Yasmin's Moroccan fish

Recipes: Moroccan-spiced fish with vegetables, Roasted asparagus

 Our friend Yasmin has been visiting, and when she's here we often have a cook-a-thon and of course a resulting eat-a-thon. Yasmin, who is originally from Israel, cooks Middle Eastern style and I love her spicing. She says there were many Moroccan families in her neighborhood near Jerusalem, and she learned to make this dish from them. It's an original one-pot meal, with vegetables, potatoes, beans, and fish all cooked together in a delicious sauce that can be as spicy, or not, as you wish.

We served Moroccan fish with a simple dish of roasted asparagus with balsamica and Parmigiano cheese, plus chunks of bread for dipping. And wine, of course. It was a memorable meal.

Moroccan Fish 

Spread one tablespoon canola or peanut oil over the bottom of a large skillet or Dutch oven. 

• Add a layer of sliced red or yellow potatoes, about two medium potatoes, unpeeled if you wish.
• Add a layer of carrots, peeled and either sliced or cut into thin sticks (two or three medium carrots).
• Add a layer of red bell pepper, cut in strips (one bell pepper)
• Add a layer of sliced fresh ripe tomatoes, if they are in season, or you could use chopped roasted tomatoes, if you roasted and froze some of last year's crop. Or you could eliminate the tomatoes. In this case, it is better not to use canned.
• Add five or six whole cloves of peeled garlic.
• Add fresh seeded sliced hot chiles, or seeded and crumbled dried chiles, to taste. Or, if you would like it to be only a little spicy, add a sprinkle of crushed red chile flakes. Or forget about the chiles.
• Place four pieces of salmon (or tuna, or talapia) on top. This is one time when it's just as good to use frozen fish, as opposed to fresh fish, because it's going to cook a long time. And frozen fish is usually much less expensive!

Put your pot with all its vegetables and fish on a medium high flame. When you hear it start to sizzle, add water to halfway up the vegetables. Cover and bring it to a boil.

While the pot's coming to a boil, make the sauce. In a bowl combine:

• 1/3 cup canola or peanut oil
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• a dash of ground cumin
• a dash of ground turmeric
• a pinch of good saffron (optional, only if you have it)

When the pot boils, add one can of garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed. Then add the sauce over all. Cover and cook for 10 minutes. 

Uncover and cook for one hour over medium heat. The liquid should just evaporate, but the potatoes should not stick to the bottom, so you will need to keep an eye on it close to the end. 

Top with a handful of chopped cilantro and serve with Roasted Asparagus below. Yum!

Roasted Asparagus

Buy fat asparagus with fresh green tips. Trim the stems about an inch from the bottom, or where the stem turns woody. Carefully peel the lower half of each stem with a vegetable peeler.

Wash the asparagus briefly in running water and pat dry with a towel. In an wide baking pan, toss the asparagus with a tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of sea salt. 

Roast in a preheated 400 degree F oven for 20 minutes. When you remove from the oven, drizzle a tablespoon of good Balsamic vinegar over the spears.

Make shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese with the vegetable peeler and sprinkle over the asparagus. Serve.

Kisses and hugs on Valentine's Day (or good food is love)

Recipes: Baby limas with ham, Roasted asparagus, Strawberries with sweets 'n sour cream

It's Valentine's Day, when you show extra love to your loved ones. To me extra love means special food, and possibly food presented in a special way. Some of the best Valentine's Day "feasts" I've ever had have been those designed to be served on a picnic blanket in front of a roaring fire in our own living room, and eaten at least partially with hands instead of utensils. This feels kind of elemental to me, and earthy. And loving. And fun.

There are many good foods that can be served and eaten this way - homemade burgers and oven fries, grilled little lamb chops with roasted new potatoes, or the following menu, heart-warming beans and ham (only a spoon required) with asparagus and beautiful red organic strawberries.

I usually use black beans for this recipe (canned is fine), but this time I "only" had dried baby limas. They were fabulous! Lima beans don't take long to cook, and frozen limas would work just as well. Here are both options, with cooking instructions for dried limas first. If you're using frozen, just start mid-way where it's indicated below.

Baby Limas with Ham

To cook dried lima beans: At least 2 1/2 hours before you plan to serve them, take one cup of dried baby limas and put them in a pot with water to cover by one inch. Bring that to a boil and boil them for one minute. Then turn the heat off and let them sit at least one hour. Drain the water off the beans and put fresh water in to cover by an inch. Bring that to a boil and while you're cooking everything else, let it simmer with the top askew. By the time you put them in with the other ingredients, they will almost tender.  If you were cooking other dried beans, except for blackeyed peas, you would have to cook them longer.

