Curried Squarrot Latkes

Tonight marks the start of Chanukah, the Festival of Lights.  The miracle we're celebrating is that while our ancestors were cleaning up their desecrated Temple from the Assyrians, they found only one day's supply of oil to light the Ner Tamid (eternal flame) which, as its name implies, should always be left burning.   It took eight days to produce more of the lamp oil.  The decision was made to light the lamp right away, even if it meant burning out while waiting for more oil.  But, guess what?   One day's supply of oil burned for eight, until they could once again guarantee a steady supply.

In celebration of that lamp, the marker of all Chanukah foods is oil!   Fried potato pancakes and fried doughnuts are the order of the day.

I was short on potatoes and long on other veggies (and only eating for one as BF left for holidays early) so this is my take.

Curried Squarrot Latkes

Serves two. Or one super-pleased cooklet with leftovers aplenty for tomorrow's breakfast. Play around with the measurements; I encourage you.

ingredients:

3/4 cup shredded or grated carrot (maybe one full-size or about 8 baby carrots or six small-to-medium ones)
1 cup shredded or grated marrow or other summer squash (6-8 inches)
1/2 onion, shredded/grated
1 egg
1/2 tbsp potato starch
2 tbsp flour
2 tsp curry powder
Salt and pepper, to taste

directions:

Shred or grate carrots, marrow and onion and remove to a bowl. Squeeze out excess liquid. Mix in the egg, then the starch and flour. Finally mix in the spices. Best mixing method is squishing with your hands.

Heat 1-2 inches of vegetable oil in a skillet on medium-high heat.

Form palm-sized patties of the mix and place carefully in the hot oil one at a time. Give the oil a few seconds or longer between each one to let it adjust to the temperature change before putting in a new one.

Fry 5-8 minutes on each side, until cooked to your preferred golden-brown shade.

My teeth couldn't resist long enough to decide an accompaniment, but I'm sure sour cream would be lovely to top it.

Flammkuchen & Pizza

When we have a few hours to wait for the dough to rise, and especially when we've found sour cream or mozzarella at one of the stores, the BF and I treat ourselves to thin crusts and hot veggies.

Flammkuchen is a specialty of BF's region of Germany, right on the border with Elsass (that's Alsace, more commonly, in French!)  It's made on a thin crust, spread with creme fraiche and topped with onions, bacon and nutmeg.  When we find turkey bacon in the stores it's a treat for me; otherwise we make do with a veggie version and may add some other toppings to compensate.  We did mushrooms this weekend and it was lovely.

Legend has it that these crispy wonders were tossed into the oven before the baker got going to check the oven temperature.  If the oven was too cold they wouldn't bake quickly enough.  If the oven was too hot, the thin crusts would catch fire; hence the name, which basically translates to fire-cake!  They're quick to bake, and you can add anything you want to the top of them.  Savory or sweet, they go down a treat.  And all you need are a few ingredients.

Make sure the oven's hot before you pop them in!  This is the one time I care that the oven's fully preheated because the crust needs to crisp up immediately.  Sometimes (don't tell) I don't preheat the oven - is that 50-minute bread really going to care if it took 4 extra minutes to warm up to full blast?  

Flammkuchen/Pizzateig (that's dough)

makes four servings, rolled thin

500g flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp yeast (or however much your yeast's instructions say for 500g of flour)

250ml/1 cup milk, at room temperature - too cold and the yeast won't wake up; too warm and you'll kill them.

1 egg

2-3 tbsp olive oil

Mix the dry ingredients together thoroughly.  Stir in the wet ingredients one by one.  Mix it around with your hands to get it all thoroughly blended. 

Leave it in a bowl with lots of room to rise.  Cover with a dishtowel and leave it somewhere warm (on a radiator, in a barely-going oven... in West Africa the balcony works perfectly!) for a minimum of 2-3 hours.  Can be left overnight if you've got the time. 

Flammkuchen Toppings

These measurements are for 1 pan, but rough estimates. 

The Traditional:

2/3 cup creme fraiche (if you don't have creme fraiche, mix 1 part cream to 2 parts sour cream)

1/2 onion, diced

1/4 cup speck or lardons (diced turkey bacon for me, please!)

Ground nutmeg - fresh is best.  Use a heavy hand here; it tastes lovely.

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 200C/390F. 

Divide the dough into quarters.  Dust your rolling surface with flour and roll each portion thin-thin, a quarter of an inch or so.  When you're getting close, place the pan you intend to use over the rolled dough to check if size and shape are right.

Butter the pan.  Place the dough inside, stretching to fit as necessary.  Spread with a thin layer of creme fraiche and top with onions, bacon, nutmeg, salt and pepper.  Bake for 10 minutes or so, until the toppings are sizzling and the crust is turning golden-brown. 

*The instructions I have say 20 minutes, but that can't be right; we put #2 in as soon as #1 is done, and #2's always done right as we're polishing off the last slice of #1.  And let's just say, we are not slow eaters.

You'll also know it's done when your kitchen fills with the tantalizing scent of baked crust and onions. 

Try any of these variations:

Sliced brown mushrooms

Baby spinach

Garlic

Piri-piri or other chilis

Other meats, such as (beef) salami or (turkey) ham

Muenster cheese

For dessert:

Spread with creme fraiche; bake with sliced apples and cinnamon; drizzle with Calvados or rum.  Set the booze aflame (safely!) as it reaches the table.

Spread with creme fraiche; bake with dark berries.  Top with honey?  Maybe some Pastis?

Spread with lemon juice; top with sugar.

Spread & bake with Nutella; top with strawberries.

Pizza?  Do you really need a recipe?

Start with the same teig; add fresh or dried herbs that you have available.  Let's say one tablespoon for the entire batch, or a tsp for each quarter - and yes, I know that doesn't add up!

Roll it the same way.  Spread with passata (sieved tomatoes; we find it in bottles here all the time).  Top with whatever your heart desires, salt and pepper, and super thin slices of fresh mozzarella.

There are two schools on how to do the mozzarella: shredded and spread(ed) or sliced and placed.  BF's convinced me to go the sliced way.  If you totally cover your pizza in grated fresh mozzarella, and I mean the good stuff, I'd be worried about a tastebud overload.  When sliced, the slices spread a bit when they melt, and with fresh, succulent mozzarella every new bite is a revelation and every cheeseless bite is full of delicious anticipation.  The flavors are balanced.

Plus, those fresh balls are fiendish to grate and spread evenly.  This way, distribution is intentional and artistic.  Done.

Upcoming Posts!

well, today we finally diagnosed my computer.  It needs a new charger.  And I'm going to get one... in Germany.  That's just next week, so I'll be catching up from then on!

Here's what's in store:

Pizza
Flammkuchen (devoured before photos could be taken)
mozzarella arepas
the earlier-mentioned lentil-ricotta "meat"balls
and oy, even Thanksgiving!

I think I'll start with text-only posts and add pictures from Germany.  I can't imagine how quick the uploading is gonna be with a real internet connection!

computer woes

No posts lately as my computer has a power issue so can't charge.  Working on getting it fixed and making sure they aren't overcharging me for fiddlies I don't need.  I could do words-only posts, but part of the whole deal here is the photos!

So, no Thanksgiving post yet.  Last week was so stressful I didn't cook much, so no posts from then.  And none of the lentil-ricotta meatballs from three weeks ago (!) because I have already saved a draft with the recipes, but not with the photos - so those are stuck, too.  Next week has a German test and a choir performance in store, so I can't even predict when the next post will be.  I did cook something quick tonight.


Something I do want to comment on, though, is how it can be difficult to cook everyday recipes here in Accra.

Yes, there are supermarkets for expats - four of them in the whole city of 2 million.  Yes, they stock two brands of imported, UHT-treated cream, and two brands of imported butter, two brands of UHT milk.  Yes, there are three kinds of cheese you can count on finding - and they're mass-produced in Lebanon with little attention to subtlety, detail or taste.  On the worst days, a block of orange cheddar from the store can taste like the bleach they used to clean the cooler last night; the best days find imported Cathedral City from the UK.  I long for cheeses that don't come labeled or shrinkwrapped.


