Much Depends On Dinner

Sopa Ranchera

2008-11-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

Christmas Break (which we're extending until January 7th) is a great time for my culinary creativity to be refreshed as I take the time to try a few new recipes. Here is a one for a delicious winter soup. My family liked this so much that I made it twice in one week--and I'm making yet another batch to add to the growing stash of freezer entrees that will keep Dear Husband and the kids fed while Oldest Daughter and I are on our audition trip.

My inspiration comes, again, from The Best of Cooking Light. I followed the recipe pretty closely except for:

-I omitted the zucchini because I didn't have any and my dear children said not to bother going out to get some. It wouldn't be missed.
-I used leftover roasted potatoes and chicken. This worked so well that when I made it again I pre-roasted some chicken breasts (olive oil and cajun spice mix) and potatoes.
-I doubled the oregano and tripled the cumin
-I added some red pepper flakes--about 1/2 tsp for a double batch.
-I added extra garlic
-other alterations are noted within the recipe

Other than that, I followed the recipe closely ; )

Oh, and I never, ever make a single batch.

Sopa Ranchera:

1 tsp. vegetable oil (I use about 3 T olive oil)
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1 clove garlic, minced
6 cups chicken stock (I used 7 cups vegetable stock)
1 3/4 cups cubed peeled baking potato
1 (15 oz) can chickpeas, drained
2 cups shredded (I diced) cooked chicken breast
1 cup frozen whole-kernel corn, thawed (I used one can of corn)
3/4 tsp, salt (I omitted as my stock was salted)
1 zucchini, quartered lengthwise and sliced-about 1 1/2 cups (I omitted)
1 cup diced tomato
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Toppings:
grated cheddar or montery jack cheese
sour cream
lime wedges

We don't have any reduced fat options on the dairy products so our finished dish probably wouldn't meet Cooking Light standards.

Heat oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add onion and saute' 3 minutes. Add oregano, cumin, and garlic, and saute' about 1 minute. Add stock, potato, and chickpeas, bring mixture to a boil, and cook 5 minutes. Add chicken, corn, salt, and zucchini, and cook 5 minutes. Stir in tomato and 1/3 cup cilantro, and cook 2 minutes.

Humble Fare

2008-11-15T12:43:00.001-08:00

Dear husband and I had some minor cross-cultural adjustments to make when we married. We are both Americans but I'm a West Coast girl and he hails from the Midwest and the East. Where I grew up a salad could be considered an entree, even if there were no meat in it. Same for soups. Dear husband, on the other hand, had never even tasted an avocado before he met me (aren't avocados better than meat??). Additionally, my wonderful mother-in-law, also a wonderful cook, was a Sunday-pot-roast-with-all-the-trimmings kind of woman. (I still can't compete, but I certainly have learned a lot from her!)

Through the years I've learned to cook enough dishes which don't prompt my husband to look at me with a longing "where's the beef" look in his eyes and he's learned to be satisfied with a few meatless dinners. Just a few. Below is a the recipe for a favorite soup which besides being quick to fix, tasty, and healthy, is very easy on an increasingly burdened grocery budget in these days of rising food prices.

Tomato, Lentil, and Cilantro Soup

1/4 cup canola oil
2 medium onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. garam masala (Indian spice mixture)
red pepper flakes to taste
2 14 oz cans of chopped tomatoes, puree one can in the blender
8 cups vegetable stock
1 cup red (orange) lentils
2 tsp. sugar
1/2 cup-or more-chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Heat oil in a large pan, add onions, garlic, garam masala, and red pepper flakes. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until onions are soft. Add tomatoes, stock, lentils, sugar, and cilantro, simmer, stirring, uncovered about 20 minutes or until lentils are tender.

Serve with sour cream and chopped cilantro leaves. Of course, Dear Husband would prefer it served with a steak, but he'll settle for a grilled cheese sandwich.

"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it."
Proverbs 15:17

A Middle Eastern/North African Meal

2008-06-30T19:04:00.001-07:00

One of the things we enjoy when we are back in the States is preparing a Middle Eastern meal for family and friends. This week, I, with the help of my children, dear mother, and a few other friends, prepared and served a lunch for about 120 people. We prepared the main dish on one afternoon, the couscous another morning, and the salad was put together just before the lunch.

This year I chose some recipes which were more North African (Tunisia, Morocco) in origin, though the ingredients and flavors are found throughout the Middle East. All three recipes were inspired from those found in the Australian Women's Weekly Middle Eastern Cooking Class.

Women's Weekly Middle Eastern Cooking School Class

For the main dish we served Chicken Tagine with Dates and Honey. Tagines are slow cooked stews of North African origin, traditional cooked in special clay pots. Ours was cooked in stainless steel pots on electric burners.

