Nigella Lawson - Quick Chili

 suppose this is more Tex-Mex than just Mex, but none the worse for that. Besides, there is a reason that old-fashioned cookbooks devoted so much energy to ground meat: It makes for simple, speedy supper.
Luckily, there is a lot more going for this than efficiency. It just hits the spot when you want something comforting but not bland: It soothes but its sprightly.
If you've got a rice cooker - and I make no secret of my dependence here - then you put your rice on to steam before you make the chili and a substantial supper is mere minutes away, which is just the way a substantial supper should be.

INGREDIENTS: * 5 oz chorizo sausage (not the hard salami sort of sausage), halved lengthwise and cut into ¼ - inch half-moons * 1 lb ground beef * ½ teaspoon ground cumin * ½ teaspoon ground coriander * ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon * 3 cardamom pods, bruised * 2 cups good-quality tomato and chunky vegetable sauce for pasta * 1 14-oz can mixed spicy beans * ¼ cup sweet chile sauce * ¼ teaspoon chile flakes, optional, or if your canned beans are not spicy * Put the sliced chorizo into a hot pan and cook over medium heat until the sausage crisps a little and gives up its orange-red oil.


PREPARATION: * Add the ground beef and cook for about 5 minutes, breaking it up with a wooden fork to help it brown. * Stir in the spices and then ad the tomato-vegetable pasta sauce, beans, and chile sauce. Also add the chile flakes if you need more heat. * Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes and eat with rice or just as it is. If you're not adding any rice, you might consider dolloping with a blob of sour cream and sprinkling some grated cheese and chopped cilantro. I cant think of any way of eating this that isn't good.

Serves 4

Cardamom gains 1.4% on spot demand

Press Trust of India / New Delhi Mar 07, 2012, 15:07 IST

Cardamom prices rose by Rs 14.40 to Rs 1,028.90 per kg in futures trade today as speculators created fresh positions, tracking a firming spot market trend on pick-up in demand.

Less arrivals from producing region also supported the uptrend in cardamom futures.

At the Multi Commodity Exchange, cardamom for delivery in April rose by Rs 14.40, or 1.42%, to Rs 1,028.90 per kg, with a business turnover of 399 lots.

March cardamom gained Rs 5.10, or 0.53%, to Rs 968 per kg, with a business turnover of 687 lots.

Market analysts said fresh buying by speculators on the back of pick-up in spot market demand mainly led to rise in cardamom prices at futures trade.

LIME & CARDAMOM SCONES

Ingredients:

DRY
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup pastry flour
6 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
6 TB sugar
3 tsp lime zest
3 tsp cardamom
2/3 cup craisins





WET
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 TB lime juice

Preheat oven to 400˚.

In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients together with a whisk. Then whisk wet ingredients together and add to the dry ingredients. With a rubber spatula gently mix everything together. If dough seems too dry to hold together, squeeze about 2-3 tablespoon of lime juice into the dough and continue folding and mixing until dough holds together, pressing the dough into the dry bits at the bottom of the bowl until it becomes one cohesive mass.

Gently press into an 8” circle and cut into 6 wedges. Line a baking try with parchment paper and set each wedge about 2-3 inches apart. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until pale brown on the edges. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. When nearly completely cool you can go ahead and drizzle on the glaze. Let the glaze dry for about ten minutes before serving.

GLAZE

1 cup icing sugar (or more if needed for thickness)

2 TB lime juice
1 tsp grated lime zest

With a small whisk or fork, mix together the icing sugar, zest and lime juice until thick but pourable.

