Baba Ghanouj Twisted

Living in Eindhoven means we are surrounded by more expats (typically from the U.S., but sometimes other areas) than Dutch on some occasions.  Large, global companies such as Philips, ASML, and Merck exist here sustaining the economy and much like Minneapolis, generate small spin off companies that ultimately bring people in like my husband to bring in knowledge/experiences that are typically unknown in the region.  One of Matthew's co-workers has been here for a slightly longer time, and while he lived in the U.S. for quite some time, he's originally Persian.  His wife, also an American has taken to Persian cooking, but what I love about her cooking is that it's a bit of a fusion with some of favorite ingredients incorporated (in this recipe sun-dried tomatoes and basil).  Anyway, we had them over for dinner one night and she brought some Baba Ghanouj to gobble before dinner and I fell in love with it.  I've adapted her recipe a bit to fit the ingredients I had, but it's such a great dip and as I've found this week, perfect for lunches.

Note, this recipe is not very prescriptive with respect to the ingredients, the key is getting good eggplant flavor, but then season it as you like.

Ingredients: 

2-3 medium sized eggplants (I prefer the dark purple kind - the flavor is richer as compared to the white/purple stripped kind)

olive oil (about 1/4 cup)

1 small white or yellow onion

1 tablespoon (approximately) of tahini (I used a small spoon I use for coffee - so, really it's an approximate and a taste measurement). 

2-3 cloves of roasted garlic (you can also use raw garlic, but it will be a bit more 'raw', similar to pesto)

3-5 sun dried tomatoes (make sure you know the salt content of these first; chop these a little bit to facilitate the blending process)

a handful of cilantro and/or parsley (note, I only used cilantro - use as much or as little as appeal to your taste buds)

a handful of basil (use as much or as little as appeal to your taste buds) 

Directions: 

1. Grill or broil the eggplant until the inner meat of the eggplant is very mushy and soft

   (My husband graciously grilled the eggplant for me.  While the coals were heating (mostly white, but not fully hot) he allowed the skin of the eggplants to char (but the meaty inside was still pretty firm), then I wrapped the eggplants (2 -3 per pack) in aluminum foil and he buried the wrapped whole eggplant in the coals as they continued to warm up.  This gave the eggplant a sort of campfire roasted flavor which I found delicious). 

2. Once the eggplant is cooked, unwrap from the aluminum foil and cut into thirds and place in the blender.  The eggplant will be difficult to handle as the foil and eggplant will be very hot, be careful!  The only reason to cut into thirds is to accommodate a smaller blender, if you have a larger one you may be able to skip this step. 

(Note, I left the skin on as I wanted to preserve the charred flavor.  Similar to hummus, if you want a smoother texture scrape out the cooked eggplant meat and leave the skin behind) 

3. In a blender, add the olive oil to the eggplant and blend until few clumps are present (it doesn't need to be completely smooth for this step).  

4.  Add the remaining ingredients except for the salt and blend until smooth. 

5. Taste the mixture and add salt to taste.  Blend to combine any additional salt added. 

6. Serve with bread, pita slices, crackers, or whatever else you like.

This is a photo of the leftovers for my lunch today, it's not very pretty.  If you want a smoother Baba Ghanouj use the full amount of olive oil the recipe calls for, this version shown in this photo contains less (I eye-balled it). 

Enjoy!!!

The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

image taken from amazon.com

Phew, what a book!

The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende follows three generations of intertwined families centered around Esteban Trueba, his family, his fortune, and his demise.  The book is narrated partially by Trueba, but mostly by his granddaughter, Alba who recounts her family history beginning from her great grandmother's, Clara, childhood.  The novel also intertwines the political upheaval of Chile (as many of Isabel Allende's books do) which plays a critical role in the lives of the Trueba family.

