A Thai-ish Supper

I always have at least one jar of Maesri Thai chilli paste with sweet basil in the pantry. If you enjoy drunken noodles, you'll like this condiment.

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Ordinarily, I plan our weekend dinners a few days in advance, but other times I just wing it. We normally have enough raw ingredients in the house to produce something interesting without having to make a run to the store. On this particular weekend, I decided to use some of the Trader Joe's cod we had in the freezer. Cod's not my favorite--I'm not into its weird, almost-buttery, flavor-- but it's relatively inexpensive and cooks quickly. I thought I could do something like my old standby Sriracha Bouillabaisse, which is relatively easy. (I was feeling lazy.) Then I noticed a jar of Thai chilli paste with sweet basil in the cupboard, next to a can of coconut milk, and dinner suddenly veered off in a slightly different direction.

Both recipes start with sautéing aromatics, then adding tomatoes, stock, and something spicy. In this case, the spicy element is provided one of my favorite condiments. I discovered chilli paste with sweet basil leaves at H Mart many years ago. There are a couple of variations and brands available, with holy basil, or labeled as "pad kapao" sauce. All of them contain some variety of Thai basil, chile peppers, soy bean oil, garlic, and salt. The flavors are spicy and aromatic, bright and fragrant, great with everything (I think). If you appreciate the licorice-like flavors of Thai basil and are into hot stuff, I think you'll like it.

I mostly had peppers on hand--an orange bell pepper and a bag of shishitos that I haven't gotten around to using. I chopped up a handful of those; while not really spicy, shishitos still have the flavor profile of a hot green pepper, which I vastly prefer over a green bell pepper. Green beans would work nicely in this dish, too, so if you have some, toss them in. Hell, any veg would be good, and shrimp or tofu would work just as well as the fish.

I simmer the veg and wet ingredients until they look more like a sauce than a soup, adding lots of fish sauce, lime juice, and a pinch or two of sweetener (sugar, agave nectar, honey) to get a balanced flavor. Restaurant Thai food, at least in this area, tends to be sweet. It's nice to be able to cut back on the sweetness when preparing food with Thai flavors at home, but I still think many dishes need at least a touch of sweetness to balance the more intense flavors of chiles and fish sauce.

The protein is added at the last minute and heated only until cooked through. Overcooked fish is a bad thing, so don't do it. I don't think you can overcook tofu, but probably best not to let that go too long, either. I served the dish with plain jasmine rice, your favorite grain would probably be fine. If you reduce the sauce even more before seasoning, you could probably eat this over pasta, should you be so inclined.

Thai Basil Coconut Fish

2 tablespoons neutral oil
1 medium onion, sliced thinly
1 orange bell pepper, sliced thinly
1-3 green chiles of your choice (jalapenos or whatever you have on hand), sliced thinly
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro stems
2 cloves garlic, minced
Kosher salt
1 Knorr fish bouillon cube plus 1 cup water, or 1 8-oz bottle of clam juice
1 15-oz can diced tomatoes
1 15-oz can coconut milk
2 heaping tablespoons Maesri chilli paste with sweet basil leaves (or to taste)
Fish sauce
Lime juice
Sugar to taste
1 pound boneless, skinless cod filets, or similar white-fleshed fish
Rice for serving
Cilantro and sliced green onion for garnish

Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a dutch oven or large pan with lid. Add the onion, peppers, cilantro stems, and a big pinch of salt.. Stir occasionally, cooking until veg have softened a bit and starting to brown, 5-6 minutes. Add the garlic and cook an additional minute or so. Add the bouillon or clam juice, tomatoes, and coconut milk and stir to combine. Bring mixture to a simmer and cook for 8-10 minutes to evaporate some of the liquid and concentrate the flavors.

Turn the heat down to medium. Add the chilli paste and taste for seasoning. If you are serving this with rice, you'll need the sauce to be somewhat aggressively seasoned. Add fish sauce for salt--I used a couple of tablespoons. You can add some kosher salt, too. Add a few squeezes of lime juice and a bit of sugar. Once you have the sauce flavored to your liking (it should have a nice spicy/tangy/sweet balance, but do what works for your palate), slip in the pieces of fish. Cover the pan and cook until the fish is cooked through and easily flakes apart, about 5 minutes.

Serve in bowls, with rice on the bottom or on the side. Garnish with cilantro.

