Baked Beans

The family likes baked beans, but even the best store bought ones tend to be very watery. For a burgers and hot dogs meal on the grill recently, I decided to try to make my own baked beans.

The recipe below is adapted from what I first tried, and is an effort to make the beans a little less sweet and a little spicier.

Ingredients:

• ~6 oz bacon, sliced into thin strips (8-9 pieces)
• 1 large onion, small dice
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1 cup tomato puree (unseasoned)
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 TB Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 4 cans light red kidney beans (~14 oz each can)

[Preheat oven to 325 degrees F]
Step 1 - Render the bacon in an oven proof pot for 7 or 8 minutes until beginning to crisp up. Then add the onion to the pot for another 5 minutes or so to soften.

Rendered bacon and softened onion

Step 2 - Mix all liquids and spices (everything else but the beans) in a bowl. This is basically a homemade barbecue sauce base... Add the sauce to the pot and bring to a simmer.

Everybody in the pool

Step 3 - Add the beans (drained and rinsed) to the pot. Stir to mix everything together. Cover and put in the 325 degree oven for an hour. At the end of an hour, remove the lid and cook for another 15-20 minutes to thicken the sauce.

An hour and twenty minutes of baking later

The beans were very good, but as originally made were a little sweeter than I would prefer, and could have used a little more spice. For the recipe given above, I have replaced some of the ketchup (with its high sugar content) with additional tomato puree, added the cumin, and upped the amount of cayenne.

This is a very easy recipe that takes almost no prep, and basically just sits in the oven untouched until done. The only downside is that you need to start about two hours before you want to eat...

Grilled Pork Tenderloin al Pastor with Avocado Crema

While working on a hobby project in the basement earlier today (a different post for my main blog), I was watching the Food Network (The Kitchen), and saw a recipe that made me say "that's dinner for tonight."

The recipe was Grilled Pork Tenderloin al Pastor with an avocado crema. Yum. Thanks to Jeff Mauro.

This is a simple recipe (the best kind), with a minimum of ingredients and not a ton of prep work.

The pork tenderloins were marinaded for 2-3 hours in a blender-ed combination of pineapple juice, chipotle chilis in adobo sauce, garlic, salt and achiote paste. As a short cut to the true achiote paste, I used two packets of Goya brand achiote seasoning powder (and the result was terrific).

The avocado crema was blender-ed combination of 1.5 avocados, part of a bunch of cilantro, a half cup or so of sour cream, some salt and pepper, a lime's zest and juice, plus a little water and olive oil to thin it down.

Grilled Pork Tenderloin al Pastor with Avocado Crema

The result was fabulous. I cooked the tenderloins (3 of them) on a 350-ish degree grill for 10 minutes on each side. They rested for ten minutes while we steamed some broccoli.

We served it, as is often the case in our semi-Asian family, with white rice (and a glass of Chardonnay...).

Highly recommended. Complex rich flavors with minimal prep and not too many ingredients. If you can't find achiote powder or paste, you could use salt, pepper and garlic powder and you'd be OK...

Try this, you won't regret it.

Spicy Mint Beef

Dinner tonight was a new recipe; Spicy Mint Beef, a Thai recipe from the May 2013 issue of Food Network Magazine.

This was basically a stir fry. Prep was minimal, and the ingredient list was short, many of which were pantry ingredients.

Prepped ingredients

Step 1 - A sliced jalapeno and some garlic go into a pan over high heat (high heat throughout). The recipe called for a few Thai or serrano chilis, but this might make it too spicy for Julia, and definitely too spicy for Grace.

Step 1 - oil, chili and garlic

Step 2 - After a minute or so, sliced flank steak goes into the pan, followed a couple minutes later by a sliced bell pepper and 3 sliced shallots.

Step 2 - beef, peppers and shallots

Step 3 - After another minute or so, a sauce goes in. The sauce is a combination of dark soy, sweet soy, fish sauce (fermented fishy goodness!) and chili garlic paste.

Step 3 - soy, fish sauce and chili garlic paste

Step 4 - After 3 minutes of simmering the beef and veggies in the sauce, you take the dish off the heat and add a handful of mint leaves and a handful of chopped basil. Give it a couple of minutes to wilt, and you are done.

Step 4 - mint leaves and chopped basil

The end result, served with white rice. And a glass of Chardonnay...

