Rice Cooker Recipe: Ropa Vieja

There used to be this place in our village in New York that served really amazing ropa vieja. But then the owner skipped town and the restaurant closed. It turned out he was deeply in debt, and apparently he just couldn't keep up, or figure out anything else to do. And so I decided I should learn to make my own ropa vieja, to fill the void in my heart (and stomach).

Ropa vieja (literally "old clothes") is a shredded beef dish of deliciousness and Cuban origin. I made it probably 4-5 times myself, trying different recipes and not being entirely satisfied with any of them. For one thing, they were rather a lot of work, and for another, they just weren't as yummy as I wanted them to be. So I more or less resigned myself to a ropa vieja-less world.

But then Big Basket had organic bell peppers in their produce section. I bought them without any particular plan, but just because Liel likes peppers and we could all use the variety in our diet. I had a vague idea that I might cook some of the water buffalo with them and some tomatoes. And suddenly I realized: ropa vieja!

If ever there were a test for making ropa vieja on the fly, this would be it. Armed only with my trusty rice cooker, 1/2 a kilo of water buffalo, and the seasonings in my very poorly stocked Indian kitchen, I set to work.

Five hours later I had pure deliciousness. The kids said it was the best thing I'd cooked in India. They begged me to make it again. They didn't need to though; it was so good I would have made it again even if they hadn't asked!

Rice Cooker Ropa Vieja

-1 lb of water buffalo (or, if you can get it, beef!). Mine was cubed. Anything but ground would work.
- 1 large onion, sliced
- tomatoes, seeded and chopped
- two bell peppers, sliced
- tomato paste mixed with water to make tomato sauce. Or, just use tomato sauce if you have it!
- 4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 3tsp cumin
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 1/2- 1 tsp pepper
- water
- splash of apple cider vinegar

(Note: this is by no means a traditional recipe. I'm missing all kinds of things that are commonly included. But it tastes great, and more importantly, it still tastes like ropa vieja. So I'm counting it!)

Put some oil in the bottom of your rice cooker. Layer the sliced onions on top of it, and then the bell peppers. Cover those with the buffalo (or beef), and the chopped tomatoes. Sprinkle the garlic, cumin, salt, and pepper on top, and then pour over the tomato saucey stuff. Add enough water to come partway up the side of the rice cooker (but don't cover the tomatoes), and a splash of apple cider vinegar. Turn your rice cooker on. Once again I used my patented "turn it to cook/turn it to warm" technique to try to approximate a lower cooking temperature, but if you have a fancy rice cooker you won't have to do that.

I did have to add more water once or twice, and I stirred it a couple of times. I let it cook for about 5 hours, and served it on rice. And at the risk of repeating myself too frequently: It was full of win!

2 downs, 1 up, one middling

It's all about food, of course.

The downs are as follows: 1. matta rice flakes are not a cold breakfast cereal, despite being listed in the cold breakfast cereal section at Big Basket. Furthermore, they do not taste good, even when you mix them with sweet things. 2. The coconut oil I bought tastes like ass. Smokey ass. Not rancid, just totally, utterly disgusting. It made the matta rice flakes look like yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

Not that I make short work of a yellow cake with chocolate frosting or anything. Nope.

Anyway, the matta rice flakes are only a mild disappointment, but I'm bummed about the coconut oil. I use coconut oil as a moisturizer for my face and body, and was hoping I could keep doing so here, but unless I can find a much better coconut oil that's not happening. And honestly, the moisturizer choices, while abundant, leave something to be desired, because so many of the offerings are skin whiteners. I knew before coming here that skin whiteners were popular, but I still wasn't prepared for how popular. Kwality Big Bazaar, though quite small in size, stocks a wide selection of them. Big Basket lists approximately 150 lotions and moisturizers on their site, and 75 of those are whitening products. I know that still leaves me 75 to choose from, but most (all?) of them have ingredients I choose to avoid. So compromise it will be! But no lightening lotions. I'd scare people.

