Of Curry, Chocolate, and Moonshine… homemade is best!

For starters, yes I know making alcohol in your own household is illegal. Which is why I didn't MAKE it, per se. Per se, people, I said per se. Doesn't anyone appreciate Latin anymore? But I digress… you know the saying that there's nothing like moonshine from your own still? Well, its sometimes true! But of course, I'm stretching the metaphor to apply to anything made in the home from scratch. And in the last year, I've noticed this trend developing in my home. Seems I'm getting more and more interested in making food products instead of buying them.

First it was curry paste, a food I experimented with a few years back and felt the need to repeat. That all started with a reading of a label, and the realization that there was nothing contained within a commercially bought jar that I couldn't find in my food pantry. It's really quite simple, you combine some chilies (though you might want to remove the seeds and keep the skins to control the spice level), some lemongrass, onions, garlic, and cilantro, blend evenly, then heat to remove the water and get a good pasty consistency. Then, spoon into your stir fry or soups and add coconut milk… or don't, I don't care! In any case, this was my first homemade product and it inspired others.

The second was the aforementioned (ahem) moonshine. In truth, it was a fruit cordial made from vodka and blackberries and a separate batch of blackberry-infused vodka. So no real moonshinery was going on here, no distilling or serious fermenting. You hear that, prohibition-era lawmakers? And you can do it too, and I highly recommend it. All you need to make cordial is some fruit, some sugar, and a catalytic alcoholic agent (vodka is ideal since it has no color, taste, or odor). Just combine your ingredients, let sit for about a week, and then refrigerate. If you grind the fruit up, some straining might be necessary, but otherwise, just remove the fruit after its fully infused (i.e. the color and odor have changed). I tried it both ways, crushing the blackberries and adding sugar and water to create a cordial, and letting the blackberries infuse the alcohol, but with no sugar, to create a very smooth, semi-sweet berry vodka.

Then came chocolate… That one started with some organic cocoa beans my darling bride's mother gave us. In this case as well, I had some understanding of the process that went into turning them into the lovely sweet thing that ladies love and men have no strong opinions on either way (if television, movies and advertisements have not horribly misguided me)! Sorry, stereotype moment there! It's really easy to make actually, all you need is butter, milk, cocoa beans, and a sweetening agent. I used honey. Grind the beans, add melted butter, smooth it out, add milk until you have the color and consistency you want. And don't be shy, either. It actually takes quite a bit of milk to get it to a nice, even consistency and taste. Then, remove, put into a container, and refrigerate. You can even do this with cocoa, which I did. The finer the cocoa, the more smooth and mousse-like the concoction will be.

So far, that's all I got. But I just bought a bunch of mangoes and sour cherry season is around the corner. And there's no shortage of organic cocoa beans or cocoa powder around here either. And I'm determined to give homemade curry another go since the last batch didn't come out red enough, not to mention really, really hot! So… look out! No slowing down here. If any of this appealed to anyone else out there, get on it and let me know how it went.