Spicy Mint Beef

This meal gets very high marks for flavor, limited list of ingredients, minimal prep, minimal clean up, and good authentic ethnic taste. The downside is...I can't think of one. This was easy, cheap and delicious. I'm not sure what more I could ask for...

Ribs (again)

Nothing says "I have 5 hours this afternoon on a vacation day at the end of a holiday weekend with nothing particular to do" like 3 full racks of baby back ribs.

I have written about my rib rub recipe before (May 2013), so nothing here was extraordinarily new other than the store bought sauce used to finish off this batch of ribs. Normally I use Sweet Baby Ray's (original recipe), which has a nice sweetness to offset the spiciness of the dry rub. Wandering the market today I noticed a series of Guy Fieri branded sauces, and since Grace is a fan of Diners Drive Ins and Dives, I picked up a bottle of his "Kansas City - smoky and sweet" version. Getting this home and comparing it side by side to SBR's, it was extremely similar in texture and taste. Which meant it was good.

Ribs - final 10 minutes sauced with bone side down

The ribs themselves were cooked in the oven, tented with foil, for 3 hours and 45 minutes at 250 degrees [F] (a long slow cook with dry rub only) and then finished on a medium heat grill for 10-15 minutes with a liberal basting of the sauce (5 minutes meat down then 10 minutes bone down). Despite what others (the purists) might say, you can make a wonderful rack of barbecued ribs entirely in the oven as long as you take your time. The last few minutes on the grill with the sauce serves to caramelize the sugars in the sauce (and make nice grill marks) but isn't absolutely necessary. [I know, I know, nothing replaces a real slow cooked rib from a smoker or a grill with wood chips...I agree...but...this works well too]

Spicy Honey Barbecued Chicken

(with Honeyed Apple-Cabbage Slaw)

I knew I would have some time today to cook a nice dinner, and I wanted to do something with grilled/barbecued chicken, but didn't want to do the simple "thrown chicken on the grill and slather with store bought barbecue sauce at the end".

Trolling the Food Network website for ideas turned up two that looked great: a brined chicken with a homemade classic style ketchup/molasses/vinegar sauce (by Tyler Florence) and an asian themed spicy honey barbecued chicken (by Emeril Lagasse). Emeril's recipe also had a terrific looking slaw recipe, so I decided to do that one. The recipe is here.

Spicy Honey BBQ Chicken with Apple-Cabbage Slaw

The marinade (which also becomes a basting sauce and finishing sauce) is very asian in character, and consists of soy sauce, vinegar, honey, sriracha (hot sauce), sesame oil, garlic, ginger, etc... I marinated the chicken for 5 hours (bone-in, skin-on pieces of chunked up split breasts and thighs).

After marinating, the chicken goes on a medium grill for 10 minutes (skin up) then 5 minutes (skin down). While the chicken grills, the marinade is boiled in a sauce pan for that entire time. This both thickens it and also removes any danger from raw chicken having been marinating in it.

When the grill time is done, the chicken goes onto a sheet pan in a 350 degree oven to finish cooking (another 20 minutes or so). While in the oven, I basted the chicken twice with the boiled sauce.

Earlier in the day I made the slaw, which is cabbage, endive, carrot, onion and apple in a sauce made from mayonnaise, sour cream, honey and apple cider vinegar.

The final dish was chicken topped with the last of the sauce, the slaw, and simple green beans with olive oil and lemon pepper.

The result - A fantastic meal. The chicken was moist, tender and packed with flavor. The slaw was cool and crunchy and a perfect counterpoint to the chicken. The green beans were...a green veg.

I'd rate this about an 8.5 out of 10 for flavor. It wasn't expensive to make, as almost everything other than the chicken was a basic pantry ingredient. It was simple to make, with the only consideration being that the chicken definitely benefits from a long marinade. Highly recommended.

Mediterranean Baked Cod

We were looking for a lighter seafood/fish dinner tonight, and a quick flip through Paul Johnson's Fish Forever (Wiley and Sons, 2007) turned up a meal that looked both good and easy to make. It was true on both counts.

The recipe, page 97, was Mediterranean Baked Cod, which was a simple baked fish in mediterranean ingredients (leeks, fennel, tomatoes and white wine).

Baked Cod Ingredients (with cauliflower)

Step 1 was to bake some sliced fennel and leeks in olive oil and salt and pepper (for 10-15 minutes). When this was done, white wine, saffron and lemon juice was added to the pan, and then the cod was placed on top of the veggies, which were then topped with tomatoes, more olive oil, salt and pepper. This was baked for a good 20-25 minutes at 400 degrees (not the 10 minutes at 350 degrees as stated in the recipe).

