Food, nature notes and Battle of Puebla Day

Today is May 5, Battle of Puebla Day, a short -lived victory of Mexican forces against a French invasion. Not a public holiday in Mexico, but seemingly celebrated more in the US. 

It reminds me of St Patrick's Day which is pretty low key and religious in Ireland, but a blowout party day in the US. 

It's also not Mexican independence day, which comes September 16. But we can party twice.

On to food, and Misfits lovely cornucopia

Setting aside some fresh celery and carrots for salad, the rest is prepped and frozen, the carrot peelings and celery-end in the freezer stock bag.

And the arrival of the coconut milk, in anticipa-a-a-ation of chicken curry, I got out the Bill Veach book of curries and chutneys, opened it to my favorite Buckingham Palace chicken curry..

To be studied with tea, fresh hot biscuit/scone thing and newly arrived Misfits blueberries.

It's pretty clear when a recipe is a favorite, as you see.  Not particularly celebrating the KCIII party tomorrow, when an array of looted jewels will be set on a couple of heads for reasons which escape this anti monarchist old lady. This is just a nice recipe, ingredients come by honestly.

This is the book I use for my curry powder mixes, too. 

So that will happen in the next day or two after which the chicken carcase will take its place in soup.

Meanwhile, here's today's Dove Family sighting. 

As you see, the surrounding henbit is growing rapidly and providing great concealment. Smart choice chez Dove.

And here's the sum total of flowers to show you

Best the Christmas, or Easter, or maybe Whitsun, cactus can do at this time.

Happy day everyone, knitting group later and we'll see what's up there.

Happy Fourth, with cherries

Breakfast in bed, with cherries, which seem like patriotic food to me, probably the Washington connection. And a Charles Todd Inspector Rutledge mystery, not Bess Crawford this time.

Note the stainless steel cup, hot tea from the thermos. This is great.

Quiet day, handsome Son working full day as usual in Sunday and most holidays and this is both. But in summer he's off to the shore every chance he gets, so I may see him less anyway.

Yesterday I was so industrious that I made the curry powder and the baharat. Grinding that many spices is in fact quite buzzy. Definite high happens, a happy one, no crash.

So here's what transpired.

Getting the seeds out of cardamom pods, wonderful smell. After a bit I decided just to grind the whole pods anyway.

Here's the mixture ready to grind. Everywhere the recipe says ounce I used two teaspoons, just to keep the proportions right. Half ounce = one teaspoon etc.

Then after grinding, I winnowed a bit, then reground what was left in the sieve, a tip from Bill Veach which I'd never noticed before.

And came out to this beautiful powder.

On to the baharat, much simpler recipe

Very different from the curry powder, warm scent and taste, great for all kinds of food.

And somewhere I found a tip for cleaning the grinder. The top comes off and can be washed, but all you can do with the grinding chamber is wipe it out. Hard to remove traces of previous spices. Anyway the tip was to grind some salt, then empty and wipe.

Which I did, using kosher salt, which is a great scouring material, safe and it works, and that was a good tip. But there's more..

I realized that I now had a supply of ground salt with spice flavoring. I tasted, and the saltiness was amazingly amped up, along with spice flavor. So, frugal me, I bottled and labeled it, and it's joined the salt collection. Tiny pinch is all it takes. Happy discovery.

And, since I didn't waste, I mean spend, all my time in the kitchen, I also discovered a very funny writer, D.G.Strong, humor pieces, right up my street. 

So that's another holiday, my whole life is holiday, chez Boud.

The Law of Concatenation has struck

 After the prepping of the Misfits produce, minus the ginger which they forgot to pack, and will credit me for, though I'd rather have the ginger,  where was I? 

Anyway, at that point I noticed the spices which take up most of the small cabinet space of this not very well designed kitchen, were in total disarray.

I use them a lot, so they get knocked down, shoved around and generally disrespected.

So today, the weather being rainy, seemed like a good idea finally to Do Something. 

Three cabinets, the only ones away from the stove and the window, better for spices, were stuffed with containers of all sorts and materials which defeated my original idea of alphabetizing them. I'm against buying containers on purpose except for the few I have for jam. 

So I sort of have them organized by function. All the baking related ones together, more or less, the others by family, all the salts, all the peppers, that sort of thing. 

But it's ages since I took everything out and cleaned the shelves, and generally Kept It Up.

