Blueberry Toddler - YUM!

From the “isn’t-that-cute-but-also-horrifying” archive of Things Kids Say When They’re Three comes the following:

Always with the white clothes in blueberry season...

“What would you like to eat for lunch today?”

“Toddler.”

“What’s a toddler?”

“It was yummy.”

“A toddler was yummy?”

<Nods>

“A toddler is a little kid, like you.”

<Nods> “But I’m big.” <cries>

“OK, yes, you’re big. But I don’t think you ate a toddler.”

“I did!” <cries>

“When did you eat a toddler?”

“When you cooked it.”

“Honey, Mama wouldn’t cook a toddler.”

<Tearfully> “You did, Mama! I ate it!”

After I went over the prior week’s grocery list and mentally reconsidered our plans for preschool, I figured out that he wanted COBBLER. Of course he did – this is a perfect cobbler recipe, and we should throw temperance out the window whenever any kind of fruit comes into season and eat this for breakfast and also have it for dessert every single night and get into fights about the last serving.

It scales up (and down) beautifully and there’s not a single fruit I can think of that wouldn’t be delicious in this recipe (OK, maybe bananas. Or kiwi). There are no difficult ingredients and it’s easy to make gluten- and dairy-free. It’s so rich that it’s almost impossible to overcook, even if you’re drunk around a campfire with your friends by the time it goes in the oven; your beer-soaked future self will be grateful. But do please taste your fruit, because the only way to make this slightly less than totally perfect is to over-sweeten it.

From How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.

Blueberry Toddler

4-6 cups blueberries or other fruit, washed and picked over
1 cup sugar
8 Tbsp butter, cold, cut into bits
½ cup flour
½ tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla extract

 Preheat the oven to 375. Toss the fruit with half the sugar and set aside. IMPORTANT: If you are using a sweeter fruit – for example, the most perfectly ripe peaches ever – use less sugar so your filling isn’t too sweet. Put the fruit in a lightly buttered 8-inch baking pan or a round cake pan.

Combine the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the butter and process for 10 seconds, until mixture is well blended. Add the egg and vanilla and pulse to combine.

 Drop the dough by tablespoons onto the fruit (don’t spread it out evenly). Bake until golden yellow and just starting to brown, 35-45 minutes.

 

Summer Favorite: Kill the Rhubarb

I never ate anything with rhubarb until my father-in-law brought a grocery bag full to the house in Northport, courtesy of a vigorous plant in his backyard. I had no idea what to do with it other than strawberry rhubarb pie, but David isn’t a fan (he says it’s always too sweet). And even though this was years ago and we could still eat gluten with wild abandon, I had no interest in dealing with a pie crust that day. That month’s issue of Gourmet magazine had a feature story on a restaurant in North Dakota that included something called Rhubarb Crunch, which was basically fruit with an oat streusel topping. Seemed simple enough.

And it was! The filling is just the right amount of sweet, the proportion of topping to filling is perfect, and it doesn’t have any weird or hard-to-find ingredients, which makes it a winner for cabin/cottage/anyone else’s house and/or unfamiliar grocery stores – situations that tend to happen to me fairly often during the summer.

The first time I made this, David and some friends of ours were watching Loony Tunes in the room next to the kitchen. Turns out it’s nearly impossible to resist chopping in tempo with “What’s Opera, Doc?” and “kill the wabbit” promptly became “kill the rhubarb.” We’ve never called it anything else and I have to sing this every time I make it.

Everyone we’ve ever served this to has loved it; it comes together in a few minutes, the leftovers are delicious, and ice cream is the only way it can possibly be improved. We lost the recipe for a few years and have happily rediscovered it recently; David even agreed to adding strawberries last time, which was wonderful and not at all too sweet. The prolific rhubarb plant was moved from the house in Auburn Hills to the house in Oxford some years ago; now that David’s mom is selling and moving closer to the rest of us, I’ll be sure that Papa’s rhubarb plant finds a new home in our yard.

From Gourmet magazine, July 1997, where it was unimaginatively titled “Doris Gulsvig’s Rhubarb Crunch.”

Kill the Rhubarb

1 ½ lbs rhubarb (or 1 lb rhubarb and ½ lb strawberries)
¾ cup sugar
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1 cup water
½ tsp salt
½ tsp vanilla
1 cup flour (or your favorite GF blend)
¾ cup oats
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
½ cup butter, melted 

 Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a 13x9 baking pan.

Trim the rhubarb (and strawberries, if you’re using them) and chop into ½-inch pieces. This works out to about 5 cups of fruit, and yes you can use different fruit or frozen fruit and it will be delicious. Put the fruit into the baking dish.

In a small saucepan, stir together the sugar, cornstarch, water, and half the salt. Bring it to a boil and simmer, stirring, about 3 minutes or until it’s thickened and clear. Stir in the vanilla. Pour over the fruit in the baking pan.

Stir together the remaining ¼ tsp salt, flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter. Sprinkle evenly over the fruit and bake for 1 hour.

 

When life hands you lemons, make a mocktail and serve it at prom: Mom Prom Chicken

 Oh lordy, it’s been a season.

Look, this isn’t my first rodeo – I know that the end of the school year is always overwhelming, what with all the extra events and spring fever and cramming in 3 months’ worth of homework in a couple of weeks. What I didn’t understand was how very, very extra this was going to be with a graduating senior and a pandemic. As these things go, Anna’s not particularly engaged with her school community, but there was still just so very much to keep track of: senior pictures, rescheduling senior pictures due to rain, yearbook pickup mid-day, a completely separate day to drop off textbooks, procuring the cap and gown, etc etc etc. Goodness knows these kids deserve recognition and I respect the importance of milestones, but…just….wow. And the emotion.

Actually Relevant Aside: some zillion years ago, when David and I first looked at this house, I stood in front of the mantel and blurted, “I can see my daughter walking down those stairs in her prom dress.” Not having or planning on children, this was a little out of character… but it stuck with me, and as this year wound down I realized that an off-the-cuff comment made 22 years ago could actually come true. Except. You know. The pandemic.

There was an unofficial prom in the works, but for a good number of valid reasons Anna wasn’t interested in being part of it. But she still wanted a prom experience. The solution? Hold one at home. And thus Mom Prom was born. I’ll be the first to admit that this was as much about me needing to do this for her as it was about her having a special event. We hosted a prom-like event in our back yard, complete with multi-course dinner and a dance floor, for Anna and a handful of her friends. It was lovely and she had fun and now my yard looks better than it has in years. I mashed together a number of online recipes to come up with the recipe for the entrée, which is now known as Mom Prom Chicken.  

After looking at approximately one million recipes for chicken rolls, I truly don’t know where all the parts of this came from. My apologies to the original authors and their various family members who shared their family favorite recipes; it’s now become one of our family favorites as well.

Mom Prom Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, trimmed and sliced in half lengthwise
I large carton sour cream
¼ cup lemon juice  
Fresh bread crumbs (I always find it hard to estimate, but expect to use 3 cups or so)
1 tsp salt
½ tsp dried basil
½ tsp dried oregano
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp caraway seeds
½ tsp fennel seeds
¼ tsp white pepper
¼ tsp onion powder
½ stick butter, melted

 Put the chicken between two pieces of parchment paper and pound gently to make sure they’re an even thickness. Combine the sour cream and lemon juice, salt and pepper liberally, add the chicken, and refrigerate overnight.

