Fearless Kitchen

Recipe: Green Salad with Strawberries and Goat Cheese

Here we are again with yet another way to get your greens.  I know I've made this dish before, but apparently I haven't posted it.  It's an incredibly simple recipe, and very healthy for you to boot.  The greens provide fiber.  The strawberries offer fiber and all sorts of anti-oxidants.  The goat cheese provides calcium and some other kinds of good stuff - I'm not a nutritionist.  The "dressing" consists entirely of vinegar, reducing the amount of fat.  Finally, and most importantly, it tastes good.  If eating healthy becomes an ordeal, you're much less likely to stick with it.  Even your healthy dishes should have a good flavor to them.  Just my two cents...

Green Salad with Strawberries and Goat Cheese (serves 4; approx. $1.18/serving)

3 ounces salad greens (approximate)

1 pint strawberries, stemmed and sliced

1 ounce goat cheese, crumbled

3 sprigs fresh oregano, leaves only

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Equipment:

• No special equipment is required for this recipe.

1. Combine the ingredients in a salad bowl.
2. Drizzle the vinegar over the salad.
3. Serve. 

Recipe: Pulled Pork Stuffed Poblanos

  If you read the Pulled Pork post from Saturday, you'll have probably already done the math.  "Serves: a lot" does not equal four people.  Despite the fact that all were very hungry, and everyone had seconds and some thirds, we still had an awful lot of pulled pork left over.  We had expected this and planned ahead.  On our foray north of the city to get said pork, we made a trip to Wilson Farms and found some beautiful looking poblanos.  I immediately placed two of them into a bag and put them in the cart.  Fearless Grill was leery - what, he asked, was I planning to do with them?  I immediately replied that I would stuff them with the pulled pork. 

A dish was born.  I used some cilantro and some cheese to round out the rest of the recipe.  We cooked them on the Big Green Egg and topped them with the leftover Piedmont-style sauce.  They made a pretty phenomenal side dish.  You could also serve this as a main dish.

Pulled Pork Stuffed Poblanos (serves 2; approx. cost per serving not available)

3 cups leftover Pulled Pork

2 good-sized poblano chilies

4 ounces Monterrey jack cheese, grated

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

2 cups leftover barbeque sauce

Equipment:

• Big Green Egg (optional; you can probably do this in the oven if you must.)
• Bowl

1. Combine pork, cheese and cilantro in the bowl.  Your hands are the best tool for this job.
2. Slice off the tops of the poblanos and remove the seeds and ribs.
3. Stuff the poblanos with the bowl mixture. 
4. Cook over direct heat 5 - 10 minutes or until heated through.  The poblanos should be soft enough to eat but not disintegrating.
5. Serve, topped with some sauce and with more sauce on the side. 

Recipe: Lamb Shanks Braised in Red Wine, Saffron and Rosewater

Recipe Source: Batmanglij, Najmieh.  From Persia to Napa: Wine at the Persian Table.  Mage Publishers, Washington DC, 2006 p. 162

Traditions don't just happen.  No one wakes up one day and says, "Hey, you know what?  It would be really great if on this day every year, everyone wore their underwear outside their clothes."  Well, maybe they do, but I don't want to know about it.  People generally don't listen to them, at any rate.  For most of the rest of us, traditions evolve because we do something and think it would be kind of keen to do it again.  Years ago, St. Patrick's Day and Purim fell on the same day.  Our friends celebrated Purim, and we celebrated St. Patrick's Day, and we decided to celebrate together.  We really enjoyed it, and going forward we always celebrated Purim with those friends.  We just don't make the green hamantashen every year.