Serves 4.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Chilis and Stews

When someone says chili, what comes to mind? Ground beef cooked with canned tomatoes, beans, and a packet of chili seasoning? I think that's probably the norm. That's the kind of chili that my Dad used to whip up using Wick Fowler's 2-Alarm Chili kit. My Aunt Stasia, on the other hand, made a loose ground beef sauce that was closer to Coney Island sauce that was meant to be served on a hot dog. I blithely went along with the idea that either one was the Platonic ideal of chili until I picked up a copy of a cookbook that included thirty or so recipes for Texas chili. This type of chili, the book insisted, required chunks of beef and absolutely did not include beans of any sort. Real Texas chili doesn't even have tomatoes in it. Rather, it should include only beef, chile puree, and seasonings. After reading the subtle variations presented in this manual to one of the carnivore's most important dishes, I fell into the Texas chili camp. No more ground beef chili for me! Ok, so that's not entirely true. Ground beef chili definitely has it's place. For one thing, it's a quicker cook than chili made with hunks of pork or beef. And I'm more likely to have ground beef, chicken, or turkey in the freezer. Still, my heart belongs to Texas chili.

Chili isn't the only belly-warming stew-like substance on the menu at Chez Minx. I have tossed together many a supper-in-a-bowl in the fall and winter months. Scroll down to find links to some of my favorite non-chili creations.

Beef and Black Bean Chili

Chili Verde

Emergency Chili

Five (or More) Chile Chili

Green Chicken Chili

Kitchen Sink Chili

Lamb Tagine Chili

Minx Chili

Moroccan Chili

Spicy Smoky Chili

Spicy Smoky Turkey Chili

Whole30 Chili

Non-Chili Stews

Black Bean Ragout

Bloody Mary Beef

Chicken and Cannellini Bean Stew

Chicken and Dumplings

Lamb Fesenjan

Lamb Stew a la Chinoise

Sausage and White Bean Stew

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Lamb Stew

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on March 17, 2011.

So it's St. Patrick's Day and most of you are probably planning to whip up some corned beef and cabbage with a side of potatoes, or something else traditionally consumed on this day. Green beer, perhaps. Or a Shamrock shake. Personally, I'm in the mood for some stew.

"Irish" stew typically contains lamb or mutton, onions, carrots, and of course, potatoes. While it's very tasty, I'm feeling a little more exotic this week. My stew still contains lamb, onion, and carrots, but the overall flavor profile leans more toward the Chinese, with the potatoes replaced by steamed rice.

Pretty, no? Tasty, yes!

Lamb Stew a la Chinoise

1 tablespoon canola oil
3 lbs cubed lamb
1 cup sliced onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
2 cloves chopped garlic
6 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon crushed Sichuan peppercorns
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons black bean and garlic sauce
2 tablespoons soy
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon Sriracha
1 star anise, broken
2 tablespoons corn starch
1 cup mixed vegetables (I used frozen peas and edamame)

In a dutch oven, heat the oil and brown the lamb in batches. When uniformly brown on all sides, remove lamb to a bowl and set aside. Into the hot fat left in the pan, add the peppercorns and toast for about a minute, then add the onions, celery, carrot, and ginger and saute until vegetables soften, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and saute another minute or two. Add the meat back to the pot along with the remaining ingredients and bring mixture to a boil. After reaching a boil, turn the heat down to low and allow the stew to simmer for 3 hours, or until meat is very tender.

Place cornstarch in a small bowl and whisk in enough of the stew liquid to make a thin paste (about half a cup). Whisk cornstarch slurry into stew, and stir until thickened.

Stir in additional and cook until tender, about 10 minutes more.

Serve with sauteed cabbage.

Sautéed Cabbage

1/2 cabbage cut into shreds as for coleslaw
1 teaspoon veg oil
2 tablespoons chopped scallions
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon honey
salt and pepper to taste

Heat vegetable oil in a sauté pan. Add cabbage and toss to coat with oil. Stir fry for about 3 minutes, until cabbage begins to soften. Add remaining ingredients and toss to coat. Cook until warmed through, an additional 2 minutes. Serve atop lamb stew, or as a side dish to something else.

Sausage and White Bean Stew

A recipe for a hearty stew might seem a bit out of place in May, but with the weird chilly and rainy weather we've been having here in Baltimore, it's really quite apropos. And actually, despite containing Italian sausage and white beans, this stew is really not all that heavy. It's tomato-rich, which brings a nice hit of bright acidity, perfect to chase away some rainy-May blues.

Normally, a soup like this might have some dark leafy greens in it, like kale. We didn't have kale, but we did have a head of organic bok choy from the farm box we received earlier in the week (from Washington's Green Grocer). It was green, and like kale, a member of the Brassica genus. But unlike kale, bok choy is crisper and juicier and cooks faster. And isn't kale. Come on, I know you are all as sick of kale as I am. Yes, it's green, yes it's good for you. But hell, there are plenty of other Brassica that are tastier and more fun to eat (gai lan, rapini, romanesco, heck, even plain old broccoli). Anyway, so I added bok choy. If you are a kale-ie, and have some hanging around, then by all means add it to the pot, remembering to remove the tough stem, and cook it for a bit longer to lessen the chew.

