Fearless Kitchen

Recipe: Potatoes in a Yogurt Sauce

Recipe Source: Saberi, Helen.  Afghan Food & Cookery.  Hippocrene Books, New York, 2000 p. 195

I'm not really sure what my issue was that day.  My body must have really craved calcium, because not a single one of the four dishes I made that day lacked dairy.  This is unusual for me.  Like many people with allergy or sinus problems, I tend to to use a whole lot of dairy in my everyday cooking.  I guess that you have to do what you have to do, though. 

I really enjoyed this recipe.  If the other dishes I served that day hadn't been so very filling, there would have been no leftovers at all, and I nearly ate myself sick on it as it was.  I love potatoes, of course (a taste I share with my mother), and I'm always happy to find a new way to use them.  I didn't make many changes to this recipe.  I increased the garlic, added a little Aleppo pepper to the sauce, and left the potatoes unpeeled to retain more of their nutritional value.  Oh, I increased the amount of turmeric, too.  I justify this by saying that it has wonderful anti-inflammatory properties, which is true, but in reality I just really like the stuff. 

Potatoes in a Yogurt Sauce (serves 4; approx. $2.40/serving)

6 Yukon Gold potatoes, diced

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon turmeric

8 garlic cloves, crushed

16 ounces Greek fat-free yogurt

1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper (substitute cayenne if you can't find it.)

Equipment:

• Large pot or large wok

1. Heat the oil in the pot.
2. Add the onions and fry gently until golden.
3. Add the tomato paste.  Cook another minute or two. 
4. Add 1/2 cup (approx.) water and the cilantro.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until the sauce has reduced a little.
5. Add the potatoes, turmeric, and salt and pepper to taste. 
6. Carefully stir until the potatoes are coated with the sauce.  Add more water if need be. 
7. Cook gently, stirring from time to time.  Try not to break up the potatoes and add more water if necessary as you go. 
8. Crush the garlic into the yogurt with the Aleppo pepper and stir well. 
9. Put about 3/4 of the garlic yogurt mix on the bottom of your serving bowl. 
10. Top with the potatoes when soft (but not mushy).
11. Spoon the remaining yogurt sauce on top of the potatoes and serve. 

Recipe: Eggplant in Black Bean Sauce

This year the first hard frost kind of took us a bit by surprise.  New England is a funny place to grow things, at least as an amateur who has never actually studied agriculture.  The first year we had our garden it flourished and it produced well into late October.  Last year, thanks to the cold summer and the astronomical amounts of rain, we got precisely one habanero pepper and two tomatoes.  We really expected this year to be the same.  After all, the spring was actually colder than last year, and soggier too.  We had tried to accommodate that by putting our plants out later in the year, once the weather was warmer, and starting them indoors in a sun room (with a grow lamp, thanks to the soggy weather!)  When we left for our August vacation, we thought it was all for naught.  None of our seedlings had grown in the slightest and we had actually started to talk about replacing the garden with a swingset. 

Then we got back from Pennsylvania.  In just ten days our plants had shot up and begun to fruit.  We enjoyed so many tomatoes we had to get people to come and do a pick-your-own kind of thing, and I'm still trying to come up with a plan for all those chili peppers.  The thing is, the frost came quickly this year, and early, and very very suddenly.  My husband harvested as much as he could get his hands on and left me to come up with ways of using things before they rotted. 

This is one recipe that I came up with to meet that challenge.  There aren't a lot of ingredients.  There's the eggplant, which needed to get used ASAP.  There's the black bean sauce, which was left over from the Squid in Black Bean Sauce recipe and was taking up space in the fridge.  Then there's the oils and the garlic.  That's pretty much it.  It's a very tasty treat, a little on the spicy side maybe but you don't have to choose black bean sauce with chiles in it. 

Eggplant in Black Bean Sauce (serves 4; approx. cost per serving not available)

3 long, thin eggplants (I'm guessing about 1 1/2 lb here), diced

1/4 cup water

4 tablespoons black bean sauce - I used black bean sauce with chiles, but there are other kinds available

1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil

1 teaspoon hot pepper sesame oil

8 cloves garlic, crushed

Equipment:

• Wok or frying pan

1. Heat the oils in the wok.
2. Add the garlic and stir-fry a few seconds, just until the garlic becomes fragrant.
3. Add the eggplant and saute until the eggplant is just beginning to change color.
4. Add the water and the black bean paste.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat.
5. Stir well to ensure that all of the eggplant gets some of the sauce and cook until the eggplant is tender. 
6. Serve.

