.

Here’s How It Really Went

Preparing the ingredients for this recipe was pretty easy, and required no special skills or appliances. Everything went more or less according to the plan, with a few hiccups.

Let’s start with the ginger. Like I said, I had minimal instruction on how to deal with this guy. The recipe called for grated ginger. After using a sharp knife to slice off the “skin,” I went into the drawer to get the little cheese grater, and found that it was gone. Note: don’t try to cook a new dish that requires certain tools while your roommate is in the process of packing up her things to move to Michigan. Rookie mistake.

Mangled and stumpy... just how I like 'em.

Instead, I found a vegetable peeler, and tried to hack off little shavings of the ginger. This was frustrating and difficult, and I gave up before I reached the requisite 3 teaspoons. Having a grater would probably have made it easier, but even so, I still wouldn’t recommend using powered ginger (if they even make such a thing). The smell and taste of fresh ginger is really something, and I think is a key component to this dish.

You could say things got a "little dicey..." Yep, I said it.

The second challenge was the tomatoes.

The recipe calls for fresh or canned, and while I would almost always prefer fresh, I think in this case, canned might be better.

The fresh tomatoes basically disintegrated during the cooking process, leaving behind some seeds and skins. Canned tomatoes, I think, would have cooked down much more nicely. Their juice would have contributed well to the stew, and the tomatoes themselves would have broken down nicely, while still retaining some substance.

Onion, garlic, ginger, and little flecks of a green jalapeno pepper, smelling oh so good

And the final dilemma: again, forgetting that my roommate had already packed up her kitchen gadgets, I reached into the drawer for the can opener to open my chickpeas and… gone. And, unless you're MacGyver, finding a replacement tool for a can opener isn’t so easy. This required a pause in the cooking process, a quick run to the CVS down the street—which, luckily, sold can openers—and eight dollars and fifteen minutes later, I was back in action.

My newest kitchen gadget. :)

The final product? Colorful, a tad spicy, full of protein and fiber, but… would I make it again? Probably not in the near future. It was pretty fun to cook, with all of its exotic aromas, but I was disappointed that mine didn’t turn out as rich, thick, and flavorful looking as Smitten Kitchen’s. Either I’m not a very good cook, or she’s way too good at food photography.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Arugula and Hazelnuts

As Cathy of NotEatingOutInNY.com points out in her introduction to this recipe, these three ingredients are a little obscure. I agreed with her when she wrote that they probably aren’t things you eat very often: sweet potatoes mainly at Thanksgiving and Christmas, arugula thrown incognito into salads, and hazelnuts strictly in Milka chocolate bars (yes, please).

A friend and co-worker happened upon this recipe, which happened to be from one of my favorite food blogs, Not Eating Out in New York. After hearing her very positive review, it seemed like the perfect weekend project. Sweet potato gnocchi. Now that’s scary.

The Recipe

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Arugula and Hazelnuts from NotEatingOutInNY.com

Apprehension Meter

The meter reached a new peak with this recipe. The thought of trying to make any kind of noodle from scratch practically gives me hives, let alone making a noodle out of a potato. I went into this one almost certain that I would end up red-faced, swearing a little, and ordering pizza.

At least there were some easy ingredients to work with in this recipe, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have tried it. The three very basic ingredients in this recipe weren’t a bother. Sweet potatoes = easy. Arugula = easy (although I had never purchased any before making this dish). Hazelnuts = easy, but somewhat spendy.

Here’s How It Really Went

Oy. I didn’t end up red-faced and swearing, and I did finish the dish to completion, but let’s just say I did end up a little rosy-cheeked and distressed. This one was not easy. But I learned a few things that will hopefully help you and your novice cook friends out there.

First off, the recipe calls for one pound of sweet potatoes. I was surprised to learn, while weighing my produce at the grocery store, that this meant one large sweet potato. I had my doubts that one sweet potato would yield four servings of gnocchi. To my surprise, this big guy ended up certainly producing enough for three, maybe even four people.