Serve with crusty bread, or by itself (as we did).

Sausage and White Bean Stew

1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 onion, chopped
Olive oil
Salt
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon (divided use)
2 (15-oz) cans diced tomatoes
1 cup chicken stock
1 lb sweet or hot Italian sausages
2 (15-oz cans) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
Cayenne pepper
Sugar
1 head bok choy

In a large pot, cook pepper and onion in a few teaspoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt over medium heat until softened. Stir in garlic, fennel seeds, and half the tarragon. Stir for a minute or so, then add the tomatoes and their juices and the chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer. Cook for one hour. (You could cook it for less, if you're in some kind of hurry, but the longer you cook it, the better it will taste, and the more mellow the tomatoes will be.)

About 45 minutes into the tomato + veg + stock cooking time, place the sausages in a saute pan with a half cup of water. Cover the pan and cook over medium heat until water has evaporated and sausages start to sizzle. Turning sausages occasionally, cook for about 8-10 minutes, until they are cooked through. Remove the sausages from the pan, cut each into 5 or six slices, and add them to the pot along with the cans of beans. Cook an additional 30 minutes. Taste for seasoning and add cayenne, a big pinch of sugar if the tomatoes still seem a bit acidy, more salt, and the rest of the tarragon.

Wash the bok choy thoroughly. Cut off the stem end, slice the bok choy crosswise into 3/4" pieces, and add to the pot. Cook an additional 10 minutes, until bok choy is tender.

Serves 6.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Chile Chili

A few weeks ago, I realized that the entire winter had gone by without my making a batch of beef chili. While it is Spring (believe it or not), and chili might be thought of as cold weather food, cooking it up is a snap and it tastes fine all year long.

My preferred method of making chili involves chunks of beef, canned tomatoes, and no beans. This time, I went the opposite direction by using ground beef, no tomatoes (at least not many), and a can of black beans. Why? Because sometimes we need change in our lives. Change is good.

Beef and Black Bean Chili

4 New Mexico chiles
2.5 lb ground beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon oregano
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1-2 chipotles en adobo, mashed
2 tablespoons cacao nibs, ground or 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 bottle beer of your choice (not too hoppy)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
2-3 tomatoes, diced (optional)
Sriracha
Lime Juice
Salt
Additional spices for re-seasoning
Grated cheese
Scallions or spring onions for garnish

Put the chiles and 1 1/2 cups water in a large glass bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Microwave on high for 5 minutes. Remove from microwave and set aside. If the chiles aren't submerged, put a small plate over to keep them under the water.

Cook the ground beef in a dutch oven, stirring regularly, until it begins to brown. Drain any accumulated fat, then add the onions to the beef in the pot. Cook, covered, 5-6 minutes until onions soften. Combine the next 5 ingredients in a small bowl. Once onions have softened, stir in the spices and cook an additional 1-2 minutes until fragrant. Stir in the garlic, then add the tomato paste, chipotles, and cacao or cocoa.

Remove the stems and seeds from the chiles put them in a food processor or blender with enough of the soaking liquid to make a puree. Add to the pot, along with the beer and the strained soaking liquid. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer.

Cook, covered, for at least one hour, or until ground beef is tender. Add the beans and cook for an additional 15 minutes. Taste for seasoning and add sriracha, lime juice, and salt to taste.

Sometimes, when a dish like chili has been cooking for a long time, it needs a bit of re-seasoning. Add pinches more of cumin, coriander, and smoked paprika to taste.

Leftovers taste great on a hot dog.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Khoresht-e Fesenjan

My version of the Persian dish, fesenjan, is inauthentic, perhaps, but still utterly delicious.

--Kathy

This post was originally published on November 5, 2008.
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Khoresht-e Fesenjan

We bought a pomegranate at the Superfresh the other day.  When I was a kid, my Uncle Frankie bought a pom every fall for my mother and me. He had done this since she was young, and after so many years of wrestling with the fruit, she let me mangle and eat most of it.  When Frankie died, in 1983, so did the annual tradition of red hands and stained kitchen table.  Nowadays, I slice open the fruit and rip it apart in a big bowl of cold water.  The arils sink to the bottom and the tissue-like membrane floats to the top, making the fruit a breeze to dismantle. Plus the water keeps my hands from getting stained.

The pomegranate sat on our kitchen counter for a few days when I was struck with the idea of making fesenjan, a Persian preparation featuring pomegranate and walnuts.  I had eaten a version with made with duck at the Orchard Market and Café many years ago and remembered enjoying it. We had a small half leg of lamb in the freezer, and I decided that would be the perfect protein to match with the tangy fruit and nut sauce.

