One way or the other Red Hokkaido Squash Soup

From what I gather by looking around, it's time for squashes and pumpkins. Really? Yes, I would say so. What do we get out of it? For example, I bought a Red Hokkaido squash. Well, I didn't have to go that far and travel to Japan to get it. From it we can get vitamin A and vitamin C, calcium, potassium and iron to mention just a few. Furthermore it is low in calories and sodium. That is, if you are caring about nutrition facts and ... eh ... calories. However, I guess we have to mess around with the calories anyway. But at least you can say, the calories didn't come from the squash.
We are going to have some soup. One day I was invited by some friends ... eh ... just a moment, I invited myself and ... we had some pumpkin soup. Some time later I tried to recreate that soup without having the recipe. 

I may have gotten it slightly wrong, but I will give you some alternative ideas, too. So you can have it one way or the other ...

Christine & Christian: Episode 9 - When Chorizo meets India

Things are not always running smoothly. In fact only sometimes they are. However, when it comes to the 'Christine & Christian' part here on my blog, things haven't been running at all and as I feel it, still things are not fine. Having some chapati or naan would have been the least to accompany today's dinner, but there was no such thing.
Today we are having some Indian food from Goa with a Portuguese influence ... which I have to change slightly on top of it. Originally the recipe is called Chorico Sausage with Dal. I had to turn it into Chorizo Sausage with Dal for I don't know where to get Portuguese chorico sausages here in the countryside. Chorico and chorizo - that sounds all the same to me. Therefore it should do no harm.

In the end it tasted delicious anyway. Still another funny thing, though, there were no chillies needed for the recipe. Alright, the sausage was spicy enough.

Christine & Christian - Episode 6: Dal, Naan and beyond

I need a plan ... again. Or I simply need to be careful. There is no way I am going to buy new clothing just to have it comfortably fitting. Loosening the belt from time to time isn't what I want to imagine.
Since I've started Christine & Christian, I had quite some Indian food not meaning I didn't have anything else as you can see from my previous posts. After 17 days of cooking from Tasting India I managed 22 recipes so far. I didn't have so much help with eating things up, but still I cope.
What did we have on the menu then last week? Maybe you remember the white dal from the last post. The leftovers were taking some time to be dealt with. Therefore I just made some naan bread to go with it and got any idea as well.
The dough for naan bread is quite easy to make, similar like your familiar yeast dough you might use for pizza. For the naan there was just some yogurt added, roughly spoken.
I made dough that would go for four average sized naan breads. they tasted quite good. I was satisfied. The dough for one bread, though, I decided to turn into something else ...

White dal stuff! Hm, let's rather say naan bread stuffed with white dal, almost like an Indian calzone, if there would be something like that. Samosas are prepared slightly differently. You most probably will read something about that at another time on this blog.
What else was on the menu?

There was this spiced eggplant (aubergine) salad served at room temperature. It was spicy, so it was fine.

Potatoes in curd, also a rather colder dish. That doesn't mean, though, there wasn't any chilli in there in some way.

Another quick one, sweet and sour tomatoes. While they were sweet, I couldn't detect so much the sour part in it. There was, however, something else apart from the sweetness. Oh, sure, the recipe mentioned to use chilli powder in it. Sweet and spicy would be fine.

I go on with eating more fish after I just had this Italian-style tuna, poached in tomato sauce, this time it's Indian-style fish fry. Very nicely you get the taste of ginger with a hint of lime beneath that breadcrust. Besides that the marinade included mustard and garlic. That doesn't sound too bad, does it? Yes, it tasted lovely and ... there was no chilli included.
There also was no chilli in the last dish for today ...

Do you know how long it takes to cook 1 litre milk so that it thickens? Well, it was okay in the end, although the rice pudding was a bit sweet. I guess 150 g sugar would do as well. Maybe one or to pistachio and almond more wouldn't hurt, either. At least it wouldn't hurt me. I know others, who cannot even eat a single piece of almond.
Anyway, I like to take this rice pudding along on our food trip around the world for Bloggers Around the World for as you might know, our current stop is India.

 

 
Do you notice another ingredient from the rice pudding picture? Have a guess and tell me. It shouldn't be so difficult.
In the meantime hang on and keep cooking!

