Okra Curry

Okay, first off, if you don't like okra, we might not be able to be friends. Or rather, we might not be able to be dinner companions, because if there is one vegetable I cannot resist, those little green fingers are it. And if you refuse to like okra, that would cause me to question your taste more generally, and then perhaps your value as a person. Which in turn will make me feel judgmental. So lets skip all of that nonsense and just agree that okra is where it's at.

The other night, R brought a 2 pound bag of okra home, because he knows I can't resist the stuff, then asked that I make an Indian recipe with it. This okra curry is what I made. It comes from a no-nonsense book, The Classic 1000 Indian Recipes, absent commentary, absent pictures, absent description, this book really is just a collection of 1000 Indian recipes. But this curry was delicious. The sauce is essentially a paste of onions, garlic, seasonings and yoghurt, all enveloping the okra. While the traditional way might be to grind the onions and garlic to a paste by hand, a food processor is a good, updated choice.

Okra Curry

Slightly adopted from Wendy Hobson's The Classic 1000 Indian Recipes

1 pound okra

1/2 cup ghee (clarified butter)

4 onions, cut into large chuncks

6 cloves garlic

salt, to taste

1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon garam masala

1 teaspoon chili powder

2/3 cup plain yoghurt

3 3/4 cup water

1 teaspoon chopped fresh cilantro

Trim the okra of the skinny end, but you can leave the fat end intact. Heat about half of the butter in a large saucepan and sauté the okra until golden. Remove from the pan and let drain on paper towels. Grind the onions and garlic to a paste in a food processor. Add the rest of the butter to the pan and then add the onion paste. Cook for about one minute, then add the salt, turmeric, garam masala and chili powder. You may need to add a little of the water from time to time to keep it from drying out.

Stir in the yogurt, then add the water and simmer for 30 minutes, uncovered. Stir occasionally. Add the okra and simmer for an additional 15 minutes. If you pan isn't large enough, you can add the water in batches, taking care to keep the mixture wet enough so that it won't burn.

Serve over rice and with a sprinkling of cilantro on top.

Pflaumekuchen, My Family's German Plum Cake

Finally, finally, finally we're back on-line. We also have furniture (finally) and we're unpacked (finally!). I've been saving up a few recipes for this very day, but there's one I want to get out there right away: my family's pflaumekuchen, or German plum cake recipe. Now's the time for a couple of reasons. It's plum season, and September is the best time to find the Italian prune plums so wonderful in baking. (Look for those long, oblong-shaped plums, not the round ones you're probably used to eating out of hand.) Also, it's an old family recipe that I promised to you around this time last year, when I made a different pflaumekuchen. Although good, I vowed to return to my family's recipe this year.

Like the other recipe, this one has just enough crumb to hold the plums in, but in our version, there's no yeasted tart dough. Actually, it's mostly butter. And it has the structural integrity of, well, butter. In other words, not very much. So you can't expect pretty slices here, that buttery cake is in no way strong enough to support the weight of the plums, but it does do a wonderful job of soaking up the purple plum juice as it bakes. Actually, it reminds me a bit of the Nantucket Cranberry Pie I made a while back, and which, by at least one account, might be the easiest cake out there. This one is pretty darn easy as well.

The recipe comes from my paternal great grandmother, and originally she called for a mixture of butter and shortening. I almost never bake with shortening, so the little can I buy for this occasion goes unused the rest of the year. As an experiment this time around, I decided to try it will all butter, and really see no reason to go back. But I'll give you the choice in case you have some shortening to be used up.

UPDATE: This recipe won first place in a dessert competition held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. You can read about the competition on my post here, which also includes a recipe for a delicious cream to serve alongside.

Erna Welp's Pflaumekuchen, or German Plum Cake

15 Italian Prune Plums, halved and stone removed, but not peeled

1 stick butter, plus either 1/4 cup shortening or another 1/4 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

pinch salt

1 cup flour

1 1/2 tablespoons milk

Preheat the oven to 325F and grease a 9x13" baking pan and set aside.

With an electric mixer, cream together the sugar and butter/shortening until well combined. Add in the rest of the ingredients except the plums and mix until combined. Spread the batter out on the bottom of the baking pan (it will be a relatively thin layer, so use your spatula to spread it around and cover the entire bottom).