The middling (because I'm going from bad to good here, despite the order in the title) was the pre-made paneer butter masala I bought the other day. I decided the kids and I would try it out for lunch today, because it was marked as "mild", and therefore, I hoped, suitable for Liel.

Well, sort of.

First of all, it was not mild in the way Americans would define that word. But I'm in India, so of course that makes sense! But I've bought "hot" salsas at home that couldn't even come close to this stuff in terms of spice. Just sayin'.

So I put some rice in a bowl for the girl, and added a little bit of sauce. I'd say it was about a 4:1 rice: sauce ratio. Too spicy. So I brought her some plain yogurt to cool it off, and she put in about twice as much yogurt as there was masala sauce. But then she could eat it, at least! I think the channa masala I bought, and which is labeled as being "medium" spicy, will have to be eaten on a day when I have something else cooked for Liel, cause there's no way that's happening.

And the good? Well, I'm making ropa vieja! In my rice cooker! With water buffalo!

OK that last one might not really call for an exclamation mark. But it smells super yummy, so keep your fingers crossed that it will be, because not good water buffalo ropa vieja would make me a sad panda indeed.

Rice cooker recipe: Eating their heritage

I've probably told you this story at least twice before (and if I haven't, Robert has) so I'll keep it short and sweet here. I first met Robert's mom after he and I had been dating for a year (she lives in Chicagoland and we lived in Santa Barbara, and that was the first time we were in the same state). One afternoon, while Robert was in class, she and I were sitting around our living room chatting and she asked me about my ethnic background. It's quite varied and I ended the litany by saying, "So X, and Y, and then pretty much most of Europe...except for Ireland. I'm not Irish at all".

"Well", said Robert's mother, whose maiden name was Donohue, "Your kids will be".

Anyway, the dinner I made tonight for my kids, who are indeed part Irish, was Colcannon. I'd never made it nor eaten it before, but I had potatoes and cabbage in the fridge so it seemed like a good idea.

Rice Cooker Colcannon

- Potatoes, cooked
- Cabbage, shredded
- Onion, minced
- Butter
- Milk
- Salt
- Pepper

(There aren't quantities given because as far as I can tell, you don't need them. I used roughly equal amounts of cabbage and potato (two smallish potatoes, half of a smallish cabbage) and one small onion. I did the rest to taste.)

First you need to cook the potatoes. If you live in one-rice-cooker land you can cut them into chunks, cover with water, and cook until they're soft. Drain them in a colander and leave them until you need them.

Next, heat oil in your rice cooker, and saute the onions until they're just slightly browned. Add the cabbage and a bit of water, and saute/simmer until the cabbage is soft, but not overcooked. Toss the potatoes in and squash them up until you have something that looks like mashed potatoes with cabbage, or in other words: colcannon. Add milk, butter, salt and pepper to taste, and eat!

If you're wondering why I made this for my kids, and not my entire family, well...I managed to marry a part-Irish guy who doesn't like potatoes! Since he wasn't home for dinner tonight it seemed like a good time to try colcannon out.  And I snarfed it down. It was damn tasty.

Rice cooker recipe: Shabbos lentils

This recipe is my family's favorite of the many dals I've made up since we landed here in Bangalore. I've named it Shabbos Lentils because, well, I like to make it for shabbos because it's so delicious! If you're lucky enough to have a stove, or two rice cookers, you can make rice at the same time that you're cooking the dal. Otherwise you can do it like I do and cook the dal, transfer it to a big pot, clean the rice cooker and cook the rice. This method takes longer (of course) but is great in a pinch, or for tiny and/or minimalist kitchens!