I usually cook for our Purim celebration.  This is often because I have the time, but also because I love to cook.  A few years ago, when I started getting into Persian food, I decided one year that I would make Persian food for the Purim party (the Purim story does take place in Persia, after all.)  The tradition stuck, largely because I really like Persian food.  This year, I made this dish to celebrate.  (Yes, I know Purim was several weeks ago.  Sorry.)  I didn't make a whole lot of changes to the recipe.  The original wanted to be served with a complicated-looking crusted rice dish on the side; that looked like too much fuss under the circumstances and I decided to use a different rice dish instead (to be posted another day.)  The result was a flavorful, delicious dish that everyone enjoyed seconds of.  Since we were eating at someone else's house, our hostess kept the braising liquid to top rice later in the week.  My only complaint was that the rosewater flavor didn't come through at all; if you don't have any on hand, it's not worth running to the store.

Lamb Shanks Braised in Wine (serves 6; approx. $7.34/serving)

6 lamb shanks

3 teaspoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 head garlic, peeled and sliced

4 onions, peeled and diced

2 tablespoons orange rind

Zest of one lime

1 cinnamon stick

1 teaspoon saffron, ground and dissolved in 1/4 cup rosewater

1 tablespoon honey

2 cups water

4 cups Merlot

1 tablespoon lime juice

Equipment:

• Dutch oven
• Shallow bowl

1. Preheat your oven to 325.
2. Combine the salt and pepper with the flour in the shallow bowl.  Dredge the lamb shanks in the flour mixture and set aside.
3. Heat the oil in the Dutch oven .  Add the lamb shanks and brown on all sides.  You may have to work in batches.
4. Add the garlic, onions, orange rind, lemon zest and cinnamon.  Cook 10 minutes.
5. Add saffron rosewater, honey, water and wine.  Bring to a boil.  Remove from heat.
6. Cover and bake the shanks in the oven for 3 hours. 
7. Serve warm.

Recipe: North Carolina Style Pulled Pork (Guest Post from Fearless Grill)

Recipe Source:  Originally posted to the Big Green Egg forum by user Elder Ward, and reposted to a permanent site by the Naked Whiz (http://www.nakedwhiz.com/elder.htm)

I’ve had my Big Green Egg for a while now, and I’ve made some great barbeque on it.  The Egg really excels at traditional ‘low and slow’ barbeque, where meat is cooked for hours over low heat and smoke until it is falling apart tender.  This technique is great for dishes like beef brisket and ribs.  It is also great for pulled pork, and I’ve wanted to try making this barbeque staple for some time, but none of our local stores carry the large pieces of pork shoulder needed to make this dish.  I asked the local butcher last summer, and he said that not enough people buy it, and so they don’t stock it.     I guess more people need smokers.  Finally, I was on the opposite side of the city last weekend, and I remembered that there was an old-school butcher shop there, so I stopped in to see what they had.  Before my eyes were 5 or 6 10 lb. pieces of bone in pork shoulder.  I quickly grabbed one, and set off to make barbecued pulled pork for the first time. 

Although I hadn’t personally tried to make pulled pork before, it is one of the more frequently discussed items on the Big Green Egg online forum, so I knew where to turn.  Elder Ward’s pulled pork recipe outlines all the techniques needed to succeed at this cook, and is one of the resources that forum members point new people too.  Since this was my first time doing this, I chose to follow the recipe exactly as written, except that I eliminated the cheap hamburger buns for serving, as we already had way too much food, and didn’t need to add a bunch of carbs to the meal.  I made a minor substitution and used Spanish rather than Hungarian paprika since that’s what I had.  I also used apple wood for smoking, as I was out of the hickory recommended in the recipe, and I usually use apple with pork anyway. 

