Veggie's Delight: Spinach Pulao & Aubergine Curry

Spinach Pulao with Jumbo Raisins, Toasted Almonds and Pomegranate Seeds

&  Aubergine Curry

Type of cuisine: Indian/Vegetarian
Cooking time: 2 hours
Difficulty: medium

Since the last time I cooked Indian was more than a week ago, today I had a craving for a curry, and not just any curry, I felt like having a vegetarian curry.

Vegetarian curries are colourful, zesty, and exciting to cook. Even though it was pretty time-consuming (I spent the bones of two hours baking, frying, chopping, dicing, peeling, grating, crushing, etc :) I was happy at the end when I got to take the pictures and we both enjoyed a very nice meal.

If you have cooked Indian before, you know that there's no Indian dish without spices: cumin, coriander, mustard seeds, cinnamon,  turmeric, saffron, cloves, onion seeds, sweet paprika, and chilly- to name just a few. These wonderful spices are the base of whatever you cook.

Preparation

If you want to cook them both (it's a very good combination), you must start with the eggplants. Wash them, pierce their skin with a sharp knife and bake them in the oven for 45 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.

The Spinach Pulao

In the meantime, deal with the rice. Basmati rice will take more time to steam and it's a good idea to let it soak all the water while you are busy doing other things.

Fry some oil in a medium-size pot, add the spices (cumin, coriander, mustard and onion seeds) and let them pop. Cover with a lid, they are leathal :)

Add two cups of Basmati. Fry and mix with the spices. Pour water to cover and add salt (I used Camargue salt with crushed curry leaves- it's home-made), turmeric, a handful of jumbo golden raisin (yes, be generous) and bay leaves. Let it simmer.

While the rice and aubergines are taking care of themselves, prepare the veggies.

For both dishes, you will need the following vegetables 

a bag of baby spinach 

3 medium-size aubergines/eggplants

3 carrots 

2 red peppers

5 small red onions

 4 cloves garlic

fresh ginger

fresh tomatoes or a can of diced tomatoes

a handful of almonds

jumbo raisins

pomegranates (to decorate)

Method

Going back to the rice, fry a pinch of cumin and onion seeds in the wok and cover.

Cut the two carrots julienne and put them in fry them with the two onions.  Set aside.

Cut the spinach if the leaves are long and fry them in butter.

Toast the almonds.

The wine is just for the show :) I love the reflection mirrored in the black bottle

To finish the Pulao, incorporate the carrot and onion mix with the rice, add the spinach and use a soft rubber spoon to mix. 

Top with toasted almonds and pomegranate seeds. 

Now, with the Pulao out of your hair, the Aubergine Curry will be a piece of cake.

Remove the aubergines from the oven and peel them. Drain and chop. Set aside.

Prepare the curry base: fry the spices (mustard, coriander, cumin, onion seeds- the usual). Add the freshly diced (or grated) ginger, the garlic and the chopped onions (should be the last three).

Add a carrot, two peppers and the diced tomatoes with a spoon of brown sugar, mix the lot, season with a little salt, turmeric, sweet paprika, a pinch of hot chilly, and a spoon of  Madras curry powder.  Reduce.

Can you see the onion seeds on top? They're beautiful.

Work in the chopped aubergines and let them simmer quietly. 

I hope you will enjoy this dish as much as I did. Have it with naan, papadums, raita, or chutney.  

Even though it takes longer to prepare, don't feel discouraged and arm yourself with patience. It took me two hours because it was the first time I cooked these particular dishes.  If you are organised and have all the veggies ready for cooking, you might even spend less time in the kitchen and more time entertaining your loved ones.  Enjoy :))

Hot Chocolate, Sweet Bread & Some Soul Searching

No, I will not write down the recipe of how to make hot chocolate! :)


I know I will sound a bit mushy, but even a cuppa chocolate can bring you down memory lane. 


You may remember the famous madeleine quotation by Marcel Proust from A la recherche du temps perdu:  "I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place." [...]


"And suddenly the memory revealed itself."


"The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it...." but "....as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me .... immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents."


It's funny how many times a whiff of perfume perforating the air, the flavour of a dish or a tantalizing sip we take send us to a different world we once were in and thus, makes our return simply magical.


Same as in Proust's story, my mother had given me this big sweet bread named cozonac in Romanian. It's made with white flour, yeast, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, saffron, lemon or orange rind and zest, and stuffed with chocolate, walnuts, Turkish Delight or raisins soaked in rum overnight.


I have never attempted such a difficult task, but I enjoy having a slice a day, relishing every bite and going back to the hot kitchen, seeing my mother kneading the sweet aromatic dough and there I am, stealing a tiny, gluey tidbit... How many times hasn't my mother found me with the finger in the pie, literally speaking? Guilty pleasures are made of these short instances that shape our life as adults: the love we were loved with, the tenderness with which we were often reprimanded.

Sweet bread with raisins, Turkish Delight and stuffed with rich, dark chocolate. Vintage serving tray.

Coming out of the stream of consciousness, I must say I crushed some fresh leaves of mint in the mortar and pestle till they oozed their green sap, mixed them with Dutch dark cocoa, brown sugar and scalding hot milk. 


A surprising combination: something old (the sweet bread) and something new (the hot chocolate), something hot (the milk) and something fresh (the mint).


What a trip!


And I will end with the excerpt from Du côté de chez Swann in French because, as Shakspeare rightly acknowledged, "translators [are] traitors", aren't they?


"(Ma mère) envoya chercher un de ces gâteaux courts et dodus appelés Petites Madeleines qui semblent avoir été moulés dans la valve rainurée d'une coquille de Saint-Jacques. Et bientôt, machinalement, accablé par la morne journée et la perspective d'un triste lendemain, je portai à mes lèvres une cuillerée du thé où j'avais laissé s'amollir un morceau de madeleine. Mais à l'instant même où la gorgée mêlée des miettes du gâteau toucha mon palais, je tressaillis, attentif à ce qui se passait d'extraordinaire en moi. Un plaisir délicieux m'avait envahi (...)"

"Et tout d'un coup, le souvenir m'est apparu. Ce goût, c'était celui du petit morceau de madeleine que le dimanche matin à Combray (...) ma tante Léonie m'offrait après l'avoir trempé dans son infusion de thé ou de tilleul." 

"Quand d'un passé ancien rien ne subsiste, après la mort des êtres, après la destruction des choses, seules, plus frêles mais plus vivaces, plus immatérielles, plus persistantes, plus fidèles, l'odeur et la saveur restent encore longtemps, comme des âmes, à se rappeler, à attendre, à espérer, sur la ruine de tout le reste, à porter sans fléchir, sous leur gouttelette presque impalpable, l'édifice immense du souvenir."

Marcel Proust in Combray in Du côté de chez Swann in A la recherche du temps perdu (1913) (source http://du-sacre-au-sucre.blogspot.com)