Hainanese Chicken

Ingredients

• 2-3lb boneless skinless chicken thighs
  
• ~4 cloves of garlic
  
• 1-2 lobes of ginger, minced or grated
  
• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 3 scallions, chopped
  
• 2c rice, thoroughly washed
  
• sesame oil, soy sauce, sriracha, black vinegar
  

In a pot, add the chicken, garlic, and ginger and enough water to just coat the chicken - about 5 cups for us, I think? Depends on the size pot, I guess. Bring the water to a boil, add some salt, and reduce to a simmer. Cook until the chicken is cooked through - about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on whether you started with frozen. The original recipe had you cook for 10 minutes then leave sit for 45, but we weren't too happy with the way it looked, so we just cooked it until it was done.

Remove the chicken to a cutting board and shred. Reserve the broth in a measuring cup. Add the onion to the pot with a little sesame oil and maybe some extra garlic and ginger. Cook until the onion is translucent and softened, then add the rice. Toss that around for a little bit, then add 2.5c of the broth (for us, I think this is all that was left - the closer you can come to hitting the 2.5c mark when you're done with the chicken, the better). Bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer and cover, cooking for 10 minutes. Then turn off the heat and let the rice sit for an additional 10 minutes before you uncover and fluff the rice.

Serve the rice topped with the chicken. Sprinkle with scallions and a sauce made of soy sauce, black vinegar, sesame oil, and sriracha. I think we actually ran out of soy sauce so we used "tempura dipping sauce" (which contains many of the same ingredients but it's a little sweeter - it was really good). We also served this with tomato, which I think we agree was kind of unnecessary.

Thoughts: Aside from the fact that you will feel you need more vegetables while eating this, it's really fantastic. I mean, you COULD add carrot, water chestnut, bamboo shoots, or whatever you're interested in and the dish probably wouldn't suffer (I'd cook them with the rice). But it's totally unnecessary. One of the most important factors in this dish is the sauce at the end - you have to do a lot of adjusting to make it just right, but it's really good. As mentioned above, when we decided to make this, we started by boiling the chicken for 10 minutes and then letting it sit. This didn't work at all. Maybe it's because our chicken was frozen? Anyway, I'd definitely consider making this again - it was really easy and quite good. Not all that healthy, perhaps, but who really cares?

Disaster Index: 1/10

Hamentaschen (Dough)

A pastry dough recipe.

Ingredients

• 2c flour
  
• 2 sticks butter
  
• 8oz cream cheese
  
• 3tbsp sugar
  
• 1tsp vanilla
  

In a cuisinart (food processor, NOT a blender), add the flour and sugar and pulse once to mix. Add the butter and cream cheese, chopped into smallish pieces, along with the vanilla, and pulse until the the dough JUST sticks together. Don't overprocess. If you don't have a cuisinart, you'll need to cut the fat into the flour, which is just really annoying, so I guess what I'm saying is: don't not have a cuisinart.

Dump the (really quite loose) dough onto a piece of cling wrap. It'll be crumbly. Lump it together in the center of the cling wrap and, well, wrap it up. Then you can kind of press the dough together, turning the package of cling wrap & dough, until it resembles a disc. Don't overdo it. Put the dough into the fridge for at least 8 hours or overnight.

When you're ready to use it, take out the dough. Roll it out thin on a WELL floured surface with a well floured rolling pin. Cut the cookies, add your filling, and bake at 350 for 15-30 minutes, until browned.

Thoughts: My mother's recipe. This pastry dough is fantastic. We actually made hamentaschen AND a little pie using this dough, and it works well for any purpose. I think the cream cheese really makes it. It's tender and flaky. Just fantastic. My mother also recommends replacing the vanilla with the zest of one lemon. This is easily the best pastry dough we've ever made.

For fillings for our hamentaschen, we strayed from tradition a lot. For the first batch, we used a few types of jam mixed with blackberries and some lemon juice and sugar. We kind of boiled them with a little water and reduced until the blackberries were really soft and the mixture was adequate for filling. I think I may have added a little corn starch to encourage it. The next batch was sliced apples with cinnamon cooked down in a little water in the same pot as the previous batch, so they turned bright red. Third batch was (frozen) peaches and blackberries with a little brown sugar and lemon juice, again cooked down until the peaches were soft. My mother uses a recipe of dates processed with frozen orange juice (which is a fairly traditional recipe), and also one with almond paste, cream cheese, almond extract, and chocolate chips. But that's for another post / another hamentashen experience.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Cornmeal Waffles

Ingredients

• 1.25 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
• 3 tbsp + 1 tsp granulated sugar
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 1.5 cups buttermilk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
  

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla.
Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.
Add oil and butter and whisk until smooth.