Chicken Curry

Ingredients:
Whole cumin seeds,
mustard seeds,
onion,
root ginger,
garlic,
green chilli,
chicken breast,
tomato puree,
green pepper,
ground coriander,
tumeric,
cardamom pods,
fresh coriander,
lemon and  Basmati rice

Traditional Saudi Kabsa (Kabseh) Rice

Ingredients :

1 2/12 - 3 pound chicken, cut into eight pieces
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 medium onions, sliced
1 (12 ounce) can tomato puree
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2 medium carrots, grated
Grated rind of one orange
4 cloves
4 cardamom pods
3 sticks cinnamon
Sale and pepper to taste
1 pound long grain rice
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup sliced almonds
Preparation:
Sautee onion in oil until it begins to brown. Add chicken pieces, tomato puree, chopped tomatoes and garlic and stir for about five minutes over low heat. Stir in three cups hot water, grated carrot, orange rind, spices, salt and pepper to taste. Cook over medium heat, covered, about 20-25 minutes, until chicken is done.

Remove chicken. Set aside to keep warm. Stir rice into the liquid in the pan, and cook, covered over low heat for about 35 - 40 minutes, or until liquid is absorbed.
Put rice on a serving platter with chicken pieces arranged around the circumfrence. Toss raisins and almonds over all.

Ras Malai, Bangali Sweet Dessert.

Ras Malai is dumplings made from cottage or riccotta cheese soaked in sweetened, thickened milk delicately flavored with cardamom. Serve it chilled and garnished with slivers of dried fruit.

Ingredients:

Paneer made from 1 liter of milk (recipe below)
1 liter full cream/ whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cardamom powder
4 cups water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup thinly sliced almonds or pistachios

Preparation:

Mix the water and 1 cup of sugar in a pan and boil till all the sugar is dissolved. Turn off the fire and keep syrup aside.
Knead the Paneer (How to make Paneer) in a platter till very smooth. Make into balls slightly smaller than the size of a walnut and flatten slightly in the center.
When the Paneer balls are made, reheat the syrup to boiling, then simmer and gently drop in the Paneer balls. Cook for 10 minutes. Turn off fire.
In another pan boil the 1 litre of full cream milk with the 1/2 cup of sugar, till reduced/thickened to 75 per cent of its original volume. Turn off the fire, add the cardamom powder and mix well.
Add the syrup soaked Paneer balls (after draining) to the milk mixture and chill for a few hours.
Before serving, garnish with slivers of dried fruit.

Top Chef Finalist Beverly Kim Inspired by Black Cardamom.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/

If you go into the spice section of any grocery store looking for cardamom, green cardamom is what you'll find. Black cardamom, less popular and stronger in flavor, is a different genus of the same family—the ginger family, to be precise. It's dried over an open flame, which gives it a smoky aroma. Beverly Kim also noted a menthol-like, medicinal flavor. "It's almost completely different from green cardamom; I was really surprised," she said. "It's very powerful. It needs to be balanced with other spices to round out the flavor."

Kim read that you're not supposed to eat black cardamom raw. She tried it anyway: "I ate it raw, and it's fine. But I don't think you're going to get the beauty of it eating it raw. You have to let it cook out."

Green cardamom has a light, citrusy quality to it that makes it useful in both sweet and savory dishes; black cardamom is used almost exclusively in savory preparations. Nevertheless, Kim decided to make a dessert with her ingredient. Inspired by the smokiness and blackness of black cardamom, she made a black cardamom molasses cake, paired with a chai ice cream infused with black tea, cardamom, and other spices. Other elements of the dish included raisins pickled in dark rum and lemon juice, baby carrots poached in simple syrup with ginger, a "soil" of walnuts and cake crumbles, and "ginger hay"—fresh ginger sliced into thin sticks and then deep-fried.

Black cardamom molasses cake, black cardamom chai ice cream, ginger hay, and buttermilk puree

JULIA THIEL

"It's all really dark, and I'm thinking it's going to look kind of like a wicked, stark black landscape," she said. "Like black hills of the cake, and the curly weeds of the carrots coming out, kind of like a dark forest. And then painted buttermilk puree on the bottom, because you need to balance those dark flavors with something light and acidic and kind of ghostly looking. . . . I was also thinking it's perfect before Halloween. I want something creepy."

Read the entire article Here