Christine & Christian - Episode 4: Up and running

After a few hours of warm up by leafing through the pages of Tasting India, I started cooking from it on Thursday April 11th. 
I mentioned there would be over 250 recipes in the book. Now after carefully counting ... that is if I really was that careful, but that would be too many 'ifs' ... I came to the number of 283 recipes in the book, not counting any variations. I added, though, also individual recipes for spice mixes and pastes, of which I might need some more then once. That also means there are also some quite simple recipes in it.
While cooking for 5 days I managed 8 so far, including one for garlic and ginger paste ... or was it ginger and garlic paste. No worries. I was also invited to cook some Indian food with some friends. On that day, there was also butter chicken on the menu, which tasted very very luvly. Fine, that doesn't count for the recipes, because I didn't make it from the book.
I contributed a gorgeous dal, which tasted as luvly as the chicken, although one of my friends said, it was even better than the chicken. Ah, whatever, very lovely.
I leave you with some food impressions before I have a few more words.

 

Dal Makhani - one of the best dals I ever had ... with that ginger and garlic paste, tomato puree, butter and cream it promises a lot of taste and ... guess what? Have no fear!

Butter Chicken - I wonder, why it has this name. There were a lot of spices, yoghurt, milk and obviously chicken.

Just give me a large plate of it ... anytime!

Sweets for the sweet - Wholemeal Halwa. Don't ask, just taste ... there is a touch of cardamom to it ... if you do it right. All that stirring was some good exercise. Was it half an hour? It was supposed to be less.

 That would be something for hot days - Ginger Lime Soda. I just hope we will have some days this year, so I can put that drink to proper use. It's really refreshing. The ginger isn't too intrusive.

Eggplant (Aubergine) Masala - There were two green chillies and two dries red chillies going into it. I wonder what that will do, if you have properly hot chillies. Those fresh green ones from my windowsill need some more sun. This eggplant masala is delicious how it is with some rice ... good I have a rice cooker.

I hope, that gives you also some good inspiration for our current Bloggers Around the World - India. If you like to know more about one of those dishes, ask away ...
 
Now I had also chance to stock up some things. While sitting at home unprepared and pondering about what to cook, I was still in need of some vital ingredients and there was no chance for shopping. By now, it's fine! I'm up and running ... as you can see above as well.
What about fresh coriander, though? That might cause a problem, searching through shops for some. Parallel to that I started my coriander growing program again. Better late then never, although it will take some time before I can use some of that ... if it works at all. I definitely should get some more ready plants for the garden, when the time is right.

Randomly Indian: Dhal and Saraswat Machchi Kadhi

A few days ago I decided to give Cooking Around the World a new design. Basically I changed the background colour and the welcoming banner for the blog. I hope you like it! When you look at the picture there are foods and places. One of these places I can see every day, if I want to. Have a guess which one that is! However, there are other places there, I'd rather like to see more often.
Additionally I adjusted my Facebook page as well. It has to reflect the blog. 
While I was at all this I decided to change my profile picture. You can only see it partly, but I'm wearing an Indian kurta. It looks like this ...

I just wanted to mention those things. Keep it in mind as you read on. Strangely, things fit all together once more.
Have you ever thought about doing a themed dinner party? You dress up for it, maybe do some decoration, put on music and it all fits to the food you are going to have. How would you like that?
What about doing it alone ... a one person themed dinner party?
Let me tell about it ...
There is a certain person that is running this blog called Belleau Kitchen. As he is doing this random recipes challenge every month I cannot resist, but take part in it. Quite often you end up with cooking food you wouldn't have otherwise. 

 

This time we have the theme 'cuttings, memories and clippings'. That means I have to go and search my shelves for those hidden cuttings and clippings to find some recipes. I don't have as many cuttings and clippings as others and they are also not so well organized.
Anyway I got myself a small pile and rolled the dice of random. I ended up with number 3 - therefore I went for the third sheet of paper.
It was a clipping from a health journal of a health insurance company and ... strange enough ... it featured some Indian dishes. Did I say some? Yes, five to be exactly. Taking the number three further I decided for the third dish and it was ... dhal.
Well, that would be something to have as a side dish. Due to this fact I randomly decided to do the fish curry mentioned on that clipping as well. That is called 'Saraswat Machchi Kadhi'. I tried my Hindi dictionary on that, but gave up quickly. Then I asked the Internet and it called it Goa style fish curry. I even found the same picture of it as was used in this health magazine article.
I made sure I had all the needed ingredients and then, went for it ...

