Organic Henna , Indigo and Senna

We have had some disruption to the products availability as these ingredients are grown for us and could have unforseen problems during the growing period. We expect to have Indigo back in stock around May 10th , 2011.

Thanks
Nature Shop

Dad’s Cooking -Phanaeng Beef Curry in sweet peanut sauce

I had a challenge to put together something for Easter 2010 as part of a all male culinary celebration. A meat dish with beef was what appealed to me a couple of weeks before Easter although the final decision on its make did not take place till a couple of days before Easter. I did have mental images of what it would look like although at that time and going by some of my previous experiences, it had all the ingredients of a  disaster in the making.

Finally – Googled ‘Thai Beef Curry’ and a recipe for the above mentioned dish ended up on the first page .

Ingredients – Thai cooking necessarily has a couple of must have’s – fresh ingredients, lemon grass  , coconut and beef. The rest can be improvised. Spent the Saturday before Easter shopping at the fresh produce markets around Flemington in Sydney.

How to go about putting it together:-

Beef – suggest chuck steak which needs to be thinly sliced. A slice about 5mm in width should be sufficient using a sharp knife. I would also suggest you avoid the prime cuts of meat …curry needs time for the flavours to percolate the meat and as a prime cut of meat cooks in no time, it does not go well with a curry.

Lemon grass – you can pick up 4 stalks for around $2.00 at most Asian stores. On average you will need 1 stalk / 1 Kg of meat. Peel the outer layers from the grass till the white inner layer is exposed. Cut the stalk into 2 – 3 mm thick slices

Coconut milk – Pick up 3 cans of coconut full flavoured milk. Fresh Coconut always adds flavour to a dish that needs coconut, however its a difficult ingredient to find.

Peanuts – pick up some unsalted roasted peanuts from any store. If they come in the salted variety then its also fine to use – reduce the salt in the final product. Grind the peanuts in a food processor – the lesson I picked up was to grind it for say 10 secs till the nuts are broken into tiny pieces. Over grinding it makes it all sticky as the oil from the nut gets extracted and causes the pieces to gell together. Around 100g / 2Kg of meat should be adequate.

Spices – This is my variation from the Thai recipe. Take piece of ginger the size of your pinky and cut it into think slices. Around 5 – 7 garlic cloves and 2 – 3 chillies and say one onion roughly chopped. Throw all these ingredients and the lemon grass in a blender and add some water . Blend to a reasonably smooth paste. The paste will look white to red in colour depending on the onion that was used (Spanish onion is red in colour !!)

Additional ingredients – red curry paste (2 – 3 teaspoons), fish sauce (3 – 5 teaspoons), 1 – 2 teaspoons of brown/white sugar. One of the secrets of most Asian cooking is that it needs the 3 flavours – sweet, sour and pungency to blend together …hence the need of fish sauce and sugar. The measures I have provided is a guide ..when you add it , taste the sauce and add extra depending on your preference.

A couple of cloves, nutmeg ,a cinnamon stick / powder and 4 – 5 cardamon pods

That’s it, you are now ready to take a final plunge into the creation of this dish.

Empty a can of coconut milk into the meat . Half fill the empty can with water and empty it into the meat. Add the cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamon pods and let the mixture boil till the meat is cooked. Add some salt to taste ..literally taste the mixture to judge its flavour. As the meat cooks, it would appear that the coconut milk curdles …it will work out fine as it cooks. Add more water in case all the liquid dries out and the meat is still not cooked. Depending on the quality of the meat this step could take 1/2 hour to 1 hour.

In a saucepan, empty the remaining 2 cans of coconut milk, the blended spices, fish sauce and sugar. Heat the liquid blend till it boils – reduce the heat and add the 2 teaspoons of red curry paste. (You need to be careful here ..check the ingredients on the bottle ..red colour in most cases is artificial and in some kids this causes a problem). As the mixture boils – taste the sauce and increase any ingredient as desired.

Add the sauce to the meat and boil the mixture with the peanut powder till the sauce thickens . The final colour could be a mild to dark red depending on the additive colour in the red curry paste. What is important is that it tastes heaven over steamed Basmatic rice.

Another secret – A curry dish always tastes better after its kept for a day as it gives the spices a chance to percolate the meat.

I will post the recipe on Nature Shops Web Site with a picture of the final product and also provide some alternative ingredients in case you are lazy to shop for the fresh ingredients .

Look forward to your comments.

Mat

Dad’s Cooking

Hello,

My name is Mathew with a penchant for expressing a bit of creativity in cooking. I am not a trained chef or have any formal training in the esoteric art of cooking. I like to eat tasty food and improvise on every day recipes in a way that any dad would do – for example adding palm sugar to a dish may just add that extra oomph to a culinary item , however if I factor in the time it would take me to get the ingredient, I like most dad’s could live by adding normal sugar !!

I normally cook Sunday dinner at home and opt for the easy and non-complicated forms of cooking that achieves 3 objectives in the order below :-

It’s simple to put together and non complicated i.e it does not involve spending hours shopping or using a weighing measure

As much as possible it involves a maximum of 3 vessels – like most dad’s I am not a fan in the subsequent cleanup

It tastes great – something that will form the main culinary dish

I intend to blog my recipes ..one blog per recipe and would solicit your comments.

