Turkish Chicken Thighs

This recipe was fabulous! I made this for the first time the other night, and it was a huge hit. I have been experimenting quite a bit lately with yoghurt based marinades for meat, because they really tenderize without adding much additional fat to your meal... and well, because they taste really good!

I found this recipe for Turkish Chicken Thighs on the website Eating Well which has tons of great healthy recipes. I had to go out and buy some hot paprika (I found "Hot Hungarian Paprika") and WOW, was it good. It was so much more flavourful than regular paprika. I threw all the rest of my regular paprika out, and I will only be using "Hot Hungarian Paprika" from now on.

Right after I mixed the marinade and tasted it, it had quite a kick to it, and I thought, "uh oh, the kids will never eat this", but after 24 hours in the fridge marinating, it mellowed and the kids never complained about the heat.

The chicken was tender and juicy and the flavour was really great.

The kids were really confused by the name of the recipe, "Turkish Chicken Thighs". Claire said, "well Mom what is it? Like, make up your mind, TURKEY or CHICKEN...." (yes she really did say "like" and she rolled her eyes too). So I explained that Turkey is a country and this recipe combines flavours and spices that are sometimes used in Turkish cuisine. Marco pipes up, "So turkey's eat chicken?" Sigh. This made me think I should try making a Turducken sometime.... THAT would be a fun one to explain.

Turkish Chicken Thighs

8 skinless chicken thighs (I used boneless)
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup low-fat plain yogurt
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
2 tsp hot paprika
1 1/2 tsp dried mint
1/2 tsp salt

1. Mix together lemon juice, yogurt, garlic, ginger, paprika, mint and salt.

2. Place the chicken in a ziploc bag and pour the yogurt mixture over the chicken. Close the bag and mush it around.

3. Refrigerate overnight.

4. Preheat barbeque grill to med-high. Remove chicken from ziploc bag and discard marinade. Grill until chicken is juicy but cooked through (about 15 minutes).

5. Alternately, you could place the chicken on a broiler rack in the oven at 400F for about 15 minutes until cooked. Serve immediately.

Chicken Shawarma

Mario and I have always been big fans of Lebanese food. In particular, we love shawarmas. There is no shortage of Lebanese take out places here in Ottawa where we live and when we were in University, we frequented many of them (usually in the early hours of the morning).

I have experimented several times with making shawarmas at home, but I think it's just one of those things that you will never quite get right without the proper equipment, techniques and of course the secret recipe for that amazing garlic sauce (yum).

When I saw this recipe for chicken shawarmas in the July 2008 issue of Cooking Light magazine, I knew I had to try it. It didn't quite have the taste of an authentic Lebanese shawarma, but we thought this recipe was very good in its own right. The marinade on the chicken was great, and I could eat my chicken breasts just marinated and grilled this way anytime. The sauce was very good, and was probably way healthier than the sauce you would normally get on a shawarma.

Overall, we thought this recipe was a keeper.

Chicken Shawarma
adapted from Cooking Light Magazine, July 2008

Chicken:
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp curry powder
2 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb chicken breasts, cut into strips

Sauce:
1/2 cup fat free plain yoghurt
2 tbsp tahini
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, minced

Other ingredients:
Pita bread
Chopped lettuce
Tomato slices
Chopped red onion

1. Combine first 6 ingredients of marinade. Cut chicken into strips (I cut each breast into 3 strips) and pour marinade over chicken in a Ziploc bag. Marinade in fridge all day (or overnight).

2. To prepare sauce, combine yoghurt and next 4 ingredients. Mix well. The sauce can be made ahead and stored in the fridge.

3. Preheat barbeque grill. Shake the excess marinade off the chicken and thread on barbeque skewers. Grill for approximately 4 minutes per side until chicken is cooked through.

4. Place pita bread on the grill for a minute or two to warm.

5. To serve, place lettuce tomato and onion on top of the pita bread. Top with chicken and drizzle with sauce.

Salami Cones

Well, it's been an unforgivably long time since I've written a post, but rather than going into a whole list of excuses (most of them would be made up anyway), I'm just going to give you all a nice new recipe.