Coat a 9x12 backing with cooking spray and preheat the oven to 350.

Combine the bread crumbs with all the remaining ingredients except the melted butter. Spread the bread crumbs out on a very large plate or piece of parchment paper (easier to clean up!). Dredge each piece of chicken in the bread crumbs, then roll up and place in the baking pan. When all the chicken is rolled, drizzle the butter over the top, cover the pan with foil, and bake for 40 minutes.

Some of the recipes had you putting a bit of cheese in the middle of these rolls, which would be delightful. Others had you pounding an entire chicken breast to a rollable thickness; clearly those authors had not seen a modern Gigantor-sized piece of chicken, which would take forever to pound thin enough and would probably make you very cranky. I like my slice-in-half method, which is (1) less work overall and (2) means that each breast becomes 2 servings instead of one, so either you can feed your ravenous teenagers or this dish can feed 8 instead of 4. We tried this with dried bread crumbs but preferred the fresh.

 

 

Cookbook Challenge #16: Saying that tofu-stuffed celery is tastier than it sounds is keeping the bar pretty low

I’ve adulted so hard this month, it’s hard to believe it’s even me. This time of year is always super-busy, and having a soon-to-be-high-school-graduate around makes it even busier. Prom was one the many Covid casualties for the Class of 2021, so I (for some unknown reason) thought it would be a fine idea to host a semi-formal dinner dance in the backyard for Anna and a handful of her graduating, fully-vaccinated friends.

And you know what? It WAS a fine idea. Everyone looked lovely and a good time was had by all, and an event that should have been a memorable milestone turned out to be one after all. I’m kinda proud of that. Of course, combining party prep with all the other things going on – including 2 not-unexpected but still very sad funerals – plus work stuff means that there hasn’t been a lot of recreational writing going on. No matter.

Here is an appetizer for times when you need to look fancy-schmancy but you’re also really busy or it’s hot as hell or you just don’t want to do a lot of work, and you have to feed a group with all sorts of food issues and thinking about it is overwhelming. It’s tofu-based, which will shock anyone who knows me, but it fed the gluten-free, the dairy-free, and the vegans, and even the omnivores thought it was tasty and never would have guessed it wasn’t loaded with cheesy goodness.

The celery prep sounds a little fussy but it was really nice; you could also just use this as dip with crackers or cut vegetables, obviously, and I think it would make a nice mayo alternative on a veggie sandwich.

Happy snacking!

From Cocktail Food by Mary Corpening Barber, Sara Corpening Whiteford, and Lori Lyn Narlock. I was initially a little put off by the cutesy names (ironic, coming from me on this blog) but after trying the tofu I’m definitely interested in trying more of these recipes. It’s definitely earned its space on the bookshelf.

Tofu-Stuffed Celery

8 oz. extra-firm tofu, patted dry
¼ cup fresh basil
1 Tbsp fresh dill
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp lemon juice
½ teaspoon minced garlic
4 tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp black pepper
Celery stalks, for serving; or cut-up veggies, crackers, etc.

 Put everything in the food processor and blend until creamy. The original recipe has you chopping the herbs in advance, but I see no point in this when the machine will do all the work just fine. Process it a little longer than you think strictly necessary to make sure it’s extra-creamy.

Trim the ends of the celery stalk, then peel a thin strip off the length of it. This will make the celery lay flat on a serving platter once it’s stuffed and is well worth the effort. Cut the celery stalks on the diagonal into 1-inch lengths, then blanch in salted water for 1 minute. Drain and run under cold water or put in an ice water bath; when the celery is cool, pat it dry with paper towels and put it in the refrigerator to get cold again.

Spoon a teaspoon or so of the tofu mixture onto the celery. Feel free to garnish with little teeny sprigs of dill if you’re feeling like a purist; or arrange them in some kind of symmetrical pinwheel pattern if you have too much time on your hands, or whatever. The dip keeps for a couple of days in the fridge – possibly longer, but we ate it all before we could verify this.

 

 

Road Trip Waffles are the Stuff of Childhood Memories

 I love road trips.

Ask anyone who grew up in the 1970s about family vacations and you’ll hear some shared themes: getting stuck sitting in the middle, one leg spraddled on either side of the transmission hump; playing the license plate game; facing backwards in the far rear “seat” of the station wagon; being at the mercy of the radio wherever you were. None of this fancy-schmancy mini-van life with on-demand DVDs, personal electronics, and comfort. Road trips in the 70s were a character-building experience.

I spent a lot of time building character with my aunt Alice and cousin Jacqueline, roaming the country in a wood-sided station wagon hauling a pop-up camper. A lot of our trips were to amusement parks in Ohio; my aunt was a thrill-seeker and adored roller coasters. One of my earlier memories involves her hauling my definitely-not-a-thrill-seeker mom onto The Beast by the straps of her stylish overalls romper. We went to Florida. We visited the relatives in Kansas. There was an epic multi-week adventure to Texas that is the stuff of family legends.

There were a few constants in these trips that were specific to Aunt Alice. The first was Bisquick waffles, baked to absolute perfection on a beast of a waffle iron, at least 25 pounds of cast-iron plates and heat-conducive plastic handles and iffy wiring. It was the only place I’d ever seen waffles outside of a restaurant, and to this day the smell makes me feel like I’m at a campground. It had enormous square plates divided into quarters, so it was easier to split the waffles up as they came out; I can’t even imagine how much batter you would need to actually cover the entire plate, but never in my life have I seen a square waffle come out of one of these. David and I spent a summer trolling garage sales to find the same waffle iron; our lightweight, enclosed-hinge, Teflon-coated modern one just didn’t do the same job. I think of Aunt Alice every time we use it.

The second constant was hyper-competitive games of Boggle. I had a pretty good vocabulary as a kid, but I don’t do well under pressure. My dream in life was to beat my aunt at one of these games we played, crowded around the tiny pop-up dining table by lantern light. (I never did. It is, however, one of the few games I can reliably beat my kids at.)

And finally – awfully – there was the dummy. Yes, an actual ventriloquist’s dummy, a horrible, creepy, staring ventriloquist’s dummy. I don’t know what compelled my cousin to decide that ventriloquism was a skill her pre-teen self needed to learn, but I spent many, many hours being creeped out by that damn thing. And I surely don’t know what compelled my aunt to put it in the pop-up camper before our trips, or what made her think it was funny to make the dummy look up my nightgown. As a kid, it made me cry. As an adult, I’m 100% sure that – terrorizing me aside – it was probably one of the funniest nights of my life, because my aunt was hilarious. My mom laughed until she cried. I would give a lot to have one of those flickery home movies of whatever the night’s monologue was.

The subject of the dummy came up at her husband’s funeral a few years ago. I commented that I remembered the waffles and the Boggle and the constant stream of Elvis tunes and yes, the dummy.