I got Mr Minx to whip up some of his delicious pilaf (sautéed onions, broken capellini pasta, and leftover rice, flavored with saffron) as a go-with, and cooked some okra pods with various spices: mustard and cumin seeds, charnushka, coriander, salt and pepper.

The meat was deliciously tender.  I had cut off most of the fat but left all of the annoying silver skin and other connective tissue, which melted away during the long slow cooking.  The sauce was tangy and rich, with just enough spice flavor to keep it far away from the realm of ordinary lamb stew.  In short, it was delicious, and I would definitely make this dish again.  Perhaps I'll try chicken next time....

Lamb Fesenjan

Serves 6

1 large onion, chopped

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp turmeric

2 tblsp oil

2 lbs lamb, cut into cubes

1 tblsp flour

8oz walnuts, chopped

1/3 cup hot water

1 1/2 cups pomegranate juice

1/2 tsp cinnamon

5 cardamom pods, crushed

1 tblsp honey (optional)

salt to taste

Sauté onion with turmeric and pepper in the oil until browned.  Remove from pot.  Add meat and brown on all sides.  Sprinkle meat with the flour and the chopped walnuts and sauté for a few minutes.  Add water, pomegranate juice, cardamom, and cinnamon and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat and simmer 2 hours or so until meat is very tender and the juices have thickened.  Add salt to taste and honey, if the pomegranate is too tart for you.  Conversely, if you want the dish to have more tart flavor, add lemon juice.

Serve with rice or pilaf.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Bloody Mary Beef

Sometimes a recipe sounds better than it actually is. I got excited about one for Bloody Mary Beef from Jamie Oliver's new Comfort Food cookbook. I like a good Bloody Mary on occasion, and think the flavors of horseradish, Worcestershire, and tomato would be smashing with beef. And it is, but if one follows the recipe to the letter, the flavors are a bit weak. Too much tomato, not enough anything else. But, if one ups the amount of aromatic Worcestershire sauce, adds horseradish (found in the original internet version but not in the cookbook version), and re-seasons the dish before serving, it's actually pretty good, with a nice depth of flavor

If I tinkered with it enough, I could probably make it great. For now, though, this is a pretty good stew to make when you have a bit of time on the weekend. It's great with horseradish mashed potatoes, but it makes such a large amount, you'll find yourself serving it again later in the week as a pasta sauce or with rice.

Bloody Mary Beef (a Jamie Oliver recipe, with some alterations)

Olive oil
1 2lb beef chuck roast
Kosher salt
Freshly ground white pepper
1 bunch of celery, trimmed and cut into 2" lengths
2 red onions, cut into eighths
1 32oz can of tomato puree
5 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco
3 tablespoons vodka
Juice of 1 lemon
2 fresh bay leaves

Heat a large pot or dutch oven over high heat and add the olive oil. Pat the roast dry and season generously with salt and pepper on both sides. Brown meat on all sides, about 10 minutes total, and remove from pan. Add celery and onion to the pan with a pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until they start to soften.

In a bowl, stir together the tomato puree, Worcestershire, horseradish, Tabasco, vodka, and lemon juice. Put the browned meat back into the pot on top of the vegetables and add the tomato mixture plus one cup of water. Toss in the bay leaves.

Bring mixture to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Cover pot and cook meat until fork tender, stirring occasionally, about 3 hours. Remove meat from pot and shred with two forks or slice thinly. Add back to pot and stir well. Cook an additional hour. Taste for seasoning, adding salt, pepper, and additional Worcestershire and Tabasco, if necessary. It's not going to taste exactly like a Bloody Mary, but you want to at least get the idea.

Serve with horseradish mashed potatoes.

Serves 6-8.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Lamb Tagine Chili

Yet another football-filled Sunday rolled around posing yet another dinner dilemma. Should I make something that cooks up quickly, or something that can stew on the stove for a bit while the game is on? On days when the Ravens lose, I am often too dispirited to put a tasty meal together, so it's best that I get dinner started well in advance. Chili is usually my go-to long-simmered meal, but honestly, I am so tired of it. I've made green chilis and red chilis, chilis with turkey, chicken, beef, and lamb. With cubed meat and with ground meat. Just about the only thing I haven't tried making chili with is tofu, and as much as I like the stuff, I don't think I could make it work.

Forget tofu. I went with lamb.

Rather than use a typical chili flavor profile, I switched things up and added things that one might fine in a Moroccan tagine: orange, lemon, olives, cinnamon. But it still has the coriander and cumin flavors of more familiar Tex-Mex chili. Except for the chile powder. If you want it spicy, feel free to add chiles.

