Samosa Time

Tonight's kitchen adventure: Samosas, which are Indian pastries stuffed with curried potato and vegetables.

I admit I nicked the photo to the left from the nethers of the interwebs. By the time I thought about taking pictures of ours, they were pretty much gone. Next time I'll take pictures of the actual thing.

Over the past while, we've stocked up on some of the basics needed in Eastern cooking: Garam Masala, Hot Madras curry powder, regular yellow curry powder, fresh ginger, cardemom leaves--stuff like that. These are things that we don't use all that often, and will probably last us forever and a day. They're good to have around in case of a sudden hankering for Thai or Indian food.
I apologize for not having exact measurements on some of these things. I improvised a bit, and didn't measure some items in the filling.



For the shells:

• Mix 1 & 1/2 cups flour with 1 tsp salt
• Add 4 Tbs shortening, and cut together till crumbly.
• Add 5 or 6 Tbs cold water, just enough to make a kneadable mass.

Get your hands into it, and knead it together for a few minutes until it becomes smooth. Set it aside in a covered bowl to "rest." God knows what tuckers pastry dough out so much, but it needs a lot of rest, apparently.

After tucking the pastry in for a nap, (quietly) start in on the filling.

You can do one of two things here. You can go whole hog, and boil a bunch of potatos and make real live lumpy mashed potatos, or you can do as I did, and mix up a pack of dehydrated mashed potatoes, mince another potato finely, and cook that up with the rest of the filling.

In a frying pan, put a little of your favorite oil down and add the following:

• minced onion
• minced potato (if you cheated like I did)
• some grated or very finely chopped fresh ginger, or a few shakes of powdered stuff, I guess
  

Once the onions start to brown just a bit...

Add the mashed potatoes
some green peas
few shakes of Hot Madras Curry Powder
some Garam Masala
a bunch of plain yellow curry powder
salt

At this point, you can add some optional stuff, like chopped cashews, corn, or meat of some kind, if you'd like. I found these to be pretty substantial with just the vegetables, but do what you think would be yummy.

Mix it all together while heating it up. You should be able to taste test and see what you like here in terms of spices. I wasn't sure about the plain curry powder, but it turned out it needed more than I thought it would.

Take the filling off the heat, and set it aside.

Now, wake up the pastry, take a chunk of it, and begin rolling it out. You'll want a bowl or a large circular object (about 5-6 inches across) to cut out circles of pastry. Roll it out thinly, cut large circles and set them aside, making sure you flour so they don't stick together. Once you've used up all the dough, take a sharp knife and cut the circles in half, one at a time as you use them.

Take each half circle, dab some water around the lower edges, plop a decent blob of filling down in the middle, then fold the edges together and press well, so you have a little triangle with a rounded bottom. Wash, rinse, repeat until all the samosas are stuffed.

At this point, you can do one of two things. You can either deep fry the samosas, or you can bake them. Since deep frying is the traditional method, I tried it, but frankly, it was kind of terrifying in our little kitchen, and I don't think I'll do it that way again, even though they were delicious. I did find a recipe with baking directions, so that's what I'm posting.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F, place the samosas on parchment paper on a pan, and pop them in the oven.

Once they're in, turn the oven down to 300, and let them bake for 45 minutes, or until they're golden brown.

You can dip them in chutney, or eat them plain, like we did.

YUM.

Makings

I have been making.

We got couple lovely couch cushions several months ago. Their covers were made of a soft woven brown fiber with a bit of a sheen to it--nice and nubbly. Unfortunately, they were sewn really shoddily, and since they were woven, they were just falling apart after only a few months. It was a shame to let the fabric go to waste, and since I lost my last pair of wrist warmers (Wrist dickies, as we refer to them. Remember turtleneck dickies from the eighties? It was just a neck and a bit of cloth, so you looked like you were wearing a turtleneck without bothering to actually put one on under your sweater. ) err... sorry about the detour. Since I lost my last pair, I thought I'd repurpose the fabric to make new ones.

