As promised, though later than I had hoped, I’m bringing you a Mama Buddha original.

While not northern Chinese, I think you’ll like it. And I promise that the week continues in the vein of northern China, though perhaps with a little bit of Thanksgiving hanging around…

If you’ve been following along, you know that my mom is Hungarian (the HUNGARY part of The Hungary Buddha), and because of that, I grew up eating things like the poppyseed bread and cabbage rolls.  However, because she is awesome (duh), I also grew up eating things like gumbo and black beans and rice with mojo pork ribs (wait for it- coming in Cuba).  And because she married the Big Buddha, she made coconut chicken and what I bring to you today: Indian breakfast.

Ok, I’m pretty sure it’s not legally or authentically called “indian breakfast.” However, it’s what we have always called it. It’s a hodgepodge of curries and soups, served along rice and puffed up fried bread, puri (that is the actual real name). I’m not sure if it has actual Indian roots, or more Nepalese roots, but in any case, it has Buddha roots, and I’ve been shoving this in my face as long as I can remember.

I’m more inclined to think this leans more towards the Nepalese since it bears a striking resemblance to that which Tomato and I ate atop a Nepalese mountain a little over two years ago. Whatever…it’s time to stop debating the heritage of this dish and just put it out there for you to make and try. If you like actual Indian food, I’m confident that you will like our so-called Indian food.  As with all “mom” recipes, these amounts are approximate. Add more/less of the spices as you like.

For the curried potatoes:

Ingredients

2 TB vegetable oil

1 lb potatoes, diced and boiled until soft

2 large onions, sliced

1 inch fresh ginger, diced

3-4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 cup tomatoes, diced

1 cup frozen peas

1 jalapeno, diced

¼ tsp turmeric

1 tsp cumin

4 whole cloves

1 inch cinnamon stick

Cilantro, diced to garnish

Directions

1.  In a bit of oil, toast the onions until golden brown.  Remove from oil, drain on a paper towel and set aside until the end.

2.  In the same pan, saute the garlic, ginger and jalapeno.  Add the spices and toast until fragrant.  Add in cooked potatoes, peas and tomatoes.

3.  Cook just a few more minutes until the potatoes are soft and creamy.  Just before removing everything from the heat, add the onions and mix them all together.  Finish with cilantro.

For the lamb curry:

Ingredients

1 ½ pounds ground lamb or beef

2 large onions, chopped

5 cloves garlic, chopped

1 medium tomato, diced

1 ½ inches fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

1 jalapeno, diced

2 cups chick peas, cooked (may use canned)

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp ground coriander

¼  tsp turmeric

4-5 crushed cardamom pods

6-8 whole cloves

1  1“ cinnamon stick

1- 1 ½ cups chicken broth, or as you like

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1.  Brown and drain ground meat.

2.  Saute the onion, garlic and ginger with meat until translucent.  Add spices and toast a few minutes until fragrant.

3.  Add the diced tomato and chick peas.  Add the chicken broth, as much or as little as it reaches the consistency you desire.  Simmer 45 min.

For the dal:

Ingredients

1 TB oil

1 cup cooked yellow or pink lentils

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

1 inch ginger, peeled and sliced

½ cup okra, chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, chopped

½ cup onion, diced

1 small tomato, diced

1 small jalapeno, diced

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp coriander

¼ tsp turmeric

1 cup water (or to consistency)

Cilantro, chopped for garnish

Directions

1.  In oil, saute onion, garlic, ginger and pepper. Add the spices and toast.

2.  Add tomato and okra, sauté for about one minute, and add the lentils and the water to desired consistency.

3.  Season with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with cilantro.

Mama forgot to give me the puri recipe, so I’ll get that and deliver shortly. Until then, this is what they look like:

Serve all of the above with rice and puri or roti

If calling this Indian Breakfast is wrong, I don’t want to be right…

Tea eggs.

That’s what I’ve got for you tonight.

As I was paging through the Eastern China pages of Mama Buddha’s cookbook trying to decide what to make, I was struck by these tea eggs:  a simple yet exotic twist on something so seemingly ordinary makes these little breakfast bites both aesthetically and tastefully extraordinary.

THE book

I actually love hard boiled eggs, though I admit I’ve never been able to get them as perfect as those Europeans seem to, and every time I take a trip across the pond I sing a sad song about it. They’re either too runny in the middle, or too overdone.

Due to the nature of how these are made, they slant heavily into the overdone, but that didn’t really bother me.  These were really easy to make, and the hardest thing about them was peeling them, a problem faced with regular boiled eggs.

To conclude, these were great. If you regularly eat hard-boiled eggs, you’ll really like these. If you don’t, try them anyway.

