A holiday meal

We're having our oldest friends over for dinner tonight.  Even the kids don't argue about setting time aside for dinner with Steve and Gayle every year.

I don't like to make a typical holiday meal of ham or turkey for this family tradition. (I'm not actually making any traditional meals this year--we're having salmon for Christmas day.)  I should probably have made at least an attempt at a kosher meal in honor of the first day of hanukkah today, but I couldn't resist the dip (shell fish and cheese) or the cheesecake.

I love putting together meals like this, thinking through all the courses to make a balance, and to make every course interesting and different.

A good bit of the ingredients are local and seasonal, all of it (with the probable exception of the crab meat) is sustainable and whole:

Appetizer

Goat cheese dip with crab meat
Place in a food processor or mixing bowl: 4 oz crumbled goat cheese, 2 T yogurt, 4 T soft cream cheese, winter or indoor herbs: 2-3 sprigs each. I still had chives, parsley, and thyme outside, and rosemary inside. Add salt and pepper to taste and mix until smooth. Serve with homemade crackers.

Hot spiced cider
Mix in a large saucepan: 1 quart cider, 1 cup orange juice, 1 T each cinnamon (or 3-4 cinnamon sticks) orange zest, 1 teaspoon whole coriander, 1/4 each teaspoon nutmeg, allspice, a few black peppercorns. Heat to a simmer, cover and continue to barely simmer for a couple of hours. Strain through cheesecloth.  Add a little spiced cider liqueur (scroll down to "apple jail fail-redux").

Dinner

Chicken curry with fall vegetables I finally bought a dutch oven, which you really need to finish a dish like this properly, by letting it simmer in the dutch oven for a couple of hours. I served it with local(ish) wild rice and brussels sprouts.

Dessert

Chocolate raspberry cheesecake. I used this recipe from epicurious, but substituted semi-sweet chocolate and semi-sweet milk chocolate melting dots for the white chocolate. I had to add the melting dots when I discovered that you can't melt chocolate in the microwave because it makes it burn. Good news is that I didn't actually burn down the kitchen (scroll down to the photo that says "Ack").

If I had to depend on my garden for food, I'd be in trouble right now

Seasons like this one, which cost me crops, make me think about what it must have meant to be dependent on your garden for food. I lost two early crops that normally provide our vegetables for part of May and all of June.

This year my peas, snow peas and chard were a dead loss. The first two plantings of these early crops just washed away in the nearly 20 inches of rain between April 15 and June 15 (half our normal annual precipitation in just 8 weeks); the penultimate of the peas and snowpeas fell prey to the bumper crop of slugs that were a consequence of the weather. I have maybe a single meal’s worth of peas ripening, and I get a meal’s worth of broccoli every four days.

I’m going to have a harvest-free week or two at this point, as the broccoli gears down (if it does) but the beans aren’t quite ready. I still have lettuce, but although it hasn’t bolted, it’s bitter. I’ll have chard, after all, but not until late summer and autumn.

Probably if I depended on the garden for food I’d have fought harder for the lost crops. Rather than weeding the lamb’s quarters and purslane, we would have been eating it. Rather than chasing the rabbits away, we’d have been trapping them.

Appreciate your food supply. Appreciate your farmer, who does have to fight the weather for her crop, which feeds you.

Honey-rosemary roast chicken
Brush a whole chicken with honey (you can thin it slightly with boiling water to make it brush more easily); I then sprinkled it with rosemary salt, but you can also grind some dried rosemary with sea salt and make your own.

Roast according to your favorite cookbook recipe (I use the Woman's Home Companion Cook Book from 1952).

While the chicken is roasting, use the sweetmeats, neck, and skin flaps from the neck, with a cut up onion, some green peppercorns, sea salt and 2-3 sprigs of fresh rosemary in 3 cups of water to create a broth-- boil down to 2 cups. Use 1 cup of this plus enough additional water to cook rice; use the remaining broth to make pan gravy with the drippings.

Pan gravy
Pour the drippings into a sauce pan, add about 1 teaspoon of flour per 1/4 cup of drippings (should create a thin paste). Simmer for 2 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly. Turn off the heat and allow to quiet down (i.e. no more simmer). Turn the heat back on and add boiling liquid-- this can be almost anything- wine, stock, broth, fruit juice, milk or just plain water depending on the flavor you want. It will immediately thicken; thin it to the desired consistency with cool water. You can strain this if you want, although I seldom strain my gravy-- I like the little bits and pieces!