If you're using frozen beans, start here...

• 2 slices bacon, diced
• olive oil
• 1 medium or 1/2 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 jalapeno pepper or other moderately hot pepper, chopped fine
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
• Sea salt
• 3 large garlic cloves, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 14-ounce can of chopped tomatoes
• 1 cup water
• A bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 package frozen baby lima beans (unless you're using cooked dried beans)
• 1/2 cup cooked ham, chopped into pieces
• 1 cup brown basmati rice

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

 

In a large ovenproof pot, fry the diced bacon until a little crisp. Take the cooked bacon out, leaving the fat behind, and put it on paper towels to drain. Add a little squirt of olive oil to the bacon fat.

 

In the fat, cook the onion, the peppers, the cumin, and a couple of good pinches of sea salt for a few minutes, until the onion is translucent.

 

Add the chopped garlic, the oregano, and the tomatoes. Cook that for a couple of minutes, mixing it well.

 

Add the water, the cooked and drained beans (or the frozen beans, slightly thawed so they're not in a block), the bay leaf, and the red pepper flakes.

 

Bring it to a boil, put the cover on, and bake it for one hour in the 350 degree oven. After an hour,  uncover it, add the ham and bake it for 30 minutes more.

 

While the beans are cooking, make the rice. Bring two cups water to a boil on the stove or in the microwave. Put 1 tablespoon of butter or olive oil in a small pot over medium heat. When the fat is hot, add the rice. Stir it so all the grains are covered, and cook until the rice smells toasty (one minute). Carefully add the water (it will boil up) and cook for a minute or two until it's bubbling well, then turn down the heat and cover the pot. Cook over low heat for 40 minutes. When it is done, let it sit with the cover on until the beans and ham are finished cooking.

 

Serve the beans in a wide soup bowl over a half-cup mound of the rice. You can top it with raw chopped onion and chopped cilantro, if you like, or with the roasted asparagus.

 

Roasted Asparagus

Buy fat asparagus if you can find it. Cut or break off the woody ends (about 2 inches off the "bottom") and carefully remove the outer skin of the lower half of each stalk with a vegetable peeler. It works best to lay the whole stalk in your palm as you peel with the other hand to keep it from breaking. This is the hardest part.

Then toss the stalks gently with a tablespoon of olive oil and a good pinch of salt. Lay them out in one layer in a shallow baking dish or cookie sheet and roast along with the beans for about 25 minutes. You can do this any time during the bean-cooking process, as the asparagus doesn't need to stay hot for serving. It's good at room temperature.

When the asparagus is cooked (it should still have some crispness, so shouldn't be completely limp), sprinkle a little balsamic vinegar over it. Serve over the beans and rice, or along the side. It's perfectly OK to pick up the stalks and eat them with your hands. It's perfectly OK to scoop up some beans with your asparagus. You know. Yum.

Strawberries with Sweets 'n Sour Cream

Valentine's Day just seems to demand sweets, but do they have to be bad for you? NO! Here's a gorgeous treat that you'll both love, and it won't add pounds or too much sugar either. What it does add is color and sensuous beauty, plus it's easy to eat with your hands. Hands were invented before forks (an Ethiopian saying, I'm told), remember that. Provide lovely cloth napkins.

Arrange whole organic washed strawberries around a beautiful plate. In the center place two small bowls, one containing organic brown sugar and the other containing sour cream.

To eat, pick a strawberry up by its stem or leaves and dip it in the sour cream. Then dip it in the brown sugar and put it in your mouth, biting off the stem/leaves. Heaven.

The Payoff
Lima beans help balance blood sugar and high levels of soluble fiber help lower cholesterol. They are heart healthy, a lovely attribute for a Valentine's Day love feast.
Asparagus is low-calorie, high in folates, which help your heart and may ward off Alzheimer's, and in potassium and antioxidants.
Strawberries are low-calorie and very high in Vitamin C, a good thing since it's still cold and flu season. Besides they're so delicious.

This entire meal is gluten-free.

Happy Valentine's Day!! Show your love!

 

 

Adjusting, Part 1 (or how to turn Chicken Cacciatora for four into Chicken Cacciatora for two)

Recipes: Chicken Cacciatora, Buttered Whole-Wheat Pasta, Roasted Asparagus with Balsamic Vinegar

I don't know if you're like I am, but I read cookbooks like novels. I also read a lot of cooking magazines because I love to cook and eat, and I've noticed you'll rarely see a recipe, especially in a magazine, that's written for two. If you do it's not likely to be very interesting; that's just my observation. No, it's obvious - you're going to need to know how to take that great-looking recipe on page 58 of the latest Bon Appetit that serves four-to-six, and make it into your own fabulous recipe for two.