Recipe from The Great Book of Chinese Cooking

Ingredients

4 fresh eggs

1 cup water

1 ½ TB black tea leaves (or two bags of black tea- I used Tetley British Breakfast)

1 star anise

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp soy sauce

Directions

1.  Bring plenty of water to a boil in a small saucepan. Add room-temperature eggs and boil for 5 minutes, timed from the moment returns to a boil.

2.  Remove the eggs from the water, place in a bowl, and run cold water on them to cool; tap the shells all over just hard enough to crack them, with a spoon, but not hard enough to dislodge any of the shell.  These tiny, irregular cracks all over the egg will enable the tea to stain the surface of the thin membrane inside the shell with a pattern.

See, how pretty!

3.  Heat the above listed quantity of fresh water in the saucepan. Add the tea, anise, sugar, salt and soy sauce. Bring to a boil. Add the eggs and simmer for about an hour. I ended up turning the eggs after thirty minutes since the liquid was not deep enough to cover the whole egg.

4.  All to cool completely in the liquid (once cold they can be stored short term in the refrigerator).  Peel just before serving.

I’m kicking things off with what I feel like is one of Vietnam’s most popular dishes- Pho.

Pho (pronounced “fuh”) is, to put it simply, noodle soup. But, oh, it’s so much more than that.

How? Let me explain.

The broth: I mentioned the French influence in Vietnamese cuisine, and this is the perfect example of said influence. It is from the French tradition that we make this soup’s stock base from hearty beef bones, left to simmer for hours over the stove.  I remember when beef bones such as oxtails, etc. were a poor man’s food, and mom used to buy them to make stock all the time. Now, in the age of Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen, I’ve seen the price of these once-considered-junk-ingredients sky rocket.  While I’m all about authenticity, I opted to use the much cheaper beef neck bones to make my stock, and I tell you, it was no less flavorful than if I’d use the oxtails, and is still 1000% better than store bought stock. If you have learned nothing in my kitchen so far, you’ve at least learned that I can’t stress enough the difference a good homemade chicken/beef/vegetable stock can make.  So, beef neck bones, $2.50. Worth it.

The other component of this stock that distinguished it from my regular stock base of carrot/onion/celery was that this had spices in it. Like, actual, bouquet garni spices, and they were spices that I wasn’t all that familiar with. The most notable “huh?” in this broth was anise star. I’m not a fan of licorice, so I really hesitated to add this. However, when combined with everything else, it wasn’t’ so much about the licorice taste but more about the “hmmm. That’s interesting. Interestingly fantastic!”

My Spice House had these perfect little bags for JUST such an occasion. Neat!

The noodles:  Rice noodles, the norm for this area.

The meat: Campbell’s chunky chicken soup, this is not. Rather, the beef is sliced really thin and put into the bowls raw (!), only to be cooked by the hot broth upon service. Both Donut and I were skeptical that this would actually work, but lo and behold it did. No one has food poisoning today.

The toppings:  This is a choose-your-own-soup adventure because, besides the meat, noodles and sliced green onions, the rest is up to you. Traditional garnishes include cilantro, bean sprouts, limes, hoisin sauce, chili sauce…and believe me, we had them all. I added too much chili sauce, but what else is new?

Combine all of the above and you’ve got a PHO-N time!

Bad joke. Horrible. I make no apologies.

Recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients

2 lbs beef necks, with meat

1 white radish, sliced

1 onion

½ ounce star anise pods

¼ cinnamon sticks

1 whole clove

½ tsp black peppercorns

1 slice fresh ginger

½ TB white sugar

½ TB salt

½ TB fish sauce

¾ lb dried rice noodles

¼ lb frozen beef sirloin

Toppings

Sriracha sauce

Hoisin sauce

Thinly sliced onions

Cilantro, chopped

Bean sprouts

Thai basil

Sliced scallions

Limes, quartered

Directions

1.  Place the beef bones a large pot. Season with salt, and fill pot with 1 gallon of water. Bring to a boil, and cook for about 2 hours.

2.   Skim fat from the surface of the soup, and add the radish and onions. Tie the anise pods, cinnamon stick, cloves, peppercorns and ginger in a cheesecloth or place in a spice bag; add to the soup. Stir in sugar, salt and fish sauce. Simmer over medium-low heat for at least 2 more hours (the longer, the better). At the end of cooking, taste, and add salt as needed. Strain broth, and return to the pot to keep at a simmer. Discard spices and bones. Reserve meat from the beef necks for other uses if desired.

3.  Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Soak the rice noodles in water for about 20 minutes, then cook in boiling water until soft, but not mushy, about 5 minutes. Slice the frozen beef paper thin. The meat must be thin enough to cook instantly.

4.  Place some noodles into each bowl, and top with a few raw beef slices. Ladle boiling broth over the beef and noodles in the bowl. Serve with hoisin sauce and sriracha sauce on the side, and with onion, cilantro, bean sprouts, basil, green onions, and lime as you wish.