First of all I put on my Indian cooking kurta. Well, I simply declare it that one from now on. By the way, it is not the one shown in the picture above. I have a few more other ones. Why do I have so many Indian clothing to wear? Go ahead and ask me, if you like to know!
Then I put on some music from the soundtrack of a famous Indian movie ... as far as I know.
Now our Indian themed cooking party can start.
Good thing I still had some urid lentils on stock. They went into a pot covered with one centimetre of water.
Meanwhile I prepared the marinate for the fish. I squeezed one lime and mixed the juice with some freshly grated ginger, mustard powder, sesame seeds and coriander seeds. The white fish fillet was cut into small bite sized pieces and went marinating.
Before I continued with the dhal, I brought some basmati rice on the way.
Back to the dhal. I freshly picked a green chili from one of my bushes on the windowsill, cut it in half and tossed it in with the lentils. If I were to change the recipe, I would cut it into small rings and add it to the lentils. Anyway, one bay leaf, a chopped onion and two chopped cloves of garlic went in, too. Here also some grating of ginger is necessary. Some curry powder rounds it up. Now heat it up on medium heat and let it go for 20 minutes, checking every now and then and working through with a spoon.
The fish has nearly enough marinating. However, there is still some chopping of an onion to do. That one made me cry slightly. Then half four tomatoes, spoon out the seeds and then cut the tomatoes into small pieces. Now take the fish, pat it dry and fry it for 5 minutes in sesame oil at a medium heat.
Don't forget to give some attention to the rice when it's ready and to the dhal. After the 20 minutes you have to turn off the heat of the dhal.
Take out the fish from the pan and put aside. Now fry the onions in the pan.
If I hadn't already enough work with cooking I suddenly decided it would be a brilliant idea to have a cucumber raita with it all, as well. So I took some of the chopped onions and put the together with some halved slices of cucumber, cumin, salt, yogurt and water and mixed it all up.
Add some curry powder to the onions in the pan. Then add the remaining fish marinade and some 250 ml of coconut milk to the pan and bring to the boil.
What about some naan breads. Yes, that would have been lovely, but I'm not that crazy today and make some on my own. No, I even didn't buy any ready made ones to just warm up. Sadly!
Remove the green chili and the bay leaf from the dhal and heat the dhal up again, if necessary. We are almost there.
Let the tomatoes meet their destiny by adding them to the boiling coconut milk mixture. I guess the fish can go for some swimming, too. Go for it! Warm it up again.
If I'm right now, all the food is ready. You just need to plate and bowl it up and decorate everything with some fresh coriander. I already know that the remaining coriander will not survive too long in my kitchen. I should use it up in the coming days.
Here we are with the food ...

Sitting alone at the table and tasting the fish curry, memories spring to my mind. The food wasn't dangerously spicy. I still remember the fish curries of my Tamil friends and Tamil food in general. They always used to say they have to adjust the spices to the European palate. However, the first time I tasted a dish, I had the feeling it wasn't adjusted sufficiently.
Having this fish curry in front of me, I wished it would be going at least a bit in that direction. Don't get me wrong, it still tasted delicious. It was only thinking. While doing this I thought ... well, I'm sitting here all by myself eating this lovely food ... and then ... I put away the fork and went on eating as we used to do it with the best tools ever, my fingers.
Once more, I managed to end up with something lovely, doing random recipes ... and that's not cheating. After all, why should I keep any clippings with rubbish recipes.
Moreover, I ended up with fish again. This wasn't the first time either.
So far about random recipes this time. Time and again, I thought about cooking through one cookbook. After all, I nearly baked myself already through a book about French bread.
Now I have a few books in mind I seriously want to choose one from and go completely through it and report about it here on my blog. One of the books on that list is 'Tasting India' from Christine Manfield (Christian and Christine?). That post now made me hungry for that book. However, things haven't been decided in the final and I won't start before April.
In the meantime I still have a voting going on my Facebook page. If you don't mind, please head over there one time and give your vote. That would be very much appreciated. You can also suggest other books to make it more interesting.
You see, once more, it came all together ... strangely ... as last time. India was on my mind and suddenly it's all India!
Any thoughts? Just leave a lovely comment!