I sliced the ends of the sweet potato to see its beautiful bright orange color, then plunked it in a pot of boiling water. Unfortunately, the recipe didn’t specify how long to boil the potato. ‘Until tender’ doesn’t mean much to a novice.

I found, doing a little pre-research, that it usually takes about 30 minutes for a boiled sweet potato to become tender. After plunking my little orange friend into the water, I set the timer for 30 minutes. After about 20 minutes had elapsed, I poked it with a fork and found that its skin was easily pierced. How easy! And it even took less time than I had read!

I plucked the potato out of the boiling water with a pair of tongs, peeled it using the tongs (it’s true- the skin does practically slide right off), and slid my knife through the middle, only to be met with a very solid, un-soft, un-cooked inside. Rats.

Unhappily, I added more water to the pot (some had evaporated during the first try), and watched the orange little bits that had fallen off the potato swirl around as the water re-heated into a boil. In went the semi-cooked sweet potato. For nearly 20 more minutes.

By this point, my cheeks were rosy, my living room windows were steaming up, and the whole apartment smelled slightly of baby food.

After pacing impatiently from the kitchen to the living room for 20 minutes (the Oscars were on), I re-plucked the potato from the water, and placed it in a glass bowl, to be mashed with a fork.

Now, the recipe specifically says not to do this, but I didn’t really have another option. In place of a food mill (I wish I knew what that was), the recipe says to press the potato through a strainer with a spatula. My strainer has large sporadic holes, not fine wire mesh, so that wasn’t really an option.

After mashing the potato, I threw in about a ½ cup of flour, which I folded into what was now turning into orange dough.

Another bump in the road: the recipe called for 1 cup of flour. I’m not sure where or how I went wrong, but I ended up using at least two cups just to get the dough to the point where I could form it into balls, then roll it into little logs without it sticking to my hands and everything else. This turned out to be okay. Be liberal with the flour- I found that, for me, it didn’t affect the consistency of the gnocchi a great deal.

The first gratifying moment of this recipe came once I sliced the logs into little bit-sized pieces, and scored them with a fork. They were actually starting to look like gnocchi.

Into another pot of boiling water they went, in two batches, and it was smooth sailing from there on out.

The arugula practically wilted itself, and the hazelnuts were easy to chop.

Once both batches of the gnocchi had been cooked and the arugula was sufficiently wilted, I added the gnocchi to the arugula pan, and sprinkled on the hazelnuts.

And the final product? Not much to look at, but it ended up tasting pretty good. But, I’m not sure the final result was worth the headache of making it all. I’ll probably try to make gnocchi again someday, and it’ll probably go much smoother the second time around, but for the novices: I would suggest saving this recipe for an evening when you want to get your hands dirty and feel particularly challenged, with only a moderate (albeit healthy) pay-off.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Glaze

I’ve been on a baking kick lately. Meaning, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. And until this post, I hadn’t actually done any of it since the Monkey Bread Minis.

Baking kind of turns me off. I don’t think I’m enough of a perfectionist to be a baker. As Ms. Abigail Johnson Dodge points out in her book The Weekend Baker, there are lots and lots and lots of finicky rules that “must” be followed. For example, did you know that measuring a dry ingredient, such as flour, with a measuring cup doesn’t actually work? In order to be exactly accurate, you must weigh the ingredients. If you must use a measuring cup, you should never dare dip your measuring cup into the bag of flour. You should always scoop the flour into the measuring cup with a… I don’t know…a special spoon…and then level it off with a knife. And this will only be somewhat accurate if you are using plain stainless steel measuring cups.

Jeez. Talk about intimidation. I don’t have a kitchen scale, nor do I intend on buying one. I don’t have stainless steel measuring cups; I have perfectly good little yellow ones (though I don’t know what they’re made out of). But in the spirit of this blog, I wasn’t going to let that stop me. That, and I was using cake mix from a box.

