Lahmacun

So now I work at a cooking store.  My coworkers own every cool cooking tool that exists, and one was nice enough to lend me their Emile Henri pizza stone.  After baking a bunch of wonderful soda bread, I decided to try to reproduce a delicious flatbread pizza I'd eaten in Istanbul last summer.

I doctored the topping, adding more chili pepper flakes, cumin, and red bell pepper with the tomatoes.

Then I baked it on the pizza stone, making a really crispy crust.

It was delicious.

I will add the recipe soon.

The High Holidays!

Since it was just me and the hubby this Rosh Hashanah, I decided to go all out.

Two kinds of challah.

Apple:

And my regular challah recipe, but made roll-sized and round!

[The leftover apple stuffed challah makes fantastic bread pudding!]

For the first night, I made a persian chicken, apple and cherry stew, a khoresh.  It was a bit too sweet, and a bit too watery, but the chicken was melt-in-your-mouth tender.

The persian rice with crispy topping [tahdig] was more successful.

We had a really nice Riesling to go with the meal.

Since I was trying to be economical, lunch consisted of my friend AF's fabulous chicken and apple salad (recipe will follow in another post!)

Night two started out with the traditional apples and honey with an unusual fruit (starfruit in this case, I couldn't find pomegranate):

There is a Jewish tradition to eat a "new" fruit on the second night of any holiday.  Some popular ones are pomegranate, star fruit, kumquat, etc.

We had a traditional brisket for dinner.

All in all a delicious holiday with lots of leftovers!

Sometime in July

Eager to relieve the glories of Dad's kitchen, and to live down past kitchen disasters once and for all, to save face in front of my brother and his friend A, I borrowed my Dad's girlfriend's Syrian Jewish cookbook and went to town.  On the menu:

Phyllo triangles stuffed with spinach [Im'warah b'Sbanech]

Rice with crispy bottom [Riz]

Meatballs in tomato cumin sauce [Kibbe m'Kamuneh b'Bandoorah]

Jewish Sabbath bread [Challah]

Pistachio rosewater cornstarch pudding [El Mazeeyah]  {Least successful dish, tasted more like a palate cleanser than a proper dessert}
Phyllo nut pastry [Baklawa]


And no dinner party would be complete without a Menage a Trois!
Just kidding...

One-pan Chicken dinner in the Oven

So I discovered this chicken recipe by accident, and have tried it successfully in three different variations, whose descriptions I will include.

Ingredients
boneless skinless chicken breasts
olive oil

Version 1: 1 large zucchini, 3 tomatoes, 2 small onions, fennel, garlic, lemon, cumin, coriander, tumeric, paprika, salt and pepper

Version 2: 3 small potatoes, 2 small onions, cherry tomatoes (cut in half), curry powder, cumin, coriander, tumeric, paprika, salt and pepper, a little bit of liquid in the bottom of the baking dish.

Version 3: 3 small potatoes, 2 small onions, 1 zucchini, 2 small tomatoes, lemon, curry powder, cumin, tumeric, paprika, salt and pepper

Supplies
Knife and cutting board
Baking dish
Oven

Directions (for Version 3, which I have pictures for)


Slice the potatoes and layer them in the bottom of the baking dish.

Slice the onion and add it to the pan.

 Chop the zucchini and tomato and add them.  

 Season with salt, pepper, and turmeric. Drizzle on some olive oil.

Pull out your seasoning for the chicken breast.  In this case I used curry powder, paprika, cumin, turmeric, salt and pepper.  Slice the lemon.

Rub olive oil on the chicken breasts and season on both sides with spices.

 Layer lemon slices on chicken breasts to keep it moist.  Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until cooked through.

If lemons start to burn, tent with tinfoil.
Enjoy!

Date Night Dinner!

Tonight my husband and I are having a special evening out:  a show at the Fox and steak for dinner!

For the soup:
1 acorn squash
1 c chicken stock, optional
2T margarine, optional

Preheat oven to 375F.  Wash the skin of the acorn squash.  Pat dry.  Stab repeatedly with knife--this is very good for stress!!!  It also keeps it from exploding in the oven under the pressure of the steam from its flesh cooking.  Put on baking tray, to catch any leaking juices, and roast for 45 minutes or until tender.

Let cool.  It should be soft enough to pierce easily with a fork.

Cut in half.  Scrape out the seeds and innards, discard. 

Cut in four pieces and peel off the skin, discard.  Puree the flesh and add choice of liquid and spices to make a tasty soup to the desired consistency!

