I recently made this delectable little Indian treat native to Maharashtra (think Mumbai/Bombay and surroundings) for my nerdy clerk book club.  We read East of Eden, which is one of the BEST BOOKS EVER, so of course I had to make something delicious and completely not themed to the book in any way.

All inspiration (and the entire recipe) from this awesome blog.  If you want to learn how to cook fun and easy vegetarian Indian cuisine, go visit Hungry Desi and read all the entries.

Here is what you do to make Vada Pav (pronounced, according to Hungry Desi and V, like this: vuh-duh pow). 

Boil potatoes, mash with peas (I also used corn because I JUST DID AND IT’S MY BLOG) and add mix of food-processed delicious spices, garlic, serrano chiles, and … wait for it … I USED ALMONDS.  

Then coat in yummy besan flour batter (chickpea flour — guys, this stuff is good, be responsible and get a huge quantity of it from local indian grocery like I did) and fry in veggie oil.

Then convince your friends to go drive to Escondido and pick up some legit pav buns (OR, IF GULLIBLE-FRIEND-LESS, USE HAMBURGER BUNS) and slather with a bunch of chutneys (I used garlic chutney, spicy mango chutney, and mint chutney - tamarind chutney would be IDEAL but I couldn’t find it … later V and I found some and the second batch was pretty good with that tamarind.)  Also my new discovery of garlic chutney may be life-changing.

Then smush and eat.

If you make wayyyyyy too many like I did, just save some pre-battering.  Then, a few days hours later when you want some more, batter and fry up a new batch then, it takes mere moments.  Although, shockingly, post-battering and frying, they will also save pretty well for a day or two and may even be heated in microwave.

No, I don’t always use dashes correctly and I often over-punctuate and capsify in in this blog sorry I am like the anti e.e.cummings that is just how it is.

Sorry, America! I forgot to take ANY pictures of the Fourth of July party we had, even though there was some pretty delicious grilled food. 

So we tried again a few days ago. I learned from Cook’s Illustrated that you don’t have to make veggie kabobs when you are grilling…instead, you should maximize the veggie surface area for maximum infusion of grill flavor. If you slice the zucchini/squash/onions/whatevs longways, they don’t slip through the grill, and they taste delicious. Lightly brushed with olive oil, S&P, and my new obsession, aleppo flakes (thanks, Brian!). Task thirteen FTW!

The chicken is salted and peppered as well, then slathered with a mix of some BBQ sauce and this Balsamic Fig Vinaigrette I had in fridge (turns out this stuff, reminiscent of ambrosia of the Gods, can be used to great effect on ANYTHING. I am going to need to try to figure out how to make something like it.)

We half-shucked the corn but left the husks attached, removing only the hairy stuff, and put a few spices and some butter on each thing before wrapping the husks back around and tying up with cute bow. They were kind of undercooked. Then I read in this cooking magazine that you should remove all the under-layers of husk, leaving ONLY the outer layer. Alternatively you can remove all the husks and just wrap in aluminum foil, but what is the point? That’s like, removing ALL the cuteness.

I highly recommend grilling some veggies this way. You’re (belatedly) welcome, America.

You’re going to want to make this.

First of all, polenta crust couldn’t me easier to make or more delicious. You basically just heat up some chicken stock, pour in your polenta, and stir for about 5-10 minutes, then spread the polenta in your tart pan (or pie plate), then stick it in a 450 oven for 10 minutes. I want to make everything with polenta crust now.

Meanwhile, you can do whatever you want for the veggie filling. You could even do a non-veggie filling. You could even put nothing in there and just eat crispy polenta for dinner.

Here’s what we put in it:

• one yellow summer squash, sliced thin
• one zucchini, sliced thin
• 3 roma tomatoes, sliced thin
• 1 leek, finely chopped
• 4 oz wild mushroom (variety pack woo!), finely chopped
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 1 cherry pepper (they are so cute! and fairly mild — next time I might spice it up more), seeds out, finely chopped
• olive oil
• salt 
• pepper

My brother-in-law Brian send me these Aleppo flakes that I was intending to use but then I forgot!! Alas.