Leeks and Fennel

The result was a lovely tender white fish in a saffron tomato broth. We served it with a mashed garlic cauliflower and some crusty bread for mopping up the broth. The ultimate arbiters of success, the children, pronounced it good. Me and Amp loved it.

Mediterranean Baked Cod

Although it was deemed good, Grace's final words on the subject were: "it would be better with halibut". Brat. :-)

Chili - Basic Texas Red

A good dish for a cold winter Eagles-game-day Sunday is a nice bowl of chili - a basic Texas Red, with just beef (and no beans).

I was looking back through my postings here, and I can't believe I haven't posted this recipe yet... This is our version of a basic easy chili, adapted from several different recipes. So here's how an east coast Yankee makes a bowl of Texas Red.

Ingredients:

• 4 pounds of cubed "stew" beef (chuck is good)
• 1 large onion, chopped into small pieces
• 1-2 cups of green and red chilis (today I used three Anaheim mild green chilis, 1 red bell pepper and 1 jalapeno), chopped into small pieces
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, minced (or 1 tablespoon minced jar garlic)
• 1 teaspoon ground chipotle chili powder
• 1 teaspoon ground ancho chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon generic "chili powder"
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• A 28 oz can of diced tomatoes in juice
• 1 square semi-sweet baker's chocolate
• 2-3 cups beef stock
• 1 bottle of beer

Steps:

1) Cut the beef into small (1/2 - 3/4 inch cubes or small pieces). In a large dutch oven, brown the beef pieces in a little bit of oil, in batches.

2)  Put all the beef back into the pot, add the onions and garlic, and stir for a few minutes.

Beef and onions and garlic

3) Add the dried spices, fresh chilis and diced tomatoes with their juices. Stir for a few minutes to get the spices mixed in.

Add the spices, fresh chilis and diced tomatoes

Add 2-3 cups of beef stock and one bottle of a good beer (I used a bottle of Sam Adams this time). Also add the one square of baker's chocolate. Mix well. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer, and cook for an hour.

Add beef stock and a beer

At the end of an hour, remove the cover, and simmer it for another 1-1.5 hours, adjusting the temperature as needed to make sure you maintain a low simmer.

Two to two and a half hours later - Chili

Serve with jalapeno corn bread and a salad. We garnish with sour cream, green onions, shredded cheddar (and more sliced fresh jalapeno for me).

Thanksgiving 2014

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, and another terrific meal was had in the company of family.

As much as I love to try different things, Thanksgiving is the one holiday that I don't want to mess with too much; everyone has an expectation of what should be served, and to not meet those expectations seems like a sacrilege I am not willing to undertake. So turkey and all the trimmings it is...

The meal, of tried and true standards, along with a new recipe of two, was as follows:

• A 24 pound fresh Butterball turkey, simply prepped and roasted in a Reynolds oven bag. I have gone to a lot more trouble with turkeys over the years, brining and basting and trying all sorts of different things, but you really can't beat the combination of ease and great moist turkey that you get doing it this way. Turkey. Bag. A little butter and oil. Salt and pepper. Sage and rosemary. Throw it in the oven at 350 degrees and forget it for 3 hours. With gravy of course.
• A spiral carved ham. Adding a little pork to the festivities never hurts. A good store bought one requiring no effort other than to pull off slices and put it on the platter.
• Stuffing - a new recipe this year; an Anne Burrell online recipe for cornbread and sausage stuffing. This was better than other cornbread stuffings I have tried. It had the usual homemade and dried out cornbread and sausage meat, but these with a combination of walnuts and dried cranberries made for an excellent dish. Between this and the Bobby Flay mushroom stuffing we did last year, there are now two stuffing recipes I would gladly make again.
• Mashed potatoes - The classic. Five pounds of yukon golds, milk, butter, salt and pepper. Grace would eat a huge bowl of this and nothing else for dinner if we would let her.
• Sweet potatoes and apples - Much like I need to try a new stuffing recipe every year, Amparo needs to tinker with with the obligatory sweet potato dish. This year was a great one; boiled and sliced sweet potatoes (like a gratin prep) and sliced apples in a sweet sauce, layered and baked. Yum. Better than mashed potatoes, whipped sweet potatoes and everything mashed...
• Cranberry sauce - Homemade from Jasper White's Cooking from New England. A simple cranberry, caramel, orange and ginger recipe that I have been making for close to 20 years now I guess. Grace loves this too.
• Corn.
• Green beans.
• Chardonnays, Rieslings and a Cotes du Rhone
• A bunch of different desserts courtesy of Brother Dave and his Darling Wife.