The Recipe

Chocolate Cupcakes- The recipe for the cupcakes themselves can be found on the back of the Pillsbury “Devil’s Food” cake box. Give me a break- it was a Wednesday night.

Vanilla Icing- This recipe was hidden in a post from Bakerella on Bourbon Sweet Potato Cupcakes. Yum. (Scroll down almost to the bottom of this link for the recipe.)

Apprehension Meter

The meter was reading at a medium-high to high earlier in the day at work, when I was feeling overly ambitious and was considering making homemade fondant to top my cupcakes. The cupcakes didn’t scare me (considering they’re from a box…), but the idea of making fondant really made me nervous. Fondant has a reputation for looking so pretty and perfect draped over cakes and placed neatly onto cupcakes, but that means a greater risk of completely screwing it up.

The meter sank back down to a medium-low once I admitted to myself that a Wednesday night was no time to take on such an endeavor. Vanilla glaze it would be.

Here’s How It Really Went

The boxed cupcakes, well, you know how those go. But the vanilla glaze? So easy! With only four ingredients that basically all get mixed together at once (aside from the milk), it has to be.

A small mountain of Pillsbury chocolate cake mix

Baking the cupcakes took a little longer than I had initially planned. The box made 24 cupcakes, with each batch taking about 18 minutes to bake. I only had one muffin tin, so the baking alone took almost 40 minutes, not factoring in the time to mix together all of the ingredients.

YUM

Feel free to lick everything covered in chocolate when you're done.

After combining the dry and wet ingredients and mixing on medium speed, I dollop-ed ice cream scoop-sized dollops into the lined muffin tin. Using an ice cream scooper sans the little clicky handle thing kind of defeats the purpose of using one, I discovered, but at least you get uniform amounts of batter in each muffin cup.

Once each cup was filled 2/3 of the way with batter, I smoothed each of them down with the backside of a spoon, to hopefully eliminate any weird bumps or abnormalities as they baked.

Crucial information! Never, ever, under any circumstances, open the oven door once your cakes are in there. I learned from Ms. Dodge’s book that opening the oven door can lower the oven temperature up to 50˚! She says that if you must check, check toward the very end of the baking time. This was especially tough for me, as my oven doesn’t have a window to spy through. It’s an exercise in self-restraint.

My goal was smooth cupcakes.

And they turned out… smooth enough.

While letting the little cakes cool, I started to whip up the glaze. The first three ingredients went in all at once, with the milk being added little by little. One thing Bakerella didn’t specify was how to “mix” the ingredients. Did this mean use a hand-held mixer? A whisk? A fork? I wasn’t sure, so I went with a fork, and it was perfect. A whisk would probably also get the job done.

Looking at the two cups of confectioner’s sugar sitting in the bowl, I certainly thought I’d be adding more than four tablespoons of milk to make this stuff turn into a glaze. But you know, four tablespoons turned out to be perfect. A little goes a long way, in this case.

Then came time for the dipping. I transferred the glaze into a smaller, deeper bowl in order to be able to fully submerse the tops of the cupcakes. (Don’t feel bad if you drop one or more cupcake(s) into the bowl- I did.)

One coat created a somewhat see-through glaze. It was kind of neat looking, but I wanted a little fuller coverage. I waited about ten minutes for the first coat to dry a little, then re-dipped. Two coats seemed to do the trick.

One coat

Two lovely, drippy coats

What’s great about these cupcakes and especially the glaze, is that non-professional, non-perfectionist, non-bakers can bake these, and they come out looking, well, imperfect. Just the way they should.

The icing dripping down the sides of the muffin cup, and the bizarre topography of the cupcake top showing through the glaze make them look homemade, and therefore, delicious.