Chicken Tagine with Dates and Honey

2 lbs chicken breasts cut in to strips or chunks
2 tablesppons olive oil
2 medium onions, finely sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground tumeric
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
1/2 cup seedless dates, halved
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup blanched almonds, toasted
2 chopped fresh coriander leaves

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a pan, add chicken and cook, stirring, until browned. Remove from pan.
2. Heat remaining oil in the same pan, add onions and garlic. When onions are nearly soft, add all the spices and continue cooking, stirring, until onions are soft.
3. Return chicken to pan with stock and water and simmer covered for one hour. Remove lid and simmer for about 30 minutes or until mixture is thickened slightly and chicken is tender.
4. Stir in dates, honey, and nuts. Sprinkle with fresh coriander (cilantro).

Serves 4-6

The chicken tagine was served with couscous:

Almond Coriander (Cilantro) Couscous

3 cups couscous
3 (or 4) cups boiling water---or better, us the quantities of couscous and water as directed on the package of couscous. I usually decrease the water a bit so that the couscous isn't too wet.
1/4 cup olive oil
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 green onions, chopped
3/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted
1/2 cup chopped fresh coriander leaves

1. Heat water (I add a tablespoon of olive oil) to boiling. Take water off the heat, add couscous, and let sit for about 5 minutes, covered, or until the water is absorbed. Fluff couscous with a fork.
2. Heat oil in a large pan, add garlic and onions, cook, stirring, until onions are soft. Add the onion mixture to the couscous.
3. Stir nuts and coriander into the couscous mixture.

And, the salad:

Tomato, Feta, and Green Onion Salad

1 lb. feta cheese
4 medium onions
1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
3-4 green onions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts, toasted
3 teaspoons sesame seeds, toasted

1. Cut tomatoes into wedges, remove seeds, and chop tomatoes finely.
2. Whisk oil and juice in small bowl until combined; add onions and mint. Mix well.
3. Combine the mint mixture with the tomatoes and let marinate for about 1 hour.
4. Crumble the cheese in (about) 1/2 inch chunks on a plate or platter.
5. Spoon tomato mixture over the crumbled cheese and sprinkle with the toasted walnuts and sesame seeds.

Confession: If I were serve this meal to Middle Eastern friends it would be considered a light meal. Besides the three dishes above I would need to serve at least one other main dish, at least one more salad, olives, and flat bread. And even then, this amount of food would be acceptable only because I am a foreigner.

Sahtayn! (Double your health)

When it's too hot to turn on the oven~

2007-09-27T07:34:00.001-07:00

As this dear friend had to await the return of her writing muse, so I feel as if I have been awaiting the return of my cooking muse. (Yes, I know there is no mythological cooking muse, but I've never had a writing muse, so I thought, "why not a cooking muse?") The temperatures have been so high for the past few weeks that I've turned on my oven hardly at all--baking daughter has taken to checking the extended forecast on the internet so that she may request permission to bake cookies--and the times I have turned it on, I've regretted it. Limited stovetop cooking and creative energies directed towards beginning the new school year have taken their toll on my culinary offerings.

This afternoon, faced with a neglected pantry and just one hour to prepare dinner, I resorted to what almost never works: I picked up a large cookbook that I've been wanting to cook from and looked for a new recipe to try. Amazingly, I found one! I was lacking a few essential fresh vegetables to I headed to the local vegetable stand, which had everything on my list. So, I give you this recipe, acclaimed by all in this household and prepared in one hour, from searching the cookbook to table, including the trip to the vegetable stand.

My inspiration, though not my law:

Cilantro Rice with Chicken
from The Best of Cooking Light with some variations on the main theme

Rice:
2 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups quartered shitake mushroom caps ( I could only find white mushrooms and not quite 2 cups at that. Also I'd recommend cutting them smaller than quarters unless your children have mature tastes and like chunks of mushrooms in their food.)
1/3 cup chopped green onion bottoms
1 (1/2-inch) piece peeled fresh ginger
1 garlic clove, crushed (I used three and chopped them finely)
2 cups uncooked long-grain rice (I used 2 1/2 cups basmati)
2 teaspoons ground cumin
About 1 3/4 pounds (just under a kilo) of boneless chicken breasts cut into bite-sized pieces
3 cups chicken broth (I used 3 3/4 since I slightly increased the rice)

Sauce:
2 cups loosely packed cilantro leaves
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons chopped green onion tops
1-2 teaspoons chopped peeled fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt (or less if your broth is salted)
1 garlic clove, peeled

Topping:
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups grape or cherry tomatoes, halved (I used small grape tomatoes and threw them in whole)
2 tablespoons chopped green onion tops

Optional extra addition:
2 cans of drained chickpeas (or garbanzo beans, which my mom called them when I was growing up)

Note: I've changed this from a bake-in-the-oven to a stovetop recipe.

