As someone who has prided herself for making even the most laborious dishes from scratch, I was hesitant to buy dosa batter. I’d made it at least three times in the old apartment, old and wretched with who knows what growths there, and my dosa batter, since the first try, always fermented properly and yielded delicious, sour, crispy dosas. But Chris’s aunt, who took us to an Indian grocery store near her house in December, insisted that every Indian family buys their dosa and idli batter now. “Everyone does it,” she said to me. “Don’t feel bad. We don’t have time to make all this from scratch anymore! We’re too busy!” I looked at a container she pointed at, which she said she bought. I scanned the ingredients list to see what it was made of and was pleasantly surprised to see that no artificial ingredients or preservatives were listed. The only ingredients that should be in dosa/idli batter, which were the only ones listed were these, in this order: water, rice, urad dal, salt, fenugreek seeds.

I thought about it then, and I decided that at some point, when we returned to New York, I’d check Patel Brothers to see if they sold a similarly pure dosa batter and try it out. So the time came, and we added it to our Mirchi Market order this week. It was delivered yesterday, along with a number of other goodies, including my happy mangoes. I left it on the kitchen counter and photographed it for my social media, then left it there while eating dinner. Then, when Chris got up to get something from the kitchen, he returned to the couch to see splatters of white batter everywhere — all over the counter, the back of the couch, and even on the couch cushions! I realized that the batter had come from the dosa batter container. The dosa batter was so bubbly and fermented to the point of developing so much pressure that it popped the container lid off!

Well, I guess that means this batter won’t be a failure after all, and maybe this small trial was worth it.

I love sweet potatoes. They are likely one of the most nutritious foods on earth, rich in vitamins A, B (multiple types), C, beta carotene, potassium, and fiber. I used to eat them on their own all the time, steamed or roasted, but because Chris is not a huge fan of them, I’ve eaten them a lot less in the last eight years. I’ve occasionally spent time researching how I could incorporate these into our diet without him seeing them on the plate and screaming, “SWEET POTATOES! Noooo!”

A few vegan recipes I’ve seen have combined sweet potatoes with black beans in quesadillas. Something about that just seemed weird to me. There needs to be some other flavor component to pull these flavors together, and I found a recipe that incorporated some ground chipotle pepper that piqued some intrigue. Well, that could definitely be a start. Since I have a huge supply of dried Mexican chilies I’ve stocked up on, I decided to rehydrate a few ancho and pasilla chilies, add cumin, smoked paprika, and cinnamon, and mash roasted sweet potatoes and canned black beans together.

Combined with some hemp seeds, avocado, minced cilantro, mozzarella/cheddar, and pickled jalapeños and heated on a pan, these mini quesadillas were surprisingly very impressive. The flavors really work well with the rehydrated ancho/pasilla chilies with their heat and smokiness. Chris even embraced them and said they were very good. He made no negative comments on the sweet potatoes here.

Win/win for the sweet potatoes and black beans together. 🙂

I was waiting until I got my hands on whole wheat flour before I actually used my ripened sourdough starter for the first time, so I had to put the sourdough starter in the fridge. Once it’s in the fridge and no longer in a friendly, warm environment, sourdough starter begins to “sleep,” meaning it becomes dormant in the cold and needs to be reawakened for use by taking it out of the fridge, re-feeding it, and getting it to the ripe, mature stage again. Unfortunately for me, I had no idea what I was doing, and instead of re-feeding it with all-purpose flour, which is what I originally began this starter with, I thought no harm would be done if I added my new whole wheat flour. Apparently I violated a rule that says you are supposed to keep with the same flour, and the starter became far less happy and bubbly. And as a result of this, it’s been less gurgly and excited since coming out of the fridge.

This means I have more discard starter to use… even when I do not want to bake or make anything. Whole wheat sourdough crumpets are what I tried…. and what I did not realize is that the texture would be completely different than with all-purpose. As Chris said, “these are more doughy.” In other words, these are far more dense and not airy and “hole-y” the way the white flour ones are. Test and learn, I suppose?

In addition to video editing, cooking, and reading, I’ve been spending a good amount of my free time now studying sourdough and understanding how different recipes work. A few fun facts I’ve learned about making bread from a starter: it tends to be a bit more forgiving than dry active/fresh yeast, it doesn’t “rise” doubly the way commercial yeast does, and it also seems to develop more of a… “personality.” That last part can be a good or a bad thing depending on who you ask, but the die-hard bread makers will say it’s definitely a good thing. This is when cooking truly is a science, when everyone starts taking out their scales, instant read thermometers, and setting timers down to the last minute to keep track of proper, exact proofing and hydration. I’m not completely into that level of exact science (I’m also at a disadvantage now, in this very moment, because even if I wanted to be, I am not currently in possession of a scale), but this whole process is so fascinating. It’s also been interesting to see this domestic science side via our Breadheads Slack channel of a number of my fellow colleagues, who are engineers, data scientists, and statisticians by profession.

Sourdough is an art and a science. I’ve already appreciated the art, but I am still navigating the science, especially reading recipes written by these maniacally exact chefs (where everything has a gram measurement and a temperature, even the flour you use!).

