Couscous with Chicken, Dates, Figs, & Apricots

My recipe is an adaptation of the one I found here: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/CINNAMON-CHICKEN-WITH-COUSCOUS-AND-DRIED-FRUIT-233401

Phase 1, The Chicken:

• I had two split chicken breasts (with bones & skin).
• Preheat the oven to 375°F.
• Toast some cinnamon and a little cumin in a pan, until fragrant.
• Mix those with some salt and a couple pinches of sugar.
• Then, rub the seasoning all over the chicken, under and over the skin.
• heat olive oil and a dab of butter in a cast iron skillet.
• sear the chicken breasts, skin side down.
• once seared, flip them and place the skillet into the oven.
• Take them out of the oven when they’re done − at 160°F core temperature.
• Set the chicken aside to rest and keep the drippings in the skillet.

Phase 2, Prepping the Couscous and the Stock:

• Put the couscous into a pan with tall sides.
• Turn the heat on medium-high and toast it, stirring, until the exact moment that it begins to smell toasty.
• In a pot, heat some chicken stock until it’s too hot to put your hand into.
• Rub and sprinkle in a tiny bit of saffron.

Phase 3, The Flavor:

• In the same skillet that you cooked the chicken in, with the drippings from the chicken:
• Sauté a half of diced onion and a minced shallot, until they have begun to brown.
• Add in:
• Some chopped dried apricots.
• Some chopped dried figs.
• Some chopped dried dates.
• (Don’t be skimpy on the fruit.)
• Continue sautéing for a minute or so.
• Sprinkle in some cinnamon.
• Salt.
• Add little bit of minced ginger.
• And, some finely chopped mint.
• Stir and sauté for another moment.
• Pour in the seasoned chicken stock.
• Bring the soup to a boil.
• Pour the soup into the pan with the couscous and stir.
• Put a lid on it and wait for your wife to come home for dinner.
• Fluff the couscous.
• Put it on a plate and put the chicken on top.

Thoughts: This was one tasty piece of chicken − crispy skin, tender, juicy, and roasted-cinnamony.  All of the fruit and the flavors in the couscous were full and complex, while still light.  I’m not sure what it is though, but my couscous never has quite the fresh-feeling texture and taste of couscous in a snazzy restaurant.  I mean, it’s good.  I’d make it for a hot date, if I wasn’t married, that is.  But, I’m just not sure what it takes to make perfect, delicate couscous.

Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Sautéed Tomatoes & Sage

The Gnocchi: If you’ve never made gnocchi and need to get the feel for it, no one can teach you better than Lidia Bastianich.  My recipe is only what I did.

• Cut a butternut squash in half lengthwise.
• Scoop out the seeds.  Clean off the goop to your liking.  Sprinkle with salt, olive oil, and any seasoning you like.  I used paprika this time.  Then, bake them.  Remove them from the oven when some start popping.  Eat them while you wait for the squash to finish.
• Place the squash face down in a pan with an inch or so of water.
• Roast at 425°F until the squash is tender when touched with a fork.  I usually wait until the skin starts to brown a little.
• Meanwhile, poke some holes in five medium Russet potatoes.
• Put them in the oven with the squash.
• The potatoes will need more time than the squash.  But, like the squash, when they’re tender, they’re done.
• Allow everything to cool to a temperature that you’re willing to stick your hands in.
• Scoop all of the potato and squash out of the skins and mash them until all of the lumps are gone.
• Mix in two beaten eggs.
• Add some salt.
• Also pepper.
• Mince several sage leaves, mix in those too.
• Sprinkle in some ground thyme.
• add some grated Parmesan cheese, maybe a ½ cup.
• Add flour, mix, knead.
• Here’s where things get murky.  I started with two cups of flour and it wasn’t even close to enough.  The dough continued to surprise me with it’s ability to remain too wet.  So I don’t have any idea how much flour I put in – probably more than four cups.
• … just mix in flour until you have dough that is very soft but can be kneaded without sticking.  However much that is.
• pull the apart and roll it into little oblong eggs shapes.
• I use Lidia’s fork-rolling method that leaves little indentations in the gnocchi.
• To cook, boil as big of a pot of salted water as you can, with as much water as you can get into it without risk of spilling over.  Then, dump in the gnocchi in batches of not more than two servings (unless you have an industrial size pot).  Scoop them out with a strainer when the float and remain floating.

The Sauce:

• I cut up a handful of yellow cherry tomatoes into little pieces.
• I also cup up a double handful of tomatoes from my balcony.  They’re a little smaller than Roma tomatoes, and red.
• Pulverize a few small cloves of garlic.
• mince five or six small sage leaves.
• mince a little bit of fresh rosemary, not so much as to overpower the sage.
• heat some quality olive oil in a pan.
• Sauté the sage and rosemary for a moment.
• Add the garlic and sauté until the rawness is cooked out of it.
• Dump in all of your tomatoes and toss.
• Season with salt and pepper.
• I put a little bit of ground thyme in the sauce too.
• Continue sautéing until the tomatoes release some of their juices to make things a little more of a sauce.
• Add the cooked gnocchi to the sauce and toss in the pan.
• I grated more Parmesan cheese on the plated gnocchi.

The Review: I thought this added up to a great end of summer/beginning of autumn flavor.  The time has arrived for the last of the fresh tomatoes and the first of the fresh squash.  The sauce was bright and bold, strong, and a bit acidic.  All of the tomatoes were very fresh and sweet, which helped a lot.  I also thought the mixture of yellow and red tomatoes made for a nice color with the pale-orange gnocchi.   I made the gnocchi a little too large, for lack of patience when rolling them out.  As it were, the size threw the texture off a bit.  But, they had a nice, soft squash flavor that could lend itself to a lot of different gnocchi dishes.

Stuffed Clams, Stuffed Thai Eggplant

Stuffed Clams:

• I used cherrystone clams.
• first, wash any dirt off of the clam shells.
• pour an inch or so of water into a big pot.
• add a bunch of salt.
• put the clams in.
• close the lid and turn the heat on.
• wait until all of the clams open, then turn off the heat and take them out of the water.
• let them cool.
• sauté a small handful of diced onions and a little bit of minced garlic in a little oil.
• when the clams cool, chop them up.  Cherrystone clams are a little on the tough side, although tasty.  So, they need to be cut into fairly small pieces to avoid getting chewy chunks.  (Nobody likes chewy chunks.)
• dump the onion & garlic into a bowl with your clams.
• add a whole bunch of Panko.
• some minced green onion.
• juice from one lemon.
• lemon zest.
• a little minced cilantro.
• some dried parsley.
• a couple handfuls of grated Parmesan cheese.
• salt
• pepper.
• some liquid left over from boiling the clams, enough to make the Panko and everything stick together.
• fill up clam shell halves with the mixture.
• bake them at 375ºF until a little bit of brown color develops on top.

Stuffed Thai Eggplant:

• cut the little eggplants in half.
• use a little spoon to scoop out as much of the insides as possible without destroying the shells.
• sauté some diced onions – more than you would for the clams – and a hefty dose of minced garlic in a little oil.  I used more oil than I might have otherwise so that there was still some to mix with the eggplant after the onions & garlic were done cooking.
• dice the scooped-out eggplant.
• mix it with the freshly sautéed onions & garlic.  And,
• a fair share of Panko.
• salt.
• pepper.
• red pepper flakes.
• plenty of paprika.
• noticeable portions of cilantro.
• a little bit of mint.
• loosely pack the mixture together and stuff it back into the eggplant shells.
• bake them at 375ºF until a little bit of brown color develops on top. (Just like the clams, in my case at the same time.)

Served With: LInguine with pesto and cauliflower.  I’m not going to go into the recipe.  I’ll just say that the pasta noodles were homemade, the pesto was frozen from when I killed off the basil at the end of last summer, and the cauliflower was an attempt to make sure we ate enough vegetables.  Altogether, it was the easiest way to fill out the meal with starch – which as you know, is the base of the food pyramid!!!

Thoughts: Clams = pretty good.  The bivalves themselves were fresh, oceany, and full of flavor.  The stuffing mix let that come through.  Eggplant = good for weeknight, not for a first date.  I was pleased that the eggplant’s own flavor was prominent.  And, the little green Thai eggplants are sort of cute.  My wife ate the skins, I scooped out the filling.  The skins are a little tough and bring a “raw” sort of flavor with them, for better or worse.

