We Can Pickle That!

I know it's been a while since we've posted anything, but once again, work and life has gotten in the way.  We've been sticking to old standby recipes that we can whip up in a flash.  Plus, the polar vortex has limited the amount of produce we've been receiving in our share, so we haven't had much to work with on that front either.

Nonetheless, we've got a quick an easy way to spice things up during these cold winter months.  A few months back, we got a bunch of jalapenos in our share.  With no immediate use for them, we decided to pickle them, following this recipe by Michael Symon.

Start by poking a few holes in each pepper, and placing them in your jar.  This will allow the brine to get inside the peppers, and pickle them from the inside out.

For your brine, bring to boil equal parts water and vinegar, some sugar and salt (in equal proportions), and your aromatics; bay leaves, whole coriander seeds, a few garlic cloves, and black peppercorns.  We didn't have any peppercorns on hand, so we just used our coarse ground black pepper instead.  We also didn't have whole coriander seeds, as the recipe called for, so we used ground coriander.  That's why our brine looks a bit muddy.  We also decided to throw in some mustard seeds for good measure.

Once your brine begins to boil, turn down the heat, and let it simmer for about 5 minutes.  Pour the brine over your peppers, place the lid on, and let it cool.  Once cooled, put them in the fridge, and let the brine work it's magic.  Let them sit in the fridge for about a week before using them.  This will give the peppers time to pickle.

Then you can slice them up and serve as you see fit.  Ours have a nice sweetness to balance out some of the heat.  They're great on top of nachos or tacos.

It's the Greatest of all Time (G.O.A.T)

I've only eaten goat once before, at my graduation dinner last year at Komi.  It was a slow-roasted goat shoulder, served with pita, tzatziki, and a few other condiments.  So when we got ground goat in last week's share, we drew inspiration from that meal to make Greek-style goat meatballs with tzatziki.

For the meatballs, we found this recipe by one of our Food Network favorites, Michael Symon.  As always,we took a few liberties with the recipe, and made our own tweaks.  To start, we chopped (rather than grated) half an onion and a couple cloves of garlic, and tossed them into a pan to sweat down.  After 8-10 minutes, the onions will be translucent.  You'll want to set them aside and let them cool before you add them.

While the onions and garlic are cooking, you can start mixing up your meatball mixture.  Cumin, coriander, cinnamon and nutmeg went into a bowl with our goat.

To that we added an egg to help bind the meatballs, the zest of a lemon, some oregano and mint.  Once your onions and garlic have cooled, toss them in with the meat mixture, and combine everything thoroughly.  Just be careful not to overwork the meat.  Form the meat into balls, roll them through some flour, and toss them into a hot pan to cook.  We got a nice sear on the outside of the meatballs, and then tossed them into the oven to cook through.

To accompany our meatballs, we cooked up some romanesco.  It is a variant of cauliflower, and almost looks like some kind of medieval torture device.  We decided to treat it as we would cauliflower, and roast it with brown butter, mint, red onion and lemon juice.  Since we didn't have any cheese, and we still wanted a salty, umami component, we shaved a little bottarga on top.

To finish off our meatballs, we whipped up some tzatziki, sliced up some red onions and tomatoes, and toasted up some pita.  Slather your pita with some of your tzatziki, line with red onion and tomato, and then toss in your meatballs.  We used some extra mint as garnish.  To help your meatballs fit into your pita, give them a little smash with a fork.  I learned this trick from eating lots of falafel!  And there you have it...Greek-style, goat meatballs!

Voyage to India

That's right...2 posts in 1 day!  So grab your passport and join us as we chow down on some Indian grub!  Now, don't be intimidated by the thought of cooking Indian food.  The techniques aren't anything new, but there are probably a few spices that aren't currently in your pantry.  For the lamb biryani and the chana masala we needed quite a variety of spices, but we actually had most of them on hand already.

We found recipes online for both the lamb biryani and the chana masala, and kept pretty close to the recipes.  So let's start with the lamb.

Start with some plain yogurt, garlic, cayenne, cumin, salt & pepper.  Once mixed together, drop in your lamb and make sure they're nice and coated in the yogurt mixture.  While the lamb is getting all cozy with the yogurt and spices, you can saute some sliced onions in butter with cardamom, turmeric, cloves, and cinnamon.

This recipe wanted you to cook the rice in the sauce with the lamb, but we opted to cook the rice separately.  That way we'd have plain rice to mix with the various sauces.


Once everything was mixed, we added the lamb and yogurt to the pan, along with some water and the golden raisins.  The recipe calls for regular raisins, but I prefer golden raisins, so we used those.  If you're not cooking the rice in the pan with the lamb, you can add less water than the recipe calls for.  You just want enough to make a sauce.

