Recipe of the Day

A few weeks ago, I was stuck with that ubiquitous and hugely boring ingredient - boneless, skinless chicken breasts - and was plum out of ideas.

But when I googled Recipe of the Day, it was my lucky day. One of the first responses was this Spicy Coconut Chicken Curry from the Food Network. I used butter instead of ghee, curry powder from a jar, and the results were incredible. This dish is fragrant, fruity, spicy, and pretty easy. These quantities also make a lot of leftovers, so I started packaging it up and bringing it to work.

The problem with these leftovers, though, are as follows:

1. It smells up the whole office and everyone feels like they have something to say about it (generally "Yum, that smells delicious," which is all well and good, but you cannot eat this meal in peace).

2. The chicken pieces, which have been cooked in the sauce, have a tendency to explode in the microwave. Maybe this is not very serious, but it's embarrassing and they do sort of still popple and crackle after you've heated up the dish. I do not want a piece of chicken to explode in my mouth.

As leftovers are one of my favorite reasons for cooking things in vast quantities, I needed a solution.

I started using sweet potatoes instead of chicken. The curried fruitiness of the sauce is a perfect match for the soft mushiness of the sweet potato.

Instead of cooking the potatoes in the sauce, I make the sauce separately and microwave the sweet potatoes according to these guidelines.


Peel the sweet potatoes, cube them, and add them to the sauce.


Serve with basmati rice and yogurt.


It makes a terrifically luscious vegetarian option.

What's in your cupboard?

Inspired by Alice Waters' list of things-to-have-around-to-whip-up-delicious-food-at-a-moment's-notice (from The Art of Simple Food), here's what I always have in the kitchen:

onions
garlic
lemons
olive oil
butter
3 cheeses - hard yellow (cheddar, parmesan), softish white (brie, camembert), really soft white (goat or sheep's milk cheese)
eggs
jams
Nutella
tahini
loaf of Pepperidge Farm whole wheat bread in the fridge, which makes it last forever
rice - arborio, basmati (white and brown), pearl
pasta - long noodles, short noodles, soupy noodles
chicken stock - I love Better than Bouillon
sweet potatoes
flour - cake, all-purpose, bread
sugar - brown, granulated, confectioners, demerera or turbinado
chocolate - bittersweet and semisweet baking chocolate, Ghirardelli chocolate chips

Canned:

beans - kidney, black, cannellini, and chick pea
tomatoes - peeled, pureed, sauce, paste

In the freezer:

peas
ground meat (normally turkey)
gyoza
a whole chicken
molokhaya
pitas

Things you can whip up using the above include hommos, full-on chili con carne or vegetarian chili, wonton soup, risotto with cheese, peas, and onions, lemon-garlic roast chicken, pasta con pomodoro, chocolate sandwiches brushed with confectioner's sugar, or these killer New York Times brownies.

What's in your cupboard?

That's What Makes the Gravy Grander*

Towards the end of every week there comes a point when I open the fridge and it's empty. We've cooked all of the fresh food, we've munched all the leftovers, and we're not going to the supermarket until the next day.

Time to scrounge.

Last time this happened, I unearthed frozen Johnsonville brats and a few potatoes. It was a start. But there was something about a plate of sausages and potatoes that struck me as unbearably bland (albeit hearty). I needed to add a little something to make it a meal I actually wanted to eat as opposed to a we're-out-of-fresh-food-so-deal meal.

So I diced up an onion and started making some home-made gravy.

I fried it in a mixture of butter and oil until it was translucent. I threw in some flour to make the roux, and it blackened immediately. I thought my gravy alchemy was all over, that the flour was burnt, but after adding chicken stock, the gravy was an appealing golden-brown color.



To finish it, and add a little tang, I dropped in a teaspoon of Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard.

I boiled the sausages, then sliced them lengthwise and seared them cut-side down.

My husband parboiled and broiled the potatoes, we made a salad, and the end result was hearty and delicious.



Dinner was saved.

*Post title changed! I asked for input as follows:

Ed's note: Um. I know this title [From Bland to Grand] is dorky. And I love myself a dorky title (see Stewed Drupes) but seriously, I need help. Any suggestions? Kthxbye.

Thanks Emma!