Rainy, muddy and happy

Is there any other way for a gardener to feel after a day of gardening?

Fantastic time at Peterson Garden today, selling plants, talking to gardeners and wearing my Master Gardener (trainee) hat. Okay, it was a Chicago Botanic Garden hat, actually. Planted a Three Sisters bed, communed with good gardening friends and got very wet and muddy since, as usual it started to rain.

Here's a nice chicken salad from leftovers:

Chicken Salad
1/2 chicken, roasted (in other words, leftovers)
4 hard boiled eggs, diced
pickles, to taste (sweet, kosher or dill)
2-3 small roasted potatoes (again, I used the leftovers from our chicken dinner)

1/2-2/3 cup seasoned mayo (depending on how goopy you like your chicken salad)

Seasoning:
2 T ground rosemary
1 tsp black pepper
1-2T crushed or ground sea salt

Cut up and mix the chicken, eggs, potatoes and pickles. Mix the seasonings into the mayo, and then mix it all together. Serve on lettuce or in a sandwich. If it hadn't been so damned cold for the last 6 weeks, I'd have some lettuce in the garden right now.

I used my own homemade crushed rosemary, mayo and pickles, but I'll relent and let you use store-bought as long as it's local and organic.

Sunday Tomato update

I'll be tracking all my tomatoes on Sundays through the summer.

I've grown the following tomatoes from, and have about 70 starts, 22 of which will go into my garden, 15-20 to various friends and community projects, and the remainder to the plant sale at Peterson Garden.

All plants were started March 20 from seed on grow mats. I used plastic shoeboxes with drainage holes drilled in the bottoms, and set with sterilized TP rolls filled with organic seed starting mix. All trays were covered with cellophane wrap until the seeds sprouted, then kept under grow lights until the first ones were set out on May 1. Lights are kept on for 16 hours per day, within 5" of the top of the sprouts, and a fan is kept blowing on them at all times. I used canister clamp lamps with 150 and 200 watt CFLs.

Growing projects:
Seed saving for Populuxe
Bramki
Ferris Wheel
Blondkopfchen
Unfortunately, of my 70 or so tomato starts, 9 lost their tags, among them the Blondkopfchens. The unknowns are going to the Peterson Garden plant sale to some adventurous gardener willing to buy an untagged tom! The Bramki are the sturdiest starts I've ever grown, and had a 100% germination rate as well. Ferris Wheels had only 30% germination, but are also very good looking starts.

Web community: One Heirloom Chicago
German Pink
This start was much smaller than I'd hoped (still on its cotyledons, no true leaves), so I put it back under grow lights, even though Green Home mentioned it was already hardened. It's now got its first set of leaves, but won't go out until it has at least four sets of leaves (my personal marker for "ready.")

Growing for me and Hipster Supported Agriculture:
San Marzano from saved seeds, original plant from Chicago Botanic Garden, 2010
I have 27 of these, and will plant 5 here. These yielded 70 fruits (you read that right) per plant last year, so this will be the backbone of my winter tomato preserving.

Black Krim from saved seeds, 8th generation, original plant from Gethsemane Garden, 2000. This was the first heirloom I ever planted as well as being the first seed I ever saved. Because I've been saving it from my own yard for nearly a decade, these have more or less adapted to a hyper-local condition and give me amazing yields (up to 12 fruits) from a single plant each season, very high for an heirloom not bred specifically for yield. Again, really nice, sturdy starts.

Goldman's Italian American from saved seeds, original plant from Chicago Botanic Garden, 2010. A fluted paste tomato, large, but small yield. However, I loved the flavor and look.

Unknown gold heirloom, from saved seeds, grown last year at Peterson Garden from a start by The Yarden. A beautiful deep gold, meaty, flavorful tomato. Wish I knew what kind it was!

Pictures of all of these on flickr.

This should probably be a tomato recipe, but I'm too tired to come up with one.

