I like peanut butter cookies a lot, but that is (or was) about the extent of my experience in cooking with nut butters. Well, that and peanut butter and honey sandwiches, which are infinitely superior to PB&J and which I happily ate every day for breakfast and lunch when I was little. But I suppose one really can’t count either as “cooking”. This month, the Daring Cooks challenge was intended to break us all out of that rut: the goal was to prepare one or more recipes using a nut butter, ideally homemade.

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

Unfortunately, this month the usual sweltering Toronto summer descended – in spades. Day upon day of 30-plus highs, combined with the humidity that makes it feel more like 40, does not in any way inspire me to turn on the stove. Fortunately, our gracious hosts had suggested recipes for a lovely dip that was reminiscent of hummous – and yet at the same time, entirely different – which, with some vegetable crudités and grilled focaccia, made for a perfectly satisfying dinner, as well as a fantastically good cold rice noodle salad with a kicky cashew-butter based dressing. To round things out, with this week’s slightly lower temperatures I fulfilled an old ambition and put together my own interpretation of butter chicken (albeit using paneer), in a riff on the posted recipe for chicken in a curried tomato-almond sauce.

Thoughts upon completion? I’ve never made a habit of buying nut butters, as aside from the usual peanut butter they’re rather expensive, and so never cooked much with them. It’s really good to know now how easy it is to make them in small quantities at home – at least, it’ll be easy so long as my mini-chopper’s motor holds out – and I’ll certainly re-visit the salad and the dip. I played around with the flavourings in both, and more so with the dip, but the bones of both recipes were great. The makhani sauce needs some tweaking, and oh, how I wish I’d asked a former co-worker of mine for her recipe when I had the chance; I know she used cashews and no dairy, but the rest is a mystery. Too, to me it’s a winter dish; the name “butter chicken” doesn’t exactly imply “light”, which is what I want when all I can do is make like Sputnik and sprawl (poor kitty had a much harder time with the heat and humidity than we humans). Bean and Walnut Dip with Oregano (based on the challenge recipe for a White Bean and Walnut Dip with Rosemary)

This dip reminds me of hummous – beans, seasoning, and a nut butter (or seed butter, in the case of hummous). I think – and some of the other DCers demonstrate – that any number of different beans, nuts, and flavourings could be used, with delicious results. I used black-eyed peas, because I had ‘em to hand, and I think they were a fine substitute, and chose oregano since I have it in a pot on my porch. I didn’t toast the walnuts this time, but I think I will next time; I also added a bit of walnut oil because my butter was very, very stiff.

1 cup cooked black-eyed peas
1/2 cup of walnuts
3 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp fresh oregano
1 Tbsp walnut oil
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste

In a food processor or mini-chopper, grind the walnuts until they form a paste, about 2 minutes. Add the walnut oil, beans, garlic, oregano, and lime juice. Process until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Asian Noodle Salad with Cashew Butter Dressing

For this recipe, aside from the addition of fresh chilies to the dressing and my choice of vegetables (shredded cabbage and carrots and a red bell pepper), I changed almost nothing; I did skip adding any protein since I brought it to a potluck BBQ.

For the cashew butter:

1 cup cashews

For the dressing:

½ inch slice of fresh ginger, chopped
8 cloves garlic, more or less to taste, chopped
5 Thai bird chiles
½ cup cashew butter
¼ cup soy sauce
3 Tbsps sugar
3 Tbsps rice vinegar
3 Tbsps  toasted sesame oil
¼ cup plus 1 Tbsp water

For the salad:

1/2 pound thin rice noodles, cooked according to directions, cooled in a water bath, and drained
1 large red bell pepper, cored and seeded, cut into thin strips
1/4 head of green cabbage, shredded
3 carrots, grated
1/4 cup (60 ml) sliced green onions

Make the cashew butter: in a food processor or mini-chopper, process the cashews until a paste forms, about 2 minutes.

Make the dressing: in the food processor or mini-chopper, add in all other ingredients for the dressing and process to combine them into a fairly smooth, intensely-flavoured sauce.

Combine the cooked noodles and vegetables; toss to mix them thoroughly. Pour on the dressing and toss again to coat the salad completely. I put all the ingredients in the big tupperware container I was using to cart it to the BBQ, stuck the lid on, and shook it for a few minutes, which worked neatly.

Paneer in “Makhani” Sauce (loosely based on the recipe for Chicken in Curried Tomato-Almond Sauce)

One thing I will never understand is the instruction in some recipes to do something with onion – such as fry it in butter – and then discard the onion. Why? I would have thought that if one likes the onion flavour enough to do this, one would not have a problem with eating the onion itself… I also used fresh tomatoes rather than canned tomato sauce, since they were available and delicious and local and extremely cheap (surprisingly so, in fact), but if I were making it in winter I think I’d use canned diced tomatoes or crushed tomatoes to have full control over the final taste. I decided to use paneer largely because I wanted to try out the stuff my local grocery store sells (all in all, not bad, though not as good as fresh), and because honestly, I like it better than most meats.

For the almond butter:

1 cup whole raw almonds

For the sauce:

454 g fresh tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic
5 minced Thai chiles
1 1/2 tsps garam masala
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp fresh-ground black pepper
1/2 cup almond butter
4 Tbsp butter
plain yoghurt, to thin and smooth out the sauce as necessary
salt, to taste

454 g paneer, cut into cubes
1 onion, sliced

Make the almond butter: process the almonds in a food processor or mini-chopper until they form a fairly smooth, oily paste, about 2 minutes (or a little longer, in my case).

