So Many Spices...

I wanted to use my pomegranate seeds. I've had an air-tight box of pomegranate seeds sitting in my cupboard for a few months now, waiting to be made into a delicious Indian meal, along with my mango powder. Unfortunately, Madhur Jaffrey doesn't have a single recipe in her "Indian Cooking" using pomegranate. Maybe one with mango (amchoor powder). Maybe.

So I googled, and then I went and bought green chilies and tomatoes. That and eggplant were all I needed to make chaat masala for masala puri, garam masala (because I used the last of my first garam masala to make the chaat masala) for baigan bhartha (my favourite eggplant dish ever, that kind of came out as a delicious mix between the best tomato sauce ever, bruschetta, and Indian ratatouille), mint chutney (because I had mint and what DOESN'T mint chutney go with? What it does go with is my first Sancerre bottle of white wine that I finally opened), and calamari curry (because it's the only affordable fish at that God-forsaken Poissonerie Atwater. I got the same woman again, the one I fought with about bellyfish, and she started off calling me "ma belle" again, and then remembered me. It went downhill from there...but she DID give me just the 1 1/2 lbs of squid I asked for. No tricks to get me to buy 2 lbs. Apparently even mean people can learn their lessons.

I would have bought these things at the Verdun Fermer's Market that I biked to today, but it wasn't open yet. Poor reporting in the Montreal Mirror, it seems. No, not really. They said it would be open in "June" so I can't really blame them. The article was really lovely.

Anyway, needless to say, I'm exhausted, and importing photos is time-consuming. So until then, use your imagination. Layers of chickpeas with home-made bread, tomatoes, cumin, nutmeg, turmeric, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, mango, pomegranate, asafoetida, fennel, star anise, ginger, garlic, chili powder, cayenne, salt, paprika, sugar, black pepper, and "curry" (oh, internet...curry is a spice blend, not a spice...though I suppose it could have meant curry leaves which are a real, single thing). This is the list of spices. Ridiculous, I know, and I didn't have to buy a single one of them. I left out lovage because it was optional, and used regular cumin when it called for black cumin seed once. All in all, a very efficient use of my spice cupboard, and oh, the flavour...pomegranate and mango are wonderful. My tongue is still spinning from the overload. The heat of the chilies! Mmm...just enough for me. 5 in total. A little bit of mango sorbet when I got over-heated from the hot liquid of the squid. Absolutely divine. 5 hours of cooking distraction from life. Can someone please pay me to do this?

"Will adjust chili heat for money"...or under duress.

Indian Spicy Green Beans (Masaledar Sem): Madhur Jaffrey's "Indian Cooking"

It's funny, I took all these pictures are at different points in the cooking process and they all look exactly the same...I don't know if that's good because the beans never got to the point where they looked over-cooked, or if that's bad because there's some freakish genetic modification made to the green bean plant to make it stay green even when North Americans over-cook it (or stew it, like what's called for in Indian dishes).

This is a good recipe for fresh green beans. When green beans are not so fresh and they taste chewy and waxy it's not so spectacular. Still, it's not bad, and it's very healthy, so if you're looking for a side dish of green with a non-creamy sauce, this is a good choice.
Normally I'd never make a side dish with this many ingredients. Vegetables should be relatively simple, but this one is mostly spices, so it's the blend of these spices that's important. So I took the extra time and did it perfectly. When I ate it I couldn't figure out how it was so hot. It tasted like there were five or so chili peppers in it, but there was only one. There was no cayenne powder, no flakes, and no fresh ones, so it took me a long time to come to the conclusion that a hunk of ginger is very spicy indeed.

The most time consuming part of this is actually chopping the ends off the beans. You then need to cut them into half-centimetre pieces. Do this and toss them in a bowl for when you need them. Then move along with your life/recipe.