Recipe: Chicken in Chili Sauce

Recipe Source: Lee, Cecilia Hae-Jin.  Eating Korean.  John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 2005 p. 177

I made this dish as part of my attempt to eat healthier during the playoffs (a futile attempt so far) and as part of one of my regular freezer purges.  I had some chicken thighs in the fridge.  I knew that in order to implement my plan of making food ahead of time and eating it during the week I would need to clear some space in the freezer.  This was done. 

I did make a few changes, naturally.  I halved the amount of chicken, because that's what I had on hand.  I also used boneless, skinless chicken thighs instead of the bone-in ones, again because that's what I had.  Due to poor inventory management, I had run out of regular onions on Sunday and had only red onions to work with.  I substituted some home-grown broccoli for the zucchini and carrot, because I detest carrots and because we'd harvested the broccoli before the first big frost and needed to use it up.  I increased the amount of garlic and I omitted the sugar. 

I really, really liked this dish, having felt the need to sample it before freezing.  It's a hearty, fall-appropriate dish that really brings a smile to your face.  Well, my face anyway, and my husband certainly liked it too. 

Chicken in Chili Sauce (serves 4; approx. $2.51/serving)

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into small pieces

2 cups water

2 potatoes, cubed

1 red onion, diced

1 lb broccoli, chopped

7 garlic cloves, crushed

2 tablespoons minced ginger

1 tablespoon soy sauce

5 tablespoons Korean chili paste

2 scallions, sliced on the diagonal

Equipment:

• Deep frying pan or wok with lid

1. Bring 2 cups water to a boil in the pan. 
2. Add the chicken, potatoes, onion and broccoli.
3. Add the garlic, ginger, soy sauce and chili paste.  Bring back to a boil.
4. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, about 15 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. 
5. Add the scallions and cook another minute or so. 
6. Remove from heat and serve. 

Recipe: Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Two Ways

I've been craving grilled cheese sandwiches for months now, and I have no idea why.  I remember the grilled cheese sandwiches I used to get when I was a kid, at the babysitters'.  They were made with loads of butter (or margarine, I can't recall), a certain name-brand white sandwich bread with the nutritional value of drywall (and approximately the same taste), and a certain name-brand cheese-like product that looked more like a petroleum product than like a dairy food.  And I LOVED them, much to my mother's horror.  Of course, now I allow margarine into my house exactly once a year (for Purim, because my friend's mom's recipe is quite insistent about margarine instead of butter and Ruth prefers her mom's recipe).  I don't allow that particular name brand of sandwich bread into my house at all.  Ditto for pseudo-cheeses that look like they belong in an oil field.  But, uh, yeah, I still wanted grilled cheese. 

So after months and months of saying, "No, grilled cheese is bad for you, you don't need that crap, eat an apple," and assorted other counter-blandishments, I decided that once was unlikely to hurt.  Besides, cheese has calcium, and since my diet contains a pitifully low amount of dairy I justified it on calcium grounds.  Hey, pregnant women have higher calcium needs than other people you know.  You wouldn't want the Fearless Fetus to have brittle bones or anything like that, would you?  (I ignore the people pointing out that I could drink skim milk.  I stopped drinking milk when I was eighteen and my mother couldn't legally force it on me anymore and haven't looked back since.) 

I'm not sure why grilled cheese is called "grilled" cheese, because you'd have a really hard time making it on a grill.  Traditionally it should be made on a well-greased griddle.  We don't own a griddle, so I used a fry pan.  I decided that I would make two sandwiches, one with cheddar and one with smoked gouda.  That would be more exciting, at least for me, and would use up some of the cheese that had been in our fridge for a while.  When I served them, I halved the sandwich and served each of us one half of each sandwich. 

Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Two Ways (serves 2; approx. $1.61/serving)

4 slices Cheese Bread

1 ounce (approx.) smoked Gouda cheese, sliced

1 ounce (approx.) extra-sharp Cheddar, preferably a New York cheddar, sliced

1 ounce butter

1 tablespoon (approx.) olive oil

Equipment:

• Frying pan
• Pastry brush
• Spatula

1. Brush one side of each slice of Cheese Bread with the olive oil.  You don't need a lot; this is just to keep the bread from burning much.
2. Lay the cheese in a single layer on the oil-free side of two pieces of bread (cheddar on one, gouda on the other.)
3. Top with the other slices of bread, oil-side up. 
4. Melt the butter over medium-low heat in the frying pan. 
5. Put the sandwiches into the pan.  Toast until the cheese begins to get runny.  Watch the heat carefully here, since you don't want to burn the bread or the cheese!
6. Carefully flip the sandwiches and cook until the bread is well toasted.
7. Halve each sandwich along the diagonal. 
8. Serve one half of each sandwich to each diner. 

