Roman Mustard

I found this recipe while looking for ideas on what to do with the quail I'd gotten. The body of the post says the recipe is "adapted from Apicius, and it's about 2,000 years old". However, one of the commenters notes that the recipe is from a different Roman writer, Columella, from around 1AD. I haven't looked into it any further to see which author the recipe should actually be attributed to. All I know is that it makes freakin' awesome mustard and I think this is going to be my go-to mustard recipe from now on.

I've made mustard before. It wasn't particularly difficult. However, it also wasn't good enough for me to keep coming back to again and again. It was a novelty. Something that was kind of cool to say I could do, but not a replacement for other mustard. This though? This so is! As a basic recipe it makes a delicious, sharp, hot mustard with a thick, slightly coarse texture. A lovely, tangy mustard in its own right. And it seems like it'll take tweaks and modifications really well. I think it would make a wonderful base for various flavoured mustards. You could play around with different nuts or types of mustard seed as well as all sort of additions and inclusions! I am extremely excited at the possibilities here!

Roman Mustard
From Honest Food
1/2 c. pine nuts
1/2 c. slivered almonds
1 c. brown mustard seeds
2 tsp. coarse sea salt
1 c. cold water
2/3 c. red wine vinegar

1. Add pine nutes, almonds, mustard seed, salt, and cold water to blender.
2. Purée on high (or using the frozen drink setting) until mixture looks fairly uniform (or it gets too thick to blend). Let stand for 10 minutes.
3. Add vinegar. Stir by hand a little bit to get some vinegar down to the blades of the blender.
4. Blend on high for a few more seconds to get vinegar evenly mixed and attain a thick, uniform, slightly grainy mustard.
5. Keep in an airtight jar in the fridge for up to a year.

Paneer Pasanda

The creamy, nutty pasanda is a favourite curry of ours; there's a local curry house that makes chicken pasanda, and we always order it when eating there. This is our first attempt at making a pasanda at home. It lived up to our expectations.

The recipe as written expects you to prepare this as a side dish or appetizer, cutting long "fingers" of paneer, grilling them, and then serving them soaked in pasanda sauce. We made it as a main course, pan-frying smaller cubes of paneer and serving it over rice.

Ingredients

• 400mL coconut milk
• 64mL slivered blanched almonds, ground
• 5mL coarsely cracked black pepper
• 2.5mL coarse salt
• 10-20 fresh curry leaves
• 6 whole cloves
• 4 green or white cardamom pods
• 1 cinnamon stick
• Malai paneer from 2L of cream, cubed
• 30mL canola oil
• 1 small red onion, finely chopped

Procedure

1. Pour the coconut milk, almonds, pepper, salt, curry leaves, cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon into a pot. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally.
2. Remove from the heat and add the paneer cubes, ideally covering them all completely with the sauce. Set aside for ~30 minutes so the paneer can soak up the sauce and absorb the flavours.
3. Remove the paneer cubes from the pot using a slotted spoon. Transfer them to a bowl to drain further.
4. Heat the oil in a deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until it softens and browns around the edges, 3-5 minutes.
5. Add the sauce, reduce heat to medium, and simmer, uncovered, until the sauce heats through and thickens, another 3-5 minutes. Remove from the heat.
6. Meanwhile, heat a generous amount of oil in a skillet and pan-fry the paneer cubes until golden brown. Add any additional sauce that drained off to the onion/sauce skillet.
7. Heat the sauce back up (if necessary) and mix in the fried paneer.
8. Eat.

Malai Paneer

Paneer is India's sole cheese. It's firm, slightly crumbly, and doesn't melt but does grill or fry quite nicely. It's a heat-acid curdle, so it's easy to make at home but is not at all safe for the lactose-intolerant (like myself and my sister); if that's a concern, use lactose-free milk or cream in its preparation.

660 Curries has two paneer recipes, one made with whole milk and one made with cream. It's the cream version that we usually make, and that I've reproduced here.

This recipe is for a plain paneer, but you can easily mix in spices during the cheesemaking process, to complement whatever curry you'll be using it in or just enhance its appeal as a snack -- as we did with the paneer below.

Ingredients

• 2L 10% cream
• 64mL white vinegar

Procedure

1. Bring the cream to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently to prevent it from scorching or suddenly boiling over.
2. Stir in the vinegar and remove from the heat. Wait for the curds and whey to separate, ~30 seconds.
3. Line a colander with a double layer of cheesecloth, making sure you have some extra hanging over the edge. Pour the cheese and whey into the colander, and let it drain.
4. Wait until the cheese is cool enough to handle, 5-10 minutes.
1. If you're going to add seasonings, now is the time; mix them well into the curds.
5. Fold the cheesecloth over the curds and squish them to squeeze more moisture out.
6. Once you aren't getting any more moisture out, return the wrapped curds to the colander and place a heavy weight on top of them, such as a pot filled with water. Leave them for 3-6 hours (or in the fridge overnight) while the remaining liquid is squeezed out.
7. Unwrap the cheese, and re-wrap in plastic wrap; keep in the fridge for up to a week.

If you don't get enough liquid out during the squeezing-and-pressing phase, the paneer won't hold its shape very well; you get a very soft, crumbly "cottage paneer" that disintegrates into something resembling scrambled eggs when heated. It's still very tasty, but a completely different texture, and it can't really be sliced or pan-fried.

Moghalai-Style Chicken with Spinach, Almonds, and Raisins

We're cooking curries again! And this one is delicious, chunks of chicken simmered in an onion-almond-raisin sauce with a few spices. It takes about 30-40 minutes to put together, much of which is spent simmering or stirring occasionally, so you can use the time to do other things -- prepare a side dish, say, or (as we did) tidy up the spice cupboard and perform laptop surgery.

It calls for Punjabi garam masala; it's very easy to put together, and we previously posted the recipe as part of the Paneer Pizza recipe. We served it over brown rice cooked with cinnamon, star anise, and ghee.

As with all recipes from 660 Curries, we've halved the salt for this writeup, but no other alterations have been made.

Ingredients

• 64mL canola oil
• 1 large red onion (or two yellow onions), finely chopped
• 128mL golden raisins
• 128mL slivered blanched almonds
• 1kg boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into ~2cm chunks
• 15mL Punjabi garam masala
• 5mL coarse salt
• 2.5mL cayenne
• 2.5mL ground turmeric
• 1 package (~300g) fresh baby spinach leaves (or chopped full-size spinach), or thawed frozen spinach

Procedure

1. Heat the oil in a deep skillet (or pot) over medium heat. Add the onions, raisins, and almonds, and cook until the onion softens, the almonds are toasted, and the raisins turn honey-brown and succulent, 10-15 minutes.
2. Stir in the chicken and cook until it sears and turns light brown in places, ~10 minutes.
3. Stir in the spices and cook for 20-30 seconds.
4. Stir in the spinach and 128mL water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the spinach is wilted and the chicken cooked through, 5-10 minutes.