1 1/2lbs green beans, cut as above
a "thumb-and-a-half"-sized piece of ginger (my words, not Jaffrey's), cut into a few pieces
10 cloves of garlic (so maybe this is kind of labour intensive too, but oh so very good for you. You won't even end up with garlic breath, don't worry)
1 cup water (Jaffrey says 1 1/2 cups but you just boil it away at the end and over-cook the beans in the process. So start with 1 cup and see if you need more)
2 tsp oil
2 tsp cumin seeds (plus 1 tsp roasted, crushed cumin seeds, like the corn and potato recipe)
1 dried red chili (a small one, not a big one like a poblano, a New Mexican, or any of those South American chilies)
2 tsp ground coriander (grind your own fresh if you can)
2 medium tomatoes, peeled and diced (if you don't peel them it hurts the texture but it may also make the flavour more bitter. I'm not 100% sure on that. I didn't care about the texture so I skipped the peeling step. If you want to peel them the simplest way is to stick them in boiling water on the stove for just a few minutes until their skin begins to break, like lacerations. Then remove them with a slotted spoon and plunge them into cold water, or place them in a colander and rinse with cold water until they're cool enough to handle. Do not drain the boiling water! The skins should peel easily through the lacerations. If they don't, stick them back into the boiling water another minute or so. If you drained the water, you're screwed, and have to wait for more water to boil. Waiting for water to boil is a horrible way to spend a life).
1 tsp salt (max)
3 tbsp lemon juice (I think this is too much, but it depends on your lemons, so taste and it and see for your yourself before you add all three tbsps)
freshly ground black pepper (optional)

A lot of Thai recipes call for you to do this to start: put the ginger and garlic in a blender and process to create a paste. Getting the paste out of the blender can be a trial if there's not enough water, so make sure you add 1/2 cup of the water and do it just before you heat the oil in the next step so all the solid parts of the paste don't have a chance to sink to the bottom of the blender and get stuck. Have all your spices and ingredients ready to go.

Here we go!

Put the 2 tsp oil in a big pot over medium heat. When it's hot, tilt the pot to the side so all the oil collects in one spot. Then add the un-roasted cumin seeds only to the collection of oil. Count to 5 and put in the chilies. You need the pot to be directly on the heat, so you can tilt the pot back down, or even place it back directly on the burner, but use your spatula to keep all the oil and spices together. The spices need the oil to cook but this way you can save yourself about 2 tbsp worth of oil in the dish since you don't need to coat the whole pan to cook the spices.

Now add the crush chili pepper, count to 6, and put in the ginger-garlic paste. Stir and cook about a minute. Keep stirring so the paste doesn't burn since you skimped on oil.

Add the coriander, count to 7, and add the chopped tomatoes. Stir and cook for 2 minutes and mash the tomato against the side of the dish. Some thai dishes add the tomato to the garlic-ginger paste, and since you're mashing the tomato now I might try this next time. I don't see an advantage to not cooking the tomato a few minutes extra from putting it in earlier. They don't get quite as mashed this way compared with purée-ing, so there's a different texture, but purée-ing might be interesting and less soupy, both of which are good things).
Now add the beans, salt and remaining 1/2 cup of water. Bring to a simmer, cover, and reduce heat to medium-low for about 8 minutes. The beans should be almost tender.

Remove the lid and boil away any excess liquid. Rejoice.

Corn and Potatoes With Mustard Seeds and Mint (Bhutta aur Aloo ke Mazedar Tarkari)

Not the best Indian recipe ever, but it was probably my corn's fault. That or my tomatoes. This could be a very acidic dish or a very sweet one, so it's worth another shot in corn season. I'd also really appreciate someone else trying it and letting me know how it goes. I love a recipe that tells you to make it as hot as you can stand. That's what Madhur Jaffrey says to do here. Hurray.

oil
black mustard seeds
cumin seeds
garlic clove, diced
Some potato(es), boiled and cut into small cubes
1 or 2 diced tomatoes
fresh cilantro, diced
fresh mint, diced
1 hot green chili (I used a red one. Maybe that's why it wasn't as great as it should have been?)
2 cups fresh or frozen corn kernels (make this recipe with frozen for convenience and fresh if you've got some spare time on your hands...)
3 oz coconut milk (I used almond milk so it wasn't as thick and creamy. Maybe also why it wasn't so great. Use a shot glass to get the 3 oz. I'm a Newfoundlander and so I had a 3 oz shot glass hanging around...if you're not lucky enough to be from Newfoundland you will have to add a few shots together. Don't worry, it's just coconut milk...not coconut rum)
1/2 tsp salt
large pinch of cayenne
1 tbsp lemon juice (this felt like too much)
fresh ground pepper
2 tsp roasted and then ground cumin seeds (stick them in a frying pan over medium heat until they start to have an aroma, then remove from heat to an electric coffee grinder or mortar and pestle, and grind. Optionally put them in a paper or plastic bag, close the opening of the bag, and smash with something large...)

