Q: What beats homemade marmalade?

A: Homemade marmalade on homemade bread.

Its not impossible to find good bread here, but when it comes to bread, I've been totally spoiled (mostly by Le Fromentier). Le Fromentier tops my list for two reasons. First they have the technical aspects of bread-baking nailed (things like crumb, texture, moisture etc). I have never bought a loaf there crumbled when I cut it, or was too dry, or had a hard, leathery crust, or suffered from any other unforgivable bread flaw, which is a good start. But what really puts them over the top is their creativity. Nuts, grains I had never heard of (or at least, didn't know the French translation of), vegetables, spices, cheese, olives, herbs...you name it, Le Fromentier has made a (flawless) loaf with it. If you don't believe me, check out this blog for a (somewhat complete) list.

Now, in Seattle, it is not impossible to find a decent baguette, rye, sourdough or even whole wheat loaf, you have to know where to look, but they're out there. Beyond the standard selection though, things are experimental at best. It was the insatiable desire for a good rustic grainy loaf on which to debut the marmalade experiment that drove me to bread-making.

Well, that and the desire to try out the infamous no knead breadmaking method. The idea behind the no-knead bread making method is just as it sounds: instead of kneading the dough, you assemble all the ingredients, stir until it forms a "shaggy ball" and leave the whole lot to rise for 12-24 hrs. Then, you punch it down, give it a quick fold (only once or twice), let it sit for 15 min, shape it into a ball, and let it rise for another 1.5-3 hrs. Finally, you pop the whole lot in the oven, in a pre-heated, approximation of a bread cloche. This could be a dutch oven, clay pot, etc. Any oven safe vessel which is approx. 5-7 qts in size and holds the heat well should work (the purpose of this is to shape the loaf, and give it a nice crust). I made one loaf in an enamel cast iron dutch oven, and one in a clay pot. The clay pot loaf was more successful, but I wasn't very scientific about the whole process.

You'd think I'd have learned after my marmalade escapades to keep things simple the first time round, and just made a simple, whole wheat loaf...no such luck. I dove in, head-first and decided to make Four Seed No Knead Bread. Probably not the optimal choice for a first loaf, and the fact that I bought the wrong yeast (active-dry instead of quick/instant rise...oops) probably didn't help. I ended up with a very flat (1.5" high), grainy, dense loaf...oh well. It tasted good, and if sliced sufficiently thinly, made an excellent venue for a good strong blue cheese.

But, flat grainy loaves do not lend themselves to toast, and even less so to marmalade. So, it was back to the cutting board. This time I did my homework. I learned that yeast labels (instant? quick? active?) are *almost* as poorly standardized as cream labels are (half-and-half? light? table? old-fashioned? numbers please people!). I watched the videos on Breadtopia. I read the threads on chowhound, and finally, with new yeast, a slightly smaller pot, and renewed energy, I tried again.

This time, I simplified things a bit, no four-seeds (maybe next time) just whole-wheat flour and bread flour:

Ingredients for basic yeasted No Knead Method (from Breadtopia.com):

3 cups bread flour (the above video used 1 cup (5 oz.) whole wheat flour and 2 cups (10 1/2 oz.) white bread flour
1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups purified or spring water

* Mix together the dry ingredients.
* Mix in water until the water is incorporated.
* Cover with plastic and let sit 18 hours.
* Follow video instruction for folding.
* Cover loosely with plastic and rest for 15 minutes.
* Transfer to well floured towel or proofing basket. Cover with towel and let rise about 1 1/2 hours.
* Bake in covered La Cloche or Dutch oven preheated to 500 degrees for 30 minutes.
* Remove cover; reduce heat to 450 degrees and bake an additional 15 minutes.
* Let cool completely on rack.
* Consume bread, be happy.

The result was most definitely marmalade-worthy.



The marmalade, sadly, was delicious, but a tad loose (I'm hoping it will improve with time), and if not, well, at least now I know how to make a killer loaf of bread. Maybe next time I'll get more creative and add a some more interesting grains.

Marmalade-Making in Gruesome Detail

"It wasn't, on reflection, the wisest of days to make marmalade. I had pruned the roses, the temperature was a degree or two below freezing, and the skin around my thumbnail had cracked open in the cold. It seemed as if each drop of bitter orange juice, each squirt of lemon zest sent shots of stinging pain through my thumb. But the Seville orange season is over in the blink of an eye and sometimes you just have to shut up and get on with things."

