Reflection: What has changed?

So I have cooked a fair amount of things. I guess I feel now more "comfortable" in the kitchen than I have ever done before. I am no longer afraid of cooking, and I feel that if I were forced to improvise a meal, it would turn out acceptably. I think I should (finally) focus on more Indian things, and should also improvise and experiment more.

I guess to all of you who already cook this is not impressive. But I am always really anxious every time I cook, and am afraid of doing something "wrong". I am now a bit more confident, and a bit more ready to trust my instincts. I have no regrets pursuing this project. (I think at least)

Pasta!!!

This is probably the last of the non-Indian basic stuff that I make, for reasons I will outline afterwards. But, as evident from the title, I am blogging today about pasta. I made a pasta dish, which is insignificant in itself, but pasta dishes are very important to me. When I was younger, pasta was one of the few things I would eat, and one of the few things I genuinely enjoyed. To this day, I enjoy both making and eating pasta.
Without further ado: the recipe

The dish is basically pasta with a sauce made from milk, sausage, kale, and lemon juice.
I used sausage from the Piggery, expensive, but absolutely worth it.

All of the individual elements in the dish were prominent, resulting in a pleasant flavor. The proportions were also to my liking, the same weight of pasta, sausage, and kale. I never felt there was too much or too little of one ingredient. (It is often the meat in such dishes that is scarce).

Here is a picture of how the dish turned out:


As an aside, the best way to remove sausages from their casing is to score the casing with a knife, and use the knife to rip a line down the sausage, and then remove the casing as you would a jacket from a person.

HW Assignment: Responses to Other Blogs:

I read Dennis Jung's blog about Fitness and positive habit-building. I am impressed with his progress, but noticed something of a pattern in  where he did not meet his schedule. He consistently wakes up later than he plans to. While this may seem like a problem, I argue that it is not. People naturally have different sleep patterns, and ideal times for them to wake up. I think if Dennis imposes on himself too much, he may force himself into a sleep schedule that does not suit him, and that would be more detrimental than beneficial. He has already become much more productive, so it think he should consider planning the rest of his day around the time he would actually prefer to wake up.

I also read Balazs Szegletes' blog about Hungarian Cooking  While the dishes look excellent, I would really appreciate some more background about them. Hungarian cooking is a subject unfamiliar both to me, and to most of his readership. I therefore think it is important that he provide historical or cultural context to what he makes, in order to better educate his readers. (I tried to do this to some extent in my post on junglee pulao).

Junglee Pulao

A few days ago, I made junglee pulao, the first actual Indian dish in this little adventure. Obviously, many more are coming. Junglee pulao means something like "crazy rice" in Hindi, because that is precisely what  it is. The dish is a hodgepodge of things, it is supposed to use spices and ingredients that one would already have around the house, such as tomatoes and potatoes. Many choose to incorporate leftover vegetable and meat dishes into it. Keeping this in mind, making it using a recipe would be somewhat silly. (Also my mother knew the general steps by heart)

Cooking the dish did not take very long (total preparation and cooking time took maybe an hour at most), and since it does not require that many specific ingredients, junglee pulao is an ideal thing for me to make in college. (Also I can impress Americans by cooking something "ethnic").
The result was actually quite delicious, and looked like this:

For the curious, a sample recipe is here:
http://indianfood.about.com/od/ricerecipes/r/jungleepulao.html

It's somewhat similar to the method I used, but I used no meat.

Progress as of Feb 19th Part 2: Fried Rice

As I said before, I made fried rice. It was at the behest of my mother, who is (perhaps quite wisely) using my project as an opportunity to have me cook things she wants to eat. Our tastes are generally in agreement, so this does not really bother me. This was loosely based off of a recipe from Yahoo (http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/4-quick-healthy-400-calorie-recipes-dinner-171600309.html;_ylt=A2KJ3CTxrCpRnHsA3KIhmolQ) for a shrimp fried rice made with brown rice.

I did not have hoisin sauce so I made a substitute with soy sauce, sesame oil, and ume plum vinegar. (Which did not approximate Hoisin sauce at all, but it was the closest I could have gotten with the ingredients at hand).

The only things noteworthy about making this was the cooking of the shrimp. Cooking shrimp is actually very interesting, because of how quickly the shrimp change color from grey to pink. I really should have taken pictures of that process.

Eggs, green onions, carrots, and sauces.

Some of the ingredients, rice, shrimp, carrots, mushrooms, etc.

The final product!

The result wasn't spectacular. We used fresh rice, and thus it was too moist. Fried rice is generally better with day-old rice. The shrimp were too large, the dish would have been much improved with smaller shrimp. I also prefer white to brown rice.

It is also worth noting that this is a recipe by and for white people on diets, therefore it is of very low authenticity. The procedure given by the recipe is very well-ordered, organized, and quite sterile. It is quite amusing to note the contrast between this an "actual" fried rice. When I made it with my Taiwanese friend a week later, we fried the onions first, and then added the other ingredients essentially all together.  I think this methods gives the dish more "soul". I'm not really sure  how to explain this.

Progress as of Feb 19th: Part 1

Hi all, sorry for the large break in posting. There was a lot to be done over this break. I actually cooked many things, and have a lot to talk about. This first part will be a very brief overview of what I've cooked, in the next part, I will elaborate on the posts that need more elaboration.