I reused the zippers, and made use of the silk edging already on the inside of the cushion cover. I added some reinforcing ribbon, and a loop and button to close it at the top. I also had to add a long loop of thin ribbon on the inside at the elbow end, so I can hold that with my teeth as I zip them up. Otherwise I'd have to have the Boy zip them up, and that would just be lame. This one needs a little more stitching added to the ribbon, but it's basically done. Both of them took me about an evening.


Not a difficult project, and my sewing machine was lovely and behaved perfectly. I seem to have the tension issue well in hand.... Quite accidentally, of course, but I'm not touching it, since it seems to be a-ok. This is a machine the Boy got me a couple Christmases ago. I remember using my mother's machine, which required hours of squinting and threading needles and trying to readjust bobbins... All of which, doubtless, was my fault. But this new machine is fancy. The little design on the black ribbon is made by the machine sewing little patterns. Fancy. It is too fancy to be Amish. (link to a sweet children's book--check out the illustrations about halfway down the page.)

In other, more edible news, we made a butternut squash soup that turned out quite yummy.


I'd never made one, but we'd liked a few we'd tried various places, and it seemed easy enough. I wasn't quite into any of the recipes I found, so combined the parts I liked into a slow cooker recipe that turned out really nice. It's very simple, and very comfort-foody.

• 1 raw butternut squash
• a pat of butter
• nutmeg (I grated about a third of a "nut" of nutmeg--I think that would be about a half teaspoon of the ground stuff? I kind of wished I'd used more though.)
• hot madras curry powder - a decent amount. it's not that spicy, and the finished product is not at all spicy.
• cumin - a nice shake, but not too much, because it can overpower the taste of the squash
• chicken stock - I used enough to just come to the level of the cubed squash in the slowcooker.
• sour cream - a heaping tablespoon
• one dollop of cream or milk

Cut the squash in half, and then slice it so that you can cut off the rind. Once that's done, cube it, and throw it in the slow cooker with the stock, butter, nutmeg, curry powder, and cumin. Let it cook away on medium high for 2 hours, or you could put it on low for 8 hours while you're at work.

At this point, the squash may not be totally mushy, but will be soft enough to blend. Scoop the chunks out into a different bowl, then blend them several at a time, pouring them back into the slowcooker as you go. Add stock while you blend to keep things moist. Some people might like theirs silky smooth, but I found it was really pleasant with a little texture to it, so I didn't blend forever.

Once everything's blended, turn the heat to medium or a bit lower, and wisk in the sour cream and a blop of cream or milk. If you boil at this point, it'll curdle, so keep the heat down a bit.

You can serve right away, or let it simmer another while. We served it with a couple sage leaves, and a bit of sour cream. I have a feeling this soup is one of those ones that will be even better the second time around. The recipe makes quite a bit, so you can pack it up into the freezer or fridge to use another day like we did.

Power Struggle

I admit it--I have one of those big monolith computer monitors. You know, the kind that extend forever behind? Actually, I'm not complaining. It serves me perfectly well, and has a pretty big screen, which is nice. However, I think one of the main reasons I haven't thought about replacing it involves the cats.

When the weather started to turn cold a few months ago, Nihao discovered she could satisfy both her urge to constantly be practically on top of me, and her obsession with warm things--by perching on top of the back of the monitor. I also discovered I could keep her from lolling all over the keyboard by encouraging her to go up there, without being punished by the (very loud) self-righteous howls that happen when I put her on the floor. So when she hops up looking for attention and I'm in the middle of something, I pat her and then aim the front of her toward the screen. She reaches her front paws up to the top and waits, looking back at me disapprovingly if I take too long. So I grab her chicken legs and hoist her butt the rest of the way up. She's trained me well.