Thanksgiving, as intended, is a time to be thankful for the gifts we have, and I am luckier than most, and far more blessed than I deserve. It is a joy to be surrounded by family, eat some good food, watch a little football, and reflect on things. Thanksgiving no longer comes without a twinge of sadness, however, as it is the reminder that it has been 4 years since Dad passed. Four years ago today we laid him to rest. I remember, and I am thankful.

Spaghetti with Brussels Sprouts and Mushrooms

I have a few days off around the Thanksgiving holiday, and had the Food Channel on in the background while doing some things around the house. Something that caught my attention was Giada de Laurentiis making Spaghetti with Brussels Sprouts and Mushrooms. It looked interesting, easy and quick to make, and used an ingredient I am not all that familiar with. Brussels sprouts have a bad reputation with many people, but as I believe is often the case, that is because people are used to certain things being badly prepared. If you boiled these little guys and stuck them on a plate, they wouldn't be very good. In my limited past experience with them, I have found them to be similar in taste and texture to cabbage. Cabbage, to my mind, also isn't something inherently delicious, but can be if prepared properly.

With all that being said, and with the turkey, ham and starchy-side-dish fest on tap for tomorrow (and days after), a light pasta dish with veggies seemed like a good idea. I had no idea whether any of us (me included) would like it.

Brussels Sprouts, Mushrooms, Onions and Garlic

The recipe itself couldn't be much simpler. First, thinly sliced brussels sprouts, mushrooms, onions and garlic are sauteed for 6-8 minutes in olive oil (seasoned with salt and pepper).

Wilting the veggies

When the veggies have wilted down, the juice and zest of a lemon are added along with a cup of creme fraiche and some vegetable stock. With the local Whole Foods being picked over because of the holiday and no creme fraiche being available, I substituted a little sour cream and some heavy cream. This is simmered for just a few minutes to bring everything to temperature.

Add cream, lemon juice and veggie stock

Spaghetti is mixed into the sauce, and then plated with a healthy dose of grated/shredded parmesan or romano cheese. The recipe called for whole grain pasta. I hate whole grain pasta. Can't stand the stuff. I used regular old spaghetti.

Spaghetti with Brussels Sprouts and Mushrooms

As I expected, Grace wouldn't eat it (we had marinara waiting in the wings), but everyone else thought it was terrific. Julia claimed the leftovers for lunch tomorrow. So I guess that says something.

The sauce was light, the veggies were delicious, and the lemon particularly brought out the flavors. A whim of a recipe turns out to be a keeper. High marks for flavor, ease of making, and simple inexpensive ingredients.

But now...turkey and a plethora of starches.

Giada's Chicken Piccata

Grace and I made a Chicken Piccata in June of last year without a recipe after watching an episode of Diners, Drive Ins and Dives on the Food Network. It was good.

Last weekend, we wanted to make it again, but figured we'd find a real recipe. For anything that is an Italian staple like this, we go to our Giada de Laurentiis cookbooks as a first choice. This time we used the Chicken Piccata recipe on page 153 of her first book, Everyday Italian (Clarkson Potter, 2005).

The recipe couldn't be easier, and the result couldn't be better. The ingredient list is ridiculously short, and almost everything is a pantry staple. Chicken cutlets, salted and peppered, dredged in flour and sauteed in olive oil and butter. Sauce made from pan drippings, butter, chicken stock, capers and lemon juice. Flat leaf parsley to garnish.

Chicken Piccata (Giada de Laurentiis)

Ten minutes of prep, 20 minutes of cooking. Served with white rice, asparagus, and a nice unoaked California Chardonnay.

A 9.5 out of 10. Very high marks for low cost, minimal prep, ease of cooking, simple clean up, and most of all, great taste. Given that this is so easy as to be a good weeknight dish, and that the kids loved it, I can see this getting high rotation on the family meals menu.