Monkey Bread Minis

Sounds cute, doesn’t it? In fact, it sounds downright adorable. For those who don’t know, monkey bread is the distant cousin of the cinnamon roll. Or at least they look alike. Think sweet dough, caramely brown sugar, melted butter, and cinnamon, all baked into a delicious, pull-apart treat.

Upon seeing a full-blown monkey bread recipe on smittenkitchen.com, I was reminded of a similar (and easier-looking) recipe I clipped from an old Rachael Ray magazine in 2008, but had never made—the story of my life, until this blog came around.

The Recipe

Monkey Bread Minis, from Everyday with Rachael Ray, September 2008 (can also be found on her website)

Apprehension Meter

The meter reads at medium-high for this recipe. Before using my food processor for the first time last week, the meter would have been at high, because this recipe requires the use of one. Now I practically feel like a pro.

With my food processor-fears vanquished, the real reason it took me almost two years to try this recipe was that it had “bread” in the title. All I know about making bread is that it involves yeast, time, letting things rise, and punching dough. Needless to say, I’m not quite there yet.

This recipe didn’t require most of those components, and while it still involved “lightly floured surfaces” and pulsing dough until “course crumbs form” (what’s a course crumb?), it seemed like a reasonable introduction to homemade bread and bread-like things.

The final deterrent was one of the ingredients: pure maple syrup. Did you know that brands like Eggo actually contain no real maple syrup? Check the label the next time you are at the grocery store- you’ll find high fructose corn syrup at the beginning of the ingredients list. And that’s why it’s small fraction of the price of pure maple syrup. The cheapest bottle I could find at Whole Foods was about nine dollars. That kind of hurt.

Here’s How It Really Went

Today I had a little helper—my boyfriend—which made for a fun and interesting experience. Like me, he’s also a novice in the kitchen (slightly more so—he makes me feel like Julia Child), so we stumbled through the recipe together.

Good job, bf.

I have to give kudos to Ms. Ray in that this recipe was very simple to follow, and didn’t require reading it though seven times. The bf prepared the maple syrup/butter concoction, while I put together the sweet mixture of sugary powders (here we have granulated sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon).

Next was on to the food processor. After pulsing like a pro to mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking power, and some sugar and salt), it was time to figure out how to create those course crumbs.

Dry ingredients, pre-processing

Post-processing, pre-course crumbs

After adding the butter, and pulsing for about three seconds, four to five times, I ran my fingers through the mixture and decided that what I felt were course crumbs. Basically, the mixture didn’t have any visible butter chunks, but I did feel some little clumps (about the size of a pea or smaller) throughout the dough. Also, remember to remove the blade before running your fingers through the dough. Like a true novice, I didn’t.

Into the processor went the not-so-delicious smelling buttermilk, added to the mixture and pulsed until…dough! It was that easy. Nothing had to rise, and I didn’t have to punch anything, and I had just made my first dough!

The “lightly floured surface” I chose to use was my cookie sheet, set over my stove, due to lack of counter space.

This stuff gets sticky- be prepared to flour your hands a little, too, in addition to your surface.

I cut the flattened dough into 64 little squares, though I did have to combine a few of the too-small-squares when it came time to roll them into balls. I used a regular kitchen knife, but now that I think of it, a pizza cutter would make a lot of sense here.

Then came the really fun part. Dough turns into ball, ball takes a syrup/butter bath, gets tossed around in a delicious cinnamon/sugar mixture, then into the muffin cup it goes. In hindsight, I would have not coated them so much in the cinnamon/sugar mixture. They ended up a little on the sugary side. I would have liked to have tasted more of the dough, butter, and maple syrup.

Yum- can I eat this raw, right now?

Alas, they still turned out quite well. Plus- look at them. They’re kind of novel. I found them to be a little more fun to make than to eat, but the bf and some other friends seemed to enjoy them quite a bit.

Plus, it’s a great and non-scary way to enter into the world of homemade dough. Its probably the easiest dough you’ll ever make.

Coming next on She Tries Cooking… homemade pizza dough?