Katie at the Kitchen Door

Globally-inspired, seasonal recipes

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I love India.

Here are some things that characterize my day today:

  • I have eaten an entire box of mini strawberry cream cheese strudels.  They were in the manager’s markdown bin right by the checkout at Kroger.  I did not get them, they got me.
  • The highlight of my day so far was cleaning the fridge.
  • I wore sweatpants to school.  And a sweatshirt.  This does not count as fashion.
  • I spent 6 hours in a row doing math, pencil to paper.  I know that in the real world this is called a “work day” but I’m not there yet.
  • I turned in my stats quiz with no answers.
  • The rain has been falling at exactly the same rate for the entire day.  I know because I stood in it a lot and my umbrella, while trendy, is quite petite.

This is why I needed daal.  Hot, spicy, lentily daal, served on crispy toast (because one more pot to wash, i.e., for the rice, might have put me over the edge) with a cucumber-dill raita.  The Refectory, one of the on-campus eateries at Duke, makes a daal that I live for.  I asked for the recipe a year ago and they said that they were compiling a cookbook and I should wait until it came out, but I don’t think it ever came out.  Liars.  And they’re part of the Divinity School.  Jeez.  So anyway I shall resort to trying all the daal recipes I can find until I can recreate that one.  This is attempt #1.

An aside: I love all things that come out of India – best flavors in the world.  And also colors.  And also dance moves.  I went to my first ever Bhangra class on Wednesday night, and very much enjoyed it.  I have little to no coordination when it comes to dancing, but I love to move!  And I’m slowly mastering that little hand flick thing.  I left class with a new appreciation for how much calf strength it takes to jump up and down for an entire hour.  Oh yeah, and a blood blister the size of my big toe.  But that’s healing, so we won’t talk about it.

Back to the food – this daal was created as a sort-of mash-up of several daal recipes I found on the web.  Everyday yellow daal on smitten kitchen was a source of inspiration, as was Route79.  Really though I know so little about Indian cooking and there are so many types of daal out there that I was sort of winging it.  To be honest, my daal didn’t even come out yellow.  And it tastes exactly nothing like the daal at The Refectory – it’s much meatier, for lack of a better descriptor.  But it’s still delicious and warming and comforting and the highlight of my day is no longer cleaning the refrigerator because I am on my second plate of dinner, drinking my first glass of wine in a month, and watching a sappy old person love movie.* So here’s the deets:

Basic Yellow Split Pea Daal

  • 1 c. yellow split peas
  • 1 T canola oil
  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 2 T cumin
  • 2 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp turmeric
  • 2 tsp garam masala
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • 3/4 c. diced tomatoes (approx. 1/4 28 oz. can)
  • 2 carrots, grated or finely chopped
  • 2 T butter
  • 1/2 c chopped cilantro
  • 2 tsp kosher salt
  1. Soak the split peas in cold water for half an hour.  Drain, and rinse 2 or 3 times until water is fairly clear.
  2. Cover the split peas with water and bring to a boil.
  3. Meanwhile, sautee onion with cumin in olive oil in medium heat for 5-7 minutes.
  4. Add onion, tomatoes, carrots and spices to split peas.  Simmer on medium heat, half-covered, for a full hour and a half, stirring occasionally.  Add water as needed to keep covered.
  5. When split peas are soft and begin to break down, add butter, cilantro, and salt.  Simmer for another 10 minutes.
  6. Serve on basmati rice or hot toast with a cucumber-dill raita glopped on top.**

*Old people love movies are movies where people that I consider old have a surprising amount of sex.  The prime example of this genre is Something’s Gotta Give.

** Cucumber raita: Take a spoon, a tub of yogurt, half a cucumber (diced), lemon juice, black pepper, kosher salt, cilantro and dill.  Mix ingredients, tasting after each addition, until you like it.  Personally, I use vanilla yogurt because I like the extra flavor and greek yogurt kind of freaks me out, but most people recommend plain greek yogurt.  Also, I used dill in a tube – yeah, I was skeptical too, but there wasn’t any dill in the grocery store and this stuff tastes great!  And you don’t have to chop anything!  So I approve of that too.