Half of the time I devote to this blog is spent narrowing out recipes with ingredients I can't hope to find in West Africa, even in Westernized Accra.  Beef short ribs, arborio rice, sage, portobello mushrooms.  Fresh milk.  Different varieties of potatoes?  Are you kidding?  And don't even think about those lovely fall-inspired recipes I'm seeing lately, full of cool-weather harvests.  The weather here just doesn't get cold.

They talk about asking your deli counter for this-and-that, or going to the bakery aisle.  Our local bakery aisle stocks staples like maraschino cherries, Aunt Jemima sugar syrup for four times the usual price, four flavors of cake mix, and coconut milk.  Plus flour and sugar.


Still, there are things in the tropics you really can't beat.

We get the sweetest pineapples in the world (as Ghanaians proudly claim) year-round.  Mangoes picked off the tree the same day they're cut for me and packed in a rubber (plastic bag) are about to come back into season.  We get streetside roasted plantains to be snacked on with flavorful local peanuts.  We get boiled corn, dunked in coconut water and served with chunks of mature, crunchy coconut flesh - again, just starting to come back into season.


Still, I do wish I could find just half of the things I'm tempted by on Gojee.

Next move, I've promised myself, will be to a place where all these luxuries are easier to find, even, than Dublin.  We'll see how that goes!

thankstuffing teaser

recipes on Thanksgiving:

the "best turkey [one guest] has ever tasted"
pumpkin pie
Nor'n Irish champ
quinoa stuffing from no recipe but my head
mac and cheese reduxed

plus contributions from BF and guests.

teaser:

happy thanksgiving, y'all.

Lentil and Ricotta "Meatballs"

That's right.  These are meatless balls.

They taste light and rich; fluffy and satisfying.  This is such a keeper of a recipe.  They take a notable amount of prep work, though.  Just sayin', I warned y'all.  Make parts of this in advance.

In Jennie's Kitchen is a cool blog with loads of interlinked recipes and cross-referencing - in this post, I have put together three of her recipes into one spot.  Let me know if that's okay, Jennie.  The links I've given are all worth following, as she has loads of other recipes mingled into these ones: homemade ricotta, vegetable stock, and loads more.

With recipes from now on I'd like to take a page out of Food Network's book and add in prep times, so you know from the start what you're getting into.  Still working out the kinks and the preferences in all the formatting here!

Lentil and Ricotta Meatballs, in three parts

Active Prep Time: 60-90 minutes
Total Time: 5-6 hours (this includes two 2-hour chilling periods)

The first thing you need to do is make the lentils - with a while afterwards to let them cool.  Dear BF had the day off and made these in advance.  He cooked them plain and added the garlic and shallot afterwards... and they turned out just fine!

Then you cook up the meatballs, and the marinara sauce, and serve them all with pasta.

ingredients:

for the lentils

1 cup uncooked lentils (puy are recommended but we used red instead)
3 cups vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic, smashed
1 shallot, sliced
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

for the meatballs

2 cups cooked lentils, pureed
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup plain breadcrumbs
1/2 cup fresh ricotta
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 1/2 teaspoon chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Canola oil for frying
Marinara sauce, optional (see below)

for the marinara

2 teaspoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
1 can peeled tomatoes
Handful of fresh basil leaves
1 pinch sugar
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

directions:

for the lentils

Add all ingredients to a 2-quart pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, and cook for 30 minutes, or until lentils are tender. Let sit, covered, for 10 minutes to absorb any remaining liquid.

Cool at least 2 hours, or overnight, in preparation for meatballs.

for the meatballs

Add all ingredients to a deep bowl. Mix completely with your hands or a spoon. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or as long as overnight.

At cooking time, shape the mix into 1 1/2-inch balls. Heat about 1/2 inch of oil in a nonstick skillet over medium heat.

Add the balls and cook until browned, only turning once.  Transfer to a paper-toweled plate to drain.  Add to marinara sauce and serve over pasta immediately, or store in a covered container for up to 3 days.

for the marinara sauce

Crush the tomatoes with your hands into a large bowl.  Keep the liquid from the can.

