kebab b’il karaz

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather for various reasons (hence the much less regular posting - sorry), but I’m finally managing to get back gradually to real food and wine. The other night J decided to break out one of our new cookbooks, Street Food by Tom Kime, and make Turkish lamb meatballs with sour cherry sauce, called kebab b’il karaz.

We had ground lamb in the freezer and plenty of dried tart cherries on hand, but we did not have any pomegranate molasses, which forms the basis of the sauce. After calling around to local specialty stores, none of whom had even heard of pomegranate molasses, J decided to make his own by boiling down pomegranate juice into syrup. It worked great!

The original recipe suggested serving the kebabs as one of many dishes, with lots of flatbread. J made chapatis, and we put the hot meatballs and sauce on a bed of fresh spinach, which went beautifully with the cherry sauce. The flavor is very rich, dark, sweet and spicy, so it’s good to have something to contrast. Couscous would be good, too.

braising a brisket

On Sunday we did something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time - stayed home all day! We ventured out only to bring in the paper and fetch a bay leaf from the tree in the back yard. The morning was snowy and the rest of the day gray and uninteresting, so it was a perfect way to spend the day. We had gotten a brisket out of the freezer a couple days before. J got it prepped and simmering before breakfast, so its aroma filled the house all day long. We had it for dinner with mashed potatoes and some spinach sauteed with garlic.

We’d never done a brisket before, so we just picked a recipe that looked interesting from the book Kitchen Sense by Mitchell Davis. It uses ketchup, which sounded odd but somehow intriguing. The final product is very tender, and the flavor sort of reminiscent of barbecue, but also sort of like meatloaf. I might make this one again sometime, but I don’t think it’ll be my go-to brisket.

Braised Brisket

adapted from Kitchen Sense by Mitchell Davis

• 1 small brisket (ours was only 3 lbs or so)
• 7 oz ketchup
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp worcestershire
• 1/2 Tbsp dry mustard
• 1/2 Tbsp white vinegar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp New Mexico chile powder
• 1/4 tsp paprika
• 1 good grinding of black pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 3/4 cup water

In the garden: snowdrops

It may still be winter, but the bulbs in the garden know spring is coming. There’s a small herd of snowdrops under our fir tree that have managed to survive poor conditions and the local stray cat community, and they’re just now opening.

saag paneer & dal

This whole soft-food thing has been a great brain exercise for us. I’m feeling like I’ve eaten enough white carbs to do me for a while, so thinking of things that are soft and flavorful but NOT bread/pasta/rice is a real challenge. I managed a small bowl of chili at a restaurant last weekend and realized that beans are my friends - soft, nutritious and full of protein. We decided to make red lentil dal for dinner, one of the softest and most comforting foods out there. To round it out, we made one of our favorite Indian dishes, saag paneer (spinach with panir cheese). Panir is the tofu of India: bland on its own, but a great foil for and absorber of strong flavors.

I love saag paneer not just because it’s softly spicy and full of cheese - it’s also really easy to make, assuming you can buy panir at your local shop like we can. If you have to make it from scratch…well, in that case, you might want to make something else (unless you have better luck making cheese than I do). Same with the greens - you could certainly buy a bunch of fresh spinach, but this is a dish where I think it’s better by far to just pull a bag of chopped spinach out of the freezer.

Padang fish curry

In further pursuit of soft foods I can eat after my oral surgery last week, I’ve been going through cookbooks and looking for recipes that use white fish - I figure it’s one of the few animal proteins that doesn’t require much chewing. I’ve also been getting bored, so I thought a curry might be nice, as long as it didn’t have too many chunks in it. What I ended up with was the Padang fish curry, a sweet and slightly spicy coconut milk dish, from Cradle of Flavor. Thank goodness, it was actually like eating real food again!

Padang fish curry for two

adapted from Cradle of Flavor by James Oseland

flavoring paste:

• 2 oz shallots, coarsely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1/4 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 piece fresh ginger, thinly sliced
• 2 unsalted macadamia nuts

for the curry:

• 2 Tbsp canola oil
• 1 stalk lemongrass (ideally), tied into a knot
• 2 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 daun salam leaf (if you have it)
• 10 oz coconut milk
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• kosher salt
• two serrano chiles, tops cut off
• 2/3 lb white fish

In the garden: helleborus sternii

This the most subtle of the hellebores in my garden, but very elegant. The purple stems and glaucous leaves are the main attraction, but the flowers are nice when they show up. It does very well in a neglected corner of the yard in rather dry shade, and looks good when everything else is still flat and muddy.

still on the “soft food” diet

Ordinarily I’d think this was a nice lunch: homemade macaroni and cheese with cauliflower, and a bowl of Pacific brand roasted red pepper and tomato soup. I am so tired of it. I’m starting to be able to eat a bit easier, but nothing chewy or crispy any time soon - and I’m amazed at how bored I’m getting. I’m tired of ice cream (I know, shocking).

I have ideas for something more interesting for dinner tonight, but in the meantime - anyone out there have any good ideas for soft foods? I can chew on one side, but I’m supposed to avoid acidic or caustic foods, or anything too hot, cold or spicy. What are your favorite foods for après-dental work?

soft foods & liquids

Things may be a little quiet around here for a couple days. I got a tooth pulled yesterday, and in between naps and trying to remember which pills I should be taking, I’m now casting around for ideas of things to eat with as little texture as possible, with the added fun of nothing hot, acidic or alcoholic.

As you might imagine, I’ve had a lot of yogurt. And cream of tomato soup. We had macaroni and cheese with steamed cauliflower last night, that went down pretty easy. So I’m not starving, but it all seems a little dull. And not very photogenic, either.

On the other hand, it was a perfect excuse for J to make me some ice cream! We dug out our copy of The Perfect Scoop, which hasn’t been seeing much use the last couple months, and I decided that plain old chocolate custard ice cream would do the trick. So J got hold of some good bittersweet chocolate and did it up, and oh my god it’s good. Like a fudgsicle, but a million times better. I can’t believe there’s a pint of it in my fridge right now and I’m not currently eating any. After the custard had chilled it was like a wonderful chocolate pudding, we almost didn’t want to put it in the ice cream maker - but it was even better afterwards.

You don’t need to wait until your next date with oral surgery to try this ice cream - go right out and make it now!

snowshoeing and pasta

I only had a one-day weekend this week, so we decided to take advantage of it and went snowshoeing. Our usual spot is the access road to Hannegan Pass, below Mount Baker. We like it because it has parking, isn’t usually too populated and, as long as you don’t go up too far, has virtually no avalanche danger. We snowshoed up to Artist Point once and I’m amazed there were no avalanches - we were very lucky that time, and I prefer not to risk it if I don’t have to.

The snowshoe itself was nice enough, although the snow had turned to rain and we quickly overheated in our snow gear. We went just far enough to work up good appetites, then headed back down the valley to Glacier. Lunch at Milano’s, after all, is the real reason we like to go hiking or snowshoeing at Mount Baker.

If you’ve been skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing or hiking, what could be better than an enormous plate of pasta and a bottle of wine? Milano’s takes care of all your carbohydrate needs, from their delicious crumbly cornmeal bread to their homemade linguine and panini to their intimidatingly rich dessert selection. We try to go anytime we’re up the Mount Baker Highway - but we need to earn it with a little physical exertion.

dinner at the Oyster Creek Inn

Birthdays in our house are never just one day - it’s more of a birthday week (one celebratory dinner is never enough). So I took J out for dinner at the Oyster Creek Inn, one of several restaurants perched precariously on the edge of Chuckanut Drive. It’s a funny place, very quiet and romantic but with a slight rustic edge, and an amazing view down a ravine to Oyster Creek, covered in ferns and loud with the sound of the rushing water. The chef there is Peter Belknap, of Gretchens Cooking School fame, but he had somehow managed to take a vacation this week, so we weren’t able to harass him from the dining room. The food was still excellent, though! We tried to take pictures but, believe me, you don’t want to see them (too dark).

We had intended to start with the Kung Pao clams, a dish we had tried over a year ago and loved. They didn’t have it, which crushed us briefly, but we rallied and ordered mussels with ginger and chile oil, along with a half bottle of Fess Parker viognier. The mussels were some of the best I’ve ever had, just in terms of freshness and texture, and they were sitting in a sauce chock full of ginger chunks. The chile wasn’t very obvious but there was still a nice zip to the dish. It went fantastically with the viognier, which under other circumstances might have been too sweet and syrupy for my taste - but it contrasted with the fresh ginger to great effect.

For our entrees, I ordered a pork tenderloin and J got the New Zealand rack of lamb. Both were excellent, but I particularly liked what they were served with: a melange of roasted vegetables, caramelized and savory, and a tangle of red cabbage. It was dark and hard to tell, but I think there were potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, carrots - maybe parsnips? We had a bottle of Stag’s Leap petite syrah, which was big, bold and fruity - a great pairing with the meat and vegetables.

For dessert I had a cup of coffee, but J (true to form) needed to try the creme brulee. He said it had a great crust, but the custard itself was a little curdled in texture. Not that he let that stop him from eating it.

It was a nice dinner - quiet, warming and cozy. The waitress seemed a little awkward, but she also seemed to be the only person working outside the kitchen. Our table was by one of the big windows looking down into the ravine, and even though there were other diners in the room it felt very private. It’s not necessarily a place for adventurous eating, but for a mellow, comfortable evening out - just what we wanted.