Moroccan Marathon

Picking recipes is something of a hobby of mine, but sometimes I spend too much time thinking of all the things I could make and have trouble actually picking what’s for dinner so I asked my husband to pick a recipe for us to try. He definitely spend a lot less time deciding on a recipe than I do, but that is in large part because he does not actually read the recipe at all. This is how we ended up spending 3 days working on a single dish, Moroccan Stew we found through Gojee. For someone cooking without an infant in the house, or with a fully stocked kitchen, this probably won’t take as long. Fortunately the results were delicious and tasted unlike anything we’d made before. The chickpeas added some nice texture and the figs melted into the sauce, giving it an unexpectedly nice fruitiness.

One of the first steps of the recipe is to make the spice mixture used to marinate the meat. The spice mixture is called Ras el Hanout. Our local grocery store doesn’t stock the spice mixture, but we discovered weeks later that you can purchase it inexpensively at Cost Plus. This recipe seems like one that could be adapted pretty easily to go in the crockpot (follow the recipe through step 3, then dump everything in the slow cooker and let it work its magic).

Ras El Hanout

3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 teaspoons ground coriander
3 teaspoons ground nutmeg
2 teaspoons allspice
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne

Combine all the spices together. Store in a cool, dark place.

The original recipe called for 2 teaspoons of turmeric as well, but even after making a grocery run, we didn’t have any and made do without. The recipe can be halved. Even after halving the recipe, you won’t use all of the mixture and will have some to store for future recipes.

Moroccan Stew - packed up for lunch with cilantro and quinoa.

Moroccan Lamb Stew

Ingredients:

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground paprika
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 1/2 – 3 pounds lamb shoulder or leg, cut in 2 inch chunks
1 large onion, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
5 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 – 14 ounce can Italian plum tomatoes with juice
2 cups chicken stock
12 dried Calimyrna or Turkish figs, halved
1 cinnamon stick
2 teaspoons ras el hanout
1 – 14 ounce can chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Harissa or red chili paste
Fresh cilantro sprigs

Directions:

1. Combine 1/4 cup olive oil, coriander, cumin, paprika, 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon black pepper in a small bowl. Mix to form a paste. Place lamb in a large bowl. Rub paste all over lamb. Let sit at room temperature for 2 hours or refrigerate covered up to 24 hours.

2. Preheat oven to 325 F. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large Dutch oven or oven proof pot with lid over medium-high heat. Add lamb in batches and brown on all sides, taking care not to overcrowd the pan. Transfer lamb to a plate or bowl.

3. Add onion and carrot to the same pot. Saute, stirring up the brown bits, for 2 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and continue to saute 1 minute. Add tomatoes, chicken stock, figs, cinnamon stick, ras el hanout, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon black pepper.

4. Return lamb and any collected juices to the pot, submerging it in the stock. Add additional chicken stock to cover, if necessary.

5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cover pot. Transfer to oven and bake until lamb is falling apart tender, (about 2 hours).

6. Transfer pot to stove. Remove lamb and vegetables with a slotted spoon and place in a bowl. Bring stock to a boil over medium-high heat. Boil uncovered until sauce is reduced by about half and thickened, skimming fat.  Stir in chickpeas. Taste to check for seasoning. If necessary add a tablespoon of brown sugar to the stock. Return lamb and vegetables to pot.

Recipe may be prepared up to 24 hours in advance. Cover and refrigerate. To serve, skim any collected fat from surface. Rewarm over medium-low heat or in a 325 F. oven. Serve with prepared quinoa or couscous. Pass bowls of harissa and fresh cilantro around the table as condiments.

We made a quick pot of quinoa in our rice cooker as we finished up the recipe and it was delicious! Be prepared for your entire house to smell of the rich, spiced aroma of the dish.

Cookies!

There’s just something about the holiday season that seems to make many feel like baking; something about the cooler weather, friends and family visiting, and the lack of worrying about how one looks in a bathing suit seems to spell out a stronger desire for fresh-baked goods. I’m not immune myself, which is why I was testing out some new cookie recipes recently – Peanut Butter, Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip cookies and a shortbread with jam cookie.  Both turned out well, but I’m partial to the first since it has a lovely combination of three types of cookies. The friend I was baking with preferred the shortbread. The results of both recipes have been disappearing faster than I would like from the kitchen, though, so I’m going to need to bake again before hosting my annual family get together.

