MKMW - Moroccan Week

Oh, kids...there really is no excuse for me! Here it is, Saturday night...and no Moroccan Dish to show! A few hours ago I was proud of myself for cooking four meals in a row that my small family loved...but I forgot Morocco. (For the record, here's my success story. Friday: apple crisp, from Mom's recipe, using apples picked last week. Dessert counts! Oh, and for dinner we had Traditional Chinese - rice (duh!), eggs and stewed tomatoes, and a steamed fish with ginger and green onions. This morning, it was light, fluffy pancakes. Dinner was a good old fashioned pot of spaghetti with meat sauce, Lo Gung's choice.)

ANYWHOO...I didn't want to punish all of you because I forgot to cook Moroccan food. So, I would like to present a version of the recipe that I would have cooked...had I remembered to. (I'm afraid I can't share the original, since my Godfather**** gave me his personal recipe and did not give me leave to share it.)

This dish is best eaten over scented rice, with your fingers. Trust me.

Moroccan Chicken
(Adapted from RiceandSpice.wordpress.com)

One whole chicken, divided into 8 pieces**
6 cloves garlic
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
a pinch saffron
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp powdered ginger (don’t substitute fresh)
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 c. canola or peanut oil

2 large yellow onions, grated and drained in a colander
1/4 c. packed chopped cilantro
1/4 c. packed chopped parsley
1/2-3/4 c. olives*
1 preserved lemon, peel only, sliced finely (Recipes abound online for how to preserve your own lemons, if you cannot find them in your ethnic grocery. However, these take about a month, so plan ahead!)
juice of 1/2-1 lemon

*You may use any olive. Canned, American "black olives" are not recommended, since they are, quite frankly, kind of nasty and won't give you the right flavor for this sauce. If your olives are bitter, they can be blanched and drained first.

** You may cook two chickens at once in the same sauce. You will need to double the amount of olives and preserved lemon. Of course, you will need the largest Dutch Oven known to man to pull this off. Yes, my Godfather owns the Largest Dutch Oven Known to Man. It's oval. He cooks two chickens at once and freezes one.

The day before, pound the garlic in the mortar and pestle with the other spices. Moisten mixture with the oil. Pull the skin off the chicken and rub with garlic paste. Refrigerate overnight.
The next day, place chickens in a large, heavy pot, preferably enameled cast iron. Add grated onions, herbs and about 2 c. water. Bring to boil, cover and lower heat. Simmer 40 minutes.
When chicken is tender and falling off the bone, add olives and lemon peel. Continue cooking 10-15 minutes. When ready to serve, pull chicken and as many olives as you can out of the sauce and arrange on serving platter. Boil sauce vigorously until reduced and thickened. Taste and season with lemon juice and additional sauce if necessary. Pour sauce over chicken and serve.

***Godfather also recommends cooking the liver with the chicken, if at all possible. After you remove the chicken from the broth, mash the liver up and return it to the broth. This will make a much thicker, richer sauce.

****He's not really my Godfather. He used to be my Home Teacher, a man assigned to our family to visit us once a month and check on our spiritual and temporal well-being. After a "shake up" in the assignments, he was no longer assigned to our family. He feigned ignorance, and never stopped visiting us. However, without the official title of Home Teacher, he was no longer obligated to share lessons with us, freeing up his time to cook us elaborate meals instead. One day at church, I was introducing him to a friend of mine and I stumbled over what I should call him - he was a family friend, but had so much more history than that. He smoothly stepped in and explained that he was my "gawdfaathah." Having been raised a Jewish New Yorker, he had the perfect accent to pull this off - and we never looked back.

MKMW- Indian Week

I was honored when Susie Homemaker of My Kitchen My World asked me to choose the country for this week's journey. China, of course, was my first choice, but it was a very sneaky one. My (Chinese) Mother in Law is visiting this week, and it would have been super easy to snap a picture any evening this week and have a fabulous record of authentic Chinese food!

Since China has already been done, I consulted with Lo Gung (the Reigning Stomach) and we came up with India. We haven't had good Indian food in a while, so it seemed worth a shot!

(We still haven't had good Indian food...but at least there was lamb involved. Even BBJ liked this, so it's earned the Toddler Food label.) I still have most of a jar of Tikka Masala, and another pound of ground lamb in the freezer, so I think this dish will be making a comeback. Next time, I will leave out the coconut milk and use cream, instead, if I still want it creamy.)

If you'd like to see more Indian Offerings, head over to My Kitchen My World and check out the blogroll!

This makes a fairly hot Tikka Masala dish. If spicy isn't your thing, cut the Tikka Masala paste way, way back. Start with about 1/2 a teaspoon and work up from there.

Tikka Masala -

1 lb ground lamb

1 onion, diced

2 tsp. minced garlic

2 tsp. Tikka Masala paste (Maggi Brand works well)

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

4 T. tomato paste

3/4 cup water

3/4 cup coconut milk

3 tsp. white sugar

handful of fresh basil, chopped

Brown lamb in a skillet, breaking it up with a spoon. When lamb is cooked all the way through, remove to a bowl. Discard the oil in the skillet, leaving 1 T.

Saute the onions in the reserved drippings until translucent and soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute another 1 minute.