Place the plum halves skin side up in rows on top of the batter. Bake for 1 hour, until it passes the toothpick test. Cool before serving and enjoy!

Why Moving Isn't Fun

Moving isn't fun for so many reasons. But our particular internet service provider makes it even less fun. Did you know it can take over three weeks to get internet set up in a new apartment? Because it can. I hope to be back on-line soon, but not if our great internet company has anything to say about it, it seems. Don't worry, I send them mental daggers every night before bed.

Guest Post: Plum Cupcakes with Lemon Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

You may have noticed that things have really slowed down over here.  Well, I have a good reason, and a fabulous post to offer you as an apology.  You may recall my past rants about the evilness of my landlord.  Well no more, R and I finally packed up and moved.  We're just down the street from where we were before, but now we're renting from someone not quite so associated with the devil.  We're in the middle of unpacking the apartment, so one of my good friends was kind enough to help keep this place going.  Take it away Todd!!

Plum Cupcakes with Lemon Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting 

I met Andrea during freshman year of college, but it wasn’t until we became roommates in New York City, 6 years later, that I caught wind of Andrea’s foodie brilliance. When we first met she was eating tuna from a can.  Ok, fine, college students can’t exactly seer up tuna steaks in the dorm, but still I get fuzzy tingles of pride seeing her culinary passions take life in the form of the fabulous Cooking Books!  In fact, it’s had a VIP parking spot in my browser’s toolbar since 2008 

As a child, I lived for cookies and cupcakes.  I may as well be honest here: I only really learned to bake for my own piggish gourmandizing.  Yup!  And I baked often.  Perhaps I needn’t mention my mother eventually had to shop for my outfits in the “husky” section at JC Penny.  We can’t all love cooking AND Triathlons! Ahem, Andrea, cough, grumble, grumble.

Fortuitously, I have found something called a gym, where I can conveniently peddle and step while watching Ina Garten.  I travel right to the Land of Yum and handily forget that I am whittling my waist.   What this really means is that I can bake cupcakes once more!   If these weren’t so amazingly delicious then I’d have used this opportunity to actually share my creations.  Maybe next time…

I came up with the idea for plum cupcakes while browsing this site.  I decided to try plums instead of peaches, but I didn’t want to use just any plums.  I wanted stunning plums.  I visited the Harvard Square Farmer’s Market and found the dearest wee plums I’ve ever laid eyes on.  They actually had two varieties: a European Green Gage (very sweet and moist), and classic Blue (more firm and tart).   I bought them and mixed both kinds into the recipe.  For the frosting, I decided to get sassy and match the sweet plum with a fresh lemon and ginger cream cheese frosting. 

“Fruit in a cupcake??” you might be fretting.  Rest assured that it’s nothing less than wonderful.  And these aren’t at all like a muffin, like I had feared.  They actually have the fluffy constitution of a cupcake, and the plum pieces add a refreshing, summery hint of the orchard.

Plum Cupcakes:

Makes 24 cupcakes

 

3 cups cake flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Pinch of nutmeg

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks or 6 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup dark or light brown sugar, packed

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) whole milk yogurt

5 or 6 plums, cored and chopped to small cubes (may leave on skins)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line muffin tins with paper liners.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg and set aside. Cream the butter and sugars together, beating until fluffy. Add the beaten eggs in two turns, scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl between each addition, and then the vanilla and almond extracts. Gently mix in the yogurt. Stir in the dry ingredients and fold in the cubed plums.

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared cupcake liners.  Fill to just below the paper’s rim, as they rise slightly but not overwhelmingly.  Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of cupcakes comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes for a couple minutes in the tin, then turn them place them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Lemon Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 bars (8 ounces each) cream cheese, room temperature

2 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest

1 1/2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 pinch of salt

Place butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add cream cheese and beat until well-combined and fluffy, about 2 additional minutes. Add sugar, lemon zest, ginger, lemon juice and salt, then beat for 3 or 4 minutes.  If you’d like it to thicken some, you can place the frosting in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes before spreading it onto the cupcakes.