I have a friend who thinks this blog needs to come back to life. So this is for her – T, you're probably the only person who will read this anyway!
I had class today, and I had initially planned on starting something in the crockpot before leaving for school but that didn't happen, so I just ended up leaving a tray of goat meat out to thaw. I figured I would just cook it when I got back. The tray said 'putt' on it. I have no idea what part of a goat that is but if you are reading this and know what putt is, please tell. I clearly don't care enough to just google it. Hey, if it tastes good...
On another note, I tried my hand at vegetable gardening last year and pretty much failed EXCEPT for this massive growth of kale in my garden box that passionately survived even though I ignored it for months. I end up giving away most of it, every month, because there's so much when I eventually get around to harvesting it. I picked a lot of it two days ago and wound up driving around town like the kale-fairy. I delivered kale to four different people that day, and I have a jar full of the stuff on my kitchen counter as we speak. Kale chips are a fave around here, which is huge, by the way, considering what a nightmare it is to get healthy food to enter Newbah's body.
So naturally, once I got home and started cooking the gosht in my pressure cooker, I looked over at the bouquet of kale on the counter, and I thought, 'hello. let's make kale-gosht.' You know, like palak-gosht, but with kale? I have to say that I didn't put in nearly as much kale as is required with regular palak-gosht but it was enough, and it was goooood.
Let me back-track a little bit and talk about how I cooked the meat. It's pretty basic. I chopped up some onion. Threw it in the pressure cooker and fried it up till it was brown. The brownness of my onions depends on how enthusiastic I am about cooking on that particular day. It was medium brown today. I added in a teaspoon or tablespoon of ginger-garlic paste, which I try to always keep handy in my fridge. It's a pain to prepare once a month or so, but it's worth it. Then, depending on whether I have tomatoes or not, I either add a chopped up tomato, a can (or half) of tomatoes, or some yogurt. I had tomatoes today, so I just put one of those in there and let it fry up a little bit with the onions. I then added my spices: turmeric, red chili powder, coriander powder, cumin powder, salt. Regular stuff. After that, I plopped the meat in and let it cook for a minute or so while I chopped up some fresh cilantro and mint. This stuff makes all the difference, I tell ya. I dropped a handful of that into the pot and poured in about two cups of water, let it come to a boil and closed that thing up so it could pressure cook. Once the whistle started blowing, I let it cook on medium for about 15 - 20 minutes and then turned it off. It was around this time that I had my kale-gosht epiphany, so I cut up a bunch of big green leaves.
I also started my rice around the same time. SPEAKING OF WHICH. The most bizarre thing happened when my rice was almost done. In fact, it was at the point where you pretty much turn the stove off and just let the rice sit in the pot, covered, for like 5 - 10 minutes or however long you like before you eat it. I was standing right next to it, talking to the boy about something stupid, and all of a sudden we hear this loud 'POP'. I look over and this is what the lid of my rice pot looks like:
I really thought it was about to fall through into my rice, a million little pieces of it. But I lifted it off really carefully and put it on a plate. It's still sitting there, intact. We tried tapping it and stuff but nothing budged. Why do these things happen? The boy was like, 'is it because of the heat?' and I was like, 'well.......that's what it's made for.....', so yeah. Totally weird. Now I can't cook rice in my favorite pot for rice-cooking. But I have this piece of art that I can put up on the wall or something and then everyone can judge me.
ANYWAY. Back to that gosht. Here's what it looked like when I opened up the pressure cooker.
And here's the kale. Which soon joined the meat. I had the stove on again, letting the water evaporate and just generally bhunofying.
I was pretty excited by this point. And then my mind was racing and I wanted to make it moarrr special and I opened the fridge and just stood there. This is how I cook. I open the fridge and stare at stuff and then I just start throwing random things together. It's like making art. So anyway, I found these little guys and I chopped up a couple of them and threw them into the mix too, mostly because they were ORANGE and I like colorful food.
And since I was feeling so fancy I added a generous sprinkle of black pepper near the end, gave it a little swirl, and it was done! Served over rice, devoured, thanked God, et cetera.
Seriously, the best thing I've cooked in a while:
Alhamdulillah for good, fresh food. Or just food in general. And all the other good things.
I had class today, and I had initially planned on starting something in the crockpot before leaving for school but that didn't happen, so I just ended up leaving a tray of goat meat out to thaw. I figured I would just cook it when I got back. The tray said 'putt' on it. I have no idea what part of a goat that is but if you are reading this and know what putt is, please tell. I clearly don't care enough to just google it. Hey, if it tastes good...
On another note, I tried my hand at vegetable gardening last year and pretty much failed EXCEPT for this massive growth of kale in my garden box that passionately survived even though I ignored it for months. I end up giving away most of it, every month, because there's so much when I eventually get around to harvesting it. I picked a lot of it two days ago and wound up driving around town like the kale-fairy. I delivered kale to four different people that day, and I have a jar full of the stuff on my kitchen counter as we speak. Kale chips are a fave around here, which is huge, by the way, considering what a nightmare it is to get healthy food to enter Newbah's body.
So naturally, once I got home and started cooking the gosht in my pressure cooker, I looked over at the bouquet of kale on the counter, and I thought, 'hello. let's make kale-gosht.' You know, like palak-gosht, but with kale? I have to say that I didn't put in nearly as much kale as is required with regular palak-gosht but it was enough, and it was goooood.
Let me back-track a little bit and talk about how I cooked the meat. It's pretty basic. I chopped up some onion. Threw it in the pressure cooker and fried it up till it was brown. The brownness of my onions depends on how enthusiastic I am about cooking on that particular day. It was medium brown today. I added in a teaspoon or tablespoon of ginger-garlic paste, which I try to always keep handy in my fridge. It's a pain to prepare once a month or so, but it's worth it. Then, depending on whether I have tomatoes or not, I either add a chopped up tomato, a can (or half) of tomatoes, or some yogurt. I had tomatoes today, so I just put one of those in there and let it fry up a little bit with the onions. I then added my spices: turmeric, red chili powder, coriander powder, cumin powder, salt. Regular stuff. After that, I plopped the meat in and let it cook for a minute or so while I chopped up some fresh cilantro and mint. This stuff makes all the difference, I tell ya. I dropped a handful of that into the pot and poured in about two cups of water, let it come to a boil and closed that thing up so it could pressure cook. Once the whistle started blowing, I let it cook on medium for about 15 - 20 minutes and then turned it off. It was around this time that I had my kale-gosht epiphany, so I cut up a bunch of big green leaves.
I also started my rice around the same time. SPEAKING OF WHICH. The most bizarre thing happened when my rice was almost done. In fact, it was at the point where you pretty much turn the stove off and just let the rice sit in the pot, covered, for like 5 - 10 minutes or however long you like before you eat it. I was standing right next to it, talking to the boy about something stupid, and all of a sudden we hear this loud 'POP'. I look over and this is what the lid of my rice pot looks like:
I really thought it was about to fall through into my rice, a million little pieces of it. But I lifted it off really carefully and put it on a plate. It's still sitting there, intact. We tried tapping it and stuff but nothing budged. Why do these things happen? The boy was like, 'is it because of the heat?' and I was like, 'well.......that's what it's made for.....', so yeah. Totally weird. Now I can't cook rice in my favorite pot for rice-cooking. But I have this piece of art that I can put up on the wall or something and then everyone can judge me.
ANYWAY. Back to that gosht. Here's what it looked like when I opened up the pressure cooker.
And here's the kale. Which soon joined the meat. I had the stove on again, letting the water evaporate and just generally bhunofying.
I was pretty excited by this point. And then my mind was racing and I wanted to make it moarrr special and I opened the fridge and just stood there. This is how I cook. I open the fridge and stare at stuff and then I just start throwing random things together. It's like making art. So anyway, I found these little guys and I chopped up a couple of them and threw them into the mix too, mostly because they were ORANGE and I like colorful food.
And since I was feeling so fancy I added a generous sprinkle of black pepper near the end, gave it a little swirl, and it was done! Served over rice, devoured, thanked God, et cetera.
Seriously, the best thing I've cooked in a while:
Alhamdulillah for good, fresh food. Or just food in general. And all the other good things.