Emeril's Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo

I looooooooove cajun/creole food. Let's be perfectly clear about that. Unfortunately, to do this kind of cooking right, you need a lot of time, as these recipes are often long and slow-cooking endeavors. Fortunately for me, I had some time today around the house (while working on a remodel of daughter Julia's room) to do just that; a long slow-cooked cajun meal the correct way. The recipe used was Emeril Lagasse's Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo. Yum. Since it is readily available on the Internet, I will walk you through it here...

First and foremost, this isn't  quick recipe; it states 30 minutes prep time and 3:30 total time, and it is all of that. First you brown smoked sausages in a dutch oven. Then you brown highly seasoned chicken (boneless thighs of course).

Sausage, Chicken, Onions and Peppers

When the sausage and chicken have both been browned (and removed from the pot), you take the next 20-25 minutes making a chocolate brown roux from the drippings, oil and flour. This is the key flavor step for the whole dish and cannot be skimped on.

Starting a chocolate brown roux

When the chocolate roux is done, you add onions, celery and peppers, and soften them. Then you add seasonings and the sausage back in.

Onions and peppers go into the roux

You add chicken stock, bring this to a boil, and then simmer it for an hour.

Ready for a long simmer

At the end of the first hour of simmering, you add the browned chicken to the pot and then simmer it for another hour and a half.

Chicken and smoked sausage gumbo

At the very end, you add in green onions, chopped parsley and a bunch of file powder (not easy to find, but one of the things that gives the dish its authentic gumbo flavor).

This should be served with, or over, white rice (what else?), but I always want to have a nice crusty bread on hand for sopping up the sauce.

This takes an afternoon of commitment to make, but it is not difficult by any means. I can't recommend it highly enough. I have been to New Orleans several times over the years, and this recipe tastes like New Orleans. Very highly recommended.

Chicken Cacciatore

We needed something relatively easy to put together for dinner last night, and we had chicken, peppers, onions and mushrooms that needed to be used, so that looked like Chicken Cacciatore to me. I'm not the biggest fan in the world of tomato sauce dishes in general, but this is a dish that the whole family likes.

When I have made this in the past, I have tended to wing it, with decent but not spectacular results. This time I thought maybe I should actually use a real recipe. I Googled Chicken Cacciatore, and the first link at the top of the list was a Giada De Laurentiis recipe from Food Network. We have made a few dozen Giada recipes and have never had a bad one yet, so this was an obvious choice.

The recipe was simple and straightforward, and the end result was better that I generally think Cacciatore is. I am sure this is because of the sauce. The sauce here was a combination of tomato, white wine and chicken broth, and was lighter than the intensely tomato sauce that I am more accustomed to.

Total prep time was 10-15 minutes, and cooking time was closer to an hour. This is longer than listed, but we made a larger batch, and most of that extra time was the initial browning of chicken in batches.

Which brings us to step 1 - dredging bone-in chicken pieces in flour and browning them in batches. Salt and pepper. Olive oil. Easy. Remove the browned chicken from the pan.

Dredged and browned chicken

Step 2 - Add chopped peppers, onions and garlic to the drippings in the pan. Add some white wine and reduce it a bit.

Onions, peppers and garlic

Step 3 - Add chopped tomatoes and juice, broth, capers and oregano. Bring to a boil. Return the chicken to the pot. Lower to a simmer.

Tomatoes, white wine and chicken broth

Half-cover and Simmer 20-30 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened somewhat.

Chicken Cacciatore

This was another good Giada recipe, and better by far than I have made when going without a recipe. The lighter and yet still richer sauce was the difference. The stock added some lightness and took away the overly tomato taste, and the white wine added some depth of flavor.

Yes, I did forget the mushrooms. I was making the recipe by the book, which doesn't call for them. After dinner, I sauteed the mushrooms that needed using, and added them to the leftovers in the pot. Even better...

Chicken Tikka Masala

The kids requested Chicken Tikka Masala for dinner tonight, so who am I to argue. Tikka Masala is our "go to" Indian dish, as it is richly flavored, but not overly spicy, so the kids love it. The recipe we use for this is on page 447 of More Best Recipes (The Editors of Cooks Illustrated, 2009). The New Best Recipe and More Best Recipes are two of our most used cookbooks, containing a wealth of bullet proof recipes on all sorts of classic dishes. Chicken Tikka Masala is a fragrantly spiced dish of chicken in a tomato cream sauce.

But before we get to the CTM, we need to make raita, because you can't have an Indian meal without raita (at least in our house you can't).

Raita prep (Chardonnay optional...)

