Ethiopian Feast

Robert was in town, so I used his arrival as a perfect excuse to try my hand at Ethiopian food, which we both love, especially Doro Wat.

Having never attempted a single Ethiopian dish before, I was a little nervous. I looked at more than one hundred recipes, and here is what I came up with:


For those of you unfamiliar with Ethiopian food (shame on you) the brown tortilla sort of bread is called injera. It is a spongy, slightly sour, bread made mostly of Teff flour. There are lots of places to pick this up in Minneapolis including African grocery stores, the Seward Co-op, and Everret's Foods on 38th and Cedar. It is tasty, even with good old American food.

The bright pink food is a beet and potato salad with a lemon dressing.

To the right, the yellow mush are lentils called Misr Allecha. These were amazing.

To the left of the picture is Chickpea Wat.

All three of these recipes I followed pretty much exactly. They were all good, but the lentils were particularly good.

On the bottom of the picture is Doro Wat. This is my favorite Ethiopian dish and this was my attempt to recreate it, though Robert did a lot of the work. We combined a few recipes to get to what we thought was a good recipe. It ended up being VERY spicy, almost too much. But it was VERY GOOD.

This dinner was great. I will definitely be making more Ethiopian food in the future. It was pretty easy, it just takes some time.

Presidents' Day Weekend

It was a long weekend of treats and dinners. Did I take lots of pictures? Of course not. Friends were in town, guests had to be fed, and I was absent-minded.

Friday started out with some homemade Mexican. I made a nice meal of tacos, beans and rice. The filling for the tacos was chicken in a green pumpkin seed sauce. It was outstanding, in my opinion, and you can get the recipe here. I tweaked the recipe a bit, but it is close.

Have I mentioned my love of homemade beans? Beans are the easiest things in the world to make from scratch and one of the most satisfying. Bean juice is the greatest tasting substance in the world some days. Everyone should spend time next weekend making beans at home. Pinto beans are a very easy place to start and give you the most bang for your buck.

Saturday dinner was a bit complicated. It had to be a vegan gluten free dinner. Yikes. I ended up with a mushroom ragu (that was way too watery) on polenta. Tisha brought a spinach salad, that was perfect. Dessert was a bizarre concoction of prunes, oranges, and cardamom syrup on ice cream (and soy cream). It was an okay dinner, but not my favorite by any means.

Sunday, my feet hurt from two days of cooking, so dinner was takeout.

Today, was sort-of-meatless Monday. See, CJ gave me these great crocks for my birthday and Valentine's Day.
I also had a lot of chicken stock left over from making chicken Friday night and no room in the freezer for it.

What could I do? I made super nummy, super tasty, super awesome French Onion Soup.

I used the recipe from Cook's Illustrated. It took over four hours to make; 2 1/2 half were inactive. It was very good and well worth it. While very few ingredients are used in the recipe, it would be too much work to paraphrase, so I suggest you get to the library and get the recipe yourself for your collection.

You do have a collection, don't you?

Hillary Clinton is Basically a Republican Chicken

I don't like Hillary. I really hope her pro-death penalty, pro-using force in Iran, pro-Patriot Act, anti-gay marriage, more of the same butt loses tomorrow.

But, she inspired a good chicken.

I started with a very large chicken because mom and dad were coming over and we like leftovers. 24 hours in advance I salt and peppered the chicken and put rosemary under the skin and in the cavity.

1 hour before cooking take it out and bring it to room temperature. I then stuffed garlic under the skin and put garlic all around it and in the cavity. I also squeezed lemons all around and put them in the pan too.


The preheated oven was at 400. Put the chicken in breast up for 20 minutes. Then flip the whole thing over, which takes some skill. Cook breast down for 20 minutes and cook breast up until done. USE A THERMOMETER. Take out when it reaches 175 or so.

My skin split open, so it wasn't beautiful, but it was tasty.

Who Loves Pate?

I love pate. Oh, so tasty. But it is also so easy. Even you can make it (for the next time I come over).

