Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Cauliflower Pepper Curry

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hello beautiful friends!

so sorry for being quite MIA in the past week. a fatal combination of house guests, laziness, and a renewed inspiration to make work had culminated in a bit of stagnation, cooking-wise.

but as a peace offering, i have the recipe from the cauliflower pepper curry that i made for the second time in a week. so take that as an endorsement; this stuff is good.

this recipe is a great illustration of one of my favorite food policies: "more pepper". (the others being, 'more mustard', and 'more garlic'.)



Cauliflower Pepper Curry

INGREDIENTS:
  • 1 tsp mustard seeds
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 8 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 can of coconut milk (14 oz)
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp peppercorns, crushed
  • 1 tablespoon curry leaves
  • 1 bunch spinach, chopped
  • 1 head cauliflower, chopped
  • 2 vine-ripened tomatoes, cubed

INSTRUCTIONS
  1. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add mustard seeds and cover, until the seeds have stopped popping. Add cumin seeds and cook until browned (1 min).
  2. Stir-fry cauliflower until lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and continue to cook for an additional one minute.
  3. Pour in coconut milk and scrape bottom of pan to release spice. Stir in salt, peppercorns, and curry leaves. Reduce and simmer for about 5-8 minutes, until cauliflower is tender.
  4. Add spinach, continue to simmer until cooked (about 5 minutes).
  5. Stir in tomatoes. Raise heat to medium-high, and boil uncovered for 3-5 minutes until tomato is warmed, and some of the cauliflower has broken down to thicken the sauce.
  6. Serve over basmati rice, if desired.


Bon appetit! Was a great, simple meal that could be left unattended for stretches of time. Perfect for listening to the State of the Union address and chipping away steadily at a cable-knit scarf that I have been working on since December.

There are a lot of things that I could say about my feelings (or lack thereof) on politics, and political leaders, and rhetoric, and public relations. Clearly, there are many things about our nation's shared situation that are less than ideal, and things about my own situation that are the same. In some ways, the last year has caused me to become a skeptic. Skeptical about things working out, about the seemingly inexorable slide of our country towards desperation, about things falling apart more than they come together.

As I made dinner tonight, I was a bit surprised to find that despite these precious feelings, I now have more gratitude than ever before. I no longer feel helpless. I no longer feel as if the things that happen to me are solely a result of unpredictable, inscrutable factors.

I could focus on the negative. I could grouse about tuition costs, about squeezing in hours at work at any given opportunity, about always rushing endlessly from place to place with burning calves and lungs. About millions of things, really. But the truth is, I don't. I'm recklessly, stupidly grateful to have a job, to have the opportunity to work and be paid in exchange, to have faith in my ability to do things well, in good friends and in a warm cat on my lap. I'm grateful for having the will and health to put in the effort to make food for myself, to experience the satisfaction in preparing it for subsequent consumption. In exercising a conscientiousness and a certain joy in converting raw ingredients into something worth having.

There are a lot of cliches that exist about the therapeutic effect of making food, about cooking to save yourself. I think I can buy into that to some degree, but it goes deeper than that. It's not just cooking that's saving myself. It's me. I'm saving myself. And small things, small things are saving me.

1 comment:

  1. that looks delicious. reading about your food adventures uplifts my soggy soul. good food or death!

    ReplyDelete