A while ago I went to a work potluck. I wanted to make something delicious (and mildly impressive), but by the time the list came to me, many people had already signed up for dishes in the other genres I had considered. So after much anxiety and numerous suggestions, I decided on this rice. I have had this recipe for years, but I never make it because it has a lot of ingredients that I never had and never felt like buying. But, this time I took a look at my spices and realized I was pretty much set to go with this. And, once you have all the ingredients, it's pretty easy.
And, this rice is so delicious. Like this and this, it might be the butter. Also, I did not cook this rice in the pot in the picture, but I did serve it in that dish because it's so pretty. I think you could make this rice in the oven in a dutch-oven-like pot. The chicken would probably even taste better if you did.
Recipe adapted from and Zubin Mehta (Bon Appetit)
Ingredients:
- 1 stick butter
- 4 medium onions, chopped
- 1 tablespoon minced ginger
- 2 cups (basmatti) rice
- 4 cups of stock
- 2 large (or more) chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces. You can skip the chicken, add in cubed (pan fried) tofu, or skip it all together. When my parents used to make this they served it as a side, and I always thought the chicken was sort of pointless. However, if you want it as a main dish, I think adding chicken (or tofu) definitely improves it.
(Spices)
- 16 whole cloves
- 4 cinnamon sticks
- 2 teaspoons turmeric
- 2 teaspoons cumin seeds
- 1 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 1/2 teaspoon ground mace
- 3/4 teaspoon cardamom seeds
- 3/4 teaspoon cayenne
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads
- 1 teaspoon sugar
(Other Stuff)
- 3/4 cups dark raisins, plumped in water
- 3/4 cups yellow raisins, plumped in water
- 1/2 cup unsalted raw cashews
- 1/2 cup shelled pistachios
- 1/2 cup slivered almonds
- One more onion cut into strips and fried until they're crispy (for garnish, if you want)
Note about substituting tofu: If you do this (which I think would be equally delicious) you should pan fry it first, and add it to the mix later in the cooking process, so that it doesn't fall apart.
Note about the spices: The only downside (that I can think of) to this recipe is that it involves numerous spices and can therefore require a sort of heavy investment in spices at the outset. I skipped the cloves because I didn't have any, and I used ground cumin instead of cumin seed for the same reason. It all worked out just fine.
Instructions:
- Melt butter in large pot (like one you'd use to make soup)
- Saute the onions and garlic, then add ginger
- Add the broth and bring to a boil
- Add the rice and spices. Lower heat, stir and simmer for about 5 minutes.
- Add the chicken. Cover and cook on medium heat for 40 minutes, or until all of the liquid is absorbed. I found I needed more broth than the recipe called for because all the liquid was absorbed but the rice was not soft yet. If this happens, just add a little more broth (or water if you don't have more broth).
- While the rice is cooking, in a skillet, roast all of the nuts and soak all of the raisins.
- Once all the liquid is absorbed in the rice, add in the nuts and (drained) raisins. Stir and cook for an additional five minutes.
- Serve. The recipe says it serves 8. I think, as a side, it serves several more than that.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Make This For Your Next Potluck
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Because It's Always Somethin' Somethin' Weather
This cranberry slushy can barely be classified as a recipe, but it is probably my first (and favorite) exposure to alcohol. My aunt always made this at Thanksgiving and now it is a staple in my freezer, for parties and for weekday nights.
All you need is (1) one can of frozen lemonade, (2) one bottle of standard
sized cranberry juice, and (3) the frozen lemonade can full of rum (1.5 if you're really feeling feisty).
Stir it up, and put it in the freezer. The next day you'll have a frozen treat. The alcohol keeps it from freezing solid, so once you stir it up, you're good to go.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Mini Quiche Are Maybe Worth It
For the recent David Berkeley house concert, I made mini quiche. During the baking process I basically decided there was no way I was going to post this recipe because they were sort of a hassle. But today one of my coworkers told me she "must have eaten a dozen of them." And, to my surprise, they were the most heavily consumed item at the event (this is particularly shocking since these were also available). So since they were pretty popular, and since I imagine they will be much less of a hassle now that the kinks are basically worked out, here is the path to mini-quiche heaven.
Before you try to repeat this at home, a few warnings are prudent. First, other than the crust, I made this up as I went along. Second, I had a number of debates with my sou chef (who has much more experience eating quiche than I but much less experience in the kitchen) regarding the proper way to make sure each mini had the proper mix of ingredients. Third, the sou also raised his eyebrows at my use of skim milk and at the fact that the cheese to spinach ratio was sort of low. He also forbade the use of pepper and salt, which ultimately I would have liked to have had. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, you need an obscene amount of PAM to get these buggers out of the pan.