Start with half a stick of butter, half an onion and a clove of garlic. Saute until soft.

Take one pound of chicken livers. Trim, rinse and pat dry.
Chicken livers are great. We get high end, organic, free range, local livers for $2.50 a pound. That makes pate a super cheap high end appetizer.

The chicken livers go in with the onions and are sauteed to a light pink inside.

Then add 1/4 cup of cognac or other brandy.

Cook for two minutes to remove most of the alcohol.

The whole mixture goes into a food processor along with 1/4 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg, a pinch of allspice and salt and pepper.

Puree until smooth.

Meanwhile, take 1/3 cup of currents and reconstitute them with boiling water. Drain and add to pate mixture.

Mix together and put in a crock.

Put in the fridge for a few hours to firm it up. Then bring to room temp before serving.

Peanut Stew

African Peanut Stew with Chicken and Potatoes

I got this recipe from The Soul of a New Cuisine by Marcus Samuelsson. It is the most beautiful cookbook I've ever seen. It is beautifully written with lots of information about Africa, its food, and its people.

The stew was good. The recipe called for one teaspoon of salt, but it needed at least two tablespoons. It also called for half white meat, but I only did one quarter white meat and next time, if I make it again, it will be all dark meat.

The cookbook has lots of interesting recipes. I'm looking forward to trying the Ethiopian recipes most. It has too many high end recipes, I think, but it is a great table book none-the-less.

I am a Slacker

Sorry about the weeks of not posting. It wasn't that I haven't been cooking, I have. It is just that I didn't get pics of everything and that I'm lazy.

So, here you go, a big long list of things I've made recently, with some pics.

1) Roasted chicken- One of CJ's favorites. Super easy and real tasty.
2) Split pea soup
How I love split pea soup. I made a whole bunch last week, froze some, and have been eating it for a few days.
3) Squash- Sauteed with some onions, one of my favorites.
4) Pumpkin Spice Muffins
Ugly, but good.
5) Fava beans and tomatoes- I threw this together real quick one night, and it turned out good. By real quick, I mean under 3 minutes.
6) Homemade applesauce


7) Carnitas

These were really good. Take a couple pounds of pork shoulder and cut into cubes. Add enough water to cover, the juice from a small lime, and a couple pinches of salt. Bring to a boil and simmer for 40 minutes on medium low covered. Uncover once tender and let water boil off. When it does, it will start frying itself in its own fat.

We ate it as we do tacos. It was really good. REALLY GOOD. The recipe came from my new cookbook, The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. The cookbook is also great. If you are interested in learning to cook real food, it is a great starter. She does the basics, then goes on to other things, all which look excellent and simple.

Whew, What A Week

So, no posts for an entire week. What's going on?

The truth is, I didn't cook a single thing all week. As outrageous as it seems, I just didn't. Monday I went to bed before dinner. Tuesday I went out with people from work. Wednesday is bar trivia night for CJ, so I met him there for dinner. Thursday I picked up tortas from Manny's Tortas. Friday, we got Chinese food from Village Wok. It was a very busy week.

Yesterday, I roasted a whole chicken. It sort of looked like this:
We ate it before I got a picture of it. It was super tasty. I rubbed the whole thing down with a combo of olive oil, lemon, garlic, honey, thyme, sage, salt and pepper. I stuffed some garlic and lemons in the cavity and threw some in the dutch oven with the chicken. I started the oven at 400 degrees and immediately dropped it down to 250. It was taking forever to cook, so after about 2 hours, I raised the temp to 325.

Next time I will get a picture.

Chicken Friday

Friday night we had chicken and rice, a very simple meal. I used this chicken recipe:
orange braised chicken with olives
and this rice recipe:
yellow rice with sofrito.

I'm learning lots of things with this new blog:
1) Brown plates + brown foods = ugly looking food. I'm going to start trying to use white plates for pics, I think that will help.
2) Meat goes on top. See that pick above. It would look better if the meat would have been on top.
3) Green. Plates need green. Or some bright color.