So first you want to boil the potato. You need to peel them afterward but you don't need to do it in advance. If you boil them until they're soft (this depends on how big they are) and then rinse them in cold water their skins tend to peel more easily, I've found. If you peel in advance I think you lose some nutrients. You can also chop them in quarters to boil them faster, but then it's harder to peel and you lose nutrients. Not much harder, though. So it's your choice.

While they're boiling chop everything else and have it and all the spices measured and ready to go. This recipe goes fast.

All that are left to chop are the boiled, drained and skinned and potatoes, so do that and then heat a good few tbsp of oil in a large skillet on medium-high (Normally I would never use this much but you need it all to give the potatoes a nice crispy exterior. If you don't mind mushy potatoes don't use so much oil, but it really makes a difference). When hot, put in the mustard seeds and a big pinch of un-roasted cumin seeds. When the mustard seeds start to pop put in the garlic and potatoes. Stir for a few minutes and then add the tomato (or tomatoes, if they're small), cilantro, mint and green chili (You can use a fair bit of each fresh spice. A good handful of fresh leaves of each). Two minutes later add the corn.

Stir until the herbs are mixed through the corn and then add the coconut milk (or almond milk. To make the almond milk thicker like coconut milk you could also put 6 oz of it in a saucepan over medium-high heat and let some of the water evaporate out of it until you have only 3 oz left. This just concentrates the flavour. Voila, evaporated milk. You can also just use water instead of coconut milk or almond milk, but again, not the same. Like the difference between sorbet and ice cream, it's a big one. Not necessarily bad, and sometimes you want sorbet and sometimes you want ice cream, but it's your choice and there'll probably be more flavour overall with the coconut milk). Also add the salt, cayenne and lemon juice now. I didn't know it was okay to add lemon juice this early in a recipe since it's so pungent and I think it's loses its pungency if you cook it for so long, but maybe that's the intention here??
Bring the skillet to a simmer. This should just take a few seconds, but turn up the heat if it doesn't happen soon. Then reduce the heat to medium-low, cover the skillet, and let it simmer for 3 minutes. Don't overcook the corn. You just want to heat it through. If the corn is really fresh it probably only needs about 2 minutes max.

While this is cooking put the 2 remaining teaspoons of cumin seeds in a small frying pan over medium-high heat (don't use any oil) and cook them until they're fragrant and slightly browned, just a few minutes. Then grind them. If you don't have a convenient grinding device like a coffee grinder, make sure you don't save this step until this late in the dinner game. Your corn will over-cook while you're fussing with a plastic bag and mallet of some kind.

Now uncover the skillet, grind some black pepper over top along with the roasted and ground cumin seeds. Stir. Serve. Voila side dish.

60% Chance of Success Pouding Chomeur - The Bowl Was More Than Half Full

Unfortunately it still wasn't great. I took a pouding chomeur recipe and made it refined sugar free. Basically I knew I'd be eating it late at night and a cup and a half of brown sugar, or two cups of maple syrup were not my idea of a night cap. So, I took a bunch of fresh dates and puréed them with water and a few dried dates for the cake part, and then took a whole lot more dried dates and puréed them with water for the syrup. I had a strong feeling it was going to taste watered down, but I did it anyway. I tried to keep the water-sugar ratio decent, but I kind of figured I'd add too much water because my blender is not the greatest, so to get anything resembling a purée you need to add more water than you would hope.
This was a mini disaster, the likes of which I've not had since my mousse days. Basically I puréed fine a few times, and then the third time I'd forgotten to tighten the blender bottom all the way and didn't realize somehow that all the liquid I was adding was just flowing out of the blender all over the counter - under the toaster oven, under the drain board, into my teas. Fortunately my counter top is not perfectly even so it got kind of stuck in small date water reservoirs. A lot of towel-ringing later, and a little bit of swearing, I'd cleaned up the mess and puréed my dates. I'd made a double batch of my version of this delicious dessert because I wanted to make it in the slow cooker. Generally, small batches of things burn in the slow cooker, so better to super size and freeze portions for later. Not a problem as long as it's delicious. Oh, I also made this dairy-free and gluten-free. I made another gluten-free flour blend, this time with mostly sweet white sorghum flour and brown rice flour (plus some tapioca flour, potato starch flour, sweet white rice flour and guar gum to cover all my bases) and used almond breeze for the milk. These didn't make the recipe bad. The flour blend you would barely taste. It wouldn't really mess up the consistency of a pudding cake since it's supposed to be so liquidy anyway. The almond milk would only make it better by giving more flavour, but I was worried about not having enough salt and enough addictive sugary taste that you'd normally get from brown sugar. What happened was my pudding kind of ended up tasting like my hollow granola - lots of cinnamon, but no sugary bite. This time I had no one to resent but myself. There was certainly no physical activity involved that I could give up.