Recipe: Cheese Bread

Recipe Source: The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion.  Countryman Press, Woodstock, 2003 p. 211

The opening lines of this recipe say that it should be used for the "ultimate grilled cheese sandwich."  I've been craving grilled cheese for months.  I'm not sure why; I guess it's just one of those things.  Anyway, I'd made myself a bread the previous week to be used for sandwiches and toast, but the Spouse didn't think that the Vermont Maple-Honey Oatmeal Bread would make a good grilled cheese.  Fine.  I decided to make this just to have a bread that would make a good grilled cheese, and I can assure you that it did not disappoint in any way. 

Cheese Bread (Makes about 10 slices; approx. $0.43/slice)

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/4 cup lukewarm water

1 cup milk

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

1 tablespoon sugar

14 3/4 ounces flour

4 ounces cheddar cheese, grated

2 ounces grated pecorino

2 tablespoons olive oil

Equipment:

• Stand mixer
• Loaf pan

1. Combine the yeast and the sugar with the lukewarm water.  Let sit 5 - 10 minutes or until foamy.
2. Combine the yeast mixture with the remaining ingredients in the stand mixer and knead until you have a soft, smooth dough. 
3. Cover and let rise 1 hour.  It will not necessarily double in bulk, but it will get puffy and that's what you're looking for.  (If it does double, well, bonus.) 
4. Grease your loaf pan using your lubricant of choice, I used cooking spray. 
5. Transfer the dough to the loaf pan and cover.  Let rise until the outer edge is just barely over the edge of the pan, about 45 minutes.
6. Preheat your oven to 350. 
7. Bake the bread 35 - 40 minutes. 
8. Cool completely before using. 

Recipe: Game Pie

Recipe Source: Lennon, Biddy White and Georgina Campbell.  Irish Food and Cooking.  Anness Publishing, London, 2007 p. 164

This is a tasty, hearty dish for Fall.  The original recipe called it "adaptable" and let me tell you that I made sure of that.  I made a few changes, then I made a few more.  I also cooked the finished pie on the Big Green Egg, which gave it a wonderful color and a delicious, rustic, cooked-on-a-wood-fire flavor.  Since it's so adaptable, feel free to use whatever bird (and stewing meat) is available to you, just as I did.  I will warn you that some of the meat can dry out a bit if it gets re-heated a few days later.

Game Pie (serves 8; approx. $2.90/serving

1 duck

1/2 pound stewing lamb

4 ounces beef bacon (you can use pork bacon here if you can eat pork; it's cheaper and better)

4 ounces butter

2 onions, finely chopped

5 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tablespoon flour

1/4 cup duck stock

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

1/4 teaspoon grated lemon peel

1 tablespoon lingonberry jelly (redcurrant or rowan would be more appropriate, but I had lingonberry open and taking up space in the fridge.)

4 ounces Baby Bella mushrooms, chopped

1 pinch ground nutmeg

1 pinch ground cloves

8 ounces flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 cup butter, cut into "walnut-sized" pieces

Equipment:

• Food processor
• Rolling pin
• Large, deep pie plate
• Deep sauteuse or pot
• Big Green Egg (optional; this is the best way to cook it, but you can certainly do it in the oven and do it well, too.)

1. Combine the flour, salt, lemon juice and butter in the food processor.
2. Add just enough iced water that the ingredients come together.
3. Turn the mixture out onto a floured surface and roll out into a rectangle. 
4. Fold the rectangle into thirds, in on itself, and roll it out again.
5. Repeat step 4 three more times, then refrigerate. 
6. Remove the meat from the duck bones.  This will be kind of messy.  Discard the skin and fat and reserve the carcass for making stock (possibly the same stock you use in this dish!)
7. Slice the meat you've just carved from the duck into thin slices and set aside. 
8. Slice the stewing lamb into thin strips. 
9. Slice the bacon into thin strips as well. 
10. In the deep saute pan, cook the bacon until the fat runs. 
11. Add the butter.
12. When the butter melts, add the duck and lamb meat.  Brown the meats in the fats, in batches if need be, and set aside.
13. Cook the onions and garlic in the fat over medium heat.  Remove and set aside.
14. Stir the flour carefully into the remaining fat and cook 1 - 2 minutes.
15. Add the stock and make it into a fairly thin gravy.
16. Add the tomato paste, parsley, lemon peel and jelly along with the mushrooms.
17. Season to taste with the nutmeg and cloves. 
18. Return the meats to the pan and mix well.
19. Turn the mixture out into the deep pie plate. 
20. Preheat your Big Green Egg or oven to 425.
21. Top the pie with the dough you prepared in steps 1 - 5.  The crust should overhang the pie enough to make a seal with the scraps.  Do so. 
22. Glaze the top of the pie in whatever way seems best to you - I used milk, you can use egg if you like.
23. Bake 20 minutes at 425, then reduce the heat and bake at 300 for 1 1/2 hours. 
24. Serve hot. 

