You say "potato," I say "potato"

As a run-up to Mmm...Canada, this week's posts will feature Canadian foods and food products. Today's post uses Yukon Gold potatoes.

I can't remember who included Lets Call The Whole Thing Off in his stand-up routine, but I still smile when I think of it. Instead of the usual "You say potato, I say potaeto/You say tomato, I say tomaeto," he sang "You say potato, I say potato/you say tomato, I say tomato"...tee hee...okay...maybe you had to be there.

I'm a bit of a potato freak. As someone who grew up with rice at every evening meal, I saw potatoes as something wonderful and special. I know there are others who see things exactly opposite to me and yawn at potatoes but are very pleased to see a little mound of rice on their plate. That's fine...you can have your rice, I'll have my potatoes, please.

Mashed, boiled, roasted, fried, baked, rosti...I love it all. And for me, Yukon gold is king. Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder for me to find my favourite potato in the bigscarymegamart or even the mediumscarymegamart. In fact, I'm finding it difficult to find varietals at all. It seems as if the store's (or maybe the potato marketing board, if there is a beast) marketers see fit to just call them white potatoes, red potatoes, or this newfangled "yellow flesh" potatoes.

On the weekend a friend asked about Yukon golds and the stock boy told him that yellow flesh are the same as Yukon gold and he had no idea why the name change.

My guess is they're going to be switching over to a cheaper, less harmoniously sounding spud so it's easier to call them by a generic name, but still charge YGP prices

Smarmketers. (Oh wait, was that me being snarky? Just a tad...it's been a day).

Anyway...

When I made the lamb curry I decided to forego the rice and make Aloo Gobi--a potato and cauliflower dish spiced with cumin and coriander. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cauliflower on hand. A quick check of the fridge proffered the last leaves of my Chinese cabbage, but not enough to substitute for the caulifower in my recipe....so used up the Chinese leaf and topped up on cauliflower.

The flavours and textures work well together--the potatoes are soft and yielding and the cauliflower has a bit of crunch and the cabbage...well...the cabbage is cabbagey. The dish itself is cumminy and slightly zingy from the pepper. Plus the turmeric tinges the potatoes and the cauliflower with happy. What more could you want?

I don't have a name for this dish...so for now I'm going to be more than a tad boring...and obvious. If you can come up with a better name, let me know...

Potatoes, Cabbage and Cauliflower
oil
¾ tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
½ onion, sliced

400g potatoes, in 1cm cubes and boiled until tender in salty water
2c julienned cabbage
2c cauliflower florets
1½ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp tumeric
¼ chilli pepper powder
1½ tsp salt

Putting it together

1. Heat oil over medium heat. Add mustard and cumin seeds and toast until the mustard seeds begin to pop (you might want to lid the pot...or you could just live dangerously...it's up to you). Add the onions and fry until golden and soft.


2. Add cauliflower and stiry for a few minutes--basically heat it through. Tip in the cabbage shreds and then the potatoes. Add the coriander, turmeric, chilli pepper and salt. Stir again and add a spoonful of water and give everything a good stir so that the potatoes and cauliflower take on the tumeric's yellow. Season to taste.

cheers!
jasmine

Time for a curry I'm happy with

As a run-up to Mmm...Canada,this week's posts will feature Canadian foods and food products. Today's post uses Ontario Lamb.

You know how sometimes...just sometimes...you eat a food that leaves you so unsatisfied that you know you have to make it yourself just to prove that there can be a good version of it...somewhere?

My most recent example of this was inspired by June's Milk Calendar Monday offering. Yes. I know, I know...in certain circles even mentioning that something doesn't taste good because it really doesn't have a passing resemblance to the food its supposed to be is a no-no, since it shrieks not only of an honest knowledge of that food, but also schmecks of foodish elitism.

But you know...sometimes a rendition is just plain, old...bad...and shouldn't be recommended or replicated. This is how I feel about a couple of recipes in this calendar (the "curry" and the jambalaya)

I've posted a couple of chicken curries on this blog...the mild vanilla kurma and my (dare I say successful) attempt at butter chicken. This time I wanted something different and--thanks to a great price reduction on a boned leg of lamb--I found it.

Normally I stick to chicken or veggie curries, so this one was a bit of a departure for me. My Dear Little Mummy's (whom I'm thinking of renaming My Dear Little Cardamummy) mutton curries are quite good, but she doesn't make them very often--they are dry (as opposed to swathed in gravy) coconutty and gingery. I wasn't really in the mood for that sort of curry, so I checked out a few recipes and came up with my own variant...it's part rogan josh, part something I can't remember and part something I saw on Meena's site.

Like all good curries I've had (and I'll add this to the list) this one does not come together in 30 minutes, nor is it constrained by a maximum number of ingredients, assisted greatly by a jar of pre-made stuff. It takes a certain amount of time, but I think for something like this, it's time well invested.

This is a saucy curry-chunks of tender lamb blanketed in a tomatoey gravy. There are little spikes of heat, thanks to the green chilli pepper and the ground chilli peppers and the ginger.

I served some to the same friend who tried the other "curry" and he much preferred it to the Dairy peoples' one ("I thought it was really good. It was what a lamb curry should be.")