So I made this for my parents and warned them in advance that there was a 60% chance that the pudding would be good and a 40% chance that it wouldn't. I wouldn't be offended if they didn't like or if they wanted to skip dessert. My mom liked it, but I didn't, so before my dad could try it I poured over some syrup. It's supposed to be a maple syrup dessert anyway (according to some recipes) but I don't do maple syrup for anxiety attack reasons. Basically my body freaks out, and it's not exactly the most sane body (or mind) when uncontaminated with the liquid.

Anyway, long story short, the pudding actually came out pudding-like. There was some liquid and some cake, and the colour was darker than normal, but that was because of the dates, so it was fine. The taste, though, left a lot to be desired. There's a reason we use sugar. Real sugar. Honey would ahve been fine. Maple syrup would have been fine, but there's nothing like brown sugar. I should have at least added some molasses and white sugar substitute, but I feel like sends my body conflicting messages, like a mom and dad fighting in front of a child. Who do I listen to? Who do I believe? Who do I ask for candy?

Anyway, moral of the story is use less water. I think I could get away with using dates if I used more of them, and for that I need a better blender or a few days' worth of patience while the water dissolved from the purée. Pictures to come.

Affordable Taste: An Indian Dinner of "Dry" Moong Dal

A food friend once told me that in his opinion the only vegetarian food in the world worth eating is Indian. I don't fully agree. I do hate tofu and soy of all kinds, but there are a whole lot of other good vegetarian food options out there, even if North American vegetarian restaurants tend to disagree (I'm looking at you "Fresh" in Toronto and "Aux Vivres" in Montreal). There's Ethiopian, Mexican, South American, French, and Italian, to name a few prime examples, but I understand my friend's point. Meat (fat) gives flavour. It's easy to make a meal with meat delicious without doing too much. Vegetable oil and other kinds of oils just aren't as naturally delicious as meat fat, so vegetarian food has to work a little harder. Indian food (very similar to Ethiopian) brilliantly uses complicated blends of spices to flavour otherwise dull things (lentils and beans). Even so, using the same spices to flavour meat is astronomically better.

Like eating out every day, though, eating meat at every meal because it tastes better is just not sustainable, both financially and physically. Your body needs a respite from time to time. Look at cultures that involve traditional fasting. All sorts of religions incorporate a set period when the body can clean itself out, either by restricting times of the day you can eat, or what you can eat. The same goes for the spices in food. It's all traditional. People who make the food that way may not know why certain spices go together, but they sure know it tastes good and it's healthy for them. Who cares if ginger is good for the immune system so a hunk of it goes in Vietnamese soup? Meat is a treat, and maybe people would eat more of it if they could afford to do so, but not every body is designed to function at its peak that way. Everything in moderation? Unless you're a monk, or a vegan...

Anyway, my point is that if you just think Indian is the only good vegetarian food out there, you're limiting yourself. Ethiopian, for example, is very similar, using slightly different spices in the same way. Coincidentally (or not) there was a large migration from India to East Africa (mainly Kenya) to build railroads and I'm not sure who brought what spices where, or where traditions originated, but the end result is delicious. Chile peppers, turmeric, fenugreek, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon (have you ever seen a cinnamon tree? You want to lick the bark), and most importantly, salt. Nothing against a perfect batch of baked beans, corn and squash tamales, or a traditional vegetable minestrone or fresh pasta, but Indians and Ethiopians got this whole spice thing figured out.

With that in mind, I made a healthy dinner. I generally don't make a bunch of Indian dishes in one night because it's labour intensive. Instead I'll make make one the first night, the next night I'll make another and eat it with leftovers from the first night, and maybe the third night I'll make another and put all the items together for a true Indian meal. Here's what I made: "Dry" Moong Dal ("Sookhi" Moong Dal), Corn and Potatoes with Mustard Seeds and Mint (Bhutta aur aloo ki mazedar tarkari), Gluten-Free Bread (to replace naan, since the dry dal was supposed to be served with bread, not rice) and raita (plain, thick yogurt to help digest the lentils with the bread. Complete protein and all).

