Sunday Suppers (Monday Evening Edition): In Which We Visit Spice Mecca, Pretend We're Back in College, and Make Some Curry

I just barely restrained myself from pressing my nose against the window. Besides, it was open, so we just walked right in.

Hello, friends!  It has been quite the Whirlwind the past couple of days.  Do you guys remember Cindy?  You know, my friend from college who gave me the recipe for Miss Patsy’s Pound Cake which then morphed into Van Halen Pound Cake?  Well, The Beloved and I drove up to Richmond to attend her Annual Christmas Shindig on Saturday.  We left around 12:30pm on Saturday and got home around 4pm on Sunday.  It was a Very Fast Trip.

Friday evening, The Beloved and I were engaging in our normal Pre-Sleeping Activity.  No, not that.  We were Perusing Catalogs.  I like to look at them to a)get Ideas and b)make fun of them.  The Beloved comes along for the ride.  We are a Very Happening Couple, indeed.  Anyway, we were perusing the Penzeys Spice Catalog.  (There is no apostrophe in Penzeys.  I checked). I don’t know if you guys know the Penzeys folks, but we’ve been getting their catalog for years.  They have almost every spice known to man, including some stuff that I’ve never heard of, let alone Played With.  We’ve always wanted to make a Pilgrimage to Spice Mecca, and when we lived in Orlando, we always talked about making a day trip to Jacksonville (2 hours away) to visit the Penzeys there.  That never happened.

When we moved here, we were all “We’re even farther away from a Penzey’s now.  Sad.”  But then, once we had decided to go to Miss Cindy’s Christmas Shindig, The Beloved realized that there is a Penzeys Right In Richmond.  Hooray!  With the help of our Google Maps friends, we found out that it was only a short 25 minutes from Penzeys to Cindy’s house, so we made sure to leave plenty of time to visit there before heading to her place.

Now, I shall back up a moment and tell you A Little About Penzey’s.  They’ve been around, in one form or another, since 1957.  Bill Penzey, Sr. opened a spice store with his wife, and their son, Bill Jr, spun off the mail-order business when he was in his 20s.  The Penzeys people seem to me to be that unique mix of down-t0-earth meets exceptional quality.  And that’s a very good thing.  If you’d like to read more about the history of Penzeys, here you go.

Back to the store.  They have over 250 spices and dried herbs for sale in their retail stores.  What’s more, you can smell all of them because they are nice enough to put a jar of each spice or herb Right There on the Shelf so you can smell before you buy.  Hooray! We did a Very Lot of smelling on Saturday, and here’s what we came away with.

Look at what we got! Including the peppermill. There's chili seasoning "Chili 3000," Italian seasoning that has fennel in it (!), black cardamom, which I will show you a picture of in a minute, Tellicherry peppercorns (ditto), Dutched cocoa powder for making Chocolate Syrup, Balti seasoning (which I will also show you in a minute) and some other good stuff! Plus venison seasoning for our neighbors Chuck and Susan. Chuck and Jackson (11) went hunting on Saturday, and Jackson killed his first deer. Go, Jackson! Venison tenderloin, here we come!

We also purchased a gift box of 4 spices for Cindy, our hostess.  As an aside, Cindy lives 25 minutes from Penzeys and works 5 minutes from there, and She Has Never Been There Before!  Shame on you, Cindy.

We had a fantastic time at the party, what with the wine and all the fabulous food that Cindy makes all by herself for about 100 people.  Oh, and did I mention the wine?  There was A Lot of wine there, and I drank it.  Plus I ate the snacks, drank some water to stay hydrated, and drank more wine.  It was lovely.  We didn’t have to worry about driving ’cause we were staying at Cindy’s.  When we finally looked at the clock, it was 3-ish am.  So we drank some more and visited and Caught Up, and then went to bed at 4:30.

This is Unlike Me.  I love to sleep, and I’m generally in bed before midnight, even on weekends.  I guess the whole college thing came back to us and we decided that it was 1986 instead of 2009 and we were Young and Vigorous and Didn’t Need Sleep.  Foolish, foolish us.  I’m pretty sure it has never been more difficult to get out of bed than it was yesterday morning.  I felt fine, thanks for asking, except for the Extreme Lack of Sleep.  We took a nap when we got home yesterday afternoon and are planning a Very Early Night tonight, too.  Cindy, you throw a great party, and we are Thrilled to be back in touch.

Okay, all of this serves as Preamble to Today’s Dish.  I went to the store today and bought some fairly random Food Items, plus a bag of food for donation to the local Food Bank.  If you have such a program at your local grocery, I encourage you to buy a bag or two for donation.  They are all pre-bagged with the contents and the price on the label.  My bag contained jarred spaghetti sauce, peanut butter and several other things that that folks can certainly use.