Heat olive oil in a deep pot.  Add garlic and cook until golden.  Add the crushed tomatoes, plus any remaining liquid from the can, and stir.  Tear the basil into pieces and add to the pot.  Add the sugar and season with salt & pepper.

Simmer for 20 minutes.  Kaboom.

This will keep in the fridge for a week, or in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 months.

Last step: Put it all together, whaddaya got?!

Cook up some pasta.  Stir meatballs into marinara and ladle it onto the pasta.

Look at the fluffy insides... totally irresistible.

recipe (we hope) for wellness

I've got my second cold in the space of a month.  This time around, I took a day off of work to recover before it got as bad as it did the first time around.  I also was reminded by my buddy Jo about a traditional cold remedy:

Chop garlic finely.  Pour yourself a glass of milk.

Put chopped garlic on a spoonful of honey.  Swallow as quickly as you can (without chewing), then chase with the milk (to cut down the burning in your belly.  which raw garlic does).

Yowza!  Let's hope this works.

fajitas, and tortillas from scratch

Fajitas!

A sizzling favorite at Mexican restaurants and an easy-peasy dinner option. All you need are peppers, onions and the right spices.

Don't bother buying fajita spice seasoning packets. A well-stocked kitchen has all the spices you need in the pantry already. Maybe you'll need to go get the red pepper flakes, but those are worth it when you make homemade pizza.  That recipe will come up one of these days - as soon as one of the grocery stores imports some fresh mozzarella for a decent price!

Premade tortillas here are too expensive AND I really like making them from scratch, so I've also included a quick tutorial on corn tortillas in this post.

Fajitas for Two

Ingredients:

For eight tortillas:
1 cup masa harina
2/3 cup water
Pinch of salt

For the fajitas:
1 large chicken breast, or similar amount of beef or tofu or other protein source (optional)
2-3 tbsp fajita spice mix (recipe follows)
1 onion, sliced into thin strips
2-3 African-sized bell peppers (one American giant will probably do), sliced into thin strips
other condiments of your choice, such as hot peppers

Fajita Spice Mix:
3 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp sugar
2 1/2 tsp crushed chicken bouillon cube
1 1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp cumin

Directions

First off, to make the tortillas: Measure masa into a bowl. My package has instructions to make 4, 8 and 16 tortillas. This recipe made 8.

Measure out the water but don't add it all at once.

Pour in half or 3/4 of the water and mix thoroughly with your hand, kneading and squishing. Add more water as necessary until the dough becomes, as Alton Brown said, "like mashed potatoes." Moist so it sticks to itself, but not yet squishy. About like this:

Divide the dough into two even logs, and then cut each log into four equal-sized pieces. Voila: eight tortillas.

With experience, I've learned to eyeball the quantity needed and take it off the dough mass at once.

Keep all the dough you're not yet using in a bowl under a damp dish towel to keep it moist.

Grab your handy-dandy tortilla press! Make sure you have some plastic in there to keep the dough off of the plates. I use a cutout from a zip-top baggie but I know others who use squares from heavy-duty garbage bags.

If you don't have a tortilla press, you can press the tortillas between the counter and a heavy book, or under the bottom of a coffee can.

Roll the dough bit into a ball, center in the plastic and center the plastic in the tortilla press, then smoosh!

Flip the tortilla at least once, for even squishing, and re-press.  The part closest to the lever's base gets squished the thinnest.

Carefully unpeel the tortilla from the plastic and place into a hot pan. No oil is needed; the water in the tortilla will steam and cushion it from the bottom of the pan. Try moving it around the pan; you'll see! It's like a hovercraft!

If your edges taper (mine often do) you can tell the first side is done when the edges start to curl.

The second side is done when the tortilla begins to balloon up inside.  Like this...

See that shadow in the front?  Ballooning!

Tortillas can be kept warm in an oven or toaster oven on low. If in the oven, cover 'em up with something... in the toaster oven, covering may be too risky but keep the heat way low to stop them getting too crispy. They still need to be pliable for fajitas.

If you're lucky, you'll have a willing kitchen assistant nearby. While one makes the tortillas, the other can start cutting protein of choice (optional), onions and peppers into small strips, and/or mixing the spices.


When the spices are mixed, rub 2-3 tbsp (depending how spicy you want your fajitas) onto the protein, if using, or the peppers 'n onions, if not.

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a pan.  Fry the protein until nearly cooked through.  Add the peppers 'n onions and whatever extras you choose to throw in.

Cook until the veggies are soft.

Serve with salsa, sour cream and grated cheese. 

To serve: Spread ingredients in a line down the middle of the tortilla, and roll it up.

Curried Spinach, Chickpea and Red Lentil Soup

This post starts with an ode to my favorite recipe website: Gojee!

I wanted to make a Food Network Indian recipe - either Chicken & Cashew Curry or Cardamom Chicken Curry.  But BF had had chicken for lunch and didn't want another meal of meat + sauce.

Quick, to the kitchen!  What can we do with what we've got?  What have we got that needs doing?

Red lentils are a friend of mine in that they're very quick to cook (unlike many of their rainbow-hued cousins) and a filling source of protein.  Pop that into the recipe engine at Gojee and voila!  A soup that looks quick, easy and tasty, and uses ingredients we already have.  PS, quick plug of Gojee - it's a free, registration-required recipe "curator" tool that mines the food blogs for recipes.  You can search for recipes including a certain ingredient, permanently cut out things you "don't like" (which can be great for dietary restrictions, too), and there's a "crave" feature too.  It's a cool place.  If you're ever in a bind for what to make, you should check it out.

The recipe calls for Swiss chard, but we had some spinach sitting around that was days away from wilting so used that instead.  Besides, Swiss chard?  In Ghana?  Hmmm...

This soup is spicy, hearty and healthy.  It's super easy and quite fast to boot.  The cool yogurt is a wonderful addition - it's a perfect use for that thicker-than-Greek labneh I talked about earlier.  But it's great without, too.  And that would even make it vegan.

Curried Chickpea, Red Lentil and Spinach Soup

adapted from Fresh 365, in turn adapted from Bon Appetit
serves 4-6
prep time:
cook time:

ingredients:

3 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 pound spinach, chopped, stems (if included) and leaves separated
5 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp salt
1 cup carrots, coarsely chopped
4 cups vegetable broth
2 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups red lentils
15-oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
plain yogurt

directions:

In large saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add onion, garlic and spinach stems.  Sauté until golden brown, about 10 minutes. Stir in curry, cayenne and salt. Add spinach leaves, carrots, broth and water, stir, and bring to a boil. Add lentils and chickpeas. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until lentils are tender, about 12 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. To serve, ladle into soup bowls and top with yogurt.

The leftovers are amazing, too.

Ode to Yolks

As a kid, I never liked egg yolks.  I never liked their vague chalkiness, their cholesterol taste or the gray ring that enveloped them when they were hard-boiled.

I would only eat egg yolks if they were in scrambled eggs or omelets and doused with ketchup.  All hard-boiled yolks I would remove.  

Then I moved to Ireland, started shopping at the Co-op, and discovered the happiest eggs I have ever seen.  The yolks were the color of marigolds, and for the first time in my entire life, at the age of 25 I appreciated my first yolk.  It was rich and nourishing and for the first time, didn't taste vaguely... wrong.

Now we're in Ghana.  The hens don't generally feast on green pastures, but on what they can pick out of the rubbish heaps and scrubby grass patches at the side of the road.  Grassy front lawns are a rarity because they attract mosquitoes.  The local preference is to have a concrete yard in front of your house.  Maybe with some potted plants.

As you can imagine, egg yolks here were back to the pasty colors I was used to - and then even lighter on the spectrum.  Some yolks are hardly yellow at all!

But then I discovered that my physiotherapy clinic also ran a little shop, selling eggs with yolks as yellow as the African sunset.  I jumped right in!  

Some yolks were pretty average, but some were beautiful and orange.  That makes the whole pack worth it.  I can't get them all the time because I don't go to PT as often as we need eggs!  But I'm going again on Friday, and already looking forward to those creamy and delicious yolks.

Here's one now, with Roomie's feijao and rice.

(Separate post for that recipe will come.  Maybe.)