Peanut Butter, Oatmeal, Chocolate Chip Cookies (aka Everything Cookies)

Adapted from Peanut Butter Cookies IX on Allrecipes.com.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 rounded teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 heaping cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, white sugar and peanut butter until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture. Finally, mix in the oats and chocolate chips. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

Notes: These were delicious as is, but I plan to try to improve them by adding some dried cranberries, fresh ground nutmeg, additional cinnamon, and or more chocolate chips.

Shortbread Cookies with homemade Cranberry-Berry Jam and Kiwi-Lime-Pineapple Jam in the front two rows, Everything Cookies in the back.

Shortbread Cookies with Jam

Adapted from Berry Shortbread Dreams recipe by Mildred Sherrer.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup seedless jam (I used two types of homemade jam: Berry Cranberry and Kiwi-Lime-Pineapple)

• GLAZE:
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 2 teaspoons water
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in extract; gradually add flour until dough forms a ball. Cover and refrigerate at least 1 hour or until easy to handle. Roll into 1-in. balls. Place 1 in. apart on un-greased baking sheets. Using the back of a 1/8 tsp measuring spoon, make an indentation in the center. Fill with jam.
2. Bake at 350 degrees F for 14-18 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. While cookies are baking, combine glaze ingredients.
3. When cookies are done, remove to wire racks to cool.  Use a fork to stir up the glaze again; drizzle over cookies.

Tips: The vanilla extract tints the glaze a light tan brown color. If you prefer your glaze to be a pure white, use almond extract or leave out the extract altogether. I used vanilla since I like how the taste complimented the jam and because I’m allergic to almonds. If your jam is very sweet, you might consider using a little less of it when filling in your cookies since it might overpower the delicateness of the shortbread, especially if you plan to top with glaze as well.

Cheese Bake

After an afternoon of baking cookies, I was hyped up on sugar and in no mood to cook. Thankfully, hubby was ready to step in and make dinner adapted from a recipe he found online calling for 5 types of cheese in a baked macaroni dish (Original recipe: Wisconsin Five Cheese Bake found on allrecipes.com). Since we wanted to reduce the amount of ingredients we had to buy to make the meal, we adapted it to what we had in the fridge. You could easily sub in your favorite mixture of cheeses and whatever medium size pasta you have in your pantry.

Ingredients:

• 1 (16 ounce) package bow tie noodles
• 2 cups shredded Mexican cheese mixture
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella
• 1 cup grated cheddar
• 1/2 cup low-fat ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup non-fat Greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon chopped dried parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9×13 inch baking dish. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add bow tie noodles, and cook until tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Drain.
2. In a large bowl, toss together the shredded cheeses. Remove about 1/2 cup for topping and set aside. In a separate bowl, stir together the ricotta cheese, Greek yogurt and heavy cream. Season with parsley, Italian seasoning.
3. Pour the ricotta cheese mixture and drained pasta into the bowl with the shredded cheeses and toss lightly. Don’t worry about mixing it too thoroughly, it will melt. Pour into the prepared baking dish. Sprinkle the reserved cheese over the top.
4. Bake in the preheated oven until cheese is melted, about 10 minutes, then turn the oven to broil. Broil for about 5 minutes to brown the top.

Final Results: Totally decadent, even with the minor fat reducing adaptations we tested. It did need some salt, so adding in garlic salt as the original recipe suggested to the cheese mixture would have been nice. It also could have used a little kick of something – perhaps a dash of tabasco to add some heat or a shake or two of cayenne or crushed red peppers flakes. I loved the crunchy bits on top, but if you don’t like a crunchy top to your baked pasta, don’t broil it at the end. The cheese will still be plenty gooey and creamy.

Here’s what the leftovers looked like packed up for hubby’s lunch the next day (I added some cherry tomatoes and cucumber slices to round it out).

Beef Chorizo, Black Bean, and Chicken Burritos

It’s been almost a year since I last posted, and what a year it’s been! We’ve added a new member to our family, and while my pregnancy was remarkably healthy for the most part, I dealt with an unusual form of morning sickness that not only made cooking difficult due to the smells, but also made it so I was not hungry at all. I tried cooking a handful of times during the pregnancy, but the dishes turned out pretty poorly (my first inedible dish!). But now, Baby Monkey is here in person, I’m able to eat again, and I’m cooking food that’s actually edible once more so I’m back to blogging about our experiments in the kitchen.

The following recipe was cooked by my husband (yay!). Don’t be intimidated by the long ingredient list or the fact that it isn’t a single pot dinner. The taste is well worth it – it has some heat, complex flavors and generous servings.

