Milk (22 page)

Lightly oil your hands and a couple of plates. Divide the chhenna-potato dough into 8 equal-sized portions. Roll each into a ball between your palms, then pat it into a disc about 2½ inches across and set it on a plate. Place about a teaspoon of the nut-fruit mixture in the center of each disc. Gently fold up the edges, and reshape it into a ball enclosing the filling; roll smooth between your palms. Set the filled croquettes on a plate.

Sift the chickpea flour into a bowl with the remaining ½ to 1 teaspoon salt and optional cumin and coriander. Add a large dash of vegetable oil and ⅔ cup water, and whisk to make a smooth batter.

Reheat the sauce if it has cooled, dumping in any unused fruit-nut mixture.

Pour oil into a wok, Indian
kadhai,
or deep skillet to a depth of about 1½ to 2 inches, and heat to about 350°F. Immerse half the croquettes in the batter; lift out with a skimmer and quickly add them to the hot oil. Fry, turning several times, until they are golden brown on all sides, and lift out to drain on a plate lined with paper towels. Repeat with the remaining croquettes. Slide the croquettes into the hot sauce and let warm through for a minute. Arrange the croquettes and sauce in a serving dish, garnish with a little cilantro, and serve at once. Steamed basmati rice is an ideal accompaniment.

W
hen Indian restaurants began multiplying in the United States during the 1970s, one of the quickest hits with diners everywhere was a northern-style dish called
saag panir
or
palak panir
that has now become as all-American as spring rolls or shish kebab. It consists of panir cubes—eclectically minded cooks are known to substitute firm tofu or drained pressed ricotta—in a sauce of chopped or puréed leafy greens. “Palak” is Hindi for “spinach”; “saag” can be any kind of leafy greens. The faintly nutty blandness of the panir marvelously contrasts with and complements the slight bitterness of spinach or the more assertive character of Swiss chard, collard greens, or any other greens you care to experiment with.

There are no rules about the composition of the sauce. Anything goes—greens or spinach creamed or simply tossed in a little hot oil or ghee with a few quasi-Indian seasonings, or sumptuous presentations of puréed greens simmered in a “wet” (saucelike) masala and flavored with a dry masala (spice mixture). My version is neither more nor less “authentic” than a hundred others.

YIELD:
About 5 to 6 servings as a vegetarian main dish

Make the chhenna as directed. Press it firm, cut into cubes, and brown in 3 tablespoons of ghee or oil, following the directions for
panir
.

Rinse fresh spinach or greens very zealously to remove the last trace of grit or sand. Shake off a little of the water, put it in a large heavy-lidded saucepan, and cook, tightly covered, over high heat just long enough to wilt the leaves, 3 to 4 minutes. Frozen spinach or greens can be used as soon as thawed. In either case, drain off excess liquid and squeeze as dry as possible between your hands. Pick over the spinach to remove the coarser stems. Chop it very fine with a heavy sharp knife. (You can roughly purée it in a food processor, but first chop through the stems in several places to keep them from wrapping around the spindle.)

Mince together the ginger, chile, and garlic until they are almost a paste. Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of ghee or oil until rippling in a large deep skillet or medium saucepan. Add the optional cumin and mustard seeds. When the seeds start to pop, add the minced ginger paste, let it sizzle for 10 to 20 seconds, and add the onion. Cook uncovered over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the onion is well cooked, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add the optional tomato, and cook for another few minutes before stirring in the spinach and salt. Add the garam masala in any amount you prefer, from a large pinch to more than a teaspoon. Cook uncovered, stirring frequently, about 20 to 25 minutes, or until the spinach and onion have formed a dense, fragrant sauce and the fat is beginning to separate.

Add the panir to the sauce and let heat through. Gently but thoroughly stir in ½ cup each of thick drained yogurt and heavy cream. Check the consistency and add a little more of one or both if desired. Serve with plain steamed basmati (or other) rice.

T
his pretty dish originally came from a small Indian paperback,
100 Easy-to-Make Gujarati Dishes
by
Veena Shroff and
Vanmala Desai. Our corn and watery milk undoubtedly produce a thinner, sweeter result than the starchy, filling corn and richer milk of India, so I replace some of the milk with cream and add a little starch in the form of wheat flour. To me, corn here seems plenty sweet without the added sugar, but this is a matter of individual taste.

Asafetida, once available only in Indian grocery stores, now turns up in more venues (my local Whole Foods supermarket, for one). It deepens all the other flavors just as the turmeric deepens the color.

Dishes like this are regularly made with either cows’ (or buffaloes’) milk or coconut milk; in both cases the milk brings out the “corny” quality of the corn. In a pinch you can substitute three 10-ounce packages of frozen corn kernels, first giving the corn a very short spin in a blender or food processor to bring out the juice while leaving the texture coarse.

