Stolen Recipes

Orzo with spinach and mediterranean goodies

2011-04-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

This is a recipe that I reverse engineered from a dish I ate, of all places, in the Simmons College dining hall. Very simple, very tasty. I can pretty much make a meal out of it by itself, but I usually accompany it with a simple chicken breast "a la plancha" (cooked in a pan or skillet). We usually eat this dish hot, but I think it would make a lovely pasta salad with a bit more olive oil and vinegar to keep it from drying out.

Ingredients

- Half a box of Orzo (of a 16 oz box, that is around 500 grams for you europeans out there)
- Spinach (one bag of the prewashed baby spinach, or a large fresh bunch washed and chopped. I suppose frozen would do as well, though in less volume, since frozen spinach has already shrunk down quite a bit)
- 1 smallish/medium red or purple onion, chopped.
- Feta cheese
- Roughly chopped olives (I think Kalamata type ones work best for this)
- Sun dried tomato (optional)
- Olive oil (use a good one, because this dish will take quite a bit of that flavor.

Directions
Cook the Orzo pasta. Drain it and set it aside. I recommend adding a dash of olive oil to keep it from sticking.
In a large pan cook the onion for a minute until it begins to get barely soft or translucent, best if slightly raw still.
Throw the spinach in too until it wilts.
Add the Orzo to the pan and mix it around.
Crumble feta over the mix and add olives, then mix it again.
A slight sprinkling of balsamic vinegar is often the final touch in my kitchen.

Moroccan-Style Chicken and Root Vegetable Stew

2011-03-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

I got this recipe from Epicurious (the food website, not the god Apollo).

This is a dish I made on Saturday for some friends that came over for dinner. I served it over brown jasmine rice (which actually I think I like less than plain brown rice or plain jasmine rice... live and learn). It is fun because it uses root vegetables that you may never use or only use sparingly. I love parsnips and carrots sauteed with honey, but then I'm often at a loss for what I can use the rest of my bag of parsnips for. Stews are a great way to use them up. I particularly love this kind of recipe because it uses cinnamon and sweet potatoes in savory food.

Like I said, I served it with Jasmine rice and homemade naan, but its probably great over cous cous. Also feel free to mix and match other kinds of root veggies. I'm sure potatoes and carrots could be substituted for rutabaga and parsnips. Prunes could go in instead of raisins. Pine nuts, garbanzo beans, and olives would also work well with this, I think.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil
12 ounces skinless boneless chicken breast halves, cut into 1-inch pieces

1 1/2 cups chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 cinnamon stick (or a teaspoon of ground cinnamon)
2 cups 1/2-inch pieces peeled red-skinned sweet potatoes (yams)
2 cups 1/2-inch pieces peeled parsnips
2 cups 1/2-inch pieces peeled turnips
1 cup 1/2-inch pieces peeled rutabaga
2 cups canned low-salt chicken broth
1/4 cup dried currants or raisins
1 cup drained canned diced tomatoes
Chopped fresh cilantro
print a shopping list for this recipe

Preparation

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper. Add chicken to pot and sauté until light golden but not cooked through, about 1 minute. Transfer chicken to bowl.
Add onion to pot and sauté until golden, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and stir 1 minute. Add curry powder, cumin and cinnamon stick and stir 30 seconds. Add sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, broth and currants. Cover and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 20 minutes. Add tomatoes and chicken with any accumulated juices to pot. Simmer until chicken is cooked through and flavors blend, about 5 minutes longer. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve.

Bread. Everyday.

2011-03-06T12:10:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I was over at my friend Miriam's house and she served me some homemade bread with a bowl of soup. After gushing over how wonderful it was to have bread with a meal (it is an essential part of the spanish dining experience I grew up with), Miriam revealed that it was actually really easy to make and pointed me to a book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It uses a method that is stripped down in its complexity. None of the usual kneading or sourdough culture growing that bread recipes normally ask for. Instead, you mix a batch of wet dough, put it in your fridge, and use bits of that dough as needed for the next few weeks. I usually make a batch a week because I go through it quickly.