Beef Chorizo, Black Bean, and Chicken Burritos

Serves 4

Taken (with some minor changes) from Rachael Ray’s Express Lane Meals.

• 2 T vegetable oil
• 1 large onion
• Salt and pepper
• 1.5 cups white rice
• 3.5 cups chicken stock
• 1/3 lb. Beef chorizo, chopped
• 3 large garlic cloves
• 2 t ground cumin
• 1 t ground coriander
• 1.5 lbs. Chicken tenders, chopped small
• 1 avocado, halved, skinned, and cut into small pieces
• Handful grape tomatoes, halved
• 1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped
• 1/4 cup cilantro leaves, chopped
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 14 oz. can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 8 flour tortillas
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Heat medium size pan over medium heat with half the oil. Add 1/4 of the chopped onion, season with salt and pepper, and then cook for 1 minute. Add the rice, stirring to coat in the oil. Add 2.5 cups of the chicken stock and bring up to simmer. Cover the pot tightly, reduce heat to medium low, and cook rice for 15-17 minutes until tender. Fluff rice with a fork when it’s done.

2. While rice cooks, preheat large skillet over medium-high heat with remaining oil. Add chorizo and cook for 2 minutes. Add remaining chopped onion, garlic, cumin, coriander, and some salt and pepper. Cook for 3 minutes until the onions start to get tender. Add the chicken and cook for 4-5 minutes, or until chicken no longer has any pink and is cooked through.

3. Combine avocado with the tomatoes, jalapeno, cilantro, lime juice and mix to combine.

4. Add remaining cup of chicken stock to the chorizo mixture and bring it up to a bubble. Once it simmers, add the black beans and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated (at least a few minutes).

5. Assemble burrito: Put handful of cheese on the tortilla, add rice, and top with meat mixture, then add some of the avocado mixture. Wrap and enjoy!

Fun with Cookie Cutters

Pita, low-fat salami, hard-boiled eggs, dried berries, grapes, mini-bell peppers stuffed with hummus or meat and cheese.

After finding a small tin filled with cute little metal cookie cutters, I’ve wanted to use them for ages, but we had some trouble opening the container. No wonder they were on sale! After denting the container a bit, we were finally able to access the cookie cutters. Next task – finding foods in our fridge that would be fun to cut. I used cheese, salami, and egg white cutouts as decorations.

Since this was packed for hubby, I used a bigger lunch box and a lot of highly caloric items to keep him filled up. The verdict: too many dried blueberries, but everything else went over well.

Rice Cooker Double Duty

Since November is a busy month for me, I was hoping to multitask using some of my cooking appliances. I’ve always been a fan of steaming some vegetables while I cook rice in the rice cooker, experimented with steaming dumplings, but when I came across some recipes that cooked entire meals in the rice cooker, I was intrigued. This lunch bento is the result of my first (and most likely last attempt).

I’m not going to include the recipes because none of them actually worked. The chicken and bell peppers were marinated in sesame oil with some pepper and salt, wrapped in foil, then tossed into the rice and water and left to steam with them. No matter how long I kept it in the cooker, the chicken remained raw in the middle, so I ended up giving up and tossing it in a skillet . Great end taste, but not worth the time and effort of seal up the chicken in a nice little foil pouch, especially since I ended up having to cook it in a pan anyways.

The savory egg dish was also incredibly delicious, but very ineffective in the rice cooker. It was flavored strongly enough that it tasted good both hot and cold the next day in our lunches. I just had to keep it in my rice cooker for 4+ cycles. It also puffed up to incredible heights while cooking. It might be that my rice cooker just isn’t strong/good enough, but I won’t be using it to cook anything more than rice or steam veggies again anytime soon.

Top Tier: Steamed Rice with Scallions and Kinpira, Bottom Tier: Sesame Chicken and Red Bell Pepper, Carrot Kinpira, Savory Quiche

White Wine Sangria

This is a dangerously addictive drink – easy to customize, easy to make, easy to drink. We used a bottle of buttery Chardonnay and it blended beautifully with the fruits. Author of the recipe is Stacy Slinkard.