Make the sauce: melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add in the sliced onion, chiles, and garlic. Cook for about 10 minutes, until the onion is softened and fragrant. Add the spices and saute for another few minutes.

Stir in the chopped tomatoes and allow them to come to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes or so. Whisk in the almond butter. Use an immersion blender, food processor, or blender to blend the ingredients into a fairly smooth sauce. It will probably be quite thick; I used several spoonfuls of yoghurt to thin it out. Add salt to taste. Set the sauce aside.

Fry the paneer: in a skillet, heat a little oil and fry the onion until softened, 5-7 minutes. Add in the paneer, spreading the cubes in a single layer, and cook for several more minutes, flipping often with a spatula. Pour on the makhani sauce. (I only used about half the sauce, and as an experiment I’ve frozen the remainder…)

I served the paneer with home-made parathas stuffed with a little onion and chives, basmati rice, and a quick dish of cabbage and green beans cooked with mustard and cumin. It was utterly delicious, although the sauce could have been more intense in my estimation and it did make my kitchen feel like a sauna.

“Cats believe that all human beings, animals and plants should congregate in a huge heap in the centre of the universe and promptly fall asleep together.

…
The patron saint of cats is called: Beast of the Skies, Warm Presence, Eyes…”

from Magic Cats, by Gwendolyn MacEwen.

Perhaps it’s not right for me, as a non-Liberal voter, to criticize Ignatieff’s decision to try to get a sense of what Canadians want; after all, proposing a bold new policy direction didn’t work very well for Stephane Dion. However, as a Canadian citizen concerned by Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament for the second time, effectively killing the Foreign Affairs Committee’s investigation into the treatment of Afghan detainees, I want the leader of our Opposition to be leading, not trying to follow the disparate directions of hundreds of Canadians who are divided, regionally, ideologically, and culturally.

A palate: that which one cleanses between the courses of a meal.

Palette. Palate. Not. The. Same.

(Because the state of the world is depressing tonight. Can’t we say no to more greenfield development?)

Immediately after the capture, dozens of onlookers who had gathered, disappeared.

The animal has since been released in a conservation in the city’s east end, but no one knows where it came from.

(However, I too would like to know how a deer managed to get to Dundas and Chestnut. Definitely not where one would expect to see anybody but the squirrels and raccoons – and yet another reason why we need to advocate for wildlife corridors in the city. Wouldn’t it be nice if the deer could come and go without mobs of people gathering, or requiring a police “escort” outside of the city?)

Sincerely,
Tariqata

P.S. Still alive. Just busy.

We just need to work on the temperature now.

I get frustrated with the argument that new social media are going to result in a population that has only superficial knowledge about issues of importance. (I happened to flip through The Dumbest Generation in a bookstore on Saturday; I can’t offer a review because I have not yet read it, but that did seem to be the author’s main point; in other words, it updates Amusing Ourselves to Death.) What we do on sites like Facebook is a choice; our choices are obviously shaped by the medium, but the medium makes it as easy to communicate book recommendations as it does who was at last night’s party. I don’t update my Facebook status terribly often, because microblogging and tweeting strike me as a bit more work than they’re worth, but I like being able to share a little capsule of my thoughts with a much wider group than the circle of friends and family that I see regularly, and I want those thought-capsules to be interesting.

I want that because that’s my life. I can – and do – choose to share what I’m thinking or reading or working on. Many of my friends also share their own ideas, goals, creative activities, political interests. Sometimes these are issues that have wider significance, and sometimes they’re not, but those little capsules can drive all kinds of interesting directions of thought for their readers.

However: what about the stories about teenagers who send each other naked photos and are arrested for possession of child pornography, or kids who upload pictures of their illicit drinking? As a society, I think we’re still adapting to the fact that our lives are increasingly transparent;  the exponential increase in our ability to share information about ourselves and what we do has added new layers of richness to the ways that we interact, but it does reduce privacy as well. (I may blog under a pseudonym, but my Facebook page, after all, uses my real  name.) But what do I want to keep private?

I wouldn’t want my phone number or my address to be widely available to people who don’t know me face to face. I wouldn’t want to post many details about friends or family because I’d be taking away their choice about how present they want to be online. But my thoughts and ideas? I like to be able to share them. I like to know that I’m presenting a face to the world that’s as congruent with how I see myself, and how I try to act, as I can. That means that I try to use Facebook to talk about the things that I think are interesting – good books, important environmental causes, and so forth – as well as to kick ass at Word Twist on a regular basis.

The internet is not going to disappear, no matter how many curmudgeonly people wish it and it’s consequences away. We can learn to adapt to them, though, by thinking about what we do online. Not that it needs to be serious: I love xkcd and cuteoverload and lolcats, and I love coming across bits of the internet that are creative, whimsical, and fun. I also love the fact that Science Blogs exists to create an ongoing conversation between scientists and non-scientists, and that social scientists and lawyers can blog about their professions and ideas, as well as about policy and politics. I love that I can take what I’ve learned and share it. If stupid content exists, then the answer is not to condemn the platform but to create new and better content of one’s own. Social media are part of that, because they’re such a powerful way to share that content.

Of the pictures I got of the heron, this is my favourite.

(Still figuring out what I can do with Flickr and this blog!) Rob and I spotted this heron hanging out around the locks at Smith’s Falls. He was, happily, very amenable to repeated photographing, and even hung out long enough for me to run to a pharmacy for replacement batteries.