For those who haven’t tried doing true barbeque, this isn’t about throwing a steak over a fire for a few minutes and trying to keep it from charring.  The idea behind ‘low and slow’ is to take an otherwise lousy cut of meat (e.g. $.99/lb) and turn it into a delicacy by cooking it at a very low temperature over a long period of time, adding smoke from hardwood to enhance the flavor.  The ‘low and slow’ cook breaks down the connective tissues in the meat and melts away the fat.  This isn’t the kind of dish you can just decide to make after work, as it really only works with larger pieces of meat - smaller ones would just dry out - and takes about 2 hours / lb.  My 9 lb. pork shoulder took just over 18 hours to cook, which led to a somewhat funny exchange.  Once I was confident that I hadn’t burned the meat to a crisp, I called our friends who live nearby, explained that we had a large hunk of meat that needed to be eaten, and invited them over.  Their response was “have you started it yet?”  They were quite shocked when I told them it had been cooking since the previous day.  Don’t be put off by the huge amount of meat this makes.   It’s cheap, and because it’s cooked to a high temperature and smoked, the leftovers will keep for a while, and are useful in numerous other recipes. 

Of course, part of being able to cook a meal like this is having the right tools, and the Big Green Egg really excels at long low temperature cooks.  It can cook for at least 24 hours on a single load of lump charcoal, and it maintains its temperature very well.  This translates into few trips outside in the middle of the night to check on the smoker.  Unfortunately, this isn’t a meal that can be translated to a regular grill.  You really need a smoker, and one that can go for long periods of time unattended unless you really feel the need to sit up all night with it.  To supplement the Egg on this cook, I also got to try out a new toy that I got for Christmas, but hadn’t had a chance to use yet - a Maverick ET-73 remote thermometer.  This great little device comes with two temperature probes, one for the meat and one for the smoker.   These connect to a weather-resistant transmitter that sits next to your smoker.  A wireless receiver shows you a constant readout of the temperature and can alert you if the temperature of the smoker drops too low, goes too high, or if your meat reaches it’s target temperature.  The Maverick worked great, giving me a view of what was happening from in the house, alerting me once during the cook when the temperature dropped, and letting me monitor the meat as it came toward it’s target temperature without having to stand over the smoker to take constant readings with my Thermapen. 

The pulled pork itself came out perfectly.  The meat was extremely tender and easily pulled apart for serving.  It had a nice smoky flavor and remained moist.  Most of the fat on the meat rendered off during the long cook, so it didn’t come across as heavy or greasy at all.  I also made two sauces to go along with the pork, as recommended in the recipe - a vinegar sauce and a mustard-based sauce.  When I was mixing them up, I liked the vinegar sauce more, and the mustard sauce didn’t taste that good at all.  But when we ate them on the pork, the vinegar sauce didn’t really provide a lot of flavor, and the mustard sauce was definitely the hands-down favorite around the table.  Overall, I was very happy with this first attempt at pulled pork, and I’ll be experimenting to get this even better in the future.  

North Carolina Style Pulled Pork (Serves a lot.   Approx. Cost Per Serving Not Available)

Equipment Required

• Big Green Egg or other smoker
• Wood for smoking (I used Apple)
• Remote thermometer (Optional but recommended)

1 large pork shoulder / Boston Butt - 8 - 10 lbs.

For the Rub
2 tablespoons kosher salt

2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons ground cumin seed

2 tablespoons chili powder

2 tablespoons cracked black pepper

1 tablespoon cayenne pepper

4 tablespoons paprika

2 tablespoons ground sage

For the ‘Traditional North Carolina’ (vinegar-based) sauce
1 cup white vinegar

1 cup cider vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

For the ‘Western North Carolina (Piedmont)’ (mustard-based) sauce
1 cup ketchup

1 cup water

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

1 onion chopped fine

3 cloves crushed garlic

 2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons dry mustard

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Determine when you want to eat, and plan your cook accordingly.  The meat will take approximately 2 hours/lb. to cook, though you will judge doneness strictly by temperature.  So for a 9 pound piece of meat, you’ll want to put it in the smoker at least 18 hours before you want to eat.
Prepare your fire.  Since an 18 hour cook would usually start in the middle of the night to be ready for dinner the next day, I set my smoker up before dark, so all I have to do is go outside and light it when I’m ready.  To maximize the chances your fire will burn properly, clean out your smoker thoroughly, removing all ash.  If you’re using a BGE or other smoker that uses lump charcoal as a fuel, build your fire with the largest chunks of charcoal toward the bottom, and fill in with smaller pieces above.  This will prevent the air holes from getting clogged with ash over time and putting out the fire.  See Elder Ward’s writeup for more detailed instructions on this.

