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As I was threatening to do, I've made beans. There's going to be techniques that I'm using that I've already covered elsewhere. If you want to follow along, I've detailed my process in other threads. Dosa: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3585837 In it, I basically swear and drink a lot. Huh. not much has changed, has it? Adai, the traditional way: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3633494 First off, thanks That Works for launching such a cool prompt. I don't think we give enough love to the variety of ways to cook beans that exist. For the most part, I know my friends buy tinned beans, and combine them with tinned other crap and call it "chili" or something. To be honest, most Indians aren't much better. Cook beans in the pressure cooker for 2 - 7 whistles, dump some spices and aromatics on its head, bring to a boil, dump onto rice. BORING. Although the North Indians have mastered daal of various types (you put a Punjabi chhole up against anything else and I defy you to find a superior dish; Punjabis are the OG masters of daal), the Southerners have mastered using beans for stand-ins for various components of the meal, /including rice/, which is loving bonkers. Why? To understand that, you'd have to understand the more devout Hindus. For most who consume meat, any holy day, up to and including funerals and the like, will involve fasting. That doesn't mean like the Abrahamic version of fasting, where one abstains from everything. Instead, it means abstaining from the big guns of your diet. For meat eating Hindus, meat is the big deal. Yeah there's rice, yeah there's veggies, but the meat will take up a good half the plate if they can afford it. To them, abstaining from meat would mean that they're focusing more on the spiritual, and less on the physical. WTF are the South Indian Tamil Brahmins to do? We already don't eat meat. Most of us don't even eat eggs. And if we have dairy (unlike the North), it's used exceedingly sparingly. You'll throw a small teaspoon of ghee onto a big pot of food to get the flavour. Now what? What's our heavy hitter? Rice. In fact, to be honest, it's grain. Even if they don't use it as a staple, most TamBram households will eat roti at least once a day. And everyone loves uppuma. So just giving up rice is no big. There's even Southerners who don't /like/ rice (SHOCK!), and who'd prefer to eat roti or sooji to begin with. So the South Indian Tamil Brahmins basically pivot their fasts around giving up /all/ grain. That means no wheat, no rice, no millet, no nothing fun or good or right with the world. We've mastered things like adai (which, while frequently made with rice, can easily [as I'll show you] be made with only beans), paruppu usuli (where the daal gets treated in such a way that it basically becomes a stand-in for rice or uppuma), vadai, pesarattu (I know it's an Andhra dish, but the two states borrow liberally from each other), not to mention the various gravies and such that end up with beans being assistant ingredients, and not the star attraction. Gujaratis are famous for their moothia, dhokla, ghanthia, etc, but those are all pretty much summarily made with besan (chickpea flour). I wanted to challenge myself to make dishes that involve me grinding down whole beans, and working it on out. I don't like dessert, so I subbed in the fritters, which /can/ be made sweet with very few changes (more on that later). If you want to see the full album on the Imgur, here it is: https://imgur.com/gallery/qJO4brT Let's start with the soaking.  For this version, I'm going full on beans. I have chana daal, urad daal, and some pinto beans that I needed to finish off. Seriously, it's like a half cup or so, and it's been staring at me from the pantry for entirely too long. I'm onto you, beans. I see you watching. I had bought it ages ago to make refried beans, and also because they were cheap AF. But I didn't need the full pound, so I only used what I needed, and that last loving half cup has been there, mocking me. Anyway. Because and only because I have a vitamix, I soaked them all together. I knew that even if some of the pintos didn't fully hydrate or whatever, the vitamix would grind it anyways. I used roughly however much was left over in the container. The ratios matter not at all. You just need some damned soaked beans. Soak them overnight. The next morning, decide that rather than making only adai for the week, you're also going to make a vada. Well fine then. For vada, you need pieces of curry leaves and pieces of ginger. Some people also like to add whole black peppercorns, but that is not the manner in which I roll. If you'd rather make a sweet version, use only urad daal soaked overnight, add a bit of sugar to the batter (like maybe a tsp or so for a cup), and don't use curry leaves. Sub out cardamom powder instead. After frying, soak in simple syrup to which you've added some saffron, and you're good. But personally, I strongly, strongly dislike sweets in general, so I didn't make one. >  Anyway. You can grate the ginger pieces, but I have no trouble chopping it, so I did.  Now comes the "Fun" part. As mentioned in the dosa thread, I have a severe hate for grinding batters to a smooth paste. However, all these years later, I live alone, and have a vitamix. It was 6:00 AM, and I was like "gently caress yeah, I can grind if I want to and there's nothing anyone else can do to stop me!" I used roughly 3/4 cup of the soaked beans + enough water that the level came up to JUST BARELY cover the beans inside the vitamix. Then, I did an initial spin at low speed. WAHOO! NO SPLATTERING! Take THAT, past Dino. Slowly increase the speed as the pieces of bean grow smaller. You don't want to add any extra liquid /at all/. Bring the speed back down and turn off the blender, because you forgot to loving add salt. Go over to the salt box you keep by the stove. It's loving empty. Roll your eyes, and pull out the trusty refill canister. It's also empty. Jesus christ. Open the unopened 3-lb box of Diamond that you keep at the back of the pantry. Refill all refill