Category Archives: Cookbooks

Buttery Whole Wheat Paratha

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Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

I’d never heard of a flatbread called paratha, but I love breads, flat or not, and I knew the rest of our meal would need something (we were having the braised lentils, also from this book; watch for that review soon).  In the story that goes with this recipe, Clarks says she based her recipe on one from Madhur Jaffrey, the queen of Indian cooking. Now, I don’t own any of Jaffrey’s cookbooks, but I’ve heard of her from lots of  people I trust, so I figured these flatbreads were probably going to be pretty good. They certainly looked easy enough.

A simple dough is made from whole wheat flour, melted butter, salt and water. The dough is divided into sixths and each part rolled into a circle. The circles are brushed with more melted butter, sprinkled with nigella seeds (I can’t find nigella seeds around here, so I used sesame seeds. Clark says you could also use poppyseeds), folded into a semicircle, brushed with more melted butter and sprinkled with seeds and folded in half again. The triangle of dough is then rolled out, brushed with melted butter, sprinkled with salt and cooked in a skillet until browned on each side. Did you notice that there is a little bit of butter going on here?

What you end up with is a buttery, flaky disk of crispy bread. I guess, anyway. I ended up with a buttery, gummy disk of bland wheatyness that kept getting stuck in my throat. The problems were probably more my fault than Clark’s. I should have used more salt on them, and I should have rolled them out thinner at the end. If you google “paratha,” you’ll find lots of pictures. I didn’t take any, because I was too busy trying to swallow.

Note: Except for the one I ate, Bryan ate the rest of the paratha. He liked them. I don’t know why.

Chile-Coconut Braised Beef Short Ribs

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Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

Clark has introduced me to another ingredient that I’ve never cooked with – boneless, beef short ribs. Where have they been all my life? How have I lived without them? This dish was so good and easy, don’t let the word “coconut” in the title scare you. There is enough heat in the dish to counter any coconuttyness you find. I couldn’t taste the coconut milk; Bryan said he could, but that didn’t stop him from inhaling his meal. And he doesn’t really like coconut.

The dish starts off by browning the short ribs (which you’ve cut into 2-inch chunks) in oil. Garlic, jalapenos, ginger, shallots and cumin seeds are added to the pot and allowed to cook for a minute before coconut milk (unsweetened, please), lime zest and juice, salt and pepper and water are added. The pot gets transferred to the oven where the meat braises until it is fall-apart tender. And succulent. And just plain wonderful.

As usual, I made a few minor changes. I left out the ginger (yuck) and added more garlic and shallots. I also used lemons because I forgot to buy limes (darn). We ate this over brown rice, but it would work over any grain, or potatoes or even pasta. This is definitely a dish worthy of company.

White Bean Stew with Rosemary, Garlic and Farro

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Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

There’s an allure about bean dishes – filling! thrifty! nutritious! – that makes me feel kind of ashamed that I don’t eat more beans, especially homemade ones (in other words, opening a can is cheating somehow). There’s just something about the whole soaking ahead of time that I can never remember to do. Fortunately, Clark admits that she has the same problem and promises that you don’t really need to presoak your beans; they’ll just take longer to cook. So with that in mind, when I started making this stew with unsoaked beans, I was prepared to wait several extra hours while the beans softened. Fortunately, I used small cannellini beans, and they were done in under two hours. But after one bite of this bean stew, I would have happily waited another two hours for it. It was everything a bean stew ought to be. Tender, flavorful beans in a rich, meaty sauce. I have to admit that I did make a few small changes, but even so, I feel pretty safe saying this is my favorite recipe out of this book so far.

With the exception of the farro, this is a “throw everything in the pot and let it cook” dish. Dried white beans, olive oil (a lot of it), garlic, celery, onion, clove, rosemary, thyme, bay leaf and a Parmesan rind thrown into a pot, covered with water and simmered until the beans are tender. Once the beans get close to being done, you boil up a pot of farro, pasta style, until the grain is tender. When you are ready to serve the dish, half of the beans are roughly pureed, along with more garlic, and stirred back into the pot to thicken the stew. The stew is then served over the farro with some more olive oil and lemon juice drizzled on.