Preparing the batch of dough takes me maybe 10 minutes to mix it, and a couple of hours to let it sit. But once that is done, you pretty much just take 5 minutes to take some dough, form it into a ball, and throw it into the oven (letting the ball rest while the oven heats up).

Practical and Foolproof Bread Recipe

3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees)

1 ½ tablespoons granulated yeast

1 ½ tablespoons kosher salt or other coarse salt

6 ½ cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour (measure by scooping; don't pour it into the cup or the flour will compact more and you will get a slightly different measurement)

More details after the jump:

Preparing the dough:

-In a 5-quart bowl or a resealable, lidded, plastic food container, add yeast and salt to lukewarm water. Don't worry about getting it all to dissolve.

- Add in all the flour at once. Mix with a wooden spoon (you can use very wet hands to help if needed) or a heavy-duty stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Don't knead the dough; just mix until it is uniformly moist without dry patches.

- Cover with a lid that fits well, but is not airtight. Allow to rise at room temperature until it begins to collapse, about 2 hours. (You can let it go up to 5 hours.) The dough is ready to use at this point, but will be easier to shape if it is refrigerated at least 3 hours first.

On baking day:

- Prepare a cutting board by sprinkling it liberally with cornmeal, oats, or whole wheat flour.

- Sprinkle the surface of your refrigerated dough with flour.

- Pull up and cut off a 1 pound (grapefruit-size) piece of dough, using a serrated knife.

- Hold the mass of dough in your hands and add a little more flour as needed so it won't stick to your hands. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go. (Most of the dusting flour will fall off.) The bottom of the loaf may appear to be a collection of bunched ends, but it will flatten and adhere during resting and baking. Handle the dough as little as possible.

- Place the shaped ball on the cornmeal-covered board. Allow the loaf to rest on the board for about 40 minutes, uncovered. Depending on the age of the dough, you may not see much rise (more will occur during baking).

- 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450 degrees, with a baking stone (or the back side of a cookie sheet) placed on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray for holding water on any other shelf that won't interfere with the rising bread.

- Dust the top of the loaf liberally with flour. Slash a ¼-inch-deep cross, scallop or tic-tac-toe pattern into the top, using a serrated bread knife.

-With a quick forward jerking motion of the wrist, slide the loaf off the cutting board and onto the preheated baking stone. Quickly but carefully pour about 1 cup of hot water from the tap into the broiler tray and close the oven door to trap the steam.

- Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and firm to the touch. Allow to cool completely, preferably on a wire rack.

- Store the remaining dough in the refrigerator in your lidded (not airtight) container. Cut off and shape more loaves as you need them anytime over the next 14 days. The flavor and texture will improve after even one day's storage.

(recipe reprint taken from: http://www.seattlepi.com/food/386357_bread05.html)

Irish Milkshake

2009-07-23T00:53:00.000-07:00

This recipe is one of my own, kind of. The "Guinness Milkshake" has been floating around cyberspace for a while. This is my modification.
"A guinness milkshake?", you say.
Yep.
Think about it. Guinness is a creamy thick brew anyway. And in America it is a common thing to put malt in your milkshakes. So it makes sense to mix a malty, creamy, beer like Stout with ice cream.

Ingredients
-1 part Ice Cream (vanilla works very well, but some people like chocolate. I personally think that the stout already gives the shake a bitter chocolaty enough aftertaste)
-1 part Guinness (or other stouts, like Beamish)
-Baileys or similar Irish Cream to taste.

Directions
Blend. Ha.
Now, as in any milkshake, the proportions and methods are varied for personal taste. I often put a little more icecream than what I said above, for added thickness, especially if I use a lot of Irish Cream, as the alcohol thins out the drink considerably.

