Flashback Friday - Kofte with Pistachio Sauce

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on November 19, 2012.

You may recall from my recap of Time Machine Chefs back in August that I expressed admiration for chef Silvena Rowe, of the restaurant Quince in London's May Fair Hotel. Her ballsy attitude on the show made me check if she had any cookbooks available in the U.S. - and yes, she does! A couple, actually, and I chose to buy Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume: Cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean, mostly because I liked the idea of purple citrus. :) While no actual purple citrus were harmed during the reading of that book, by the time I was done with it, I wanted to cook every recipe. I even bought a jar of grape leaves, which I have never used before.

The recipe that stood out most for me was for lamb kofte with pistachio sauce. Kofte are meatballs or small patties made from ground meat, and I just happened to have some ground lamb in the freezer. There were also pistachios and tahini kicking around for the sauce, as well as the last vestiges of our garden's fresh mint and all of the recipe's required spices. (Find the recipe here.)

Toasting and grinding the pistachios was the most difficult and time consuming part of the process. Well, not that either the toasting or the grinding part of the equation was difficult, but cleaning out the coffee grinder that I used for the purpose was not fun. (We have two - one for coffee, one for other stuff.) The sauce ended up tasting more of the tahini than the pistachios, which was a little disappointing, but the kofte were wonderful. I had swapped out the currants in the recipe for dried cherries, and they lent a lovely sweetness to the savory spice- and mint-flavored patties. I also chose to serve some home-made preserved lemons as a garnish, and their juicy salty tang was a perfect accent.

I hope to try other recipes from this book over the coming months and will post my adventures here. In the meantime, do try the recipe for yourself.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Apricot-Cardamom-Pistachio Ice Cream

Last summer, we made a lot of frozen desserts. We had borrowed a friend's ice cream machine (which we still have - oops!) and were cranking out a new flavor every weekend. Now we have our own fun little Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker, and we hope to start using it regularly.

This summer's inaugural batch used up a selection of apricots that had been purchased at the farmers' market across from my office. I bought them on Tuesday for Mr Minx to eat, but he kept forgetting. By Saturday, one of them was rotten, and I needed to do something with the rest so as not to lose my investment (they weren't cheap). I also wanted to involve one or more of the Runamok Maple syrups that I picked up at the Summer Fancy Food Show in June. One of them is infused with cardamom, and I knew cardamom and apricot went well together. I also wanted to add a bit of texture to the ice cream and knew pistachios would work with both of the other players. The next question was how best to use the cardamom syrup so it didn't get lost in all that cream.

The answer was pretty simple: I used it to candy the nuts. While I did add a big pinch of ground cardamom to the ice cream itself, it was subtle. The candied nuts supplied stronger hits of the sweet spice, which made each bite more interesting.

It might seem like there's a lot of sugar in this ice cream, but apricot puree is tangy. You can probably reduce the sugar to 2/3 cup, but don't go any further than that, as less sugar will affect the way the ice cream freezes.

Apricot-Cardamom-Pistachio Ice Cream

For the nuts:
1/2 cup pistachio nutmeats
2 tablespoons Runamok Maple Cardamom Maple Syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons butter

For the ice cream:
6-8 fresh apricots (to make about 1 cup of puree)
2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup granulated sugar
5 egg yolks
1 cup heavy cream
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom

To make the nuts: Prepare a sheet pan with a piece of parchment or a silicone baking sheet/Silpat.

Heat the Runamok Maple Cardamom-infused maple syrup and butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until bubbly. Add the nuts. Stir the mixture constantly until the nuts are glazed and most of the moisture is evaporated. Don't cook much beyond this point - you don't want the caramel to be hard, otherwise it will be hard and potentially tooth-sticky once frozen.

Remove the nuts from the heat and immediately spread out onto the sheet pan, separating them with a fork. Allow to cool. They should still be tacky to the touch when cool.

To make the ice cream: Wash the apricots thoroughly. Cut in half, discard pits and stems, and whiz the flesh in a food processor to make a puree. Strain to remove skins, if desired (I left them in). Refrigerate puree until ready to use.

Place the milk and sugar in a sauce pan and heat over medium-high heat until just starting to bubble around the edges. Do not let come to a boil, and definitely don't let it burn.

While the milk is warming, whisk the egg yolks in a large bowl. Using a ladle, dribble some of the hot milk into the eggs in a thin stream, whisking constantly. After about half the milk has been whisked in, pour the egg and milk mixture back into the pot with the remaining milk. Cook over medium-low heat until thick enough to coat a spoon, whisking all the while.

Strain the custard and stir in the heavy cream. Refrigerate until cold.

Combine the cold custard with the cold apricot puree. Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Once the consistency starts to visually resemble soft serve ice cream, start dropping in the nuts, a few at a time, until all are incorporated. Scoop the ice cream (it will still be quite soft) into a covered container and freeze until firm, at least 2 hours.

* 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.

Lamb, Sweet Potatoes, and Yogurt

This meal came on the same weekend as the avocado and shrimp thing I posted a couple weeks back. In addition to the avocados we had in the house, we had a couple of sweet potatoes. Mr Minx isn't particularly fond of sweet elements in an entree course (with exceptions) but I thought if I spiced up the potatoes with some harissa and added a little smoked paprika, he might not notice the sweetness so much.

I also wanted to use up the Greek yogurt I bought for the avocado dish. A fairly recent issue of Martha Stewart Living (whatever one was on our coffee table) just so happened to have a recipe for lamb meatballs with yogurt sauce. I was going to make lamb meatballs anyway, and didn't use her recipe, but I did adapt the yogurt sauce. It's rather plain, but is a nice tangy foil to the spicy meat and potatoes. Adding a bit of pomegranate molasses to sauteed onions (which I added to the dish because we had a ton of onions taking up precious room in our tiny kitchen) added still more tang, and another layer of somewhat exotic flavors.

A quarter cup of cilantro and 4 tablespoons of mint might seem excessive, but don't skimp! Lamb has a powerful flavor and fewer herbs means that you won't be able to taste them. Plus, they're green, and green is good for you. :)

Lamb Meatballs with Spiced Sweet Potato Puree and Yogurt Sauce

For the meatballs:
1 lb ground lamb
1/4 cup minced cilantro
1 clove garlic, minced
4 tablespoons minced mint
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/8 teaspoon ground pepper
Pinch cinnamon

For potatoes:
2 medium sweet potatoes
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 - 1 teaspoon dry harissa spices
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
Salt

For onions:
1 medium onion, sliced
3 teaspoons oil
Salt
2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses

For sauce:
1 cup plain whole milk Greek yogurt
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 cup chicken stock
Salt and pepper

To serve:
Crushed pistachios
Cilantro
Chives and chive blossoms, if you can get them

To make meatballs: Mix ingredients well. Refrigerate meat for an hour or so to allow flavors to meld. Form golfball-sized meatballs. Heat a non-stick skillet and add the meatballs. Cook, turning regularly, until crusty and brown on all sides, about 12-15 minutes. Ground lamb gives off a lot of fat while cooking, so you might want to cover the pan to prevent splatters. Drain on paper towel-lined plates.

To make potatoes: Peel sweet potatoes and cut into rough 1" chunks. Place in a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are very soft, about 12 minutes. Drain water from pan and mash potatoes, adding olive oil and spices. Add salt to taste and keep warm until ready to use.

To make onions: Cook the onions in the oil with a pinch of salt over medium heat until very soft, about 20 minutes. Stir in molasses and set aside.

To make sauce: Whisk together egg yolk and yogurt. In a microwave safe bowl (I used a 2 cup pyrex measuring cup), whisk cornstarch into chicken stock. Microwave on high for 1 minute, whisk again, then heat for an additional minute, or until thickened. Slowly dribble in the yogurt mixture while continuing to mix. Once fully combined, return to the microwave and cook for another 2 minutes, in 30 second bursts, whisking well between each. Season with salt and pepper and keep warm until ready to serve.

To serve: Mound some of the sweet potato mash on a plate. Top with a portion of the onions and a few of the meatballs. Sprinkle with pistachios, cilantro, and chives, and garnish with a chive blossom.

Serves 2-4.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Minty Pea Pesto with Risotto

We got two pounds of organic sugar snap peas in our farm box not long ago, which is a lot of peas. I suggested that Mr Minx make a cold salad with some of them because I really prefer my sugar snaps raw. He brilliantly threw together the peas, roughly chopped, some cucumber, and tons of mint, with a Asian-style dressing. Wow. It was so good! Sweet, crunchy, refreshing. I really loved the combo of mint and peas and decided that it would make a fine pesto-type concoction. So on the weekend, I cleaned the other pound of peas, picked some of our proliferating mint, and dug a handful of pistachios out of a bag of deluxe unsalted mixed nuts. No cheese, no garlic. I just want to taste the peas and mint, with a little earthy nuttiness for balance.

So what to do with what ended up being a pinto of pesto?

I decided to stir it into a risotto. I planned to make the risotto for dinner on one night, then to  make fried chicken (my first time) on the other. But then I was lured away from the kitchen by a soft shell crab po' boy and had to make both the risotto and fried chicken on the same day. I didn't want to stir risotto while a freakishly hot cast iron skillet full of grease and chicken parts bubbled away like a witch's cauldron  mere inches away. One, I figured I would do something stupid and burn myself, and two, it was already too hot and humid outside. Didn't need the kitchen to feel the same way.

So I thought I maybe could try making a risotto in the rice cooker. I Googled it, and found that Wolfgang Puck said it was ok. And so it was. It was as good as my non-rice-cooker risotto, which is occasionally very good but most often only decent. In any case, it certainly helped keep the kitchen cool and allowed me to avoid the scary two-pan scenario.

You can certainly make risotto the old-fashioned way and stir the pesto in afterward. Up to you.

Rice Cooker Risotto with Minty Pea Pesto

For the pesto:
1 lb sugar snap peas
1/4 cup shelled unsalted pistachios
1/2 cup packed mint leaves
Extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt to taste

For the risotto:
2 cups (the ones that come with your rice cooker) Arborio rice, rinsed and drained
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chicken or veg broth
Freshly ground pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan

To make the pesto: Remove stems and strings from peas. Open several of them and reserve the peas for garnish. Put the rest in a food processor with the pistachios and mint. Add enough olive oil to allow you to puree the peas, nuts, and mint into a chunky paste. Season with kosher salt and refrigerate in a tightly covered container until ready to use.

To make the risotto: Put the rice in the rice cooker and fill the bowl with water to between the 1 and 2 marks and add the salt. Cook rice for 20 minutes, then turn to the "keep warm" setting.

Open the rice cooker and pour in the chicken broth, stirring vigorously. The rice should be creamy. Season with pepper, adding more salt if necessary.

Stir several tablespoons of the pesto into the risotto. Scrape into a serving bowl and top with the reserved peas and some Parmesan. Garnish with mint, if desired.

**You'll have tons of pesto left over to smear on fish or chicken or whathaveyou. It's great with ricotta on thickly sliced, lightly-toasted, country-style bread, too.



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Cinghiale

Did you know that if you use Open Table to make reservations, you can earn free food? Yes, if you make (and keep!) enough reservations and save up the points earned, eventually you can cash them in for a "dining cheque." So, armed with a cheque for one hundred smackaroos, Mr Minx and I went to Cinghiale, the Italian-flavored restaurant in the multi-ethnic restaurant empire belonging to Baltimore restaurateurs Cindy Wolf and Tony Foreman.

I made the earliest reservation possible, 5:30pm, because I get off work at 4 and am downtown anyway. Yes, I sacrificed myself by staying for an additional hour just to be able to eat at Cinghiale. It may or may not have been worth it.

We arrived at the restaurant about four minutes early and were asked to wait in the bar. Soon enough we were whisked to a table in the front corner of the empty restaurant. Another couple waiting with us got seated at the very next, so close it was practically adjacent, table. Huge empty restaurant, and they put the two couples eating early right next to each other. The woman at that other table was so loud, hell, they might as well have given us a four-top.

Anyhoo, lets ignore them for a few minutes, as if that's possible.