• 1 Bottle of white wine (Riesling, Albarino, Chablis, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc).
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 3 oranges (sliced) or may substitute 1 cup of orange juice)
• 1 lemon (sliced)
• 1 lime (sliced)
• 1/2 liter club soda
• handful of hulled and sliced strawberries

Preparation:

Pour wine in the pitcher and squeeze the juice wedges from the orange,lemon and lime into the wine. Toss in the fruit wedges (leaving out seeds if possible) and add sugar. Chill overnight. Add ginger ale or club soda just before serving.If you’d like to serve right away, use chilled white wine and serve over lots of ice. 

Addition ideas: peaches, handful of fresh blueberries, raspberries, kiwi, a shot or two of gin, brandy or rum, a cup of citrus-flavored soda pop, ginger ale in place of the club soda.

We had a wine-lover coming over for lunch and had a tough time figuring out what to serve.  This was the perfect complement to a light, summer brunch/lunch including grilled chicken and lemon quinoa.  It might have been prettier served in wine glasses instead of tall tumblers, but these worked well.  One of the best parts was eating the boozy fruit as dessert.

Continued Adventures with Quinoa: Lemon & Herb Quinoa

I’ve made the Black Bean & Quinoa salad a couple times now since we liked it so much. It packs well in lunches, tastes good cold or warm, and was pretty easy to make. When planning the menu for today’s lunch however, I wanted to try something new since we had a guinea pig, I mean guest, coming over so I decided to play around with a Giada de Laurentiis recipe for Herbed Quinoa. After reading the reviews, I made some alterations to the recipe and came up with something everyone at the table agreed was a perfect summer luncheon dish (and would be ideal for a picnic or packed lunch). By swapping the chicken stock for vegetable, it’s a vegan or vegetarian dish. Here’s my version:

Lemon & Herb Quinoa

Ingredients:

Quinoa:

• 2 3/4 cups low-sodium chicken (or vegetable) stock
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups quinoa

Dressing:

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• ¾ – 1 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
• ¼  cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
• zest from one lemon
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

For the quinoa: Put all quinoa ingredients in your rice cooker and cook as you would white rice. When the rice cooker switches off or to the warming function, dump the quinoa into a large bowl and fluff with a fork (as you would couscous).

For the dressing: In a small bowl, mix together the olive oil, lemon juice, basil, parsley, thyme, and lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Pour the dressing over the quinoa and toss until all the ingredients are coated. Season with salt and pepper, to taste, and serve.

Note: I made this dish the night before and kept it covered in the refrigerator. I tasted it right after mixing everything together and it was good, but the garlic (I was a bit generous in the serving since we love garlic) overwhelmed the herbs and lemon. By lunchtime the next day though, the garlic had mellowed and the herbs and lemon played stronger roles. It was delicious! We served it with Zucchini and Tomatoes (recipe will be posted later this week), green salads, grilled rosemary chicken, and white sangria (recipe will be posted later this week). We ate so much, we didn’t leave any room for the planned dessert (angel food cake with homemade berry sauce). I’m definitely looking forward to our dinner tonight of leftovers and the dessert!

New Kitchen Toy, New Hobby

Although I’m posting about both at the same time, my new kitchen toy has absolutely nothing to do with my new hobby (go figure).  First up, the new toy:

Berry Strainer from Sur La Table with one can of black beans.

While searching for a copper bowl to give as a present (who knew no one keeps them in stock in stores anymore?), we came across this awesome silicone collapsible berry strainer at Sur La Table for the splurge-worthy price of $4.00.  Considering I had a gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket at that moment, it was fate.  It’s currently my new favorite kitchen toy.  I don’t just use it for washing berries, though I have used it for strawberries and blueberries; it’s real handy trick is helping rinse canned beans and veggies.  This berry strainer is perfectly sized to hold 1-2 cans of whatever you need drained or rinsed.  One of my least favorite parts of cooking with canned beans was always the rinsing; I know how to use the can’s lid to hold in the beans while I fill and dump it with water, but I’m not fond of it.  It’s not worth digging out the colander and using it, but somehow holding a can under the faucet and letting the water run over the not so clean lid and into my food didn’t seem like it was the best way to get the job done. Enter the berry strainer: I dump the contents of the can into the strainer over the sink, run it under water, give it a couple shakes and wait till the water runs clear. End result: perfectly rinsed and rained beans. When making the Black Bean and Quinoa salad, I used the strainer to rinse the black beans, and to help me drain the canned tomatoes so the dish didn’t end up too liquidy. It’s dishwasher safe and collapses thin enough to fit in my gadget drawer so it’s easy to access while cooking.

