Feeding “Big Red”

How was your day? Good? Great, mine was okay except for when…
MARTHA STEWART FUCKING SAID THAT I HAD THE BEST TWEET!

Now, to be honest I stumbled upon Fox News’ Neil Cavuto interviewing Martha. I wasn’t too sure how long the interview was going on, but judging that Neil was asking about the fairness of the rich paying taxes and the effectiveness of President Obama, I didn’t think it was going to last much longer. I am not going to assume the intentions of Fox News, but the line of questioning was challenging Martha Stewart the successful businesswoman and Martha Stewart the progenitor of good things.

A great diplomat, Martha dismissed the statistic of non-tax payers and made no apologies about the staggering economic divide between her and the people who consume her products. Shame on Fox News for trying to trap a former billionaire in a self-righteous sound byte, and bravo to Martha for not allowing anyone to bring her down.

She barely got to plug the products selling at Wal*Mart and her website!

I unfortunately left my lunch of mujadra [link] at home before heading off to work this morning, so I had something to look forward to, when arriving home. Seeing that this isn’t wasn’t office and I had time before the dinner hour, I decided against just warming up the mujadra and instead turn it into something better.

Empanadas were the first thing to come to mind. I started poking around on my phone for “empanada dough” and recipes came up with the one ingredient that I didn’t have… eggs. I thought on this for a minute. Could I substitute eggs with some other protein? Tofu would serve as a protein, but wouldn’t give me leavening or elasticity. I thought substituting in glutinous rice flour, which would have given me the structure I needed but not necessarily yield a tender dough.

Forsaking latin cuisine, I thought samosas. Since I rarely see egg in Indian recipes, so I googled around for samosa dough. Like many Indian bread recipes, samosa dough is 10% ingredients and 90% technique. An aggregate of all the recipes are as follows:

• 1 scoop [roughly a 1/3rd of a cup] of flour
• 1 scoop of semolina flour
• a heaping tablespoon of oil, butter, or shortening (yes Crisco is vegan)
• water

The trick is to mash the fat into the flour then add enough water to make a slightly tacky ball.
Let the dough rest as you prepare the filling.

My samosa filling was the left over mujadra, frozen cauliflower and broccoli, and mushroom pieces; sauteed, then tossed with some madras curry powder and left to cool. I thought of frying up some turkey burger or throwing in pieces of tofu… but meh.

Divide the dough into four pieces. Roll each piece on floured surface to about 5-6 inch round. Place stuffing in the center of the circle and fold the edges to make a triangle: see a real Indian do it [link]

Bake at 400ºF for about 20 minutes.

Apropos of clearly nothing, my dear friend Roseld sent me a most wonderful and somewhat rare gift.  A mint condition children’s backpack from licensed with Binney & Smith’s trademark, Crayola.  The elation from sheer uniqueness of which I am still getting over was tempered by the fact that there was no way that I could strap this onto my back, nor do I have the charity to give this to a deserving child.

A need to change laptop bags and a purchase of a ridiculously expensive luxury bag gave me a great idea to finally use the backpack.  I purchased hardware and polyester seatbelt material and fashioned a strap.  I looped the squared O-rings through the arms of the backpack.  No sewing or altering of the backpack was needed; I didn’t want to spoil or alter it in any way.  Gravity and the weight of the contents of the bag keep the shoulder strap in place, et voila – one of a kind laptop case that even a hipster would have to be envious of.