-Nigel Slater

That was how it began: with Nigel's marmalade recipe. I love marmalade, and usually the stuff at the grocery store isn't punchy enough for me, so naturally, I decided to try to make my own.

Marmalade was probably not the wisest choice as a first time project for someone who had never canned, jarred or preserved a darn thing. I could have chosen something benign like grape jelly and saved myself the peeling, chopping and soaking--but, for some misguided masochistic reason, it had to be marmalade. As if that wasn't bad enough, I was taking my cues from two hard-core marmalade-ists (Nigel and my mother) who both firmly believe that real marmalade should be made with no added pectin. That is, if you do it right, the pectin from the oranges themselves should be enough to set the marmalade. Which means that you have to be quite diligent about buying the right oranges (Sevilles to be precise), or else things go horribly wrong. Anyways, at long last I found my sevilles (on the other side of town) and we went on a Saturday expedition to retrieve them. On the upside, we did find an excellent grocery store (two!) in the process.

The Peeling

Ideally, one wants to peel the oranges in such a way that minimal pith (the white stuff) is left on the rinds, and so that the rinds end up in rather lage chunks (to make chopping easier later on). Nige recommends a complicated algorithm involving a paring knife, my mother recommended a vegetable peeler. I opted for the latter. Perhaps the oranges were a little off, or perhaps my peeler just sucks, but peeling oranges with a vegetable peeler proved to be no easy task, and I peeled 3 knuckles in the process. At the end of it though, we were left with a pile of peels, and 12 oranges to juice.

The Juicing

This is pretty straight-forward really: just get 2 large bowls, and squeeze the oranges, pouring the juice into one bowl and chucking the spent piths into another--Don't throw these out! Afterwards, tie up the piths, seeds, pulp and any other orange bits that are not going into the marmalade with cheesecloth.

The Chopping

Sadly, it did not dawn on me until I was halfway through peeling the oranges that I might want to try to peel off large strips at a time, to ease the chopping process. As such, chopping was doubly tedious: gathering up tiny little shards of orange peel and chopping them into strips. A good knife is invaluable. Afterwards, I added the chopped orange peel to the juice (padded out with water to make 4L) and submerged the cheesecloth bundle in the liquid. The whole mess soaked overnight in the garage, to leech all the pectin out of the oranges.

The Boiling

How hard could it be, I thought, boil with the cheesecloth bundle until the strips of peel are soft and translucent, remove the bundle, add the sugar, then boil some more. Well, the first half went fine, the peel became translucent and soft, in went the sugar, and then I waited, and waited, and waited.

The Wrinkles

The general consensus, according to the all-knowing web is that marmalade will set when a small spoonful put on a plate in the fridge for 5 minutes forms wrinkles when you nudge it with your pinky finger. If that last sentence made utterly no sense, don't worry. It won't until you've actually seen it happen. Having not seen it happen, I assumed, after an hour plus of boiling that it *must* be at setting consistency, and I just wasn't doing the test correctly, or didn't know what to look for. Oops.

That evening, the marmalade was still very liquid. And I began to get worried. A short post-mortem with my mother the marmalade expert confirmed my suspiscions. Apparently, athough this is never mentioned once in the recipe, marmalade is supposed to be made with the lid *off* and the volume should reduce by about 1/2 in the process. I had just jarred 12 jars of lovely diluted marmalade syrup. FAIL.

The Recovery

I have never seen someone look so happy about having to work on President's Day as Dan did when he left the house Monday morning. Between the drama of the first failed batch, a midnight run for sugar, jars and more oranges, and the late night juicing and chopping, I think he'd had quite enough of the whole marmalade-making process. You see, I had decided at some point the night before that I would not only try to save first batch, but also make a back up batch, in case the first was beyond all help. It was about at this point that Dan fled to work, leaving me surrounded by marmalade in various states of disrepair.

I dumped all the jars from the first marmalade batch back into the pot, resterilized the jars, and amazingly, after 15 minutes of boiling, I plopped some marmalade into the fridge on a plate, pulled it out shortly thereafter, and lo and behold it wrinkled! In fact, in the 5 minutes it took to set in the fridge, the whole darn pot of marmalade had become suspiciously dark and viscous. What began as 10 jars of marmalade syrup was now 5 jars of ridiculously dark marmalade. I have not yet gotten up the nerve to try it. It may quite potent.

