Recipe 3: Tiger Nut Sweets

When I first read the words Tiger Nut I immediately thought of the worst case scenario - Oh no, I really hope this recipe isn't similar to Rocky Mountain Oysters - which are deep fried bull testicles. Luckily, it's not even close. Tiger Nut Sweets refers to a mix of fruits, nuts, honey and spices. It's appearance is similar to a tuber root with the same name. Tiger Nut Sweets are one of the earliest desserts and were given as a gift to show appreciation similar to the modern day hostess gift. 

This vegan, gluten free, no added sugar recipe is almost more of a snack than a dessert. I've actually seen a few energy bars with the same ingredients. To really satisfy my sweet tooth and make the original recipe more of a dessert, I opted to coat them with chocolate instead of honey.

Ingredients: 

• 1 cup whole pitted dates
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1/3 cup shelled walnuts
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 oz of chocolate
• 2 tablespoons of whole milk or cream
• 1/3 cup ground almonds

 Finely chop the dates. In a medium bowl add dates and stir in 1 tablespoon of water until mushy.

Finely chop walnuts. Mix cinnamon and walnuts with dates.

 Shape the (very sticky) date mixture into balls.

Add the milk and chocolate to a double boiler and melt. You can also use a microwave, stirring the mixture every 30 seconds until melted. Set aside to cool.

Roll the date and walnut balls in the chocolate until completely covered in a thin layer. Roll the chocolate covered balls in ground almonds until coated. 

Recipe 2: Lamb Stew with Pearled Barley

Stews have always been an integral part of cooking. Braising tough, inexpensive pieces of meat breaks down the connective tissue, while also tenderizing and adding flavor. The oldest recipe for meat and vegetable stew was found on clay tablets from Yale University's Babylonian Collection. The recipe contains an immense variety of ingredients - some of which can't be deciphered. Having written documentation of ingredients and cooking techniques gives insight into what life was like during that time.

Lamb stew with Pearled Barley is the perfect meal to coax fall into returning, although now that I live in Atlanta, there's no telling how long that will take!

Ingredients:

• 2lbs bone-in lamb stew meat
• 1 large onion
• 4 carrots
• 4 celery stalks
• 1 leek
• 1 tablespoon of Herbs de Provance
• 1 bay leag
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 1 1/2 cups of red wine
• 4 cups of chicken broth
• pearled barley

Add just enough oil to coat the bottom of a dutch oven - I used my Le Creuset. On high heat, sear the lamb in two batches. Set lamb aside. 

Saute chopped onions, carrots, leek and celery in remaining oil until soft, about 5 minutes. Add Herbs de Provence, thyme, bay leaf and red wine. Simmer for 5-10 minutes until the wine has reduced by half.  

Add chicken broth and lamb. Simmer for 2 hours or until the meat is tender and falling off the bone.

While the lamb is simmering, cook the pearled barley. For two cups of barley, use 5 cups of water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes. Let the barley sit for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

Remove lamb from the dutch oven, shred the meat and discard bones. Add the lamb back to the simmering liquid. Serve with pearled barley.

Onion and Shallot Dip

Last weekend I attended a book club hosted by one of my neighbors. The book being discussed was Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married by Gary Chapman, which I managed borrow and speed read the previous week. I'm usually not a fan of self-help or therapy-related books, but I found this one to be really interesting - if you ignore the Christian undertone. Many of the ideas can be applied to any relationship since the book focused on communication and learning to speak your partners' "language." The section on learning to apologize was especially helpful since I've necer thought about how to apologize or if I was communicating my apology effectively. 

I've always wanted to be in a book club and really enjoyed spending the evening with an intriguing group of women. I don't think anyone in the group was from the same state and that's what I love about Atlanta - you meet people from all over the country. Our diverse backgrounds and cultures brought about thought-provoking topics and fascinating points of view.
 

You can't discuss a book on an empty stomach, so we were asked to contribute an appetizer. I brought an Onion and Shallot Dip served with potato chips. It tasted a million times better than the standard onion dip packet mixed with sour cream, but it looked a lot like tuna salad. In fact, Paul asked, "Why the hell did you make so much tuna?" Even the host gave me a confused look when I set it down on the table. 

 

This recipe has a large yield - we went through 2 bags of chips and still had some left over. Next time, I'll wait for a huge party or half the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds large yellow onions, thinly sliced
• 2 large shallots, thinly sliced
• 4 springs of thyme
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar - red wine vinegar can substitute
• 2 cups sour cream
• 1/4 cup minced chives - Omitted
• 1/4 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt
• 2 teaspoons onion powder

Preheat oven to 425°.  Thinly slice the onions and shallots using a knife, mandolin, or your 

food processor with a slicer attachment.

                                    

Mix onions, shallots, thyme and olive oil in a large roasting pan. Season with salt and pepper. 

 

 Roast onion mixture, stirring and scraping down the sides of the pan every 10 minutes, until the mixture breaks down and become golden, about 45-55 minutes. If the onions start to burn, turn down the oven temperature and add a few tablespoons of oil.

Discard thyme sprigs, most of the leaves will have fallen off but you don't want to eat the woody stems. Add wine and vinegar, roast for another 15 minutes until it is a deep golden brown and caramelized. Remove from the oven and cool.

 

Mince the cooled onion mixture and transfer to a bowl; combine with sour cream, yogurt, onion powder and chives. Season with salt and pepper. 