I brought my goodies home, put them all away, and then ignored them until 4:50pm, when I realized that The Beloved would be home in an hour or so.  And get this:  he seems to think that I should Feed Him.  Hmmph.  Anyway, I decided to get all Creative and make something with some of the Penzeys seasonings.  Here’s what I used from my Penzeys stash:

This is one of Penzeys Indian curry mixtures. There are lots and lots of spices in it, including some that I've not heard of. We bought it because, of all the curry mixes we smelled, it smelled the most wonderful. It's a little spicy, but not over-the-top at all.

I never buy ground pepper, and I was happy enough with my little peppercorns (on the left), until I saw these babies--Tellicherry peppercorns. The king of all peppercorns. My peppercorns smell sort of dark. The Tellicherry ones smell like in-your-face pepper. Really nice.

Here are the black cardamom guys I told you about. They had cardamom seeds, green cardamom pods, expensive white cardamom pods, and the black cardamom at the Penzeys. See why I love it there? All the other cardamoms smelled cardamom-ish to one extent or another. The black cardamom smells like a campfire. Like a dark and mysterious campfire. The label said it is used frequently in African cooking but can be subbed in Indian cuisine. It added a nice, smokey background note to the curry.

Keep in mind that I didn’t have any particular dish in mind when I went to the store.  I just bought stuff that sounded good and that I knew I could make Some Sort of Meal from.  Sorry about that preposition at the end of that last sentence.  Shoulda gone with “from which,” but that just sounds Too Stuffy.

Here’s With What I Came Up.  See, it just doesn’t work.  Here’s what I came up with, using the following:

Ode to Penzeys Chicken-Chickpea Curry
Disclaimer:  This is not any sort of traditional Indian food.  Or Thai food, for that matter.  It’s just a spicy Indian-inspired stew that I threw together and served over spiced brown rice.  So, no ghee here.  I just went with olive oil.  Consider it Fusion Cuisine if it makes you feel better.

• 2 dark meat chicken quarters (or whatever sort of chicken you have.  That’s what was in the freezer, so I went with it)
• olive oil
• kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons, Penzey’s Balti seasoning (roughly–I didn’t measure)
• 1 black coriander pod, whacked with the flat of my knife
• 2 tablespoons red curry powder (not from Penzey’s.  I already had some, and ditto about the amount)
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin (double ditto)
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 can of chickpeas, water and all
• 1/2 cup chicken broth or stock
• 1 bag frozen stir-fry vegetables (onions and peppers; they were on sale)
• 1 large-ish Russet potato, cut into 1-inch chunks

For the rice:

• brown rice
• water
• kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 whole clove
• some red curry powder
• couple of splashes of olive oil

Here’s what to do:

1. Season the chicken with salt and pepper.
2. Heat a pan to Pretty Hot.
3. Add some oil, and sear the chicken on both sides.  Remove the chicken to a plate.
4. Add a bit more oil to the pan, and throw in the onion.
5. Saute/scrape up the brown chicken bits from the bottom of the pan.
6. Add the garlic and the spices and cook the spices in the oil until very fragrant and a couple of shades darker than when you started.
7. Toss in the chickpeas with their liquid to deglaze the pan.
8. Add the veggies along with some more salt and pepper.  Add the stock.
9. Put the chicken back in the pan, nicely nestled down in the veggies and liquid.
10. Cover and bring just to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer until the chicken is cooked through.  I turned the chicken once after about 20 minutes.
11. Once the chicken in cooked, pull all the meat off the bone, shred (the meat, not the bones), and return to the pan.
12. Taste and adjust seasonings.  Serve over the rice.

How to cook rice:

1. Put however much rice you want to cook in a pot.
2. Pour cold water/stock/whatever liquid you want (within reason) over the rice is covered by about 3/4″.  I measure this with my pointer finger.  The water comes to just below my first knuckle.
3. Add spices, etc.
4. Taste for seasoning, bring to a boil.
5. Cover and turn the heat down to a low simmer for 40 minutes (this is for Brown Rice Only).  It’ll take only 15 minutes for white rice.  After 40 minutes (15 minutes), turn off the heat, fluff the rice up with a fork, and put the lid back on.
6. Leave the pot of rice on the burner (which you have turned off, right?) and let sit for another 10 minutes (5 minutes).
7. The end.

We ate at 7:00, but we could have eaten at 6:30.  That might be a little outside the realm of possibility on a weeknight, but keep it in mind for a weekend.  It was Very, Very Good.  Oh, here’s what the whole thing looked like: