Now THAT'S a strange thing...

  

  
I got this terribly poorly edited Indian cookbook, which had a picture of this gorgeous looking dessert in it. Probably the picture had something to do with my buying the damn book, I've had mixed experiences with it so far. I finally made this recipe, and it is even more bizarre than I had hoped.

There's a fairly normal layer of whipped cream on top, but the red stuff underneath is mighty strange. It's made with basil seeds. They aren't naturaly that color, that's just food coloring, which looks better than their natural cloudy brownish gray.

Put 1 cup of water and 2 tablespoons of sugar in a small sauce pan and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and add 1 teaspoon of basil seeds, a drop of food coloring, and 1/2 teaspoon of orange extract. Remove from heat and admire the swelling of the seeds. Chill, and top with a bit of whipped cream.

Basil seed are really neat, because they have a large amount of water soluble fiber in their husks. That's the stuff that food nutrition labels call 'dietary fiber', I think. In any case, when you put them in water, they instantly start to expand by an order of magnitude. You can actually see them swelling up. The seeds start out black and shiny, and as soon as they hit the water they develop a pearly gray coating that expands and becomes more gelatinous and transparent over the next half hour or so. If you've ever seen chia seeds in the natural foods section of the grocery store, those will do exactly the same thing. You can buy Kombucha with chia floating around in it, it looks polkadotted. Or like a bottle of tiny frog eggs.

But what on earth do they taste like?!?

Not much, to tell the truth. If you chew the seeds, they have a very faintly grassy flavor. It's more about texture. If you like those tapioca things in bubble tea you might enjoy this, but you might not. If you bite tapioca, it's all jelly. These seeds have a little crunchy middle. It's quite distinctive. You notice this is a very small recipe- I don't think anybody will want to eat more than a few spoonfuls of it. It would make some really badass Halloween shots with a kick of tequila, but that's about the only reason I can think of to do it again.

More things to do with dough

  

  
A very long time ago, I posted a recipe for spinach lentil curry. It's one of my staples in cooler weather, but I wanted something a little different to go with it. I also love naan, but buying anything made out of bread these days seems like an extraordinary expense. These aren't authentic naan, but they're pretty good.

Naan procedure:

Use the pizza dough recipe from the last post, but swap in about 25% whole wheat flour.

Knead and rest the dough the same way, and when you're ready to use it, pull it out of the fridge and deflate it. Put a little oil on your hands to keep the dough from sticking to you, and tear off pieces of dough about twice the size of a ping pong ball. Stretch them out until they are about the size of your palm, then set them aside to rest for bit.

Meanwhile, heat a heavy skillet to medium low. I use a cast iron pan. You don't need to oil the pan, but you do need a lid for it.

Once the pan is hot, put a bit more oil on the dough bits and pat them out until they are about 1/4" thick, then lay them in the pan. My skillet is just about big enough to cook 2 at a time. Cover the pan and let the naan cook for 3 minutes, turn them over, and cook them another 3 minutes. That's it!

As usual, there are some things I think are important to pay attention to.

1. The pizza /baguette dough formula calls for bread flour. This makes it chewy. Adding whole wheat makes it slightly less so, but traditionally naan is made with a lower protein flour. All purpose flour would probably be closer.
2. Also traditional is the use of copious amounts of butter, mostly for frying, but also I think there is some butter or oil in the dough itself. Again, this would tenderize the dough, if you wanted a more traditional end product.
3. Additional ingredients commonly used are nigella or cumin seeds, anise seed, or caraway seed, also fried onions and or potatoes are often mixed in. I didn't have any of those things on hand when I took a notion to make these.
4. The toasty bits are vitally important! If you don't have any little chewy crusty dark bits, it won't taste like naan.



So why did I decide to use this somewhat deviant recipe to make naan? Because of my desire to have a range of versatile, cheap, generic, ingredients that I can dress up a variety of ways. A wad of flour, water & yeast doesn't get much more basic, but already I've used it for French, Italian, and Indian cooking styles. I haven't made any steamed buns with it yet, but that's next on the list.

Simple Spinach Lentil Sludge

There was some kinda indian name for this recipe when I first read it online, I no longer remember where. The original recipe was awfully fiddly, calling for fresh spinach, boiling, draining, squeezing, mincing, toasting and grinding herbs, spices, peppers... plah. This is pretty much a two-step soup.



1 cup lentils. I recommend the tiny little red ones without the hulls, but a mix is ok. This time I was short on lentils and used 1/2 c red and 1/2 c green french.

1 1-lb bag frozen chopped spinach

2 cloves fresh garlic, crushed or minced
1 inch cube fresh grated ginger- note that you can sub dry for both of these in this recipe, you just have to adjust the amounts.

1 generous tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander- although this is one I do grind the seeds myself. There's this kinda lemony flavor in the whole seeds that evaporates off if it's stored ground. If you grind it yourself, use a scant teaspoon of whole seeds.

1/2 tsp ground mustard
1/2 tsp ground chai spices- if you don't have this, I use a combination of cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, powdered ginger, nutmeg and anise. Go easy on the anise, it's got a lot of punch.

1 tsp paprika
1 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
3 Tbsp butter
3 Tbsp olive oil


Rinse the lentils really well. Bring them to a boil in 2-3 cups of water. The amount isn't really critical. If you're using the red kind of lentil, they'll start to disintegrate almost instantly, and you can add the spinach and stir it up. Otherwise, wait about 5 minutes until they soften a good bit, then throw in the spinach.

Meanwhile, put all the other things in a little saucepan on medium heat, and simmer them together for about 5 minutes. Add the seasonings to the soup and simmer with a lid on until the lentils are totally disintegrated, or have reached a texture you're happy with. It does take 15 or 20 minutes for the flavors to blend well though. About 10 minutes before serving, add some salt. It takes a fair amount, lentils are powerfully bland, and you need to balance out the sweet spices. The finished texture is largely a matter of preference. If you want it soupy, add a little water. If you want it more like a pottage, leave the lid off to cook out more water.

This is really good to poach an egg in for breakfast. Or, if you don't have any paneer, a couple chunks of fresh mozz work well too, but they do get stringy.

You should have some tea, too.