Thanks
Mathew

Fruit Powders

Preserving fruits has been part of all cultures as a means to use them during the off-season. The methods employed have been diverse and in part based on the cost, buying power and technology. Sun-drying fruits is one of the first methods employed for preservation. However it is a technique that cannot be applied to all fruits, for example, oranges. Preservation methods such as refrigeration is popular, but again the fruit has limited shelf life, as it will not keep for long periods in the fridge.

Air-drying fresh fruit is a fairly recent technique, where the fruit juice is reduced to a free flowing, water soluble powder under hot air. It is the same technology used to make skim milk powder, soup powder etc. These powders are hygroscopic and hence once opened, the container must be sealed properly.

Some of the benefits of fruit powder is that, it is natural, it does not need any special means to preserve it other than a cool, dry place and has no added sugar. So when you feel like a fresh, natural fruit juice, just dissolve the fruit powder in water and you will get the original juice, retaining all of its natural flavour.

Natural fruit powders can also be used in many culinary applications – for example, marinades, sauces, ice-creams, milk shakes, smoothies, cake mixes, cookies – in fact, it is only limited by your imagination! Why resort to artificial flavourings!

Nature Shop will soon be offering natural fruit powders as an ingredient, as well as a range of ready-to-use Organic Spice-flavoured Fruit Mixes to tempt your palettes…

Anybody can henna their hair, its not difficult!

Applying plant powders such as Henna or Indigo as natural hair dyes takes a bit of time, but it is not difficult – and once you have used it you will never want to use the chemical dye again! We have put together a toolbox of services that will assist you in using our natural hair colours. Some of the features are under development and will be released soon.

The “Guide to Hair Care”( ) provides information on how to mix the hair dyes to achieve different colours. Being natural hair dyes, it is not possible to get a standarised shade, however this guide will give you clear guidelines of how to mix Henna & Indigo to get different shades of coppery red to black colour.

If you need help with applying Henna or Indigo then there are professional hairdressers ( ) who can assist you in applying pre-mixed hair dyes. These hair dressers are not employees of Nature Shop.

Share with us your experiences on how you mixed your colours – did you try anything different – or what worked best for you.

Shoba

What makes a Quality Spice Blend

There are a couple of pointers that anyone can use to judge the quality of a spice blend :

• Look for spice blends that are made in small batches – Spices that are blended from stored bulk powdered ingredients loose their flavour much more quickly that a freshly powdered spice. All spices contain essential oils and powdered spices tend to loose their essential oil faster than whole spices.
• Colour of the blend – there are very few spices that give a white or pale colour to a blend. The whiter a blend the more likely it will contain a higher proportion of salt.
• Aroma of the blend – Some of the aromatic spices are cloves, cardamon & cinnamon. If the blend indicates it contains aromatic spices it should have a great aroma.
• Spice fillers – A typical spice filler is coriander powder. Coriander is cheap and hence used liberally in a number of blends to reduce its cost. Coriander is a flavoursome spice but when used in aromatic spice blends, it tends to overpower the aroma of the aromatic spices.
• Cost – A good spice blend could be expensive, however you will end up using much less due to its rich aroma and flavour.

As an example – A typical Indian flavoursome spice blend is Garam Masala. The word Garam means both “hot” or “flavoursome” depending on the context of its usage …and in a spice blend it should conjure the image a rich aromatic flavoursome meal. Garam Masala has its origins in Mugal India where cuisine was meant to excite all the senses. The aromatic aspect of the blend is provided by a greater proportion of cardamon, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg compared to the other spices in the blend. Using the guidelines above, you can judge a great Garam Masala by :-

• Colour – reddish brown in colour
• Aroma – rich with the flavoursome, freshly ground spices
• Fillers – the more coriander, the less reddish brown the blend will appear. It would also loose its aroma.
• Cost – it will be more expensive than a commercial grade blend

Use organics both for environmental reasons and health reasons – it is also an undisputed fact that organic spices has a much richer flavour and aroma than the mass produced inorganically grown spices.

Taste the organic difference.

Shoba

Natural and organic approach to dyeing hair

If are you allergic to synthetic hair dyes, concerned about the chemicals used in the synthetic dyes, pregnant or a cancer survivor susceptible to harsh chemicals such as PPD, resorcinol or ammonia, there are natural and safe alternatives to colouring hair.

Synthetic dyes work by raising the pH of the hair surface with ammonia in order to open the cuticle to allow the dye to penetrate the hair shaft. This in turn damages the hair.

Henna is an all natural permanent dye. Henna has a dye molecule called Lawsone in its leaves. When Henna powder is mixed with black tea or lemon juice, the dye is released, which binds with the keratin of the hair shaft, thus colouring hair.

Indigo is also completely natural and will not damage the hair, no matter how long it remains. Indigo powder is a medium to bright green powder. When mixed into a paste it is a dark rich green that slowly shows blue dye on the top and will appear a navy blue/blackish color with time.

There are a lot of companies promoting henna and indigo that is supposed to be all natural and organic. Henna products can contain metallic compounds. It is well know now that “Black henna” has PPD. PPD can also be used in either black or red henna products. PPD is not the only adulterant used. Henna or Indigo if not certified organic, could contain high levels of lead, bacteria, pesticides, solvents, skin irritating fillers, etc. So look carefully at the ingredient listing before buying.

When using natural products please keep in mind that henna and indigo will react and color your hair uniquely. The result will be different and unique on everyone depending on their hair type and condition.

Have fun experimenting!