Sticky Chicken Lentils

Sticky Chicken Lentils

Originally uploaded by kitchenbean

Woke up from a nap thinking of eating a late dinner and wanted to make a saucy dish to go over all the left over rice in the fridge. Two thoughts crossed my mind – lentil dal or spicy chicken with onions. Anyway, thats when I thought to myself that there MUST be recipes out there for lentils and chicken in the same dish. Did some searching on the net and found a bunch of Moroccan Chicken with Lentils (many of which seemed suspiciously similar to one another) which basically called for making brown or green lentils in a pot, dressing them with a red wine vinaigrette and topping with thinly sliced chicken breast spiced with cinnamon, cumin, and chili. I was going for more of a stewed-all-in-one pot, sticky, spicy lentil dish. So I kept the spices but nixed the vinegar dressing, used a pair of fat chicken thighs instead of the lean breast meat, and opted to cook the chicken and lentils together. The lentils at the top of the brew turned out chewy but not hard, while the ones at the bottom were soft and sticky making for a great dish over the left-over rice. YUM!

Sautéed Steak and Steamed Potatoes

Ingredients to duplicate the depicted: dead cow (beef), small potatoes, mushrooms, red wine, olive oil, cooking oil, salt + pepper.

Meat notice: though we used ribeye steak, the Cattlemen’s propaganda beef chart informs us that many other forms of cow are acceptable for the skillet.

Potatoes

1. Steam until tender.

2. Toss with olive oil, salt + pepper.

Steak

1. Season with salt + pepper

2. Heat oil in skillet until hot (barely smoking). Add steak. Reduce heat in case of fire.

3. Cook side A of steak before turning to side B. 5 minutes on a gas stove in a cast iron worked for me. Remove steak from pan.

4. Add sliced mushrooms to pan, cook briefly, then add wine. The wine will loosen (deglaze) the burnt on “flavor”. For the less wino, deglaze with broth or water. Serve pan sauce on steak.

The Essentials of Cooking book by James Peterson does a better (and lengthier, with pictures) job of explaining this process. In fact, read it now (for free!) by following the link and Searching Inside™ for “Sauté steaks, chops” on page 195-7.

Lavender Panna Cotta

About Panna Cotta

Panna Cotta, literally “cooked cream”, is an elegant dessert from the Piedmont dairy country of Italy. Rich cream, yogurt, and sometimes marscapone or sour cream is cooked and set with gelatin, sweetened with honey or sugar, and perhaps flavored with any variety of spices, fruits and chocolates. Readers may be familiar with a cousin known as blancmange, literally “white eat”, a bouncier firmer version with more gelatin, usually set in fancy tin molds with elaborate patterns, and served with a red wine sauce. The best panna cottas, according to Camilla V. Saulsbury, the author of the recipe tome Panna Cotta, have “very little gelatin; the result is not a solid gel, but rather a softly set, fine slip of a dessert, akin to the creamiest gelato or ice cream, without the freezing.”

Recipe for Lavender Panna Cotta

Lavender blossoms are steeped in rich cream before the gelatin and whole milk yogurt are added for thickening and tang. The resulting panna cotta has a floral taste and pairs well with a sweet blueberry sauce made by stewing either fresh or frozen berries with honey.

Pictures

• finished product topped with blueberry coulis, fresh blackberries, and lemon zest

• lavender blossoms close up

• putting four ramekins in a pan makes it easier to transport in and out of the fridge.
• tools used to make panna cotta (ramekin, wisk, rubber spatula, measuring cup)

Q:Dill, what is it good for? A:Gravlax.

Dill, Anethum graveolens, from the Apiaceae family, originates from Eurasia and likes full sun, and moist but well-drained soil.

It’s fun to tease the kids at the playground by calling them “dillweeds”. Also, if you chew on dill seeds, they can quiet rumbling hungry stomachs. That’s a fun fact used by colonial era churchgoers who referred to them as “meeting seeds” because munching on dill seeds got them through long sermons.

Dill is good in cucumber salads, with cheese, fish, eggs, and potatoes. It’s also used to flavor the vinegar used to make dill pickles. I got my hands on a nice side of wild Alaskan salmon that I was tempted to eat raw. Instead, I decided to cure it in a salt/sugar mixture with fresh ground black pepper and dill. The resulting dish is referred to as gravad lax (that is, buried salmon) in Swedish and Danish, gravlaks in Norwegian, graavilohi in Finnish and graflax in Icelandic. Yay for wikipedia. It’s usually served thinly-sliced and is great on stone ground wheat crackers, bread, or potatoes with mustard. I like to garnish mine with plenty of thinly sliced lemon wedges, chives, and a dollop of sour cream.

You’ll need:

• Enough plastic wrap to wrap the fish in, twice
• A plate or sheet pan large enough to catch the juices from the fish as it’s curing
• A jar to hold the salt/sugar cure

Ingredients include:

• A side of salmon with the skin on
• Equal parts kosher salt and granulated sugar, about half a cup of each
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Enough dill to cover the fish

1. Put the salt, sugar, and pepper in a jar and shake. You can store left over cure mix in the jar when you’re done.
2. Cut the side into two equal pieces.
3. Spread a quarter of the cure mix on the plastic wrap
4. • Now build a fish/cure/dill sandwich on top of the plastic wrap.
   • put one half of the fish, skin side down onto the plastic wrap that has the cure mix sprinkled on it.
   • spread one half of the cure mix on the flesh-side of the fish
   • arrange the dill on that fish
   • put the other half of the fish on the dill, flesh-side down.
   • spread the remaining cure mix on the skin-side of the fish
5. Wrap the fish/cure/dill sandwich tightly in the plastic wrap.

Parsley, not just a garnish

Parsley, (aka. Petroselinum crispum), is part of the Apiaceae (or Umbelliferae) family, originates in southeast Europe and western Asia, grows in part shade/full sun in moist, rich soil, and is a biennial plant that can withstand frost.

Growing
Get a deep pot for its carrot-like root, and put it in a cool, bright place — such as a windowsill inside your windowsill. It lasts for 18 months outside, but once it blooms, its life cycle is finished, and it must be allowed to reseed or else be replaced by a new plant. To have an abundance of parsley, sow seeds in the fall, in the early spring, and again in the midsummer. It is not easy to transplant seedings due to the long taproot. The seeds take so long to germinate that legend says that parsley must go to the devil and back nine times unless it is planted on Good Friday. Others say to plant it on St. Patrick’s day. To speed up germination, soak seeds in a jar of tepid water with a teaspoon of vinegar. After three days, drain and rinse the seeds and plant them directly in the garden. Plant twice what you need as butterflies lay eggs in parsley and use it as a host food.

Nutritional and Medicinal Value
It is high in vitamin A and C. It is a great natural breath freshener. In China and Germany, herbologists recommend parsley tea to control high blood pressure. The Cherokee Indians use it as a tonic to strengthen the bladder. Parsley may be used as a diuretic. It is known to stimulate blood flow to the pelvis, and so may be used to stimulate menstruation.

History
It was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans as a garnish. According to legend, they believed that if it was eaten between courses, the wine they drank would not make them drunk. During the Middle Ages, it was used in monasteries as an edging in herb gardens, where it was also grown for its medicinal properties.

Salsa Verde (Italian Green Sauce)

• Parsley
• Capers
• Garlic
• Green olive oil

Gremolata

• Parsley
• Lemon
• Garlic