Tamales

You guys!  I made tamales!  They were time-consuming but so tasty!  Every tamal is a new reward, and honestly, I had fun putting these together.

Sunday was a real mix of emotions in the kitchen.  Each of us made something we'd been craving: Roommate M cooked up some Brazilian sweet rice, BF was on duty for a German cream-yogurt-fruit cake, and I: I made tamales.

M's rice came out lovely.  BF's cheesishcake, however, was not a success.  When he tried to whip the filling, it just ended up splashing everywhere.  No matter how long or hard the beaters worked, it wouldn't go.  We decided to add the fruit anyway, but it just curdled.  We had to throw it away untasted.

Such a disappointment.  

My dish worked out beautifully, though.  I hated to rub it in BF's face, but it really was awesome.

And he loved eating them - especially last night, a day after they were made.  He says they taste even better.  As for me, I'm saving my portion of the leftovers for Wednesday.

My friend and advisor on all things Mexican, Hugo of Cafe Azteca, had given me a recipe for the filling in December - the same time he sold me the corn husks you need to wrap around these parcels.  Yes, I've been sitting on those husks since then... Bad me, bad.  

This recipe needs a long time.  Set aside the better part of a day.  The meat should simmer for a couple of hours; the liquid you simmer in is left to cool then mixed with the dough; the corn-husk wrappers need to soak in hot water; assembly is pretty easy but time-consuming to a beginner; and THEN, when they've all been put together, they need at least an hour to steam.  Oof!

All things considered, though, these babies went down really smoothly!  I'd love to make more, but I'm out of dried corn husks and there aren't any Mexican import shops around here.  Shucks!

TAMALES

Recipe adapted from Alton Brown's Turkey Tamales and Cafe Azteca's Tamales

makes about 16 tamales

prep time: 1 hour

cook time: 2 hours (all told)

Ingredients

For the meat filling:

2 teaspoons chili powder

• 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly toasted and ground cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 500g chicken fillets
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 serrano chile, seeded and finely minced

100-200g cheddar cheese, grated

half a can of raja peppers, chopped

For the wrappers:

• 2 dozen dried corn husks

For the dough:

• 250g masa harina (approximately 1 3/4 cups)
• 5g salt (1 tsp - adjust to taste)
• 20g baking powder (approximately 3 tbsp)
• 250g vegetable oil or margarine (approximately 1/4 cup)
• 1 to 2 cups reserved cooking liquid

Directions

For the meat filling:
Place a saucepan over medium heat and add the vegetable oil. Once shimmering, add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until they are semi-translucent, approximately 2 minutes. Add the garlic and chili and continue to cook for another minute.  Add the chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper, oregano, salt, and black pepper and heat for two minutes.  When the spices are fragrant, add the chicken, with enough water to completely cover the meat. Cover, place over high heat and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer.  (Alton Brown recommends 1.5 to 2 hours; I lasted about 45 minutes - also keep in mind I was cooking chicken rather than turkey.)
Remove the meat from the water, and set aside to cool. Leave the cooking liquid in the pot. Once the meat is cool enough to handle, shred with forks or fingers.  Mix in the cheese and rajas.  Set aside until ready to assemble.  

For the wrappers:

While the meat is cooking, place the husks in a large bowl or container and submerge completely in hot water. Soak the husks until they are soft and pliable, at least 45 minutes and up to 2 hours.
If you don't have kitchen twine handy, find an extra-wide corn husk (or a broken one, should you have the misfortune) and tear off thin, quarter-inch lengthwise strips to tie the wrappers later on.

For the dough:

Place the masa, salt, and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and combine. Add the vegetable oil and, using your hands, knead together until the oil is well incorporated into the dry mixture. Gradually add enough of the reserved cooking liquid, 2 to 4 cups, to create a dough that is like thick mashed potatoes. The dough should be moist but not wet. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and set aside until ready to use.
Save the leftover cooking liquid for a soup, because it tastes amazing.

To assemble the tamales:
I've prepared a photo tutorial to accompany the instructions!  Excuse the untrained hand modeling.

Remove a corn husk from the hot water and pat to remove excess water. Lay the husk on a towel and spread about 2 tablespoons of the dough in an even layer across the wide end of the husk to within 1/2-inch of the edges. 