“Do you want it?” she asked eagerly.

“God no. You’ve entirely missed the point of the story if you think I want that thing.”

She laughed then, her distinct wheezing smoker’s laugh, the one that made her eyes crinkle shut and her whole body shake, and slapped my shoulder lightly.

“I’m cleaning out the house. You can have it.”

“I really, truly, honestly don’t want it. Please.”

“You can have it!”

My aunt’s sense of humor being what it is, I wouldn’t be even a tiny bit surprised if she left it to me in her will.

Last week we said goodbye to her for the last time. A lifetime of smoking caught up to her, and she passed away peacefully in her sleep at my cousin’s house, where she spent the last 7 months of her life being pampered and taken out to lunch and made much of, and where her amazing sense of humor was very much appreciated. I wasn’t close to her as an adult, but my childhood was shaped by memories of our trips together.

We don’t eat Bisquick waffles, what with the gluten and all, but waffles are actually pretty easy to make from scratch. You could knock together a batch in under 5 minutes, easily. If you wish to think ahead a little bit because you’re paying tribute to some of the best memories of your childhood, you can’t do any better than overnight waffles. I believe this is originally a Fannie Farmer recipe, but it’s taken here from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. He’s absolutely correct in saying that these need to stay in the iron a bit longer than the indicator light wants them to; wait until there is almost no steam coming out of the iron for the crispiest, creamiest, best possible version of these. They absolutely must be served with Bob Evans link sausages and warmed syrup.

Overnight Waffles

½ tsp instant yeast
2 cups GF flour blend of your choice
1 Tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
2 cups milk
8 tablespoons (yes, a whole stick) of butter, melted and cooled
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Before going to bed, combine the dry ingredients. Stir in the milk, butter, and vanilla. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside overnight.

While the waffle iron heats, separate the eggs. Stir the yolks into the batter. Beat the whites until they hold soft peaks, then fold into the batter.

Make sure the iron is very hot and oil it well (spray oil is good here) before ladling batter onto the cooking plate. Ignore the indicator light and let the waffle cook until the steam stops almost completely.

Spring Madness: And, three pounds of beef fajitas will feed three teenagers exactly once

Sometime in late March, I invariably launch on a series of grandiose projects, assuming that the jolt to my system prompted by a couple of warm sunny days is an accurate indicator of the level of energy and interest I will maintain through the next two months. Invariably, I am wrong.

However, ‘hope springs eternal’ and all that, so I’m knee-deep in the chaos of moving THREE rooms of my house at once. The Teen Queen will be sticking around for a while, so we decided that having her bedroom in the basement will give her the space and privacy we all need in order for this arrangement to work. John got booted to her old room and my office/craft space was relocated to his room, necessitating all three rooms be in some state of flux for the last ten days.

There is an actual Bottomless Pit, not just a teenager's stomach

I’m proud that we’ve only resorted to carryout once, but dinners have not been stellar; I’m very much thinking about what I can pull together with an absolute minimum of planning, shopping, and effort. Nothing fun, nothing new, and certainly nothing that makes more mess! Given our newly re-ignited passion for Corn Thing, it makes sense that we’ve been having all sorts of variations on taco night, which lets everyone assemble their own plate and eat at their leisure.

It’s probably inevitable that the answer to taco night came from the same source as Corn Thing, a small volume that feels like the least Jen-like cookbook I own (Anna calls it “Mexican Food For White Midwesterners” but that didn’t stop her from raving about this meal). Paging through, I see that I’ve actually cooked quite a few dishes from it….time to check my nascent cookbook snobbery.

This fajita recipe fit the bill on a night I didn’t have time for marinating, shredding, or fussing. I doubled the recipe (hoping in vain for leftovers) so it didn’t fit into my largest skillet in a single batch; if you have the onions/peppers going in one pan and the meat in another, everything should come out at the same time but it was worth it to just do everything in batches so I had one less pan to wash. The toppings, as always, are up to you.

Adapted from Quick Mexican Cooking by Cyndi Duncan and Georgie Patrick.

Beef Fajitas

1 ½ lb flank steak, thinly sliced, or chicken breasts, cut into strips (I used GFS pre-cut beef fajita strips, which cut down tremendously on prep time)
2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp chili powder
½ tsp garlic powder
½ garlic pepper mix (a spice Anna found on a road trip; you could use a teaspoon of garlic salt in place of this and the garlic powder)
½ tsp oregano
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp Aleppo pepper, which I put on everything lately; feel free to substitute whatever your favorite pepper/chile happens to be right now
4 Tbsp oil
1 large onion, sliced vertically
1-2 bell peppers, sliced

Combine the meat with the Worcestershire sauce and spices. Using half the oil, saute the onion and bell peppers until slightly charred and tender but not mushy (we’re going for that Mexican restaurant sizzling plate effect; a cast iron pan is perfect for this). Remove the vegetables to a plate.

Heat the remaining oil in the same pan. Working in batches if necessary, saute the meat just until cooked through.

Serve with corn or flour tortillas, salsa, guacamole, etc. etc. etc.

Fire in the Hole! Or, How *Not* to Cook Your Venison Barbacoa

Nothing makes a new recipe more exciting than setting your kitchen on fire while cooking it.

Thanks to a friend, we have a fair amount of venison in our freezer, and I’m generally on the lookout for new ways to cook it. For years I thought that the only thing you could do with venison was make a substandard and overly-spiced chili with it (yeah, throwing a little shade there) so the last several years’ worth of dinners at our friends’ house have been an absolute revelation. Having been on a bit of a taco kick since receiving Death By Burrito as a gift a few years ago, the venison barbacoa seemed like a shoo-in for my latest favorite taco filling.

The recipe itself is dead easy as long as you think ahead and pull out your slow cooker earlier in the day. As is slow cooker standard, you put everything in and turn it on and magically your dinner is done when you wake up from an extended nap on the couch. That's the beauty of the slow cooker: the part where you really don't have to pay any attention to it or worry about it. (This becomes important later.)

My slow cookers have seen a fair bit of hard labor; from September to April there’s pretty much always one on the kitchen counter, and it's started to make more year-round appearances as I hate heating up our non-air-conditioned house in the summer. Stephanie O’Dea’s excellent slow cooker website has definitely given me a much larger repertoire (though I will never get over the eww factor of her frequent use of the word ‘plop’ in the instructions) as well as explaining that different size slow cookers exist for a reason and that reason has an awful lot to do with not drying out your food while it’s cooking. Hence my justification for owning three different slow cookers of various sizes.

As this was a smallish piece of meat, my smallest, oldest, least complicated cooker was called for. Ingredients in: check. Turn dial from Off to High: check. Fall asleep on couch while food cooks itself with no help from me: check.

Kids! Dinner's ready!

My daughter moved the slow cooker ever-so-slightly and – loud popping noise while the fuses blow: check. Smoke and flame shooting out from underneath: check. Big charred spot on the kitchen counter: check. I slept through all of this even though it took place about 15 feet away. At some point I was lucid enough to tell her to just get another slow cooker and transfer everything, but I don’t remember it. And then when I woke up, dinner was magically ready and there was a nice big char spot on the counter and now I only own two slow cookers.