canisters. Refill stove's salt box. Go back to blender, and realise that the batter is too far along to add salt anyway, and we could have just used the goddamned pink salt grinder when we grind in our pepper. Curse effusively. It's not even 7:00! How the gently caress did we-- Never mind. We can do this. We have a VITAMIX. Continue grinding, using the tamper LIBERALLY, because every second or two, you'll hear that hollow rear end noise it makes to let you know it formed an air pocket. Gradually increase speed some more. Oh NOW you get rid of the air pocket? At full tilt, the mass at the bottom barely needs a gentle nudge from time to time. WAHOO! Now we're cooking with gas! No we're not. We have a lovely electric coil. Sigh. Anyway. Once the batter is smooth (I prefer mine pretty smooth, but most people only take it up to the point where it's ground, but still has a bit of grittiness), Use the coarse setting on your pepper grinder to add a liberal bit of pepper, and also add the salt you forgot to add way back when. Dump in the chopped curry leaves and chopped ginger. Stir through until you combine everything. You want the batter to have soft peaks. If it's downright runny, congratulations, you added too much water, and you're not going to get vadai.  This is the consistency you want. It's super thick, which is why you also realise you should have bought that blender spatula that has that long slender thingy (heh) that will fit into the jar of the Vitamix. Instead, you have the huge spatula, which is going to get sliced and diced by the vitamix blades. Also realise that you've already cut your hand once this week, and don't want to risk putting your hands near the blades. Also, using a metal spoon will scrape up the nice jar of your vitamix which has thus far sustained no scratches. gently caress it, we're gonna be making adai anyways. Get out as much as you can, and leave the rest in the jar. It's fine. I was only kidding about the no vadai having. If you over add water, but the batter is still ground down? You can fix it with a spot of rice flour. If you use all purpose flour, the texture will get too dried out. If you use chickpea flour, same situation. Rice flour will help the vadai have a nice texture while giving it a crispy texture. Both AP flour and besan will reduce the crispiness. Don't try to use the blender to incorporate the rice flour. You already gave it too much to do. Use like a spatula or something. Using a teaspoon, pull out lumps of batter, and drop them to hot oil heated over MEDIUM. This is /very/ important when cooking with beans in this manner: TAKE. YOUR. TIME. Beans need time to cook fully, and trying to rush the process will end up with undercooked beans, which do not feel good later on. This is going to take a hell of a lot longer than if you'd added rice, because rice browns quicker than beans. It's OK though. They're going to taste good. Right now, the kitchen is going to smell of the cooking curry leaves, ginger, and black pepper, and my mouth is already watering. This smells sooooo good.  When you drop your fritters into the fat, they should sink for a bit (like 2 - 3 seconds), and then float back up to the top. If they sink and sit there, the oil is too cold. If they never really sink, the oil is too hot. You should see a healthy bit of bubbles around each fritter. They're going to take their sweet time. This is fine. However, they're not going to take so long that you can walk away from the stove! If you have more oil than I do in the house, go ahead and use a wider pot, because frying these suckers in tiny batches can get annoying. That said, I'm experienced enough in making them that I managed to walk away and get the adai batter going. (More on that in a second.) TO BE CONTINUED IN NEXT POST. dino. fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Feb 23, 2019 |
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Feb 23, 2019 18:35
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When they're done, they should be roughly this brown: Then you overhear the Tamil granny teaching you how to make her version of some daal or another mention that because you're cooking beans, you put in a bit of asafoetida. gently caress! That's what I forgot. Go back, and add like this much asafoetida:  Stir to combine, and marvel at how fluffy the batter is, even though you never added any leavening. It just is. Again plop in little blobs.  Hoooooooly fuuuuuck that's the ticket. The entire place smells freaking heavenly divine. Remember that you were supposed to taste test the first vadai. Eek! Fortunately, the salt is fine, although I wouldn't be mad at a skosh more pepper. Whatever. It's fine. Idly keep taste testing the first batch until you've eaten it all. Hey! If you're the one who cooked it, you get first dibs. Nom nom nom nom nom. Second batch is looking good too:  Now. Adai time! Take the remaining soaked beans, and add them to the blender. Add like, this much water:  ADD SALT THIS TIME IN THE BEGINNING, and also asafoetida. Add a knob (heh) of ginger like this big:  Scrape down the sides, so that the ground beans stuck to the sides from your previous adventure will mix with the ground beans from this batch, which will slide out easier, because look how much water there is, fam. I gradually increased the speed, until we had bean vortex, and that sucker got down to a smooooth batter. Chop up some curry leaves. When the batter is done, add in the chopped curry leaves, and some cumin seed. Give it a gentle hit with the speed dial basically to very very lightly chop up the leaves a little finer. You still want to see large pieces, but not so large that they burn easily. Make your dosa onion.  I didn't have yellow onion, so I used a red one. It's fine. The dosa onion is for you to redistribute the oils across your skillet before each adai goes onto the skillet. Why? Because if there's too much oil, you're going to not be able to spread out the batter. If there isn't enough? It's gonna stick like a burr on your dog's coat after that walk you went on. The dosa onion basically absorbs excess oil, while creating a very very thin film of oil over the skillet. This is not an optional step, as Ricola can tell you.  