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Good Indian food is hard not to love. When I open my spice cupboard I'm instantly transported to a magical land full of aromas and color and when we're cooking - well, you can probably imagine. When someone says Chickin Tikka Masala most people who know Indian food knows it's a tomato creme sauce with a strong Garam Masala flavor to it.What most people don't know is that it's a dish that was created in London and has become so popular there that the Brits have declared it the national dish. The proprietor of my favorite local Indian restaurant (Clay Pit - Mill Creek WA) said that 90 percent of the people they serve order Chicken Tikka Masala because that's the most known and recognized dish. Mill Creek is a predominantly white community so this makes sense. We've eaten Indian food all over the world and it's a shame that people don't get better accustomed to some of the other dishes as they're wonderful as well. The influence Chicken Tikka Masala has had on other Indian dishes has been dramatic so much so that cooks are adding Garam Masala to a lot of other dishes to make them more appealing to customers addicted to Chicken Tikka Masala. This I think is unfortunate but a reality nonetheless. Anyway we've been working on a Chicken Tikka Masala recipe at home and we're about 90% there. On first bite it comes off as being a bit flat but things build as you proceed. What I'd like is for the flavor to be stronger and the heat identical. Outside of that I think we're about there.
You may already know that Chicken Tikka is cooked in a tandoori and I don't have one. To get around this I marinate the kebabs in the yogurt/spice mix and put them as close to the broiler as possible. This may mean you put the rack on the topmost slot and then invert a sheet pan in order to get the kebabs closer. I'm also experimenting with making naan in a similar fashion. A tandoori runs at about 800 degrees and my oven will hit 550 so by heating the oven with a Pizza stone up under the broiler I may be able to similate a tandoori. More on that later. I have a few more changes to my Chicken Tikka Masala recipe before I post it but it will be coming in the next month or so.
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I'm off dinner duty tonight which means I'm on dessert duty. Most baked desserts take quite a while to make so I decided to drag out the fryer and make Gulab Jamun which is a popular North Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Gujarati and Punjabi sweet dish made of a dough consisting mainly of milk solids (often including double cream and flour) in a sugar syrup flavored with cardamom seeds and rosewater or saffron.
You can get it in Indian restaurants but we've found the quality to be all over the place. Sometimes you get it cold and other times it's warm. Once they were very clearly frozen and when they warmed them up the insides were still cold - ew! Also like many desserts there is a huge markup on Gulab Jamun in restaurants, for the price of one Gulab Jamun with maybe 2 balls of dough you can make an entire dish of them with 80 at home and in under an hour.
The photo to the right is 3/4 of the batch we made because we are still experimenting with the proportions for our copper serving dish. We used 2c dried milk, 1c flour, about 2/3c milk and 1tsp baking soda for the dough. We'll be adjusting this down a bit because we ended up with an extra 10 that won't fit in the dish. The syrup is made with 3c sugar, 2.5c water (or less) and 2tsp cardamom powder. In the future I'll be experimenting with putting rosewater in it as well. This whole tray of Galub Jamun cost about $2.50.
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Ah, Mole Rojo! Probably my favorite Mexican dish is Pollo en Mole but it's REALLY hard to find a restaurant that can make it. I know of three Mexican restaurants in all of Seattle (and there are a lot) that make a decent Mole. La Carte De Oaxaca in Ballard makes an excellent Mole Negro, Fridas in Mill Creek makes a decent Mole Pablano and Todo in Lynnwood makes a decent Molo Pablano. There used to be a restaurant in South Everett called El Pechugon that made a decent Mole Pablano. The problem with mole is you don't eat it all the time and it's a long process to make. Mole Negro has up to 40 ingredients! Because of my love for mole and the rarity of good mole in restaurants I've tried to make it a few times. In Mexican tiendas there are mole pastes and I've tried them all. I've even brought mole paste back from Oaxaca and it was so so. There was a new brand (Teololepan Mole Rojo) in the stores so I decided to try it. The instructions go something like this - "Disolve paste in pan, add broth and chicken before frying". Not very helpful so I disolved the paste in chicken broth and the taste was way way off. Very bitter so I started to add flavor with my many Mole Rojo recipes. And after recreating the entire paste short of the peppers and chocolate I ended up with something that wasn't offensive but I'm not sure I saved any time and I definately didn't create a mole that I'd eat if I had a choice. I think next time I'll just take the day (because it really does need a whole day) and make it from scratch. That would probably be a great time to make tamalles too as Natalya has been wanting them and you basically need to mark a day off the calender for them as well.
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Everytime I walk by a Pummelo in the store I have to pick it up and smell it. This wonderful fruit is the grandfather to the grapefruit and according to the scientists a Pummelo and an Orange had too much to drink one night and before the Pummelo finished school and saved enough money to move out of the trailer the orange had given birth to a grapefruit. The grapefruit seemed like it was going to be a complete failure at first but both of it's parents saw something in it and with encouragement it went on to become a star even if it's temperament was a bit sour at times. Or so that's what the scientists say.
