Tomatoes and Herbs - Desi Pizza

One of the bounties of summer is of course, amazing wonderful tomatoes! These are so plentiful, enticing you with their rich beautiful color. I have to confess, I love tomatoes all year round and my friend Bob, complains when I buy fresh tomatoes in winter, pointing out how bad that is for our plannet, since they are being transported at some ridiculous cost to the environment (since it takes energy to do this). Well, this is not an agruement that has an easy ending so, for now, I will continue to eat my fresh tomatoes as long as I can afford them of course.

Tomatoes pair beautifully with most herbs, especially in my opinion with basil and cilantro. Here is something interesting that I did with a store-bought un-cooked cheese pizza. I used the "Freschetta" store multi-grain crust.

While the oven pre-heated, I chopped two tomatoes into fairly thick slices. Sprinkle the pizza with cumin seeds (1/2 tsp), crush 1/2 dried red chilli pepper, generously add fresh black pepper. Top with the tomatoes and add 3 tbsp finely chopped cilantro.

When the pizza is cooked, spinkle with the juice of half a lime and if you wish 1/2 tsp chat masala.

This was a really simple way to add sparkle to something off the supermarket shelf. I will send this off to WHB, which is being hosted by the chocolate lady, who has some stunning chocolate cookies on her blog.

Panch Phoron - Bengali 5-Spice Mixture

It is the start of another Introduction to Indian cooking class. One of things that never fail to surprise students is how much flavor on teaspoon of this simple spice holds. The word Panch means Five in hindi or Bengali and phoron means seasoning. This blend contains equal amounts of Nigella seeds, Fennel seeds, Fenugreek seeds, Mustard seeds and Cumin seeds.

The typical use of this is in a stir-fry although it is also used in tempering dals. I usually have a classic cauliflower recipe with potatoes and peas, it is a staple that my mother makes and it is quite a stapple both in my house and classes.

What was funny was also that Paul Bianchi who was in the class while spluttering the phoron, asks me what I know about Calcutta spices, without making the connection between Bengali and Calcutta since it turns out one of his best friends Gautam is from Calcutta, well maybe Gautam will be happy to try the Alu Gobi (potato and cauliflower) with the salmon curry that I will be teaching next week.

All about Shrimp Paste

All About Shrimp Paste

Until yesterday, I assumed shrimp paste was always this solid block of dried, salted processed shrimp. This is an essential ingredient in most Asian cooking - Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, etc.
Natalie tells me about this liquid product that she got called shrimp paste that prompted me to look about the varieties of Shrimp Paste.

My first hit was Wikipedia, that is such an useful resource, this is their piece on Shrimp Paste. Now, that I confirmed my hypothesis that shrimp paste varies somewhat depending on the country of origin, the issue still remained as the composition and texture, was there a more liquid version of shrimp paste?

Well, here is a little piece from another well illustrated food-blog, that also groups the varieties into a combined group. I suppose since this references us back to Wikipedia, that is really a good source on this.

Myanmar - Characteristics of Cooking

Myanmar - Characteristics of cooking

Once again these curry classic countries are joined at the hip by common ingredients and similar spices. When we get to Burmese cooking we start seeing a richer cuisine. There is an increase love of non-vegetarian food especially chicken. We also get intoduced to lemon grass which is happily married to soy sauce and garlic.

Some of the websites that I liked were Myanmardotcom I am leaning towards the Burmese Roast Chicken, which is in the tradition of a pot roast. The others were not especially interesting, what I did like however was another composite site with a fair amount of links. I will decide what to make and post soon.