Pretty often, in the dark of an Ohio winter I get a craving for food that reminds me of warmer times. You know, things that are grilled, or bright “summer” flavors or even better, the sort of meals that are best enjoyed sitting around a garden patio table with friends and wine and a long slow waning day.
Long slow waning … unlike the 4:30pm sudden and shocking “Well, I guess it’s dark now. Should probably make dinner.” that’s the norm for the months that end with weary (however you choose to spell it).
So, I wanted to make something a little brighter, something to remind me of another time. This week was also the 3rd anniversary of my dad’s death, so of course I’d been thinking about him as well. Dad was – for a guy that seemed very staid and settled in his ways - an unexpected adventurer. Those adventures included time living in the Middle East working on archeological digs – like a very very nerdy version of Indiana Jones, or so I supposed as a kid. Regardless, that meant that Dad remembered and loved middle eastern foods – and that we were exposed to some of them, or at least the midwestern available analogs – as kids.
So, with Dad’s memory on my mind, and a desire to do something (however small) to escape from the 45° and raining cold and grey and dark before happy hour drudgery of midwinter midweek.
This week’s menu is a middle eastern inspired chicken dinner, and I think Dad would have liked it.
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Pearl Couscous Salad
Simple truth: I make this salad because I mostly completely hate Tabbouleh. Ok, that’s unfair. I don’t hate all Tabbouleh, just most. In particular I hate the stuff that featured frequently on the menus or in salad cases of the various hippiehealthrealfood restaurants and co-ops that were a mainstay of my collegiate and post collegiate years. Unseasoned wheatberries and stuckinyourteeth shreds of garnish parsley don’t really make for an appetizing dish. Since then, obviously, I’ve been exposed to some really great versions – but my antipathy to the dish as a whole remains. When it’s good, it’s great. When it’s not, it’s beyond disappointing.
As I’m not one of those masterful cooks who can consistently produce one that’s great – I stick to something else. Really, this is just a simple pasta salad, but the texture of pearled couscous is so much fun – sort of like savory dinner plate version of those tapioca pearls in bubble tea – that it feels elevated and fun and fancy. And maybe possibly the greatest thing about it – if you chill the pasta in ice water, you can throw the whole thing together in minutes: just cook the pasta while you’re preparing the vegetables and dress. Will it be better after a few hours for the flavors to meld? Yeah. Will it be 80% that good without the wait? Yup.
2 cups uncooked pearled couscous
2 medium tomatoes
1 hothouse/English style cucumber
½ red onion
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp chopped mint leaves
1 tbsp chopped parsley
salt and pepper to taste
Cook the couscous according to the package directions.
Peel, trim, and finely dice the onion.
Remove the ends, seed, and finely dice the cucumber.
Seed, and dice the tomatoes.
Add the tomatoes, cucumber, onion, garlic, salt, and lemon juice to a large non-reactive bowl and allow to rest for 15 minutes.
Stir in the olive oil.
Add the pasta and toss well to coat, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Refrigerate the mixture for at least 1 hour, checking seasoning once more.
Just before service, stir in the chopped herbs – this keeps them fresh and bright.
Rather Large Flatbread
This, again, is a rehash of a rehash because I really like making flatbreads. Unlike previous flatbreads I’ve made for this newsletter; this version doesn’t include yogurt – though you can certainly simply use that recipe. The only substantial difference here is – because of a recipe further down in this here text – is that I’m going to use about half the dough to make a huge nearly pizza sized flatbread neé platter-made-of-bread for a delicious chicken dish. It sits there soaking up the juices and … well, it’s really really god and a lot of fun to eat.
Just to be clear, while the size and shape of this bread is sort of vaguely inspired by taboon – a traditional Arabic bread – it’s not that. Though I’d love to, I’ve never had the chance to try the real thing, and this is simply a repurposing of another general purpose flatbread I’ve made for years.
500g Bread Flour
300g water
7g yeast
25g olive oil
10g salt
Add the water and yeast to the bowl of a stand mixer, and stir to combine.
Allow to sit for 5 minutes.
Add the bread flour, yogurt, salt, and olive oil and process with a bread hook until a smooth dough has formed.
Turn the dough out into a lightly oiled bowl, and cover.
Allow to rise until doubled in size.
Divide the dough into 2 pieces.
Form one half into a large ball, and gently stretch and or roll into a large pizza sized round.
Divide the remaining half into 4-6 smaller pieces.
Roll the remaining pieces into balls, and lightly flatten them with a floured hand.
Allow to rest 10 minutes, covered with a damp towel or plastic wrap.
Roll each piece into a thin circle approximately 1/8th inch thick.
Heat a griddle, comal, or thick bottomed pan over medium heat.
Griddle the flatbreads, turning once they begin to puff up, until lightly browned on both sides.
If (like me) you don’t have a griddle large enough for the large piece, you can bake it on a stone in a 450°F oven – turning once (unlike a pizza) until puffy and lightly browned.
Baba Ganoush
Like my comments on the nefarious parsleyintheteeth salads I mentioned above, I was pretty hesitant about Baba Ganoush for a very long time. See, most versions I’d tried were mostly a sort of grey goo made from big batches of peeled and “roasted” (aka steamed in their own juice in an overcrowded hotel pan) eggplant coarsely blitzed in a food processor – without much in the way of adjuncts or seasoning.
Then at some middle eastern joint in San Francisco – whose location and name I’ve unfortunately long ago forgotten, someone in our party ordered it. The lucious, smooth, smokey, flavorful dip that arrived at the table, doused with good olive oil and finished with a sprinkling of pepper flake was unlike any of the goo I’d had (or indeed cooked – it was a menu item at a restaurant where I had worked). I ordered a second plate.