I have read many of Ms. Allende's books prior to this including, Daughter of Fortune and Portrait in Sepia.  This book caught my eye after watching the movie (with actresses Meryl Streep and Winona Ryder released in 1993) on Netflix.  I've enjoyed Ms. Allende's books, but since the story lines are similar and the writing style is consistent, I would recommend reading them between other books.

Isabel Allende's novels are complex, dark, usually about love and loss of love, almost always include a political event, and usually span generations of one family.  I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Ms. Allende's writing.  On the one hand, her text includes a richness that is emphasized with her choice of words and the manner and meaning she uses them in, but as a result I often find myself needing to read with a dictionary (maybe that suggests I'm lacking in vocabulary more than anything!).  Isabel Allende's novels are generally long (relatively speaking) as they transgress through multiple generations which allows the reader to become completely engulfed in the story line.

The House of Spirits is spiritual, but also real. Clara's (Alba's great grandmother) clairvoyance and ability to see the future sets the tone of the novel lifting it from reality to the unknown.  Eventually as Clara's importance to the story line fades and she herself ages, reality becomes more predominant, but the sense of spirituality remains in the novel as it eventually creeps it's way into Esteban Trueba (Clara's stubborn, head-strong husband) way of thinking.

The beauty with which Ms. Allende tells the stories of various intertwined lovers is also remarkable.  As soon as the lovers passion begins to soak in to your mind, a life event, tragedy, or social circumstance throws a bend in their pathway and it takes another turn, one unexpected or one you may not like.  The commonality of this experience is also striking, but I have to wonder if it's always so dramatic in real life?

Overall, I loved this novel and I would pick up another novel by Isabel Allende in a heart beat.  This book is completely different from the movie, but as a result one is not necessarily better than the other.  They simply are stories loosely similar based around the same set of events and ideas.   This novel is not a fast read, it does take some time to make your way through, but it's worth the time!

On my nightstand...

Update 12 August: Turns out the Ken Follett book sitting on my nightstand is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, called World Without End, so this one will take a back seat until I purchase and read the former. Instead, I'm replacing this book with another book written by Jeanette Walls.  As part of book club, we read The Glass Castle (check out my review here).  She's written a book about her grandmother's life called, Half Broke Horses.  She calls this book a true-life novel ... I imagine she had to fill in some details while bringing the story together.  I also suspect some of the information is a retelling of her own mother's life experiences with her grandmother, Lily Casey.  

image taken from amazon.com

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Here's a quick review of books on my nightstand/in my iPhone/on my Kindle (geez... do I have enough ways to read a book?!) that I'm hoping to write about soon.

If you click on the image it should take you the amazon.com synopsis, where I also acquired these images from.  Just in case that doesn't work, I've added a link to the title in my discussion below.

 


The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende - I added this book to my list of reads after watching the movie on Netflix while we still lived in Italy and after reading Portrait in Sepia (during our trip home in between living in Italy and moving to the Netherlands) which is the sequel to Daughter of Fortune (which I also read, but well before our life in Italy - I remember it was a random Barnes and Nobel pick up in the discount section!). I'm almost through it, it's taken a lot longer than expected, but I have had some visitors in the last month.  In general I find Isabel Allende's books a very dense read and occasionally catch my mind wandering while reading her all too often run-on sentences.  Isabel Allende's books are jam packed with action, adventure, love and often cover generations of the family at the center of the book (all three primarily set  in Central America).  This book is completely different from the movie and really, both are great!  I can't wait to share my thoughts with you on this book.

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer - This book was randomly added to my current reading list when I mistook it for the July Eindhoven book club choice, ha!  This is an interesting read about the state of things in the U.S. (since the early 60s/70s to 2010), but there's not a lot of interpretation of the stories George Packer shares.  I think the stories themselves could be great discussion topics for a book club, if you're willing to get political.  Mostly for now (at least of what I'm willing to share at the moment) I've realized that this is not a book I want to read before I go to bed, it's not a comforting read.  Right now this book has taken a back seat to The House of Spirits, but I'm about 70% of the way through and I plan to finish it before adding anything else to this reading list.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - This is a book my mom set beside the door of the room my husband and I were staying in when we went home for the month between living in Italy and moving to the Netherlands as a slight nudge to read this book... it was very cute, I have to say.  Well, I brought it all the way over from the States, and now that I have heard enough about it and it has been recommended by others, it has made my current reading list.  TBD on  my initial thoughts on this one, I haven't even cracked a page!

Until the next book review...

Book Review - The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

I started writing this review a long time ago and didn't take the time to finish the review until just recently.  I'm still not sure if I will continue with book club reviews, but since this review was mostly complete, I decided to post it.
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Image from amazon.com

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls was the June 2013 book club choice we reviewed and it was a good discussion that was facilitated with questions I found online. I’m not sure if I’ll continue to review book club books and/or if I will write the reviews before or afterwards.  It could be an interesting comparison to write my review before and see what I think of it after the discussion with the club.  Food for thought for now, but for the time being an FYI for this blog.

SPOILER ALERT - Note, there is some discussion of some of the stories in this review that you may want to experience raw, hence I am labeling this a spoiler alert!

Synopsis - click here 

This book was heartbreaking, but the entire time I was rooting for Jeanette Walls.  Curiosity got the best of me and within the first story (a 3 year old cooking hot-dogs and setting her polyester dress on fire), I looked up Jeanette Walls and the creation of this book and quickly learned that Jeanette Walls was a successful journalist and now writes full time.  Despite this information, I found these stories unbelievably difficult to imagine, heartbreaking to read, but yet very brave for writing them and telling the world her story. 

Ms. Walls opens with a story of watching her mother and father sorting through trash bins in New York City from afar (I believe it was a taxi cab), ashamed of what she is observing.  Ms. Walls opens the novel with this story, but it’s not the shock value alone that gets you.  The story also serves to intrigue the reader to understand why her parents choose a lifestyle of homelessness and most importantly, why Ms. Walls appears to be living in drastically better circumstances than her own parents.  This stark contrast sucked me into this novel, that’s for sure.

Throughout the memoir, there are many difficult stories.  Eating out of the trash at school and dumpsters, a mother hiding and stealing food from her children, dire living conditions including no running water or electricity, coaxing your own mother to go to work so there’s enough money for the family, and so on.  But despite the desperate-ness of these stories, Jeanette Walls shows deep love and admiration (especially in her younger years) for her parents, especially her father.  The relationship Ms. Walls has with her father, being his favorite child, is the hardest thing to wrap your head around.  How can Ms. Walls love her father so much, but not have her most basic needs provided for?  Is it because she doesn't know any better, this is the hand life has dealt? After thinking and discussing with my book club, I think that Jeanette Walls’ father intended to be a good father, but he didn't have the knowledge.  Mr. Walls' upbringing was arguably worse than the one he provided for his own family.   

Another interesting point of discussion at book club was Jeanette's mother, Mary and whether she fulfilled her role as a mother.  We debated quite a bit in the group if she could be called a mother, some were on the fence while others were positive she had not fulfilled her duties as a mother.  I landed on the fence.  On one hand, her children's basic needs were clearly not taken care of and she let her children (especially Jeanette Walls) be in the middle of her messy relationship with her husband, Rex.  On the other hand, she was the one who was able to provide when Rex was drinking and gambling, albeit the children themselves had to convince her to go to work!  Mary also had a heavy hand in their love for reading (their father did too) and art, and I believe her children's success was heavily influenced by this environment she encouraged and provided.

I highly recommend reading this book, it's well written and it's such an interesting story that while I can't relate to it directly, provides another perspective on how life may be lived. I also think this is a great selection for a book club as there are so many topics and stories to discuss and the interpretation of them is bound to be different from person to person, thus generating interesting discussion and a fun book club event!

