Loft Chef: Curry-ish

Friends, it has been far far too long, and for this, I apologize. In my absence from the blogosphere, we have gotten more tour guides, I have mastered the art of riding a bike uphill and took a ridiculous test to become a licensed guide, my brother has updated his food blog for the first time since July of 2008, and my friend Melissa has arrived in DC (more on that later.) But let's talk food. When I first started out on this food adventure, my friend Joel introduced me to a website called stumbleupon to help me find recipes. I had obviously heard of stumbleupon, but never actually used it. To read Joel's post about the website, click here (told you I would shamelessly plug you, Joel!) The way stumbleupon works is that you put in your interests and it finds websites to match those interests. Joel told me that there was an option to find pages related to food, so I did that and found all sorts of exciting recipes, one of which was a recipe for potato and cauliflower curry from a website called the kitchn (sic.) The thing about this curry is that it was far more solid and less spicy than any curry I've ever had, but still quite delicious. It tasted a lot like one of the dishes my roommate Komal's mom had made for her to keep in our mini-fridge (best idea ever.) I made this "curry" with some naan using a recipe I stole from my brother quite some time ago. The curry recipe is available here, but of course I'll put it in the blog as well.

Potato and Cauliflower Non-Curry

1 large or 2 small onions, diced small
1 pound (about 6 small) red potatoes, cut into small cubes
1 small head of cauliflower, cut into bite-size pieces
1-inch clove of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon cumin
2 teaspoons curry powder
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes in their juices
1/4 cup yogurt

Heat a teaspoon of olive oil in a 4- to 6- quart dutch oven over medium-high heat. Cook the onions with a half teaspoon of salt until they are soft and translucent. Add the potatoes with another half teaspoon of salt and cook until they are browned on all sides. Add the cauliflower and cook until it is also browned in spots. It'll start to look like this:

Toss in all of the spices and stir until they are fragrant, about 30 seconds. Pour in the tomatoes and their juices. Bring everything to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low. Cover the pot and let the curry simmer until the potatoes and cauliflower are soft, 15-20 minutes. For a thicker sauce, remove the lid in the last five minutes of cooking to let moisture evaporate.

Turn off the heat and stir in the yogurt. Taste the curry and adjust the salt, pepper, or other seasonings as desired. This curry will keep for one week refrigerated or up to 6 months frozen. (If you're planning on freezing some of it, don't add the yogurt until you're ready to serve the curry.)

This makes a LOT of curry, I froze half of it and was able to bring it in for lunch 4 times within a few weeks, plus eating it for dinner and snacks. You want to make sure that you have everything cut up ahead of time and that you are constantly stirring the pot while the cover is off so nothing gets burned.

Now for part two: you can't eat curry alone, simply because it is generally too liquidy. Now since this was not real curry, it was more solid, but that wasn't going to stop me from having fun! So I made one of my favorite types of bread, naan.

Now naan is typically baked in a wood fire oven, found at most good Indian restaurants, but unfortunately, my apartment does not have such amenities...maybe some day...

In any event, I have been making naan for a while by frying it. It's fast, delicious and fun! Here's the recipe:

1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons plain yogurt

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. Then add in the yogurt and start kneading (with you hands! I know it seems gross and gooey at first, but I promise you'll get used to it and it's so much fun! ALWAYS use your hands while making bread. There are no exceptions to this rule unless your hands are permanently disgusting, in which case you probably shouldn't be cooking anyway.)

Keep it going until it's nice and mixed. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic and let sit out for two hours

If you're crunched on time, you could just let it sit for 30 minutes, but it's nice to give it more time.

After two hours cut into 6 pieces or more, I can usually get eight to ten out of this recipe. If you want more than that, just double it!

Make the pieces into balls, and roll those out into flattened rounds with a floured rolling pin. You can also flatten 'em by hand.

Heat the skillet, and then lightly oil the pan. Brush one side of a flattened naan-round with oil.

Then place it, oiled-side up, in the pan. After two to three minutes of cooking, the naan should begin to form bubbles, and brown spots should form on the cooking side.

Flip and brown evenly. Flipping is the best part. Don't use a spatula, just swish the naan around in the pan a bit and flip! naan is really easy to do this with, and with enough practice you could try with other things too, like pancakes (although pancakes are much harder because their tops stay liquid while cooking.) I would advise you to keep a spatula nearby just in case, but you'll master the art of flipping in no time!