The failed batch of marmalade was saved, but there was still a large pot of orange rind, juice and pith sitting in the garage (the batch I'd started when I thought the first one was destroyed). So began the boiling (again). However, knowing what to look for made the whole process much less scary, and this batch took a fraction of the time of the previous one, and ended up a slightly less disturbing color. I have not got round to trying this one either, but I'm definitely more optimistic about it.

Marmalade Making Take-Aways

• I like Nige's recipe, but it's a bit vague at times. Really, some of us are quite clueless and need to have our hands held. Things that may be obvious to some (like "Boil the marmalade with the lid OFF" may not be to others).
• Good oranges really do make a difference. I think next time I will try to seek out organic Sevilles, in hopes of getting a sunnier marmalade.
  
• The bigger the chunks of peel you can get, the easier the chopping will be.
• Do not let the back of the Mason jar box scare you. You do not need a jar grabber or a wire frame or whatever else they claim is needed to sterilize jars. All you really need is a large pot and a decent set of tongs.
• Be warned, the floor will be very sticky when you finish.
  

All Things Orange

It has been a *very* productive weekend in terms of culinary endeavours: first there was the marmalade mishap and the marmalade recovery (I don't have the energy to write about this tonight--but rest assured, its coming), then there was the marmalade cake (because I had to make *something* for valentine's day) and last but not least, there was the dutch oven.

I suppose I should elaborate. The marmalade was something I'd been wanting to do for a long time, and a 3-day weekend seemed like a good chance to do it. Despite a rocky start we ended up with 6 lovely jars of normal marmalade, and 6 jars of looks-a-bit-like-molasses marmalade. I suppose batch #2 will be useful for cooking at least.

The marmalade cake is an old favorite. It got made because I had been leafing through Michael Pollan's new book Food Rules, and feeling guilty about buying premade muffins, so I decided some baking was in order. Now the issue with the marmalade cake recipe is that it lives here, in Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries. This is a dangerous book. Everytime I open it I want to cook every recipe in it. I don't think I'd ever have the perserverence to make it through Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking in one year, but Nige's cooking is much more low-key, and given an adequate budget for organic meat, excellent cheese, and so forth, I would happily cook my way through his book.

But, as it was, I was already up to my eyeballs in marmalade fixin's so keeping things minimal seemed like a wise call. I made Nige's Marmalade Cake (picture below) as an tasty valentine's day breakfast. It was the perfect thing to spice up a dreary Feb. morning.

Ingredients:

175 Butter, softened
175g Golden Caster Sugar (If like me, you live across the pond and the stores don't carry Golden Caster Sugar, white, light brown, or cane sugar (also light brown in color) all work)
Zest of 1 orange
3 Large eggs, beaten
75g Marmalade
175g All-purpose Flour
Juice half an orange

Icing:
100g Icing sugar, sifted
2 TBSP Orange Juice

Method:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 355F (180c) and line a loaf tin with parchement paper
Step 2: In a mixer (or by hand) cream together the butter and sugar, add in the zest, eggs and marmalade and beat.
Step 3: Fold in flour and orange juice and pour into prepared tin
Step 4: Bake for 40 minutes then turn out onto cooling rack
Step 5: To make icing mix together icing sugar and orange juice then spoon over cooled cake.

This time round, I skipped the icing, because I had no icing sugar. The cake didn't suffer.

So that brings us to the last item of orange: The new cast iron, enamel, 22lb, real deal dutch oven. I have been on the lookout for one of these for quite some time. In addition to stews, braised meats, briskets, etc. I've seen them used to make kneadless-bread, clay-pot like Asian foods and all sorts of other things. BUT to get a new one--a good one, not a cheap costo/target knockoff, you're looking at upwards of $200. Yikes. So when I found someone selling them for $45 on craigslist, I called immediately. While not La Creuset, the one I ended up buying did come from a restaurant supplier and so was industrial quality, which is all that really matters, in the end. So stay tuned for Kneadless bread in a casserole dish (learned from a friend at McGill who made absolutely stellar, bakery quality bread this way), and at least one meat stew before the dreary weather is out -- oh and also the play by play of the marmalade-mayhem, coming soon, I promise.

Two Creative Ways to Cook Chicken Thighs

Chicken thighs are underrated. Or rather, chicken breasts are overrated. In truth, since I discovered the difference in the juiciness and taste, I have only bought chicken breasts for grilling purposes (actually, chicken thighs grill up quite nicely too, but they're smaller, so you have to be a bit more diligent about flipping them). When it comes to stovetop cooking though, chicken thighs (bone in or out) are the perfect size. Big enough that they don't disappear, but small enough that they cook quickly, and don't dry out.