Spoon about 2 teaspoons of the meat mixture in a line down the center of the dough.

Roll the husk so the dough surrounds the meat and fold the bottom under to finish creating the tamale.  

Repeat until all the husks, dough and filling are used. Tie the tamales around the center, using kitchen twine or strips of husk.

To steam the tamales:

Place a steamer basket in the bottom of an 11-quart pot and add enough water to come to the bottom of the basket. Stand the tamales close together on their folded ends and lean them in towards the center, away from the sides of the pot. Bring the water to a boil over medium heat, then cover and reduce the heat to maintain a simmer. Check the water level every 15 to 20 minutes, and add boiling water by pouring down the side of the pot, if necessary. Steam until the dough is firm and pulls away from the husk easily, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Serve warm. Store leftover tamales, tightly wrapped in plastic wrap, in the freezer, for up to a month. To reheat, remove the plastic wrap and steam until heated through.  Yes, microwaving works too.

Mac and Cheese

Roommate and I, raised in the US, have a shared affinity for a good mac and cheese.  Boyfriend, from Germany, never saw the appeal.

BF was away for a week, returning last night.  Roomie and I treated him to dinner waiting upon his arrival... which happened to be mac 'n cheese.  Roomie'd been craving it for a while.

We found an Alton Brown recipe and discovered too late that we didn't have enough of any one cheese to fill the recipe.  The photos you see are of a five-cheese amalgam that wasn't half bad.

A lot of the reviews of this recipe call it "grown-up," and I think that's exactly what it is.  The mustard and bay leaf add a depth and contrast to the creamy cheese.  It's covered in buttery breadcrumbs and cooked with onion for texture.  It's not gooey, but it surely is creamy.  While the entire thing's crazy rich, without a doubt the best part is the sneaky layer of cheese hiding just under the toasted panko topping.

Mac and Cheese

Adapted from Alton Brown

ingredients:

• 1/2 pound elbow macaroni
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 tablespoon powdered mustard 
• 3 cups milk
• 1/2 cup yellow onion, finely diced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1 large egg
• 12 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• Fresh black pepper

topping:

• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 cup panko bread crumbs

directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cook the pasta to al dente.

While the pasta is cooking, in a separate pot, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and mustard and keep it moving for about five minutes. Make sure it's free of lumps. Stir in the milk, onion, bay leaf, and paprika. Simmer for ten minutes and remove the bay leaf.

Whisk the egg in a bowl until mixed.  Add a few tbsp of the sauce to the egg.  Continue until the egg is mixed into the sauce in your bowl - then add it to the pot.  This is called tempering and prevents the egg from cooking.

Add 3/4 of the cheese. Season with salt and pepper. Fold the macaroni into the mix and pour into a 2-quart casserole dish. Top with remaining cheese.

Melt the butter in a saute pan and toss the panko to coat. Top the macaroni with the bread crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and rest for five minutes before serving.

Khadafy Chicken

JUST IN CASE you missed yesterday's explanatory post, I'll recap.  My parents first had this chicken at a friend's house.  On that night, they put the chicken on the grill then heard I-can't-honestly-remember-which breaking news about Gadhafi.  It was so enthralling that they forgot all about the grill, and the chicken charred.

So, call me morbid.  Just this once, I matched my food to the international news...  You can rename the marinade if you want.  It is under this name that the chicken marinade below became infamous in my family.

I marinated, I grilled, I blissed out.  Even now the kitchen still smells like this fabulous, piquant and herby marinade.  I would totally eat this every week if I wanted to go through the effort of making the marinade.  We'll see; grating that ginger is not the easiest thing in the world!

When my parents grilled this chicken on the outdoor grill, I remember it would taste nice but never this strong.  Doing it on my grill pan kept a lot more of the marinade on the chicken - even a bit too much.  It didn't help, either, that I drizzled more over the chicken before I started grilling to make sure it was super flavorful!  It was overpowering, but the cool, fresh tabouli I made with it helped to balance the strength of the flavors.