Chicken Salad
1/2 chicken, roasted (in other words, leftovers)
4 hard boiled eggs, diced
pickles, to taste (sweet, kosher or dill)
2-3 small roasted potatoes (again, I used the leftovers from our chicken dinner)

1/2-2/3 cup seasoned mayo (depending on how goopy you like your chicken salad)

Seasoning:
2 T ground rosemary
1 tsp black pepper
1-2T crushed or ground sea salt

Cut up and mix the chicken, eggs, potatoes and pickles. Mix the seasonings into the mayo, and then mix it all together. Serve on lettuce or in a sandwich. If it hadn't been so damned cold for the last 6 weeks, I'd have some lettuce in the garden right now.

I used my own homemade crushed rosemary, mayo and pickles, but I'll relent and let you use store-bought as long as it's local and organic.

Talking to the butcher

After years of buying my meat from the last local butcher in Chicago (well, not quite, there are lots of carnicerias in my neighborhood, my Spanish just isn't good enough), I switched to the mail-order meat from freshpicks.com for the past couple of months.

I can't tell you how guilty I felt about this, because I basically abandoned a local, multiple-generation, family-owned business that I feel very strongly about supporting. He knows me by name. I know when his daughter got married, and his grandchildren's ages. He remembers where my kids are traveling. It finally occurred to me, duh, to switch all my paper goods and cleaning supply purchases to him; I'm not even sure why I wasn't buying these things from him anyway.

Today I went in for the first time in nearly three months. Of course, being a neighborhood butcher, he immediately wanted to know where I'd been, and how the kids were. So I took a deep breath and fessed up. "I stopped buying from you because I don't know where your meat comes from, or what's in it."

And I got an education.

He knows where his chickens come from, because they come from a local, sustainable farm. He can do this because his customers seem to tolerate the slightly higher price of these birds. But pork and beef are too expensive to buy from known provenance; in fact, as he explained, it's impossible for him to know the original farm source of his beef and pork. He buys from an abattoire that doesn't give that information. This was new information-- that butchers don't necessarily know the source of their meat because of the way the slaughtering industry is set up. It makes me admire the effort that has gone into setting up this alternative slaughterhouse system that tracks the meat back to its farm source. I just never thought about it before, which I suppose is the entire problem with our food system. No one thinks about it.

I will tell you, if you're lucky enough to be able to have this conversation with your butcher, he will look at you like you're crazy. I hope more people do this, so maybe these small stores will start buying meat from certified organic/sustainable slaughterhouses.

I'm going to switch my chicken purchases, and special-order meats for holidays back to Don down the block. I'll buy my dry goods and paper products from him. Supporting locally owned businesses is part of the new web we're trying to create, after all.

Shredded Chicken and Pearl Barley with spring vegetables
via MoreMarin.com

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 4-5 celery stalks, with leaves, diced
• 5 large garlic cloves, finely minced
• 2-3 large carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 medium sweet potato, diced (I used apples, having no sweet potatoes at hand)
• 2 tablespoons dried thyme
• 1 tablespoon dried sage
• 1 tablespoon dried rosemary
• 1 tablespoon dried fennel
• 1 cup pearl barley
• 32 oz. chicken or vegetable broth or stock
• 2 1/2 cups cooked, shredded organic chicken breast
• 2-3 cups peas (didn't have any-- I used swiss chard)
• sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste

*Note- this dish is so versatile. Any combination of vegetables and spices may be used. Tofu may also be substituted for the chicken, if desired.

The moreeats.com recipe didn't say how the chicken got cooked, so I've added that step.

Preparation
In a large stock pot over medium heat add the olive oil until shimmering but not smoking. Brown the chicken (cook on each side until the skin "releases" the pan; about 5 minutes per side).

Add the onion and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent - about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, carrots and sweet potatoes and cook for about 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the thyme, sage, rosemary, fennel and barley and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add broth/stock and stir to incorporate. Bring to a boil and reduce to low heat to simmer. Cover and let cook for 20-25 minutes or until liquid is reduced and barley is cooked through.

Add chicken if using pre-cooked, otherwise remove the chicken, allow to cool then debone and shred it (make stock for a future meal with the bones and skin). Put it back in the pot with the peas or other greens, sea salt and pepper and stir to combine. Cook for another 5 minutes. Remove from heat and re-season if necessary.