0 Dessert

Glorified GORP Cookies

It is absolutely dismal outside today.  I know I wrote about North Carolina sunshine yesterday but it was mostly wishful thinking.  And today it is raining.  35° and raining.  Actually the forecast says ice pellets and that sounds more dramatic so we’ll go with that.  More importantly, on Saturday we got 6 inches of snow.  I’m from Massachusetts, and 6 inches of snow in January isn’t generally a big deal.  But here it’s a big deal for everyone, even the tough Yankees.  A state that gets snow maybe once every two years doesn’t have the equipment necessary to deal with a storm like the one we had, and while the papers have been accolading how well prepared we were and how successful “recovery” efforts have been, I am not impressed.  I have never seen roads in such a terrible state.  They’re better now, but the biggest challenge for me is the sidewalks.  I generally enjoy my 15 minute walk to school, but with a two inch thick sheet of ice covering everything that isn’t the road, my morning walk is an ordeal.  And the rain, which sort of instantly freezes on top of the already gross slush sheet makes it even worse.  Anyway, by the time I got home from class, I needed a cookie.  Forget homework.

These cookies are basically glorified and compacted GORP.  Why eat something in handfuls when you can just eat all the same ingredients in one delicious bite?  Exactly.  Also I know that GORP stands for good old raisins and peanuts but I think that it’s generally accepted for GORP to be any fruit-nut-chocolate combination that sustains you while hiking… or taking notes in stats class.

The base of these cookies had to be soft and chewy oatmeal to maintain the facade of health in these cookies.  (GORP is good for you right?  Fruit, protein?  I don’t think I have ever burned more calories than I consumed during a hike due to my belief that one bag of M&Ms plus one can of raisins plus one jar of peanuts equals one serving of GORP).  But whether they’re good for you or not they’re yummy and comforting and eating them is greatly preferable to being outside in the sleet/rain/ice not eating them.  My roommate can vouch for this – she’s eaten three since she walked in the door five minutes ago.  And every time she takes one she tells me how much she hates me.

Cranberry-Almond-Chocolate Cookies

  • 1/2 c butter, very soft
  • 3/4 c brown sugar
  • 1/4 c white sugar
  • 1 whole egg, plus 1 egg yolk
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1 c flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 1/2 c oats
  • 2/3 c slivered almonds, chopped
  • 3/4 c dried cranberries
  • 3/4 c chocolate chips
  1. Preheat oven to 375°F
  2. Cream butter and sugar together.  I like to melt my butter and then let it come back to room temperature because it creams so much better.  Add egg and egg yolk and whisk until batter is smooth.
  3. Sift flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon together.  Add oats.  Stir to incorporate.
  4. Combine wet and dry ingredients and mix just until batter is even.
  5. Toast almonds in a dry pan over medium heat until golden brown and fragrant.
  6. Add almonds, cranberries, and chocolate to batter.  Refrigerate batter for 30 minutes.
  7. Drop the cold batter by spoonfuls onto a baking tray.  Bake about 8-10 minutes.  Cookies will be golden brown on top but still soft in the center.

0 Recipe

Sweet Petite Pea Soup

I haven’t been writing because I’ve been reading.  I’ve been reading all of the fabulous, drool-inducing, comically upbeat and visually stunning food blogs that already exist on the big old web.  And it should be inspiring, but really I find it kind of daunting.  I find it daunting that there are already so many women living my dream – they make beautiful, creative food, they take beautiful, perfectly exposed photographs, they have beautiful, warm-hearted husbands who share their culinary passions, and they have beautiful, cherubic children adorably wreaking havoc.  Plus, they write and people read what they say.  People enjoy what they have to say.  I enjoy what they have to say.  I want all of that so much and it seems so far away.  Plus, sometimes I’m skeptical that so many people can fill the same role – what if the happily-married-with-kids food-writer/photographer quota has been filled and I’ve missed the boat?

Alas, pessimism never gets me anywhere, although I’m pretty sure there are some people who can get pretty far on it.  So I’m focusing on what I’m good at.  I can almost run a mile in 7:30 again.  I can draw moment diagrams like it’s my job.  I’m a reasonably good girlfriend and a responsible daughter.  I am a pretty good photographer – feel free to affirm me at my flickr page – and my writing might still have a future.  And although I’m a new cook and I can’t really afford fancy ingredients and non-essential utensils like muffin tins, I make pretty good soup.  If soup has to be my calling, so be it.  I could do worse.