Make waffles. The waffle iron will tell you what to do.

Thoughts: Awesome. The cornmeal gives a crunchy texture to the outside of the waffle, while the inside stays fluffy. What else is there to say? This waffle recipe is probably one of the best we've made. It's as good as my grandmother's recipe (see some earlier month -- I don't know, December?), but in a completely different way. The taste is totally awesome. Please make this recipe. That is all.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Fettuccine with Fava Beans and Basil

Deceptively complex.

Ingredients

• 3c dry fava beans, soaked, or 3c fresh, shelled*
  
• 1lb fettuccine
  
• 2c basil, chopped
  
• 2 cloves garlic
  
• salt
  
• pepper
  
• parmesan
  
• juice of 1/2 a lemon
  

After you soak the dry beans, cook them until they're tender. We did this with the shells on. Afterward, fish out the beans and run under some cold water. Then shell them all. Ugh. Take 2/3 of the beans and pulse in a kitchenaid with 1c basil, some salt, the garlic, and enough olive oil to make it work. Don't puree the stuff, just chop until it's pretty small. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in the same water that you used to cook the fava beans. When that's done, reserve a cup of water and drain the pasta. Now you assemble. In the pot, combine the whole favas, the blended favas, and some of the pasta/fava cooking water. Add the lemon juice and parmesan and stir together. Then add the pasta and toss together.

Thoughts: VERY filling. One problem is that after we shelled and blended the beans, we discovered that they were still just too toothsome, so we had to return them to a pot and add water and cook until the favas were done. Meh. Otherwise, this is really delicious. Next time... we'll probably cook the beans for longer initially. Or maybe use fresh beans if we have them. I don't know. Quite good, though.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Cornbread

This is a good cornbread recipe. I tried it out on all these poets who will probably eat anything and tell me it's good because, y'know, poets. LIARS. But it was actually awesome.


Ingredients

• 2c corn meal
  
• 1c flour
  
• 4tsp baking powder
  
• 3/4tsp salt
  
• 6tbsp butter
  
• 1/4c sugar
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 2c milk
  

Mix all the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Add the butter, softened, and the eggs and milk. Whisk thoroughly. Pour into something with 64 square inches, like a 9" round cast-iron pan, or a 9" other round thing, or an 8x8 square pan. Or make a double batch and pour it into a 9x13 pan, like I did.

ANYWAY, bake it at 450 for about 30 minutes, then turn it to 350 and bake it until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean, about another 10 or 15 minutes in our oven.

Thoughts: This was really good. We were worried that the middle wasn't done because it was really soft even though a knife came out clean. Let it cool a little bit and you'll be rewarded for your patience. Awesome.

Disaster Index: 1/10 - this is really a turning point in our corn-bread career, I think.

Palak Paneer

Don't try this at home.

• 2 10 oz package of chopped frozen spinach or 4 cups of fresh finely chopped spinach
  
• Farmer’s cheese
  
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
  
• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 1 teaspoon chopped ginger
  
• 2 teaspoon coriander powder (dhania)
  
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder (haldi)
  
• 2-4 chili peppers, minced
  
• 1 tablespoon oil
  
• 1 teaspoon cumin seed (jeera)
  
• 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
  
• 4 tablespoons of whole wheat flour
  
• 1.5 cup milk
  

Blend spinach until creamy but not pasty. Mix the whole wheat flour with the milk and set aside. Cube the farmer’s cheese and fry on medium high heat. Remove and set aside. Then add the onion, pepper, chili, cumin, ginger, coriander, turmeric, and salt. Cook until it’s pretty soft, and then add the spinach. Cook over low heat for about 10 minutes, covered. Add the milk mixture and let it cook until the consistency is right. Then take off the heat and fold in the cheese.

Thoughts: OK, so deep frying the cheese did NOT work at all. That was just the first disaster. So I threw SOME of the cheese into the oil and it promptly melted. Maybe you can't use farmer's cheese as a replacement for paneer (as one web site suggested). Next, I was looking at 3 recipes... 2 used tomatoes, 1 used red bell pepper. But I only had bell pepper, so I went for it. I think tomatoes would have been much better. From there, it worked out OK. We wound up adding a ton more seasonings because you couldn't really taste anything. I added a little bit of lemon juice, too, and I think that helped. We served it over rice. There's agreement that we can tell it's supposed to be Indian in origin, and the flavor isn't BAD, but it's not... great, either. And it's way far from the mark in terms of Palak Paneer. Well, I mean, why call it DCCDI if there aren't some D's.

Disaster Index: 5/10