Lamb Tagine Chili

2 leeks
Olive oil
2 pounds ground lamb
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
Generous pinch cayenne
1/2 cup orange juice
Rind from half a lemon, julienned
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes
2 roasted red peppers, diced
2 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon honey
1-2 tablespoons of flour
Salt to taste
1½ tablespoons sesame seeds
1/4 cup green olives, sliced
Cilantro leaves (optional)
Basmati rice

Cut the leeks in half and slice thinly. Wash thoroughly to get rid of any sand or dirt. Add a bit of olive oil to a large pot or dutch oven and saute the leeks for a few minutes. Add the lamb and cook, stirring frequently, until the meat is broken up into smaller chunks and browning in spots, about 10 minutes. Stir in the garlic and spices and cook an additional five minutes. Add the orange juice, lemon rind, tomatoes, peppers, and chicken broth and bring to a boil. Turn heat down to medium-low and simmer for at least an hour, until meat is tender.

Skim fat from broth and bring to a boil. Combine the flour with twice as much warm water (or stock, or sauce from the pot) and stir well to make a runny slurry. Dribble into the chili and stir to combine. Add as much or as little as you need to achieve a consistency you like. Stir in the honey and add salt to taste (at least a couple of teaspoons).

Serve over basmati rice with a sprinkle of sesame seeds, some olives, and cilantro, if you wish.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Lazy Ropa Vieja

Ropa Vieja, which means "old rags" or "old clothes" in Spanish, is a classic Cuban dish of shredded beef seasoned with tomato, bell pepper, and cumin. It's traditionally made with flank steak, which shreds nicely into long rag-like pieces, but have you seen the price of flank steak these days? I'm sorry, but I'm not paying $13 for a chunk of meat that I'm going to stew into oblivion. Instead, I paid less than half that amount for a 2lb chuck roast, which I cut into cubes. If you're really lazy, you can buy pre-cubed stew beef, but that's going to cost a few more dollars.

There's a perfectly lovely recipe for ropa vieja in our book, Food Lovers' Guide to Baltimore, provided by Marta Quintana, owner of Havana Road in Towson, but it had too many steps for me on this particular Sunday. While I love to cook, sometimes I just like to throw things in a pot and see how it turns out. That probably makes me a perfect candidate for a slow cooker, but I have no room for another oversized kitchen gadget. Stovetop cooking is more my bag, anyway.

So to cut down on the steps, I cheated with a jar of Goya sofrito, which already contains onions and peppers and seasoning. Marta uses brisket, and doesn't brown it first, so I didn't brown the chuck. I just "chucked" it into the sofrito which I first mixed with water and seasoned with a couple of bay leaves and lots and lots of garlic. After stewing for a couple of hours, the meat was very tender. I put it aside while I thickened and further seasoned the stewing sauce with tomato paste and spices. Some ropa vieja recipes call for sliced olives and pimento, so I pulled two more jars out of the pantry and added some of each. After shredding the meat, I put it back into the sauce and cooked it a bit more before a final seasoning with salt, pepper, and lime juice.

It was delicious.

Lazy Ropa Vieja

1 6oz jar Goya sofrito
2 lbs chuck roast, cut into cubes, or 2 lbs beef stew meat
2 bay leaves
6 large garlic cloves, chopped
3 heaping tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1/2 cup sliced pimento-stuffed green olives
1/2 cup chopped pimento or roasted red bell pepper
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste
Cilantro and green onion (optional)

Dump the sofrito into a stew pot and add about 2.5 jars' worth of water (rinsing out any sofrito clinging to the sides while doing so). Add the meat, the bay leaves and garlic, and cover the pot. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat to a bare simmer. Cook for about 2 - 2.5 hours, or until the meat is fork tender.

Remove meat to a bowl with a slotted spoon. Turn the heat up under the pot of remaining liquid and add the tomato paste, cumin, and paprika. Bring to a boil, whisking well to combine. If there seems to be an excess of liquid, keep at a boil for a few minutes until it reduces to about 2 cups. If there's less than 2 cups in the pot, turn the heat down to a simmer, adding a little bit of beef stock, if necessary. You want the resulting dish to be like a very thick stew, but not dry.

Shred the meat with two forks and return to the pot. Stir in the green olives and pimento. Cook for an additional half hour. Remove from heat and add the lime juice and salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with rice, plantains, and black beans. Or just rice. Garnish with cilantro and green onion.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Pozole

When football season comes around, it seems I'm always concocting recipes for long-cooked stew-type dishes. If I can get everything in a pot before the game, then I don't have to worry about cooking something afterwards when I may be stressed out from a loss or an especially hard-earned win. (Those times, I'd just rather have a cocktail and a big bowl of ice cream.) So there's plenty of winter weekends when we eat chili and the like. While I like to think I make some pretty kick-ass chili, I get bored with it.