Bringing back the birds

The house next door to us has had a fascinating garden history. When we moved here in 1986, the next door yard was the territory of two big mean dogs. Separated from us by a flimsy wire fence, they prevented us from even walking through our back yard, let alone using it. We used to have to get to our garage by going through the yard on the other side when those dogs were out.

Mercifully they left 18 months after we moved in. The people who replaced them never had an idea they didn't like, and had a chaotic but charming garden with every plant known to humans, structures, ponds, walls and walkways. Maybe 8 years later new people moved in and imposed some order on the chaos. Then after about 12 years, they sold it to a young family who didn't really take care of it, but didn't actively destroy it either; however, they were victims of a bankruptcy and bailed on the property.

And there it sat for more than 2 years, with no resident. I did what maintenance I could, as did the neighbor on the other side, but over the years it got wilder and wilder, becoming quite literally a wildlife habitat, to the benefit of the entire neighborhood.

But eventually, new people moved in, and completely destroyed the garden. They took out every structure, path, and plant (yes, the plants too) including 25 year-old lilacs and hydrangeas, and a 15 foot tall redtwig. They filled in the pond. With the garden went the wildlife and we suffered through a summer with no birds or insects, except large flocks of pigeons that kept coming because the new people kept throwing out bread "for the birds." (Hey, if you want birds, leave the plants, idiots.) What we did get were all the little furry things that had taken refuge in the tiny wilderness- voles, moles, rats, mice, rabbits, coons and possums- and now had no homes.

In an effort to lure the birds back, I completely reconfigured my garden. I added a bed with shrubs and berries, constructed a trellis (we don't have any large trees in our yard) redirected paths, and upped the number of bird-and-butterfly plants like coneflowers. We put in bird feeders, something we never had to do in the past.

Last month, counting along with the annual backyard bird count, we observed juncos, cardinals, a robin (in February!), two different types of apparent sparrows, a catbird, two types of woodpeckers, flickers, those shiny black ones that I can never remember the name, and crows.

And in honor of our feathery co-habits, of course, a chicken recipe (sorry, couldn't resist)

Papaiachne (pa-pa-ya-chnee)
Cut up whole chicken
1 large onion
1 large carrot, sliced
2 large potatoes
2 stalks celery
1 can whole peeled tomatoes (no salt added)
2 cups fresh green beans
2 T fresh oregano, chopped fine, or 1 T dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste

Make broth with the back, neck and wings of the chicken plus the onion and potato skins and celery ends, plus salt and black peppercorns. Use enough water to make 2 cups of broth.

Brown the chicken in olive oil in a deep pot, turning once. Add the onions and celery and sautee until soft. Add the broth and tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Add the potatoes and carrots and simmer until soft. Add the green beans and cover, simmering until beans are al dente (about 15 minutes).

Serve over rice.

This was a staple of our diet when I was growing up, and I have always known it as Greek chicken stew. However, it's one recipe I have never found in a book or on line quite in this form. I've never been able to find the Greek word transliterated, so the transliteration is my own; anyone with a better spelling, please let me know. I suspect this dish is an export from my grandmother's turn-of-the-century childhood in an ethnic Greek village near Smyrna, Turkey, and possibly a dish typical only of her village, or even her family. Which makes it kind of wonderful.

Getting mom to make the normal stuff

When I was growing up, the mother of my best friend had a reputation for being a marvelous cook. There was even a rumor that she had a college degree in cooking. This was back in the 60s when women with college degrees were not all that thick on the ground. I assume the degree was home economics or nutrition or something like that, but to our 7 and 8 year old minds, this translated directly as "food." And we were ready to believe it because of the exotic things she made-- easter cake shaped like a lamb and covered with coconut; red velvet cake shaped like a heart.

Of course two houses over my mother was making home made pastitio and baklava, but this was boring, and my friends thought it was weird. I wanted to have Sunday dinner with the Roberts. Pot Roast! Grilled streaks! Even a toffee pull, once. I remember once telling my mother that Mrs. Roberts was a better cook, because she had been to college. I cringe now. So sorry mom, I was just a stupid kid.