1. About an hour before starting the cook, mix the rub ingredients together and liberally coat the meat.  I had some rub left over, and applied a second coat right before putting the meat into the smoker. 
2. Start your fire, add your smoking wood, and set up your smoker for indirect cooking with a drip pan under the meat.  Put in the meat, either on a V-rack or directly on the grill.  Insert the probes from your remote thermometer if you are using one, and stabilize your smoker at around 210 degrees Fahrenheit.  Note that putting such a large piece of cold meat into the smoker will cause the temperature to drop.  Make sure you get it stable with the meat in the smoker before going to bed, or the remote alarm will be waking you up later. 
3. Let the pork cook.  If you’re using a ceramic smoker like the BGE, you don’t need to really worry about the meat drying out.  Just leave the lid shut.  On other types of smokers, you may need to baste the meat periodically.  You can either use the vinegar sauce, or another complimentary flavor, such as a 50-50 mix of apple juice and cider vinegar. 
4. Eventually, the internal temperature of the meat will hit a plateau in the 175 to 185 degree range, and will stay there for a while.  If you notice that your pork has done this, you can raise the heat to 250-275 degrees to help it on its way.  Eventually, the temperature will move past the plateau and continue to rise. 
5. At some point during the cooking process, prepare the sauces.  The vinegar sauce is easy - just stir all the ingredients together and put in a plastic squirt container or some other appropriate serving vessel.  For the mustard sauce, mix the ingredients together and simmer in a medium saucepan for about 20 minutes.  This one needs to be served warm, so if you make it ahead of time, reheat it before serving. 
6. When the internal temperature of the meat hits 200 degrees, remove from the heat.  Since this isn’t an exact science, just wrap it in foil until you are ready to eat.  If it’s done really early, wrap the foiled pork in a large towel, and put it in a cooler until you’re ready.  It will stay warm for at least 90 minutes this way. 
7. When you’re ready to serve, use a couple of forks to pull the meat apart with the grain, which should result in piles of string-like pieces of meat.  If you’re going to serve as sandwiches, use a cleaver or chef’s knife to cut the meat into smaller chunks.  Otherwise, just serve on a plate, with the sauces on the side. 

Recipe: Red and Gold Fried Rice

Recipe Source: Yan, Martin.  Martin Yan's China.  Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2008 p. 130

Are you a Harried Homemaker(tm)?  Are you always looking for something quick to make that is both nutritious and easy?  If so, this recipe is for you.  The original recipe said that it served four; we managed to get six servings out of it easily.  It came together amazingly quickly once the rice was done; if you make the rice ahead of time it will be even easier. 

I made a few changes, as always.  I didn't have dried black whole mushrooms, so I used pre-sliced black dried mushrooms.  This made the dish even easier.  I used hot pepper sesame oil instead of vegetable oil, because the hot peppers do nice things for my sinuses in spring.  I used a whole onion, increased the amount of ginger, substituted white wine for chicken broth (I didn't feel like thawing out a whole container of broth for one tablespoon of liquid) and omitted the final salt.  I used ground turkey instead of ground beef to give the dish an even lighter flavor, and Worcestershire sauce instead of hoisin sauce because that's what I had on hand.  I didn't have prepared rice on hand and had to make it from scratch, which probably resulted in a more glutinous texture than I would have liked but that was certainly not a meal killer. 

We both really, really liked this dish, but I should point out that we didn't much care for it until we added soy sauce.  Adding soy sauce to taste really brought out all the flavors and brought the dish together.  My husband also tried it with Red Hot sauce and more Worcestershire sauce, but neither worked as well as additional soy sauce. 