1. To prepare rice, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large heavy bottom pan. Add mushrooms, green onion bottoms, ginger piece, and chopped garlic, and cook 5 minutes stirring frequently. Stir in rice, cumin, and chicken. Cook a couple minutes more. Stir in broth and bring to a boil. Let simmer on very low heat until the rice is cooked, about 20. Add drained chickpeas and let sit an additional 10 minutes..

2. To prepare sauce, place cilantro leaves and the next five ingredients in a food processor or blender and process until smooth. Stir into rice mixture. Discard ginger piece.

3. To prepare the topping, toss the olive oil with the tomatoes and chopped green onion tops. Place the rice mixture in a large bowl, and spoon the tomato topping over the rice. Garnish with cilantro sprigs.

Desired condiment as suggested by my family:

Yogurt and Cucumber Salad
( I didn't make this tonight but instead served plain yogurt)

~ an approximate recipe~

Ingredients:
about five or six cups of plain yogurt
several cucumbers, peeled, seeded (if necessary), and finely chopped
salt to taste
chopped mint, fresh or dry, to taste
1 cloves chopped garlic

Mix all ingredients together.

Enjoy!

Salsa by the Gallon

2007-04-29T13:17:00.001-07:00

This recipe might not be of much interest to my U.S. friends who live in the land of salsa plenty, but for the salsa lovers of Amman, where a 16 oz. jar of Pace salsa costs a cool five dollars this recipe might be helpful: 2.25 gallons of salsa at a cost of about fifteen dollars--or--9.5 litres for about JD 11. Quite a savings.

Our family likes salsa. Loves salsa. I used to make it from scratch and from all fresh ingredients when the children were young. I seeded all the hot peppers by hand and will never forget how I learned the hard way how important it is to wear rubber gloves when working with hot peppers. Those were the days when the children were playing at my feet. Now, they are playing at the ballfield and the conservatory so there is no time to peel 10 Kilograms of tomatoes or seed hot peppers. Thus, I've cut some time corners by using some now available canned chopped tomatoes and jalepeno peppers. The cilantro/kuzbara, garlic, onion, and lemon juice are still fresh.

The Recipe~

Combine in a large stock pot:

3 large cans of cooked chopped tomatoes, in juice. These cans were labled at 2.550 K and I purchased them at Carrefour in the bulk section. They looked to be the same size as the cans available at Costco in the States.
1 cup fresh lemon juice
3 bunches of cilantro Take the leaves off the stems and chop them in the food processor. Three Amman size bunches yielded a salad bowl of leaves after they were removed from the stems.
4 large onions, chopped in the food processor
40 cloves of garlic, chopped in the food processor
5 canned jalepeno peppers, choppped in the food processor. Adjust the amount of this ingredient according to taste.
3 Tablespoons salt

Bring all the ingredients to a boil and simmer for about 10 minutes. The salsa can now be canned (20 minute hot water bath) or frozen. No time for canning right now, so this batch goes into the freezer. My discriminating tasters say that the quality of the salsa was not compromised by the use of some prepared ingredients. Now, if we could just find someone to import tortilla chips for less than nine dollars a family-size bag!

Indian Cooking 101~Butter Chicken

2007-02-25T12:47:00.001-08:00

This chicken dish was my first attempt at Indian cooking and it fast became a family favorite. Additionally, it fits all my requirements for a great dish: easy to fix, healthy (mostly), economical, and delicious. It includes a couple of spices you may not have on hand (green cardamon pods and garam masala) but once you secure these you will have enough to make many delicious batches of Butter Chicken. This recipe came to me from two friends: I received it from one friend who received it from a mutual British friend who grew up in India.

Marinate 2 lbs. of cut up chicken breasts in the following mixture for 1-2 hours:

2/3 cup yogurt
1/2 cup ground blanched almonds (I grind them in my blender)
1 1/2 tsp. chili powder
2 bay leaves
1/4 ground cloves
1 tsp. garam masala
4 green cardamon pods
1 tsp. ginger
1/2 cloves garlic, minced
14 oz. can chopped or pureed tomatoes
1 1/2 tsp. salt

Melt in large cooking pot:
6 Tsp. butter
1 Tsp. oil

Add:
2 large onions, sliced and fry until lightly browned

Add:
chicken mixture (chicken + marinade)

Simmer until chicken is cooked through and stir in:
4 Tsp. cream

(Remove the bay leaves and the cardamon pods, if you can find them)

I serve this with brown or white basmati rice. Serves about 6. I double this for a great company dish.