Without further ado then, here are some fun ways to do chicken thighs:

Chicken Dijonnaise

Courtesy of LCBO's (Food and Drink).

I have done this with bone-in and boneless chicken thighs; both work, but I think the bone-in ones somehow give the dish more of a *French bistro* vibe. Also, they hold their shape and moisture better. To remove the skin from chicken thighs, grasp one corner with a piece of paper towel and give it a good tug.

Ingredients

1. 2 tbsp (25 mL) butter
2. 1 tbsp (15 mL) olive oil
3. 8 plump skinless bone-in chicken thighs, about 2 lb (1 kg)
4. ½ tsp (2 mL) salt
5. 1 cup (250 mL) sliced shallots (about 6)
6. ¼ cup (50 mL) good-quality smooth Dijon mustard
7. ½ tsp (2 mL) black pepper
8. 1 cup (250 mL) white wine (or vermouth)
9. ½ cup (125 mL) whipping cream
10. Thyme sprigs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375ºF (190ºC).

2. Melt butter with oil in a large flameproof casserole or ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle chicken thighs with salt. Cook in batches 5 to 7 minutes, until golden brown on all sides. Remove chicken thighs from casserole as each batch cooks, and set aside on a plate.

NB: This is probably the hardest step. The butter and chicken fat tend to spit a bit, and browning any sort of meat is a skill which I have only recently learned. There are 2 tricks: first, don't crowd the chicken--I usually do no more than 3-4 thighs per batch. Second, leave them for a good 3 minutes (at least) before flipping them, this way, the meat seals, and doesn't stick to the pot when you go to turn it, so you get a nice golden-brown layer on the meat, rather than the pot.

3. Reduce heat to medium, add shallots to fat remaining in casserole. Cook, stirring, 3 to 5 minutes until softened. Return chicken thighs to casserole, meaty side up, along with any juices that have accumulated on plate. Cover casserole and transfer to the oven.

4. Cook 25 minutes, until chicken is cooked through. Remove chicken thighs from casserole. Arrange meaty sides up on a baking sheet. Spread 2 tbsp (25 mL) mustard evenly over thighs (this seems like a lot of mustard, but it works). Sprinkle with pepper. Return chicken thighs to turned-off oven to keep warm.

5. Add the wine to the casserole. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring to scrape up any brown bits from bottom of casserole. Boil over high heat 3 to 5 minutes, until liquid has reduced slightly. Whisk in cream and remaining mustard. Boil, stirring, 2 to 3 minutes, until sauce has thickened slightly. Taste and add salt and pepper if necessary.

6. Arrange chicken thighs on a warm shallow serving dish and pour sauce over and around chicken. Garnish with thyme and serve at once.

This goes really well with risotto, or Brussels sprouts saute.

Clay Pot Ginger Chicken

(Courtesy of Food and Wine).

I was actually really impressed with this dish. Maybe it was the ginger (I'm a total sucker for ginger) or maybe it was because we got the rice bang on, or maybe it was just the authenticity of eating it out of little white bowls with chopsticks. But I thought it was authentic-Chinese-restaurant quality good. The sugar-syrup might be the secret ingredient too.

No clay pot required. A good quality medium-to-large dutch oven will work just fine.

Ingredients

1. 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons sugar
   
2. 1/3 cup plus 1/4 cup hot water
3. 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4. 2 Thai red chiles, chopped, or 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (I think we put in both)
   
5. 1 garlic clove, minced
6. One 4-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and cut into slivers
7. 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into 3-by-1-inch pieces
8. 1 1/2 tablespoons Asian fish sauce
9. 1/4 teaspoon salt
10. 1 small onion, cut into thin wedges
11. 2 scallions, cut into 2-inch lengths
12. 6 cilantro sprigs, cut into 1-inch lengths

Directions

1. In a small heavy saucepan, cook 2 tablespoons of the sugar over moderate heat until bubbling and beginning to brown around the edges, 4 minutes. Gradually stir in 1/3 cup of the hot water and simmer for 3 minutes to dissolve the caramel. Remove from the heat.