A bit of advice. If your server asks if you've eaten at Cinghiale before, say yes, otherwise he or she will start a seemingly endless spiel about how the menu works. There are two prix fixe options, a rustic 3-course with limited choices and a larger and fancier 4-course version, both of which are spelled out very clearly (and in different colors) on the menu. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at our server's pronunciation, which was only made worse by her Valley Girl-esque delivery. Eventually, she left us alone with the menu. As we perused it, another server brought over a basket of bread and poured puddles of olive oil onto our bread plates. I think a single saucer of oil for the table would have been a better idea. The oil was so raw and bitter, we rejected it after one taste and had to balance our bread on the rim of our plates to avoid the stuff. As it turns out, the bread itself--a rustic Italian and another with bacon and dried cherries--was delicious on its own. Come on--bacon bread. What's not to love?

After we ordered and before we received our first course, we learned that the couple sitting at the next table were vegetarians who fancied themselves as wine snobs. (They may not have appreciated the bacon bread.) She nattered on about trivial things for much of the duration of our meal. He didn't say much at all, and when he did, it was in much quieter tones than hers. I figured they were probably on their second or third date.

After what seemed like an endless wait, although it was probably five minutes, we received our first courses. I had chosen the grilled calamari with crispy carrots. The plate smelled offputtingly fishy when it was set in front of me, but the calamari tasted fine. It was very tender, and the broth was lightly spicy. The carrots were a nice idea, but had an off flavor, either from having been cooked in old oil, or too far in advance.

Mr Minx ordered the speck, a cured and cold-smoked ham from the northeast of Italy. The thinly sliced porky goodness was served with a tiny bit of delicious fennel mostarda. More mostarda, please.

We had opted for the fancy four-course "prezzo fisso" option, so our second course was pasta. I ordered the tagliolini neri with Virginia clams, aglio i olio, and pepperoncini. Black pasta can be pretty sexy stuff, with its faint taste of the sea, and doesn't need to be sauced heavily. The little black dress of pasta. Mine was in a light broth flavored with finely diced pepper and teeny tiny clams. The pasta was perfectly cooked, with a pronounced egg flavor that overwhelmed any briny squid-inkiness, but the clams were lovely. Optimally, the dish would have a pinch more seasoning, but alas, the kitchen knows the diner's palate better than the diner and does not provide salt and pepper on the table.

Mr Minx's simple spaghetti alla chitarra with Umbrian summer truffles was amply seasoned and tasted of expensive butter. However, the truffles were wan and flavorless and not worth the $6 supplement (which worked out to about $1.20 per whisper-thin slice).

Meanwhile, the woman at the next table liked the vinaigrette on her asparagus A LOT. And whee...look! Her red wine is a different color than his red wine! And if she can't see Andrea Bocelli in Tuscany, she'll settle for seeing him at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Life's hard like that sometimes. (Heaven forbid that she be forced to see him at the Verizon Center.)

After that brief interlude of inanity, our entrées arrived. I had the pan-roasted halibut, which was served simply with local asparagus and a saffron hollandaise, which I requested on the side. Why bother to put a nice sear on a piece of fish if you're only going to drown it in a heavy sauce? I detected no saffron, but the fish was so moist and perfectly cooked, it didn't need the sauce at all.

Mr Minx's grilled magret of duck was cooked medium rare, which necessitated the use of a steak knife. I feel that most restaurants are so obsessed with the internal temperature of duck that they ignore the elephant in the room - the fat. So while the center was pink from edge to edge, there was still an ample ring of fat. At least the skin seemed a bit crisp, and it was very well seasoned. The rhubarb marmellata on the side was a nice idea, but the vinegar and fruit didn't marry particularly well.

At this point in our meal, we find out that our female dining companion the loud and increasingly drunk chick at the next table really enjoys watching Master Chef and Hell's Kitchen. OOh! And their red wines are the same color this time! Thanks for the update.

Finally, dessert. I chose the pistachio torta with white chocolate and cherry. The torta was very dense and rich and I would have loved more of the tart-ish cherry, which got lost in all the butterfat. In fact, a quenelle of cherry sorbet might have been a better accompaniment than the white chocolate gelato, which brought back unpleasant memories of a cheap white chocolate Easter bunny I received in my youth. (I never did forgive that aunt.)

Mr Minx's mascarpone cheesecake with amaretti crust and local blueberries was near perfect, however. Sweet, dense, and smooth, it, too, could have benefitted from more tartness in the berries, but was otherwise pretty terrific.

By this point in the evening, Mrs Wine Snob (turns out they were celebrating a wedding anniversary) was completely blotto and practically yelling about how much she enjoyed the meal. What started out as amusing had finally taken me past the point of being annoyed, and I was eager to pay the tab and hit the road. I was especially pleased that the tab was so low, thanks to that Open Table cheque.

Cinghiale
822 Lancaster St
Baltimore, MD 21202
(410) 547-8282
http://www.cgeno.com/





Posted on Minxeats.com.

When the Cat's Away...

...we eat what we like.

With Mr Minx away visiting a relative, I took the opportunity to concoct a dinner with ingredients he doesn't particularly like. He's not a fan of zucchini, so my first stop on the way home from work was the Giant produce department, to pick up a few. Originally I was going to sauté them with onions and mushrooms and mix that concoction with scrambled eggs, but then I spotted some handsome scallops in the seafood department. He dislikes those as well, so I purchased three of them for less than $3.

Even with a hard sear, scallops are soft. Zucchini is definitely soft, so I needed to add something more textural to the dish. Toasted pistachios, bashed a little with a meat tenderizer, not only provided crunch, but were also color coordinated. Sweetness was added by a sprinkle of granulated honey that I had received as a sample from Marx Foods, but you could use brown sugar.

I didn't make a sauce for the scallops because the vegetable mixture was pretty moist, but you could always pour a little brown butter over the top, if you'd like.

Green and Brown

1/2 cup onion, chopped
1-2 small zucchini, peeled and sliced thinly (about 1 cup)
5-6 large button mushrooms, wiped clean and chopped roughly
salt and pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil (divided use)
3 U-10 scallops, patted dry
2 tablespoons toasted pistachios, roughly chopped
pinch granulated honey (or brown sugar)
squeeze lemon

In a large saute pan over medium heat, cook onion until softened, about 3 minutes. Turn up heat and add mushrooms, stirring regularly, until they release their juices and start to brown. Turn the heat down to medium and add the zucchini. Cover pan and cook until squash is soft, stirring occasionally, about 5 more minutes. Take off cover and add salt and pepper to taste.

Remove zucchini mixture to a bowl and set aside. Wipe out the pan and set it over high heat. After after a couple of minutes, when the pan is very hot, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Watch carefully - it will heat up quickly. When small wisps of smoke start coming up off the oil, gently add the scallops. Cook about 2 minutes on first side, then turn them. Cook an additional 2-3 minutes until browned on bottom and mostly opaque.

Put the zucchini mixture in the center of a plate. Arrange the scallops on top. Sprinkle on the pistachios and honey or brown sugar. Squeeze the lemon over all and serve.

Makes one serving.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Kofte with Pistachio Sauce

You may recall from my recap of Time Machine Chefs back in August that I expressed admiration for chef Silvena Rowe, of the restaurant Quince in London's May Fair Hotel. Her ballsy attitude on the show made me check if she had any cookbooks available in the U.S. - and yes, she does! A couple, actually, and I chose to buy Purple Citrus and Sweet Perfume: Cuisine of the Eastern Mediterranean, mostly because I liked the idea of purple citrus. :) While no actual purple citrus were harmed during the reading of that book, by the time I was done with it, I wanted to cook every recipe. I even bought a jar of grape leaves, which I have never used before.

The recipe that stood out most for me was for lamb kofte with pistachio sauce. Kofte are meatballs or small patties made from ground meat, and I just happened to have some ground lamb in the freezer. There were also pistachios and tahini kicking around for the sauce, as well as the last vestiges of our garden's fresh mint and all of the recipe's required spices. (Find the recipe here.)

Toasting and grinding the pistachios was the most difficult and time consuming part of the process. Well, not that either the toasting or the grinding part of the equation was difficult, but cleaning out the coffee grinder that I used for the purpose was not fun. (We have two - one for coffee, one for other stuff.) The sauce ended up tasting more of the tahini than the pistachios, which was a little disappointing, but the kofte were wonderful. I had swapped out the currants in the recipe for dried cherries, and they lent a lovely sweetness to the savory spice- and mint-flavored patties. I also chose to serve some home-made preserved lemons as a garnish, and their juicy salty tang was a perfect accent.

I hope to try other recipes from this book over the coming months and will post my adventures here. In the meantime, do try the recipe for yourself.

Posted on Minxeats.com.