I find lentils boring on their own, but the little bit of sugar in the bread made them absolutely savoury and delicious. Naan would also work perfectly, and on the third day I had the lentils with some leftover kulcha (like a naan, but yeast-free. Not lactose-free) from an Indian restaurant I'd gone to in Parc Extension, Indian Maison Curry House.

The dal is a really easy recipe.1 cup moong dal (this is not moong dal above...I used these green lentils instead. It's a different taste, but definitely not a bad one)
About 5 cups of water, divided
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cayenne (never skimp on this...)
2 tsp oil (...or this...)
1/2 tsp salt (...or this, in the case of lentils, since they're bland enough already)
1 tbsp oil or ghee
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 dried red chili

Wash the dal like you would rice, in several changes of water. For real moong dal you're supposed to soak it for 3 hours, but these lentils don't need to be pre-soaked for so long, so just stick them in 4 cups of water until you need them later in the recipe. Drain them before adding them below. If you skip this step and the lentils don't absorb enough water, you'll just need to add more later to make sure they cook fully.

Combine the 1st four spices (up to the cayenne) along with a tbsp of water in a small cup.

Heat the first amount of oil over medium in a large pot and when it's hot put in the spice mixture. See, you don't need a lot of oil because the spices have water mixed in. It will be harder for you to burn them. Stir the spices for a second (for once the recipe doesn't say something like "For 5 seconds". It just says "Stir once", which I think is still hilarious. What if I accidentally stir twice? and what constitutes a stir?) then add drained dal. Stir and then add a cup of water. Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce the heat to very low, cover the pot and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Depending on your type of dal and whether or not you soaked it long enough you may need to cook it longer or add more water. Just make sure it always stays at a simmer but doesn't start to stick to the bottom of the pot. "Very" low can also be misleading and end up causing you to wait more than patiently for your lentils to cook.

Now the fun part.

Just before you're ready to eat (aka the dal is tender, "dry" or not too liquidy, and not sticking to the pot) heat the remaining oil or ghee in a small frying pan over high heat. You want this to be VERY hot oil so don't use olive oil. The heat is necessary to extract as much flavour as possible from the spices. You're basically going to create spiced oil and use it as a seasoning.

So add the cumin seeds to the hot oil. Count to 3.

Add the hot chili. Count to 3 again. It should puff up and darken. If not, just count to 3 and get on with your life/recipe.

Now pour the oil, cumin seeds and chili right over the pot of dal and stir it in. You can also place the dal on individual serving plates and pour a small amount of the spiced oil over each portion as a garnish, or just place the whole pot of dal with the oil on top on the table and serve family-style. I recommend mixing it in, though, because it lets the spices blend, so you don't end up with some people having bland bowls of dal and some having spiced ones. You can also fry some very thinly sliced onions in a few tablespoons of oil on medium-high until they're crispy and browned, drain them on paper towels, and serve them on top.

Serve with some kind of flatbread (or my gluten-free bread, or anything that isn't a piece of whole wheat, comes in a bag, or is sandwich bread. This is not a French meal) and some yogurt to help the digestion. Mango for dessert? I got 14 at Jean-Talon and biked them home. Soon I will start a series called "What did Amie bike home from Jean-Talon this week?". Half a watermelon, 14 mangos, 5 oranges, 4 peaches, 2 bunches of asparagus, a bag of lettuce, and a canteloupe. Thank you Leonardo's. If only you were at Atwater.

"Get Off Your High (Sea)Horse" Calamari Challenge: Thai Chili Squid Stir-Fry with Carrots and Arugula

There's something miraculous about a dish made with ridiculously fresh ingredients, stir-fried for mere minutes and coated in a salty, sweet, sour and hot sauce before making the inevitable journey to your mouth. Come on, LOOK at those colours!