I added turmeric, a little coriander, a little ginger powder, and fresh ground black pepper. 

The puree can be frozen, and snuck into other veggie-less meals to pump up their healthiness.  Stealth veggies!!  You can also add brown sugar, orange juice, and milk or cream to make a sweeter soup, or blend in apple puree or parsnip puree to make a veggie side, sweet or savory respectively.

Steak

Ingredients
3 beef eye of round steaks
1/4 c sweet vermouth
1/4 c white vinegar (white wine or cider would have been better)
1/4 c olive oil
1 onion, diced
Salt and pepper

Salt and pepper both sides of the steak.

Marinade the meet in the vermouth, vinegar, oil and onion.

I never finished this post, because while the soup was delicious, simple and filling, the steaks were too greasy and underseasoned.  I should not have used olive oil, I should have used a more acidic marinade, and I should have kept the onions separate from the meat as they cooked at a different time and temperature.  Lesson learned.

Sausage, peppers and rice

Ingredients
2 onions, diced
sausage (I used about 6 inches of a Turkey sausage link)
2 bell peppers (I used 1 red, 1 yellow)
garlic
beer
chicken stock
rice (I used brown basmati rice)

Set the rice cooking, with just a little less water than usual since it will be finished in the frying pan.

Cook the sausage and onion in a frying pan, letting the fat from the sausage soften the onions.

Add the bell peppers and garlic.

When all the vegetables are softened, add some beer to deglaze the pan, about 1/4 c.  This keep things from burning and adds a little flavor.  Wait for that to heat up and start to cook off, and add the chicken broth, about 1 1/4 c.

When that reaches a boil, add the almost-cooked rice.

Let the rice absorb most of the liquid.
Serve and enjoy!

Silly Orange Halloween Dinner

Barbecue-Sauce Baked Chicken with Pumpkin-Mashed Potatoes and Roasted Carrots

Ingredients
2 Boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 c canned pumpkin
3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 T margarine
1/4 c chicken stock, or amount necessary for desired consistency
4 carrots, peeled and chopped into 1" pieces
olive oil
salt, pepper
BBQ sauce (store bought or recipe below)

Preheat oven to 375F.  Spread some BBQ sauce in a baking dish.  Set chicken breasts on the sauce.  Spoon more sauce onto the chicken breasts, being careful not to cross-contaminate.  Bake for 25 minutes.

On a baking tray or a second baking dish, place carrots, toss in olive oil.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  Put it in the oven for about 25 minutes as well, until tender.

Boil potatoes until tender.  Drain, return to pot, add pumpkin and heat a bit so that any excess water cooks off and the pumpkin warms through.   Add the margarine and chicken stock and mash with ricer, fork, or potato masher.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Barbecue Sauce
1 can tomato paste
white vinegar
brown sugar
cumin
chili powder
Worcester sauce

Blend all the ingredients into desired thickness and taste.  I just experimented until it tasted right.  You can also add hot sauce, diced onion, or whatever you like.

And voila!  A very orange meal for Halloween!

Spaghetti with Meat Balls: or how to hide veggies without even trying, my recipe

Ingredients
2 onions
2 carrots
2 celery sticks
1 lb lean ground beef, appx
1 egg
breadcrumbs (optional)
2 cans diced tomatoes, no salt added
1 jar tomato sauce
garlic
My herbs of choice: parsely, basil, oregano, cumin, turmeric, black pepper
Spaghetti

Supplies
knife and cutting board
blender
2 pots: 1 for the spaghetti, 1 for the meatballs (if you cook the spaghetti 1st and set it aside, you can get away with just 1 pan)
colander (for straining the spaghetti, you can use the pot lid if you don't have one.  Just be careful of steam burns.)
jar or garbage container of some kind

Dice onions, carrots, celery. In a blender, puree 1 onion, the carrots and the celery.

Mix the pureed veggies, meat, and egg in a bowl.

Add breadcrumbs to the bowl.  The point of the breadcrumbs is to help bind it all together by keeping it from being too moist, but if you don't have that, just treat them more gently.  I usually start mixing the meat, and have my hubby shake some in, and decide how much by feel--not too dry, still moist, but holding together a bit.

Once mixed, roll the meat into little balls, about 1" diameter.

Heat a pot and add meatballs gently, one at a time.

Keep adding meatballs, rolling the already cooking ones to one side so they brown all over and to make room for the new ones.

Carefully pour off the fat that is cooking off the meatballs into your throwaway jar or container.  I didn't have one, so I poured it into a bowl until it cooled enough for the trashbag.

