Squab, with accompaniments

Ed went to Savenor's today. They're a meat shop, and can apparently order you anything you want, with enough warning. I want wooly mammoth! Lets see how easily they get that, muahahaha. Anyway, he walked away much lighter in his pockets with some frozen rabbit, duck legs (not eggs), and a squab. We're having the duck tomorrow, but tonight we had the squab. A squab is a pigeon. Its not very big. really, two squabs would have been more appropriate, but apparently they only had one at the time. We decided to make a pretty substantial meal to go along with it, since really the squab was only there for looks. I mean, two bites and it'd be gone. We ended up with a pretty eclectic pile o' stuff on our plates, it all sort of worked together, but not quite perfectly. Alas, another weeknight dinner that is... awesome.



The squab was cooked using the oven, first Ed cut it in half (he is in charge of the meat 'round here), then rubbed some butter on the skin, and stuck it under the broiler for 5 minutes. Once the skin was nice and crispy, he basted it with some blood orange glaze he'd cooked up, and cooked it for another 10 minutes, ish. The recipe for the glaze is below.



The bird cooked up pretty tasty, sort of like a gamey chicken. After an abortive attempt at using knives and forks we settled for picking it up and gnawing, things were much more enjoyable after that. The sides (or main course, if you like, by size or weight the squab was definitely one of the sides...) were cooked endive, fresh fava beans and an Asian-inspired risotto. The risotto stole the show, in my opinion, although the endives were a close second. I could have done with just the risotto and you can keep your pricey pigeon thank you very much. So, here is my recipe for the Asian-inspired risotto.



Ginger-cilantro-pea risotto.
Serves 3-4 as a side dish

3/4C short-grain rice (sushi rice or arborio)
1 tbs olive oil (peanut oil or sesame oil would be good in this case, though)
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 shallot, diced finely
2" cube of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 scallion
1C peas (frozen is fine)
1/4-1/2C chopped cilantro
zest of a quarter of a lemon
salt and pepper to taste
1C white wine
4C chicken stock, broth, or water

Have everything ready to go. Although risotto requires a lot of stirring, its pretty easy. Chop all your veggies and stuff, and heat the wine and the chicken broth (separately). You need to add warm liquid to the rice, otherwise it shocks the kernels and it doesn't absorb water properly.

Mise en place.

Heat the oil in a wok or big frying pan, over medium-high heat. Add the shallot and cook until sweated through. Add the garlic and cook until just golden. Add the rice, and stir it around for about 1-2 minutes, making sure to get all the grains coated. Add the wine, and stir the rice. (I might be repeating this instruction a lot...). Keep stirring and cooking until most of the liquid has been absorbed, and then start add the chicken broth one cup at a time. Wait for the liquid to get absorbed before adding more. Add the ginger and lemon after 1-2 additions of chicken broth. Once the grains taste about done, add the cilantro and stir it around. You have to keep adding liquid and stirring until the rice tastes done. The cilantro should cook for about 3-4 minutes, then take the rice off the heat and add the peas. Garnish with the scallion.



Cooked endives
~2 tsp olive oil
~1 tsp salt
2 endives

Cut the endives in half lengthwise. Heat a frying pan over medium to low heat. Add some olive oil, then add the endives flat size down and cover. Cook for 10 minutes or so, and when the bottoms look nice and toasty, flip them over and cook them uncovered on their backs for a minute or so. Serve warm.



Blood orange maple glaze
juice of one blood orange
water
brown sugar
maple syrup
coriander
lemon juice
red chili flakes

Put all these things in a pot in a ratio that tastes good to you (taste it). Cook it until it reduces to something sweet and sticky, and then strain it to get out all the chili flakes. Can you tell this is an Ed-recipe? There aren't any measurements...

Scallion Pancakes

The other day I was struck by a craving for the Taiwan Cafe's scallion pancakes. Unfortunately, I wasn't near the Taiwan Cafe, so I figured I'd try making them. I was scared it would be a very long, arduous process, but it actually wasn't too bad. I found a recipe here, and it looked doable. I did not let the dough rest at all, which may have made them easier to roll out, but it worked. They ended up delicious, although they could have used more of a deep-fried method rather than pan-fried, I thought they were lacking in oil.

Use Real Butter has much nicer looking step-by-step instructions than me, and since I didn't change the recipe, go get it there. Basically, you make the dough, knead it, let it rest (oops), divide it up and roll it out into a circle. I put about a quarter teaspoon of oil on each pancake, then sprinkled on the scallions and some salt.

Roll it up like a cigar, and then roll it horizontally like a snail.


Once its rolled up again, roll it out flat. This is what gives those pancakes their awesome flakiness and layers.


Fry them up in about a tablespoon of oil per pancake.


Slice them up and enjoy!!


A dipping sauce would be nice, I don't know what the proper dipping sauce is but I mixed some soy sauce with rice wine vinegar and that tasted pretty good. I highly recommend making these things, they were easy and pretty quick, and most importantly - delicious.

Crunchy chickpeas

I don't know where I found this recipe, but, it was really so-so. (I need to start posting recipes that are less mediocre. This is getting depressing). The idea was that the chickpeas would get crunchy, like soy nuts, and some of them did, but mostly, they just got dry. Dry enough that your mouth feels like its filled with powder. Maybe I just had to cook them longer. Because maybe one in six were crunchy. If you want to experiment, here is the recipe:

Crunchy Chickpeas
1C chickpeas (half a can's worth)
1 tbs olive oil
salt
curry powder

Drain the chickpeas and pat them dry with a towel. Toss with oil, sprinkle on the spices and toss, and bake at 400F for 30 minutes or until they rattle when you shake the pan.

Cottage cheese muffins

Or, king's muffins. I'll get to that.