2. Heat the oil in a medium Chinese clay pot or in a casserole. Add the chiles, garlic and half of the ginger and stir-fry over moderate heat until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add the chicken, fish sauce, salt and the remaining 2 teaspoons of sugar and stir until the chicken turns white, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the onion wedges, the remaining 1/4 cup of hot water and the caramel sauce and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to low and simmer until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce is slightly thickened, about 8 minutes. Add the scallions and cook for 3 minutes longer. Stir in the remaining ginger and remove the pot from the heat. Garnish with the cilantro and serve.

More Brussels Sprouts

A variation on an old theme tonight: Brussels sprouts sauteed with lemon, toasted pine nuts, shallots, and butter. I have come to the conclusion that you pretty much can't go wrong once you've gotten as far as sauteeing the sprouts with shallots and butter, and throwing some lemon zest or juice or both on at the end. The most impressive part of this recipe I thought was how quick it was.

Unlike Fine Cooking'sbrussels sprouts with hazelnut butter or brussels sprouts with brown butter, there is no roasting or butter-making or anything fancy in this one. It is *dead easy*:

This one comes courtesy of Edible Vancouver (whose cover is responsible for my brussels sprout cravings BTW):


Brussels Sprouts Saute

1 1/2 lb brussels sprouts trimmed and sliced in half lenthwise (I only had 1 lb, so I 2/3'ed the butter, but kept the lemon and shallots and garlic the same)

5 tbsp butter, divided (I used 4: 3 at the beginning, one at the end)

6 shallots or 1 medium sized onion (I used 3 monster sized shallots), finely sliced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 1/2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

2 tsp lemon zest

1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted

1/4 cup parmesean cheese, finely grated

Heat 4 tbsp of butter in a large pan on medium high. When butter starts to bubble, add shallots, cook until shallots just start to brown. Add garlic and cook for 30 sec. longer. Add brussels sprouts. Turn heat up a little and saute until sprouts are tender (they suggest 6 minutes, I'd say closer to 10). Stir in lemon juice, zest, and remaining 1 tbsp of butter, and half of pine nuts. Transfer to a large bowl and garnish with remaining pine nuts and parmesean. And voila! That's all there is to it.


We served ours with grilled Mahi-Mahi ala Trader Joe's frozen section, and some left-over herb baguette from the bakery (and of course, red wine). Not to bad for a thown together at the last minute meal, if I do say so myself.

A new (mathematician's) scale for grading restaurants

Most restaurant critics or reviewers rate restaurants (and movies, hotels and other things for that matter) on scales that don't really mean very much. Some critics will give scales of 1-10. But this raises a whole slew of questions. It is very hard to know what a restaurant being a 1 means or what a 10 means. If you give a restaurant a 5.0 score, does that mean you liked it or that you thought it was average? What does average even mean? Most restaurants, unless they are particularly bad or expensive, are still fun to go to. So your average restaurant is probably still worth going to if you want to go out and relax. But when we say a restaurant is "mediocre" or "average," we usually are criticizing it.

Then there are the scales from 1 to 5. These suffer from the same problem except even worse with less granularity. No one wants to give a restaurant a 1 because unless you were poisoned it couldn't have been that bad. But no one wants to give a score of 5 either unless it was the best restaurant ever. So you are left with 3 scores, plus maybe a couple half points. Don't get me started on the "thumbs up/thumbs down" measurements. (How can you have "1 and a half" thumbs up? What if you put one thumb up and the other down?)

The "thumbs up/thumbs down" method, while having a granularity problem (not enough variety in the scale), does have one very interesting feature: symmetry. If the reviewer gives 0 thumbs up, we have a good idea of what the restaurant means: "eh" Not so bad that you'll regret going, but not so good that you'll just have to go back again. In other words, "average"

Based on this, I'm proposing a new way to rate restaurants (or for that matter movies, hotels, books, or almost anything else). We'll judge on a scale from -10 to 10. This is more mathematically sound because of the symmetry and effectively is modeled like a "reward" function in machine learning. If a score is greater than 0, then it was worth going to, but if a score is less than 0, it was not worth going to. This score takes into account factors such as cost, distance to travel, etc. So if two restaurants serve the exact same food in the exact same place with the exact same setting, but one costs more than the other, the restaurant with the lower prices will have a better score.