Spicy Chicken Meatballs, Sesame Cole Slaw, Plantains

Spicy Asian-ish Chicken Meatballs:

• Mix the following together:
• 1 lb. ground chicken.
• a couple big handfuls of panko.
• 2 finely chopped green onions.
• ground coriander seed.
• a small handful of finely chopped mint.
• finely chopped basil, about half as much as the mint.
• a large blob of SE Asian chili sauce, Sambal Oelek.
• salt.
• pepper.
• form the mix into loosely packed little balls.
• pan fry them.

Sesame Cole Slaw:

• A whole bunch of very finely sliced cabbage.
• several radishes, grated on the big grater holes.
• one carrot, grated on the big grater holes.
• salt.
• mayonnaise.
• rice vinegar.
• paprika.
• one small garlic clove, pulverized.
• pepper.
• red pepper flakes.
• sesame oil.
• whisk everything but the veggies together, then stir it into the veggies.

Plantains:

• Wait until their skins are almost entirely black.
• cut them in half lengthwise.
• peel them.
• cut them in half the other way.
• pan fry them in a little oil until they’re tender.
• use medium high heat so you can get some crispy outsides.

Served: Family (i.e. Asian) style with: rice, miso, and an assortment of pickled things, kimchi, etc.

How it Was: So, you know, this isn’t really a coherent meal so much as eating buffet style at home, for two people…  It is what it is.  The chicken meat balls were very good − nicely Asian-esque and fairly spicy.  I liked the plantains a lot.  But, my wife thought they were too sweet to eat with savory things.  If you’d like them less sweet, cook them when they’re less ripe.  Then, the slaw was fine.  The sesame oil helps keep it with the pseudo-Asian theme.  And, of course, around here service with bowls of rice and miso is pretty standard for weeknight meals.  It seems to be a dining style that leaves room to serve fairly disparate items.  And, because we always have a handful of pickled and preserved Japanese (and other Asian) foods in the fridge, it’s easy to fill out a meal without cooking more stuff.  Likewise, if I don’t make enough food for leftovers to be used for the next day’s lunch, we can put a little aside and just eat more pickled things and rice.

Pasta Shells with Shiso, Mussels, & Chorizo

Okay Okay… This dish is screaming to be made into a cream sauce.  I know.  But, we’re on a low cholesterol initiative around here.  So, it is what it is.

Cooking the Mussels:

• rinse, just in case the processing plant didn’t do a good enough job.
• into a pan with tall sides, put:
• salt.
• white wine.
• red pepper flakes.
• one clove of minced garlic.
• a pat of butter.
• dried parsley flakes (sure, fresh would be better, but I didn’t have fresh parsley).
• dump in all of the mussels.
• put the lid on.
• turn the heat on and leave it on until the mussels open, but not too long.
• drain the sauce into a bowl and separate out all of the mussels.
• when the mussels are cool enough to handle, remove them from their shells and put them aside.

The Sauce:

• drizzle some olive oil into the pan that you cooked the mussels in.
• sweat out two more cloves of minced garlic.
• add in a handful of chorizo (the hard Spanish variety, not the raw Central American varieties) chopped into small pieces.
• sauté for a minute or two, until it smells good and the chorizo has bled some color into the oil.
• add a small amount of finely chopped sweet bell pepper.
• pour in the liquid from the mussels.
• simmer to reduce as necessary.
• add ground black pepper and season as necessary.
• add in a couple of handfuls of finely chopped shiso leaves.
• add in a little corn starch slurry.
• simmer for a few more moments, enough to let the corn starch do its work.
• turn off the heat.
• dump the meat from the mussels in.
• stir.
• spoon over your pasta.
• I grated on some Parmesan cheese.  Yeah, on seafood, I know.  It was good though.

Served With: Spring green salad, from a bag – with tomatoes harvested from my balcony and some slices from the same bell pepper I used for the pasta.

The Good & the Bad: Actually, it was really tasty.  I think the fatty, intense chorizo makes a great compliment to fresh mussels.  So, yeah, like I said, this sauce is just dieing to become a cream sauce.  There’s no getting around it.  On the lower fat side though, (judicious) use of corn starch to get a little of the sauce to stick to the pasta was the best I could do.  It wasn’t like slimey cheap carry-out Chinese or anything…  And, for the whole cheese ≠ shellfish thing, just think of the Parmesan as being there for the chorizo.  The dish needed that little pungent note.  Oh, yeah, and I drank red wine with my seafood pasta too.  I must make for a terrible foodie.  But, then, the box only had red wine in it.  If someone sold variety pack wine boxes, I’m be the first to go all armchair sommelier with it.  As it is however…

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

Braising the Pork:

• Start with a pork shoulder picnic roast.
• hold a knife à la Norman Bates, stab holes in the skin of the roast, lots of them.
• melt butter in some vegetable oil in a large pot.
• sear all sides of the roast, starting with the skin side, to render out some fat, brown all of the sides, and to get some browned bits stuck all over the bottom of the pot.
• remove the pork from the pot.
• stir in a half a sliced onion.
• throw in a couple of smashed garlic cloves.
• pour in all of the soup stock left over from yesterday’s carry-out phò.
• pour in what’s left of the stock you made from salmon bones about a week and a half ago.
• pour in ½ the juices from a large can of whole tomatoes.
• chop ½ the tomatoes from that can into large chunks, throw them into the pot.
• stir to incorporate all of the brown bits from the pot into the liquid.
• add:
• salt.
• bay leaves.
• red pepper flakes.
• ground ancho chile.
• ground cumin.
• ground black pepper.
• brown sugar.
• a pinch of cinnamon.
• a little spoonful of cocoa powder.
• the hot sauce in the little plastic container that came with the phò yesterday, that you ate but your wife didn’t.
• stir.
• put the pork back into the pot.
• put the pot, uncovered, in an oven at 275ºF.
• braise all day, until the meat is falling apart.

What to do with the braised pork:

• Once removed from the liquid, pull apart any pieces loose enough that you can do so without burning yourself.
• spread them out.
• allow the pork to cool enough that you can handle it.
• remove the skin, bones, and every last little bit of fat you can manage to separate out.  It will still have plenty of fat left regardless, trust me.
• using your fingers, pull the meat fibers apart into fine shreds.  Be patient.
• put all of the pork into a big bowl.

The sauce, Phase One:

• Put all of the skin, fat, and bones into the braising liquid.
• simmer for an hour or so.
• remove the skin, fat, and bones.  Throw them away.
• remove the bay leaves.
• put the liquid with the tomato and onion pieces into a blender and liquefy.
• pour the sauce into a pot.
• add:
• juice from ½ a lemon.
• brown sugar.
• honey.
• red pepper flakes.
• salt.
• rice vinegar.  Then, when that bottle runs out because you didn’t have much, switch to white wine vinegar.
• cumin.
• cinnamon.
• a tiny bit of allspice.
• simmer for a couple of minutes.
• allow to cool in the refrigerator until the fat solidifies on top.
• remove all of the solidified fat.  Throw it away, it’s bad for you.
• your sauce will also be solid, because it has so much gelatin in it from boiling the skin.
• reheat the sauce enough to return it to a thin liquid state.

Preparing the Pork, One More Step:

• pour just enough of the sauce into the bowl full of pork to coat the meat.
• mix.
• drain off any sauce that will drip back into the pot.
• that’s all.

The sauce, Phase Two:

• Squeeze in the juice from the other ½ of the lemon.
• drop in the rest of the tomatoes from the can, except for the few you took out to make pasta in the meantime.
• put everything back in the blender and reliquefy.
• add more seasonings, most likely more cumin and red pepper.
• then, put in:
• more brown sugar.
• more vinegar.
• some Worcestershire sauce, just a little.
• probably some other stuff, to taste.
• simmer for a while.
• become distracted.
• return to your kitchen to discover that you forgot about your sauce.
• stir and check the viscosity.
• find it significantly reduced and thickened.  It, of course, has also darkened in color.
• turn off the heat and call it done.

Impressing Your Friends: You must find your own balance between adding the sauce to the pork before serving and serving them separately.  The meat has some pre-sauce mixed in.  However, it is not quite flavorful enough without the final sauce.  If you hang out with BBQ pork service snobs and you’re worried, you should probably find new friends.