This was an oversight on our part, so we had to use a bit of cornstarch to thicken the sauce, and added more spices to bring back the flavor.  It was an easy save.  When you're ready to serve, toss in your toasted cashews.  You don't want to add them too early, otherwise they'll lose a bit of their crunch.

Now, onto the chana masala.  This was another easy dish to pull together.  You start with some onion, garlic, ginger, and a hot green chili.  All I could at the store was a jalepeno, but it worked out just fine.  Once those cook down, add in your spices: coriander, cumin, cayenne, turmeric, paprika, garam masala (I had to use some curry since the grocery store was out of garam masala), and the juice from half of a lemon.

Once everything has been cooking for a few minutes, add your tomatoes and their juices.  This is when you can deglaze the pan and scrape up all the tasty bits at the bottom.  Once you've scraped up all the bits, you can add the chickpeas, water, and the juice from the rest of the lemon, and just let it simmer so all the flavors can come together, and the tomatoes can cook down.

We also had a third dish, some dal makhani, which is a dish of lentils and kidney beans.  We kind of cheated on this one, just heating it through and adding it to the plate.  But overall, it was a quick, and easy meal to put together.  We may have had to buy some additional spices, but that just adds to our arsenal.  Don't be intimidated by cooking ethnic food at home.  When you break it down, it's really just using different spices an flavor combinations, using techniques you're already familiar with.

Super Bowl Spread

We've had our fair share of sports this weekend...a Wake/Maryland basketball game yesterday, the Caps/Pens game this afternoon, and the Super Bowl to round things out.  So what better way to cap off the weekend than with a proper spread of delicious bar food?  On the menu tonight were some wings, buffalo chicken dip, and "crack bread".

So let's start with the wings...a bar/sports staple.  We seasoned the wings with a little roasted garlic salt and some pepper, and placed them on a cooling rack, on top of a baking sheet.  This helps get all sides of the chicken crispy, and lets some of the fat drip off.  After about 10 minutes, we flipped the wings to make sure all sides were equally crispy.

 

While the chicken baked, we mixed together the sauce for our wings.  We went with a coriander chutney for some spice, and mixed it with Greek yogurt for a little extra tang.  Once the chicken was cooked through, we dunked them in the chutney/yogurt mixture.  Back into the oven they went to crisp up again.  Think of it like tandoori chicken...the yogurt and chutney bake into the chicken, the outside is nice and crispy, while the meat stays really juicy.

The wings cooked for another 15 minutes on each side.  To the leftover sauce, we added a little cilantro, lime zest and lime juice to use as a dipping sauce for the wings.  Once the wings came out of the oven, they got a sprinkling of cilantro and squeeze of lime juice.

Dish 1 down.  Now on to dish 2...the "crack bread".  Its basically a pull-apart bread with cheese and bacon.  Think of it as an alternative to loaded potato skins.  We started with a loaf of sourdough, cutting it horizontally and vertically, but not all the way through.  You're making nooks for all the cheese and bacon to go.  Rather than using bacon bits, we cooked up our own bacon.  And the secret to it all is the melted butter mixed with a little bit of ranch dressing mix that gets drizzled over the entire loaf.

The recipe calls for slices of cheese, but I've found that shredded cheese is easier to sprinkle into all the nooks and crannies.  Its best if you can have one person spread the bread apart while someone else sprinkles the cheese.  Once you've distributed the cheese evenly, do the same with the bacon.  Then you drizzle the butter/ranch mixture over the entire loaf.  Pop it in the oven, wrapped in foil for about 15 minutes, and then another 10 minutes uncovered.  What you're left with is a crusty, melty, savory finger food.

 

And last but not least...buffalo chicken dip.  If you haven't had the fortune of experiencing this delightful treat, you should go ahead and make this right now.  We seasoned 2 chicken breasts with salt and pepper and popped them in the oven to cook for about 20 minutes.  While those cooked, we fired up the crock pot and threw in a brick of neufchatel cheese to soften up.  You can use cream cheese instead, if you want.  Because we had some extra yogurt and ranch dressing mix, we threw them together and added that to the crock pot as well, in place of the blue cheese dressing.  Its our slightly healthier spin on the dip...I mean, it was 0% fat greek yogurt ;)  For the blue cheese part, we added in blue cheese crumbles.  And to top it off, add in buffalo sauce.  We went with Frank's.  Once the chicken is cooked, shred it up and add it to the pot.  Then sprinkle a bit of shredded cheese on top and let it heat up and melt together.  What you're left with is a delicious dip that you can serve with chips, celery and carrots.

All 3 dishes came together rather quickly and with few dishes to clean up (my favorite kind of dishes!).  Throw in a few beers, and you have the makings of a great Super Bowl spread!