I've gotten a lot of e-mails over the past few months, hundreds probably, and to answer the most common question I've been asked.... YES, I am STILL hungry!!

This is a nice little appetizer recipe that I've made tons of times. It's a little finicky to put together, but well worth the effort for all the compliments you will receive.

Salami Cones

1 4oz package of cream cheese
1 cup finely shredded Monterrey Jack cheese
1-3 tbsp milk
3 tbsp very finely chopped red pepper
1 package (at least 12 slices) hard salami, thinly sliced
baby dill pickles

1. Mix softened cream cheese with Monterrey Jack and red pepper.

2. Mix in milk. Add one tablespoon at a time until mixture reaches the consistency of cake icing.

3. Spoon into pastry bag fitted with large nozzle (this is why you have to chop the red pepper very fine, or they will clog the opening).

4. Cut each salami slice into 2. Roll each half into a cone and fill with cream cheese mixture. Secure with toothpick and a chunk of baby dill.

Apple Ginger and Hazelnut Coffee Cake

This coffee cake was delicious. I was a little wary when I first read the recipe, there is so much ginger, I thought it might be overpowering. But it wasn't, it was perfect. I also found that this cake got better the next day. The first night, I served it warm with vanilla ice cream. The next day, it was still delicious and even more moist. (moist? moist? moister? that's a strange word anyway, if you ask me)...

I didn't think the kids would like this cake. There is just a little too much going on in terms of healthy stuff and alcohol, and not nearly enough going on in terms of candy or chocolate. But as usual I was wrong, and they really liked it. I brought the leftovers in to work, and they disappeared pretty quick.

Apple Ginger Hazelnut Coffee Cake
from LCBO Food and Drink

1/3 cup dried cherries (I used cherry flavoured dried cranberries)
1/3 cup dark rum
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1 tbsp freshly grated ginger
2 1/3 cups flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 cups peeled and diced apples (2 large)
1 cup sour cream

Topping:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 cup toasted hazelnuts, coarsley chopped

1. Soak dried cherries in rum for at least 20 minutes.

2. Beat butter and brown sugar. Add egg and fresh ginger and blend until mixed.

3. Sift together the flour, 2 tsp ground ginger, baking soda, and salt. Stir into butter mixture. Stir in diced apple, cherries and rum, and sour cream. Mix until well incorporated.

4. Spread batter in a greased 9" x 13" pan.

5. Stir together topping ingredients and sprinkle over batter.

6. Bake for 40 minutes at 350F, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool and cut into squares.

Beef Bourguignon

It has been a little while since my last post. I want to tell everyone not to worry... Janet is STILL hungry. I have a few excuses for my lack of updates. Would you like to hear them? No? Too bad...

The first one is laziness, I have just been feeling a little lazy these last few weeks (call it winter blahs), the second is that for a while I had lost my camera case, along with that little cable (the very important cable) that connects my camera to the computer. So while I have still been cooking and taking tons of pictures, I have been unable to get any of those picture off my camera.

Well lo and behold I finally found the cable and the case, in one of my little bugger's beloved children's bedrooms, the cord was tied around the neck of one their stuffed animals, like a leash.

The good news is, I now have a backlog of recipes (enough material to last until Christmas) so I had better GET POSTING.

This first one is a Beef Bourguignon. I was never a big fan of stews growing up. I found the meat tough and a little "stewy". Then one night we were invited to a dinner party. My friend's wife, we'll call her "Angela" (OK, that's ACTUALLY her name) made beef bourguignon, it was an epiphany for me. A real eye openner. It was so good. I've been missing out. This isn't Angela's actual recipe, I use one from the Williams Sonoma Kitchen Library book on "Beef".

I served this with roasted fingerling potatoes (roasted with olive oil, red wine, garlic and parsley) and a rosemary focaccia for mopping up the extra gravy.

Beef Bourguignon

1/2 lb bacon
8 green onions, chopped
2 onions, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups flour
1 tsp nutmeg
salt and pepper
3 lbs cubed stewing beef
olive oil
1/4 cup Cognac
2 cups beef stock
2 fresh thyme sprigs
3 cups dry red wine
1 bay leaf
24 pearl onions
5 tbsp butter
2 tbsp sugar
1 lb mushrooms
chopped fresh parsley for garnish

1. Chop raw bacon into small pieces. Cook in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat until browned. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.

