East Meets West...Africa!

West African Peanut Curry and Grilled Sweet Corn at Spork

After a nice relaxing vacation and some other big life events, I decided it's time to start cooking and blogging again!  Our vacation also inspired me to want to go on more vacations, but since we can't always be traveling around the globe I decided I could still cook dishes from all over the world.  So I walked over to our local library and picked up three globally inspired cookbooks - Jamie Oliver's Food Escapes, Cooking Light Global Kitchen, and Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World.  I was in the mood to travel to Africa this weekend after eating some West African Peanut Curry we had in our travels to Bend, OR at a cool little place called Spork (although to our disappointment we did not see any sporks there to eat with).

I decided to begin my journey by checking out one of my favorite cookbooks - Cook's Illustrated's The Best International Recipe.  Flipping through the "Africa and the Middle East" section, I found exactly what I was looking for!

West African Sweet Potato and Peanut Soup

While it wasn't quite the same as the curry, it was pretty tasty.  I went against the advice of the book which says to stick to orange-fleshed varieties of sweet potatoes, otherwise the soup can have an unappealing color.  I bought white ones and I can see what they mean, it was very....drab looking.  But it didn't hurt the flavor at all!

We also needed a little meat in our meal and for that we had to travel all the way to the other coast of the continent.  I flipped through Cooking Light Global Kitchen's "The Middle East and Africa" section and found the perfect pairing to the soup.  That's the only section I've browsed, but so far I'm LOVING the beautiful pictures in it.  While I really like Cook's Illustrated writing style and advice from the Test Kitchen, I really do wish they had more pictures.  That's also the reason I refuse to get Kindle versions of cookbooks because drooling over all the delicious food is my favorite part of cookbooks.  It helps with the experience of wanting to travel to the different parts of the world as well.

East African Braised Chicken

This one I changed up a little bit.  Instead of doing the different chicken pieces, I only did thighs.  Also, instead of opening a bottle of wine just to use 1/2 a cup, I decided to dump in a bottle of beer....because, why not?  While it was braising, I checked online to see if anyone had reviewed it and sure enough, it gets rave reviews! As of today there are 13 5-star reviews which is pretty darn good.  We liked it a lot too.  The sweetness of the raisins and dates were a great combination with the slight spiciness and other Indian inspired flavors. I was a little afraid I'd ruin it with the beer, but I couldn't tell the difference!  Sometime I'd like to do a braising test with water, chicken broth, wine and beer and see if the liquid makes a difference at all.  Maybe I just have a poor palate though, who knows.

All in all it's been a successful journey so far.  Tomorrow night we plan on traveling across the ocean to Brazil so stay tuned!

Continuing My Love of Capers

And no I don't mean going on crazy escapades - I'm talking about those little green balls of explosive flavor (completely the opposite of peas, which are little green balls of mushy poison). You may remember my first tryst with these little lovelies in the gremolicious gremolata.  This is a very classic preparation of a picatta (or apparently piccata?) although I did not have fresh lemons on hand, which is why I decided to go with this dish instead of venture out to the grocery store in the rain/sleet/snow storm that we were having.

Chicken Picatta

(I actually got this recipe out of a free issue of Cuisine at Home I received, but this looks to be the same recipe almost verbatim.)

Obviously I need to work on my chicken breading and browning skills because this did not come out like any of the pictures...(note to self, cramming four chicken cutlets into a wok does not work very well).  However it was still very tasty.  I served it with plain jasmine white rice and honey glazed carrots (yay for quick but tasty microwave sides) which actually turned out to be a nice combination of flavors.  I found myself mopping up the leftover sauce from the chicken with the carrots and mixing every bite of rice with a little chicken.  Yum.

Quick & Dirty

Changes:

• Used regular chicken broth instead of low sodium (although it seems like a lot of things are calling for this, maybe it's worth trying to see the difference?)
• Used bottled lemon juice and didn't finish the sauce with fresh lemon slices
• Didn't garnish with fresh parsley
  

Yuminess:

• The sauce was to die for.  When I added the final butter to thicken it up I knew it was going to transport me straight to Italy.
• Given how sophisticated the flavors were, it was actually a pretty quick and easy dish to put together
• I was surprised at how good the Green Giant honey glazed carrots were (it's nice to have a good cheat like that once in a while)

Sadness:

• My failure on the browning of the chicken.  All the Food Network chefs were yelling in my head "Make sure the oil is hot!  Don't crowd the pan!"  Sorry I let you guys down :(
• I would've been able to get much prettier pictures if I had fresh lemon slices and parsley.  Oh well, there will definitely be a next time :)

Baaaaaacon....and other nummy stuff

Bacon, bacon, everybody loves bacon!  Well...to be perfectly honest...up until I made this dish I wasn't a huge fan.  I didn't exactly hate it, but I wasn't head over heels in love with it either.  I just never understood what all the fuss was about.  Maybe that's because most of my bacon eating experiences over the years consisted of fresh out of the microwave pieces of greasy or dried up bacon slices.  But this combination of pasta, cheese, chicken, eggs and you guessed it - bacon - has changed me into a true believer.  And I know, that all sounds super healthy, but it can't be that bad if it's from Cooking Light...right?  Even if I eat a heaping plateful of it...? :)

Asparagus and Chicken Carbonara

Oh there's the healthy twist - asparagus!  Which was actually a very yummy addition.  Plain asparagus is an okay side dish but not one that I get real excited about, but the cheese and bacon flavors with it in this dish really jazzed it up to the next level. I'm glad I was so lazy and tired earlier in the week that I picked up a rotisserie chicken and got to make this with the leftovers.  There was nothing leftover tasting about it.

Quick & Dirty

Changes:

• Used two real eggs instead of an egg substitute
• Used a white cooking wine instead of vermouth
• Cooked the onion and then everything else in the same pan as the bacon (after removing the bacon) to soak up all that great bacon juice - probably not recommended by CL but I think it's what made the dish so delish

Yuminess:

• The combination of asparagus, chicken, cheese, and bacon all in one bite was fantastic
• This is one of the first dishes where I must say the pieces of parsley really helped lighten and freshen things up
• Made Jimmbo's Garlic Knots from AR to serve alongside which complemented the dish beautifully

Sadness:

• Made a little too much pasta...the asparagus to chicken to pasta ratio could've been better
• I think I added the egg mixture a little too quickly to the hot pan because I did end up with a little bit of a scrambled egg affect instead of a creamy sauce
• Very sadly I had to throw almost half of it down the garbage disposal because I didn't finish it all before leaving for a week for Christmas and was scared of it when I got back.  For some reason I didn't think it would freeze well, but next time I will try this since I can't think of anything worse happening than having to toss it out again.

Welcome Spring!

Say hello to spring with this easy grilled chicken recipe. The earthy green of the avocado and bright red tomato make a beautiful and delicious salsa and is definitely the star of the dish. Cooking Light suggested to serve this with saffron rice...well good luck finding such an exotic flavor in the minute-rice section! And I wasn't feeling ambitious enough to make my own that night so I just went with some easy Spanish Rice (one of those 5 minute Fiesta Sides) which was actually pretty tasty for how quick and easy it was.

Cilantro-Lime Chicken with Avocado Salsa

The first night I had this I made everything pretty close to what the recipe called for and felt that it needed a little kick. The salsa was kind of oniony instead of spicy. So when I had the leftovers I chopped up a whole jalapeno (membranes and seeds removed) and threw it in with the second half of the salsa. It still wasn't very hot so I was kind of disappointed. The other thing I did the second time around to kick up the flavors was serve the chicken and salsa over some salty yellow corn tortilla chips. I really liked this addition because it gave the dish a crunchy texture which really helped because the avocados were pretty mushy a few days later.

Quick & Dirty

Changes:

• For the chicken I used dried cilantro instead of dealing with fresh cilantro that I'd end up throwing away most of a few days later
• I pounded the chicken breasts a little so they'd cook faster on the grill
• I also used bottled lime juice because unfortunately my lime went bad really fast :(
• I tried adding some jalapeno to the salsa for a bit of a kick but I think I should've left some seeds in

Yumminess:

• The chicken came out pretty good, a bit of a crispy skin but moist on the inside
• Mixing the chicken, salsa, and some crunchy chips together in one bite was the best way to eat it
• Once in a while mix in a little spicy Spanish rice and it was a pretty good dish overall

Sadness:

• The salsa needed more flavor...and I wonder if you actually marinaded the chicken for longer than 3 minutes if it would have had more flavor as well
• I couldn't get my chicken to get real pretty grill marks like in their picture...I always just seem to brown the entire side and it makes it hard to eat
• I was kind of hoping this would compare to Applebee's Fiesta Lime Chicken because that is definitely a favorite of mine but it didn't even come close