Tucked into a warm corn tortilla with some pickled onions and crumbled cheese, this was well worth sacrificing one of the slow cookers for, although I’m not going to recommend that as a cooking method. I imagine this would also be outstanding with beef, in which case I’d skip the additional fat.

From Buck, Buck, Moose by Hank Shaw. 

Venison Barbacoa

2-3 lbs venison (shoulder or legs)(or shanks or roast or neck; I used a roast)
2-4 canned chiles in adobo
1 red onion, chopped
5 garlic cloves, chopped
2 bay leaves
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cloves
1 Tbsp kosher salt
½ cup lime juice
½ cup cider vinegar
1 quart venison or beef stock
¼ cup lard or vegetable oil

Put everything except the lard in the slow cooker and cook on High until the meat falls off the bone and/or falls into shreds, somewhere between 2 and 6 hours depending on the age of the venison. If you’re making this in the oven, set the temperature to 300.

Pull all the meat from the bones (if applicable) and shred with forks. Stir in the lard and salt to taste. The fat should coat the meat; venison is super lean and really does need this extra additional fat. Also deer fat is pretty nasty. Pour some of the juices from the pot over the meat.

Serve over rice, with potatoes, or as tacos (with lots of crumbled dry cheese, cilantro, and pickled onions).

 

Hello there, grilling season! Chicken with Sumac

In true Michigan fashion, the weather has been a bit….mercurial, lately. My head – and my grocery list – is still in the comfort food/calorie bomb part of the year, but the temperature was over 50 degrees the other day and the sun was shining and I really, really didn’t want to stand over a stove. (Also it was my turn to wash dishes.) And I got distracted by frolicking outdoors and didn’t set up anything at all in advance, so this was a last-minute, improvised effort.

While I very much enjoy the original version, which is sauteed with sliced onions and loaded into a pita and really isn’t all that much work, I can definitely see this getting tossed into a cooler for a day at the beach or showing up as part of a leisurely dinner on the deck. (Y’all, I am planning SO MANY outdoor dinners this summer. Bring dessert.) I think it benefitted from hanging out in the sort-of marinade for about 15 minutes while the grill finished heating, or you could skip it, or you could keep it in there for a good long while. It’s really hard to mess up chicken thighs, which are super forgiving and won’t dry out like chicken breasts tend to.

NOT THIS ONE!!!

Wondering what the hell sumac is? I was too, when it first showed up in a recipe for fattoush. It’s a spice made from ground sumac berries – not the poisonous variety, obviously – with a tart, lemony flavor and gorgeous dark-red color. It’s often mixed into za’atar and other spice blends, and I like to use it in place of paprika as a finish or in anything involving lamb. I buy mine at a Middle Eastern grocery store nearby, not only because I like to support local businesses but also because Halim will often make me a cup of coffee so we can sit down and visit for a bit while I shop.

This recipe is adapted from The Food and Cooking of the Middle East by Ghillie Basan, which we picked up some years ago from the remainders section at Barnes & Noble and have cooked from regularly ever since. Fun fact: It turns out this is a renamed version of The Food and Cooking of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, which is what the link will take you to on Amazon. If anyone with experience in the publishing industry has some insight on this, please enlighten me. 

Palestinian Chicken with Sumac – Grilled Edition

1 medium onion, pureed as much as you can in the food processor (unless you feel like doing this by hand, but why?)
1 heaping Ikea spoon of garlic paste (maybe 1 ½ teaspoons? ish?) or 3-4 cloves garlic, mashed (or throw it into the food processor with the onion, if you like)
2-3 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs (I made that amount up. Cook as much or as little as you want.)
3 tsp ground sumac
2 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground allspice
3 Tbsp lemon juice
Splash of olive oil
Salt and pepper                    

 Put the chicken in a mixing bowl, add the remaining ingredients, and toss to combine. Ideally this will sit for a little bit while you get the grill going, but it’s very forgiving. Grill over medium coals until the chicken is cooked through (duh) and the edges have those delicious little charred bits.

I like to serve these wrapped up in Syrian bread with hummous, garlic, and some sort of salad or slaw. I’m told some people like to add pickles to these kinds of sandwiches but I don’t think I’m friends with any of those monsters. Yogurt would be nice. So would pilaf. Or slice it and put it on top of fattoush. It’s good cold out of the fridge, reheats nicely in the microwave, and is just as tasty at room temperature. It also scales up infinitely with no extra work so you can feed a crowd.

 

Zero F#@&*s Left To Give: Chicken Divan Pot Pie

On any given day, I’ll freely admit that the pandemic year hasn’t been all that bad for us. Present company excluded, we’re a house full of introverts; having our social lives curtailed has been a bit of relief for some members of this family. My husband is still employed, the kids adapted to online school, and I’m frankly pretty glad to have the company. Most of the time.

Most of the time is not the same as all of the time.

Last night was one of those times.

I had a work commitment scheduled in the evening and David was teaching, so naturally my kids regressed by a solid decade and had a huge screaming/sitting on each other fight. The dishes were piled up, the thing I’d planned to cook hadn’t thawed in time, the dog and cat were both freaking out from all the noise, and yet everyone still expected to be able to eat at some point. Having completely flaked out the previous night and made everyone else cook, it really was my turn. I had little time and even less interest.

Pot pie to the rescue! While we’ve gotten into the habit of making the same two recipes from this particular cookbook, it really is a gem – I’ve been working my way through some of the other recipes and knew that this one was going to make an appearance on the table at some point. Thanks to my Milk Fairy neighbor, I also had some pre-cooked chicken and pre-steamed broccoli hanging out in the freezer, so really all I had to do was the sauce. This was exactly the level of effort I wanted (okay, it was actually quite a bit more but that doesn’t mean it was really much of an effort, the bar was set pretty low) and it was pretty satisfying to look at the baking dish and feel like dinner was 80% done when all I’d done was open a couple of Ziploc bags.

Then, you know, the actual cooking part happened. The whisk I’d grabbed didn’t get the corners of the pan, so I had to get a different one – more dishes piled up – and I couldn’t find any stock so I used bouillon cubes and they wouldn’t dissolve so I was trying to smoosh the cubes with the whisk and stir my sauce at the same time. I discovered that my son had eaten almost an entire loaf of bread during the day so I ended up with less than half the amount of bread crumbs needed, because of course I’d used the last of the bread crumbs in the freezer for last week’s meatloaf. I tried to use my food processor to grate the cheese – something I’ve done a zillion times – but it hated this particular block and kept getting stuck; I gave up when the motor started smelling funny and threw what I had into the bowl with the inadequate number of bread crumbs and called it good enough. The clock was ticking.

I stuck it in the oven, made myself an Old-Fashioned, and dialed in to the work thing. I assume everyone ate dinner at some point. Some nights are just like that, even in Australia.

From Pot Pies: Comfort Food Under Cover by Diane Philips. This is such a gem of a cookbook; it’s a contender in the ongoing First Time I Cooked Every Recipe in a Cookbook competition.