Basically, you mix all the above ingredients together, then lay them out on baking sheets and bake them for about 10 minutes at 450 or so. You can do this at the same time as the crust if you are super well timed. Then you let the veggies cool for a bit and then stack them around in there in a really pretty way. I just went for alternating squash, zucchini, and tomato round and round — make sure to get all that other good stuff in there too.

THEN here comes the good part: Take a bowl, break an egg in there, add a dash of cream and a dash of skim milk (or something) and grate some parmesan cheese in there as well, then whisk it up good, and pour it over your veggie tart, pushing gently on the top with the flat back of a spoon or some such to get the liquid to seep in nicely. Then bake in 350 oven for 30 minutes or so. Half-way through, I topped this baby with CRUMBLES OF GOAT CHEESE, and that couldn’t have been a better idea.

We ate the tart with some sundried tomato pesto which was delish.

Next time, I’d add corn perhaps. And more shrooms. And more heat.

Just in case anyone is trying to make this recipe at home, I’ll list the rest of the ingredients you will need here:

• polenta (6 oz or so)
• 2 cups or more chicken broth (or veggie broth or water if you want this to be completely vegetarian) 
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup cream + milk or just cream
• parmesan cheese (1/2 cup? I dunno)
• goat cheese (to taste)

My final bit of advice? Don’t let the haphazard way in which I’ve conveyed this recipe deter you from trying this delightful concoction.

Thanks to my family’s recently-acquired affinity for watching MasterChef, in spite of the show being horribly overdramatic, my mom had the idea to import one of the show’s challenges to our dinner table: guess the ingredients.

On the show, they have some old winner on who is trying to sell a new cookbook and so all of the contestants have to make a recipe from her cookbook from tasting only (ie no recipe) — this involves guessing the ingredients! This is also one of my favorite challenges from Hell’s Kitchen, another one of Gordon Ramsay’s horribly overdramatic shows that I nevertheless watch. Sigh.

So, last night, my mom made a DELICIOUS slaw similar to that featured on the show, and V and I tried to write down all of the ingredients. +1 for every correctly guessed ingredient; -1 for every wrongly guessed ingredient; no points for missed ingredients. I was too timid with my guesses and didn’t write down a few things I thought I tasted (like mint and basil), but I still won!!! (by one point only). 

I correctly guessed my mom had used this cilantro-lime dressing we had, the ingredients of which I had read yesterday, so I felt that was cheating and we only counted that for two points.

17-Ingredient Slaw

• red cabbage
• red onions
• yellow, orange, red bell peppers
• jalapeno pepper
• mango
• corn
• cashews
• parsley
• three types of basil (sweet, thai, and red rubin - from our garden)
• apple
• celery
• lime-cilantro dressing (cilantro oil, some other oils, and lime)
• mint

Instructions: chop all up, mix together, proceed to yum-ville.

READER PARTICIPATION REQUEST: If you try this game at home, and send me a picture of the meal you made, the score sheets of your participants, and the recipe w/ actual ingredients, I WILL MAKE YOU FAMOUS by posting on my website. Send me your pics via email to askbarfood@gmail.com or use the email link to the side there.

This game is seriously more fun than making 1 million flashcards.

So is this:

Hi everyone! I am currently in Boston and away from the kitchen, so today brings us our first bar guest. It is fitting that my first guest-poster should be my mom, who taught me most of everything I know about cooking. Below, she has shared her recipe for the wonderfully flavorful, colorful, and moist chicken paprika (as previously seen in my last post). And after my lackluster attempt at making leftovers from this dish, you can now see how the pros do it (mom is a master leftovers user, and her philosophy on the matter, as written below, should not be taken lightly).

Chicken Paprika Recipe

This is one of my family standards.  Use whatever kind of chicken you like.  The paprika should be as fresh as possible. 

