PEI Mussels with Lemongrass Coconut Curry

June 11, 2015 by Aurel Pop in Appetizer

The next few weeks are going to be crazy. I'm doing a round the world trip within 3 weeks. I'll be leaving Austin later today and will fly to Hungary and Romania for a week, then to Singapore, then to Japan and then finally back home. Usually I prepare ahead of time, but for some reason this time I'm not fully packed yet and my flight is today.

I know I'll miss Roni, Popsi and Austin, but I can't wait to see my family and friends. Last time I was home it was in February 2014. That's almost a year and a half ago. I miss my parents, my sister, my grandma and her amazing food and I miss my grandfather, Bunu, who unfortunately passed away last July. It was the most painful thing that I have ever experienced. He had a mild form of Alzheimer's which within weeks turned into an aggressive one and took him away from us. Seeing him stuck in bed, frustrated that he couldn't control his body and mind any longer, made me cry like never before. It broke my heart that this once handsome and strong man who achieved everything he had on his own was now a skinny old man, waiting to be fed, shaved and taken care of, ravaged by this cruel disease. I could tell from the look in his wise bright blue eyes that it was painful for him, too.

Bunu and I had a special relationship. He was very stubborn, and the only person that he listened to was me. He loved me immensely and always mentioned how proud he was of what I achieved in life. According to him, we shared similar life stories, although I think his is far more impressive than mine. At the age of 14 he left the village he lived in, Dumbrava, Romania, hoping to find a job in Satu Mare so that he could go to high school, which only existed in bigger cities. It was right after WWII and Romania was ravaged by the war and exploited by communist Russia.

He managed to find a job as an apprentice at a grocery store and after a year he returned to his home town to visit his family. He saved all the money he made and then used it to buy himself a set of new clothes and presents for his parents. When my great grandmother saw him, she didn't recognize him at first. "Who are you looking for young man," she asked Bunu when he stopped in front of the house. "It's me, Lotica," he replied. She started crying tears of joy as she was so proud of her son. He left the little village as a poor boy and a year later he returned as a handsome, well-dressed man. My grandpa would later become the store manager at one of the few grocery stores that existed in the city during Ceausescu's communist regime. Everyone loved him because he would always help the poor with obtaining sugar or oil, which were rationed during those days.

This specific recipe has nothing to do with my grandfather. My upcoming trip just made me so nostalgic for the days I spent with him on his maroon bench admiring his beautiful garden.
The inspiration for this recipe actually came from one of my business trips to California earlier this year. I hope that this upcoming trip across two continents will also give me new inspiration for future posts. This dish is refreshing, fragrant, and bursting with flavors. Mussels may seem like an intimidating dish to pursue, but it’s really quite easy and quick once you clean them up. Use fresh baguette to soak up all that tasty curry sauce. Enjoy!

PEI MUSSELS WITH LEMONGRASS COCONUT CURRY

Serves 4
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 25 minutes

INGREDIENTS

2 TBS olive oil
2 small shallots, finely minced
2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely chopped
1 1/2 inches ginger root, crushed and finely chopped
1 serrano pepper, sliced
1 stalk (about 8 inches) lemongrass, trimmed and finely chopped
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp dried curry leaves, crumbled
1/2 tsp hot chili powder
1 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
1 tsp coriander, ground
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 medium lemon, juiced (about 1-2 TBS fresh lemon juice)
1 cup coconut milk, unsweetened
1 tsp fish sauce
salt, to taste
2 lbs mussels, scrubbed, rinsed and debearded
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (for garnish)
1 French baguette

INSTRUCTIONS

In a deep skillet heat up oil over medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmering add the shallots and sauté for 2 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, serrano pepper and lemongrass and cook for another minute or two. Sprinkle with spices (turmeric, curry leaves, chili powder, black pepper and coriander) and pour wine and lemon juice in the skillet. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for 2 minutes.
Reduce the heat to medium. Add coconut milk and fish sauce. Cook for about 5-6 minutes. Taste the sauce and adjust seasoning to your liking.
Add the mussels, stir well and immediately cover with a well fitting lid. Cook for 5-6 minutes until mussels open. Remove from the heat, add fresh cilantro, gently stir mussels making sure each one gets coated with curry sauce.
Discard the mussels that aren't open. Serve in a bowl with a ladle of curry sauce and fresh cilantro. Use fresh or toasted baguette for dipping the curry sauce.

NOTES

I found this guide for cleaning mussels to be very helpful. When cleaning and debearding the mussels, discard the ones that stay open after you touched them or knocked against another mussel. It means it's dead and you should not eat it.