Red and Gold Fried Rice (serves 6; approx. $1.70/serving)

2 handfuls dried sliced black mushrooms, soaked in warm water 20 minutes

2 tablespoons hot pepper sesame oil

1 onion, chopped

2 tablespoons minced ginger

4 ounces ground lean turkey

3 cups cold cooked long-grain rice

1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

5 scallions, sliced

2 tablespoons ketchup (I like Muir Glen, but it's up to you)

1 tablespoon white wine

1 tablespoon soy sauce, plus more to serve

2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

4 eggs, lightly beaten

Equipment:

• Wok

1. Heat the oil in the wok over high heat.
2. Add the onion and ginger.  Stir fry until fragrant.
3. Add the turkey and mushrooms.  Stir-fry until the meat is no longer pink.  This shouldn't take long.  Break up the clumps of meat with your spoon as you go.
4. Add the rice.  Cook until heated through.
5. Add the tomatoes, scallions, ketchup, wine, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce.  Mix well.
6. Push the rice to the sides of the pan, creating a little well in the middle.  Pour the eggs into the middle. 
7. Let the eggs start to set up a little, then quickly stir into the rice.
8. Serve.

Recipe: Chicken in a Pot

Recipe Source: Palazuelos, Susanna and Marilyn Tausend.  Mexico: The Beautiful Cookbook.  HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1996 p. 110

Anyone raised in the United States of a certain age (and by "a certain age," I mean pre-Elmo) will probably remember The Muppet Show.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with what was quite simply the best show ever aired on television (ever ever ever!), The Muppet Showwas essentially a variety comedy show starring (mostly) puppets.  They had guest stars show up, like Elton John and Mark Hamil (yes, this was in the late 1970s), but it was really mostly about Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo and company.  One of my favorite characters was The Swedish Chef.  He bumbled around the kitchen singing a little song that probably wasn't even in Swedish, making a mess and being funny.  One of his dishes involved putting a chicken in a pot.  This resulted in several moments of hilarity.  The "chicky," also a puppet, distinctly did not wish to get into the pot.  Anyway, even though this was a Mexican dish (not Swedish or even pseudo-Swedish) and my "chicky" was long past struggling, I couldn't help but sing the Swedish Chef's little song as I worked. 

The resulting dish probably bears little resemblance to the original, although the original was "updated" from an older recipe anyway so I don't feel quite as bad.  I made changes, as always.  I increased the garlic from 11 cloves to 20.  Yes, that's a lot of garlic.  Deal.  It's good for you.  Besides, once you make this recipe you'll never be plagued by vampires again, and isn't that a goal we all strive toward?  As it turned out, I was out of thyme, so I had to use savory.  I reduced the amount, because a little ground savory goes a very long way indeed.  I reduced the amount of oil significantly.  I left the potatoes unpeeled to get more fiber out of them, and when I saw that the serrano chiles were optional I scoffed.  Chiles are never optional in this house, especially not in the spring.  Finally, I added some cayenne pepper to the spice rub - not a lot, but enough - because it's spring. 

The result of the dish was pretty delicious, even if I do say so myself.  At first I was kind of surprised, but I shouldn't have been.  The combination of marjoram and savory was the same that went into my youvetsi, which was pretty delicious.  (Savory may make this dish less authentically Mexican.  I don't know.)  My only complaint was the potatoes, which really didn't cook long enough.  Maybe it's because I left the peels on and maybe it's because I didn't add the additional olive oil.  This was not a meal wrecker - I personally will cheerfully eat potatoes raw if I have to - but it was something to be aware of.  If you try this dish, try adding the potatoes 1/2 hour before serving time.  Browning the potatoes in the skillet would probably help too. 