Add the Tikka Masala paste and kosher salt and stir to combine. Add the tomato paste, water, coconut milk and sugar. Simmer to combine. Adjust seasonings if necessary. Add the basil.

Serve with rice.

MKMW - Lithuania Week

I know what you're thinking - what on earth does a Lithuanian eat? What could Aunt LoLo have possibly made that would represent the cuisine of such a culturally rich place?

The answer? Not much. After a quick perusal of the Lithuanian recipes Google had to offer, I discovered that Lithuanians like soups...using lots of root vegetables that have not yet come into season in my part of the country.

However, since I have a reputation to keep up (do what you promise, but never less than three hours after you promised to do it!), I give you - My Lithuanian (Inspired) Soup!

I knew I was craving potatoes...and I knew that I had very little in the way of soup-fixin's in my refrigerator. This is what I came up with. It was a little salty, but overall quite tasty! (I think I overdid it with the chicken base.)

Aunt LoLo's Potato Broccoli Cheddar Soup

In a soup pot, melt 1 T. butter, then brown 1 T. minced garlic.

Add to that:
5 smallish potatoes, peeled and chunked
2 cups raw broccoli florets
2 teaspoons Chicken Base (my answer to chicken stock - it has no MSG, and I can make my stock as salty as I like it.)
Enough water to cover all the vegetables, plus a few inches. (I wanted to have enough left overs to feed my in-laws when they get in tonight from a long airplane flight!)
1 can cream of mushroom soup (I read that Lithuanians like mushrooms :-))

When all the vegetables are tender, blend the soup. (I used an immersion blender, but a normal blender would be fine, in small batches.)

Add in about 1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese and 1 c. whole milk. (Next time, I think I'll use Velveeta or American - the cheddar had a rough time melting into the soup.)

Season to taste with fresh ground black pepper, kosher salt and Worcestershire Sauce.

Even my toddler loved this! Then again, it's rare to find a soup she doesn't love.

MKMW - Indonesian Weeki

I have have this funny feeling that my manu choices for this week's MKMW - Indonesia challenge were a total cop out. Mixed rice and chicken satay? Really? (Is there anyone on the blogroll that didn't make some sort of satay? No? I didn't think so.)

Here's how it shook out - I made about 12 cups of rice for a Labor Day party on Monday. At the end of the day there were exactly 11 cups left. (Yeah...really. I know.) I also had about 2/3 of the pepper and tomato salad that I had mixed up. I cooked up the peppers and tomatoes in a large dutch oven, added all the rice, and then added Yoshida's Marinade (a sort of teriyaki sauce) to it until it tasted right. TOTALLY not Indonesian, I know...but Indonesia is in Asia, and we all eat rice. I figured my little version of "lo faan" could slide by.

My chicken satay was even more of a scramble. (Have I ever mentioned that I really don't like following recipes the first time I cook them? Baking is a different matter...but cooking gives me so much FREEDOM. If I had all the ingredients on hand, I wouldn't have to wing it. Oh well.)

The chicken started out as a marinated chicken thigh, based off of a recipe from Pioneer Woman's site here. Basically, I marinated the chicken thighs, overnight, in a mixture of equal parts milk and plain yogurt, with a little salt and minced garlic thrown in for flavor. When I realized that I wanted to make them into satay, I sliced the thighs into strips and threaded them onto pre-soaked bamboo skewers. I grilled those over medium heat and then basted them with honey at the end to give them a sweet crunch.

I served my skewers with a peanut sauce loosely based on a recipe I found here.

Umm...wow. On second thought, don't even compare my sauce to that recipe. I didn't realize I had strayed SO far from the path! I mixed, in a bowl (to taste) the following ingredients: smooth peanut butter, Thai sweet chili sauce (I'm a pepper wuss, so I like to keep things mild!), coconut milk, brown sugar, rice vinegar, soy sauce, tamari and a little hot water.

And that, my friends, is a true and faithful account of how I chose to cook my dinner during Indonesia week. Judge me as you will. (However, if you had tasted my peanut sauce on my FANTASTICALLY tender chicken...you might not be inclined to judge so harshly! I'm still trying to finish off th0se 11 cups of rice, though - maybe that is my penance.)

MKMW - My Home Week

I have to admit - this week was kind of tough! Lo Gung was traveling all week, and it was really hard to get up the gumption to make an entire meal...for myself and a toddler. I think we did pretty well, though! I wanted to make something that felt "Southern." I don't think my grandmother's roots get NEARLY enough tabletime in my house. I wanted to explore my Welsh roots with a faux-sausage recipe I found this week, too, but I just ran out of time! There is still a quarter of my loaf of bread left, and we're going to toast it and eat it with my father's Crab Dip recipe tonight. Yummy!

On the menu -

Pioneer Woman's Yogurt Chicken (adapted, because I wanted to use what I had on hand*)

Garlic Creamed Spinach

Mashed Carrots (with a little whole milk and brown sugar)

No-Knead Bread with Blueberry preserves

* I omitted the fresh parsley from the yogurt mixture and used seasoned (regular) breadcrumbs...again, it's what I had on hand. I also used a few chicken drumsticks, instead of chicken breasts. YUCK. My meat ended up tasting really gamey, but I think it was a meat issue rather than a preparation issue. I'll definitely use boneless, skinless chicken breasts next time!