1: 2/13: Fried Rice:
2: 2/15: Apple Pie
3: 2/17: Fried Rice(again) and Soup
4: 2/18: Omelet


1. The Fried Rice: This was made at the request of my mother. What was perhaps most noteworthy about the dish is the fact that it was made with brown rice. It turned out acceptably. More information about the cooking, as well as some pictures, will be provided tomorrow.

2: Apple Pie:  I made this with some friends, at one of their houses. The procedure was pretty simple, cut apples,  add spices, put mixture into pie crust, top with additional pie crust, bake. However, the pie turned out excellent. This would probably be something I should make in college, I would probably get many friends this way.

3: Fried Rice(again) and Soup: This time, I was at the house of a friend who lives independently, with a few roommates. He is from Taiwan, and cooks accordingly. So we had to make dinner, and, after buying some groceries, made fried rice and some Chinese soup. What I found really impressive was that he knew exactly what to do, and did everything with no effort. Ideally, I should be able to achieve this level of "mastery" for as many dishes as I can. The soup was very flavorful, yet it only had 4 ingredients, chicken, cabbage, water, and soy sauce. I was really pleasantly surprised. The fried rice was also quite good.

4: Omelet: It's an omelet, need I say more? Ironically, this may be the most important thing I made this past week, seeing as I will probably make a lot of omelets in the future. I used some random sausage we had lying around, as well as some greens. It turned out reasonably, however it sort of broke apart in the pan as I was flipping it.

Stir, Fry, Simmer

 The reason I made flan last Saturday was because my parents were hosting a screening of our friend Vani Subramian's recently released film "Stir, Fry, Simmer" (more information is available here), and we needed to make food for the people coming. The film was actually about food in India, and what it means in the context of cultural identity. This may perhaps seem like a stupid premise to an American, but in India, there is a very big emphasis on food. My uncle, a German (related by marriage), noted that when Indians get together, they only talk about food. With this in mind, food is a very natural lens through which to look at culture throughout India. 

The film basically tells a few stories: One of a woman who owns and arts and crafts business called Pure Ghee (ghee is clarified butter),  who talks about how she thought of the name, and of her cultural background, and how her views on food changed. (She is a Punjabi, but grew up in the South and did not like her North Indian family, as a result, she prefers South Indian food, but is now "warming up" to North Indian food) One of  band called Avial (which is a dish, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avial), and their experiences as a band singing in Malayalam trying to succeed internationally. One about the Naga tribe from Manipur, and how they are discriminated against by the Indian government and society, and how they are ostracized for their radically different food choices (they eat both beef and pork). One about unviersity students harassed for having a "beef-eating day". And one about the Irula people, a caste of rat-catchers, who, naturally, eat rats.

I found the contents  of the film very informative, as they highlighted the role food plays in establishing one's identity in India,  and they explained some regional differences in cuisine. I also got to talk to Vani afterward about why she chose the narratives she did,  which was a very good opportunity. She said that most of the choices jumped out to her as very obvious, but there were many similar things she could have used. I am not going to critique the film as I know the filmmaker, and would feel uncomfortable doing so.

Progress as of Feb 9th

This previous Saturday was quite eventful in terms of stuff for my project. My current plans (at least for this week) are to basically cook whatever needs to be made, rather than focusing on just Indian food. In this particular case, we had many guests coming over that evening for a screening of a film, and we needed to make a desert.

I suggested flan, and my mother decided she wanted some ridiculous recipe from Martha Stewart that employed pumpkin and coconut. This was not a prospect about which I was particularly excited, as I am somewhat of a flan "purist", and am also not the biggest fan of Martha Stewart. However, I helped make the flan nonetheless. The procedure, besides making the caramel, was fairly simple. (I will update this with a link to the recipe when I find one)

Probably the biggest  issue with the actual cooking was the fact that our pan was not completely watertight, so there was some leakage, with the result that the flan did not look very pretty when it was done cooking. Furthermore, flan generally is better with an excess of caramel, which was not present here.

Here are some pictures from the process:

Introduction and Upcoming Plans

Dear Reader,
Hello, this is my first post. My name is Irit, and this is the blog for my WISE Project. Perhaps you ask, what is a WISE project? WISE stands for Woodlands Individualized Senior Experience, a program started in Woodlands High School, in which seniors use their second semester to pursue a project of their own choosing. (Alternatively it stands for WISE Individualized Senior Experience, which, as a recursive acronym, I find much more amusing)

 The purpose of my project is for me to learn how to cook for myself. I will focus on Indian cooking, as my family comes from India. My goals are to be able to cook a variety of relatively simple things without reference by the time I enter college, and also to be able to cook a few more "advanced" dishes. I also want to gain a greater understanding of food, cooking, and how it is relevant to my culture. This blog will document my experiences. I have lots of material to post already, but I am waiting for some pictures. The first "real" update will be on Tuesday, as my math homework is due tomorrow.

Plans for the next two weeks:

Research cooking and food in India:
What are the differences in cuisine between the regions of India?
How is food part of the Indian identity?
Compare/contrast to other cultures.

Cook food:
I already made a flan, which will be posted about on Tuesday. My mother is going to a Saraswati Puja event on Friday, and wants to bring a chutney, which I volunteered to make. We currently have a large amount of leftovers, so cooking anything more substantial would be a waste until next week or so.