I've been working on the palak part of the palak paneer too, trying to perfect it. I almost have it. This is the onion, spice mix part. Cardamom, cumin, coriander, paprika, salt. The garam masala comes at the end.
This is the spinach.
Here's everything bubbling happily away on the stove. Neel's stirring tamarind paste. We'll work on perfecting that next. By this point we've added the cream to the spinach, and we both agreed that we got the spinach/cream/paneer ratio quite right with this batch, but that we needed more garam masala/paprika/salt. Live and learn.
And here's my family patiently awaiting dinner and not muttering things under their breath like, "Oh God, here she goes again. Come on, Mama." Oh, and one last thing about paneer. When I first tasted the paneer (made by me!), I had to admit I was a little disappointed. It was not quite as good as that which came from the Indian grocer. Alas. But, you know? Once in the palak, it tasted really good and authentic. Not superior, but definitely as good. I could see myself going either way. Sometimes I'll want to swing by the Indian grocery, and sometimes I'll want to curdle some milk. Who wouldn't want to curdle some milk?
1. Get out your favorite apron. I chose the lemons because of the lemon juice I'd need for acid in the paneer.
2. Have lunch. You don't know how long this will take or how stressful it might be, so you may need sustenance. This is my standard go-to-the-grocery-store-lunch of roasted corn salad and tofu with sun dried tomato pesto, straight from the Harris Teeter salad bar. Pomegranate juice and seltzer. My plate does not always coordinate with my apron, but today it did. That was nice.
3. Choose music. Technically I should have picked some nice sitar music, but let's face it, I'm not a fan. Wilco radio on Pandora.
4. If your printer is broken or out of ink, or both, jot down the recipe so you don't have to keep walking back and forth to the computer. It's so far away.
5. Face it that you've stalled long enough and get ready to not boil a quart of milk.
6. While the milk is coming to an almost-boil, squeeze enough lemons to make about three-four tablespoons lemon juice.
7. Line everything up to reduce risk of panic. Milk, lemon juice, cheesecloth-strainer, teaspoon.
8. When the milk is almost at a boil, add the lemon juice, a teaspoon at a time (and stirring after each addition) until the milk curdles. This will take about three tablespoons of lemon juice. Call everyone in to see.
9. Sit on your tuffet and knit patiently while the curds and whey cool.
10. When cool enough to handle, strain the curds in a strainer lined with cheesecloth and rinse.
11. Squeeze as much moisture as possible from the cheesecloth and shape it into a round.
12. Place something heavy on the cheesecloth-wrapped paneer and let it sit as long as possible.
13. When ready to prepare, slice into cubes. It should be pretty firm by now.
14. After you slice it up, fry it up and eat it up, YUM! Get ready to do it all again.
15. Eat a great dinner and rest on your laurels. It only seems like magic.
You'd never believe this, but I can go for months without thinking about Mark Bittman. I know. Crazy, isn't it? We have a couple of his books, and he has a new one out. It's wending its way towards me. I like cookbooks with pictures, so I wasn't sure at first about How to Cook Everything, but I love it. I've had it for years, and it's a staple. When I remember it. We used to have the coconut chicken all the time. I need to go dig that book out again. That's one I can just sit down with and browse through. Our Sunday Dinner this week was from The Minimalist Cooks Dinner. Roast fish and leeks. Couldn't be simpler. A bit too simple, perhaps for even my fish-loving boy. I probably should have laid in on a bit thicker with the salt and pepper. I loved it though. The bright green taste of the leeks and the lightness of the fish. Minimal, even.
Neel loves to ski, Callum loves snow, and I love Neel and Callum, so a winter vacation seemed in order.
This was Neel's birthday present actually. A winter getaway from the flatlands of marshes, bays and beaches. His care for the ocean is a direct connection of his love for me, he picks the mountains over the continual wash of the waves any day. Me? Don't ask me to choose. I grew up in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, and those rolling hills sing to my soul as much as the sea spray of where we live now. When I was a little girl I yearned to live where I do now, nearly a stone's throw from warm sands and warm water. We treat our beach the way little-girl me treated the mountains of my childhood. A quick trip after work or school. Stop by for a swim or dinner. Sunday morning for a few hours before getting on with the day.
We both miss mountains. Vistas. I have so much to be grateful for, here in the little gray house. The rhythm and clank of neighborhood life. So much that I wouldn't trade. But sometimes I yearn to break away from the chains of suburbia. A little hut on a hill.
We arrived at the beginning of a ferocious windstorm. Did you hear about it on the news? I think Pittsburgh had a wind gust of 92 miles per hour. Holey Moley! The wind howled around our little rented condo and whistled down the fireplace. Throughout that first night, I'd wake up and hear it whistling around the window and think, "We're here! This is so exciting!" and fall back asleep. It was still dark when I got up, but as the sun came up the snow cats came out and started working the slopes.
There's Neel, headed off down the hill.
Callum's not too far behind him. First in his class down the hill, of course. Oh, if I were nine.