Chicken in a Pot (serves 4 - 6; approx. $2.65/serving)

1 whole chicken, cut up into parts

20 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon coarse salt

1 tablespoon ground pepper

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

20 small new potatoes

3/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 teaspoons salt

6 bay leaves

2 tablespoons dried marjoram

1 teaspoon dried savory

2 serrano chiles, chopped

Equipment:

• Dutch oven
• Bowl
• Skillet or saute pan
• Strainer

1. Combine the garlic, tablespoon of coarse salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper in the bowl.  Rub the chicken pieces with this rub and let sit a couple of hours in the refrigerator.
2. Heat the oil in the skillet.  Brown the chicken briefly in the oil.  Transfer the chicken to the Dutch oven.
3. Deglaze the pan with the red wine vinegar and bring to a boil, scraping up the little bits on the bottom of the pan as you go.  Strain the mixture into the Dutch oven.
4. Add the salt, bay leaves, marjoram and savory to the Dutch oven.  Bring to a boil, cover and lower the heat.  Stir every ten minutes. 
5. After 35 minutes, uncover the pot.  Add the chiles and potatoes.  Cover and cook over low heat about 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. 

Recipe: Green Salad with Chipotle Salsa

This is another one of the recipes that seems so obvious that I feel downright lame for even posting it.  It is nothing more than mixed salad greens, a little cheese (very little) and some salsa.  I needed a vegetable dish to go alongside the Cod with Chipotle Romesco.  The cheese went in because I wanted to give it a little substance, so we didn't wake up in the middle of the night and raid the cookie jar.  I used the salsa for a variety of reasons: we had it in the fridge, I was feeling uninspired in terms of dressing, and the chipotle would provide continuity between the fish and the salad.  A lot of those fitness and women's health type magazines went through a phase where they were advocating the use of salsa on salads in place of dressing, so I figured it would be okay.  The result was a very tasty, refreshing side salad. 

Green Salad with Chipotle Salsa (serves 4; approx. $0.95/serving)

3 - 4 cups mixed salad greens

1 handful sliced cucumbers

2 ounces grated cheddar cheese

4 tablespoons chipotle salsa (I use Frontera brand)

Equipment:

• No special equipment is needed for this recipe

1. Put the greens in the salad bowl.
2. Add the cheese.
3. Top with the salsa.
4. Toss to coat and serve.

Recipe: Cod with Chipotle Romesco Sauce

Recipe Source (sauce): Andrews, Colman.  Catalan Cuisine: Vivid Flavors from Spain's Mediterranean Coast.  The Harvard Common Press, Boston, 1988 p. 224

Tarragona may be my favorite city in the world.  I was only there for a day and that one day was over a decade ago, but to my recollection it was simply stunning.  I loved the buildings, the smell (really!), the feel of the sunlight on my skin.... there was nothing about that city that I can recall that I did not love.  When I found a recipe for a Tarragona-style romesco sauce in my new (yet old) Catalan cookbook, I jumped at the chance.  I could not wait to make it.  Unfortunately for me, I could simply not find dried ancho chiles.  I did, however, have chipotle chiles in my possession.  Ultimately I decided to stop waiting and make the sauce with the chipotles. 

I didn't make a whole lot of other changes to the sauce.  I used canned, fire-roasted tomatoes from Muir Glen Organics, because at this time of year fresh tomatoes don't have much flavor.  When cooking the cod, I poached it simply in water.  Halfway into the cooking process I added a spoonful of the romesco sauce, just to infuse the fish with the flavors.

We both really enjoyed this dish.  The chipotle may not be perfectly authentic, but it was tasty.  It was a great, light dish for a weeknight.  In case you're wondering, the cucumber was a garnish.  Don't get me wrong - we ate the cucumber, but it was more to use up leftovers from the chicken kisrawiyya than because it was intentional.  The cost per serving doesn't include the cost of the cucumbers.