The way to approach this differs somewhat from one kind of dish to another. For instance, a baked pasta dish like lasagna or tuna noodles generally feeds a lot of people, maybe six or even eight with a big salad. You would downsize (or more accurately, right-size) this kind of dish differently from the way you would right-size a chicken dish or a pork roast. This is because chicken pieces and the size of a pork roast are easily "quantifiable". Yikes, what does that mean? It only means that you can count them easily to determine how much is likely to be the right amount for two. It makes sense that you wouldn't count noodles, so right-sizing baked ziti will be different from right-sizing chicken dishes. The chicken is easier, and that's why we're going to start with Chicken Cacciatora, or as it's correctly called in Italian Pollo alla Cacciatora (Chicken in the style of the Hunter).

Just a riff on the name, it seems every hunter in Italy has his or her own style and this dish has as many variations as there are hunters' wives, probably. Many of the recipes use bell peppers and tomatoes, as this one does, but I've seen other recipes also called Pollo alla Cacciatora made with black olives and anchovies (no tomatoes or peppers) as well as other things like mushrooms. This is classic country cooking that uses whatever the Hunter brings home from the hunt and whatever the Wife has in the pantry, so don't worry at all if you see other recipes that don't look like this one. The good news is, once you're used to making it this way, you'll find ways to substitute what you have for what you don't have and it'll become your own great recipe for Chicken Cacciatore.

OK, here are the original ingredients for Pollo alla Cacciatora, straight from a little cookbook called The Best of Italy:

• 1 3-pound chicken, cut into serving pieces, rinsed*, and patted dry
• Salt & pepper
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 large red bell pepper, cored, seeded, & cut into strips
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 2 cups drained, peeled & chopped tomatoes or 1 28-ounce can peeled tomatoes, drained & chopped
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano or 1/2 teaspoon dried
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves

Serves 4 to 6.

Right away you know a whole chicken and all those tomatoes are going to make a big dish, way too much for two people. A whole chicken is usually cut up into eight pieces. Two people need half that, at the most. And since you're not going to use a whole chicken, why not just get your favorite pieces? In my case that's chicken thighs, but it could also be legs or breast too, depending on what you like. I'm going to go with thighs for the purpose of this discussion, and you know in your heart that if you love chicken breasts better you can use those. You just have to make a mental note to cook them about 10 minutes less than thighs.

Two people can generally eat four thighs, unless they are very large. If I had large thighs, I would use three in this dish. The third can be split between two people if you're still hungry after the first one. Or it will make a wonderful lunch for someone the next day. If the thighs are small, use four.

*Many older recipes, which this is, will tell you to rinse the chicken but that is no longer recommended. Frankly, it has been found that rinsing just spreads all the "stuff" around your sink. If you pat the pieces dry with paper towels and cook it thoroughly, your chicken will be fine, and so will your sink.

Now you have to look at the rest of the ingredients to determine how much to use with your four, or three, thighs. I'm sometimes a tiny bit annoyed at "1 onion, sliced" or whatever. There's a lot of difference between a small onion, a medium onion, and a huge onion. If I'm writing a recipe, I like to use "1 cup sliced onion" or "1 medium onion, sliced". So let's say you have a medium onion. Just slice it thinly and you'll have a nice amount. If you have a huge onion, slice half of it.

Red bell pepper is interchangeable in my mind with orange and yellow bell pepper. Not so with green bell peppers, which are really hard to digest. You want a significant presence of sweet vegetable in this dish, so I'd still go with one whole bell pepper, whether it's red, yellow, or orange. Slice it kind of thin so it gets really sweet when you cook it, and be sure to get the seeds out.

You can't have too much garlic. Well, I suppose you can but this amount in this dish will be great. Garlic is very strong when it's raw, but when it cooks as much as it does in this dish, it becomes sweet and mellow and give a wonderful depth to the sauce. Keep the garlic at two cloves, and use cloves that are at least medium-size.

Now we start to make some adjustments for using less meat and serving fewer eaters. Some of the white wine will cook away, but only half this amount is needed for the extra kick in flavor it gives. And the tomatoes can be cut in half. I wouldn't bother peeling and seeding and chopping tomatoes for this dish (unless I had gobs of fresh tomatoes I had grown myself that I needed to use). I'd use a 14-ounce can of good quality organic chopped tomatoes, and don't forget to drain the juice off before using or your sauce won't thicken!