The reason I pick up Pummelos and smell them is because they have a nice grapefruity smell that's sweet, not sour. I've been envisioning Pummelo garlic sauces for chicken and Pumelo cream sauces for stuffed pasta. Up until lately they've been too green but the Asian markets have nice yellow ones now so it was time to see what I could do with this fruit.
First of all I think most of the flavor is in the meat. I drained the juice and added it to my shallot/sherry mixture and the Sherry completely overwhelmed it. Next time I'll cut the shallots in half and ax the Sherry completely. If I keep the wine I'll probably go for a nice mild Riesling. Anyway I was also candying orange peals for the garnish in a cardamom syrup so I added that to the cream and it perked up quite a bit. While I was plating it and getting the camera situated the parmesan started to cool giving the sauce a lumpy look. I'll address this next time. Overall it was a good first start but it will take a few more swings before I hit the ball out of the park. My judges (kids) scarfed it all down and licked their plates so I guess it wasn't complete loss.
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I actually made these about 4 days ago but forgot to post them...
Mexican Brownies? Maybe brownies aren't mexican but Chocolate was consumed by the Maya 1000 years before the Europeans landed at Veracruz. The Aztecs and most other indiginous groups also drank chocolate for festivals and religious ceremonies.
Even today you can stop in at a Chocolatria and have a cup of Hot Chocolate and some Churros. In Oaxaca there are several Chocolatrias that grind the cacao while you wait just like a coffee shop would here. You get a fresh ground cup of hot chocolate which you can drink in the shop while watching the world go by.
So with that in mind I buy a lot of chocolate from Mayordomo in Oaxaca. When I'm there I bring it back and if I'm not there I mail order it. It's expensive through the post so it makes sense to just pick it up if you're in the city. With that chocolate I make brownies hence the title of this blog post. There's something different about Oaxacan chocolate than European or American chocolate. It has a special smell and taste to it that always brings back nice memories.
To add extra depth to the ganache used for the brownies I also include a couple tablespoons of dutch processed cocoa to the 7 ozs of Mayordomo Oaxacan chocolate.
Oh and I forgot to take pictures until I only had one left so it was a bit weird shaped.
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I pondered on whether I'd mention Mexico in the title of this blog post because you'd be hard pressed to find fajitas in Mexico. But in fact the Mexican people created fajitas even if they did do it in the States so the title stands. We just finished up the Moussaka and I had a couple of pounds of pork loin in the freezer than needed to be used and some red bells that were starting to wrinkle so we threw together some pork fajitas for dinner. When you're using skirt steak you don't have to do anything to the meat in order for it to taste great but skirt steak is $8/lb which is a bit too rich for my blood right now. Pork or chicken for that matter needs a little something so I whipped up some marinade that I'd created to give them flavor. A while back I'd found a commercial marinade that I liked the flavor of but it had way too many chemicals in it so I recreated it from scratch. It's not too hard to make and I'm mostly satisfied with it outside of the fact that Im using lite corn syrup which I want to cut out of my food. Later I'll spend a little more time to add a bit of heat, depth and get the corn syrup out but for now it stands. I don't eat fajitas that often so I've really not put much effort into the marinade.
The fajita marinade comprises of the following ingredients.
- light corn syrup
- cider vinager
- lime juice
- ketchup
- mollases
- brown sugar
- cumin
- worchestershire sauce
- salt
- corriander
- garlic powder
- cayenne
Yes this means it's very sweet. I want the corn syrup gone and I want more depth so I'll be playing with the spices and worchestershire sauce.
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There's a wild Moussaka loose in the theater! When I tell people I'm eating Moussaka for dinner I get some strange responses. At the very least I get a "What's Moussaka?" with a wrinkled up nose. I tell them it's like Lasagna without the noodles, meat, tomato sauce or cheese which is usually followed by an "Oh!" from them. So what is Moussaka? It's a Greek cassarole dish comprised of lamb, eggplant, breadcrumbs, spices and bechemal sauce. Sometimes we cheat and use half lamb and half hamburger if we're poor. The meat is cooked with spices and herbs (cinnamon, cloves, garlic) and then the pan is deglazed with red wine. Tomato puree is added and the whole thing is simmered for a while. The breadcrumbs, meat mixture and fried eggplant are layered in a glass baking dish and topped with Bechamel and baked for 30 minutes. Our recipe is getting closer to being where I want it and when I'm happy I'll upload the recipe. Moussaka is good paired with pita brushed with olive oil and warmed on a comal dipped in Tzatziki sauce.