 

Filling

3 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp oil
8 skinless boneless chicken breasts (or equivalent amount of cooked chicken)
1 tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
3 cups broccoli florets, steamed al dente (or thawed from your freezer, if it’s that kind of day)
3 Tbsp flour
1 ½ tsp curry powder
2 cups chicken broth
½ cup milk

Crust

4 Tbsp butter
3 ½ cups fresh bread crumbs (or whatever your carb-freak child has left in the bread bag)
2 cups grated Cheddar (ish. As long as you keep it proportional to the bread crumbs you’re good)
 

Heat the oven to 375.

In a saute pan, heat 1 tablespoon butter with the oil. Sprinkle the chicken with the salt and pepper and saute until golden brown on both sides but not cooked through, about 3 minutes per side (obviously this step goes much faster if you’re using pre-cooked chicken). Arrange the chicken on the bottom of an ovenproof baking dish and top it with the broccoli. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter in the same pan and whisk in the flour and curry powder until the mixture begins to bubble, 3-4 minutes. Gradually add the chicken broth and whisk until smooth. Add the milk and bring the sauce to a boil. Pour the sauce over the chicken and broccoli. You can refrigerate it at this point until you’re ready to bake if you’re making this in advance like the organized person you are.

In the same pan, melt the butter. Add the bread crumbs and stir until the crumbs are crisp, 4-5 minutes. Put the crumbs in a mixing bowl, add the cheese, and toss. Spread the crust over the chicken mixture and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the sauce is bubbly.

Roast Vegetables with Brown Rice - for that time you forgot to buy ingredients for the ACTUAL dinner

You know the family falafel parties have reached a certain status when the people you’re having dinner with right that very minute invite themselves over for dinner the next night as soon as they hear it’s falafel time. We were delighted to be able to spend more time with them – they’re among the very few people we see in person these days – and they were delighted to be able to scarf down piles of David’s amazing falafel. He also made some excellent hummous, and Anna whipped up a batch of celery syrup so we could make the juleps from last summer. And I….. well…. I didn’t realize we were out of grapeleaves until after I’d made the filling and our friends were on their way. Oops.

Clearly the grapeleaves weren’t going to happen and I still needed to feed 7 people (man cannot live on falafel alone, no matter what my son tells you). I turned to a riff on this Moroccan dish from the Cooking Light archives, which was intended to be a quick and easy weeknight dinner later this week. As with so many other Mediterranean dishes, I was surprised at how a relatively small number of ingredients turned into something so delicious and complex. Truly, you can’t go wrong putting caramelized onions on anything! 

We swapped brown rice for the couscous and were pleasantly surprised at the result; given the choice of using couscous I think I would still stick with the rice, although millet or quinoa would also be interesting. This would be a great picnic dish, and I think the leftovers are destined to become a wrap sandwich with a piece of flatbread and some garlic dip and a little shredded lettuce.

There was a little spice-related drama in the house so I substituted the 7-spice mix from Anna’s new Syrian cookbook for the ras el hanout that was called for in the original recipe, then added a pinch of ginger and some extra black pepper to make up the difference. The recipe for the ras el hanout is at the end of the page, in case you can’t find it at the grocery store; the 7-spice mix deserves its own blog post another day.

Based on a couscous recipe from Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2010. Alas, I miss you, Cooking Light!

Roasted Vegetable Rice with Onions and Pine Nuts 

1 ½ lb sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
¾ lb peeled, sliced parsnips
3 – 4 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 ½ Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ras el hanout (see below) or 7-spice mix  
Kosher salt
4 cups cooked brown rice
2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
Topping:
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 large yellow onion, peeled and sliced thinly
¼ cup pine nuts
¼ cup raisins
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp honey

Preheat the oven to 450.

Toss the sweet potatoes, parsnips, and carrots with the olive oil and ras el hanout, then roast on a baking sheet for 30 minutes, stirring once or twice during the baking time.

Put the hot cooked rice into a large bowl. Add the roasted vegetables and chickpeas and toss.

While the vegetables are roasting, heat the remaining olive oil in a skillet and add the onions. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are very soft and caramelized (this will take about as long as the vegetables). Add the pine nuts, raisins, and cinnamon and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in the honey.

Put the rice mixture onto a platter or large serving bowl, then spread the topping evenly over it.

Ras El Hanout 

2 1/2 tsp kosher salt 
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground ginger 
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper 
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground coriander 
1 tsp ground red pepper 
1 tsp ground allspice 
1 tsp saffron threads, crushed 
1/2 tsp ground cloves 
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Combine all the ingredients and store in an airtight container for up to 1 month. 

 

 

Damn, That's a Lot of Chicken

The same neighbor who keeps me supplied with milk for my cheesemaking adventures gives us a fair number of other things, which (thankfully) vary from week to week and always keep me on my recipe-hunting toes. One recent dilemma: how to deal with 30 pounds of chicken leg quarters when the freezer(s) is full.

Note to self: It’s possible to get tired of chicken. So, so tired.

Note to reader: I’m actually a pretty lazy cook most of the time.

Solution: This fast, easy braised chicken that requires nothing fresh from my fridge – I’m not much into grocery shopping in this super-cold weather – falls off the bone so that John will eat it without complaint, takes all the chicken I can fit into my Dutch oven, and makes sufficiently versatile leftovers that we don’t get sick of eating the same thing over and over again. While I didn’t manage to make 30 pounds of this, I did knock out a sufficient quantity of it that we were able to close the freezer door afterwards.

The first round of this went with Potatoes Anna, which comes together quickly if you have a mandoline and looks ridiculously fancy for the small amount of work that goes into it; the second round paired with some risotto, which Deb Perelman has conclusively proven can be made in the oven with no arduous stirring – bless you, Deb! – and the actual leftovers were chopped up with celery and onions and dried cherries and curry powder and turned into a fantastic weekday lunch with some crackers. If I’d really been on my game I probably would have made stock from the bones but I really didn’t have time for canning that week and there wasn’t any space in the freezer…

The original recipe is from Mark Bittman, as are so many of the fast, delicious things that make it to our table regularly. This one is from The Best Recipes in the World.

Braised Chicken with Vinegar

3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup chopped pancetta or bacon (I’ve skipped this and it’s been just as delicious)(ok, almost)
1 tsp fresh chopped rosemary or ½ tsp dried
2 fresh thyme springs or ½ tsp dried
3 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly smashed
3ish lbs of bone-in chicken. You can use a whole cut-up chicken but we use leg quarters or thighs.
Salt and pepper
½ cup good-quality red wine vinegar

 Set a pan large enough to hold the chicken over medium-high heat. Add the oil, pancetta or bacon, herbs, and garlic, stirring occasionally, until the pancetta browns (about 3 minutes if you’re skipping it). Remove the garlic from the pan.

Brown the chicken well, sprinkling well with salt and pepper. This should take 10-15 minutes if you’re doing it in batches.

Add the vinegar and ½ cup water. Raise the heat to high and cook for a minute or two, until the mixture reduces and thickens somewhat.

Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and simmer about 20 minutes.

Remove the chicken from the pan, raise the heat, and cook another few minutes to further reduce the sauce. Season with more salt and pepper as needed. Serve the sauce on the side.