But Mrs. Roberts was not immune to the cruelty of children. There was a MacDonald's-like hamburger stand we all went to, called Scottie's (believe it or not, this was pretty much pre-MacDonald's. That's how old I am. Sigh.) Scottie's had greasy, squished, delicious hamburgers, and I remember overhearing Mrs. Roberts telling my mother how her kids had demanded hamburgers like Scottie's. Not the homemade meatloaf in a bun extravaganzas that she was famous for, but flat, plain, skinny, greasy hamburgers.

So she made them. Now that was a hamburger.

Chicken nuggets and homemade potato chips
Boned, skinned chicken, cut into strips
1 egg, lightly beaten

About 3 cups of canola or other light oil

Crust:
Cornmeal, flour, bread crumbs, in 1:1:3 ratio
Salt, pepper, parsley to taste
Dried rosemary or other herbs

Fill a 2 quart saucepan with corn or canola oil, to about 1 1/2 inches from the top, heat to 400F/200C.

Coat the chicken strips with egg, then roll them in the bread crumb mixture until the entire surface is completely coated. Drop the pieces into the hot oil about 5 at a time, boil for 3-5 minutes depending on how thick they are, until golden, or just starting to turn a bread-crust color.

Do not leave the pot for a single second. As you cook these, moisture will escape from the coating into the oil, which can cause the oil to foam. Very dangerous. If the oil foams, remove it IMMEDIATELY from the heat and start again with new oil.

To drain use a Chinese skimmer or similar utensil, let as much oil drip off as possible, then lay on a newspaper to drain.

For the chips, slice a couple russets paper thin, coat both sides with a fairly heavy coating of salt (to draw off moisture). Lay them in a single layer on a several sheets of paper towels, put another paper towel layer (again, several sheets thick) over them, and weight with something flat and heavy like a cutting board. This is to draw off as much moisture as possible, again so that the oil doesn't foam.

When you're done with the chicken, use the same oil to deep fry the potatoes. You'll know they're done, because they'll look just like potato chips. Again, don't turn away for a second. To drain them, use the skimmer to remove them from the pot, then put them in a brown paper bag and shake the rest of the oil off.

The "pressure" cooker

I wrote a couple of posts ago about running out of family recipes to share (although it subsequently occurred to me to get my Hungarian-Polish sister in law to share her family recipes as well). In a way it's true; the recipe reservoir of the nuclear family is going to be small. If you know how to make as few as 20 different things, assuming you eat out once a week, you're going to go nearly a month before repeating anything. Plus, they're favorites, right? So you want to keep making them.

And of course, I did think of some old family favorites that I haven't blogged yet, and some new things to try out on you, and then there's my sister-in-law. But I also realized what an inspiration just writing about these recipes is. I find myself thinking, what can I make that would have an interesting story, what can I try on my small audience, what can I create?

Here's what I created yesterday:

Ginger chicken with winter squash
bone-in chicken breast, one per diner
1 winter squash (acorn or small butternut)
1 pint shiitake mushrooms
2-4 inches fresh ginger root, peeled and sliced
1 teaspoon green peppercorns
4 cups Ginger-squash broth
1/3 cup rice for each diner

Seed, peel, and cube the squash (you can peel squash and the ginger for that matter with a potato peeler). Put the seeds, peels, ginger bark and peppercorns in a 2-quart saucepan, fill with water, and bring to a boil Simmer for 20 minutes, then strain to create about 4+ cups of broth.

In a large frying pan, saute the chicken in about 3 tablespoons of butter, until skin is browned. Add the ginger root and saute until soft. Add the squash and toss until it is completely coated with butter. Season with salt and pepper. Add the mushrooms and toss, simmering for another couple of minutes. Dredge lightly with flour, toss to distribute flour evenly. Add about 1 cup of the hot broth and bring to simmer. Continue adding up to 2+ cups of broth so that you have a nice gravy.

Use the remaining broth to cook the rice in, which will give the rice a ginger flavor.

Thanks to The Yarden for inspiring the title!

The endless warmth

It's a funny autumn season this year. It's not actually summer-like, and October was perfectly miserable, but the weather feels like it is never going to break. It looks like autumn. The sun is at that autumn angle that makes everything still and golden. Sunset comes at the correct time, and the leaves all turned, and fell.

But the gentle air goes on and on, not really warm, but zephyrous. There hasn't been a day yet where the sun is bright and painful, the winter sun that hits like a shard of glass, or the frozen crystal in your eye that enslaves you to the ice queen.