2. Add enough oil to the bacon fat to make 1/4 cup and add diced onions, carrots, green onions and garlic. Saute until soft. Transfer to a large oven proof pot.

3. In a large dish mix the flour, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Toss the cubed beef in flour to coat. Add to frying pan with enough oil to prevent sticking (I had to do 2 batches). Brown well and transfer meat to the large pot with the veggies.

4. Use the 1/4 cup cognac and some of the beef stock to deglaze the frying pan over high heat. Scrap all the bits of good stuff off the bottom and then pour into pot.

5. Add remaining beef stock, wine, thyme and bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Once boiling, transfer covered pot to oven and bake at 325F for 3 hours.

6. In the meantime, peel the pearl onions (easier if you blanche them for 30 seconds or so). Saute them in 2 tbsp butter with 2 tbsp of sugar until browned. Remove to a dish, in the same pan saute mushroom with remaining butter. Transfer to dish with onions.

7. 30 minutes before ready to serve, add onions and mushrooms to the stew. Continue baking.

8. Serve and garnish with bacon bits and chopped parsley.

Cornbread

The night before last, we decided to have chili for dinner. Lately, I've been serving the kids chili on top of toasted buns (sort of like Chili Sloppy Joe's), but this time I decided to try them out with some cornbread. I have always loved cornbread, and I figured they would too. I've made it for them before, in the form of Pogo Stick Muffins, and they ate that.... so....

I found this recipe for cornbread on The Pioneer Woman Cooks website. I decided to try her recipe because I thought, given she lives on a ranch and all, that she'd make some good authentic cornbread. She did not steer me wrong (she never has and I've made lots of her recipes).

Normally, I would have used butter in cornbread, but I went ahead and made it almost exactly as she suggested, so I used shortening. It was very good.

Marco didn't eat it. He tried it, and said that he didn't like cornbread. I usually don't argue too much when Marco says he doesn't like something. He usually eats ALMOST everything, and he always tries stuff. So I figure, at 4 years old, he's allowed to have a few things he won't eat.

Claire loved the cornbread. So I gave her some in her lunch the next day with some cold cuts and sliced cheese and carrot sticks alongside. She decided to try to saw the cornbread in half with the side of her hand so she could make a little cornbread sandwich. It all fell apart, and then she wouldn't eat it. When I picked her up she ACCUSED ME of giving her crumbled cornbread... Sigh, poor Claire what did she ever do to deserve a wicked cornbread crumbling Mom like me??

Cornbread

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp shortenning
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 400F and place 8x8 inch dish in oven to heat.

2. Mix flour, cornmeal and salt.

3. In another bowl, mix buttermilk (you can make a cup of buttermilk by adding a tbsp of lemon juice to the milk and letting it sit for 5 minutes) with regular milk and egg. Stir in baking powder and baking soda.

4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until combined. Melt 1/4 cup of shortenning in the microwave and stir into batter.

5. Remove pan from oven and put 2 tbsp of shortening in the pan, spread around until melted. Pour batter into pan. Return to oven and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Saffron Couscous

My kids hate couscous, but I love it and I'm selfish, so it really doesn't stop me from preparing it whenever I want. Plus, I figure they are never going to learn to like it unless they are exposed to it a bit.

This time they were complaining, "why is it all yellow?" I explained that the saffron made it yellow and they turned their noses up at that. So I decided that next time I make couscous, I am going to put a few drops of food colouring in it. Maybe I'll make it blue or purple. But knowing my kids, and how illogical they are they'll gobble it up, if it's purple.

Saffron Couscous

1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup couscous
1 clove garlic
1 green onion
2 tbps cilantro
1/8 tsp crush saffron threads

1. Finely chop the garlic, green onion and cilantro. Add to saucepan with chicken broth and saffron.

2. Bring to a boil. As soon as the broth is boiling, add the couscous and remove from heat.

3. Let sit 5 minutes and serve. I always use a 1/2 cup measure as a mold when I am serving it up (and a 1/4 cup measure for the kids).