I think there are a lot of things that contribute to the most excellent flavor of this dish. First, don’t skimp on the olive oil. Second, please do use a Parmesan rind if you can. And third, throw something piggy in with the beans. I used some chopped up ham. A ham hock, bacon, even sausage will add a nice meaty flavor. As to the changes I made, first, I used dried herbs instead of fresh (I’m pretty sure there are no fresh herbs in Northern Idaho right now, and if there are, they cost an arm and a leg), I added chopped up Swiss chard to the beans at the end, I didn’t throw away the onion after cooking, and I used bulgur instead of farro.

The only change I’d make next time is to forget the grain. This stew is so hearty and filling that I don’t think it needs the grain and that’s just an extra pot to wash.

Braised Pork Chops with Tomatoes, Anchovies and Rosemary

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Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

I don’t have much to say about this dish. It was easy to make, it was done in less than 30 minutes and it was okay. Not stupendous, just okay.

You start out by browning bone-in pork chops. Next you saute onions, rosemary, garlic, tomatoes (I used canned) and anchovies until the tomatoes start to break down. The pork chops get nestled into the tomato mixture and baked until they are done.

My pork chops were a little dry; Clark calls for thick-cut chops, but I could only find thin ones, and I think I ended up overcooking them slightly. We ended up with way more sauce than we could use for two pork chops. The extra sauce would be good over rice or pasta or potatoes.

Finally, this was the first time I’ve used anchovies in my cooking. You hear people say that the anchovies melt into the food, and that they don’t make food taste fishy. Those people are right.

Green Goddess Dressing

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Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

I’ve never tasted green goddess dressing. I actually hadn’t even heard of it until just recently, so I didn’t know what to expect when I made this recipe. Maybe something like ranch dressing, except greener?

What I got was an intensely green, very vegetal liquid. Interestingly enough, both of Clark’s books has a recipe for green goddess dressing. The recipe in Appetite is more of a dip, calling for sour cream and mayonnaise. The recipe in Cook This Now uses buttermilk and makes a thin, pourable dressing. Both recipes call for lots of herbs such as basil, parsley and cilantro, some sort of onion (green onions or chives) lemon juice, garlic and anchovy fillets. Everything gets ground up in a food processor until smooth.

I went with the thinner, dressing-like recipe in Cook This Now simply because I had buttermilk that I needed to use. I made it to serve over the roasted eggplant dish from Appetite. I also used it as a dressing for a grated carrot salad and as a topping for rice. It’s a good, all-purpose dressing with a bit of a kick (from what, I’m not sure, but it makes my mouth burn just a bit).

Roasted Eggplant

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Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

This is new territory for me. I’ve never cooked an eggplant, and I’ve only ever tasted it in that dip, Baba Ganoush. But hey, anything is good if it is roasted. My supermarket had exactly three eggplants sitting on the shelf. I went with the nicest looking, smallest one (about a pound), because I’ve read that large eggplants can be bitter. My eggplant felt kind of like a soft balloon.

To prepare the eggplant, you cut it up into 1-inch cubes, drizzle the cubes with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast them at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes. Pretty standard instructions for roasting vegetables.

In the oven, the eggplant cubes pretty much collapsed (after soaking up all the olive oil) and stuck to my pan. Visually, they were unappetizing, and I found the flavor of them to be bland with a very soft texture. Except for the skin. The skin was kind of tough. Clark’s instructions don’t say anything about peeling the eggplant, so I didn’t. At the table, I wondered out loud if I should have taken the skin off. Bryan, who was poking at his eggplant suspiciously, immediately had to go to the internet to find out if I had poisoned him.

In the end, we both decided that we didn’t like the eggplant. Bryan thought it was bland and had no flavor, and I didn’t like the too soft texture. The only saving grace was the green goddess dressing (review coming up next) that we drizzled over the roasted eggplant.

Olive Oil Granola

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Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

I might have mentioned that I’m on a granola kick. Lately, I can’t get enough of the stuff, whether I’m sprinkling it on greek yogurt or eating it by the handful. And although I’ve been perfectly satisfied with my go-to coconut granola recipe, I figured I’d better try this one. You know, to be fair. Or something.

This is a standard granola recipe with one big, glaring change. Instead of using a neutral vegetable oil or butter, Clark’s recipe (which comes to her via Nekisia Davis of Early Bird Granola) uses olive oil. This gives the granola a savory note, a little more oomph, and makes it not quite as sweet as other granolas. You can change out the nuts (Clark used pistachios and pumpkin seeds; I used almonds and pumpkin seeds) as well as the dried fruit (I don’t care for dried fruit in my granola, so I left it out). Oats, coconut flakes brown sugar, maple syrup, salt and cinnamon round out the recipe. Everything is tossed together and then baked until brown and crispy.