NOTE: There is an alternate version published that has you using boneless skinless chicken breasts. If that’s your jam, follow the same instructions but only cook the chicken for 10 minutes so it doesn’t dry out.

 

Cookbook Challenge #15: Amazing Gluten-Free Pizza from Your Very Own Kitchen

 If this sounds more like a fangirl love letter than a food(ish) blog, that’s because it is. After more than a decade of improvised, substituted, sub-standard gluten-free pizzas, I’m here to tell you that excellent gluten free pizza DOES exist and it can be made in your very own home.

“This is the best pizza I’ve had since I went gluten-free.” – David. (For reference, he went gluten-free when my 15 year old was in preschool.)

Regular pizza, not the Montanara. I ate it too quickly for photos.

We’ve tried everything – flatbread pizzas, pizzas made from GF bread dough, cauliflower crust, every single brand of frozen pizza (Sabatasso’s from Costco is not bad, Kroger brand is nasty as hell), etc etc etc. We love Renee’s Gluten Free Pizzeria in Troy, but we don’t love paying $50 for pizza for 4 people that can’t agree on toppings. Same with Como’s in Ferndale, which makes really good Detroit-style pizzas; they’re tasty, but they’re a sometimes treat because $$$$$. We want to eat pizza and binge-watch Netflix way more often.

Enter No Gluten, No Problem Pizza by Kelli and Peter Bronksi - my new favorite people - a cookbook I found while scrolling around on Hoopla (which means you can try it out for free, but I promise you’re going to want to buy it). I took a leap of faith and bought a baking steel and pizza peel before we tried a single recipe – clearly, my kitchen is underequipped and I need more stuff in it – but there are recipes that you can try without special equipment. That being said, I highly recommend the baking steel, which gets hot as hell and does miraculous things to a crust; David tried his usual bread-dough crust on it first and there was huge improvement. Still not as good as the recipes in this book, though.

Be warned: you’re going to need to buy a bunch of different flours for this. But if you’re already GF, this is your life – you’ve got all kinds of weird shit in your pantry. Even if you’re starting from scratch, you can go out and buy $30 worth of flours and you’ll break even after a couple of pizzas. We’ve done 4 dinners from this book and we’re even on the cost of the baking steel and pizza peel, too.  Also needed: a kitchen scale and some parchment paper. But again, you probably have these things already because GF baking.

The first recipe in the book is for a New York-style crust, your basic regular crust pizza that you can slice and fold in half to shove it in your mouth. There’s a quick version that comes together in the amount of time it takes to find your kitchen scale and throw things in a bowl, and a plan-ahead version that wants a 48-hour ferment. We’ve only tried the quick version so far, which is also the foundation for a number of other recipes in the book (calzones, etc.); we also tried the par-baked version to use later, which was just as good as freshly made. I’m excited to try the fermented version, because I seriously can’t imagine how this crust is going to get better.

We also tried the Chicago-style pizza, since we managed to unearth the pizza pan we bought back in The Wheat Flour Days. Anna filled it up with some improvised sauce, pepperoni, bell peppers, asiago cheese, and fresh ricotta; the first slice very nearly had to be eaten with a spoon and it was magnificent. As a side note, we’ve been adding fresh ricotta to everything lately and it’s fantastic. You should make some. The leftover slices reheated beautifully – and held together a little bit more, clearly we were a bit impatient when it came out of the oven. I’m not even a fan of Chicago-style pizzas and I loved it.

The third style we tried was montanara, which is basically pizza’s answer to elephant ears. Note: don’t forget the xantham gum! We discovered the hard way that it’s the difference between a dough that acts like cake frosting and a dough that acts like dough. Second note: If you accidentally make the cake-frosting version, cut out the circle of parchment paper it’s on and slide it into the hot oil. Works like a charm. The first one was a dinner version, with fresh ricotta, fresh basil, and sliced tomatoes; the second one was the garlic oil one in the book, served next to some potato leek soup. Both were excellent if you liked fried things (I do) but also very filling. We doubled the recipe next time and split the dough in quarters so everyone got their own and there was no fighting over the crispy end pieces.

And we’re just getting started! There are also recipes for Neapolitan pizzas, thin-crust, Detroit-style, California, grilled, buckwheat, and grain-free crusts. There’s instructions for calzones. There are recipes for breakfast pizzas and dessert pizzas. And we’re going to make them all!

To tide you over until your new pizza-making equipment arrives, here’s a recipe for the montanara, which you can make in a cast-iron pan.

Montanara Dough

80 grams warm water
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp active dry yeast
20 grams potato starch
20 grams tapioca starch
20 grams millet flour
20 grams quinoa flour
10 grams brown rice flour
½ tsp ground psyllium husk
½ tsp salt
½ tsp xantham gum
2 Tbsp olive oil

 In a small bowl, whisk together the water, sugar, and yeast. Set aside to allow the yeast to activate, about 5 minutes, until foamy.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients except the olive oil.

When the yeast mixture is foamy on top, add the oil and stir to combine. Pour the yeast mixture into the flour mixture and stir vigorously with a spoon until it is smooth, there are no lumps, and it forms a loose dough.

What to do with it: Garlic Montanara

Frying oil
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
Bench flour (extra flour for working with the dough); I recommend superfine rice flour
1 recipe Montanara dough  
2 Tbsp grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
1 Tbsp chopped parsley

Heat the frying oil to 375 in a 10-inch pan over medium-high heat.

Combine the olive oil and garlic in a small bowl and set aside.

Place a 15-inch square of parchment paper on a flat surface and dust with about 2 Tbsp of bench flour. Scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the parchment.

Coat your fingers with bench flour, sprinkle a little on the top of the dough, and carefully work the dough into a flat 9-inch circle, using a little more flour as needed to keep everything from sticking to your hands.

Gently flip the dough off the parchment onto your hand and slide it into the hot oil. If this is too stressful, cut out the paper in a circle around the dough and stick the whole thing in the oil; it will separate when you flip the dough.

Cook for a minute or so on the first side, until it’s golden brown, then very carefully flip the dough (use tongs, not a spatula) and cook for another minute or two on the other side.

Transfer the cooked dough to a paper towel to drain the excess oil, then transfer to a plate and drizzle with the garlic oil. Sprinkle with the cheese and parsley.

 

 

 

Time, Energy, and Too Much Cheese: Chicken Smothered with Onions and Feta

Sometime a recipe is a perfect storm. This one certainly was, the confluence of my personal time vs. energy equation, a desire for comfort food, my interest in exploring some of my newer cookbooks more deeply, and the need to use up a random abundance of ingredients. My neighbor has been facilitating some food deliveries (lordy, that’s a long story) and we’ve ended up with an abundance – nay, a glut – of random food as she tries to get rid of the excess. Thirty pounds of bone-in chicken legs? Yep. Two huge pork butts? On it. Nine bags of onions? Sounds like soup to me. THIRTY GALLONS of milk? Well… okay. I guess it’s time to learn cheesemaking.