Here is an outline of what scores could mean:

10 - This is one of the top 2 or 3 restaurants you have ever been to of this style food. (In Montreal, Halal 786 gets a 10 for Pakistani, Y Lan gets a 10 for Vietnamese, Olympico gets a 10 for coffee, and Dieu De Ciel for Micro-Brewery.) It is impossible to order something at a 10 restaurant that isn't incredible. In fact, the best way to eat at these restaurants is by randomly choosing items from the menu as otherwise you'll always get whatever you got the first time you came to this place. These are restaurants that you'll go halfway across town (or the country) to get to.

8 or 9. Very, very good restaurant. Not quite worthy of a 10, but pretty darn good. You crave going to this restaurant and will go there whenever you get a chance.

6 or 7. Good restaurant, but a notch below the 8-10, which are really elite restaurants. You won't necessarily go out of your way to go to these places, but if they are near where you are, you'll have a fun time there. Examples in Montreal: Cafe Local, EM Cafe, the "up-stairs Chinese place," the Vietnamese place across the street from Y Lan that I almost never went to because it was across the street from Y Lan. (How did that stay in business anyway?)

3 to 5. These restaurants are still worth going to. They have good food and if you are nearby you may go there. It is unlikely that you will go unless you are specifically feeling like going out that night. You mainly are going here for the atmosphere of going to a restaurant, the convenience of not having to cook, and the convenience of a lot of choices. Once in a while, they'll surprise you with a really great dish, but for the most part, you can probably cook stuff this good yourself. I would generally say this is an "average" restaurant as an "average" restaurant is still a rewarding experience. Even though you could have cooked the food yourself, it would have taken a long time to put everything together.

1 to 2. You won't regret coming to these restaurants, but you won't get very good food. Generally, for a restaurant to end up in the 1-2 category, it will be cheap-otherwise you'd regret coming since the food isn't all that special. Either that or it used ingredients that would have been difficult or annoying to find.

0. No gain, no loss

-1 to -3 : This restaurant was bad. You left and feel like you wasted your money. You could have cooked this yourself and it would have been cheaper and tasted better. You will never come back to this place again unless one of your friends drags you to it.

-4 to -6: The food was terrible, the service was incredibly slow, and the place was overpriced. (They ran out of baked potatoes! The ice cream was melted once they gave it to me! The waiter spilled salad on me and I was happy because I didn't have to eat it!) You won't come back to this place again unless your friend convinces you that the head chef was sick that night and the restaurant changed ownership.

-7 to -8 : One of the worst restaurants that you have ever been to. You still have nightmares about that weird mystery meat they served you.

-9: Gave you E Coli or some other stomach problem.

-10: After trying one taste of their specials, you immediately get up and leave because the food is that bad. Even that one spoonful, however, is enough to make you sick, and you spend the next week working up the nerve to go outside.

One other interesting thing about the scale is you may have to make it context-dependent (yes, this sounds like my work at school). For example, I'm not a big fan of Subway normally. I think their sandwiches cost more than they should since I can usually make them myself. I'd normally give Subway a score of 1 or 2. (I only give the points because it would have been wasteful for me to buy the many kinds of meat that they offer.) However, at a rest stop on a road trip, I'd give subway a higher score. Maybe 5 or 6. I know that it won't make me sick, it will be pretty healthy, and I know what to expect. When I see a Subway sign on the highway around lunch, I generally will go there.

Well, that's my food scale. I will be using this food scale from now on in rating restaurants.

Fish Biriyani Fix

Top 5 signs of a good Indian recipe:

1. Garlic is measured in heads. not cloves.
2. Spices to actual ingredients ratio is at least 1 to 1.
3. Two words: Serrano Chilies (ribs, seeds and all).
4. The house begins to smell like an indian restaurant about halfway through the prep process and continues to smell that way for a week.
5. Involves creating a paste of herbs, spices, garlic ginger, peppers etc. that looks and smells like a medieval cure for pneumonia.

This one has all 5. And we needed it.

One of the (many) let-downs we've experienced since we left Montreal is the Indian restaurant situation. We were really hoping, Seattle being the tech hub that it is, that we could find some decent, cheap Indian food. Sadly, this seems not to be the case. The situation seems to be bleakest around the area of spiciness (we have asked for 5/5 on the spiciness scale and not even broken a sweat) and biriyani (which some places appear to have confused with rice with chicken curry glopped on top). Now, rice with chicken curry glopped on top is not a bad thing...but it ain't biriyani. Biriyani, done right, is supposed to be dry, but still remarkably spicy (despite the lack of sauce). The trick here is to cook the rice in such a way that the rice itself becomes spicy. The meat, if it hasn't disintegrated completely into the rice, should be falling-off-the-bone tender, and flavourful, but again *not drenched in sauce*. And so, we did what any 2 desperate chefs would do in such a state of deprivation: we made our own.

