Recipe: Veggie Curry in the Instant Pot

I’m continuing to explore Instant Pot meals. They’re quick and make a boatload of servings.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp of avocado oil

• 2 tsp cumin seeds

• 1 medium yellow onion, diced

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tbsp garam masala

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 tbsp ginger, minced

• 4 diced small green chilies (or 1 jalapeño)

• 28 oz crushed tomatoes and puree + 3 cups water

• 1/2 package of Trader Joe’s Soycutash

• 1 large head cauliflower, roughly chopped

Instructions

As usual, fry the cumin seeds in the avocado oil in sauté mode. Add the onion and green chilies.

Add the salt, garam masala, garlic, and ginger. Before the bottom of the pot starts to burn, add the tomatoes and Soycutash. Fill up the tomato can with water and add to the pot. It will take a long time for this to come up to temperature. Give it a few minutes.

Add the cauliflower and put the lid on. Switch to high pressure mode for 12 minutes. Let the pressure release on its own, with the warmer on.

Commentary

This makes several servings, and is pretty low in calories — probably 200 for a two-cup serving. It’s better topped with yogurt.

Next time, I’ll add more green chilies. It’s hard to judge how spicy something will turn out. Maybe I’ll hit it with some cayenne too. I’ll dump the whole bag of Soycutash too. I might even add some red lentils.

Recipe: Aloo Matar in the Instant Pot

I made aloo matar this morning for the first time, just to see if it was something I’d like to prepare for quick lunches.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp of avocado oil

• 2 tsp cumin seeds

• 1 tsp black mustard seeds

• 1/2 a medium yellow onion, sliced thinly

• 1 tsp salt

• 1 tbsp garam masala

• 3 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 tbsp ginger, minced

• 2 diced small green chilies (or 1 jalapeño)

• 1 can crushed tomatoes (typically 14.5 oz) + 1 cup water

• 2 medium starchy potatoes, cubed

• 1 cup frozen green peas

• chopped cilantro

Instructions

The steps in this recipe are very typical for soups and curries in the Instant Pot. Turn on medium sauté mode; add the oil, and cumin and mustard seeds to fry for a minute. Add the onion and cook until a little bit translucent.

Add the salt, garam masala, garlic, ginger, and chilies for another minute. Add the tomatoes and water. Let this come up to a boil for a few minutes.

Add the potatoes and switch to pressure cooking for 10 minutes. Let the pressure release on its own, with the warmer on. Add the peas. Serve it with a bit of cilantro.

Commentary

Depending on how hot you want it, add some cayenne along with the other spices. I don’t add much salt, but you could bump that up. I might add some chickpeas next time for a bit more substance. I didn’t have any curry leaves, but that would be typical for aloo matar. This recipe makes a pretty modest amount; just a few bowls.

Monitoring browser sessions

​I want to create an extension for Firefox and Chrome to make troubleshooting a bit easier. All of what I will describe is currently possible using Firebug or Charles Proxy. However, I have a bunch of users that don't have the tools, experience, or patience. The main function of the extension is to answer the following questions:

• Does the browser have a session cookie for X? If so, what are its attributes (domain, path, secure, et cetera)?​
• What request contained the Set-Cookie HTTP header?​
• Did the value of the session cookie change? Which request? Was it due to session rotation or because N minutes passed since the last request?
• Does the request have multiple Set-Cookie HTTP headers with differing attributes? Which one was kept?​
• ​Are responses to requests for site resources (images, stylesheets, scripts) also including a session cookie?
• Is the previous session cookie still valid?​

A configuration panel would allow entry of a cookie name to watch, JSESSIONID for example, and a hostname pattern like *.my-app-name.com. To prevent storing a silly amount of data, it would have an option to set the maximum number and age of remembered requests. As a user clicks around an application, the extension's icon would light up when conditions are met, such as a change in session cookie attributes or value. I'd also like to add support for additional HTTP response header tracking, such as X-Node containing the name of a node behind a load balancer that actually served the request.

Hopefully all of these features would allow a user to see why they were "logged out" and be able to communicate the information to me. Or, better yet, the extension could have an option to send the current data to a collection API so I could parse it myself after the user has experienced a problem.​