And that, folks, is what I’ve been spending my time and energy on. I started with yogurt (we don’t eat enough of it to justify the effort) and ricotta (downright magical). Then feta. Now I’m stretching mozzarella curds and posting pleas on Facebook for people to please for the love of god come get some cheese. This weekend my cheese press should show up, so I’m on to queso fresco and Havarti. The wine fridge has been repurposed as an aging cave for the upcoming Cotswald. Between the cheese and all our random canning/preserving/sausage making, my friend Jason and I figure we can manage an entirely home-grown cheese and charcuterie board by summer. (I am So. Excited. about this.)(I am a huge nerd.)

Since all my attention was on the pots of curds all over my kitchen, this low-maintenance dinner was just the ticket. I used up most of a bag of chicken on it, but it’s infinitely scalable and limited only by the size of your pan and the number of onions you’re willing to cut up. I opted to throw them in the food processor and suggest you do too. Finishing the dish used up half a pound of feta; if you’re interested in trying this, please swing by my house and I’ll set you up with some.

From The Glorious Foods of Greece: Traditional Recipes from the Islands, Cities, and Villages by Diane Kochilas.

 

Chicken Smothered with Onions and Feta

1 whole cut-up chicken, or any combination of bone-in chicken pieces, cut into serving pieces and excess fat removed
Salt
¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 ½ cups olive oil
6 large red onions, finely chopped
½ lb feta cheese

 Put the chicken in a large bowl. Sprinkle with some salt and the vinegar, then ignore it while you chop the onions (see above re: food processor).

In a pan large enough to fit all the chicken, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Put the onions into the hot oil, turn the heat to low, and cover. Let the onions steam in the oil for about half an hour.

Scoop the onions out into a bowl using a slotted spoon, leaving as much oil as possible in the pot. Raise the heat, then brown the chicken pieces (in batches, if needed.) Return the onions and all the chicken pieces to the pot, making sure the onions cover the chicken as much as possible, then cover and cook on low for about an hour.

When the chicken is falling off the bone and your house smells amazing, stir in the feta cheese. It will melt and turn the oil/onion combo into a thick sauce. Remove the chicken to a platter; at this point, I pull off any skin remaining on the chicken. Skim any excess oil off the top of the sauce and pick out any large pieces of chicken skin that have fallen off, then serve the sauce on the side. We like this with roasted potatoes or a simple pilaf, anything that will justify smothering the plate with the extra sauce. No part of the end product tastes particularly onion-y, if that’s a concern; even my onion-hating son will eat this.

 

Breakfast for Breakfast or Brunch or Lunch or Dinner: There’s a Reason Everyone Loves Shashuka

I just thought this was a really cool wine label

A couple of years ago, my social media feeds were blowing up with recipes for shashuka. I dutifully flagged them (I am the Brunch Princess, after all) but it wasn’t until recently that I started to appreciate the possibilities inherent in a recipe that (1) can be made from ingredients we pretty much always have on hand; (2) can be breakfast, lunch, or dinner; (3) scales up infinitely, based on entirely in the size of your pan and your willingness to keep poaching eggs; and (4) accommodates whatever your whimsy and spice cabinet thrown your way. Also: cool name.

I’m too undercaffeinated to leap into the fray about where exactly this dish originates. Start in Tunisia and work your way east – you’ll find dozens of countries that claim this as their own. It’s basically a spicy tomato sauce with eggs poached in it, and all the bickering and arguing and regional tweaks are just a testament to how flexible and delicious this is. Don’t have peppers on hand? OK, use other veggies. Need more greens? Stir ‘em in. Have an inexplicable desire to set your digestive tract on fire? Punch up the spices. If you have a can of tomatoes, an egg, and a sense of adventure, you’re good.

I suspect my particular version started as something on Smitten Kitchen, as do so many of the things I cook regularly. I’ve made enough variations on this that I ditched recipes completely, and now I just go with what I have on hand. Most recently, this meant an enormous cache of mini peppers and onions plus a big dash of a spice blend that Anna makes, from her lovely new Syrian cookbook (it’s so fantastic it’s going to get it’s own blog entry). I used the last of the homemade feta on top, which inspired me to make another batch. Anna made some rosemary focaccia to serve with it, and it made for a really lovely dinner. 

In other but completely unrelated food-related news: we just got a baking steel, a pizza peel, and a new cookbook. Look for some great GF pizzas from us in the near future! 

 

Shashuka

1 medium onion, chopped (about ¾ cup)
1 ½ cups (more of less) peppers, chopped; I use bell peppers because I have them on hand, but Anaheim and poblano peppers are also nice. Throw in a jalapeno if you want.
2-6 cloves of garlic, chopped; this is another area where your personal preference rules. I wish to deter the vampire population of Oakland County.
1 28-oz can of tomatoes. If you have tomato puree on hand, great; diced tomatoes, great; whole tomatoes, great. Fresh tomatoes? Great! (They’ll take longer to cook down).
Salt and pepper
Spices of your choice: I usually start with 2 tsp cumin, a handful of paprika, a few pinches of cayenne (depending on the peppers I used), and a teaspoon of z’atar or 7 spices or other Middle Eastern/Mediterranean spice mix. You could also go with some herbes de Provence and thyme, or oregano and fresh basil.
Spinach, a drained can of chickpeas, leftover fresh peas, or anything else you think sound delicious in here, optional. It’s okay to be a purist, too.
4-6 eggs, depending on the size of your pan
Optional garnishes: parsley, cilantro, feta, plain yogurt.

Using a frying pan, cook the onions and peppers in a splash of oil over medium-high heat until they begin to soften. Add the garlic and cook for a few more minutes, then add the tomatoes and spices. If you’re using whole canned tomatoes, break them up before adding them; if you’re using fresh tomatoes, chop them up and add some water and a pinch of sugar (you might want to add a little tomato paste diluted in some water, a small can of V-8, or some other liquidy tomatoey thing to help the tomatoes along. Or not).

Turn the heat down and let the sauce simmer until it’s thickened up a bit, enough that you can make a dent in it with the back of a spoon and have enough time to break an egg into it. If you’re adding chickpeas or spinach or anything else that needs to be heated but not really cooked, stir it in and let it heat through.

Using the back of a spoon, make a dent in the sauce for each egg. Leave enough room so that the eggs can spread out a little bit; if I’m using my largest frying pan I can fit 5 eggs comfortably, with enough sauce left after serving that I can get some breakfast out of it as well. Your mileage may vary.

Cover the pan and cook until the eggs are as done as you would like them to be, usually about 10 minutes for me. I like the whites to be set and the yolks still runny enough to stir into the sauce.

Scoop two eggs and a generous serving of the sauce into a shallow bowl. Garnish with feta (my personal favorite) or a handful of your favorite shredded cheese, chopped parsley or cilantro, a dollop of plain yogurt, or whatever your heart desires.

Home is Where the Food Is: Spicy(ish) Syrian Potatoes

 As an aspiring culinary student, my daughter naturally asked for cookbooks for Christmas (we clearly don’t have enough of them in our house, LOL). My brother came through in spades with a beautiful, heartbreaking book full of stories from Syrian refugees and the recipes they shared with the authors. When Anna and I were both done reading it cover-to-cover (and crying), we immediately set to cooking from it.