Raita is the simplest side dish ever, and is especially good when paired with some of the very spicy Indian dishes, as the coolness of the yogurt and cucumber serves as the perfect counterbalance to the heat and spice of the entree. We use the raita recipe from Alford and Duguid's Mangoes and Curry Leaves; Culinary Travels through the Great Subcontinent (Artisan, 2005). This is one of my all-time favorite "travelogue cookbooks", but that is a story for another post.

Suffice it to say, you can make a great raita by simply peeling and dicing a seedless (English) cucumber, adding a sufficient amount of plain yogurt to give a consistency like pictured below, and then adding some salt and chopped cilantro. Make sure it is well chilled. Simple.

Raita

The Tikka Masala begins with dry rubbing the chicken in cumin, coriander, kosher salt and cayenne pepper, and setting it aside for an hour or so to marinate.

When you are ready to cook, a bunch of diced onions go into a pot to soften. After 8-10 minutes, garam masala (a store bought Indian spice blend), tomato paste, fresh grated ginger, garlic and a finely minced jalapeno or two are added.

Onions, spices and tomato paste

After the onion-tomato-spice paste has cooked for a few minutes, crushed tomatoes are added along with some sugar and salt to make a nice fragrant tomato sauce. This simmers for about 15 minutes.

Crushed tomatoes added to spice paste

While the tomato sauce is simmering, the dry rubbed chicken is dredged in a yogurt, garlic, ginger, and oil mixture and then grilled until mostly cooked. It is then set aside to rest while the sauce finishes.

Grilled dry-rubbed and yogurt-coated chicken

After the tomato sauce has simmered for a while, a bunch of heavy cream is added, and the sauce is simmered to bring it to heat.

Tomato sauce with heavy cream added

The cooked chicken (grilled or broiled) is chunked up and added into the sauce. Once everybody is in the pool, simmer for 5 minutes or so just to blend the flavors and make sure everything is nice and hot.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Easy. A little bit fiddly, but not difficult. Flavorful. Pretty inexpensive. A winner all around.

Jacques Pepin's Sweet and Sour Steak Sauce

I have tremendous respect for Jacques Pepin, and have many of his cookbooks. Over the weekend, I made filet mignon (a treat that Grace especially loves - "soft steak" as she calls it). Anytime I make a nice elegant steak like this (as opposed to a dry rubbed Fred Flintstone brontosaurus steak on the grill), there is only one sauce the family wants - Jacques' sweet and sour sauce.

The recipe is a very simple one from Jacques Pepin's Table (KQED Books, 1991, page 289), and is from a recipe called Venison Steaks in Sweet-Sour Sauce. I don't make it with venison, obviously, but it is the perfectly complement to virtually any red meat.

For the indoor (non-grill) version of this, I sear both sides of the steaks in a large skillet, and then put the steaks in a different skillet to finish in the oven (a nice medium rare of course). While the steaks are finishing, a sliced shallot or two are put into the original pan with the drippings, and stirred for half a minute or so. Two tablespoons of red wine vinegar are added to deglaze the pan. This is cooked over high heat until most of the liquid is gone. To this is added a mixture of 1 tablespoon of black current jelly, 1 tablespoon of ketchup, 2 teaspoons soy sauce and 1/4 cup cold water. This is stirred around and brought to a boil (just a minute or two to heat and thicken), then strained into a bowl to remove the solids. Super easy and made entirely from pantry ingredients.

Part of an onion can be substituted for the shallots if necessary, and when we don't have black current jelly (which we usually keep in the fridge just for this), you can use blackberry, blueberry or raspberry instead. All will be a little different in character, but will give the sweet counterpoint to the salty soy and the tangy vinegar.

Make twice as much as listed above. You'll want it...

Beef Saag ("Saag Gosht")

or Beef in a Fragrant Spinach Sauce

It's a Saturday, and I felt like making Indian food, so I decided to try a "saag"; meat in a flavorful green spinach sauce. After perusing the cookbook collection, I settled on the "Saag Gosht" recipe (Beef in Fragrant Spinach Sauce) on page 179 of Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking (William Morrow and Company, 1980). I originally intended to make this with lamb, but I couldn't find a satisfactory piece of lamb shoulder, so I went with beef instead.

The recipe is fairly simple, but as with many Indian recipes, it takes a bunch of spices and cooks for a long time (2.5 hours in the oven, after prep). Not a weekday meal, in other words.