One recent stressful Saturday, when the Ravens were facing the Broncos in the AFC Divisional Play-off game, and I was despairing that they had little chance against future Hall of Famer Peyton Manning and his new crew, I made something completely different - pozole. Typically a hearty stew of meat and hominy, my pozole contained red chiles for color and flavor, but green versions with tomatillos and green chiles also exist.

The dish was hearty and warming, and I was glad I didn't have to think about it much while I was biting my nails and cheering on my home team to their victory.

Pozole Rojo

2 pounds country-style pork ribs
1 teaspoon salt
6 cloves of garlic, sliced
2 ounces whole New Mexico red chiles
2 cups boiling water
2 cloves garlic, halved
1/2 roughly chopped onion, about 3/4 cup
2 15oz cans hominy
1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 tablespoon ancho chile powder
chicken broth
salt and pepper
cilantro for garnish
sliced radishes for garnish
flour tortillas

Place ribs, salt, and sliced garlic in a dutch oven with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then turn down so the water is simmering. Cook for about 90 minutes, skimming water as foam rises.

While meat is cooking, toast the chiles in a hot skillet for several seconds per side until they smell toasty. Place peppers in a bowl and pour on the hot water. Cover with a piece of plastic wrap or a plate. After about thirty minutes of soaking, remove stem end from pepper and slice lengthwise. Remove seeds and ribs, if desired, for a milder sauce, or leave some or all of them in for something spicier. Cut pepper into chunks and place in a food processor with the two halved cloves of garlic, the onion, and enough of the soaking water to make a thick puree. Set aside.

Remove meat from pot, remove bones, and tear into chunks. Strain the broth and set aside. Return meat to the pot with enough strained broth to barely cover, the chile, onion and garlic puree, hominy, and seasonings. Add chicken broth if there's not enough pork stock to cover, and simmer over medium heat, covered, for 45 minutes, until hominy is tender. If there's too much broth toward the end of the cooking time, turn up the heat for a few minutes to boil some of it off.

Season with salt and pepper to taste, garnish with cilantro and radishes, and serve with warm flour tortillas.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Chicken and Cannellini Bean Stew

We like to eat early because, well, we just do. So when the Ravens play a 4pm game, it cuts into our dining schedule a bit. The best solution is to make something that can be served at halftime, either a quick supper of nachos or pizza (homemade, of course) or a long-cooked stew of some sort. We had done chili already for a game earlier in the season, and leftover Thanksgiving turkey nachos fit the bill for the Ravens game against the San Diego Chargers, so I decided to make something completely new for the game against arch-rival Pittsburgh Steelers.

Chicken thighs, sausage, and white beans are a great combination, especially when teamed up with tomatoes and garlic. Lots of garlic. Serve with a green salad and garlic bread for a tasty supper that doesn't involve a lot of last-minute prep.

Chicken and Cannellini Bean Stew with Sausage

1 lb sweet Italian sausage, casings removed
olive oil
2 cups onion, chopped
pinch of salt
5 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 15 oz cans diced tomatoes and their juices
2 15 oz cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 bay leaf
1 cup chicken broth
6 - 8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
salt and pepper to taste
polenta or rice

In a large pot or Dutch oven, cook the sausage over medium-high heat until browned on all sides, breaking it up into small pieces with a wooden spoon. Add a bit of olive oil if the sausage sticks to the pot. When the sausage is mostly browned, add the onions and pinch of salt. Cover pot and cook five minutes, stirring once or twice, until onions are soft. Stir in garlic and oregano. Add wine and scrape up any browned bits on the bottom of the pot. Cook until most of the wine has evaporated. Add tomatoes, beans, bay leaf, and chicken broth and stir to combine. Tuck chicken thighs into the pot, making sure they're submerged as much as possible.

Bring mixture to a boil, then turn heat to low and cover pot. Cook for 90 minutes - 2 hours, stirring occasionally. When chicken is falling apart, taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with or over polenta or rice. Serves 4-6.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Lamb Stew

So it's St. Patrick's Day and most of you are probably planning to whip up some corned beef and cabbage with a side of potatoes, or something else traditionally consumed on this day. Green beer, perhaps. Or a Shamrock shake. Personally, I'm in the mood for some stew.

"Irish" stew typically contains lamb or mutton, onions, carrots, and of course, potatoes. While it's very tasty, I'm feeling a little more exotic this week. My stew still contains lamb, onion, and carrots, but the overall flavor profile leans more toward the Chinese, with the potatoes replaced by steamed rice.

Pretty, no? Tasty, yes!