New Hobby:

Completely unrelated to cooking, I’ve been having some fun lately with my nails.  It’s a bit strange really, since I’ve never been one for long nails and I’m not really into make up.  However, my skin has been acting up lately which doesn’t allow me to wear any jewelry on my hands and I miss having something sparkly or colorful to look at/play with.  Enter nail polish.  I’ve always had fun with random colors of nail polish, usually getting them for a couple bucks at the drug store and dealing with the endless chipping or flaking that comes with these no-name brands. My dad gave me a bottle of OPI nail polish, and I noticed how much smoother it went on, the higher gloss in the color, and how much longer it lasted before chipping.  My husband started encouraging me to stop spending money on the cheapies which just have to be touched up all the time or redone, and start getting the good stuff so I’ve been editing my nail polish stash.  Luckily, I came across a website that was liquidating it’s OPI stock, so I managed to pick up a few bottles at a great discount, and decided to try my hand at some of the nail art I’ve seen displayed on other people’s blogs and websites for the Fourth of July.  Here’s the result:

Fourth of July Fireworks Nails

The colors in the picture are a bit off (the background was actually a light blue, to give you an idea), but the fireworks actually looked pretty cute in person.

Trying to do a design on both hands proved to be a bit too complicated for me, so my left hand ended up with some fireworks, and some modified french manicure designs. Instead of the white for a traditional french manicure, I used the blue glitter nail polish I had used in the center of the fireworks on the other nails.

Black Bean & Quinoa Salad

Summer has finally arrived!  With it comes enough free time to resume cooking and an abundance of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs matched with a desire to get back to healthy eating. Perfect time to test out one of the so-called “super-foods” I haven’t tried before: quinoa. During our recent visit to Costco, we came across a 4 lb. bag of quinoa at a price under my splurge point for random foods.  Since I’ve heard so much about this amazing grain, I thought it was worth a try and picked up a bag without any clue how to cook it or what it really was. Turns out, quinoa is actually a seed, not a grain, but the rest of the rumors were correct: it is indeed a super food. Gluten free, it is high in protein, fiber, iron, and more!

With all the healthy hype, I was prepared for it to not taste great. It sort of made me think of oatmeal; I know it’s good for me, but I have to force myself to eat it in its unadulterated, healthy form (I like it when it’s mixed with brown sugar, honey, syrup, or piles of cinnamon and sugar, but then it’s not so healthy anymore). I was willing to give quinoa a fair chance though and hunted online for well-reviewed recipes to try.  Attempt #1, an adaptation of several recipes I encountered, was a hit with both Monkey and I. Monkey said he loved how fresh and light it tasted and even went back for seconds.  This was a perfect light summer meal, but would be equally nice as a side dish.

Black Bean & Quinoa Salad:

Look at all the colors!

Black Bean & Quinoa Salad Recipe:

Ingredients:

1/3 cup Quinoa

1 cup Water (add more for higher elevations, less for extremely low elevations)

1 tablespoon Olive oil

4-5 teaspoons Lime juice
 (depending on taste)

1/4 heaping teaspoon Cumin

1/4 heaping teaspoon Ground coriander

1 tablespoon Fresh cilantro; finely chopped (double it if you like cilantro)

2 tablespoons Scallions; minced

1 can (15 oz size) Black beans; drained

2 cups fresh tomatoes; diced
 or 1 can diced tomatoes; well draineds

1 cup red, orange, or yellow bell peppers; diced

2 teaspoons Fresh green chiles; minced or 2 heaping tablespoons; canned

1 dash each salt and pepper; to taste

Directions:

1. Rinse the quinoa well in a fine sieve under cool running water. Be careful, because the seeds are small! Our normal colander’s holes were too large.
2. Put rinsed quinoa and 1 cup water in rice cooker and set to cook. If you have additional settings on your rice cooker, set it to cook just like white rice.
3. While the quinoa cooks, stir oil, lime juice, cumin, coriander, cilantro and scallions in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, combine beans, tomatoes, peppers and chiles.
4. Add cooled quinoa, and salt and pepper. Then pour the cilantro sauce and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Garnish with lemon slices, lime wedges, or whole cilantro leaves.

Serves 3-4.

Note: We didn’t wait for the quinoa to cool and ate immediately. It was delicious! If you have access to fresh tomatoes and green chiles, by all means use them. We used the canned for this first go round and it was delicious. I’ll be testing out more quinoa recipes as we work our way through the 4 lb. bag. I was especially happy to use some of our home grown cilantro in this recipe!