I've had a great life...its been a roller coaster ride....but backwards...super exhilarating on the uphills and terrifying on the downhills ...this is the tale of that experience on planet earth
Normally, I find French cooking a little intimidating. Maybe that is because I don’t do too much of it. On the other hand, this dish is one of my very favorite dishes. It’s also super easy and has therefore become a standard in our house. It’s basically a few ingredients that you can put together in a few minutes and 30 minutes later be licking your plate. You core and slice tomatoes, I use 4 or 5. We love garlic, so I use a whole head. Separate the cloves, but leave the skin on. chop a cup or so of flat leaf parsley, and clarify a3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Liberally salt and pepper your chicken (we use thighs), then begin to brown the chicken in the butter on a medium hot stove once the butter stops sizzling. Add all the garlic, Brown on both sides, then add the tomatoes and the parsley, and a quarter cup of rice wine vinegar.. Cover and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Then remove the chicken and keep them warm in a 200 degree oven while you finish the sauce. To finish the sauce, remove the garlic from their peels and mash them with a fork before putting them back in the pan. Add 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter and get the sauce nice and creamy. Pour it over the chicken and enjoy! You will quickly add this dish to your regular rotation.
If anyone asks, my favorite food memory from South Africa is Prawns Peri Peri. I remember as a kid, sitting under the big blue and white tent on the beach in Lorenzo Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique, eating piles of red hot Tiger Prawns till the tears ran down my face. My mom used to say about me that I only ate 3 things as a kid, Lamb chops, Chinese food, and prawns peri peri.
I had to figure out how to make them as an adult, and luckily was able to find Peri Peri powder from an online South African Store (https://www.africanhut.com/) which has been a great resource for me for a few items. In any event, my recipe is to marinade the cleaned prawns in a marinade of lemon juice, olive oil, loads of finely chopped garlic and a pile of chopped parsley, along with a good amount of peri peri powder (your mileage may vary. Peri Peri is equivalent to the Birds Eye pepper on the Scoville scale. It’s hotter than cayenne, similar to or slightly hotter than Thai bird’s eye chili, and usually not quite as hot as a habanero.)
Then to make it, I always make jasmine rice.
To cook it, ideally, I prefer to cook it over an open flame on the BBQ, but we do not have access to one at our apartment, so I cook them on the stovetop. I use a good size brasier and melt some butter, with olive oil, fresh peri peri powder, and some fresh garlic. When the garlic is softened, I add the prawns, I keep the temperature high and make sure to turn each one over so that they get cooked through, I add any marinade that is left, add a couple hits of angasturabitters, and squeeze a lemon over them to finish. Dish them up over the rice, pour the sauce over the shrimp and go to town. Have ice cold beer available.
These prawns were pretty small, but they were still very tasty!
For my taste, I make the best burgers. There are occasions to go out for a burger, esp if you are craving a Wibleys Century Burger (Blue cheese bacon burger with sprouts), but, when we crave real burger, then I make them. I usually make quarter pounders, and I mix the beef with gochujang, bread crumbs, an egg, and a little grated cheddar. I form the patties and let them rest in the fridge for a day. For mushroom burgers, I saute the mushrooms till they are nicely caramelized. I season the burger with salt, pepper and peri peri. I saute them on the stovetop. While they are sautéing, I make my special sauce. Ketchup, mayo and Tabasco. When the burgers are just about cooked through, I put them in the hot oven with the swiss cheese on top. We sauce the toasted ciabatta buns, add lettuce, tomato, pickles, crisp bacon and red onion. The burger goes next with the melted cheese and its topped with a healthy helping of mushrooms. It really is food porn.
This was another instance of “Lets use up the ingredients we have in the fridge” pizza. I honestly did not know what this pizza was going to be till I went into the cheese drawer and pulled out all the leftovers. There was some fontina, Feta and also a little fresh motz. On the protein side, there was a half pack of spicy Korean sausages and about a third of a pack of pepperoni. Heather suggested that we use picked jalapeno and red onion as well. So that is how this came together. I chopped pepperoni, the Korean sausage, and the pickled jalapeno. I shredded the cheese (other than the fresh Motz, and sliced the onion. Stretched the dough out, spread the tomato sauce, layered the cheese, and covered it with the chopped jalapeno. I added the pepperoni and the sausage and finally, spread the sliced red onion. 11 minutes later this delicious tasty beauty emerged.The rough edges are the cheese that bled over the edge.