Plop down some batter, and spread it all about. God damnit. Why can't it come out nice and round? Oh well. First one's always hosed up, right? I was cooking this on my stove top at somewhere between 2 and 3. You want low and slow. The inside of the batter must cook through /before/ the bottom gets browned. When the top dries off (as mentioned in the previous adai thread), flip.  This is the colour you're looking for. Golden brown. Crispy. Sooooo good. Niiiiiice. Let's see if the other side is done?  gently caress yeah it's done. Subsequent ones look nicer.   If there's a few too-browned spots, you know that your heat is too high. Turn it down a bit. This is not a race. It's also why most people who have a full sized stove will have at least 2 burners going when they make adai or dosa. These things take a long loving time, and it's boring to stare at one. When my sister-in-law and I are in a groove, we can bang them out piping hot, as people are ready to eat. It's very like waffles: nobody expects to eat them at the same time. You get them in order of who's hungriest, as and when they're ready. When you're tapping out, you let the cook know, because I will speak from experience: when you're in the "zone", you will legit keep banging them out one after the other, because the stove and skillet are behaving together soooo well, and you'll never feel this sense of accomplishment again in your life. (Spoiler: you will the next time you're in the zone. But it always takes like a good 10 minutes to reach that zen-like state.) Speaking of being bored waiting for the thing to finish.
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Feb 23, 2019 18:50
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Adai, like injera, or dosa, or any manner of other flat breads, is meant to be used to scoop up other ingredients. I didn't want to make a daal, because it's not only predictable, it's also not something you eat with adai or dosa. I could make like a dry roasted veg, but that's not a bean. I know! Tofu! A typical accompaniment to dosa or adai is coconut chatni. If I hadn't just used the last of my chana daal in the adai itself, I'd have made some. When you don't have coconut chatni, you make what's called a tomato gothsu. It's essentially basic South Indian tempering spices (mustard seed, urad daal, asafoetida), onion, ginger, and tomato. My sister-in-law and I made one when we ran out of coconut chatni but wanted to eat more dosa. Because we both love ginger, I made the ginger into slivers for the dish. However, I wanted to tie in the beans theme. Tofu! I love tofu, and the spices that I'm using will lend itself well to the dish.  The usual suspects are here.  You really do want a fair bit of oil. Also, after removing the deep fry oil from the pan, your jar didn't have any more space. So here we go. You do the basic mustard seed, then urad daal once it's popping, then asafoetida, then curry leaves, then onion, then ginger. Bla bla bla, pop spices, add aromats, fry.  Crisp up the vada in the air fryer right quick, and brunch is served.  ... only now you remember that you're not married anymore, and live by yourself, so why did you make so much? gently caress. Gin it is.
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Feb 23, 2019 18:58
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I know next to nothing about Indian cooking, but that looks real tasty. Would.
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Feb 23, 2019 19:19
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 That all looks gorgeous. I feel like I don't have a sense for what that all would taste like, so I guess the only way to tell if it's good will be to make it myself  Glad I've got 2 Indian markets nearby, I should be able to find asafoetida.Do you mix any of those things together when you eat it? Any other things to try that go well with the above?
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Feb 23, 2019 20:05
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@LC: It came out delicious, and I'm pleased. @BB: OK, so you know how with Indian food, you use the bread to scoop up ingredients and get them to your face? You'd use the adai to grab pieces of tofu or tomato (or both), and stuff your face. Same would be if I had coconut chatni or something. Would also work pretty good with like a mango chutney, or pineapple chutney, or stews of various sorts. But they were all good enough to have by itself. This would all go very well with sambhar as well, for the record. If you've never had either dish, you'd have nothing to compare it to. This version is a lighter version of the traditional types. If you're at the Indian store, and picking up stuff, this would be the time to snag whatever daal looks likely to you, because if you don't care for it /as/ daal, this is the dish you'd use it up in. It's basically what I do when I have little bits and bobs of dried beans that I need to use up.
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Feb 23, 2019 22:08
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Thanks! Next week for sure, wife has already set this week's meal plan 
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Feb 23, 2019 23:07
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I live in India now and I went from cooking literally more than 99% of my food to cooking none of my food (I have no real kitchen to speak of right now). This means stuff that I never made before because it's too much trouble, like vadai, are on the menu quite often (I had vada sambhar for breakfast yesterday). Deep fried beans are the best.
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Feb 24, 2019 02:30
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::throws rajma in process OUT THE loving WINDOW, in the direction of Jersey City:: BEANBOOZLED AGAIN BY THE GREAT MONSIGNOR DINO. Toss a vadai my way tho Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Feb 24, 2019 |
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Feb 24, 2019 16:16
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