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Curry Elvis Cooks

Food, drink, cooking, lore, recipes, discussion

recipes

Savoury Minced Beef + Spinach Crepes

stuffed crepes — image source: pixabay

A couple of years ago, before I moved back to my hometown, I used to buy my crepes from a great West Indian chef – who’s name was actually Elvis and who was trained in England. Elvis had a booth at the local Farmers Market and made an incredibly taste crepe stuffed with chicken and a thick cream of mushroom sauce. He’d also sell his crepes individually, so every Saturday morning, I’d go visit him and buy a small stack of his savoury crepes. Depending on what other purchases I made that day at the market, I’d try to make different fillings and test them out on myself and my upstairs friends/ neighbours, the Leslies. The filling that I personally liked best was a savoury minced beef curry variation of a dish my mother made often. It worked wonderfully with the Elvis’ savoury crepes.

Ingredients and Preparation
Note: This post was written in 2005 and updated in 2017. My original minced beef curry recipe linked to from here doesn’t exist anymore, so I’m summarizing:

  • 1/2 pound or more of ground beef or other meats — e.g., chicken, turkey or pork, as you prefer
  • 1/4 cup or more of finely diced onion
  • 1 cup of fresh spinach leaves or 1/2 cup of frozen spinach (thawed)
  • 1/4 cup tomato sauce or salsa [OPTIONAL]
  • 1/4 cup water
  • salt, pepper, cumin, curry powder or any combo of spices you want, to create a savory minced meat filling for the crepes
  • Brown the ground beef in the pan on medium heat – about 7-10 minutes.
  • Add onions and saute for 1-2 minutes.
  • Add your choice of spices (to taste), reduce heat to under medium (about 4 on an electric stove) and sautee for 1-2 minutes.
  • Add the water, spinach and the tomato sauce/ salsa and simmer 4-5 minutes. (Watch pan and make sure that the mixture does not dry out but also is not runny.)
  • Optional: You can use 1 level tbsp of corn starch dissolved in another 1/4 cup of water to thicken the mixture, if desired. Gently combine the starch solution into the mixture.
  • Turn off heat but keep this filling warm
  • Prepare crepes or use store-bought.
  • Assemble by spooning filling onto crepes and rolling or folding.

Here’s a basic crepe recipe. For a bit more savoury flavour, add finely chopped chives and a sprinkle of fresh ground black pepper. For something like the minced beef stuffing, thicker crepes work better, but thin crispy ones are okay, too. What I found, however, was eating cold, thick crepes the next day, with the warm minced beef stuffing, adds yet another dimension of texture.

(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash/ CurryElvis.com

recipes

Mom’s Secret Garlic Ginger Paste

image by Hafiz Issadeen

ginger and garlic — image source: flickr

This sauce is the the real secret “ingredient” that makes my mother’s chicken curry in such high demand. I co-opted it for my own “secret chicken curry” (recipe to be available in the near future in a blog posting entitled “Secret Chicken Curry”).

Equipment:
Food processor or blender. I use a mini food processor that I picked up in a department store for about $14.

Ingredients:

  • Peeled and sliced ginger – 1-2 tsps
  • Peeled and diced garlic – 1-3 buds as desired
  • Peeled and diced onion – 1 cup [Use white, yellow, or spanish onion for best results. You can use Vidalia, but the paste will already be on the sweetish side.]
  • Olive or canola oil – 2+ tbsp, as necessary

Instructions:
Place the first three ingredients into the food processor. (Make in 2 batches if your food processor is small.) Now add 2 tbsps of oil to the processor. Pulse the mixture until it starts to form a paste. If your processor blade starts to stick, stop and add another 1-2 tbsp of oil, as necessary, then pulse again. Repeat as necessary until you have a smooth, slightly foamy, thick white paste with no lumps. For safety, use a rubber spatula to remove the processor or blender.

