various items

I haven't posted in a few weeks and I think part of the reason why is that I really need to get up some photos of the food. This food blogging business really seems to work better with pictures.
Part of the problem is that our internet service here in Dushanbe isn't that great and we get nicked if we go over our 4gb a month limit, and I think the limit is even less for uploads.

Tonight Boulangerie Beans & Potatoes from Bittman's HTEV.

They are in the oven now and have to back for another hour and a half. Yesterday I made a big pot of red beans. We used them to make veggie burgers (onions, beans, rolled oats, chili powder, salt, & pepper) they came out a bit dry as I messed up the proportions, but all in all not too bad.

Day before I tried my hand at making homemade English Muffins... not perfect as I mis read the recipe and tried to correct for it, but on the whole they were amazing, a bit denser than I normally like. However, the nearest available English Muffin is probably somewhere West of Istanbul. They did come out looking like they should and we were pretty happy to have them.

Day before that I tried to recreate two recipes from our recent vacation in Turkey. One was simply fire roasted red peppers in vinegar with garlic, and the other was fire roasted/smoked eggplant with roasted garlic and lemon juice. We have a local (traditional?) Tajik barbecue that was looks a bit like rusty scrap metal and earlier this year we had to take down part of the Bay Leaf Tree (I think they are normally Bay Leaf Bushes) as some of it didn't survive the tremendously cold winter here last year. Turns out the wood is fantastic for smoking veggies.

Both of those dishes turned out better than what we'd had in Bodrum, Turkey on our vacation. At least Brandy was pretty pleased with them.

Oh and I made ketchup (Bittman's recipe). Who knew that you could make your own? I've grown up with always getting it in a bottle. Turned out pretty good, but its a bit odd. I've never had non-processed ketchup and our experience has been that making food at home will always beat the processed stuff, buts its almost as if it has too much flavor.... its going to be a great base for Barbecue Sauce.

good eating.

Thai food... sort of

Last night we made lentils & potatoes with green curry from Thailand and Brandy made an fresg basil & eggplant stir fry with Thai chili paste. Recently, one of Brandy's colleagues traveled to Thailand for a workshop and while she was there she picked out some goodies for us. She brought us 2 huge packs of toasted coconut chips, 2 packs of vacuum packed red curry, and one green curry, coffee, dried pineapple, mango, and something else. The Thai chili paste is really good, its not too hot and has a nice sweetness to it.

I think tonight its going to be back to bean soup.

Catching up

Here's what we've been eating over the last few days:

Pesto made with garlic, olive oil, walnuts and fresh basil from our garden.

Another round of pizza for Father's day. The method I use to get great pizza sauce is to peel and core a couple of pounds of tomatoes, blend them and then pour them into a shallow pan in the oven and cook them until they are about halfway to becoming tomato paste. This concentrates the flavor of the tomatoes and makes for a nice thick, non-watery tomato sauce. Cook some onion and garlic with a little olive oil, add some italian spices, and bit of red wine and you've got a first class pizza sauce.

Brandy's Pizza: Roasted garlic, pesto, onions, black olives, mushrooms, artichoke hearts.

Dylan's Pizza: Russian salami, black olives.

Brandy even managed to find some passable mozzarella cheese at the grocery. The one problem I'm having though is getting the pizza into the oven. To solve this my friend Tom suggested brushing it with olive oil and pre-cooking the crust, which worked pretty well. Brandy and I are going to try and find a pizza stone when we are in Turkey next month.

Pizza tonight.

Fresh made pizza dough. Fresh made pizza sauce.

These were pretty damn good. I may have made the dough a bit thin and thinner yet by throwing it old school style (I used to throw pizza dough for Willie's Cheese & Wine Pizzeria in Medford, back in 1985). We had some difficulty getting the first pie into the oven, but once it began to bake, the crust became nice and crunchy. Even with out a decent mozzarella available ( the closest is something called 'Khujandi", and I had the nanny pick some up for us. It was absolutely atrocious. Cheese is not a high priority for Central Asians) the pizza was still pretty good. I used a Dutch Edam in place of the mozzarella.

The key here though was the sauce. I had tried to make a second batch of tomato paste, but I cut the process short because I didn't want it to burn. Apparently, half way to tomato paste you arrive at the worlds best pizza sauce. I am now convinced that I will never have to buy Digorno pizza crusts ever again, or anything pre-made ever again. In your face Betty Crocker!

Ugly Cherry Pie

Brandy and I and the boys are off to Varzob this afternoon with our friends Tom & Mette and their 1 year old boy Sasha. Varzob is narrow river valley just outside of Dushanbe, its where pretty much everyone in Dushanbe goes to relax on the weekend. Lots of little parks and restaurants along the river.

For the occasion I just put a cherry pie in the oven. Made with dark red cherries bought at the bazaar and mixed with sugar, flour, & almond oil extract that a friend of ours buys on the road between Garm and Dushanbe. The almond oil is pretty amazing. We'll see how the pie turns out. I tried to double the recipe for the dough and when I do that I pretty consistently screw it up. Next time I'll be sure to do 2 batches. The crust recipe comes from.... wait for it... Mark Bittman's HTCEV, where else? Its probably the best recipe I've used for pie crusts and works brilliantly when I don't try to double it.

so it may be ugly, but it will be delicious.

What's in the pot?

White bean soup made with fresh vegetable stock. Used the immersion blender to make it a bit creamier. Also used a local mushroom in the vegetable stock though to be honest I couldn't really taste the difference.

