India (Ghee Whiz)

I guess it's kind of futile to try to get a grasp of Indian cuisine in one 4 hour period, when the lecture takes a full hour due to the introduction of so many different and bold ingredients -- lemon grass, fish paste, ghee, curry blends, and on and on. And on top of that, the school threw in Thailand for good measure. There were literally 15 recipes to get through, so every student did something different.

I made pullao rice with crispy brown-fried onions. First step is to make ghee. Early on, we clarified butter (take solid butter, melt it, simmer it to eliminate all moisture, and skim off solids as they rose to the top). The result was golden clear and pure. Compared to ghee, it's mild and tepid. With ghee, you simmer the solid butter but you do not skim; you let it go, allowing the milk solids to brown and lend a rich flavor to the fat. After 30 minutes or so, when the oil looks dark, strain through cheese cloth. The flavor tastes slightly toasted, and just broader than simple clarification.

The pullao rice is similar to a pilaf. You start with fat in the pan (in this case, ghee) and toast the basmanti rice in it for a few minutes. Once all the rice is absorbed, you can give it a little color but not too much or it'll intefere with the liquid absorbtion. Then pour in the right amount of chicken stock, cover, simmer for about 15 minutes. Turn off heat, add some more stock around the edges of the pan, recover, and let sit and steam for about 10 minutes.

While the rice was cooking, I made what is called "chaunk", super-carmelized onions. In a wok, add ghee, then fry cumin seeds and fresh curry leaves quickly, no more than a couple of minutes, making sure not to burn. Add a bunch of long slices of onion and keep moving. In a few minutes, add easy-to-burn black mustard seed. Keep it moving ocassionally, cook down until the color of a good dark chocolate. A few minutes before finish frying, hit it with minced ginger and garlic.

The chaunk is folded into the pullao rice. Mixing will cause the rice to get gluey, so once it's relatively mixed, walk away. The chaunk was quite delicious, giving a nice brown sheen to the white rice. I could see making chaunk for just about any kind of rice and making it really flavorful.

In today's group, Dirty Dave made a chicken curry with thin slices of breast meat (which I suspect is more of an American

convention), Roundhead did a sea bass in another curry, and Norbert did some coconutty thai vegetable curry. As I made ghee, the others made a red curry paste and a garam masala, a blend of freshly-ground spices. Some other groups did a fantastic spicy shrimp dish with velvety coconut rice that would of been well received in any Thai joint in NYC.

Tomorrow, we take a day to tackle the entire cuisine of China.

ADDENDA:

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, good yogurt with honey, vanilla, cashews, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 10-11am, 2 small cups of sweetened tamarind juice, coconut rice with moti matal shrimp, browned onion rice with Thai red shrimp curry, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACKS: 4-7pm, the HVS's secret stash, 1 cup sprite, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

In the office working late, snuck into HVS's desk and ate a plethora of pretzels and delicious black sesame rice crackers, I ate the whole thing up. (If your reading this, I'll bring a vegan snack selection next time I'm in!)

DINNER: 9pm, falafel sandwich, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
A bite on the way home.