Step 1 is to brown lots of large beef cubes in batches.

Browned beef cubes

While the beef is browning in batches, lots of onions are slowly caramelized. After 25 minutes or so, garlic and fresh grated ginger are added to the browned onions in the pan, followed by cumin, coriander and turmeric. Then comes some diced tomato and 3 chopped jalapeno chilis.

Caramelized onions w/spices, tomatoes and chilis

After the onion mixture has cooked a few minutes more, some yogurt is added for creaminess.

Onion mixture with yogurt added

The onion mixture can be a little chunky, because after it is cooked, it is pureed in a blender. Then it is added into the dutch oven with the beef and more spices. Sahni's recipe called for a tied-up spice packet of cinnamon stick, whole cloves, cardamom  pods and bay leaves. I took the short cut and used ground versions of all but the bay leaves to save time (and I had ground cardamom but not whole...).

Beef with pureed onion mixture and more spices

Lastly, 4 cups of water are added and everything is stirred together before putting a lid on the pot and sticking it in the oven for 2.5 hours.

...add water, then braise for 2.5 hours

To give the saag its trademark green color (and spinach of course), a large amount of spinach is blanched in salted water before being pureed. This spinach paste is added to the pot at the end of the long cooking time, and is put back in the oven for a short time (10 minutes) just to meld the flavors a little.

After adding pureed cooked spinach

The result is a vibrant green richly-flavored dish where the beef just melts in your mouth. The last picture doesn't do the plate justice; the color was much more green, as it should be.

On the plate (color was green, not black...)

We served this with simple steamed white rice and raita (cucumber in yogurt with cilantro). And a nice Chardonnay (just doing our part to aid California wine country in its post-earthquake time of troubles...).

The kids loved it, as can be attested to by their final words at the end of the meal: "can you make Indian food again tomorrow?" I bet I can.

Halibut with Pumpkin Seed Mole

Fish Forever by Paul Johnson

We have been eating more than our fair share of meat recently and have burgers on the grill planned for a family get together-tomorrow, so we were looking for a nice light seafood dish today. It was agreed that I should make something with halibut, a wonderful white fish that everyone in the family seems to enjoy. In the past, I have done Giada's "Halibut with White Beans and Radicchio" a few times, but I had the time today to try something new. I pulled Paul Johnson's terrific Fish Forever off the shelf, looked up halibut, and found a fantastic looking recipe. Fish Forever (Wiley & Sons, 2007) is an IACP Cookbook of the Year award winner, and I have used it a few times in the past with good results. I always love trying out new recipes when I have time, and I was looking forward to making this.

The recipe I would be making was "Halibut Baked in a Pumpkin Seed Mole Sauce" (page 152). Moles are Mexican sauces, and can cover a very wide range of flavors. This particular mole was comprised of toasted pumpkin seeds, blanched tomatillos, onion, serrano chiles, cilantro, coriander, cumin and a few other things. Basically, the ingredients were prepped, put into a blender and then pureed into the consistency of a thin salsa.

Mole ingredients

At this point, the recipe said to spread some of the mole on the bottom of a baking dish, put the fish on top, layer the rest of the sauce over the fish, and then bake for 20 minutes or so. After I made the mole, I tasted it and was afraid that it would be too spicy for the kids (specifically the little one). So I changed direction at that point and decided to simmer the mole sauce by itself in a sauce pan while poaching the halibut separately, adding the two together at the end for those who wished.

Pumpkin Seed Mole

The fish was cut into servings and then poached for twelve minutes in a combination of water, a nice Chardonnay, a couple of bay leaves, 12-15 whole peppercorns and a heavy pinch of salt.

I served it with plain white rice (as suggested) and grilled zucchini. The mole sauce seemed to have mellowed quite a bit during the 25 minutes or so that it simmered, and my worry about it being too spicy seems to have been unfounded in the end. The kids loved it. The adults loved it. Even Grace thought it wasn't too spicy. Live and learn, I suppose...

Halibut with Pumpkin Seed Mole

This was a winner of a recipe. It was easy to make, didn't dirty too many pots and pans with regards to clean up, and was absolutely fantastic. Poaching the fish kept it extremely moist and tender, and I really couldn't have asked for a better result. This recipe goes on the short list of fish recipes I would make any time. The only potential downside is that halibut is pricey, but a pound and a half fed all four of us, so it wasn't too bad. And compared to the cost of eating even a mediocre meal out....