This soup is special to me.  First of all, it’s one of the only recipes I can call my own.  (But I think that’s OK at age 20).  More importantly, it reminds me of Prague.  Beautiful, perfect Prague.   I spent last semester studying abroad there and it was an incredible experience – I would give up the North Carolina sunshine to be back in freezing Prague in a second.  I could go on and on about all the things I love about that city, but they are unrelated to this particular recipe so I’ll refrain.

Basically, Prague has this famous old cafe called Cafe Louvre where Franz Kafka used to write and dissidents used to gather and all that.  Cafe Louvre is definitely an item on any tourist’s checklist but it also retains some of it’s working history – people still take their papers and books there and stake out a table for hours while a seemingly constant stream of waiters in tuxedo vests bring viennese coffees in tall glasses.  The restaurant is delightfully cheap considering the quality and atmosphere, so I frequently joined the tourists, professors, writers, and students for the lunch rush.  The menu has several standout items, but at 69Kč the pea soup was my go-to meal.  And it was soooo good.  It has the perfect balance of sweet, creamy pea, mint, and lemon.  Plus, the way they serve it is great – a waiter brings you a bowl with a potato and bacon dumpling surrounded by several croutons, and then pours the pea cream over the dumpling from a little metal pitcher, bows slightly, and walks away.  I couldn’t get enough.  And so, upon arriving back in the US, I tried to recreate it.  This is the closest I’ve come so far.

Sweet Petite Pea Soup

Inspired by Cafe Louvre

  • 1 T olive oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 4 to 8 medium sprigs of fresh tarragon, chopped
  • 1 T crushed garlic
  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt
  • 2 bags frozen petite peas
  • 1/2 c. light cream
  • 2 c. chicken broth
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • black pepper to taste
  • 20 leaves fresh mint
  1. Sauté onions, garlic mixed with salt, and tarragon in olive oil until onions are soft.
  2. Add peas and 1/4 cup of cream,  stirring until peas are heated through.
  3. Purée pea and cream mixture in batches in the blender with the chicken broth.  Leave some of the peas whole.  Return mixture to pot.
  4. Add lemon juice and more cream to desired taste and consistency.  Season with black pepper.
  5. Ladle the soup into bowls and place 3 to 6 mint leaves in each bowl.  It’s important to put the mint in while the soup is still warm but removed from the heat for the best flavor infusion.

If you don’t have any bacon-filled dumplings lying around, try eating it with a dollop of vanilla yogurt in the middle and fresh bread.  Like I’m doing right now. Yum.

0 Recipe

Warm Chevre and Jam with Some Salad Too

Warm goat cheese has a special place in my heart. Actually, all goat cheese is pretty wonderful in my opinion. One day I’m going to open a restaurant where every dish includes goat cheese and it’s going to be wildly popular. Just a heads up. But warm goat cheese is special. It’s special because it’s soft and melty and a little bit sweet and creamy and blissful.

Last May I spent two weeks in France with Trevor. We only went out to dinner twice due to the budget constraints of regular 20 year old people, but the night we went out in Paris was perfect. Duh, it’s Paris. The most memorable thing about the restaurant was the appetizer we split – chevre chaud with fig jam. Chevre chaud is basically warmed goat cheese on slices of toasted french bread, but it’s not just warm cheese. It’s perfect cheese – brown and a little crusty on the outside, smooth and melty on the inside. With the crunch of the bread and the sweet complexity of the fig jam it’s miraculous.

We have tried several times to recreate the toasts exactly, with not that much success. However, David Leibowitz includes a recipe for a Chevre Toast Salad in his book “The Sweet Life in Paris” which almost made the cut (only “almost” because I don’t know if anything I eat in real life will ever match the memory of that meal). He has you broil thick rounds of cheese on slices of bread until the bread is starting to blacken and the cheese is just starting to brown on the top and sides. So I did this. I used two slices of roasted garlic bakery bread and four 1″ thick rounds of Montchevre, broiling them on high for about 10 minutes. I served them on some hearty lettuce tossed with a homemade raspberry vinaigrette, and c’etait tres bien.