While I enjoyed the granola, I don’t think it will replace my usual granola recipe. I didn’t really taste the olive oil, and the granola didn’t get as crisp as I would have liked, though I might have just needed to bake it longer. The granola was also slightly greasy.

Not-My-Grandma’s Chicken with Lemon, Garlic and Oregano

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Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

At some point in my life, I decided that I was a chicken breast kind of person, not a drumstick one. Maybe it was that little piece of fatty, chewy gristle that I could never seem to avoid eating, or the fact that there always seemed to be more bone than meat on a drumstick. Whatever it was, I haven’t eaten chicken drumsticks for years, until this recipe came along. Now I’ve made it twice in one week.

The first time I made it, we ate most of the drumsticks before I could get a picture (curse you winter and your early darkness). Since I wanted to try the dish with more lemon and less garlic and it really needed a picture, I made it again, with a few changes.

The recipe begins by having you rub drumsticks with olive oil, salt and pepper, and broiling them until they are lightly browned. While the meat is broiling, you create a paste by mashing up some garlic cloves and stirring in lemon juice. Once the drumsticks are browned, you brush the garlic/lemon juice paste over the chicken, sprinkle it with oregano and bake the dish for 25 to 30 minutes.

Here’s what I learned the two times I’ve made this. I like my drumsticks with less garlic (two or three cloves as opposed to Clark’s five) and more lemon (the juice of two lemons instead of Clark’s one). Make sure you smash the heck out of the garlic (if you have a mortar and pestle, this is the time to use it. I don’t, so I just used a knife to  smear and mash the garlic). I also broiled my chicken until it was very dark brown and baked it for about 20 minutes. Finally, use the smallest dish you can, even if it means you have to wedge the chicken in. If you use too big of a dish, the stuff on the bottom (bits of garlic and chicken and lemon juice) can burn.

The lemon, garlic and oregano make this dish fragrant and tasty. It comes together very, very quickly and is perfect for a weeknight meal. I’d imagine you could use thighs instead of the drumsticks, adjusting for a longer baking period. You could even use chicken breasts, but I wouldn’t use skinless breasts. With the broiling and the baking, I think a skinless chicken breast would dry out before it got cooked all the way through.

Barley with Carrots, Scallions and Maybe Parmesan

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Currently cooking from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

I was looking for something to serve underneath those lemony, garlicky chicken drumsticks, and I thought this might work well. I was hoping for an alternative that could stand in for brown rice (my go-to grain), but I ended up not liking this very much.

You start off by simmering barley until it is almost tender, then adding grated carrots. Once everything is tender, you drain any remaining water and stir in olive oil, chopped scallions, Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper.

I thought the dish was very, very bland, even with the scallions and the cheese. I ended up adding lemon juice to perk up the flavor, and I could have added more cheese (but I had already washed the grater, and I was feeling too lazy to wash it again).

Garlicky Sesame-Cured Broccoli Salad

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Currently cooking from In the Kitchen with A Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

We are broccoli eaters around here, so I was intrigued by this recipe when I saw it. You cut up a couple heads of broccoli into bite-sized pieces, then toss them with salt and red wine vinegar. While the broccoli marinates, you heat olive oil with garlic and cumin seed, stir in sesame oil and a pinch of red pepper flakes and pour the whole thing over the broccoli and vinegar and let it sit for an hour to so at room temperature. The hot oil softens the florets just enough that they aren’t raw crunchy, and the vinegar adds a welcome acidity, cutting the richness of the oil. Although the broccoli will continue to soften as it sits, it will remain perfectly toothsome for several days in the refrigerator.

This is a nice change from my usual roasting or steaming method. I did have to add about twice as much vinegar as the recipe called for as there wasn’t enough to coat my broccoli, but I found that I liked having a stronger vinegar flavor. I’ve made this twice, and found that the smaller I cut the broccoli, the softer it gets. The second time I made this, I cut down a bit on the amount of cumin called for and still thought there was too much. Don’t leave out the red pepper flakes. They add just a touch of heat that contrasts nicely with the cold broccoli.