Ingredients:

-3/4 c lentils. Any type you like will work great, though cooking times will vary.
-1 tsp each of turmeric, cumin, and corriander
- 1-2" of fresh ginger, minced (or as close as you can get it)
- 4-5 cloves of fresh garlic, minced (same)
- vegetables, if you want them
- 3 fresh tomatoes, seeded and chopped
- 2 T tomato paste
- 2- 4 T butter
- cilantro
- some type of milk or cream
- salt
-oil

Directions:

Heat the oil in your rice cooker. Add the garlic and ginger and saute briefly. Add the spices and saute while you chop the veggies (if you using). I particularly like cauliflower and carrots in this dal, but it's good plain too.

When everything is nice and fragrant, add the veggies (if using- but not the tomatoes!) and lentils. Cover with water by an inch or so, and cook until the veggies and lentils are tender.

Stir in the tomatoes, tomato paste, butter, cilantro and salt to taste. Continue to cook until the tomatoes look the way you want them too. Add milk or cream (non-dairy milks work great here too) and you're done!

Raj

My rice cooker is my world...at least in my Bangalore kitchen! So I decided that he needed a name, and that that name was Raj.

I've used Raj to cook rice, of course, but also to boil water for tea, cook stew, make 8 different types of dal, and bake apples.

Yes, bake apples. In a rice cooker.

I noticed that most of the fruit sellers in our neighborhood have a lot of apples for sale right now. At first I eschewed the apples, assuming that they were imports. I still think a number of them probably are, but I've learned that India does have apple growing regions, and so I bought some local(ish) apples a few days ago. My original plan had been to make applesauce from them, but then it occurred to me that baked apples, with their quantities of butter and sugar, were even tastier. So I fired Raj up and did a trial run!

First I cored as many apples as I could fit into Raj. He's rather petite, so it wasn't too many. Luckily I had some really tiny apples in my batch, so I could fill in the spaces pretty well.

Then I made a paste of butter, sugar, and cinnamon and put some into each apple.

I added a little water to the bottom, and let them cook for about 30-40 minutes.

Delicious!!

Menu and banana leaf

Today we had lunch at an outdoor cafe on campus called Prakruthi.  At the request of one of my legion of fans, I took pictures of the menu, so you can all play along at home! I'm also hoping to figure out what some of these things are before my next visit, via the magic of the internet.

So without further ado, here is the menu!

On the walk to and from Prakruthi we walked through some of the forested bits of campus, which was lovely. The weather in Bangalore is so outstanding in December! On the way home the kids found a banana leaf on the path, which was somewhat surprising since there aren't any banana trees to be seen in the immediate area. They both wanted their picture taken with it. It was a banana leaf celebrity!

Lunch, incidentally, was super delicious. Our basic meal plan at the moment is to go out for either lunch or dinner each day (usually lunch) and then I cook something delicious in the rice cooker for dinner. Tonight I'm making toor dal with cabbage, cauliflower and carrots, seasoned with garlic, ginger, turmeric and cilantro. Nom!

Rice Cooker Buffalo Stew

I was pretty surprised to discover that the folks at Big Basket sell buffalo meat. I'd sort of anticipated not eating red meat for the duration of our stay, so I was pleased to find it, even though I'd never cooked buffalo before.

I had two choices for buffalo purchase: cubed or minced buffalo. I went with cubed, figuring that a stew was pretty likely to turn out OK in the rice cooker. And you know what? It did!

I hate to call this a recipe, because I'm relatively certain that anyone with more than a rice cooker and a handful of ingredients could improve upon this, but eh. There've got to be people out there who are only cooking with a rice cooker and a few things, right? And one of them might even find this post someday! So with that in mind, I give you my highly sought after, top secret recipe.

Rice Cooker Buffalo Stew

1 med onion, diced
5-6 cloves of garlic, minced (or something approximating minced. I only have one knife here, so my "minced" is really more like "roughly chopped, trying to make sure there aren't too many huge hunks")
3 carrots, chopped
2 biggish zucchinis, chopped
1 lb buffalo stew meat
2 T tomato paste
salt
pepper

Put the onion and garlic in your rice cooker along with a little oil. Set the rice cooker to "cook". When they start to brown (or when you get tired of waiting for them to brown, as I did), add the meat. Stir it a few times, and then add the tomato paste, salt and pepper. Stir some more, to evenly distribute the tomato paste, and then add the carrots and half of the zucchini. Pour in enough water to nearly cover it all, and put the lid on.