YIELD:
4 to 6 servings as main dish, 7 to 8 as side dish

Cut and scrape the corn kernels from the ears with a sharp knife.

Chop the chiles (deseeded if you prefer) and ginger together until they are almost a paste.

Heat the ghee or oil in a deep wide skillet or sauté pan and add the mustard seeds. When they start to splutter and pop, add the corn and stir over pretty brisk heat for a few minutes. Add the optional flour, stirring well to eliminate lumps. Add the chile-ginger paste, milk-cream mixture, salt, sugar, asafetida, and turmeric. Cook uncovered over medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 15 minutes. The texture will thicken somewhat if you have used flour and remain a little runny otherwise. Remove from the heat, stir in the lemon juice, and serve garnished with a sprinkling of minced cilantro.

VARIATION:
To convert this into
Spiced Corn Chowder, omit the flour and use 5 cups of the milk-cream mixture, 8 to 10 chiles, and a 2-inch chunk of ginger. Proceed as directed above, doubling the amount of all other seasonings and making any further adjustments when you taste the soup after it has come to a boil.

I
n some parts of the Old World milk or buttermilk was very nearly the only everyday source of protein for poor people until modern times. Ireland, where millions would have starved if the family cow had starved, remained a case in point far later than most parts of England or Europe.

When “Irish potatoes” arrived from the Americas, marriages of milk with the new vegetable proved to be a nutritional blessing to the nation. Supplementing these two ingredients with some green vegetable (usually spring onions or leeks, though young green nettles were also a favorite) put more vitamins into the mix and added a bit of fresh verve. This combination was called “champ,” and was a main dish—more accurately, an
only
dish, a meal in itself—on thousands of Irish tables for generations. Like many peasant standbys, it was usually served in one communal bowl that everyone dug into with his own spoon. I think it still makes a fine main dish for a simple meal, though of course no one today commands the services of a small Irish cow giving the excellent milk for which Ireland was once renowned. Anybody who can get good unhomogenized milk should use it here.

The important principle in dishes like champ is that cooking anything oniony in milk creates an entirely different effect from sautéing it in butter. For champ, what you want is not a sautéed
flavor but the one that results when the milk is directly infused with an oniony character (the same principle applies if you use some other kind of greens). In this way, the butter that’s added at the end will be a fresh touch of luxury not foreshadowed by anything else in the dish.

Use either leeks or scallions, or (if you can get them) the fresh white bulb onions with green stalks still attached that are often sold as “spring onions” or “jumbo scallions.” Other possibilities: a large handful of chives, new peas, parsley, or—if you’re a field forager—young nettles.

YIELD:
About 6 servings (4 as a main dish)

Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender. While they are cooking, cut the chosen onion relatives into thin slices. Put them in a small saucepan, pour in the milk, and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, until tender, about 10 to 15 minutes (a little less for scallions). Strain off the milk, return it to the pan, and keep it warm, reserving the onions separately.

Drain the cooked potatoes and briefly return them to the pan over low heat to let them dry out a little, shaking the pan to prevent scorching. Put them in a large, deep bowl, and start mashing with a wooden spoon or potato masher. Mash in the drained onions while adding as much of the hot seasoned milk as the potatoes will absorb without getting soupy (the amount will vary according to the starchiness of the potatoes). Some lumps are all to the good. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve at once, as hot as possible. Each person makes a well in his or her portion and puts in a lump of butter.

S
calloped” is a culinary term for which no reasonable definition exists. As far as I understand, it murkily emerged late in the nineteenth century from a welter of antecedent words, including “collop” (a thin, cutletlike slice of meat), “escalope” (the French equivalent), and “scallop” (the mollusk). Many cooks came to apply it to things that were “escaloped” in the sense of being cut into slices, presented in a nice layered or overlapped serving arrangement. By the turn of the twentieth century, “scalloped potatoes” usually meant a sturdy standby made by building up layer on layer of sliced raw potatoes in a dish and baking them, covered with milk, until very tender.

The dish takes well to a little jazzing up with onion and a salty accent like diced ham (a Swedish cousin, “Jansson’s Temptation,” is liberally seasoned with anchovies). But it really is only as good as the potatoes and the milk; you must remember that it originated in an age when many people dug their own potatoes and attached real meaning to such terms as “rich milk” and “new milk.” If you’re stuck with supermarket homogenized milk, you might want to replace a little of it with half-and-half or light cream. As for the potatoes, they should be mealy to the nth power. Use a heavy hand with the salt.

A slight soupiness and curdled appearance are perfectly normal for this dish.

YIELD:
6 to 8 servings