Stewed Drupes

I wanted to call this post "Plum Jam" but that is not really what I ended up with. So I am going with the much catchier title, Stewed Drupes.

We had a pint of plums from Trader Joes that had been sitting on the counter for two weeks and were still as hard as cannon balls (I guess it's because I didn't put them in the fruit bowl as they recommend. My bad, because obviously they would have ripened magically in those radically different conditions).


I considered roasting them with sugar, butter, and cinnamon, but when I took a bite of one, the flesh was so hard and, quite frankly, tasteless, that roasting did not seem a sufficient measure to coax some flavor and pleasing texture out of them.

Instead, I chopped them up into small pieces (8 plums in all), put them in a pot, added 3 cups of water, 1/2 cup of sugar, and embarked on an evening of making jam.


This is when they had already been stewing for a while - the flesh was originally very pale. The rich jewel color comes from the skins.



I brought the mixture to a boil and then simmered it for two hours. This is the right thing to do if you are watching television and you do not want the sugary mixture to burn or boil over (making a horrible mess and / or catching fire) as you can only pop into the kitchen during commercial breaks.

This is the wrong thing to do if you want jam.

In order for the boiled fruit to become jam, the fruit has to boil at a high temperature for long enough to release the fruit's natural pectin (I only looked this up after the fact). The pectin changes the consistency of the fruit from runny to gelatinous, which you can determine by spooning a small amount onto a plate (necessary because everything is runny at high temperatures, including fully-set jellies and jams). If the spoonful of fruit runs everywhere, all you have is stewed fruit. If it blobs into a discernible shape, you've got jam, baby.

I had stewed fruit. Jam it isn't, but it's pretty, no? That's my favorite color in the world.



You can serve the stewed drupes with ice cream, a la the Barefoot Contessa (and her recipe doesn't take two hours). Spread it on toast, scones, or between layers of a cake. Dollop onto freshly-made rice pudding. Or my personal fave - mix it in with yogurt topped with fresh granola and nuts.

Besides the consistency, the other distinction between jam and stewed fruit is it doesn't last forever. I took the "preserve" out of "preserves." No matter. It's too sweet and delicious to last long.

Aspirational Kitchen - Part 1

Recently, I received the most amazing catalogue ever, full of restaurant-grade tools and appliances. I felt a rush of validation. Someone out there, someone who sells my name and shopping history to other companies, knows who I really am.

*silence*

Um. You know. An accomplished chef.

Only, my receiving this catalogue is a little bit like a child who has played Operation getting a surgical kit for Christmas.

Many of the objects are intimidating.

Like this:

"Alright, alright, I confess!"

Or this:












Others have brilliant marketing names. I present the VinoVault:

"Honey, Harold had too much wine again."

"What are we doing to do? Wait! Let's lock him in the VinoVault, and he'll be ready to drive in no time."

Okay, so it's not for cooling down winos, but for keeping your bottles of wine at just the right sipping temperature. Beautifully aspirational. But given that we rarely spend more than $5 for a bottle of wine (thank you, TJs), I'd rather buy 80 bottles of plonk than spend $400 on this.

Tea Time

After years of carting suitcases full of tea back from family trips to England, I have made an amazing discovery. PG Tips is now available on Amazon.com. With free shipping.

Rejoice.

Mulled Wine

It's freezing outside. Which means it's time to fire up the stove and start mulling wine. After all, what better antidote is there to a biting wind than a glass full of warm spicy wine? It goes down particularly well with guests.

1 bottle of really cheap wine (I'm serious. Everything we add after this point would completely disguise a nice wine, so there's really no point - in fact if you have a half open bottle you don't know what to do with, why not chuck it into the pot?)
1 or 2 cinnamon sticks (or 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon)
1/4" piece of ginger root (or 1/4 tsp ground ginger)
sprinkling of allspice
sprinkling of nutmeg
1 tbsp honey or sugar (or more if the wine tastes acidic)
1 or 2 shots of rum

Combine all ingredients in a soup pot or saucepan. Heat on medium low until honey / sugar is dissolved and liquid is warmed through. Alcohol evaporates quickly, so be careful not to boil. Strain before serving.

What could be better than that? Maybe this recipe for chocolate wine, which I will have to try one of these days.