So for a fall day in this year's endless wait between equinox and solstice, a one-pan autumn meal.

Autumn pan chicken

One cut-up chicken
3-4 pats of butter
2 T flour
one medium onion, sliced
fall vegetables (I used carrots, potatoes, turnips, but you could also do this with squash or pumpkin)
dried sage
2 cups apple cider
salt
black pepper

Melt 2-3 pats of butter in a large saucepan. Heat the cider just short of boiling (about 5 minutes at 80% in the microwave.) Saute the chicken on both sides (to keep the skin from pulling off, wait for it to "release," meaning, when it's properly cooked on the first side, it will be easy to turn. If it resists and sticks to the pan, just wait until it wants to turn). Add the onions and vegetables and saute about 5 minutes. Add the rest of the butter, plus the sage, salt and pepper. When the butter is melted, dredge with flour, turning the chicken a couple of times. Add half the cider and reduce until it barely covers the bottom of the pan, scraping up the brownings. Add the rest of the cider, turn to a light simmer and cover for about 15 minutes, until chicken is cooked through.

Serve with noodles or rice and a fall vegetable like broccoli or brussels sprouts.

Please buy your chicken from a butcher or mercado, not from the chain stores, where it will have been chilled to 33F/1C meaning it will be tough and tasteless.

For the carnivores in the family

Here's some stovetop recipes for chicken and pork. A family stand by, so it probably qualifies as comfort food. As a child, I had no idea chicken could be cooked any other way.

Porkchops with mushrooms and onions

Season one porkchop per person, both sides, with parlsey, salt and pepper. Set aside.

Melt about 2 T of butter in a very hot sauce pan, sautee a pint of mushrooms until all the butter is absorbed (this will happen very quickly. Pan will end up slick but not greasy). Dash with the juice of half a lemon, or jar equivalent, and sautee until the shrooms release moisture. Add another 2 pats of butter, and sear both sides of the chops. (It's seared when it releases easily. If you have to pry it up it's not done). Cook another 5 minutes, until the pan browns nicely. Add a little liquid (water, tea, or stock, maybe 1/4 cup at most) and the onions. Continue sauteeing, turning the meat periodically, until the onions are transparent. Add 1 to 1 1/2 cups of stock or tea, about 1/3 c at a time, until a nice brown gravy forms. You can thicken the gravy by dredging the meat with about a tablespoon of flour before adding the liquid.


Greek chicken

Marinate the chicken in the juice of one lemon, oregano, salt and pepper. Let sit at least one hour (or, in fact, all day if need be).

For true Greek Chicken, you'll want to bake it at 375 for 45 minutes, turning it once. You can also pan fry this dish. Put 2 T of olive oil on the hot pan, then sear the chicken, turning it when it releases easily, until it's nicely browned on all sides. Add stock and simmer until the meat is thoroughly cooked. The stock will make a nice clear gravy; to increase the amount, just add more after you remove the chicken and make sure the pan is scraped clean. For pretty gravy strain it, but it's fine with all the flotsam in it too.

Serve with garlic mashed potatoes.

Good deeds reap new recipes

When Bill worked for the Chicago Children’s Choir, we hosted a guest musician from Hong Kong. To thank us, he made an amazing South Asian feast, which featured this dish.

Chicken curry

1 cut up chicken
2 carrots, sliced
2 medium onions
1/2 russet potato or 2 small yellow potatoes per serving
Greens (bok choy, spinach, green pepper, green beans or other per personal taste)

Spices
2-3 T. curry powder
2 t cumin seeds
1 t garam masala
1 T dried parsley, or 3T fresh parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce
1 cup half-and-half
about 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
3-4 T flour

Make chicken broth with the wings, back, neck and sweetmeats
Brown the legs, thighs, breasts in 2-3 T of olive oil; add onions and greens, sauté until vegetables release liquid (10 minutes on very low heat). Add spices and sauté another 10 minutes. Dredge with flower, sauté 2 minutes, then add 1 cup of the chicken broth until the flour has smoothed into a creamy broth. Add the rest of the chicken broth, the cut up carrots and potatoes, and the cream and adjust the spices. Simmer at least 30 minutes, up to an hour. The longer you simmer, the thicker the sauce will be.

Serve over rice. Makes about 8 servings.