Spice Rack Challenge
There are definite disadvantages to being the sort of person who is addicted to trying new recipes, chief among them being those times when I find a recipe I just have to try, which then turns out to be a total flop, usually because the recipe was poorly written or poorly tested. (Not that I don’t make mistakes, too—I in particular have this little problem with reading recipes all the way through before I start them, which has led to derailed dinner plans more than a few times.) Last weekend, however, I got sucked into making a recipe I should have known was going to end in disaster, and of course, it did.
It was such a cool-sounding recipe, though. I was searching Epicurious for just the right recipe to make for this month’s Spice Rack Challenge—I decided I didn’t want to do anything sweet, and I wanted something that really highlighted the taste/aroma of cardamom (while there’s no shortage of recipes incorporating cardamom, an awful lot of them just use a tiny amount, mixed in with several other spices). Sifting through dozens of recipes for curries and chai, berbere and braises, I came across one for Shami Kebabs, a Pakistani recipe. Reading through the instructions, two steps caught my eye and made me think “I have to try this”: after combining most of the main ingredients, including ground beef, in a pot, you boil, then simmer them till the beef is thoroughly cooked (which runs against everything I’ve ever heard about cooking ground beef). Then, after that has cooled, you grind the whole mess up in a food processor, to get a sort of lumpy paste.
I really should have known better, especially since one of the reviews of the recipe described major problems getting the paste to form coherent patties that could be fried without crumbling. But I thought I knew what had gone wrong for that reviewer, and I forged ahead, totally seduced by the novelty of the recipe, and convinced I’d get it right. Well, you can pretty much guess what happened. When I hit the food processing part of the recipe, I realized something was really, really wrong with it—I don’t know what kind of food processor the recipe’s author has, but mine can’t simultaneously grind whole spices (whole cloves and cardamom pods, not to mention a whole cinnamon stick!) to edible bits, and grind cooked ground beef to anything but a sticky mess, which even after chilling in the fridge refused to cook up into nice little patties. I suppose the result tasted okay, but it was hardly worth all the work for an ugly pile of browned ground beef.
While I can’t really recommend that recipe to anyone (unless you can figure out how the author got the results she did), I can recommend the following one. It’s not terribly difficult (I managed to put it together even though I was already in the middle of round two of the fight with the virus from hell), and the cardamom definitely makes a major contribution to the flavor.
Cardamom-Scented Chicken with Ginger and Garlic
(from 660 Curries, by Raghavan Iyer)
2 Tbsp ginger paste (I used jarred “chopped” ginger, which is really more of a paste anyway)
1Tbsp garlic paste (again, chopped or pressed would probably be fine; I made Iyer’s garlic paste, which is just a whole lot of peeled garlic cloves (50!) whizzed in a blender with a bit of water)
2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp kosher or coarse sea salt
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
8 chicken drumsticks, skin removed (or a lesser number of other skinless chicken parts—dark meat is best for this, though)
2 Tbsp canola oil
1 medium red onion, cut in half and sliced thinly
4 bay leaves, fresh or dried
2 cinnamon sticks
2 Tbsp chopped cilantro (optional—I left this out because David hates the stuff)
Combine ginger paste, garlic paste, cardamom, cayenne, salt and turmeric to form a wet paste, and smear all over chicken pieces. Cover and refrigerate the chicken at least half an hour (overnight is best, though).
Heat the oil in a large pan (seriously, unless you’ve bought really tiny drumsticks, you’re going to want the biggest frying pan or similar sort of pan you have) over medium heat. Add the chicken parts, and once they’ve started sizzling a bit, strew the onions, bay leaves and cinnamon sticks over top. After about 8 to 10 minutes, when the chicken has browned nicely on the one side, flip it over, mixing things up a bit so that some of the onions and bay and cinnamon are now under the chicken. Continue browning for another 10 minutes or so, until the mixture smells menthol-like (that’s the cardamom).
Pour 1 cup of water into the pan and scrape the browned bits off of the bottom (don’t bother to take the chicken out, just shove it around to get at the bottom of the pan). Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover the pan, and continue to cook another 25 to 30 minutes, spooning the onion mixture over the chicken occasionally. If need be, once you’re done with this step, you can remove the chicken pieces and reduce the sauce over medium-high heat for a few minutes (I didn’t find this necessary, however). Remove the bay leaves and cinnamon sticks (if you can find them—if not, some lucky winner will get a prize! 🙂 ), stir in the cilantro if you’re using it, and serve the chicken with the sauce spooned over it. Iyer also suggests adding 8 oz. of baby spinach leaves to the sauce while you reduce it, which I didn’t try, but certainly sounds good.
Okay, this is going to be an abbreviated post, because I lost track of the deadline for posting (thanks for the reminder, Cheryl!) and my brain is currently mush due to the plague. The recipe I chose for this month’s challenge was—
La!!!