Raghavan Iyer Breast of Chicken with Tomato and Coconut Milk from 660 Curries

Well, it's been quite a long time since I've blogged.  I certainly intended to blog more frequently over the last month, but with completing out my job contract and visitors from the US, it's been very busy around here! It's been great fun, but even though I've been cooking the entire time I really haven't found much time to blog. I received a lovely cook-book, 600 Curries by Raghavan Iyer, from my sister-in-law who visited us in early July and have been exploring many recipes from this book over the last month.  This is the first of what I expect will be many recipes I blog about from this cook-book.  Cooking from this book is quickly becoming a favorite past time around here!

Breast of Chicken with Tomato and Coconut Milk
adapted from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer 660 (p. 146)

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons of oil (I used peanut, the recipe calls for canola)
1 small onion, cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced (I used a small yellow onion, the recipe calls for a red onion)
4 medium sized cloves garlic, finely chopped (I used a blender for this)
2 lengthwise slices fresh ginger (each 2.5 inches long, 1 inch wide and 0.25 inch thick), julienned
1.5 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 teaspoons of English-Style Madras Curry Powder (don't let this stop you, this was very simple to make if you have a spice grinder and whole spices; it may be possible to mix the already ground spices as well, but I have not tried this)
1.5 teaspoon of coarse kosher or sea salt
0.25 cup unsweetened coconut milk (I actually used a lot more as I wanted a lot more broth, I used 8.5 fl oz)
1 large tomato, cored and fully chopped (I used 2 small ones and left out about 0.25 of the chopped tomatoes out - it felt like too much tomato and since it is added towards the end I didn't feel they would cook down enough)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems (I used a small handful, this is not something I would measure measure out)

English-Style Madras Curry Powder

Place the following items in a spice grinder or coffee grinder and blend until the mixture is finely ground (like your other ground spices!)
2 tablespoons coriander seeds
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 teaspoon black or yellow mustard seeds (I used black)
0.5 teaspoon whole clove (this was hard to measure, an approximate is fine and can also be adjusted to your taste)
0.5 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
5 to 7 dried red Thai or cayenne chilies, stems removed (to taste)

Once blended, add 1 teaspoon of ground tumeric to the mixture.

You will have leftover masala from this recipe.

Recipe:
1. Prepare all the ingredients (chop the tomatoes, grind the splice blend, cut the onion, garlic and ginger, etc.)
2. Preheat a wok over medium-high heat.  Add the oil and allow it to warm up.
3. Add the onion, garlic and ginger and stir-fry until they are light brown, about 5 minutes (yes, I used a timer)
4. Add the curry powder and mix with the vegetables.
5. Quickly thereafter, add the chicken and sear the meat on all sides (if possible, if not, sear on as many sides as possible)
6. Add salt to the mixture.
7. Add the coconut milk and allow it to come to a boil.  Turn down the heat and allow the chicken, vegetables, spices and coconut milk simmer until the chicken is cooked through.
7. Remove the chicken pieces using a slotted spoon.  Leave as much of the ginger and other vegetables in the soupy mixture remaining as possible.

Chicken cooked and removed from wok

8. Add the tomatoes and cilantro (the recipe calls to do this after the sauce thickens, but I wanted the tomatoes to cook down a bit) to the soupy mixture.
9. Raise the heat to medium,  and allow the sauce to reduce until it thickens to your desired consistency.

Sauce thickening with tomato and cilantro included

10. Add the chicken back into the wok and serve over cooked white rice immediately.

Final product in the wok!

Final product with cooked white rice

This was a fabulous weeknight meal and a great way to use of the massive amount of chicken I had leftover from earlier this week.  To make this faster, prepare the spice blend ahead of time and if possible and chop the onion and garlic ahead of time (but only a night in advance, of course, if you chop everything the day of that is better).  Leave the garlic to a quick chop in a blender/food processor. I ended up doubling the recipe (used the the single serving of garlic and ginger though) to accommodate the amount of chicken, which is great for leftovers (hopefully my new colleagues don't mind the smell of Indian food!).

Hope you enjoy this new recipe! Cheers!