Now I'd read that you can slow cook a stew in your rice cooker by setting it on "warm". And while this may be true for fancy rice cookers, my little one is as lo-fi as you can get while still using electricity. I brought the mixture to a boil, flipped it to "warm" and felt sassy and sophisticated...right up until I discovered, half an hour later, that my stew was just sitting there. Warm, yes, but certainly not cooking. So after that I alternated between boiling the fuck out of it ("cook") and letting it cool down so that the meat might not be as tough as shoe leather ("warm"). I don't exactly recommend this method if you have other options, but if you, like me, are cooking on a wing and a prayer then I can tell you that it more or less works.

After two hours of alternating between "cook" and "warm" (or two hours of simmering if you're the high society rice cooker type), add the rest of the zucchini. Give it another 30 minutes or so and call it done. Or let it cook longer, either way. I had to call it done then so I could use my rice cooker to actually cook rice to accompany the stew! Some of the more sinewy looking bits of meat were slightly tough, but none required protracted chewing, so I'm calling it a win. And what's more, my family agreed with me! Zion even had seconds.

Movin' on up

We're still sick, but things are looking up!

First of all, Liel spent about 30 minutes playing, by herself, with the Angry Birds game we got them for Hanukkah. And she let me brush and braid her hair. She still obviously doesn't feel well, but she's improving! In fact she's right next to me now, singing a Fluffy song, which goes, in part, "Oh Fluffy is such a cutie bat, and she loves her mommy more than anything else..."

Zion is....less improved. But he's better than he was yesterday. He's playing some of the new Hanukkah iPhone games on Liel's phone since his is still refusing to play the new games.

Also, we now have working ethernet in our apartment! It's such a relief to have a secure internet connection. IT guys have been here at least 4 times in the past 10 days, and finally yesterday one of the head IT guys got involved and this morning someone new came over. He spent about 40 minutes working in our apartment and outside of it, and now the ethernet works! He was really nice too. I mean, they've all been nice, but he was my favorite. Of course the fact that he fixed what was broken might bias me somewhat! But when I thanked him he smiled and said, "It is my duty, madame", which was charming.

The manager of our apartment building came in after a while too, mostly to observe the IT guy as far as I could tell. He chatted with me some too, asking if the kids had had breakfast, and what they'd had, and if we were from France. Not sure why he thought we might be from France! He also spotted our bag of Hanukkah gelt on top of the fridge and his eyes got wide and he asked if it was gold. I said no, chocolate, and his eyes got even wider! Apparently chocolate disguised as gold coins was something entirely new to him. I gave him some and he looked skeptical and said, "Chocolate??". I assured him it was and he finally peeled one open and ate it. He was quite delighted, and told the IT guy about it. I gave some to the IT guy as well, and he asked if it would keep in his pocket. I told him it might melt! It was a delightful interchange.

Also: cooking success! After my miserable experience using the induction cooker a few nights back, I was feeling pretty down on cooking. But even though I've only used it once, I think I'm in love with my rice cooker (side note: it is a Bajaj brand rice cooker. I don't know if this is a good brand or not, but there is a realtor in Nyack named Raj Bajaj, so Robert and I were pleased to have a rice cooker with a familiar name on it!). Anyway, I chopped some garlic and put it in the rice cooker along with oil. When the garlic smelled garlicky I added chopped zucchini, cauliflower, and cilantro. I let those cook a couple minutes, then added red lentils and water. After 20 minutes I came back and added salt, and after 30 minutes of cook time it was done. And pretty delicious, I might add! I forced some into both kids, too. Normally they wouldn't need forcing, but they don't really have their appetites back.

Tomorrow our maid will come for the first time, and I will hopefully get an Indian sized passport photo for my SIM card application. Big stuff ahead!