In the summer I use my pizza oven to roast and char the eggplant, but most normal – or even toaster ovens will work. That step – roasting the whole eggplant – is the key to a smokey flavor and that lucious smooth (not gloopy) texture. Even if it does make the kitchen smell like burnt leaves for a few minutes.
2 large American style eggplants
1 clove garlic.
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp good olive oil
1 tbsp tahini
1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp Aleppo pepper (for garnish)
Preheat your oven to 450F.
Peel, trim, and microplane or finely mince the garlic.
Slice the eggplants in half lengthwise, and place cut side down on a sheet pan lightly that’s been lightly oiled, or lined with a silicone mat.
Roast at 450°F until lightly charred.
Allow the eggplant to cool completely.
Using a spoon, scoop out the flesh (including any charred bits) and transfer to the container of a blender.
Discard the skin.
Add the garlic, oil, lemon juice, cumin, and salt to the blender along with the roasted eggplant, and process until smooth.
To serve, drizzle with good olive oil and sprinkle with Aleppo pepper.
Palestinian Style Roasted Chicken Thighs
First and foremost, this isn’t an authentic recipe. It’s inspired by a traditional Palestinian recipe, but it’s not authentic. This – like many of the things I cook – evolved from something I tried somewhere or heard about and tried to reproduce on my own. In this case, with help from google and a few other sources over the years. That’s mostly because the key ingredient in this dish – well, if you don’t count the chicken – is something that I’d never used at all until about a decade ago: sumac. No, not the stuff you’re warned about as a kid in the southern US – or the weird part of Ohio and Pennsylvania where Poison Sumac grows despite not being the south. That’s a different plant.
Sumac is the dried and ground berries of a similar plant and has a bright, slightly bitter, slightly sour flavor sort of like a more floral citrus note. I’ve come to love it – and a chicken dish where it’s the main flavor? Yes please.
This is iteration … I don’t even know … of this dish for me. I’ve tried simple and more complex versions – but slowly, inexorably, settled on something in between. It’s slightly sweet – from the onions and honey, slightly sour from the sumac and lemon, spicy and rich from the cumin and allspice, and best of all – when you layer it over flatbread (either the big one mentioned above, or just a pile of normal sized bread) the bread soaks up all the delicious juices.
4 large bone-in skin on chicken thighs
1 large red onion
6 cloves garlic
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp dried sumac
2 tsp honey
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp ground allspice
Garnish
Rather Large Flatbread
Minced flat leaf parsley
Sumac
Crushed pistachios or Pine nuts
Generously season the chicken thighs with salt.
Peel, trim, and coarsely crush the garlic.
Peel, trim, and slice the onion from end to end.
Wisk the sumac, cumin, allspice, honey, lemon juice, and olive oil together to form a uniform marinade.
Add the chicken and onions to the marinade, and rest, refrigerated, for at least two, and up to 4 hours.
Preheat your oven to 400°F.
Arrange the chicken and onions on a sheet pan.
Roast until the chicken is well browned (and has reached an internal temperature of 170°F), and the onions are slightly charred – about 25 minutes.
To serve, arrange the chicken and onions (and any delicious pan juices) on the large flatbread, and scatter with pistachios or pine nuts, additional sumac, and fresh torn or minced parsley.
Surprisingly Tiny Goat Cheese Tarts with Honey, Pistachios, and Apricot
These surprisingly tiny tarts are a lesson in reading the package instructions. I’d intended to make individual sized tarts. In fact, I’d originally intended to make -sort of- my own little individually sized tart shells from filo dough. I mean, I wasn’t going to make the dough, I planned on buying store bought dough and shaping/baking it into individual little 6 inch tarts.
I’d already tested the fillings, all I needed was the shell.
Only when I was there in the grocery, staring at the slightly frosted freezer case I saw pre-shaped filo dough tart shells and I said to myself … “you know, as long as you’re already using store bought pastry, what’s the difference if they’re premade shells?”
Well, the difference is about 5 inches. Which I would have known had I actually looked at the package.
But, as we do, we make do. So I filled the almost impossibly tiny tart shells with goat cheese custard, and topped them with apricot glaze and pistachios and the surprisingly tiny tarts were surprisingly fun. And tiny. And didn’t require another trip back to the store.
The moral (morals?) of this story is read the package or enjoy eating tiny desserts.
1 package prepared filo dough shells
2 egg yolks
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup whole milk
½ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup fresh goat cheese
1 sachet powdered or two sheets unflavored gelatin
½ cup shelled roasted pistachios
¼ cup apricot preserves
1 tbsp honey
¼ tsp ground cardamom
Bloom the gelatin in water – if using leaves, cut up and soak in cold water. If using powdered, sprinkle the powder over 1 tbsp cool water.
Separate the eggs, discarding the whites or reserve them for another recipe, or for one of those tasteless pale omelet analogs.
In a non-reactive, heatproof bowl, whisk the whites
Add the milk, sugar, and cream to a thick bottomed pan over medium heat.
Bring the mixture to a very low simmer.
Add the bloomed gelatin to the milk mixture and stir to dissolve.
While whisking vigorously, slowly pour 1/3 of the milk mixture into the eggs.
Again, while whisking, slowly pour the egg/milk mixture back into the rest of the mixture.
Stirring constantly, cook over a low flame until slightly thickened.
Whisk in the goat cheese, working until melted/smoothly integrated.
Allow to cool until room temperature, then use to fill individual filo shells.
Transfer the filled shells to the refrigerator to set.
In a small pan, gently heat the apricot preserves and honey until melted.
Add the cardamom and pistachios and stir to combine well.
Allow to cool slightly, and spoon over the tops of the tarts.
Refrigerate to set.