What follows is mostly approximation, except for the crust, which I followed to the letter. I will also add that I only own one mini-cupcake pan. This process would have been much less painful with 2, just in case you're thinking of trying this at home.
Crust Ingredients
This is Julia Child’s all-purpose best quality French pastry dough, provided to me by EW. The quantities listed here are for a single recipe, which I actually doubled to accomodate the amount of filling I made. I left it as is (instead of doing the math for you) because I do not think you can double this recipe. You just have to make it twice. Your food processor will die otherwise. Plus, if you want to make a plain ole quiche (as opposed to mini ones), one portion of this is more than enough.
- 1 ¾ cups flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 ¼ sticks chilled butter
- 1/3 to ½ cups ice water
Crust Instructions
1. Place salt and flour into mixer and blend for a few seconds. Cut chilled butter into quarters and drop into mixer. Turn on for three seconds.
2. Add all but two tablespoons of the ice water and turn on the machine. In 2-3 seconds, the dough has just begun to mass on the blade and the pastry is done.
3. Take the dough out and put it on a lightly floured surface. Make yourself, 48 (or 96) little balls, being careful not to over handle the dough.
4. Make each ball into a disk and press it into the bottom of your mini-cupcake pan that you have HEAVILY sprayed with cooking spray (and not the kind with flour either).
5. Press the dough to form little cups. Do your best to get the dough all the way to the top of the pan (sou was right on about this).
6. Stab the bottom of each little quiche crust with a fork to get any air bubbles out.
7. Pre bake the crust at 350. You will see in the picture, I wasnt particularly precise about the baking time. I think 5 minutes is plenty, but I did forget about one batch and left it for closer to 10 and the result was not tragic.
Filling Ingredients
- 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- one box of fresh spinach. I think this is about a pound. It was one of those boxes that you would buy for a week's worth of salad before you ended up throwing half of it away because you cant eat spinach salad every day.
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 3 large yellow onions
- 1 cup milk
- 6 eggs
- 1/2 cup gruyere
- 1/2 cup fontina
- salt and pepper to taste
Filling Instructions
1. Saute the Spinach and garlic with just a little olive oil so that it doesnt stick to the pan. I did this in batches because the pan I started to use was too small for the quantity of spinach, no more than five minutes per batch. Take the spinach out of the pan and set aside.
2. Put the onions in a food processor. Chop them up. Put them in the pan them in the same pan you used for the spinach and saute them too, about 10 minutes. Mine were too liquidy to really brown properly, but they still tasted good.
3. While the onions are cooking, put the spinach in the food processor and grind it up.
4. Put the cooked spinach and onion in a large bowl. Add milk and eggs. The sou thought it looked too liquidy, and he may have been right, but in the end it worked out fine. If you would like it firmer, I saw recipes that did crazy things like add flour or use cream instead of skim milk. The biggest lesson I learned from this process is that it doesn't really matter as long as you think the filling will taste good.
5. Stir all these ingredients together. Add salt and pepper to taste. Sou would not allow this, and since he was being so kind and helpful, I went along. Next time, I will add probably 1/2 teaspoon each (at least) to this mix.
6. Grind up your mix of gruyere and fontina (hey, that food processor really has to earn its keep after I dragged it to New York and back). Keep the cheese separate from the spinach/onion mixture. Put them in the refrigerator until your crust is ready.
Assembly
1. Once you have pre-baked the crusts, fill each with the spinach mixture almost to the top. Then sprinkle a healthy portion of the cheese.
2. Bake at 350 for about 15-20 minutes.
3. Pry them out of the pan and serve them to your friends, who will be wildly impressed that they didn't come from Costco. (I found that a butter knife worked pretty well for the quiche removal process.)
Monday, October 19, 2009
Resurgence of a Classic Cookie?
As we all know, Deb is perhaps our greatest source of inspiration. Many among us seem tempted to just make whatever she says. So, lacking creativity of my own, I pondered her snickerdoodle recipe. I had all but decided against it when, to my shock, I got almost the exact same recipe in an email from Saveur.
Partially because I dont want any more of my cooking magazines to go out of business and partially because I dont want to be too reliant on one source of inspiration, I went with Saveur's version. They are seriously pretty much identical, but maybe one day I'll do a taste test to see which one I like more. Yes, I'll do that as soon as I have a need for 96 snickerdoodle cookies in my life.
One thing I will say about this cookie that I had pretty much forgotten about from childhood, it is delicious. I love cinnamon. I love sugar. And this is one occasion where I won't complain about the butter.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Ginger Pear Sorbet
As we've mentioned before, sorbet making is easy and the results are delicious. Recently I bought a pint of pears at the Farmer's Market, to make another dessert. But then I got to making things for an upcoming party, and decided I could not justify making a pie for 10-12 people if I would not be able to serve it at said event. So, I axed the other dessert. But then I had a pint of pears going bad in my apartment. What to do?? Make sorbet!