I held my breath a little this evening as my alarm went off to remind me to check and feed my sourdough starter. I wasn’t sure how well it would do in our apartment given that our apartment, without the heat on, is not usually 70-75 F, but a friendly colleague let me know a hack: turn the oven light on and place the starter in there. The small space with the heat of the light would be able to do the trick. So I did that, and wow, what a difference that little light made! As soon as I opened the oven, my hands felt warm, so I knew the starter baby would be quite comfortable and cozy in there.

I stirred the starter with chopsticks and noticed that the top had crusted over, but the inside was sticky, a little sweet smelling: that’s the exact description my guide said it would ideally be today! So I fed it and placed it back into the oven. The crusty part could be avoided by making sure the towel placed on top is wet, so I wet the towel, too.

I’m on my way to becoming a sourdough starter queen!

Well, tonight is the night when I finally face one of my biggest kitchen challenges and fears: making my own sourdough starter. I’d read about this from Michael Pollan during college, that I could actually make my own starter just from filtered water and all-purpose flour given that there are all kinds of wild yeasts in everything from flour to our hands, but the thought of it kind of scared me. This would actually be a living thing, in my apartment, that would require daily and/or weekly feedings. It seemed like too much maintenance, so I pushed it off “to another time,” I thought then.

Well, “another time” has come, and I’ve started the process tonight. I didn’t have a scale like my bread-making colleagues advised me to get (I mean, Amazon isn’t really prioritizing scale orders now, right, nor is Sur La Table three blocks away considered an “essential business”), but I decided to wing it with my cup measures. If all goes well, I may be giving birth tonight to a new member of our family that will require a weekly feeding and a permanent spot in our refrigerator.

What I really want to make, though, is whole wheat sourdough, and I don’t actually have whole wheat flour. Buying flour online seems to be difficult since most places have seen a surge of demand and many are low in stock. I guess that challenge will need to wait until at least another week once this starter has (fingers crossed) ripened, and I won’t have to wait a ridiculous amount of time at Whole Foods to get whole wheat flour (the other markets around us do not seem to carry it!).

After visiting Vancouver for the second time in August 2018 for a friend’s wedding, I was inspired by the plant-based food scene that Vancouver offers and was particularly impressed with a place near my hotel called the Juice Truck. It was a little cafe, and without even realizing it when I walked it, was 100 percent plant-based. I ordered a toasted chickpea Caesar salad (which I still think about to this day because it was that well put together and delicious) and a slice of their vegan lemon coconut loaf, made by a vegan food company owned by Erin Ireland, a vegan chef in the area. With one bite of that loaf, I was completely in love and shocked that there were zero eggs and no butter in it. It was packed with flavor, super moist, and just delicious all around.

Erin Ireland doesn’t make her recipes publicly known, so based on the ingredients list on the packet, I took a photo of it to remember what she used and was determined to recreate a version of this at home. Well, a year and a half later, I finally tried this out today, and I’m proud to say that I’ve come quite close to replicating it. The crumb is not as firm as I’d like, but I hope it will firm up overnight, but the flavor is almost what I remember it to be. Plant-based cooking and baking definitely requires a bit more thought, but it has lots of promise when you have fresh, vibrant ingredients like fresh lemons, coconut milk, coconut oil, millet, and poppy seeds.

Given our entire company is working from home, we’ve started some new “work from home water cooler” Slack channels to keep ourselves amused and still social with each other. One of the ones I’ve recently joined is on recipes, where we share recipes of things we’re cooking given our sudden extra time at home. At least four of my colleagues have used this opportunity to make their own sourdough starter. I’ve always thought about doing this, but never actually did it. And reading through the guides they have shared, it’s actually much easier than I thought (or so it sounds!).

So while making vegan banana bread today (with a new twist I’ve never done: using all purpose flour, semolina flour, and buckwheat flour, with a few tablespoons of millet!), I bookmarked a link to teach myself how to do this. Who could say no to 100 percent homemade bread, with not even commercial yeast used?!

I’ve never really been into St. Patrick’s Day. It just seems like an annual excuse to drink more alcohol and particularly consume more Guinness beer. While I appreciate dishes like corned beef and cabbage, I found out that they actually are more Irish American and not actually Irish, so there goes that. And Irish soda bread — well, that’s actually Native American, so all the foods we typically associate with St. Patrick’s Day are not actually Irish!

Nevertheless, a few years ago, a colleague had brought his mother’s Irish soda bread in, and I was really blown away by the texture and the taste, especially knowing that no yeast is used, and the only leavener is baking soda. So, I attempted to make it myself today. It uses only four ingredients: buttermilk, flour, salt, and baking soda. It was really simple, likely the easiest bread I’ve ever made. The crumb was dense as it usually is, and oddly enough, mine came out more moist than the different versions I’ve eaten. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, but to me, it tasted good. It also came out with a really crackly, crunchy crust that I loved.

More jam, butter, and avocado toasts will be made with this for the remainder of this week at home!

After discovering the glory and and authentic flavor that dried methi leaves can give to saag, I decided to make it again today. I got a bit too blender-happy, though, and ended up blending all of the spinach and mustard greens that I pressure cooked in the Instant Pot instead of half of it. When I put all the blended greens into a glass dish with the chicken on top, Chris remarked, “That looks like chicken in a spinach bath. That’s what I would say that is if you didn’t tell me it was supposed to be chicken saag!”

Well, maybe it is chicken in a spinach bath…. I’ll tweak my method next time so that we don’t have to rename the recipe. That’s what this is all about… testing recipes and iterating on them.