Beforewarned: this is a first-time made and straight to the blog concoction, so it's bound to benefit from some tweaking...if you try it, please let me know...

Lamb Curry
750g lamb, cubed into 2.5 cm pieces
oil
6 green cardamom pods--seeds only, ground
4 whole cloves
10 whole peppercorns
1 5cm shard of cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1½ onions, sliced
3 Tbsp hot garlic and ginger paste, made of

• 1 Tbsp minced ginger


• 1 Tbsp minced garlic


• 1 green minced chilli pepper

375ml chopped tomatoes (tinned or fresh)
1½ Tbsp tomato paste
1 175g pot of plain yoghurt
125ml water

Masala--grind together the following and set aside:
1 tsp coriander seed
1 tsp cumin seed
1 Tbsp paprika
1 tsp chilli pepper powder
1½ tsp salt

Putting it together

1. Take about a spoon's worth of the masala and sprinkle it over the meat cubes. Let sit for at least an hour, or overnight.


2. Over a medium flame, heat the oil until it shimmers. Brown the meat in batches and remove to an awaiting dish.


3. Add the cardamom, cloves, peppercorns, cumin seeds, cinnamon shard and bay leaf to the oil; stir and fry until the spices' aromas begin to waft and the bay leaf changes colour. Add the onions and fry until soft and golden.


4. Add the garlic and chili paste. Stir for about a minute or so and then add the rest of the masala and fry while stirring for about a minute or so.


5. Tip in the meat and its juices, along with the tomatoes, paste and water. Stir well. Ad the yoghurt and stir. Increase the flame to medium-high and bring the pot to a boil. Turn down the heat, cover and let the pot simmer and blurble for about 45 minutes (stirring every once in a while), or until the meat is nice and tender.


6. Taste the gravy at about the 30 minute point to check for seasoning. Adjust to your palate.


7. Remove the lid, give it a good stir and turn up the flame to medium. Stir constantly while allowing the gravy to reduce so it's thick, velvety and wants to cling to each piece of meat.

Note:

• Don't trim all the fat off the meat. It adds flavour, and well...flavour.

cheers!
jasmine

Mmm...Canada: Spiced blueberry-maple syrup

This week you'll hopefully notice that things seem to be a little more Canadian in the foodblogging world. Jennifer of the Domestic Goddess and I are hosting sister events, celebrating our home and native land, under the theme of Mmm...Canada.

Earlier this month Jennifer and I issued a challenge to the foodblogging (and foodblog reading) world. We want to know what Canada tastes like to you. She's interested in all things sweet and I'm interested in the savoury side of life .

For me, savoury or sweet, Canadian food draws upon a mixture of indigenous and introduced foods. And I think this makes sense, given our national history. Settlers and immigrants came here to start new lives, but at the same time wanted to maintain their own cultural identities. Wave after wave came, bringing their own seed and livestock, building upon this land's foods. Some introduced flavours have been here for centuries, while others for only a few years.

With every group of settlers--whether they arrived in the 17th century or the 21st, adaptation was was important. Apart from the weather (-30C in winter and +40C in summer) and eventual cultural, social and political changes, they also needed to find ways of eating that reminded them of distant family and friends with ingredients that were available here.

To be honest, when I first thought of Canadian confections, I thought of two things: maple syrup and wild berries. I know it's a bit cliché on a couple of fronts. Maple syrup because, well, it's maple: we produce 85 per cent of the world's maple syrup and the leaf is on our flag. Wild berries, because they are directly linked to our forests and untamed areas, homesteaders, bears and all that.

Sigh...you'd think I'd do better than that, wouldn't you? I mean, Canadian sweets are plentiful--butter tarts, Nanaimo bars, sugar pie, fruit pies, anything appley, ice cream (I can go on and on)--to immediately leap to two obvious ingredients was a little...anticlimactic.

But not.

To paraphrase the late, great James Barber, aka The Urban Peasant and a favoured Canadian cook: "You do the best with what you've got."

How perfect a food theory is that? And how à propos to apply it to Canadian cuisine--I mean it's what we've been doing for years, is it not?

My entry for Mmm...Canada: The Sugar High Edition is my spiced blueberry-maple syrup.

It's a simple twist on two very Canadian ingredients (Elmira purveyed the syrup and the blueberries were harvested last summer from Sudbury, Ontario). Add to that the ubiquitous, familiar and exotic cinnamon and black pepper, and we've got a meeting of East and West, indigenous and imported and sweet and spicy...

Yeah, I think this sweet says Canada to me...

This is one of those bits of instinctive cooking that really doesn't call for precise measurements.

Spiced blueberry-maple syrup
Maple syrup
Blueberries (fresh or frozen)
Cinnamon
Black pepper (optional)

Add all to a sauce pan and bring to a boil while stirring. Lower the flame and let as much of the liquid boil off, leaving as thick a syrup as you wish. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Pour it over buttery pancakes (as shown), over ice cream, fruit fritters...whatever you want.

Check back to Jennifer's site for SHF 44's round up on Canada Day (1 July 2008).


cheers!
jasmine