Chilled Sour Cherry Soup

June 08, 2015 by Aurel Pop in Appetizer, Soup, Dessert

Sunshine has finally arrived to Texas! I am so happy to be leaving the rainy month of May behind and enjoy everything that typical hot Austin summers have to offer: sunbathing in Zilker Park, dipping in the cold and refreshing Barton Springs, weekend getaways to Hamilton Pool and the Hill Country, Blues on the Green, and paddle boarding on Town Lake. As great as all of these may sound, I know that by September I'll be fed up with the heat, but until then I want to live the summer to its fullest.

Summer in terms of food should be about light and refreshing dishes and this delicious sour cherry soup is one them. It may sound odd at first as it's not that common anywhere aside from Hungary, but I promise that its tart taste and creamy texture will blow your socks off.

In my Zserbó Cake post I mentioned that my grandparents, Tatus and Iolika, had an amazing orchard in their backyard with an impressive number of cherry trees. During the hot summer days my grandma would always make us- my cousins, my sister and I- huge pots of cold soups. Cold fruit soups were our favorite type. She would alternate the sour cherries with pears, quince or currants so we wouldn't get bored of the same taste.

In Hungary this soup is called meggyleves and it's served mostly during the hot summer months, but it's not unheard of it to be served warm during the colder months of the year. I prefer it cold. You can taste it before it cools down and decide which one you like better. Making this soup is very easy as it requires little effort. As kids, our contribution to this soup was to pick, wash and then pit the cherries. We hated doing this because we had to pit buckets full of cherries for not only the soup but also for preserves and compote. Fortunately nowadays it's easy to find pitted sour cherries so the dirty work has been taken care of for you by machines.

I'm not sure in which category to put this summer delicacy, because in Hungary we'd eat it either for lunch or dinner, before or after the main dish. Is there a thing called appetizer-dessert? If not I’m coining the term. Enjoy!

Chilled Sour Cherry Soup

Serves 8-10
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

2 jars sour cherries in syrup (12 oz each) (or 2 lbs. fresh or frozen pitted sour cherries and 3 cups cherry juice)
1/2 lemon, peeled
7 cups water
5 TSB sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
6 whole cloves
1 stick cinnamon
4 cardamom pods
1 star anise
1 two-inch vanilla bean pod (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
1.4 oz vanilla pudding powder
1 tsp starch (potato or arrowroot)
8 oz heavy cream (or sour cream)
1/2 cup roasted slivered almonds
6 fresh mint leaves, chopped

Instructions

In a large sauce pan combine cherry syrup from the jars (or 3 cups juice), water, lemon peel, sugar, salt, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, anise and vanilla.
If using fresh cherries you should add them as well. If using jarred or frozen sour cherries, hold off on putting them in for a bit. Usually the jarred ones are already cooked in syrup, so if you boil them now they'll be mushy by time the soup is ready. Same for the frozen cherries- they are usually blanched.
Bring sauce pan to a boil over medium high heat. Stir and boil for about 15 minutes for the spices to become fragrant. You should be able to smell the cinnamon, cloves and anise if you leaned over the pan.
While the spiced mixture is boiling, combine vanilla pudding powder and starch in a small mixing bowl. Slowly pour the cream of your choice and whisk vigorously for about 3 minutes. Make sure there aren't any lumps in the mixture.
Remove spices (cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and star anise) and lemon peel from the sauce pan using a sieve and discard them. Reduce the heat to medium. Taste the soup and adjust sweetness. If you follow the recipe the soup will be on the tart side, but if you prefer it sweeter you can add more sugar. You can make it even more tart by adding freshly squeezed lemon juice.
Temper the dairy mixture by transferring one ladle at a time of the hot soup from the sauce pan into the mixing bowl. You want to slowly raise the temperature of the cream, otherwise it will curdle when added to the hot soup. Once tempered, pour the dairy mixture into the pot and stir to combine.
If using jarred or frozen cherries now is the time to add them to the soup. Stir and cook until the soup becomes thick and creamy, about 5-6 minutes.
Increase the heat to medium-high, bring the soup to a boil and remove the pan from the heat. You're done!
Chill the soup for about an hour in the refrigerator. Sprinkle almonds and mint right before serving.

NOTES

To get the vanilla beans out of the pods split the pod in half lengthwise then scrape the beans out of the pod halves with the back of your knife using firm pressure.
If the soup ends up lumpy or the dairy curdled, remove the sour cherries from the soup and set them aside. Using an immersion blender mix the soup until the lumps are gone. Put the cherries back in the soup.