I knew I wanted muffins, but I didn't know what kind of muffin I wanted, and I wanted to try something different rather than go with the same old favorites I usually make. I snooped around the internets for a while, and eventually stumbled onto this recipe, from 101 Cookbooks, and since I've made some of her recipes before, and they've worked out, I figured I was golden. I even followed the recipe without changing anything! (this is something new for me, this following a recipe thing). Well, I did use dry sundried tomatoes instead of tomatoes packed in oil, since I didn't have tomatoes packed in oil but I did have dry ones. So I almost didn't change anything.

The recipe came together fine, and the muffins taste fine, although I did use ground almonds instead of almond flour (because I have whole almonds, but I don't have almond flour), and I like the crunchiness. I don't, however, like the pricetag that came with these muffins. So, muffins are usually a cheap snack for me - flour, egg, sugar, and some things like walnuts or raisins. These ones needed cottage cheese (not that expensive, but not something I have on hand - $2.50), 4 eggs (for 10 muffins! - $2.99/12=$.99), sundried tomatoes ($?), basil ($3.99), almond flour (if you went and bought a bag of this stuff its $9.99, I ground up whole almonds, a 5lb sack of which cost $9.99, so 1C of them was probably $.50? I can't do math), 3/4C parmesan cheese (this is almost the whole block of what I had, which was $5.20, so we'll call it $4.00 of cheese). Thats a lot of dollars for 10 muffins. They were good, but not that good. Probably won't make them again, although the idea of using cottage cheese in a muffin is intriguing, now that I have half a container to use up...

Spinach curry thing

I don't know that this is an actual curry, but it had curry powder in it, that makes it a curry, right? I felt like making a glop, and glop I did make, but it was really good glop. Sort of like a cross between curry, saag paneer, and dahl. It would have been awesome with naan, had I thought to make some. I put chicken in this, but it didn't need it. Like most glops that I make, this is extremely flexible. Any ingredient can be removed, added, substituted, whatever. It was easy, too, all I had to do was occasionally stir it or add more liquid.

1 lb frozen spinach
1/2C red lentils
1 onion
1 tbs oil
2 cloves garlic
1-inch cube of ginger
a couple chives
a couple leaves of basil
1 chicken breast
3-4 tbs lemon juice
green curry paste*
sweet curry powder*
cumin*
salt*
sambal olek*
Thai garlic chile sauce*
coriander*
mustard seeds*

*all the spices are sort of optional, I mean you want some curry flavor, but just the green curry paste would have been fine. I just happened to have other spices, that were crying out to be used.

Start by sweating the onion in the oil, and then add the garlic until its toasted. Add 2C of water and 1/2C of lentils, and the spinach. I didn't bother thawing it, I let the boiling water around it do that. So yes, I boiled the lentils. It still tasted good. Add the rest of the spices. Put a lid on the pot and let everything cook for a while. Come back and stir and taste. Cover and cook. Continue that process until the lentils taste done. Meanwhile, cook the chicken, and when the lentils are done, add the chicken (or tofu, or lamb, or whatever you want. Or nothing). Serve with rice and naan.

Persimmon Pudding Bread

Or, persimmon bread without the baking soda. A while back, after making our persimmon pie, Jackie gave me a whole bagfull of persimmon goo. It lived in my freezer for a while, until I had time to think about what to do with it. A quick search of the internets brought me to James Beard's persimmon bread, on David Lebovitz's site, and it looked and sounded good. So I figured I'd make it. His bread looks delicious. Mine looked like this:


Thats right, somebody didn't add baking soda. I tried a piece, and despite the two sticks of butter and copious quantities of alcohol and sugar, I didn't like it. Too much like fruit cake. Or a brick. Since my colleagues seem to be immune to the bad baked goods I sometimes bring in (I rarely bring in the good stuff, I eat that), I brought in one of the two loaves. It was pretty much devoured, and people claimed to like it. Weird. So, if you like a pudding-ish, dense, moist, brick-like bread, omit the baking soda from this recipe. If you'd rather have a lighter bread, keep the baking soda. Or just turn the goop into a smoothie or something. I'm not making this one again...

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

I hesitated for a long time before putting this picture up. Because not only is it not all that appealing, its pretty disgusting-looking. I didn't take a picture while everything was warm and beautifully arranged on my plate, because I forgot, and so I took a picture of the leftovers. Somehow, I'm trying to convince you that my congealed pile of cold leftovers is delicious and fresh and steaming.


We got too many brussels sprouts, and have been eating them for a couple days, which led to the inclusion of bacon in this dish. Because bacon makes everything better. In Ed's words: "I'm bringing this to Thanksgiving next year". So despite the gloppy picture, this dish is worth making. Its flexible, you can put anything you want into it, although the brussels sprouts and the bacon you can't really do without.

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

4-8 pieces of bacon (depends how much you like it)
3-4C quartered brussels sprouts
1 onion
~2 tbs lemon juice
1 kohlrabi bulb (optional)
1/2 granny smith apple (optional)
2-4 cloves garlic (optional)
2 tbs toasted pine nuts (optional)
random spices and herbs you think might go well.

Dice the bacon, and cook it until it looks delicious and edible. If you like crunchier bacon, cook it longer. Add the chopped onion, cook it until its transparent, then add the diced garlic. Add the brussels sprouts, and cover, stirring occasionally, until they're bright green. They'll probably need another minute or so to get to the perfect consistency, so add the kohlrabi now. Taste a brussels sprout from time to time, and once its at the consistency you like it at, remove the whole thing from heat, stir in the diced apple, lemon juice, and pine nuts, and serve warm.

This goes well over couscous, israeli couscous, rice, or any other grain you might have lying around. And, its addicting.