Chevre Chaud Salad with Raspberry Vinaigrette
by David Leibowitz and France and Me

2 slices good bread
3 oz. goat cheese rounds
1/2 small head of lettuce

3 T good raspberry jam*
1 tsp. dijon mustard
3 T canola oil
3 T red wine vinegar
1 T lime juice
1 T honey
1/2 tsp black pepper

  • Top two thick slices of bread with two goat cheese rounds each. Broil on high for 8-10 minutes, keeping a close eye on them so they don’t burn.
  • Wash, dry, and tear lettuce.
  • Whisk dressing ingredients together. Toss half of dressing with lettuce. Save the rest for tomorrow. Put goat cheese toasts on top. Yum.

* good raspberry jam always has seeds – don’t question it.

0 Recipe

My Can-Opener’s-Not-Working Soup

Last night I almost had my first completely unreasonable break down of the semester. I was at work until 2am the night before, so decided to spend Friday night in and make a pot of my favorite minestrone. So I cut up some onions, threw them in the pot, added some broth and spices and things, took my can opener and began to open the nice, big can of tomatoes ready on the counter. Except this can opener was not the sturdy, intimidating opener I have at home. It was the college variety. Meaning although it’s made of metal and has a wheel and resembles a can-opener, it does not actually have the capability of opening cans. It took me about 5 minutes to realize that no matter what I tried (flimsy can opener, equally flimsy knife, grunting) I wasn’t opening that can.

This sort of setback should be pretty minor. It’s soup – it can pretty much be made with any ingredients. But I had a hard time dealing with this. Several calls revealed that no one who I knew in my apartment complex had an adequate can opener. On the verge of tears (please don’t judge me too much) I called my boyfriend, and asked him to convince me of my irrationality. Which he did. And then I came to the realization that tomato sauce is really the same set of flavors as canned tomatoes and requires no can opener. And life was better. So I proceeded to invent a soup using all of the available ingredients in my fairly ingredient-less kitchen. And it tasted good enough to eat as leftovers. So, for those trying times, here’s my can-opener-less soup:

1 T olive oil
1 tsp garlic paste
2 tsp dried basil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 c. chicken broth
1 bay leaf
1/2 c. tomato sauce
3 carrots, sliced
1 russet potato, diced
2 tsp dried oregano
handful of fresh spinach
black pepper to taste
3 T fresh parsley

  • Sautee the onion in olive oil, garlic paste (which I sometimes mix with salt, depending on the brand), and the basil on medium heat for 5 minutes until fairly tender. Add the chicken broth and bay leaf, and let simmer for 15 minutes (while trying to solve can opener dilemna).
  • Add tomato sauce, carrots, and potato, and simmer on medium-low heat, covered, for 40 minutes (while talking to calming boyfriend on Skype).
  • Season with oregano and black pepper. I went heavy on the pepper and I loved the kick. Add spinach and let cook for 2 or 3 minutes longer, until leaves begin to darken. Remove from heat and top with fresh parsley.

0 Recipe

Omelette a la Trevor

I would love to have started with a fantastic recipe I just composed accompanied by a series of equally fantastic artsy pictures, but all I could do today was try and recreate the omelette that Trevor makes for me. I know, anyone can make an omelette and you don’t need a recipe at all, but I thought I’d share the flavor combination that I find so comforting and delicious. Which I needed today when I got home from my first meeting with my research advisor and realized that I’m in danger of drowning in graduate level structural dynamics. Although apparently I also needed an entire pan of underdone raspberry-chocolate chip brownies. Oh well.

Basically, when I ask him nicely, Trevor throws a few slices of onion in a pan with olive oil and a healthy sprinkling of dried basil and sautees it just for a few minutes. This creates the most amazingly delicious smell. Today I threw in a handful of spinach for the last minute to try and fool myself into a serving of vegetables. Then he does the egg bit – two or three with a splash of milk – adds the onions (and pop-eye sneak-attack veggies), a small handful of pecorino cheese, and two slices of prosciutto. Fold, trying not to break it but usually breaking it anyway, eat, feel better.

To recap: omelette – basil on onions, eggs, pecorino, prosciutto. Expect greater things from me in the future.