Spicy yogurt-lime chicken

A happy accident today. A “yogurt dip” recipe by Marcus Samuelsson went awry and turned out to be way too thin, so I made a marinade out of it and it was gorgeous. Here’s my recipe, adapted  yogurt dip.

In a small bowl, mix

• 1.5 C plain whole milk yogurt
• the juice of 2 limes (while you’re at it, check out this protip on juicing limes efficiently)
• 2 tsp parsley, minced
• 2 tsp cilantro, minced

In a small pan over medium heat, add

• 2 T olive oil
• 2 inches ginger, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• a few whole dried chiles de árbol, or 1/2 tsp red chile flakes

Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then add:

• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander

Cook for a couple more minutes to get them spices toasty. Remove the chiles de árbol and do something else with them.

Allow this to cool a bit, then stir it into the yogurt mixture. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add:

• 6 bone-in chicken thigh+leg pieces

And refrigerate 1+ hours.

When you’re ready to cook, preheat the oven to 400F and bring out your chicken. Remove most of the marinade from the chicken pieces and place them on a rack in a sheet pan. Bake for about 45 minutes, basting with the remaining marinade twice during the final 20 minutes.

combination of two of winnie’s favorite things

had to come out of posting retirement to post this which is pretty much the perfect combination of two of winnie’s favorite things, food and needlecraft: Phil Ferguson’s Crocheted Food Hats.

In the land of the trinacria

In November, we spent a week in the southeastern part of Sicily, one of my favorite parts of Italy.

What’s in your pantry?

It’s been over a year since I went to my local farmer’s market, which happens conveniently on Thursday evenings and is a mere 10 minute walk from home. I am embarrassed and ashamed, and there is no good excuse. There, I said it.

Cooking at home is a lifestyle, and it has to fit your schedule and your routine in order to work. And while we haven’t made enough time for the farmer’s market, we’ve made do with the four good stores that are within a five minute walk. We can even get farmer’s market-grade produce at one of them–at a premium.

And still, at the end of a long workday, toward the end of a long work week, Karl and I often regress to whatever’s in the pantry. We know this. And until we get our act together and head to the farmer’s market, we’re trying to make the pantry nicer. We have Indian simmer sauces, Italian bean soups in jars, really nice tins of trout fillets in oil for simple rice bowls with nori. Add in frozen paneer and naan, frozen scallops and veggies, frozen stock, and a few things we always have in the fridge (eggs, milk, scallions, kimchee, miso, etc…) and it’s possible to pull together a delicious, sometimes nutritious, meal quickly.

And when we’re really lazy, there’s pasta. Here we draw a line in the sand: we always make the sauce from scratch. A can of diced tomatoes. A desiccated garlic clove, haphazardly chopped. Are those artichoke hearts from the back of the fridge still good? Perfect. Throw them in. Splash in some leftover red wine from the other night. Capers. Lots of pepper.

But what brings the entire thing come to life–the secret ingredient–is the olive oil on top at the very end. Lately, I am smitten with Costa dei Rosmarini olive oil from Liguria. Beautiful and silky, it makes even the humdrum pantry pasta sing out with fruity flavors, evoking the Italian summer. I’m putting it on everything.

What’s your favorite pantry ingredient these days? How will you make it through this winter?

Crowd pleasing

We were invited to a holiday potluck, and after receiving my assignment (something meaty), I struggled for a few days with what to make — devils on horseback, meatballs, wings, pâté — but just wasn’t feeling it.

When in Rome

 

The tonnarelli cacio e pepe at Flavio al Velovevodetto in Testaccio has left us pining for this dish days and weeks afterward.

Seeing red

A five-pound version of the hong shao rou from the excellent Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking. Fed us for a week.

Greek to me

An amalgam of two recipes I found online: shrimp with tomato sauce and feta.

Compounded

My friend Lillian came up with this recipe for the much-lamented Gourmet back in 2007, but I only just discovered it a few weeks ago, which means that there were seven long years that I missed out on this.

XS (Or, how the Christmas cakes stacked up)

I’m not big on the winter holidays, but over the last couple of years, compelled by the magical Massari panettone that my ever-generous friend Anna turned me on to, I have fully embraced Christmas cakes.