Cooking experiments

I had two successful cooking experiments this evening, one out of necessity and one out of fun.

1. Poached murrel fish steaks in cilantro. I asked our driver to pick up some fresh murrel fillets for Sarwary to cook for dinner, knowing I wouldn't have time to shop and that the fish here is really only good day of. (yes, I do recognize how spoiled that sentence sounds.) Having never purchased fish, he was a little confused by the "fillet" concept and came home with mini-center cut steaks. Sarwary had no idea what to do with them ... so off to multiple recipe books I went for research.

Turns out, it's actually quite easy to poach fish steaks. All you need is a broth (well, I used water not having broth or wine on hand) and some spices (I used cilantro - readily available - a chili pepper, black pepper, garlic, some cumin seeds). Boiled the spices in the liquid for 5 minutes, added the fish, simmered for about 10 minutes and voila! I made an abbreviated sauce with garlic mayonnaise, tomato and a little more cilantro thrown into our "grinder" (aka, mini blender). Not too shabby.

2. Green bean soup with chili. After dinner, we had left over steamed beans that I didn't feel like keeping as beans - they would just go bad before we'd eat them. I just made a simple veg soup (water, green beans, onion, garlic, salt - boil and puree, add milk) ... but it didn't taste quite right. It took a few more sips to realize what was missing - the chili pepper! I guess I've become accustomed to Indian food because after I added that, it was great.

Cooking here can be limiting (e.g., I tried a Thai beef curry on Sunday night and the beef was inedible. We'll be sticking with chicken and fish) - though many ingredients are common, some things I took for granted in the US aren't (case in point: vanilla extract that doesn't have a metalic flavor). Thus, it's always cheering when cooking experiments turn out positive.