Lamb Stew a la Chinoise

1 tablespoon canola oil
3 lbs cubed lamb
1 cup sliced onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
2 cloves chopped garlic
6 cups beef stock
1 tablespoon crushed Sichuan peppercorns
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons black bean and garlic sauce
2 tablespoons soy
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon Sriracha
1 star anise, broken
2 tablespoons corn starch
1 cup mixed vegetables (I used frozen peas and edamame)

In a dutch oven, heat the oil and brown the lamb in batches. When uniformly brown on all sides, remove lamb to a bowl and set aside. Into the hot fat left in the pan, add the peppercorns and toast for about a minute, then add the onions, celery, carrot, and ginger and saute until vegetables soften, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and saute another minute or two. Add the meat back to the pot along with the remaining ingredients and bring mixture to a boil. After reaching a boil, turn the heat down to low and allow the stew to simmer for 3 hours, or until meat is very tender.

Place cornstarch in a small bowl and whisk in enough of the stew liquid to make a thin paste (about half a cup). Whisk cornstarch slurry into stew, and stir until thickened.

Stir in additional and cook until tender, about 10 minutes more.

Serve with sauteed cabbage.

Sautéed Cabbage

1/2 cabbage cut into shreds as for coleslaw
1 teaspoon veg oil
2 tablespoons chopped scallions
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon honey
salt and pepper to taste

Heat vegetable oil in a sauté pan. Add cabbage and toss to coat with oil. Stir fry for about 3 minutes, until cabbage begins to soften. Add remaining ingredients and toss to coat. Cook until warmed through, an additional 2 minutes. Serve atop lamb stew, or as a side dish to something else.

Tackling a Classic

Had I made it past the first round of Project Food Blog, this would have been my second post.

The challenge was to tackle a classic dish from an unfamiliar ethnic cuisine. Being a huge fan of fusion food, I've already dabbled with flavors from most Asian and European countries, and a bit of the Americas. Africa however, was pretty much wide-open, uncharted territory for me.

There are so many countries in Africa of which I know nothing - Burkina Faso, Gabon, Zambia - so the question became "which has a compelling cuisine?" I immediately thought about Namibia, because Anthony Bourdain had filmed an episode of No Reservations in that country on the Southeast coast. My next thought was the memory of his dining on warthog anus, a special delicacy bestowed on him as a guest. It seemed easy enough to prepare: slaughter a warthog; remove its intestines; give a quick grilling after an even quicker cleaning, and enjoy al dente. But should I ever want to dine on the digested fecal matter of Phacochoerus africanus, I think I would be hard-pressed to find it in the local supermarket.

Needless to say, I don't want.

My friend Pam's husband is originally from Nigeria, and I briefly deliberated whether I should contact her for recipes before I decided that I should prepare something slightly more familiar. I have eaten authentic Ethiopian food exactly once, about fifteen years ago, at a little hole-in-the-wall that's no longer in business. It was overly hot to my palate, but the method of eating was intriguing. Injera, a crepe-like bread made from the grain teff, was used as both the serving platter and the utensils. A quick trip across teh innernets revealed that injera didn't seem that difficult to make, and I was sold. Within minutes, a bag of teff flour was winging its way from an online purveyor to Casa Minx.

Because I am challenged to make an authentic dish, I dismissed the idea of making fellow blogger John's extremely inauthentic and possibly sacrilegious Bacon and Pancetta Wot. I have tasted it and can attest to its deliciousness, but it would simply not do for my purposes. Instead, I decided to tackle Doro Wat, a classic stew made with onions and chicken and seasoned with the predominately fenugreek-and-chile-flavored spice mix known as berbere.

First, I made the injera, using this recipe. The result was an unmitigated disaster. While the batter fermented nicely within 2 days, cooking it was another matter entirely. The batter stuck to the pan, even when using oil. The texture was extremely delicate and tore in multiple places when I tried to move it to a platter, and even though it seemed done (by recipe directions), it had an unpleasantly mushy "raw" quality to it. And when the pancakes cooled, they became brittle.

The injera disaster. Nice bubbles, though.

With a minor crisis on my hands, not to mention mushy bread dough on my fingers, I scrambled for an alternative. This bread wouldn't stand up to being used as an eating utensil, plus it didn't taste very good. And as the other dishes were cooking already, a solution had to come quickly. Perhaps if the injera was more like a French crepe, it would be more pliable? I tested my theory with a new batter using a 1:1 proportion of teff and wheat flour, plus milk and eggs.

It worked like a charm.

The new bread didn't have the characteristic air bubbles, but it held together and was fairly easy to manipulate to pick up morsels of food.

Perhaps inauthentic, but more authentic than having to eat with a fork!

Because man does not live by crepe-like bread (and chicken) alone, I also made a vegetable stew, Yetakelt Wat, and a salad of tomato, cucumber, and lettuce dressed simply with olive oil and lemon juice.