It was a wonderful trip. Except for the tv, we were totally unplugged, and just together, inside and out. Happy to be there and be together. We learned a lot, actually. Like the fact that we like taking winter trips. We already planning for next year.
Although, I'm pretty sure the only thing I really accomplished was number eight. Taking a lesson may qualify for number nine, but I don't think I ever actually skied. And I can tell you for sure that number seven was a near thing. I certainly didn't feel very brave. Still, it was Friday the 13th, so maybe...
Neel was thrilled to get a chance to clean out our shed this weekend (go ahead and ask if I'm kidding), and he stumbled across this rare treat mixed in with a pack of asters. It's a letter from my dad to his parents, written when he was at work (a-hem, I never waste time at work, so clearly that genetic defect jumped a generation) when I was a whopping five months old. He writes about the house they just moved into (the first house I remember), my five-month doctor's appointment (I'm getting ready to crawl) and a recent illness of my granddad's.
Nearly forty years old, that letter is (but not quite) and it's so quintessentially my dad. I can picture that house so well, and my grandparents, and my mom. A little bit of our history, encapsulated.
I'm going to say straight out of the box that the korma we had with dinner last night was from a jar. Let's face it, I am not an Indian housewife. I started dinner at six, the day was too glorious to go inside much before that, so I was not all day at the burners, stirring and tasting, but the Trader Joe's sauce tastes pretty authentic, especially after I added some cream. And let's face it, I didn't do number five either. That was from a box too. My friend Jon thinks I'm crazy to want to make paneer at all when there's perfectly good paneer to be purchased, and he has a point. At least last night he did. Still, I do want to make paneer. I'm interested in the process, one which sounds suspiciously like magic, but last night I just wanted paneer.
And, it turns out, I didn't want saag. To eat or to make. I wanted palak. There are some subtle distinctions between the two, and what I wanted was palak. To make and to eat. Sometime I'll tell you the story of the day we had saag (or was it palak?) at our Indian friends house because this dinner was really the night that started me on my quest to make Indian food. Maybe I'll save that for when I make paneer.
So I did make palak, and it was pretty good. For a first go, at any rate. Definite tweaking is in order, but the essentials were certainly there. You could say I was satisfied.
Neel's genes got all fired up, and he made tamarind sauce for us. Again, a near hit. More like chutney in consistency, and a bit tart for my taste. Part of that is Neel and his lack of sweet tooth, but at dinner he said, "The woman at the store said to mix with water and add four tablespoons of sugar, and it was still tart. I started to get nervous at the 6th tablespoon of sugar!"
I didn't sleep well last night, and at one point I woke up thinking, "Heck, these are Indians we're talking about, she probably mean four handsful of sugar!"
Neel had a late meeting and I had a migraine, so hot cocoa seemed to be the order of the evening last night. We don't usually do sprinkles, but it was clear that everybody needed some cheering up. Nearly worked too until I got so excited I burned my tongue.
We have friends who are regular about their Sunday dinner. If I happen to call on a Sunday evening, it's always the chicken roasting, the casserole burbling, the beans steaming. We're not so good at that over here. In fact, the past several Sundays (Neel's birthday included) have been all about the chicken wings. The playoffs, you see. Nice, those wings, but not Sunday dinner.
So I'm trying to switch all that up a bit. It's easier in winter when I'm a homing-mama. Wanting to be tucked into the house. In the summer, our Sundays end up on porches and lawn chairs. Not this week. At thirty-five degrees, only the neighborhood boys were outside, running straight through their frosty breath to catch a football or tackle a friend. So I stayed in and cooked, the warm stove heating up our chilly kitchen. We had salmon (for my fish lover baby boy) with black bean sauce, coconut basmati rice, and snap peas lightly steamed and sprinkled with coconut flakes.
Big hits, all. Especially the conversations. I think we'll keep it up. 'Til the ground thaws at least!
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching
each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is
noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of
our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a
hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of
repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then
others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know
there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the
dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the
bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the
glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for
every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial,
national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need
to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.
Elizabeth Alexander, at the Inauguration of President Barak Obama.
When I was nineteen, I left my small college in Indiana with a handful of friends to participate in a March on Washington for equal rights for women. I followed in the footsteps of my mother who had marched on Washington in August of 1963.
We had some downtime while we were there, and I popped into the National Archives to take a look at the Declaration of Independence. Nineteen may not be the perfect age to be reflective about the import of that document and the others which have charted the course of our country's future, but I have always been fascinated by words and the power of a carefully-crafted sentence, so I stood, captivated, and read.
All men are created equal.
When I got back to school, exhilarated by the power of assembly, I chatted briefly with my Humanities professor, a historian, and I told him how moved I was by the weekend, and how proud I was to be free to walk in protest with the power of the Declaration of Independence behind me. He was surprised. Most who marched with me came back cynical and disillusioned. Angry at our government. I understood that cynicism, and have felt it myself, especially over the last eight years. But for me, there is always an underlying thread of hope for our country and faith in what we can do.