Her sleeping up there has led to a few awkward moments when our clumsy queen has managed to slide off the side into the gap between the monitor and wall (while sleeping!?), flailing her claws about in a vain effort to catch herself. Other than that, though, it's been quite nice for both of us. She gets a warm and close place to lie, and I get to see her resting her face like a puppet over the top of my screen. Which is adorable. Especially when she flops her face right over the edge so her bottom lip gets pulled back. She looks like a complete nerd-dork. I love it.

(incidentally, for those of you wondering, the monitor seems to be fine. I vacuum any hair off it, and it has plenty of venting on the sides and back for the heat to escape. )

Moving on... Just recently, Boo has discovered the joy of the warm monitor as well. He's a particularly cautious cat, and spent about 10 minutes hanging off the shelf directly above the monitor, with just his front paws resting on it, sniffing and testing the waters. Eventually he decided it was safe, and veeerrry slowly lowered himself onto it and lay down.

The problem now is that I have one monitor, and two cats who want to be on it. Actually, it's mostly just a problem for poor Boo. When Nihao made her way to the shelf above, she seemed ambivalent to the fact Boo was already on the monitor. So ambivalent, in fact, that she climbed down onto it and proceeded to lie on top of him, shoving him off the edge. So graceful.

So now Boo waits until Nihao climbs down, and then immediately occupies her spot. Hopefully there won't be any more forcing him off the back again. Poor thing.

Lovely things...

Steampunk Aesthetics

I was fascinated with steampunk and gaslight ages before I even really knew what they were. I've turned over in my mind a couple times what it is I like about those things, but had never come to any conclusions, or even a good way to describe what those things--or styles of things-- actually are.

I was reading an article over at BoingBoing (link goes to an incredible steampunk project) which lent itself to people commenting about the steampunk aesthetic, and was impressed by one commenter to sum the whole thing up pretty nicely.
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Cheqyr says:

First, I love steampunk for the same reason I love antique wood furniture as compared to the particle-board, veneer, and plastic crap we produce nowadays. The antiques are more beautiful, more durable (chip oak, it still looks good; chip laminate and it's like an open wound), and they have a sense of history about them.

I'm writing this at an oak desk which was made around 1900 and will probably be around in 2100. That provides an enormous sense of comfort and "place" in a world of disposable things.

Steampunk has that same aesthetic. In the early-to-mid 20th century, technology became increasingly less simple and less "organic". Simple base materials of wood, copper, oil and glass -- and big chunky mechanical parts like wheels and gears -- were increasingly being replaced by aluminum, plastics, industrial lubricants, circuit boards and computer chips.

When I look at a train from the 1890s, I can see how all the parts go together, and I can even imagine myself capable of building one given the basic raw materials (and the machine shop of my dreams). Nothing requires a clean room or microscopic engineering tools. It's technology I can relate to -- "open source" in the physical world.

Now, that's just the Victorian aesthetic. But there's an added fantasy element of steampunk too: the idea that you could build a robot or a time machine with wheels and brass gears and maybe a handful of exotic material like Cavorite.

This type of Steampunk embodies the romantic idea that all our technological marvels (and more) might exist, but in a way that makes them more comprehensible, durable, and accessible to the common folk.

And that's what I like about it.
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*Points at the above quote* This.

Regarding the post below

It's also worth mentioning that you should take the time to go to the site and see the trailer for Cougar Interactive's flagship title, uh... Zoo Race.

It's... eh, forget it. There's just nothing I can say, except that you probably thought nothing could be more random or weird than that last clip. Well, you were wrong. So very wrong...

PS. It's noteworthy that all the "awards" won by Zoo Race are either a stamp indicating it doesn't contain any viruses, or are the "five star award" that's given to every item on a various download sites regardless of quality. Kind of damning with faint praise. :(

PPS. *sigh* "Oh great... I'm a horse now."

There are no words...

...for how bizarre this is. All you need to know is that it's a trailer for a real, actual game from a company called Cougar Interactive. It's a real game. A real, serious game.

I never knew Noah was so whiney.