Tabouli is really easy and customizable.  I'm only gonna give a list of the ingredients, because proportions are so totally up to individual taste.  I had taboulis in Ireland that were essentially garnished bulghur, while my favorite is pretty close to a parsley salad.  It scrubs out my inner system when I'm feeling blah.


Redux:

Khadafy Chicken Marinade

ingredients:

2 cloves chopped garlic
2 tsp salt
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp curry powder
1 tsp oregano
4 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp lemon juice

directions:

Marinate chicken breasts or drumsticks in this concoction for at least 3 hours, then grill.

Tabouli

ingredients:

Parsley, chopped fine
Tomatoes, chopped fine
Bulgur (preferably fine, but I used coarse), cooked and cooled
teeny bit of white onion, chopped super fine
Lemon juice
Dash of olive oil
Cumin (I tossed a pinch in for fun and kicks - though I don't think it's traditional)

directions:

Chop all ingredients that need chopping.  Mix together in proportions according to your own taste.

I was really happy with how it turned out considering I eyeballed the entire thing.

Interactive blogging opportunity

I heard at lunch today that Gadhafi had been captured and might be dead.  My first thought was, "Whoa."

My second thought was "Chicken."

We have a recipe in the family which we call Khadafy Chicken.  The story is, my parents were grilling chicken with friends when the news broke of Gadhafi doing something horrible (I don't know exactly what).  Everyone went inside to watch the news; the chicken was forgotten on the grill and abandoned to burn.

Ever since, this marinade has taken up his name (however you want to spell it).  And the chicken always ends up just a bit charred on the corners.

I only came home at 8 tonight, so I'm defrosting our chicken breasts overnight and will be marinating and grilling tomorrow to mark the event. It's morbid, yet topical. I know I would have left the chicken to burn if I'd been grilling this afternoon.

If you want to follow along, I'll give you the recipe now, so you can make it tomorrow.  We could compare results, perhaps.

I'm also planning to try my hand at taboule tomorrow, in case you want to match me verbatim...

Khadafy Chicken Marinade

Marinate chicken breasts in this concoction for at least 3 hours, then grill.

2 cloves chopped garlic
2 tsp salt
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp curry powder
1 tsp oregano
4 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp lemon juice

Fall doesn't really happen around here.  In fact, October is the month when the weather starts getting hotter, for one of two hot seasons split by the harmattan (sandstorm) wind in January.

The broad-leafed umbrella trees here and there turn red and surrender their leaves, but are completely refreshed in two weeks.  It's unbelievable.

Nevertheless, it's High Holiday season, and that means there's one festive food I'll go to lengths to make: brisket.  This recipe comes from a family friend; it was always my favorite part of an annual tradition of stellar shared meals.  The sauce is sweet and tangy, like a barbecue sauce, I guess.  The flavors light up all my tastebuds. Apart from taking hours for the brisket to slowly cook, it's really quite easy.

I found brisket imported from South Africa in the freezer of a ZA store here.  In total it weighed about a pound, so I checked the sources online which said to cook an hour per pound.  I put it in the oven for an hour.  20-something minutes in I cut up some potatoes in small chunks, sprinkled with chicken stock & parsley, wrapped them in foil and tossed them in.

Lesson learned: you need to cook both of those items a long time.  Longer than an hour, even if the brisket's small - that extra time will soften the meat.  This one came out tough and gray.  Longer than 35 minutes for potatoes, even if they would be soft in half that time if you'd boiled them.  We ended up putting them in a baking dish for an extra half-hour and adding water to them with about 10 minutes to go.  I should have added water from the get-go.

The sauce, however, was a hit!

Lois's Brisket

Ingredients

5-6 lbs brisket
2 chopped onions
1 clove chopped garlic

3 tablespoons brown sugar
16 oz ketchup
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon dry mustard
2 teaspoons celery salt

Directions

Wash and dry brisket.
Sprinkle onion, garlic, salt and pepper, and wrap well in foil - you don't want any moisture escaping.  

Bake at 325 for five hours.  

Simmer remaining ingredients uncovered for 3 minutes.  

Slice brisket, pour sauce over it and heat at 350 for 3 minutes.


Serve and hear the sighs.