Fish Biriyani (Recipe courtesy of Suneeta Vaswani, shortcuts courtesy of us)

Ingredients:

Fish and Potoato Layer

- 3 dried Indian red chiles
- 1/2 tsp saffron threads
- 2lbs fish (we usually use tilapia or red snapper fillets)
- 3 serrano chiles (possibly more. depending on how brave you're feeling, you can leave the ribs and seeds in, or remove them)
- 1 head of garlic (about 25 cloves)
- 1 piece of peeled minced ginger root (2"x1")
- 2 tbsp oil
- 3 sticks of cinnamon (1" each)
- 3 green cardamom pods, cracked open
- 4 whole cloves
- 10 black peppercorns
- 8oz all-purpose potatoes, cut into 2" pieces
- 8 dried apricots, halved
- 1/2 cup plain yogurt at room temp.
- 1tbsp salt, divided
- 1tbsp corriander powder
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1/2 tsp garam masala
- 1/4c fresh lime or lemon juice
- 1/2c cilantro leaves
- 10 - 12 mint leaves

Rice Layer:

-1 1/4 cups basmati rice
- 2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup crispy fried onions (you can buy these in giant bags at indian grocers, and they keep forever)
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 stick of cinnamon 2" long
- 3 whole cloves
- 3 green cardamom pods cracked open


Prep:

1. Rinse fish and pat dry. Cut into 2" pieces and set aside



2. In a mini-food-processor, combine red chiles and soaking water, serrano chiles, garlic and ginger, blend to a paste.

3. In a large saucepan, heat 2 tbsp oil, over med. heat, add cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and peppercorns and saute for 1 min. Add potatoes and saute for 6-8 min until golden on all sides. remove potatoes and set aside. In the same pan, add the chile paste and saute until mixture is fragrant (this will be hard to miss--and good for anyone with sinus troubles) and almost dry (2 to 3 min.)



4. Add apricots, yogurt, corriander, 2 tsp salt, turmeric, and garam masala, cook stirring continuouly, until almost dry 3 to 4 min. Return potatoes to pan and mix well. Reduce heat to low, and cover and cook until potatoes are about half cooked (5 minutes)

5. Carefully arrange the fish in the pan, sprinkle with remaining salt. Drizzle lime juice, saffron and soaking water over top. Spoon masala on top of fish (I usually just mix it briefly with a silicon spatula -- to avoid breaking up the fish too much). sprinkle with cilantro and mint. Increase heat to medium, and cover and cook for 5 min. Uncover and cook until liquid has reduced by half, leaving a fairly thick gravy in the pan. Set aside.



6. Rice Layer: Place rice in a large bowl with plenty of cold water, swish vigorously with fingers. Drain. Repeat 4 to 5 times until water is fairly clear (I usually just put the rice in a fine mesh seive, and lift the seive out of the water to drain). Cover rice with 3"-4" water cold water and soak for 10 min.

7. Fill a large saucepan 3/4 full with water. Add 2 tsp. salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Drain rice and add to sauce pan. Return to boil and cook until rice is cooked on the outside but uncooked in the center, 2 to 3 minutes. Do not overcook. Drain immediately and spread in a shallow pan to cool. (Shortcut: spread 1/2 the rice in an 8"x12" pyrex baking dish to cool, leave the other half to cool in the seive).

8. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Once the layer of rice in the baking dish has cooled enough to be warm to the touch, rather than hot, spread the fish and potato mixture over the rice. Spread the remaining rice on top of mixture. Sprinkle fried onions on top of rice (1/2 cup seems like a lot, but you won't regret it).



9. Heat 2 tbsp oil in a small pan. Add cinnamon, cloves and cardamom and saute until fragrant, 30 sec. Pour mixture over top of rice. Cover mixture tightly with foil, and bake in a pre-heated oven for 30 min. Let cook 5 min. before serving.

10 (optional) Carefully spoon rice into a mound on a large platter, taking care not to break up fish, place some fish and potatoes on top of rice. (We never get this far, we always just scoop it out of the baking dish--and out fish and potatoes usually disintegrate into tiny chunks anyways, but it still tastes *amazing*.