And so my heart is full today.
I know that I didn't want this place to become a political one, and I am not interested in disseminating points of policy, but this is my place, and I am so moved to be part of this moment in history. It can't be contained.
My grandmother who was born and lived in Illinois for most of her life, died the summer that Barack Obama ran for the US Senate. Like many Americans, I had watched as he wowed the Democratic National Convention and thought, "here's one to watch." Later that autumn, my mother and I traveled back to her hometown to pack up my grandmother's apartment. We made it during Apple Festival time (!), and took a break from the emotional and arduous work of sorting through my grandmother's things to attend the Apple Festival Parade. Set up behind us was a "Barack Obama for Senate" booth, and I dropped by to grab a bumper sticker. The excitement expressed by the white women in the booth was palpabale. "He's ours," it seemed to say. They knew he'd been a big hit and now had national acclaim, but "he's ours."
He's all of ours now. I wish my grandmother had lived to see this moment. She would have been stalwart in her support and so proud to vote for him. I was proud to stand in line for an hour in the rain to cast my own vote. I did it for her. I did it for my mom who stood in a crowd on a summer day and heard Dr. King speak of "the fierce urgency of now." I did it for my dad, who once made a long trek on foot back to his college after being severely beaten and dumped by the side of the road because of his ardent editorials about the assassination of Dr. King. The power of a carefully-crafted sentence. I did it for me, for my restored faith in our country and hope for our future. I did it for Callum. He's excited too. We saw Obama speak during the primaries, and Callum's so proud. He went with us to vote and every so often this week, he'll just say, "Barak Obama." But he doesn't get it. Not really. And I'm so grateful for that. For Callum, it's like his team won. He doesn't quite realize how much bigger than all of us this moment is. He's nine, and today marks a seismic shift in our collective story. He can take it for granted that a black man can be elected president.
I'm glad he's old enough to remember this. Although his primary memory will probably, "my mom cried a lot." It's true. I've been moved to tears over and over during the past weeks. We were in the car yesterday when Talk of the Nation broadcast Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech. We pulled into the driveway and sat in the car and listened, Callum anxious to be free of the seatbelt. But we sat there and listened. And I cried. Your Ama was there for that, I reminded him. Look what we've done.
We have a snow day here today (although we're still waiting on the snow!), and I plan on staying by my tv and watching every minute.
"The fierce urgency of now." That's how I feel right now. The fierce urgency of now.
My beloved turned forty yesterday. We celebrated with a party on Saturday night with about fifty of our closest friends. What fun the evening was. I'm only up for this every four years or so (So I don't expect I'll be throwing a party next year for my own fortieth, unless it's off site. And someone else cooks.), but we had a wonderful time.
We had dinner parties and bigger bashes all the time in our condo in California, and it's different here. Not a regular thing. Parts of it I miss. The dinner parties especially. A couple of couples sharing simple homemade food and a lot of wine. We tend to go out a lot here, and while I love going out (don't get me wrong!), I'd like to shift us back to cooking and staying in to socialize.
The first time we had a party here was also for Neel's birthday. It was our second winter in the little gray house, and that night our house really sparkled. Neel remarked that it felt like the house accepted and welcomed us that night. It had clearly been suspicious of us for a while. Withholding judgment. Prior to us it had been a rental and run through a series of short-term owners. I don't blame it for taking it's time. Here's the living room, expectant and waiting.
Here's the dining room, filled with laughter and life.
There were air hockey games.
And a chocolate fountain. We ran out of food and nearly ran out of wine.
Tyler made me a pre-party drink, and that saw me through.
His specialty, Planter's Punch.
It was cold, so no one went outside.
We ended the evening over some Scotch, and everyone started clearing out just before midnight. It was just the three of us then, Callum had come home from a neighbors, and we spent a little time talking about the evening and starting the clean-up.
We stayed up long enough to mark it though. Right before bed, a birthday kiss for a fine man. I think it's only going to get better from here.
Callum wore this hat I knit him all day long yesterday. As we were walking in to school, one of his teachers told him, "nice hat," and he said so proudly, "My mom made it!"
and yeah, I'm fully aware that the photo quality is lacking...I'm still learning and didn't have time for any photoshopping. so ha.
I had an impromptu lunch with some friends yesterday. We usually get together before our kids break for Christmas but didn't manage to pull it off this year.
Sometimes the unexpected feast is the best. We created a little tapas of carrot cumin soup, sweet potato fries and tuna bites. There was a lot of catching up to do.
Some of us don't like to have their pictures taken. Note that she's still managing to get the soup to her mouth. Nice defensive move.
Happy Christmas Scarf! I love, love, love it. It really is just enough ruffles, this version in Manos. I'm wearing it back to school today. I forsee other versions in my future. Ah, re-entry, I have a helluva week coming up. But a pretty scarf to keep me warm and cheerful!