I love cookbooks that read like stories. I realize that there is a widespread online impatience with authors/bloggers who write all sorts of extraneous information before actually getting to the recipe – guilty as charged. But it’s not just the taste/smell/staying alive part of food that I love. I want to hear the stories of why you liked something, or the times you’ve served it, or when you learned to make it. Food is love and home and culture and community and welcome and comfort and all sorts of other things. If I cook for you, you are part of my heart.

It’s fitting, then, that the first time we made these potatoes was for Falafel Night. Falafel Night, in case you’re not aware, is a Big Damn Deal around here; we use a recipe from a book my college roommate sent me from Dubai which involves overnight soaking of beans and grinding and the tedious, loving work of shaping each little oval individually. We only do it a couple of times of year, and always for people that are important to us. It inevitably turns into an orgy of overeating; this time around I made 4 pounds of grapeleaves that didn’t even last until the next day. In a world in which I had no other responsibilities than cooking, falafel would be a weekly event. And since that’s not realistic, these wonderful potatoes will have to do.

While I realize that garlic makes everything magical, the real star here is the Aleppo pepper. I’ve never seen it at a regular grocery store, although markets and high-end chains that sell spices in bulk may carry it. The most reliable source for most people will be Penzey’s spices. Aleppo pepper is dark red and not quite as hot as the red chile flakes you probably have in your cupboard; the flavor is something like what might happen if an ancho chile had a fling with a raisin. I’ll be sure to let you know if I ever fiddle around enough to make a spice mix that approximates it, but I just bought a big jar from Penzey’s so I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

I was going to see how the leftovers – hahahahahahaha, leftovers! Hahahahaha – ahem. I was going to see how the leftovers translated into some of my favorite breakfast dishes today, but the 4 of us ate all the potatoes last night at dinner. Guess I’ll have to make them again.  

Adapted with my editorial comments only from Our Syria:Recipes from Home by Itab Azzam and Dina Mousawi, a title that is even more heartbreaking once you read the stories in it. Never doubt that war is the cruelest thing humans can do.

Spicy Potatoes (Batata Harra)

4 medium yellow potatoes, peeled and cut into ¾-inch cubes (if you make a larger batch, use multiple baking sheets so the potatoes brown instead of steam)
Olive oil, for roasting
Salt, to taste
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 red cayenne chiles, seeded and finely chopped (we’ve omitted these and the potatoes are still delicious; you could also substitute a milder chile for less heat)
1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
1 tablespoon ground Aleppo pepper

Heat the oven to 400.

Roast the potatoes with olive oil and salt for about 30 minutes, turning halfway through, or until they are a nice golden brown color (see above about the perils of doubling this and only wanting to wash one pan).

When the potatoes are almost done, quickly fry the garlic, childes, and half the cilantro until the garlic is golden. Once the potatoes are done, combine the garlic mixture with the potatoes, Aleppo pepper, and the remaining cilantro.

 

 

Cookbook Challenge #14: A Very Pleasant Pheasant

I’ll admit there was a little corner of my mind that was afraid 2020 was never going to end. I’d look at those memes that joked about the clock turning from 11:59 to 11:60 at midnight and give an uncomfortable little laugh – funny, but also not funny, amirite?

Now that we’re safely into 2021 by a couple of days – and let’s be real, so far it’s really just the same thing – it feels okay to look back at some things. Folks, we didn’t have the worst quarantine in the world. Yes, it was hard not seeing people. Yes, masks are uncomfortable. Yes, the degree of fear and uncertainty in the world right now is demoralizing. But we have been touched so lightly by this overall that I feel bad for complaining. David still has his job, the kids are doing as well (or better) in online school as they were in person, none of us have been sick, our family and friends are still here. We know many people who cannot say the same. And I’m well aware that it’s not over yet even if the turning of a new calendar year has given us a much-needed boost of optimism.

Christmas was a low-key affair, as it was for so many people; and while our Almond Boneless Chicken feast is still traditional, we spent Christmas Eve eating leftover curry in our pajamas rather than seeing the extended family, and Solstice dinner happened a day late because John’s karate test got rescheduled. All the more reason to make it really memorable.

Skeptics will look at this recipe and say, who the hell has pheasants lying around? And when am I going to want to set something on fire? The answer is: someone whose daughter’s boyfriend hunts (or has a good grocery store nearby, or is willing to pay D’Artagan.com prices), and more often than you might have supposed. Nothing ratchets up the festivities like fire! Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Yuletide carols being sung by a fire, Santa coming down the chimney (okay, fire-adjacent, ideally), etc etc.

I’m not a fan of the current competition-driven version of The Food Network, but back when their hosts were only moderately famous-ish people without kitchenware product lines, I was a huge fan of the Two Fat Ladies. I discovered this show around the same time I discovered I loved food. In my next life, I want to go toodling around the countryside in a motorcycle with a sidecar, drinking and swearing and eating all the good things and meeting interesting people. I don’t know why I don’t look at this cookbook more often because it’s really not particularly daunting; and I knew I could count on Clarissa and Jennifer to have at least one great recipe for pheasant – after all, it’s in the theme song. 

The header begins, “This is a sumptuous way of preparing pheasant” which should brace you for what’s to come. Two average-sized birds fed four of us to the point where we all went and laid down on the couch and unbuttoned our pants afterwards. Save this for an occasion with elastic waistbands and people you love.

Adjusted ever-so-slightly from Cooking with the Two Fat Ladies by Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson.

 Pheasant Normandy

4 sweet, firm apples (firm is more important than sweet here – you can adjust the sugar if needed)
1 stick butter
1 teaspoon brown sugar
2 pheasants
2/3 cup Calvados
2 ½ cups heavy cream, more or less
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Peel and core the apples, cut them into rings, and fry them in 4 tablespoons of butter. Add the sugar and cook until they are beginning to turn golden brown. Set aside.

Melt the rest of the butter in a Dutch oven large enough to hold both birds. Brown the birds on all sides, making sure they’re coated with butter. Cover and bake at 375 for 40 minutes, or on the stovetop for roughly the same amount of time.

When the birds are tender, transfer them to a cutting board. Carve the meat into serving-size pieces (leave the legs whole). Set aside.

Turn the heat up under the pan until the butter and pan juices are bubbling, then add the Calvados and SET FIRE TO IT. (Super fun!) Tilt the pan and roll the mixture around until the flames subside or you start to get freaked out by how long this has been burning and put the lid back on. Be brave, my friends: The burning part goes on for a bit. A couple of hints: Use the super-long lighter you use for your grill, and don’t wear fabric oven mitts.

Once the flames are extinguished (by whatever means), add the cream and cook, stirring, until the sauce thickens. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Arrange the pheasant pieces on a nice serving dish with sides, put the apples on top, and pour the sauce over the whole thing.

I took the Ladies’ advice and made a very simple side with this, brown and wild rice cooked with a little stock and a simple lettuce salad with vinaigrette. This is utterly delicious but very rich; possibly you will be too full for dessert. Dining by candlelight recommended.