When we executed our World Tour of Chicken a few years ago, we found one or two surprises. I would say that this dish is the most surprising of them all. Mussakhan is a classic Palestinian dish traditionally laid out on a giant piece of bread, where the flavorful roasting juices laced with allspice, sumac, and cumin can be poured over the top. It is meant to be placed on the table so that everyone can pull off sections of bread and chicken, but we serve it on individual plates. It’s basically 2 ingredients. Chicken and red onions, but when you add sumak, lemon juice, cumin and allspice, garlic, pine nuts, parsley and naan, you have the most amazing set of flavors. After making several times, I have found that the secret is to marinate the chicken and onions overnight for the best flavors to emerge, and this time, I also made the naan from scratch.
To make the naan, naturally, I used our sourdough starter. Surprisingly the bread includes both milk and yogurt in the recipe. It’s also cooked on the stove top. Like the chicken, the dough needed to be rested overnight in the fridge. Once the naan is made, you save it for serving. To make the chicken, you roast it in the oven with the onions, the present it on top of the naan with oil fried pine nuts, chopped parsley and olive oil. You serve it with a little more sumac, and a squeeze of lemon juice with more garlic naan on the side.
When you have ridiculously delicious leftover mango sauce, and wonderful Toum in the fridge, you naturally make coconut rice and mango chicken. Fusion of African, Lebanese and Thai flavors on a plate. Flavor bomb! I seasoned the chicken, salt, pepper and peri peri, then seared it before finishing it in the oven under the grill. Served with mango sauce and toum on a bed of coconut rice!
Our world tour of soup took us to Vietnam this week, and there is only one soup that can be considered the national dish in Vietnam, that, absolutely, is pho. We live in an area of the world where there are multiple pho restaurants around, which makes it hard to consider making something that is time consuming and labor intensive when for about $20 you can have a perfect soup in about 10 minutes. Something else about pho for me, is that being that I am not from Vietnam, I have no real sense of their ingredients or the way they build flavors beyond eating Vietnamese foods. So, I did what I always do, which is to surf recipies till I find one that is pretty good, well laid out and easily duplicatable. Then it’s down to getting the ingredients. Building pho is a process of layering in flavor. You start with marrow bones and meaty bones (I substituted Ox tail for that part since there were none available.) First you boil the bones for about 5 minutes with the brisket, then you wash them all off and start again. As you are bringing a pot of water to the boil, you scale a couple of onions and gingers, and you roast the spices, including star anise, cardamom, coriander and cinnamon. Then, when the pot comes to the boil, everything goes in, the bones, the meat, the onions and garlic and the spices. That simmers for 3 hours before you pull and save the brisket, and strain the broth into another pot. (I saved the marrow bones because I love marrow on bread!) The broth is flavored with fish sauce, salt, and sugar till its just right.
To serve you have to get the rice sticks (noodles) softened and ready, which we just about got right, and you prepare the sides. In this case, bean sprouts, cilantro, korean peppers, and the thinly sliced meats (including some of the brisket). Then, of course, you need hoisin sauce, siracha and garlic chili to make the dish sing. It’s a truly great soup.
The second day of the meal, which we had a couple days later, was even better. This time, I got the rice sticks )noodles) right. My god, what a delicious dish.
In order to make a loaf of sourdough, the first thing I did, was create a fresh batch of starter by feeding a little starter with fresh flour and water and setting it in the proofer. It took about 6 hours to bloom. Then, I mixed the bread flour and All Purpose flour with water and set that in the proofer to allow the flour to absorb all the water. Then I added the starter and the salt and mixed it by hand till it was absorbed before proofing it and stretching it every 30 minutes before allowing it to proof uninterrupted. After that, I put it in the fridge in a flour covered kitchen towel in a bowl after shaping it into a round loaf. It rested in the fridge for about 12 hours.
In the morning, I put the Dutch Oven into the oven uncovered and turned the heat up to 525 and left it there for about 2 hours so it would be very hot when I put the loaf in. When the time came to put the loaf in, I took it out of the fridge and flipped it out onto a piece of parchment paper that I had cut in anticipation. I scored the loaf when looked perfect, and immediately took hold of the parchment and dropped it into the steaming hot dutch oven and covered it immediately, the into the oven it went with the temp at 500. After 20 minutes, I took the cover off and left it to bake. at 20 minutes I checked the color and the temperature (internal temp of 112 degrees) and decided to take it out. Onto the wire rack it went for an hour of cooling.