Meyer Lemon and Blood Orange Marmalade, courtesy of Melissa Clark’s “A Good Appetite” column in the New York Times (and whose recent book “In The Kitchen With A Good Appetite” I can heartily recommend–I got it for Christmas and read it cover to cover). It was really absurdly simple to make–I could probably even make it now, in my present addled state. And, as a marmalade-delivery device (because even I’m not so big a fan of marmalade that I’d just scarf it up with a spoon … more than once or twice), I made Oatmeal Popovers. Cute as they were, they were a bit on the tough side for popovers–maybe it was the oats, or maybe I let them cool a little too long. The marmalade more than made up for them, though.
I’ve always envied folks who can simply look into their fridge or cupboards, or walk through the grocery store or farmers market, and somehow just throw together a fabulous meal, either by knowing intuitively what will make for a good combo, or by having some subsection of their memory set aside for the purpose of maintaining their own personal recipe file. I, on the other hand, wasn’t born with that intuitive cook gene, and have a memory like a sieve, so if I try to grocery shop without having spent the sort of time planning and consulting recipes one would usually devote to mounting a polar expedition, I get vapor lock the moment I step through the sliding doors and end up picking stuff totally at random.
On the other hand, I’m not a total slave to recipes. I like to tweak things a bit (especially since I tend to like my food more robustly flavored than 95 percent of the American populace, it seems). Take the following two recipes, which I made this past weekend as part of the Spice Rack Challenge (this month’s challenge is rosemary):
First off, we have Rosemary Walnuts, a recipe by Laurie Colwin (whose writing I love) via The Gourmet Cookbook. While I’ve made these a gazillion times, I’ve probably only followed the recipe to the letter once–it calls for melted butter, and given that we like to eat them by the handful around here, I decided olive oil would be the better choice (and with all that rosemary and cayenne, I can’t tell the difference in the finished product anyway). This recipe is absolutely dead simple, and while the walnuts are a bit messy, they’re absolutely worth it:
5 Tbsp olive oil (or melted butter, if you want to be really decadent)
4 tsp dried rosemary, crumbled (you could probably use fresh, too–just use more)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp cayenne pepper
4 cups walnut halves
Preheat oven to 350 degrees with a rack in the middle. Mix together oil/butter, salt and spices in a large bowl, add walnuts and toss to coat. Spread nuts in a single layer on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes (don’t let the nuts burn, but let them get nicely toasted). These can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for several days, if they last long enough.
Okay, that was a relatively minor tweak. The other rosemary recipe I made this weekend, however, got tweaked a little more thoroughly. I decided I wanted to do something a little more unusual, something sweet instead of savory, so I started out with a recipe for a rustic rosemary-apple tart from A New Way to Cook, by Sally Schneider (you can also find it here). Given that I’ve been feeling a little whelmed lately, I really didn’t want to make my own pastry dough, especially since I had some perfectly good Trader Joe’s all-butter puff pastry sitting in my freezer (I strongly suggest you go get yourself some, right now, before it disappears again). What I ended up with was less rustic-looking, but about as simple to make, and with just the barest tinge of rosemary complementing the apples. (I also decided, on pulling the tart out of the oven, that it needed a glaze to pretty it up a bit, so I improvised with some honey, which was a very good idea, if I do say so myself.)
Not-So-Rustic Rosemary-Apple Tart
(the amounts below are vague because I was winging it, and they’ll vary depending on how large your sheet of puff pastry is)
1 sheet all-butter puff pastry, thawed
2-3 Tbsp packed light brown sugar
2-3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced 1/4″ thick
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1-2 tsp fresh rosemary, minced (don’t use dried here)
1-2 tsp unsalted butter
1-2 Tbsp honey
Preheat oven to 375 degrees, and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat, if you’ve got one. Lay the sheet of puff pastry either on a cutting board or on the parchment paper (just cut carefully, if you do this). Using the tip of a sharp knife, cut 1/2″ strips off of the four sides of the puff pastry, and reserve. Use a fork to prick the remaining sheet all over, then lay the strips on top around the edges, trimming as necessary. Freeze for 15 minutes, then par-bake your tart crust for 10 minutes.
While the crust is baking, toss the apple slices, brown sugar, lemon juice and rosemary together in a bowl. After the crust comes out of the oven, reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Lay the coated apple slices on the crust in rows, slices overlapping one another (basically, you’re trying to fill up the center area, leaving as little of the bottom crust showing as possible). Dot with bits of the unsalted butter. Bake for an additional 20-30 minutes (keep an eye on the tart to make sure the edges don’t get too brown–you can put foil over the edges if they do seem to be browning too fast). Microwave the honey in a small bowl for 10-15 seconds–you want it to be more fluid, so it’ll be easy to brush on to the finished tart, to glaze it. Serve warm or cooled (a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream goes really well with this).