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Recipe Source: Klivans, Elinor.  Cupcakes!  Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2005 pp. 36 - 7

I made these as the dessert for a recent Sunday dinner.  They were good.  They were a little more dense than I was really expecting, but that doesn't change the fact that they were good and that most people had seconds.  They're not fancy.  They could have been fancier had I used the glaze suggested in the book, but I decided that they didn't need to be all that fancy.  My guests were just as happy with the powdered sugar topping, which was suggested by the book, as they would have been with a messy chocolate glaze. 

I made these pretty much as written, with the exception of the fact that I used fat-free Greek yogurt instead of sour cream.  I tend to do that as much as possible, because I've got lots of uses for Greek yogurt and very, very few uses for sour cream. 

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes (makes 18; approx. $0.41/ea)

2 cups flour

2 cups light brown sugar, packed

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup butter, cut into pieces

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup fat-free Greek yogurt

1/4 cup whole milk

12 ounces dark chocolate chunks

Powdered sugar, for dusting

Equipment:

• Stand mixer
• 2 cupcake tins, or however you get to 18 cupcakes
• 18 cupcake liners

1. Preheat the oven to 325.
2. Line the cupcake tins with the liners.
3. In the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the flour, sugar and baking soda to blend. 
4. Add the butter and mix until the butter pieces are "the size of small peas," which the book says should be about 2 minutes.
5. Scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl. 
6. Add the egg and vanilla.  Mix well.
7. Add in the yogurt and milk.  Mix until the batter looks evenly moistened; lumps are okay.
8. Mix in the chocolate chips.
9. Fill the liners to about 1/3" from the top of the liner, with the batter. 
10. Bake until a tester in the center of a large cupcake comes out clean, about 25 minutes.
11. Cool 10 minutes on wire racks in the pans, then turn out of the pans to cool completely.
12. Dust with powdered sugar and serve. 

Recipe: Chicken with Ginger

Recipe Source: Dunlop, Fuchsia.  Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook.  W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2006 pp. 130 - 1

As I think I've mentioned before, the first leg of the MLB Playoffs (the ALDS, for those of you who follow baseball) was challenging culinarily.  I don't think we ate a home-cooked meal the entire week, and the reason for that is simple.  I just didn't want to cook.  Well, that's not entirely accurate.  I wasn't willing to tear myself away from what was sometimes 12 hours of baseball to putter around in the kitchen where there is no baseball.  I decided that what I was going to do was to make dishes ahead of time that could be reheated and served with a minimum of fuss or effort on my part.  We would then eat said dishes, freeing ourselves from the tyranny of take-away. 

This was not one of those dishes.  This was, instead, a dish that I made to help me purge the freezer.  My freezer is small.  It holds essentially nothing.  You can probably get a pint of ice cream onto each shelf and then you're pretty much done.  This makes it very difficult to enact my clever plan of making tasty food ahead of time, and I have no idea at all what we're going to do when the Fearless Fetus graduates to being an actual baby.  Anyway, I needed to use up some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, so I made this.  The only other significant changes I made (the original called for chicken with the bone in) were to use duck stock instead of the Everyday Stock called for in the original and to use sesame oil instead of peanut oil for cooking, because I'm allergic to peanuts. 

