long time no update! i’ve gotten back into the swing of things, cooking-wise; currently our kitchen is spotless, which certainly makes me very happy. it’ll be hard moving back into the messy, less-clean dorms this fall… this week, i’ve really only cooked on wednesday and thursday. wednesday, v and i made a chicken curry (and a veg curry for mika), and empanadas from v’s filipino cookbook. thursday, i made ginger doughnuts and we made milkshakes. theoretically, we made watermelon milkshakes, but we really made regular milkshakes and ate the watermelon because it’s been 80+ degrees, hot, and humid in the city.

the chicken curry + veg curry went pretty well; they were essentially the same thing, except that the veg curry had more vegetables in it (both number of vegetables and number of types of vegetables), with potatoes, peas, zucchini, carrots, and tomatoes. oh, and onions. never forget the onions, and always use more than the recipe says, ’cause you can never have too many onions… we were supposed to use a food processor to process garlic, ginger, green coriander (ie, cilantro), and a bunch of spices, but instead we used the blender, which, to our surprise, actually worked. it looked pretty gross though; it was the color of brillo pads, but slightly brighter – essentially it looked like vaguely radioactive/sinister spinach. anyway, there was not one spice mix, but three…we fried some black mustard seeds (which later turned a gorgeous shade of reddish brown, when the curries were done) with turmeric in some oil, then added onions, then the other two spice mixtures. then you add the meat/vegetables, add coconut milk, and simmer for a good long while. nice and easy, once you finish the mise-en-place (this is another recipe where that actually matters). i accidentally added water to the veg curry, where “accidentally” means that i thought the stuff in the pot wouldn’t cook through if it wasn’t covered with liquid, so i added water. unfortunately, that watered it down…i attempted to thicken it after boiling off some of the liquid, by pureeing part of the mixture, but it only worked to a lower degree. ah, well, can’t have everything. (more…)