The meatballs don't have to be fully cooked, just gently browned.  They're going to simmer in sauce later to get fully cooked.
Add the remaining diced onion to the meatballs to soak up the fat that is left in the pan.

When they begin to soften, add the two cans of diced tomatoes with their juice.

Add the whole jar of sauce.  Sometimes I save the jar in the fridge, wait until the pasta is cooked, and pour about 1/4 c of the pasta water in the jar to pick up ALL the rest of the sauce in there, and pour it into the cooking sauce to thin it.

Stir very gently so as not to break up the meatballs.

Cover, bring to a boil, then simmer on low for about an hour or until you're hungry, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing is sticking to the pan and burning. 

Add spices to taste soon before serving, so they don't lose their potency in the long simmer.  You can thin the sauce out if you need to be frugal and stretch this meal out, the meaty taste really permeates to make it feel richer than it is.
Serve with cooked spaghetti.

This dish freezes really well, with or without the spaghetti, so you can make a big pot of it on the weekend, freeze in individual containers, and have an instant and healthy meal on a night when you don't feel like cooking.

Chicken Stock

What do I do with the chicken after a delicious roast chicken dinner from my previous post?  I use the giblets and the carcass to make chicken stock.

Ingredients
leftover whole chicken (or soup bones from the butcher)
carrots, onions, celery, any root veggies (you can use the ones that had been roasted under the chicken, or fresh roughly chopped ones.  If you need to be frugal, you can save the chopped off ends and the pared skin of veggies in a freezer bag, and use them in this stock.)
water

Remove the chicken meat from the carcass of the roast chicken.

Save the chicken meat for other things.  (You could throw into a tortilla with salsa for a nice taco, add to the stock you'll be making with this recipe for a nice soup, add to a casserole.) 

Put the carcass, the reserved giblets, the vegetables, and skin into a stock pot.  Fill with water and bring to a boil.  Let simmer for about an hour.

I forgot to take pictures of it, I will fill them in next time I make stock, but once it smells fragrant and all the water is golden-brothy, place a colander in a large bowl and pour out all the water.  I put that in the refrigerator to cool.  I don't have a stockpot, so to get the quantity of stock that I want and the flavor level,  I generally refill the pot with fresh water and boil it again for another hour.  Then I pour it again into a colander, adding it to the first batch of stock, since the first batch was very flavorful stock and the second batch is weaker, it evens out to a nice balance.  Then I cool it, measure it into freezer bags, and freeze the stock for later.

My Iranian-inspired beef dish

The recipe for this came about by accident--I was craving steak but low on cash, had recently read a Medieval Middle Eastern cookbook, and was also trying to clean out the pantry.  It is an attempt to balance the acidity of vinegar and lemon with the sweetness of cinnamon, and the smokiness of cumin.  Texturally it is crunchy and smooth.  It might seem eclectic, but the flavors and textures usually work.  Adjust all the ingredient quantities to taste, as these are just approximations.

Ingredients:
Marinade
1/2 c white vinegar
1 t cumin
1.5 t sumac
1/4 t cinnamon
1/4 t cardamom
2 boneless round (breakfast) steaks, thin cut

Meal
1 can butterbeans, drained and rinced
1 Red bell pepper
1 Yellow squash
1/8 c lemon juice
1 t, heaping, garlic
cumin
turmeric
olive oil
parsley

Serve with:
green onions
rice (I prefer basmati, made with a cripsy crust in a rice cooker)

Supplies:
ziploc bag and dish
teaspoon
measuring cup
cutting board and knife
frying pan and wooden spoon

Mix all the marinade ingredients in a ziplock bag.

Add the beef.

Marinade the beef overnight.  I like to set the ziplock bag in a bowl to eliminate fear of leaking.

Dice the pepper and squash, set aside. 

Chop the green onion, set aside.* 

Chop the steak into bite sized pieces, brown in pan. 

Add cooking liquid and boil until steak pieces are cooked through, about 5 minutes.  

Pour all into a bowl and reserve.  Clean pan. 
Heat up olive oil and add the peppers and squash. 

Cook until the red pepper starts to soften.  Add beans. 

Continue cooking.  Add lemon juice, garlic and herbs. 

When everything is soft and the liquid is mostly cooked off, remove from heat.

To serve:
Layer rice in bowl.  Add scoop of vegetables.  Add meat slices.  Sprinkle on green onions.
Enjoy!

*I do these all first because I only have one cutting board, and I don't want to cut veggies on it after I've cut raw meat.