And, I also had a bunch of fresh ginger in my apartment from a number of only mildly successful attempts to replicate Argo Tea's Iced Green Tea Ginger Twist, so we (I had a visitor's help) decided to add the ginger to the pear.
The result, a delicious frozen treat.
Ingredients
- 1 pint of peeled pears
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup sugar
- about 3 tablespoons of minced ginger.
Instructions
- Boil the sugar, water, and 2 tablespoons of the ginger until the sugar is complete dissolved. Let cool. (Our original recipe says to let the syrup chill, but I don't think that's necessary, as long as it's not burning hot when you add it).
- Puree the pears
- Add the syrup to the pears, puree some more.
- Add the last table spoon of fresh ginger
- Freeze until hard, then take it out and puree it again.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Peach Kuchen
This post may be too little too late because peaches are no longer in season, but I wanted to post my family's lovely alternative to peach pie. This recipe comes from my great aunt, and kuchen is German. But, I don't think this qualifies a legit kuchen. Instead, I tend to think of it as a custard, at least when I bake it much longer than my mom does (she likes it runny, I like it firm).
I almost convinced CH to eat it (even though it involves cooked fruit), and apparently I know more than one crazy person who does not like peaches who also refused to try it. But, I maintain, this "pie" is delicious.
Crust Ingredients:
- 1 1/4 cup flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 2 tbs. sour cream
Filling Ingredients:
- 1 quart fresh sliced peaches
- 3 egg yolks
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1/4 cup flour
Crust Instructions:
1. Combine all the crust ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until it forms coarse crumbs (like corn meal).
2. Press into a 10 inch spring form pan. Crust should go onto the sides of the spring form.
3. Bake at 375 until golden brown, about 15 minutes (don't over cook, it's going back in the oven again later).
Filling Instructions:
1. Combine all the ingredients together. You can make more filling if you want a deeper dessert. If it seems to runny, add a little more flour or more peaches.
2. Bake at 375. My mom bakes for 35 minutes. I bake for almost an hour. It's done when you take it out and you can shake it and the filling stands up.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Not Even Remotely About Recipes
Okay, so my job rarely has anything to do with cooking or recipes. And most days, it has nothing at all to do with food. But today I came across this quote in a case I read for a project I'm working on. It's...sort of about food? Sometimes federal judges (and their clerks) do have a sense of humor.
Here's the quote:
"We start with some threshold questions about the scope of Volovsek's suit. Unfortunately we have to spend considerable time addressing this issue because the parties appear to have simply collected the sum total of all the unpleasant events in Volovsek's work history since 1991, dumped them into the legal mixing bowl of this lawsuit, set the Title VII-blender to puree and poured the resulting blob on the court."
Volovsek v. Wisconsin Dept. of Agr., Trade and Consumer Protection, 344 F.3d 680 (7th Cir. 2003)
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Brownies are Better with a Little Cheese
In just over a week, I am hosting a concert for David Berkeley. Hopefully, it will be a fun-filled evening with music and delicious food. But, since the concert is going to be on a weekday, I must plan ahead. And since Deb recently describe a reason why she too had a need to cook in advance, I decided to try her apparently delicious recipe for cheesecake brownies.
Or, at least I planned to follow her recipe. But once again, I concluded that Deb uses too much butter. So, I shopped around for some other recipes and made some modifications. Even with 25% less butter and reduced fat cream cheese, the end product is delicious. (Probably because it still has enough fat to cause a coronary.)
When I looked at the brownie recipe on Smitten Kitchen, I decided (1) I needed to double the recipe and (2) that would require 2 sticks of butter, which is outrageous. I also noticed that my mom's brownie recipe called for basically the same ingredients. Turns out, the exact same ingredients in nearly the same proportions.
So, I followed my mom's brownie instructions and then topped it with a double dose of Deb's cream cheese topping. I had one package of regular fat cream cheese and one package of 1/3 fat, so that's what I used, and it was delicious. I also decided to skip the chocolate chips - seemed like overkill.
Deb's freezing-then-cutting tip was key, and something I think I'll do from now on with brownies (even though I have recently made disparaging remarks about putting a whole slab of brownies in the freezer). I cut them into bite sized brownies so that people can have more, and so that more people can have some.
Here are the brownie ingredients:
- 6 oz. Unsweetened chocolate
- 1 1/2 sticks butter
- 6 eggs
- 2 3/4 cups sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups flour
After that, I followed SK pretty much to the letter. Hopefully they'll be a hit. Now I just need some more ideas for things to make!