Although the bread caused problems, the rest of the meal came out beautifully. Piled onto an injera-lined platter (some pieces of the original batch went down first, to lend a stronger teff fragrance), it looked relatively authentic, and tasted FABULOUS. Seriously. The chicken was tender, very spicy and hot, but the heat was tempered a bit by the teff crepe. The vegetables, although similarly spiced, had a different, somewhat sweet, flavor profile due to the tomato paste.

Being unused to such messy finger food made eating a bit awkward, but Mr Minx and I soon got the hang of it and finished up every last delicious bit. Except for the bottom-most layer of all-teff injera, which was sadly relegated to the trash can.

While my experiment wasn't 100% successful, I'd say it was pretty close. And now that I have leftover berbere and the spiced butter known as niter kibbeh, I'm very likely to make Ethiopian cuisine again in the near future. Even the injera (although I'd try another recipe, perhaps this one). Of course, the way my mind works, I'm more inclined to take the flavors of Ethiopia and apply them to Western dishes.

Berbere-spiced spaghetti and meatballs, anyone?

Faux-roccan Lamb

On Saturday, during the Snowpocalypse, I made a hearty lamb dish with Moroccan flavors, based on the Lamb with Prunes recipe in Claudia Roden's book, The Book of Jewish Food. I call it "Faux-roccan" because neither a Jew nor a Muslim would do what I did - add pork stock.

::::ducking::::

I didn't want to add plain water, and I had two quarts of lovely gelatinous pork stock left over from the pork shoulder I cooked on Friday. In addition to prunes, I added mushrooms, a can of diced tomatoes, and half a preserved lemon from a jar I picked up at Marshall's (you can find the most interesting gourmet items at Marshall's, et. al.) before the holidays.

I let it cook for several hours until the meat was fall-apart tender.

Then the carbon monoxide detector went off. While the stew was cooking, I baked a loaf of bread and a batch of brownies. Immediately I turned off the stove and opened several windows. Mr Minx checked the chimney, but it didn't seem blocked. The last time the CO detector went off was several Christmasses ago, when I had been baking cookies and prepping both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners all at the same time.

With a new puppy in the house, needless to say I didn't want to risk anything by cooking still more stuff, so plans for a bulghur pilaf were scrapped. Instead, I took Milo outside for a romp in the snow, or more accurately, he raced up and down the narrow path Mr Minx had carved out in our back yard while I scraped up the last 1/2" or so of packed-down snow so it wouldn't ice over.

And a beautiful thing happened - the sun came out, revealing patches of blue sky. Snowpocalypse was over!

We went inside and celebrated with a bowl of lamby goodness, served with slices of beer bread. Would have liked that pilaf, but still - it was good.

Chili for a Chilly Day

Even though Saturday evening had been an "Orgy of Protein," I decided to make chili on Sunday. It's a perfect dish to make on a day when my attention is turned to football. (Go Ravens!) All I needed to do was some relatively minor prep (cook onions, sear meat, open cans) and sit back and let the magic of slow braising do its thing.

I hate the dog-food texture of chili made with ground beef, so I always use beef that has been pre-cut into chunks for stewing. Except this time. The stew meat at Giant seemed really expensive to me, so I bought a rump roast that cost about $.60 less per pound and cubed it myself. The chunks were of a more manageable size, which worked out better.

If you're interested, here's my chili recipe. After nearly five hours of simmering, here is the glorious result:

A big bowl of red, garnished with chopped sweet onion, shredded Cheddar cheese, and a dollop of sour cream. I also made some cornbread, using the recipe on the back of a bag of Indian Head White Corn Meal, with some changes. I like to add corn and cheese to my cornbread, which caused it to be quite raw inside at the original 20-minute cook time and required a time adjustment.

White Corn Bread

2 c Indian Head Corn Meal

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 c milk

2 tablespoons canola or other neutral oil

1 c fresh or frozen corn kernels

1/2 c shredded Cheddar cheese (or cheese of your choice)

Preheat Oven to 450 F.

Combine dry ingredients. Combine milk, eggs, and oil. Add to dry ingredients and stir until smooth. Add corn and cheese and mix until combined. Pour batter into a 8" or 9" square pan. Bake 30 - 40 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. (If you find the cornbread is browning too quickly, cover with foil for the last 10-15 minutes, or, lower the oven temperature to 400 F.

This recipe makes a really moist, non-sweet, bread with a crunchy crust. If you like your cornbread on the sweet side, I'm sure adding a bit of sugar wouldn't hurt.

How do you like your chili? With beans or without? Prefer your cornbread sweet or not? I'd love to share recipes. :)