Top pic is the easiest one, cleaned up, then the middle one, horrible shape, too deep to reach in, goes to a point in the corner, things fall off the lazy Susan and you have to get a stepladder to retrieve them. 

Then the smallest which ended up with the most stuff, don't ask me, I only live here. That one also yielded all the items on the tray, needing emptying, cleaning, reassigning.

As I sorted and wiped and spilled and swept, I wondered why I had so much of some items. Cardamom seeds? Masses of cinnamon? Coriander?

Then is when the concatenation struck. It's a fancy word for one damn thing after a damn nother. Because a couple of the containers were empty. No home mixed curry powder. No baharat.

Clearly the next thing, once I'd dealt with the extraneous objects such as bags of coins needing wrappers if they still exist, totally outdated spices needing to be tossed to reuse the glass jars, the next thing is to get grinding.

Needing to retrieve the recipes, baharat in Jerusalem, curry powder in Bill Veach.

And that's when I realized it's why I have all those spices. 

Here's the set-up for the curry powder.

I rest my case.

I also rest my arms. 

While these are soaking, I'm off to enjoy Bad Food.

No grinding, mixing, working. Just chomping. Happy Fourth Eve.

On Finding an Old Cookbook, and revisiting the recipes

This Bill Veach cookbook has been in my life for decades, but I hadn't realized I still had it till I suddenly wondered if it would be good to make a curry. I make a lot of spicy food, but not specifically curried this and that.

So I found it behind something else on the cookbook shelf, and set to work.  This is a lovely book, on Indian food preparation by a longtime resident, made for Western cooks to follow. Not sure if it's still available but if so, well worth the finding. It's friendly, chatty, and very well presented, lovely cover, typeface and all that.

And I found my old favorite, Buckingham Palace Curry. Plan on making that soon, with roast turkey I have lurking in the freezer. 

You can easily tell this page was a favorite in our house.

Meanwhile,  I also looked up chutneys and curry powders. I used to go the whole way when I cooked this stuff, making my own ghee (my Indian friend, who has eaten it all her life, never made it, was very impressed, but said, well nowadays we buy it made!)

I also made my own chutneys, unless we were going for Major Grey's Mango Chutney, than which there is nothing better.  And I made my own coconut milk, grating and squeezing fresh coconut. I must have been hyper enthusiastic.

Today, I decided, after noticing that I have all the spices needed to make Bill's No. 1 curry powder, that all I needed to was assemble them and set to work.

This started out as just a recipe, but became a wonderful aromatherapy session.  The scent of newly opened green cardamom seeds is heavenly, and all the other spices, as you spoon them out, are wonderful. On top of the jar on the left you see a cardamom seed, hull and contents. You need to get the seeds out for use.

I don't have a scale, so I went with his suggestion to sub teaspoons in the same proportions, easy, and it makes a nice small supply.
Ground it up in the coffee grinder, and here's the result

 The grinder needs serious wiping and cleaning and airing after this recipe, so that my next nut flour won't be curry flavored.

And here, in a jar is how my personal Curry Powder No 1.  will be on the shelf.  Glass jar, tightly capped. All the proud parents looking on at their little product.

I compared it to what's left of a jar of commercial curry powder, and found they use more cumin, but my mix is very good.  This is not sizzling hot, just very spicy flavor.  And I can always adjust as I go, after trying it a few times.

So I now have a dish of curried baby bella mushrooms in the freezer for when I need an interesting vegetable side, and a piece of flounder marinating in milk and a curry rub, in the fridge probably for tomorrow.  

The mushrooms were easy, just slice and chop, and wait till the mixture of butter and oil has stopped foaming in the pan, add in the curry powder, just a half teaspoonful this time, and let it cook a while to release flavor, then add in mushrooms. Cook till you like them, then stop! Cool, label and freeze. Done. 

It's usually a good idea to cook spices first, in the hot oil, before you add other items, better flavor that way. I do this all the time, even salt is better this way.  So if you happen to have a raft of spices, here's a great recipe which reminds you why you got them in the first place.

I can now take my proud place alongside Indian women who make their own curry powder, and masala and all that..and I'm looking at the banana chutney recipe now, too. Bananas are great with curry.

Next I need to sit a while. I'm doing better, antibiotics taking hold, but I'm amazingly tired after a bit of activity.  Might even take on Handsome's Son tactful text this morning: "maybe you can take time to rest.."