Cucumber and Avocado Gazpacho

May 25, 2015 by Aurel Pop in Soup, Appetizer

Even though it's Memorial Day weekend, Roni and I decided to stay at home, relax, catch up on our passion projects and ultimately save some money. It all worked out great, except for the relaxation part. It feels like it's been one of my busiest weekends lately and without realizing it time flew by and it's Monday already. It's crazy how fast long weekends seem to pass. The good news is that long weekends are followed by short work weeks, so at least we've got that going for us.

It's been raining nonstop here in Austin lately. I can't remember the last rain-free day. I have never experienced something like this in the four years that I spent in this town. It's as if monsoon season made its way across the Pacific and into the Gulf of Mexico. I know it's beneficial for the lakes around town, but I'm tired of waking up to thunder shaking our house in the middle of the night. I’m especially sick of the swarms of mosquitoes that eat you alive as soon as you step foot outside.

I can't wait for the sunny days when we can go to Barton Springs (which by the way is currently flooded). I want to lay in the sun and take a plunge in the cold water afterwords. I want to get a nice tan, play soccer in Zilker Park, and to be finally able to play fetch with Popsi in the backyard without having to hose the mud off of her.

That is the spirit I cooked this soup in- the hot days of summer when all you crave is a cold and refreshing meal. This soup recipe may be my most simple one. It requires just a little bit of effort: chop the ingredients, let them marinate in the refrigerator and lastly puree them to a silky smooth consistency.

Cold vegetable soups are not too common in Eastern Europe. In Hungary we have cold summer soups, but usually they are made out of fruit. The sour cherry cream soup is one of my favorites and I plan on sharing the recipe sometime soon.

As far as gazpacho is concerned, I didn't know too much about it until about 5 years ago when I was visiting a good friend of mine in Barcelona. It was an eye opening experience. “How have I never thought to make this before?", I thought to myself. It was so delicious that I ate it every single day that I spent there and every time I return to Barcelona I begin my trip with a cold bowl of gazpacho.

The idea of this soup came to me when Roni and I were having friends over for dinner. I made Beef Bourguignon as the entrée, so I wanted a very light appetizer. My Romanian heritage makes me almost always choose soups over salads, so I decided to go with this gazpacho as an appetizer. I served it with pickled shrimp (recipe to come soon), but if you're vegetarian, skip the shrimp and serve it with roasted sunflower seeds and smoked paprika. The nuttiness and crunchiness of the seeds will bring out the sweet taste and smooth texture of the gazpacho.

The recipe is easily modifiable to accommodate vegans, too. Just skip the yogurt and you've got yourself a vegan delight! The final result will taste as good as the original recipe, but it won't be as creamy. Enjoy!

Cucumber and Avocado Gazpacho

Serves 6-8
Prep time: 30 minutes
Inactive time: 1 hour
Total time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients

2 English cucumbers, peeled, deseeded and roughly chopped
1 large avocado, pitted and diced
1 jalapeño, deseeded and chopped
4 fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 1/2 TBS honey
1/4 cup rice vinegar, mirin, or a mix of both
1/4 cup yogurt, optional
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
2 1/2 cups cold water
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 cup roasted sunflower seeds

Instructions

In a large bowl combine cucumbers, avocado, jalapeño, basil, lemon juice, honey, vinegar, yogurt, olive oil, salt and pepper. Mix well until cucumbers are evenly coated. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
Transfer mix to a food processor and puree until it becomes smooth. Add water and pulse for an extra minute. Taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve gazpacho cold with smoked paprika and roasted sunflower seeds on top.

Curried Cauliflower and Chickpeas with Tahini Sauce

May 21, 2015 by Aurel Pop in Appetizer

Not even a month has passed since I posted my last cauliflower recipe. Last time it was the creamy and flavorful cauliflower risotto with schnitzel, now it's the fragrant roasted cauliflower and crispy chickpeas inspired by middle eastern cuisine. If you like this amazing and underrated vegetable, you're in the right place. Chances are that it will be the most featured vegetable on the blog, not only because of my endless love for cauliflower, but also because of Roni.

As mentioned in my previous post, Roni has this habit of sneaking cauliflower in our shopping cart every time we go grocery shopping. And we go once a week. On top of that, our local CSA also included a few of them in our recent delivery. At this pace, I'm afraid I'll run out of ideas for recipes before the end of the year.

My mom used to cook cauliflower a lot. It was very easy to grow, which meant that my grandfather, Bunu, would always have them in his garden. Luckily it isn't green like broccoli so it didn't scare me and my sister away from eating it when we were kids. My mom would take advantage our our fondness for cauliflower and get creative by making cauliflower soup, roasted cauliflower, fried cauliflower, cauliflower soufflé or even mashed cauliflower. And we'd eat it all without thinking twice.