Thanksgiving Turkey

2008-12-11T09:01:00.000-08:00

Turkey. Dry and inedible, or succulent and delicious. This year, the turkey duty fell upon my shoulders. While, I botched up the instructions a bit, it came out pretty good. If I hadn't made a mistake, it would have been perfect.
Usually, turkeys are cooked on medium-low heat, for hours. And they dry out like crazy. This method, which makes sense, bakes at high temperatures for much shorter time. I cooked my 18 pound turkey in about 3 hours. Unheard of, right? The other trick was the brining. Brining means soaking the turkey in a brine mixture overnight before. Osmosis and black magic make that process keep the turkey nice and moist during cooking, and it speeds up the process.

I took my method from Alton Brown (of Good Eats fame). Here it is:

Ingredients
1 (14 to 16 pound) frozen young turkey
For the brine:
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 gallon vegetable stock
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 1/2 teaspoons allspice berries
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped candied ginger
1 gallon heavily iced water
For the aromatics:
1 red apple, sliced
1/2 onion, sliced
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup water
4 sprigs rosemary
6 leaves sage
Canola oil

Click "read more" for the directions

(2 to 3 days before roasting:)
-Begin thawing the turkey in the refrigerator or in a cooler kept at 38 degrees F.
-Combine the vegetable stock, salt, brown sugar, peppercorns, allspice berries, and candied ginger in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Stir occasionally to dissolve solids and bring to a boil. Then remove the brine from the heat, cool to room temperature, and refrigerate.

The night before you'd like to eat:
-Combine the brine, water and ice in the 5-gallon bucket. Place the thawed turkey (with innards removed) breast side down in brine. If necessary, weigh down the bird to ensure it is fully immersed, cover, and refrigerate or set in cool area for 8 to 16 hours, turning the bird once half way through brining.

Early on the day of the feast:
-Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. Remove the bird from brine and rinse inside and out with cold water. Discard the brine.
-Place the bird on roasting rack inside a half sheet pan and pat dry with paper towels.
-Combine the apple, onion, cinnamon stick, and 1 cup of water in a microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Add steeped aromatics to the turkey's cavity along with the rosemary and sage. Tuck the wings underneath the bird and coat the skin liberally with canola oil.
-Roast the turkey on lowest level of the oven at 500 degrees F for 30 minutes. Insert a probe thermometer into thickest part of the breast and reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Set the thermometer alarm (if available) to 151 degrees F. A 14 to 16 pound bird should require a total of 2 to 2 1/2 hours of roasting. Let the turkey rest, loosely covered with foil or a large mixing bowl for 15 minutes before carving.

ps: I recommend you watch his videos on the foodnetwork about this process

Easy Chicken with "Marsala" sauce

2008-10-22T06:48:00.000-07:00

Note: this should not be confused with Chicken Tika Masala. That is a tasty asian dish of complex flavors. This is a simple mediterranean chicken. It gets its name from the Marsala wine. Marsala is a fortified Italian wine, and therefore can really be substituted by any fortified wine that you may choose. A lot of sweet or cream sherries or Pedro Ximenez would work. A moscatel would work for flavor probably, but the color may be a little light for my taste. For the non-spain readers, basically pick a sweet fortified wine with a dark color.

I generally like to eat it over rice. Also is delicious with wide pasta noodles, like parpadelle. I imagine it would work with mashed potatoes if the sauce is thick enough. But that is up to you.

Ingredients:

4 medium (1 1/4 pounds) skinless, boneless chicken-breast halves
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon(s) olive oil
1 package(s) (10-ounce) sliced cremini mushrooms
1 large shallot, finely chopped
1/2 cup(s) reduced-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup(s) Marsala wine
2 tablespoon(s) chopped fresh parsley

DIRECTIONS

-Sprinkle chicken with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper.
-In nonstick pan, heat oil over medium-high heat until hot. Add breasts and cook 6 to 7 minutes or until done (browned on both sides and chicken loses its pink color throughout), turning over once. Transfer breasts to platter; cover with foil to keep warm.
-To skillet, add mushrooms, shallot, and 1/4 tsp. salt. Cook 3 minutes or until mushrooms are browned, stirring frequently. - -Add chicken broth, Marsala wine, and any juices from chicken on platter. Cook 4 minutes to reduce sauce by half, stirring occasionally. Stir in parsley.

This classic recipe was modified from the Good Housekeeping version

Mediterranean Chicken

2008-09-14T13:38:00.000-07:00

This is an easy and quick dish to make that is sure to please. It is a variation of an idea I got from goodhousekeeping cookbook. It is fairly cheap as well, since the ingredients are few and simple. Because this dish makes a nice sauce, I serve it with rice, though I have tried it with cous cous or sauteed potatoes. The image above is not quite from this recipe, but sue me. Think of prunes instead of apricots, dont cut the olives, and you´re all set. Or something.

1 tablespoon(s) olive oil
8 large (about 2 1/4 pounds) skinless chicken thighs
1/2 teaspoon(s) salt
2 small (about 4 ounces each) onions, each cut into 6 wedges
3/4 cup(s) chicken broth
1 cup seedless dried plums∕prunes
1/2 cup(s) Kalamata olives- or any large dark green olives. Pitted, for the safety of your guests
1 teaspoon(s) chopped fresh thyme, or 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
2 teaspoon(s) all-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS

1. In nonstick 12-inch skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken; sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt and cook until lightly browned. Remove to plate.
2. In drippings, cook onions until golden, shaking skillet occasionally.
3. Add chicken broth, thyme, and chicken with any juices in plate. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer 10 minutes. Add olives and prunes. Cook for 15 more minutes, until juices run clear when chicken is pierced with tip of knife.
4. Remove chicken to warm platter. In cup, mix flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon water until smooth. Pour flour mixture into skillet, whisking constantly. Over medium-high heat, heat to boiling; boil 1 minute until sauce thickens slightly. Pour sauce over chicken.

a simple sweet tomato sauce and shrimps

2008-08-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

Note: Pasta is treated with cruelty by people in their 20s. Especially in spain, where a can of Tomate Frito and some chopped chorizo is a hungry man's quick meal when poured over a plate of pasta. Don't get me wrong, that has its time and place, but it is overused. Carbonara is another one that has been beaten to death. The problem is that a lot of pasta sauces can be quite time consuming and complicated to make (a good bolognese should take hours and hours of supervision), so when I find an easy, tasty sauce, I jump on it with glee:

ingredients
8 blanched and peeled plum tomatoes, chopped -- sure, fresh tomatoes are delicious, but if you dont have time, you can use canned tomatoes and break them up
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 good knobs of butter
extra virgin olive oil
300g (10&1/2 oz) small peeled prawns or shrimps -- I used fresh shrimp, but frozen shrimp will do in a pinch
1 clove of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 shots of Vecchia Romana or Cognac -- Don't forget that Cognac is just a type of Brandy, use a Brandy de Jerez or equivalent, they can be just as good for a fraction of the price
142ml cooking cream
400g/14oz fresh or dried taglierini -- or any fresh flat noodled pasta
1 large handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped

Put a pan of salted water on to heat for the pasta. Put the butter and a couple of lugs of olive oil in a second pan, and fry the prawns, garlic, lemon zest and tomatoes for a couple of minutes. Add the booze and allow to flame if you like. (The flame should go out after about 30 seconds, so don’t worry!) Add the cream, allow to simmer gently for a couple more minutes and then remove the pan from the heat. Season the sauce carefully with salt, pepper and the lemon juice.