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Although we're out of our "travel to Italy" phase (you can thank the Italians for that) we still eat Italian food. Just so everyone knows Italian is pronounced with a short I and not eye-talian (there is no country pronounced eye-taly). Now that I have that off my chest I'll continue. We still eat Italian but we rarely ever go out to eat at Italian restaurants because just as French food get's lost in the translation to America so does Italian. In Italy most dishes are very simple to make and have a nice clean goodness to them. At italian restaurants in the States the same dishes are complex, expensive and heavy. It doesn't seem to matter if the owners are actually from Italy either because they do the same thing. Mexican's make crappy food in America and wonderful food in Mexico, Italians make crappy food in America and wonderful food in Italy. I'm not sure what the source of this is but it exists nonetheless. So anyway we wanted a simple meal tonight so we fixed Italian (remember Italian = simple, say it three times).
Usually we make our own stuffed pasta but this time we cheated. We bought frozen butternut squash filled ravioli. The problem with store bought ravioli is they have no real flavor. Even though you can look at the ingredients list and see everything is there they come out real bland. For the sauce we browned one stick of butter until it foamed and then added the sage leaves while removing it from the stove. While that was cooling I made some Buerre Monte which is an emulsion of water and butter. Buerre Monte is the coolest thing ever. You just boil about 1 TBs of water in a pan and then wisk in butter a TBs or two at a time. This emulsion process keeps the fats and milk solids from seperating from the butter. I mixed in some of the Buerre Monte to thicken our browned butter a bit and shredded some parmesan over the top and it was ready. The whole meal was done in the amount of time it takes to boil water.
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Baklava is one of those desserts that you see in many cultures but I think it's origins go back to Assyria. Most people have probably had it at a Greek restaurant and some might even claim it to be a Greek dessert but in fact Baklava was one of the many things left behind after the 400 year occupation of Greece by the Turks. If you trace the history of the land we now call Turkey far enough you'll probably run into a bunch of Persians at some point. Not that Baklava originated from Persia because it probably didn't but the version I like the best is Persian. Greek Baklava usually has layers of Phyllo dough interlaced with layers of walnuts soaked in a sugary syrup. Persian Baklava strays from this formula a bit by using Almonds (without skins for New Year) or Pistachios mixed with Cardamom and perfumed with Rose water. This version has a wonderful scent to it and a nice spice kick as well. If you've never had Cardamom then you're missing out. Just go to an Indian grocery and buy a bag of whole green cardamom pods. Break open a pod and chew the tiny black seeds that reside within and you'll be in for a treat. I'm not going to try to describe the flavor because I can't (I've tried), you just need to try it.
If you take the time to blanch the Almonds and slip the skins off you will be rewarded with a nicer cleaner flavor. We're not done with the recipe yet but when we get it perfected (and I mean perfected) I'll post it to my online Recipe book for all to use. For now though, I give you photos.
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Scenario: In the Dom0 (Host) you have a file that you export to the DomU (Guest) and it appears as an entire hard drive and you want to make it larger.
Example- Dom0: /srv/xen/diskimage.img -> DomU: /dev/xvda
If you're using diskimages for your DomU drives you may need to increase their size if any of the DomU partitions become full.
Resize the Xen Diskimage in Dom0
1. Create a backup of the diskimage from Dom0
2. Shutdown the DomU
3. Add extra space to the diskimage using dd. This will add 1GB to the DomU image. Adjust count= depending on how much you want to add. If you want a sparse file use seek= to define the entire disk size.
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=1024 >> ./diskimage.img
or if you want a sparse file
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 count=0 seek=1G >> ./diskimage.img
4. Boot the domU
Your disk should now be larger. You will need to use traditional tools inside the DomU to make the partitions and filesystems larger.
Following are examples for Partitions and LVM.
Expanding DomU Partitions from within DomU
In this example we're using /dev/xvda as the example DomU device name, change this depending on your setup. Note this tutorial only works for resizing the last partition on the diskimage drive.
1. Start the DomU and log in as root
2. Start fdisk /dev/xvda
3. Delete the last partition and recreate it with the start cylinder being identical as before and the ending cylinder being the default (end of disk)
4. Exit fdisk
5. You may have to reboot the DomU before going on.
5. Resize the filesystem on the partition - resize2fs /dev/xvda1
That's really it! You can only hot resize if the Filesystem is getting larger. If you need to shrink it then you'll have to take the Volume offline first. Isn't this easier than dealing with partitions that are too small?
If the partition you want to resize is in the middle of the DomU drive you're in a bit of a pickle. For example if you want to resize / you have problems.
- /boot - /dev/xvda1
- / - /dev/xvda2
- /var - /dev/xvda3
This is the primary reason to using LVM. The solution to this problem isn't very elegant. You basically need to make another disk image and attatch it to the DomU in exactly the same manner as you attached /dev/xvda. The new drive should appear as /dev/xvdb if that's the way we entered it in the DomU config. Once it's done you need to restart DomU, fdisk and format the drive. Once formatted you can mount it and copy all of /var over, change /etc/fstab to map /var to /dev/xvdb1 and reboot the DomU again. Once rebooted you can delete /dev/xvda3 and resize /dev/xvda2.
This process is really no different than if you had a real server but you don't have to install a physical hard drive. I think this shows why LVM is such an improvement over physical partitions.