I find that often people who eat something in huge quantities as kids will start hating that taste so much that when they grow up they lose interest in it completely. It was the opposite for me with cauliflower. Its taste reminds me of my mom. It reminds me of the good old days when I would hang around the kitchen while she cooked.

My dad on the other hand is not the biggest fan of cauliflower, so you can imagine the joy he had when we kept requesting it. He says that boiled cauliflower smells like fart. I think I will have to agree with him on that one, but cheeses smell bad too sometimes, but the taste compensates for the aroma.

One thing must be know about my dad- he has a very sensitive nose. I remember that one time while I was in high school I went to France with a friend of mine to a small town near the Swiss border called Besançon. My mom asked me to bring her back some cheeses. I brought home Camembert, Roquefort, Brie de Meaux, Époisses de Bourgogne and a few others. When my dad entered the house, he immediately turned around, refused to come back in and told us that we had to choose which stayed, him or the cheeses. And he wasn't joking. So we took all the goodies to my grandparents' place and had a huge cheese feast with fresh bread, honey and homemade jams.

The ingredients in this recipe shouldn't scare you away from trying it. I was intimidated at first by all the new spices and ingredients that I had access to in the US, but after a few failed attempts, I managed to get a good understanding of the flavors and uses. Don't be afraid to experiment with new flavors. You may discover a new favorite that you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!

A few years ago, if you had asked me if I liked barberries I would've said, “Hell yeah!”— not because I actually knew what they were (I’m stubborn and likely wouldn’t have admitted not knowing that word anyway), but mostly because it had the word berries in its name, and I love me some berries. Barberries are truly amazing. They are specific to Persian cuisine where they are mostly used in rice and couscous, or served with chicken. You may find them under the name of zereshk at Persian or Middle Eastern stores. They bring a burst of color and an explosion of tartness to your dishes. I chose to add them to this recipe because their tangy and lemony flavor contrast well with the nuttiness of the chickpeas and tahini.

If you can't find them anywhere, worry not, replace them with dried red currants or dried sour cherries.

Curried Cauliflower and Chickpeas with Tahini Sauce

Serves 4
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

Curried Cauliflower

1 large head cauliflower
1/2 cup dried barberries
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cardamom, ground
1/2 tsp coriander, ground
1/2 tsp cinnamon, ground
1/2 tsp curry leaves, dried
1/2 tsp black peppers, freshly ground
2 cans chickpeas, drained (14 oz each can)
2-3 TBS olive oil
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 lemon, juiced (1-2 TBS fresh lemon juice)
6-8 fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
1/4 cup parmesan cheese, freshly grated or shaved
salt, to taste

Tahini Sauce

1/2 cup raw tahini
1/2 tsp white pepper, ground
1/2 lemon, juiced
1/2 cup cold water
2-3 fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
salt, to taste

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425F (225C). Trim the leaves off the cauliflower and remove the stalk. The cauliflower will naturally fall apart into large florets. Cut these into small florets. Drain chickpeas and pat them dry with a paper towel. Soak barberries in warm water and set aside. Combine turmeric, cardamom, coriander, cinnamon, black pepper and curry leaves together.
Add cauliflower florets, chickpeas, olive oil, and curry spice mix to a large mixing bowl. Toss well and make sure the cauliflower and chickpeas are evenly coated with spices and oil.
Transfer the cauliflower and chickpea mix to a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Spread it out evenly and sprinkle smoked paprika on top. Don't go too crazy with the paprika though. If burned, paprika becomes bitter. Put the sheet in the oven and let it roast for about 35-40 minutes. Make sure that you toss it every now and then so that the cauliflower browns evenly and the chickpeas don't burn.
In the meantime, combine raw tahini, white pepper and lemon juice in a medium mixing bowl. Whisk well. Don't be alarmed if the lemon juice will make your tahini thick and lumpy. Keep whisking and start adding cold water until the sauce becomes smooth and silky. You can adjust the consistency of the sauce by adding more water. If you prefer a really thick sauce reduce the amount of water mentioned in the recipe. Toss in the chopped mint, taste and adjust the saltiness.
Remove the chickpeas and cauliflower from the oven and transfer the mix to a large bowl. Squeeze water out of the barberries and add it to the mix. Squeeze half a lemon, sprinkle chopped mint and grate parmesan on top. Add salt, taste and adjust seasoning.
Serve with the tahini either drizzled on top or on the side in a dipping bowl. Enjoy!