We have more free time in the evenings after Emerson goes to bed, which is why I made the dip the night before the book club meeting. Also, allowing the dip to sit over night in the fridge helps the flavors develop.

 

Recipe 1: Egyptian Bread

The first recipe in A History of Food in 100 Recipes is Egyptian Bread. According to William Sitwell, one of the earliest known recipes was painted on the wall of Senet's tomb. She lived during the Egyptian Middle Kingdom period, which is between 2005 and 1650 BC. The recipe is shown in a series of drawings where characters perform the step-by-step process of making bread, including grinding the wheat into flour and kneading the dough.

It's amazing to think that bread, a staple in most American households, has been around for more than 4,000 years. 

I love bread, hence the name of my blog, which makes this recipe the perfect start to my cooking project. I made a simple flat bread with sauteed eggplant and a fava bean, feta salad.

Flat Bread

• 500 grams of flour
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 4 tablespoons of olive oil
• 300 ml of water

In a big bowl combine the flour and salt. Mix in water and olive oil. Knead into a soft dough and allow to rest for 40 minutes. 

Form dough into 6 equally sized balls. Roll each one out to desired thickness. I rolled mine out as thin as I could which allowed them to brown and cook quickly. 

Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F for 15 minutes until golden brown.

Fava bean and Feta Salad

• 20 pods of fresh fava beans, crumbled
• 10 ounces of fresh feta
• 1 cucumber, chopped
• 1/4 cup of olive oil
• 1 clove of finely chopped garlic

Combine the olive oil and garlic, set aside. 

Bring a pot of water to a boil, remove fava beans from the pods and boil for 1-2 minutes. Add the fava beans to an ice bath to stop the cooking process. Once the beans of cooled, pop them out of their waxy shell.

Combine the peeled fava beans, feta, and cucumber. Discard the garlic from the oil and drizzle over the salad. You will have left over oil. I used mine to make another salad.

Chicken Tikka Masala

I know I said I was going to cook my way through William Sitwell's A History of Food in 100 Recipes, and I am, but I just wanted to share this recipe first.

I love Indian food and when I saw this Chicken Tikka Masala recipe in Bon Appetit, I knew it would become a fast favorite. I've made it three times. The first time it came out perfectly; the second was a complete failure; and the last was pretty good, even though I completely butchered the recipe. I also never have all of the ingredients on hand and don't always remember everything at the supermarket. I usually have to leave out ingredients or substitute, hoping it still works out.

Below is the recipe, with the mangled version I actually made in blue.  

Ingredients:

• 6 garlic cloves
• 4 teaspoons of finely grated peeled ginger - Omitted
• 4 teaspoons turmeric
• 2 teaspoons garam masala 
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 1/2 cups whole-milk yogurt (not Greek) - I only had Greek, so I added milk to thin it out
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• 2lbs boneless, skinless, chicken breasts, halved - I used boneless, skinless, chicken thighs
• 3 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
• 1 small onion
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 6 cardamom pods, crushed - I substituted with ground cardamom
• 2 dried chiles de arbol or 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
• 1 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 cups of heavy cream
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro - Omitted
• Steamed Basmati rice 

Combine garlic, ginger, turmeric, garam masala, coriander, and cumin in a small bowl. 

Whisk yogurt, salt, and half of spice mixture in a medium bowl; add chicken and turn to coat. In a rush to marinate the chicken between conference calls,  I accidentally added all of the spice mixture to the yogurt. Cover and chill 4-6 hours. Cover and chill remaining spice mixture.

Heat ghee in a large heavy pot over medium heat. Add onion, tomato paste, cardamom, and chiles and cook, stirring often, until tomato paste has darkened and onion is soft - about 5 minutes. Add remaining half of spice mixture and cook, stirring often, until bottom of pot begins to brown - about 4 minutes. Since I didn't have any spice mixture left, I moved the chicken to broiler pan and added the left over marinade to the pot on the stove.

Add tomatoes with juices, crushing them with your hands as you add them. BE CAREFUL! The tomatoes are filled with juice so when you crush them they spray everywhere and I mean EVERYWHERE. Not that having my shirt covered with food is a surprise or even remotely abnormal but most people prefer not to wear tomato stained clothes. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, stirring often and scraping up browned bits from bottom of pot, until sauce thickens, 8-10 minutes.

Add cream and chopped cilantro. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens, 30-40 minutes. I used only 1 cup of cream, since I added the yogurt based marinade.

Meanwhile, preheat broiler. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and set a wire rack inside sheet. Arrange chicken on rack in a single layer. Broil until chicken starts to blacken in spots (it will not be cooked through), about 10 minutes. I love chicken cooked this way it's toasty and adds a lot of flavor without taking the time to light the grill.

Cut chicken into bite-size pieces, add to sauce, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, 8-10 minutes.

 Serve with rice and cilantro sprigs.

Babies: The Ultimate Time Machine

Who knew that once you have a baby, time would move so quickly that yesterdays events are immediately forgotten and it seems like an eternity since last month. It's been a over ayear since my last post and since then I have spent hundreds of wonderful hours with my son Emerson and moved twice - first to NJ and then Atlanta.

Emerson and Paul both started school last week. With my boys busy learning, I now have spare time, and Paul bought me the perfect book to occupy it. I am going to attempt to cook my way through A History of Food in 100 Recipes by William Sitwell. The recipes in first half of the book aren't exact, so I'll have to improvise and research similar recipes. This is especially important since we will have to eat whatever I make and I would like to avoid a riot at the dinner time.