Cod with Chipotle Romesco Sauce (serves 2; approx. $7.40/serving)

2 cod fillets

1 cup water

3 canned chipotle chiles in adobo, roughly chopped

1 serrano chile, roughly chopped

Olive oil

2 canned, fire-roasted tomatoes

10 cloves garlic, crushed

24 almonds, roasted

24 hazelnuts, roasted

2 sprigs parsley, roughly torn

2 slices country bread, fried in olive oil

2 teaspoons red wine vinegar

Pinch kosher salt

Equipment:

• Saute pan
• Food processor

1. Saute the chipotles and the serrano briefly in a little bit of oil, just until the serranos are slightly softened.  Transfer to the food processor.
2. Add the garlic and process to a thick paste.
3. Add the nuts, parsley and fried bread to the mixture and process.
4. Add the tomatoes, salt and a little bit of olive oil.  Process until smooth. 
5. Wipe out the saute pan and add the 1 cup of water. 
6. Bring to a bare simmer and add the fish.
7. When the fish looks halfway done, add a generous dollop of the sauce to the cooking liquid.  Mix as best as you can without breaking up the fish.
8. When the fish is done, remove to a serving dish.  Top with the romesco sauce.  Serve any extra sauce on the side. 

Recipe: Pan-Seared Tuna with Cumber

Recipe Source: Basan, Ghillie.  The Complete Vietnamese Cookbook.  Anness Publishing, London, 2007 p. 120.

I've loved fish and seafood as long as I can remember.  I heard stories about the traditional Feast of Seven Fishes Christmas Eve dinner when I was a kid, and I was always so jealous.  (My mother and sister intensely dislike fish, which would have made such an event difficult at best.)  I love to try new and different fish recipes, especially tasty, light ones like this.  I also like spicy food, especially during the spring when my allergies make me so absolutely miserable.

I made a few changes.  Some of them were procedural.  I moved the garlic from the pan to the dressing.  I used hot pepper sesame oil instead of regular sesame oil, because of the affore-mentioned sinus difficulty.  I actually restricted myself to the number of chilies in the original recipe, which was a mistake, and I used regular sugar because I was out of raw sugar.  I don't have a functional mortar and pestle, so I used my mini-prep food processor.

The end result was pretty darned good, if I do say so.  Because I used tuna that had been frozen, the meat dried out a little more than I would have liked, but that in no way rendered the food inedible.  I would have liked a little more chile power, but I suspect that the majority of you would prefer it as-is :) 

Pan-Seared Tuna with Cucumber (serves 2 - 4; approx. $6.20/serving)

1 cucumber

2 teaspoons hot pepper sesame oil

3 cloves garlic

2 tuna steaks

4 tablespoons minced ginger

2 long green chillies

3 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons fish sauce

3 tablespoons lime juice

Equipment:

• Mini-prep food processor
• Skillet
• Bowl

1. Roughly chop the chilies.  Combine them, the garlic and the ginger in the food processor and grind to a pulp.
2. Add the fish sauce and lime juice.  Process to combine.
3. Turn the dressing out into a bowl. 
4. Thinly slice the cucumber into long strips.  Add them to the bowl and let sit half an hour. 
5. Add the oil to the pan.  Heat the pan and swirl around to coat.
6. Add the fish to the pan and sear over medium-high heat for a couple of minutes.
7. Flip and sear the other side another couple of minutes.
8. Evacuate to a serving tray.  Scatter the cucumber strips on top and add the dressing.  Serve and enjoy. 

Recipe: Chicken Kisrawiyya

Recipe Source: al-Warraq, Ibn Sayyar.  Annals of the Caliph's Kitchens.  Translation by Nawal Nasrallah.  Brill Press, Leiden, 2007 pp. 162 - 3

One recent Friday morning, I woke to find an email in my in box.  This is not in and of itself unusual.  The email was from a mailing list for a community group I'm involved with.  For reasons most of you don't care about, they needed someone who could come up with a dish for an event the next day.  It needed to feed about a hundred people, although it would be part of a larger buffet.  Was there anyone on the list who might be able to pull this off? 

