Crossing Cuisinal Boundaries Recipe Ideas
In case there was doubt (and there was), you can marry yesterday’s Indian curry with tonight’s Thai peanut sauce stir fry.
How You Might Do It
First, go back in time to yesterday. Start with a jar of Vindaloo sauce (purchased ready made since we are too lazy to make it ourselves) and combine a generous tablespoon with a jar of coconut milk. Add chopped garlic and cumin powder while heating gently and slowly.
Meanwhile, slice extra-firm tofu into pleasantly square pieces, perhaps 5–10 mm thick. In the oil of your choice (olive is tasty but burns too easily: we recommend peanut), fry them with many sliced mushrooms and a large, well-chopped onion.
While stirring your sauce and prodding your tofu, overestimate how much rice you will need. For two people, 1 1/2 cups of rice is too much (and therefore just right). Remembering your mother’s instructions, bring the rice to a boil in your favourite pot, using twice as much water as rice (3 cups in this case). At the boiling point, immediately turn down to low and cook covered for 15 minutes. When it’s finished, remove from heat, fluff with a fork and let sit covered while you finish.
At this point, it helps to have a helper in the kitchen. If not, do the following intermittently while ensuring your tofu doesn’t burn and your sauce doesn’t scald.
Chop a handful of almonds and lay out on a pan with an equal amount of grated coconut (for god’s sake, don’t grate it your self: they sell it like that). Brown in the oven at 400 or 450 °F, but don’t burn the nuts like I did. Meanwhile, chop two medium carrots and a healthy stalk of celery into very small bits.
Serve your rice and coat with a serving of tofu. Drape generously in curry sauce and garnish with almonds, coconut, carrots and celery to taste.
When finished, pack it away in your favourite tupperware and return to tonight.
Tonight
Retrieve last night’s meal and fry it all up with broccoli and/or snow peas (mange tout), and drape in your favourite store-bought peanut sauce. Serve hot and wonder whether this is what they might eat in Burma or Bangladesh, the two countries between India and Thailand.
Previously: McMarketing
Subsequently: Quotable
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