The rest is seasoning. Don't be intimidated by "minced fresh this-and-that". If you have a kitchen garden with fresh herbs, by all means use them. They will be wonderful! If you don't, and most people probably don't, use dried. In this recipe, the only herb you can't replace with dried is basil. If you don't have fresh basil for this recipe, just omit it. Dried basil is a waste of money.

Note to you: If you've had your dried herbs since before dirt was invented, replace them before you cook. Dried herbs should be replaced every six months or so. Elderly herbs are not dangerous, they're just tasteless. Why bother putting them in?

So, that wasn't so hard, was it? We've adjusted our recipe for two and you can see it's just logic and common sense. Let's cook some dinner.

Chicken Cacciatora (for two)

• 4 small or 3 large chicken thighs, with bone and skin attached, patted dry
• Salt & pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium onion, sliced thin
• 1 red, yellow, or orange bell pepper, cored, seeded, & cut into thin strips
• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4 cup dry white wine
• 1 14-ounce can organic chopped tomatoes, juice drained
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano, or 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme, or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 small bay leaf
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh basil leaves (optional)

Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Heat the oil in a medium skillet and brown the chicken on both sides, turning occasionally. This will take about 8 minutes. Turn off the heat and transfer the chicken to a plate.

Heat the oil in skillet again and add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Cook, stirring now and then, for 5 minutes. Add the wine and cook over medium high heat for 1 minute, until you smell the alcohol cook off.

Add the tomatoes, oregano, thyme, bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste, and bring the mixture to a simmer.

Return the chicken to the skillet, nestling it in the vegetables. Cover it and cook it at a bare simmer for 35 minutes, or until it is very tender. If there is too much liquid still in the skillet, take the cover off and let it cook for another 5 to 10 minutes. Be sure it doesn't cook dry. Turn off the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes.

You're done. Serve over buttered noodles or other buttered pasta, placing a piece of chicken on top of the noodles and spooning the vegetables over it.

Buttered Whole-Wheat Pasta

You can use any pasta (or noodles) you like under the chicken. I used farfalle the other day and it was really good. Spaghetti is good, too, and egg noodles work especially well. I like the added flavor of whole wheat pasta under this dish - it's hearty and really good-tasting. Go with your own preference.

Bring a medium pot of water to boil. You always need a lot of water to cook pasta, because it needs room to move around while it cooks. When the water is almost boiling, put in at least a tablespoon of good sea salt, or even more. The water should be salty, otherwise the pasta will taste bland. Bleh!

Put about 1/3 pound of a long pasta, or about a cup of a dried shaped pasta, into the salty boiling water and either stir it or, if you're using a long pasta like spaghetti, pull it up and separate it with tongs. Do this periodically while it cooks. Keep the pasta water on high heat throughout. Most pasta is done at about 9 minutes, but some pasta (like angel-hair) takes much less time. Test your pasta. Pull a strand or a piece out and taste it. It should have just the slightest bite to it (al dente, or to the tooth). When it's there, turn the heat off and drain it in a colander or through a strainer. Put the pasta back in the empty pot and add a tablespoon or so of butter, and stir it around. You're done. The chicken you've already cooked goes over the pasta.

This dish is really all you need for a delicious satisfying dinner. It has protein (chicken), vegetables (tomatoes, bell pepper, onion), and starch (pasta), and lots of color and taste. Of course, if you want to. . .

!!!Step it up!!!

. . . you could make some roasted asparagus with balsamic vinegar to go with it. Yum! And it's easy - here's how:

Roasted Asparagus with Balsamic Vinegar

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Take about 1/2 pound asparagus spears and line them up. Cut the bottom two inches off the stalks. Then put them in a colander and wash them with cool water.

If they are fat spears, take a vegetable peeler and peel the skin off the bottom half of each stalk. If they are thin spears, don't bother. Pat the stalks dry with paper towels and put them in a roasting dish.

Pour one tablespoon good quality extra virgin olive oil over the stalks. Sprinkle them with a good dose of  sea salt. With your hands, turn them over and over to distribute the oil and salt evenly. Put the roasting dish full of asparagus into the oven for 20 minutes. When 10 minutes have passed, use tongs to turn the asparagus spears over.

Take the baking dish out and sprinkle the asparagus with one tablespoon balsamic vinegar. With a vegetable peeler, make peels from a piece of parmigiano cheese and distribute them over the spears.
Serve and savor!