I also love that this is a very affordable recipe and so healthy, without feeling like you're depriving yourself. It's seafood, after all, and seafood is a luxury. It looks and tastes deceptively gourmet, but has a much higher intimidation factor than actual level of difficulty. So take a deep breath and go buy some squid. I resent the fact that so many people like deep-fried calamari but refuse to eat un-coated squid. If you don't like the tentacles, just buy the tubes, but know that you're missing out on great mouth texture. One small step at a time, I suppose. Think of this as my calamari challenge, to get off your high horse...or squid horse...or sea horse??
Ingredients:
2 cups jasmine (thai) rice

Sauce for Rice:
1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock (I happened to have fish stock frozen that I hacked away at until I had 1/2 a cup)
2 Tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tsp sesame oil

1 lb squid (just go to a fish counter and ask for about a pound of squid. The tentacles won't hurt you but the tubes are what you really want since they'll stay more tender)

Stir-Fry Sauce:
1 heaping Tbsp hoisin (the original recipe calls for ground bean sauce but I didn't have that. I realize my version is completely different)
2 tsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. fish sauce
1 Tbsp. soy sauce or tamari
1-2 tsp. chili sauce, or 1-2 fresh red or green chilies, minced, OR 1-2 tsp. dried chili flakes (I used a small handful of my pickled chili peppers for the endorphin rush of the sezchuan peppercorns)
5 carrots, cut in thin sticks (the thinner they are the faster they'll cook)
2 cups arugula
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves (I used frozen)
handful of fresh coriander leaves (again, frozen)
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 thumb-sized piece galangal or ginger, sliced into matchstick-like pieces
2 tsp oil

1. Cook the rice first. Leave it covered on the stove while you make the sauce.
   
2. Combine the stock, hoisin, and sesame oil sauce for the rice in a pot and heat it until it almost boils. Turn off the heat and leave the sauce on the warm burner until the rice is done. When it is, pour the sauce over the rice. This step is actually meant for glass vermicelli noodles or rice noodles because the noodles will keep absorbing the sauce, but I kind of like how it mushes up the rice and sweetens it. Then the stir-fry sauce on the squid itself doesn't have to do as much work. I'm a big believer in fair distribution of labour.
   
3. In the meantime, while the rice cooks, thaw your squid (if it's frozen) by dunking it in a bowl of warm water. If it's fresh, skip the dunking and get on with the scoring. All these sports terms...I don't even watch basketball. You don't dunk anything in World Junior Hockey, or more recently, the Montreal Canadians games.
   
4. Place the squid on a cutting board. Slide your knife along one side of the squid to open each tube. Lay the pieces of squid flat (leave the tentacles alone. They'll be fine without your knife assistance).
5. Score the squid tubes with diagonal slices. Score first one way, then the other to create diamond-shaped cuts, kind of like grill marks. Apparently you only want to cut through half the thickness. If your scores are too superficial, they won't be apparent when cooked. The cuts will "open up" while cooking and give the squid extra visual interest and texture. All this means is that you don't really need to do this step but it'll look cooler if you do.
   
6. Definitely do this step: Slice the squid into smaller, bite-size pieces (squares or triangles) and reserve. See, now that I don't understand because you just went to all the trouble of scoring and now you're cutting everything up, probably through your carefully scored lines. Any ideas on what's going on, stir-fried squid experts out there?
   
7. Combine the stir-fry sauce of hoisin, brown sugar, fish sauce, soy sauce and chili sauce (or chilies) in a small bowl.
   
8. Place a little bit of oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the garlic, ginger, and carrots (or other vegetables of your choice) and stir-fry 3-5 minutes, or until vegetables are soft. Add a little water to the pan when it becomes too dry instead of more oil. If the carrot is chopped in big pieces it will take a bit longer to soften. If you like it tender-crisp, feel free to err on the side of crisp. It gives great crunch to the resulting meal.
   
9. Now add the squid, arugula, and the stir-fry sauce. Also add the cilantro and basil if they're frozen. If they're fresh add them as a garnish only at the very end when you serve. Stir-fry for about 2 minutes, or until the squid curls up and the meat is tender. My squid didn't really "curl" but it cooked for 2 minutes, which was plenty. I hate, hate, hate rubbery squid, and when you think of how gross squid can be it's probably because you've always had it over-cooked. When it's not over-cooked it's tender and delicious. Ask a Greek. Or a Thai. So, do NOT over-cook, or the squid will become rubbery (3 minutes maximum).
10. Do a taste test for salt, adding 1-2 more Tbsp fish sauce if it's not salty enough. If it's too sour, add a little more brown sugar. If it's not hot enough, add a little more chili. If it's too sweet, add some lime juice. This isn't in the recipe (the lime) but it's the standard way to make Thai dishes more sour. Well, lime or tamarind, but only if tamarind is already called for in the recipe. You can also serve a piece of lime on the side of the plate as garnish and everyone can adjust their own level of sourness by squeezing it over top.
    
