‘Recipes’ Archives

Sorry, people lured in by my meatless recipes.

Although I cook without meat a majority of the time, I am completely powerless when it comes to chicken thighs. Tender, juicy little pieces of meat on not-too-much bone, they’re virtually impossible to screw up — and even better, they’re almost always cheaper than other chicken pieces.

My favorite way to prepare chicken (or turkey) thighs is to make Filipino chicken adobo. There are about as many recipes for adobo as there are cooks, but they all rely on a combination of soy sauce, vinegar, and garlic, at least, and usually a little sugar, bay leaves and black pepper, too. After a fair amount of trial and error, here’s the recipe I use.

Chicken (or turkey or pork) adobo

Combine 1/2 cup mushroom soy sauce, 3/4 cup vinegar, 3 tablespoons honey, 3-5 cloves of minced garlic, 3-ish bay leaves, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper with 1.5 cups water. Bring to a boil and add 3 pounds chicken thighs. Cover, and reduce to a simmer, adding more water if needed to keep the meat covered. Simmer for about 30-40 minutes. Remove from the sauce and set aside. At this point, you can fish out the bay leaves and bring the liquid to a boil until it reduces by at least half. Set a grill (or frying) pan on medium-high heat and grill each piece, skin-side down, until the skin is crisped. The sugar helps caramelize the skin but it will also help it burn faster, so watch out. Serve (with a little of the reduced sauce) over white rice or shredded cabbage or whatever suits you.

Some notes: this recipe is based on what I usually have on hand. The mushroom soy sauce isn’t exactly traditional, but because it’s so thick and dark, you can use much less and get the same result that you’d get with about a cup of regular soy sauce. I usually use cider or rice vinegar, but I’ve used red wine or even plain white vinegar in a pinch (just don’t use balsamic) and swap in any other sugar for the honey. (You could also use boneless and/or skinless thighs, but… meh.) Oh, and definitely make the whole three pounds of chicken because the leftovers are heavenly.

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Tags: chicken, do more with less, filipino, meat
Category Recipes |

In which I have hopefully triumphed over February.

I don’t want to jinx anything, as there are still 10 days left (including today), but I think I have just about beaten this whole February business. And I know this because I made lemon-garlic lamb chops with yogurt sauce last night.

Dinners this month have been okay, if a bit perfunctory (with the notable exception of these tacos which have recently made their way into my regular rotation). But these lamb chops… not only did I want to make them, I got it together to actually make them, which surprised even me.

It also added to my sense of triumph that this recipe was not only easy (marinate + cook = done) and cheap (shoulder blade chop are pretty economical to begin with and they were on sale last week) but also oh-my-frigging-god good. I honestly had my doubts about lemony red meat paired with tangy yogurt, but wow, it all really works together. The creaminess of the yogurt blunts the citrus of the meat so it’s not overpowering, plus the garlicky note… it’s brilliant.

So… yeah. I’m not quite willing to shout “I’m back, baby!” just yet, but I am thinking it. Quietly. So the February won’t hear it.

Tags: epicurious, lamb, meat, recipe
Category Recipes |

Tuna Salad (Minus The Mercury)

I love tuna salad. Canned white tuna, with minced celery and pickle, some mayonnaise and maybe a few capers… if I could eat that as often as I’d like, I’d end up as mad as a hatter (or maybe just as mad as Jeremy Piven) due to the elevated levels of mercury in canned tuna.

What’s a tuna-phile to do?

Fake it.

Fake Tuna Salad

Mash 2-3 cups of chickpeas with the tines of a fork. (You could trying using a food processor but one pulse too far and you’ve got hummus instead.) This can be a little tedious but the resulting texture is more appealing. To pass the time, I recommend Pandora’s Oldies Soul station, as pictured above. Add minced celery, pickle, mayonnaise, or whatever your mom added to tuna salad when you were a kid.

Category Doing More With Less, Green is Gezellig, Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes |

Apology Soup

When I was a kid, I always thought my grandfather had some odd eating habits. He liked his apple pie with Cheddar cheese. He grated his own Parmesan at the dinner table (which we all politely declined, preferring the powdery stuff in the green can). And—which I thought was the weirdest of all—sometimes he would open a can of chicken broth, cook a half-dozen or so tortellini in the broth, add some of his weird cheese and eat it.

Having made gnocchi soup recently, I can now say: Granddad, you were right and I was definitely wrong. This was far and away the best soup I’ve had in ages and possibly the best soup I’ve made EVER.

I only made this because one of my followers on Twitter mentioned she was having a gnocchi soup for lunch that day and I remembered I had a bag of gnocchi languishing in my freezer (along with some chicken broth and a bag of peas, which also went into the recipe).

Gnocchi soup

Put about 6-8 cups broth (I used chicken broth I’d made a while ago, but any broth will do) and several cloves of minced garlic in a large soup pot over medium-low heat. Simmer uncovered until the garlic is tender. Add a couple stalks of diced celery and continue to simmer until almost tender. Bring broth to a full boil and stir in a 12-ounce bag of frozen gnocchi and cook until the gnocchi float. Stir in 10 ounces frozen peas, cover, and turn off the heat. Add plenty of pepper and Parmesan cheese (or Argentine Reggianito which I really like these days).

Category Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes |

Biscuits? Meh.

I mean, they look okay (despite some truly lackluster photography on my part). My husband said they were good but I found these biscuits dry and bland.

I won’t link directly to the recipe I adapted from (for fear of starting an intermural food blog smackdown), but it went something like this:

- 2 cups flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon dried herbs
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup of shredded cheese
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup milk

Combine flour and baking powder; cut in remaining ingredients.
Mix and drop by teaspoonfuls on greased baking sheet.
Bake at 450 degrees for 12 – 15 minutes.

Having learned my lesson from the last time I made biscuits, I did my best to handle these as little as possible. I made the dough in the food processor, patted them out gently and cut them into circles with a drinking glass. The dough felt pretty moist from the cheese and sour cream, which is why I’m so baffled as to how they came out so dry. And damn, were these bland. There was a hint of cheese to them, but nothing nearly like what I expected.

So where did this go wrong? Did I screw it up somehow or was the recipe flawed to begin with? Or both?

Category Not Gezellig!, Recipes, Vegetarian Recipes |