Ingredients:

• 6 chicken breasts, or 4 chicken breasts and 4 thighs, or whatever combination you prefer, washed and dredged in flour
• 2 medium onions, minced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 4-8 oz. sour cream
• Around 2 T. paprika
• Salt and pepper

Brown chicken, onion, and garlic.  On each side of the chicken, add salt, pepper, and paprika.  Simmer in covered pot until chicken is tender – about 20-30 minutes.   With the pot covered, this should generate a fair amount of liquid.  For less liquid, you can leave the cover off for the last 10 minutes or so.  After the chicken is done, remove some of the liquid from the pan (1/4 cup would be plenty) and blend in a bowl with the sour cream.  How much sour cream you use is a matter of how much liquid you have generated, and what proportion of the sauce you want to be sour cream.  I use about 4 ounces.  Once the small amount is blended, add to the pot and stir.  Don’t try to stir in the sour cream without first blending with a small amount, and don’t try to blend when the sauce is too hot or the cream will curdle. 

I served this dish with rice, and with oven roasted mixed vegetables (anything and everything, cut into bit-sized pieces, cooked on a cookie sheet with olive oil, at 425degrees; stir every 5 minutes until done – about 20 minutes.   

Leftovers 

There are at least two ways to go on leftovers.  One is simply to heat up last night’s dinner, as served or with only slight variations.  This works well with dishes that just get better over time, like beef stew, but not all meals have the virtue of aging to perfection.  For these, the best route is often to introduce a new element or two altogether, perhaps ever rendering last night’s repast unrecognizable.   

The chicken paprika dish is, in my opinion, not a great stand-alone leftover.  I tried this, to rave reviews. 

Saute 3-5 garlic cloves, add a medley of vegetables – I used red peppers, kale, fresh corn, and yellow squash.  In my opinion, only the corn is essential.  Broccoli also works well.  If you are using a vegetable that takes a little extra time to cook, like kale, pre-cook it, before you add the other vegetables.  Now, here’s the special part, take some hot peppers of your choice (editor’s note: the hot peppers tasted great in this dish, and were a fine foray into task thirteen, if only we knew what the peppers my mom used were called…but I’m still counting it) I used the long green peppers, which are relatively mild, but jalapenos or serranos would do the trick and give the dish more heat.  For this dish, I used one long green chili for each leftover breast or thigh.  Before adding the peppers to the stir-fry, remove the seeds and mince the rest.  Stir-fry the peppers  with the vegetables.  While all that is stir-frying in olive oil, cut the leftover chicken in bite-sized pieces.  Don’t worry about the paprika sauce from the original dish that sticks to the chicken.  In fact, if you have some extra sauce, use a few tablespoons of it.   When the vegetables and just short of done, add the chicken.  When the chicken is heated through, break up a 3-4 oz  hunk of goat cheese in the same dish.  Stir, but you don’t want to eliminate all traces of the goat cheese.  Call it done when most but not all of the goat cheese is dissolved.  The combination of the hot peppers and the goat cheese gives a whole different consistency and makes it a brand new meal.  I served this over a bed of linguine, and topped with grated parmesan.  Delicious!

{experimenting with side views!}

{yum yum yum, melting goat cheese, sprinkles of parm, corn and kale in my tum!}

Thanks, mom! Bar Food is now officially open for guest posters who’d like to take on a bar task. Because you can’t just cook in a vacuum; you’ve got to eat and be inspired by other peoples’ food as well!

This is another one inspired by Ming Tsai’s new cookbook. Kung pao chicken.

Apparently, making rice doesn’t count as using a separate pot. But I digress.

The saving grace of this recipe for my blog’s purposes is that it gave me the opportunity to try out thai chilies (task thirteen: try out different kinds of chilies). What makes it kung pao-ey is that you coat the chicken (dark meat only! this was made entirely with chicken thighs) in a bit of corn starch first. Then you cook it in a wok. Or, if you don’t have a wok, like me, you just cook it in some really hot grapeseed oil and stir a lot. V uses a patented two-spatula method that is both hilarious and functional. We added bell peppers to Ming’s recipe. The peanuts are key.

Do you like my ball of rice? I tried hard on that.