11. To serve, scoop the sauced rice onto a serving platter (or individual plates) and top with the stir-fried squid and vegetables. Add sprinklings of fresh basil and coriander, and enjoy!
    

Halibut in Indian-Spiced Tomato Sauce: Judith Finlayson's "Delicious and Dependable Slow Cooker Recipes"

So I got in another fight with a fishmonger...

Rarely do I take a slow cooker recipe and turn it into a stove-top recipe. Usually I go the other way, preferring stewed foods to simmer for longer at a lower temperature, not to mention the no-stirring, fuss-less, set-it-and-leave-it advantages of the slow cooker.

But sometimes a recipe looks so good and so tasty even though I just don't have the time to cook in the morning or early afternoon, that I have to make it anyway. Judith Finlayson really only puts good recipes in her slow cooker books, so when I wanted to make a spicy fish dish I even vetoed Madhur Jaffrey's bible, "Indian Cooking" in favour of a generically-named halibut in "Indian-spiced" tomato sauce. As if there are only a handful of Indian spices...Still, the recipe was not oversimplified, and because it was a slow cooker recipe originally, it called for whole spices instead of ground, which makes it more authentic in my books.

Ingredients:
oil
onion, diced
garlic, minced
gingerroot, minced
1 long red chili pepper, seeded and diced
2 whole cloves
2 pods of green cardamom (you can apparently also use white but I've never even seen white cardamom before)
1 2-inch cinnamon stick (mmm...delicious when it unfurls and you can suck the sweetness out like a lollipop)
1/2 - 3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 can tomatoes
potatoes, peeled and diced (a few medium-sized)
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 1/2 lbs halibut cut into 1-inch pieces

The deal with the fishmonger food fight was this:

Basically the halibut was too expensive so I bought lotte instead. Lotte is the French word for bellyfish. I would never have bought it if I'd known it was bellyfish, also known as monkfish. Very, very unsustainable, says Seachoice.org. Still, I'd specifically heard it was a good substitute for halibut in Indian recipes and here I was looking for just that. It was less expensive, and I knew the halibut wasn't exactly sustainable either, so I figured either way would be a bad choice, and this was maybe the lesser of two evils. In the end it was just my naiveté that resulted in a fight.

I said I wanted a pound and a half. The woman slaps a big bone-in fillet on the scale. It's a good 2 pounds. "No," I say, "Less, please." The woman gets noticeably angry. What did I do? I point to a smaller fillet. She says, "That won't give you enough. Do you want the bone removed?" I think about it..."Yes." I'd just have to remove it for the recipe anyway to chop the fish into cubes. "Well if you remove the bone it won't be enough," she stated bluntly. I insisted on the smaller fillet. "But you asked for a pound and a half." Yes, I know, but isn't it my right to change my mind? The customer is always right, remember? I really don't have a good idea of how much a pound and ahalf of fish is until I see it, and upon seeing it, I knew it was too much. She gives me this dirty look and says, "How many people is it for?" I say, "Four," and she gets exasperated and repeats, "IT's not enough!" I say it's going to be stewed so it's not going to be a standard portion per person. You don't need as much. She demands I tell her the whole recipe. Just give me the gosh-darn (edit...) smaller fish, and take the gosh-darn bone out. "Have you ever made this before?" she asked. "Yes!" I lied. "Do you want the bone?" "Yes! I will make stock!" There were no "thank-you"s or "have a nice day"s involved in this transaction. I took my bag of fish and got the heck out of there. I have no problem being resentful since their store is over-priced and snobbish anyway. They just have a monopoly in the area. Poissonnerie Atwater is a horrible place where lobster is $9.99 a pound even in lobster season when it should be $6.99, the staff are opinionated, often wrong, and rude. Most importantly, rude. I'm tempted to walk up the hill to the grocery store 5 Saisons where the fish is not as good but there's a chance I'll be treated with a little more respect.

Okay, I'm done.