Also, I'm making another batch of tomato paste. I went to Zoloni Bazaar this afternoon and bought 5 kg of the best tomatoes I could find and used about half for the batch of tomato paste.

Also got more cherries, plums to mash for Cody (he was unsure of it at first but he just polished of a small bowl of mashed plums mixed with rice cereal), peaches (thought it's not yet the height of the season, but I will find something to make with them), and 3 varieties of beans. I found these giant beans they look a bit like kidney beans but they are very black in the middle and then brown on the edges, they are humongous. Also bought some more white beans and special brown & white variety of mung beans.

What's been cooked so far

everything here comes from Mark Bittman's book HTCEV.

Bean Croquettes made with cornmeal and of course, beans. a bit like a hush puppy made from beans, pretty good, but a bit oily.

Cherry Pie (2 so far), one made with flour and sugar, the other with semolina and sugar, most recipes call for tapioca as the binder, we have not got tapioca. Both were given a thumbs up and promptly devoured by Brandy and Dylan.

spaghetti sauce made from fresh tomatoes and tomato paste. The first tomato sauce I only used fresh tomatoes and no tomato paste and because our local tomatoes are not yet fully in season (it's hard to get really red over-ripe toms) the sauce came out more orange than red. The next time I used a bit of the homemade tomato paste and that worked pretty well.

Coming soon: Peach pie, more cherry pies, strawberry rhubarb pie, and all things eggplant. In the fall we hope to make some apple cider and if we get really creative and industrious we make pomegranate/apple cider.

Papa il Pomodoro

Yesterday I made tomato soup. The recipe comes from Mark Bittman's book "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" and it was pretty fantastic. I used fresh tomatoes from the bazaar and lip-e-oshka (this is the the flat bread that Central Asians eat at every meal).

To make it I used freshly made veggie soup base which is made by frying potatoes, onions, garlic, and carrots in olive oil until they are well browned, add soy sauce (we use Braggs), and fresh parsley. When the vegetables are browned you add water and then cook for about 30 minutes more, drain off the liquid and you have an excellent veggie broth, better than anything I could buy at a store and not at all difficult to make.

Then, fry garlic, a dried red pepper (seeds and stem removed), and onion, when the onions are soft and the garlic is golden, add the tomatoes (cored, peeled, and seeded). Mix in 2 or 3 cups of veggie broth and then add the bread. I didn't have any day old bread, so I put the lip-e-oshka (its about the size of frisbee) in the oven and baked it till it was hard, cut it up into small squares and then mix it into the soup.

Since our tomatoes here are not completely in season (we've yet to get the really deep red tomatoes) I used some of the fresh tomato paste I made 3 days ago to add a bit more color and flavor.

Finally, in two more days I'm going to strain the liquid out of my hot sauce mixture. Dylan's nanny, Mohira, was able to find cheese cloth at the market.

What's in the pot?

Friday, May 30th here's what's cooking:

I decided to try my hand at making tomato paste, I have a lot of uses for it and its just not available here in Dushanbe, while the locals make their own version its often cut with vinegar to preserve it.

1 kg of tomatoes, cored and peeled and blended sitting in a large shallow pan at 3oo degrees. Every 5 minutes or so I scrape the pan to keep it from burning and to separate the solids, at least that's what I think I'm doing. Credit here goes to Derrick Schneider at An Obsession with Food for the recipe.
http://www.obsessionwithfood.com/2005_09_01_blog-archive.html#112718849211970151

On the stove I've got a pot of bean soup, all from scratch. I had some beans left over from making chili the other night. The base for the soup is from Bitten's book "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian". We brought a seasoned cast iron pan with us from the states and to make the base I cut up onions (quartered with the skins left on), potatoes, carrots, and garlic, and whatever fresh vegetables I have around. Cook them in olive oil until they've browned, add Braggs, water, and fresh parsley, and then strain it and keep the liquid, makes a great base for just about any soup.

Also, on the stove is a pot of Chickpeas for tomorrow's brunch, where I'll be making Chickpeas in their own broth Catalan style, also from Bitten's book.

Making Tabasco Sauce

I was inspired the other day to try and make Tabasco sauce. It won't be exactly like the real thing as both Tabasco and real Louisiana style hot sauces are aged in oak barrels for up to 3 years. If I could I think I'd try using some oak chips, but those go on the list of things we don't have here in Tajikistan.

The recipe is fairly simple and I got it from here: http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/fresh_chiles.asp

Chiles, vinegar, & salt.

I picked up 2kg (roughly 4 lbs) of dried red chiles at Zoloni Bazaar in Dushanbe. The first step was to prepare and then rehydrate the chilies. To do this I removed the stems and then soaked the chilis in water. They soaked for about 2 hours before I did another google search to see if I was doing it properly. Turns out it works best if you soak them in hot water. Our gas was out today, as it is most days here in Dushanbe, so I used our little electrical stove.

What i wasn't prepared for wasjust how toxic these little peppers can be. My hands were buring from mixing the chilies into the water and the next day I woke at about 5am with a swollen lip. My upper lip was extremely swollen on the right side, so much so that I couldn't actually close my mouth. I did a quick search of the internet and found that it was likely a food allergy, or in my case a topical overdose of chilies. The swelling went down after a few hours after taking some antihistamines.

After the chilies were fairly well rehydrated I drained them, mixed in the vinegar, 2 cups for each pound of chilies, and salt and then used an immersion blender to thoroughly mix the batch into chili sludge. I then transferred the batch into two 2kg glass jars. They are now sitting my refrigerator for the next two weeks.

Pictures to follow.