I smiled.  I could pull this off.  I responded, offered my services, put my list together and got to work.  The recipe had to be medieval.  Well, that was fine, I had plenty of medieval recipe resources.  The event theme was Middle Eastern.  I have a few Middle Eastern medieval recipe sources.  I was personally unfamiliar with a) the facilities at the event, b) the person coordinating food service at the event, and c) the event staff.  I wasn't even going to the event.  At any rate, my unfamiliarity with the facilities dictated a dish that could be served cold or at room temperature.  There is a whole class of medieval Arab dish that is intended to be served that way, called barida.  I found one that dated to the tenth century reliably, although the Persian king for whom it was named was a sixth century figure.  It looked delicious and uncomplicated.  I decided that was what I would go with. 

The dish is sauced with cucumber.  I'll admit that I was partially attracted to the dish just because of the cucumber.  I'm quite fond of cucumbers, and they're mild and refreshing.  I also needed an interesting recipe for this month's A Fruit A Month blogging event (founded by Maheshwari of Beyond the Usual).  I used the food processor for the part where the cucumber gets chopped as fine as possible, because I don't have a staff of kitchen help.  I have myself and the dog.  We cooked most of the chickens in the Big Green Egg, although we ran out of charcoal by the end and had to roast the final two chickens indoors.  I salted the cucumbers for the sauce a bit and let them drain for about an hour before using them.  This was to take out some of the excessive moisture.  I personally liked the dish a lot, having sampled a small amount of it before sending it on its merry way. 

Chicken with Cucumber Sauce (Barida Kisrawiyya) (serves 100 as part of a buffet; approx. cost per serving not available)

10 roasting chickens

5 lemons

Kosher salt and black pepper

10 cucumbers

1 pint verjuice (juice of unripe sour grapes)

3 bunches cilantro

3 bunches basil

3 bunches thyme

1 cup olive oil

Equipment:

• Roasting pans
• Wire cooling rack
• Big Green Egg (optional)
• Food processor

1. Peel five of the cucumbers.  Halve them, seed them and set them on top of the cooling rack.
2. Salt the cucumbers and let sit at least one hour.
3. Preheat the Egg or your oven to 350.  If you're using the Egg, we did not use a particular wood chunk for smoking the chickens; it was the wood-fired flavor that we were going for, not necessarily the smoke. 
4. Prepare the chickens for roasting.  Mix a rub out of kosher salt and black pepper.  Rub it into the flesh of the chickens, under the skin.  Halve the lemons and slice the halves.  Slip the slices from one half lemon under the skin of each chicken.
5. Roast the chickens at 350 until done.  This should take about an hour and a half; you'll be at this for a while, but it's not like it takes a huge amount of attention once it's roasting.  You'll need to work in batches. 
6. Meanwhile, make the sauce.  Blend the drained cucumbers and the verjuice in the food processor.
7. Chop the cilantro and mix into the sauce.  Don't be tempted to use the food processor.  That will release too much of the cilantro juice into the sauce.  You want to be able to identify that it's cilantro when you're done, and you also want to be able to taste the cucumber.  al-Warraq was very specific about being able to taste the cucumber. 
8. Take the leaves from the thyme and basil.  Discard the stems, or compost them, or do whatever you do with them.  Set the leaves aside. 
9. As the chickens are done, let them rest to retain their juices.  When they've rested at least 15 minutes (when they're comfortable to touch with the bare hand is a good guideline), disjoint and slice them. 
10. With the remaining five cucumbers, score the peels with a fork.  Slice the cucumbers into thin, coin-sized pieces.
11. When you've roasted all the chickens, chill the slices overnight.
12. To serve, put the slices on a platter.  Scatter with the herbs.  Garnish with the cucumber slices and pass the sauce along side.  Remember - this is to be served cold, preferably chilled.