So the recipe is basically a delicious tomato sauce (which I would happily make just for pasta, being way more flavourful than a traditional sauce because of the cinnamon and cloves) with the fun additional of potatoes (omit the potatoes if you just use this as a pasta tomato sauce) topped with pan-fried, breaded fish. The breading is optional, really, and the only reason I did it was because I wanted the spice it's mixed with. The flour soaks up a lot of oil, but you need the oil so the spices don't burn. In the end you don't really taste the spice on the fish anyway, so next time I don't even think I'll use it. Or, instead of frying, I'll grill the fish. That way you skip the flour and the spices won't burn as easily. You could also bake the fish, or steam it. It just needs to be plopped on top of the tomato sauce in the end. Really you could even do fillets of it. I was wrong that it gets stewed with the tomato sauce, so there's no real point to chopping it into smaller pieces except that it browns all around the edges. For a more elegant presentation I would definitely just leave it as serving-sized fillets.

The funny thing about slow cooker fish recipes is that the fish very rarely actually goes in the slow cooker. Fish are a bit tricky because you want to make sure you kill bacteria (not easily assured with low temperature cooking) and not cook very long (kind of counter-intuitive of slow cooking).

So,

heat a little oil over medium in a large skillet or pot with a lid (lid is only necessary if you're using the stove-top method not the slow cooker method). Add some diced onions (as much as you want) and cook them until they're soft. Then add the garlic and gingerroot (again, as much as you want), as well as the hot pepper, cloves, cinnamon stick, cardamom, salt and pepper. Stir for one minute to let the spices absorb some oil and coat the onions, then pour in the 28oz can of tomatoes with their juices. These can be canned whole tomatoes with their juice that you've chopped up roughly, or diced tomatoes, or even crushed tomatoes. I personally think diced or crushed is better because it gives a thicker sauce, but just don't throw in whole canned tomatoes with their juice unless you're going to crush them well with your spatula. Bring the skillet to a boil and either transfer the whole contents to the slow cooker and then add the potatoes (slow cooker version) or add the potatoes to the pot and reduce the heat to medium-low to let it simmer for about 15 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. If you're using the slow cooker, set it to low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-5. The difference here is 15 minutes stove-top versus 10 hours slow cooker, but you know the flavours of the whole spices will be much better in the slow-cooker. Even on the stove-top I let the sauce cook longer, maybe an extra 30 minutes or 45 at low heat) adding about a cup of water along with the tomatoes to compensate for their desire to burn.

Now for the fish: In another large skillet heat a little bit more oil on medium-high heat. On a plate combine the flour and spices. Roll the cubed fish in the mixture and then toss the pieces into the hot oil. Throw out the remaining flour later when you're cleaning up. Don't pour it into the oil too. The less you use, the better. It just clumps up. The fish should get nicely browned. The trick is to cut even cubes so all the fish cooks evenly, and you don't end up with some under-cooked and some over-cooked fish. There should be a nice firm exterior because of the browning and a tender interior. The fish is done after just a few minutes and you need to check it by cutting into it. The inside flesh should be delicate, tear apart easily and no longer be translucent. It should not have the chewy texture of chicken, or, god forbid, steak. You've over-cooked it if it's like either of these things. Try again next time. It should almost fall apart in your mouth with minimal chewing. If your fish is fresh, the risk of under-cooking is minimal anyway. When you're chopping it into cubes you want to remove the fish from its package or bag first, wash it, pat it dry with paper towels so the fish juice doesn't run all over your kitchen and contaminate your counters and floor, and then do the chopping as quickly as possible. Then store the fish in a sealed container in the fridge until you're ready to use it. Don't leave it at room temperature. It's okay to take it out of the fridge 5 minutes or so before using it, to let it come to room temperature, but you never want to leave it sitting out while you spend an hour doing something else. Oh, and it's also really important to make sure it's dry before you dredge it in the flour. If it's still wet the flour will clump and not brown properly. You'll end up with fish coated in oily goo. Not so delicious.
So now presumably the fish is cooked and all you do is take a big spoonful of tomato/potato mixture and top it with the beautiful turmeric-coloured fish. Optionally top it with cilantro for garnish and enjoy Indian pasta. You can also make a side dish of my favourite saag, but don't use kale like I tried to this time. It was way too bitter and tough. Swiss chard or spinach is much better. If you forget that the dish has potatoes in it and think you need another starch and make rice because it's an Indian meal, serve it along side so you can eat it with both the saag and fish separately, like a tiffin box or thali plate would keep them separate. You don't want all the sauces mixing until they get INTO your stomach. Then it's a sauce free-for-all.