When it cooled, I cut a slice to taste it and check the crumb. During the proofing process, I made several folds to see if I could trap air in the dough, and low and behold, it looks perfect, and tastes like a perfect sourdough loaf! The crumb is open and its close to perfect! Just a few little refinements next bake to include a shorter proofing, slightly shorter in the fridge too, and to be comically gentle when I shape the next loaf!
I have mentioned that I love the cookbook Frankies Sputino. They have broken down their recopies so that a home chef and literally cook them to the same level of excellence they do in their restaurant. Once we discovered lamb shoulder was available, their Lamb Ragu recipe jumped off the page. What makes this recipe cool is that it is a 2-3 day recipe to make and it creates a fantastic ragu that serves 8. This means that we will have at least 3 additional meals from it. (They tell you where in the recipe to store it before finishing the dish. On day 1, you start out before you even get a chance to roast the lamb, by making a veal stock. To do this you roast veal bones in the oven, then you cover them with water and aromatics before simmering the bones for 4 hours. On day 2, you next, salt and pepper the lamb before roasting it at high temperature for about 45 minutes. While its roasting, you saute carrots, celerty, onion and fennel till they are heavily caramelized. When the lamb is roasted so it is clearly crusted you put it in a braising pot along with the vegetables, fresh tomatoes (crushed by hand) and parsley stems along with the veal stock made the day before.. Then it all sits covered in the braising pot for 2 hours in a 300 degree oven. When it comes out, you strain the stock, discard the vegetables. You set the lamb aside to allow it to cool. The stock is refrigerated and lamb, once cooled is pulled apart with forks, and is also refrigerated.
Day 3 is the day to eat. There are two things to do. One is to make fresh pasta for the tagliatelle needed for the dish. My strategy was to make it a little thicker than fettucine but about 4 x the width. Then you build the sauce with crushed Italian tomatoes.
The Tagliatelle is perfection. Now the sauce is getting friendly with the tomatoes, then the lamb goes in and from there w build the ragu.
Skimming the fat off the stock, and then allowing it to come together with the Italian tomatoes before adding the pulled lamb, gets the dish to the place where you can set some aside for another meal. After that, you build out the final dish with a few ladles of the ragu. To finish the dish, you add butter, Italian parsley, white pepper, salt and ultimately, the tagliatelle
You let the pasta sit in the sauce for a minute before serving and then to serve, you load pasta onto the plate, cover it in the ragu sauce and finish with tarragon and a little olive oil.
It’s not just a beautiful dish. It is spectacular. The way the tagliatelle with it’s soft folds invites the sauce. The depth of flavor that the process creates. The hints of fennel, the brightness of the tarragon, and pure perfection of the bite of the pasta. I loved this dish and will keep in in the rotation!
To be honest, I literally licked my plate clean! I will make one more note. To accompany the dish, I made the tomato, red onion and avocado salad that is literally like putting a gazpacho in your mouth between bites! It too is a winner.
Because it is a fairly significant cook, there will be at least 2 more meals for us to look forward to. This is what was left after the meal for us to save for later.What is great about this is that to get to the finished dish from here is very simple. It gives me a chance to tighten up the sauce a tad too.
As I have said many times now, every single dish I make from Frankie’s Sputino kitchen companion and cooking manual is brilliant. Honestly, the evening was a full culinary symphony — from the pasta to the ragu to the salad and wine, it all flowed together beautifully.
Heather kept saying, “I ma having a moment!” as she dug into her plate.
The full title is Spiced Chickpea Wraps with Tahini dressing. When I first made this, I was so impressed at how much it tasted like a falafel sandwich, which I LOVE, so it fast became a favorite. It’s pretty simple, and I really need to shout out to Thug Kitchen, where this recipe comes from. I also like the way the author writes, making cooking fun and simple and profane! You begin with cooking the chickpeas till they begin to pop like popcorn, then you cook down a liquid blend of soy, maple syrup and lemon juice before adding a spice blend including garlic powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper and peri peri. To serve it, you steam a large tortilla, and lay down a bed of fresh spinach, matchstick carrots and cucumber on top of a spread of tahini dressing Spoon the chickpeas on top of the vegetables and add another dollop of tahini dressing and you are off the delicious races! To make tahini dressing, you add tahini to lemon juice, olive oil, water, soy sauce and dash of rice wine vinegar. A couple cloves of finely chopped garlic and a little salt, pepper and peri peri go a long way. Also, you play with the amount of liquid to get the consistency, taste and texture right! Wrap it up and go to town! It’s definitely one of our favorite meals!
My Life: A Memoir 