Put the pasta into the boiling water — fresh will need only 3 minutes and dried will need to be cooked according to the packet instructions. If your sauce has cooled down then reheat it now. When the pasta is cooked, drain it in a colander and then toss with the parsley in the pan in which it was cooked. Check the seasoning, then divide on to your serving plates with the sauce on top. Serve straight away, telling your guests to stir the pasta up in their bowls every so often to keep the pasta moist.

serves 4 - taken from Jamie Oliver

A cheater's clam chowder

2008-08-27T01:17:00.004-07:00

Note: Most chowder recipes are much more complicated than this one. Chowder tends to be a bit like a magic potion, everyone has their own detailed and secret way to get a great solution. Unfortunately, many of those great solutions involve ingredients that are hard to come by in spain. After looking around, I found this recipe, which seems to do the trick for an easy and decent tasting chowder. I have made this recipe several times with varying degrees of success. Be careful not to cook the potatoes too long, or the whole thing becomes too thick and starchy. Ah, also, in Mercadona you can buy frozen, shelled clams. While I still like to use the canned ones because of their juice, I often throw in some extra frozen ones to make it meatier.

Ingredients:

3 slices bacon, diced -- I once used cheap spanish bacon, not smoked, and it completely changed the flavor of the dish. It lost the husky essence of the soup. Don't be stingy, get something decent. Like the prechopped Oscar Myer bacon cartons.
1 cup chopped onion
3 cups diced potatoes
1 bottle (8 ounces) clam juice -- Alas, in Spain there is no such thing as clam juice. I use fish stock, or water with fish bullion instead.
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 cans (approximately 7 ounces each) minced clams
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups half-and-half -- I make my own by simply adding one part milk, one part cream.
1 cup milk

Preparation:

Cook bacon until crisp in a Dutch oven or large, heavy saucpan. Remove bacon to paper towels with slotted spoon; drain. Add onion to bacon drippings; sauté until softened. Add potatoes and clam juice, salt, and pepper. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Remove from heat. Add minced clams with their liquid. Whisk flour into milk; add to chowder with half-and-half. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until clam chowder thickens and bubbles, or about 3 minutes.
Clam chowder recipe serves 4.

A summertime cake

2008-08-27T01:07:00.000-07:00

Note: I made this cake earlier this summer. It is a variation of a Red Velvet cake. Red Velvet cakes are typical in the south. Though they have cocoa, they do not taste like a typical chocolate cake, perhaps because they are made with buttermilk. In this version, the taste of the cake itself is overpowered by the berries anyway. In a good way. Many of these ingredients, like the baking cocoa and food coloring, are not readily available in Spain though, and you will have to go to an American import store to pick them up; these ingredients are starred

Red Velvet Cake with Raspberries and Blueberries
Bon Appetit, June 2003

Cake
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour (sifted, then measured) --Sifting is essential in cakes. If you dont have a sifter. Get one
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder**
1 teaspoon baking powder --Levadura en polvo, found in large supermarkets like carrefour or the ever odd Lidl
1 teaspoon baking soda -- bicarbonato, in spanish
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon red food coloring**
1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs
Frosting
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar** -- Perhaps its possible to find spanish confectioners sugar, but it tends to be rougher than its american counterpart. It isn't expensive at the american store though.
3 1/2-pint baskets fresh raspberries
3 1/2-pint baskets fresh blueberries --found some at supercor!

For cake:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour two 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 1 1/2-inch-high sides. Sift sifted flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into medium bowl. Whisk buttermilk, food coloring, vinegar, and vanilla in small bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and butter in large bowl until well blended. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until well blended after each addition. Beat in dry ingredients in 4 additions alternately with buttermilk mixture in 3 additions.
Divide batter between prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 27 minutes. Cool in pans on racks 10 minutes. Turn cakes out onto racks; cool completely.

For frosting:
Beat cream cheese and butter in large bowl until smooth. Beat in vanilla. Add powdered sugar and beat until smooth.
Place 1 cake layer, flat side up, on platter. Spread 1 cup frosting over top of cake. Arrange 1 basket raspberries and 1/2 basket blueberries atop frosting, pressing lightly to adhere. Top with second cake layer, flat side down. Spread remaining frosting over top and sides of cake. Arrange remaining berries decoratively over top of cake. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour before serving.)