Use:
This paste has many uses. Besides adding a very rich flavour to food, it thickens broths. Ginger and garlic are also reputed to clean up your blood stream by thinning your blood out a bit. My mother and I use this paste in our versions of chicken curry, but it can also be used in stir fries, stews, or even thick, creamy-textured soups. It’s very easy to make, but when you do use it, add it later in the cooking process or it may burn. But add it early enough that its flavours distribute well through the dish. This works best if you add it to a large quanity of liquid, such as water or broth. Keep in mind that because of the sugars in the onion, the paste will give a sweetish taste to whatever you add it to.

(c) Copyright 2005 Raj Kumar Dash/ CurryElvis.com

tidbits

Recipes: To Measure or Not To Measure

spoons and spices

Despite my having lived in Canada and the US for nearly 40 years, I come from an East Indian background and I cook that way. We’re like Italians and many other cultures in that we don’t measure ingredients exactly when we cook (except maybe for baking). And we only really follow recipes when a dish is new to us, and maybe not even then.

That said, the recipes on Curry Elvis Cooks will have measurements, albeit approximations. Feel free to follow them, or get wild and change things around a bit to suit your tastes. The truth is that, because I love to experiment with new food ingredients from around the world, I don’t always have a lot of experience with the more exotic items and tend to be rather conservative in their use. So feel free to try different amounts until you find something you like. With new, original recipes, I may try up to ten variations before I settle on something. The downside with not measuring, though, is that I sometimes have trouble repeating the variation I liked best. Overall, though, my recipes are a guideline and hopefully a starting point for you to find a version that you like best.

(c) Copyright 2005 Raj Kumar Dash/ CurryElvis.com

diet + health

The Connection Between Food and Health and Illness

image by Jason Briscoe

food and health — image source: unsplash

For the longest time, I was always quite healthy. But shortly after leaving Toronto after my hazy, crazy punk days of hard work and harder play, I went back home to my parents, broke both emotionally and financially. Very shortly after I moved home, I developed numerous allergies to food and environment. Over the next 14 years, I slowly developed a number of other illnesses culminating in the terrible symptoms of diabetes and hypothyroidism. They’ve affected my ability to hold down full-time work.

There are always all manner of explanations for these illnesses. First and foremost, stress from finances, work, family, and other relationships affects your health. Second, bad diet aggravates your stressed health. Third, for me, poor sleep habits make things even worse. I am of the opinion that if I didn’t have to sleep, I wouldn’t. For me, there isn’t enough time in the world to learn and do everything I want to do. Layer these factors together and you have serious health problems. So what to do?

I experimented with a number of variations of diet, as well as trying many natural ingredients and remedies. I am not a big fan of Allopathic Medicine (aka “Western” Medicine). I come from a very long line of “natural” doctors, who practiced naturopathy, homeopathy, and ayurveda. (However, my maternal grandfather WAS an Allopathic Doctor.) These practices are far older than Western Medicine, and I have very little respect for doctors and powerful, wealthy pharmaceutical companies who tell you that Western Medicine is and always will be better. What they will never tell you is that many of the modern medicines of today were in fact derived from natural remedies. But unless they can mass produce the remedy, they can’t make a cent.

Now, I strongly discourage you to do what I did without consulting both your physician and a Homeopathic/ Naturopathic expert, but I tried a number of homeopathic remedies (after consulting an expert myself). My results have been spotty at best, but then, there are so many factors affecting my illness. I spent eight years trying to be a vegetarian. And after I managed to be fully vegetarian for three years, one business trip to Atlanta, Georgia changed everything. I went back to being a meat-eater. But I struggled with trying to balance my allergies to most meats with my (then unknown) diabetic symptoms which caused me to fall alseep if I had too much starch and not enough protein.

Ultimately, I’ve found the best results with a balanced diet, free-range meats and eggs, minimal starches, and some naturopathic remedies. Now, I know that us North Americans typically are uncomfortable with with discussions of alternate medical practices. So rest assured that this will probably be the only such discussion in this blog. However, whenever possible, the recipes you find here will be geared towards health.

(c) Copyright 2005-present Raj Kumar Dash/ CurryElvis.com