Chicken with Ginger (serves 4; approx. $2.06/serving)

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-size chunks

2 teaspoons soy sauce, plus extra for seasoning if need be

One 3" piece of fresh ginger, unpeeled and thinly sliced

1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine

2/3 cups duck stock or water

3 scallions, finely sliced

1 teaspoon hot pepper sesame oil

3 tablespoons sesame oil

Equipment:

• Wok or saute pan
• Bowl

1. Put the chicken into the bowl.  Add the soy sauce and mix well.
2. Heat the sesame oils in a wok over medium heat, or possibly a little lower - sesame oil has a much lower smoke point than peanut oil.
3. Add the ginger.  Stir fry until richly fragrant.  The thinner you got the slices of ginger, the quicker this step will be.  I'm just saying. 
4. Add the chicken.  Stir-fry until it is tinged golden. 
5. Splash the wine into the side of the wok.  Mix well.
6. Add the stock and bring to a boil.
7. Reduce heat and simmer, seasoning with soy sauce to taste. 
8. Add the scallions when the liquid is significantly reduced.  Stir a few times. 
9. Add a little more hot pepper sesame oil if you like, then serve. 

Recipe: Mixed Sauteed Vegetables from Madagascar

Recipe Source: Samuelsson, Marcus.  The Soul of a New Cuisine.  John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 2006 p. 193

This is the recipe for which I originally made the spice paste I posted recently, sakay.  While the presence of sakay is certainly noticeable in this dish, the dish itself isn't overwhelmingly hot.  It just adds enough heat that you feel really good at the end of the dish. 

You may notice some vegetables that are not usually part of my repertoire in the ingredients list.  Yes, I included the carrot, and I even cooked the beets.  I don't personally feel that the carrots added anything good to the dish, but their sweetness didn't distract from the other flavors and it didn't have a negative effect on the final product.  (Translation: I picked them out like a picky toddler.)  Since the beets aren't cooked for too long, the house didn't get that nasty cooking-beets smell that I abhor. 

Sauteed Mixed Vegetables from Madagascar (serves 8; approx. $1.44/serving)

3 large Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into thin sticks about 2" long

2 carrots, peeled and cut into 2" sticks

1/2 head cauliflower, cut into florets

2 beets, peeled and cut into 2" long sticks (this will get messy.)

1 stick butter

1 onion, chopped

8 garlic cloves, crushed

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon powdered saffron

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 pound fava beans (I used frozen, because that's what I could get)

6 scallions, trimmed and chopped

1 tablespoon sakay

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

Juice of 2 lemons

Equipment:

• 2 saucepans
• Colander
• Large wok or saute pan

1. Fill both saucepans with salted water and bring to a boil.
2. Put the potatoes, carrots and cauliflower in one pot.  Put the beets in the second.
3. Boil 3 minutes for each pot.  Drain and set aside.  (It is important to blanch the beets separately, because otherwise the color would bleed all over the potatoes and cauliflower and they would lose their individual flavors.)  My advice would be to drain the beets first. 
4. Melt the butter in the saute pan. 
5. Add the onion and garlic.  Saute until the onion is translucent, 5 minutes or so. 
6. Add the ginger, saffron and coriander.  Saute, stirring often, until fragrant.
7. Add the vegetables.  Cook 15 minutes, or until tender. 
8. Add the fava beans, scallions and sakay.  Stir well to combine and cook until the fava beans are thoroughly heated. 
9. Remove from heat.  Stir in the parsley and lemon juice and serve. 

Recipe: Sakay

Recipe Source: Samuelsson, Marcus.  The Soul of a New Cuisine.  John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 2006 p. 61

My usual rule of thumb is to avoid using two recipes from the same source close together.  I break that rule when there is an important ingredient, such as a spice paste, in one dish that can be used in other dishes.  This spice paste from Madagascar is an important ingredient in the dish I'll probably be posting tomorrow, a mixed vegetable dish, but is delicious and wonderful in its own right. 

I made a couple of changes to the recipe, but they're minor changes.  I used minced jarred garlic (to finish off the jar), but I was concerned about a possible lack of garlic flavor in the finished product.  I added a little bit of garlic powder to compensate.  Also, I substituted olive oil for the original peanut oil, because I'm allergic to peanuts. 

The recipe makes about 12 ounces of paste and will keep for about 2 weeks in the refrigerator. 

Sakay (makes 12 ounces; approx. $0.26/oz)

3/4 cup chili powder (I used Chili Powder Extra Hot, because that's what I have)

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

4 tablespoons minced garlic

1 tablespoon garlic powder

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 cup olive oil

Equipment:

• Mini-prep mini food processor
• Saute pan

1. Heat a medium saute pan over medium heat. 
2. Add the spices and garlic.  Toast until fragrant.  Trust me when I tell you that you will know when that is, but the book says about one minute.
3. Remove from heat. 
4. Transfer the toasted spices to the mini-prep. 
5. Add the salt and blend well on low speed.
6. Add the olive oil.  Blend until a paste forms.