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.