Have you ever had tinga before? I hadn’t until I made this. Basically, it’s shredded meat in a tomato-chipotle sauce.
I made these one Sunday to have dinner ready for the next day. Actually, that same Sunday I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Do you ever do that, spend a lot of time in the kitchen on Sundays? I bet you do. I like to prepare for the week ahead, that way my time in the kitchen on weekdays after work is significantly diminished.
I have been really into Asian flavors lately, and I have started to keep white miso paste in my refrigerator to make quick miso soups for those nights that I don’t feel like cooking dinner. This is even better, because you know what else I always have? Carrots! And onions! And sesame oil. You really can’t skip the sesame oil in this recipe, it magnifies the deliciousness of the soup.
This side dish is so easy, and I love peas. The best part? You can make it all year long, since it’s great with frozen peas. If it’s springtime and you want to bother with shelling fresh peas, feel free, but I find that frozen ones are just fine.
The smell of caramelized butter and sugar is definitely a great way to start your morning. Mix that with chopped apples and fluffy batter, and you have this apple pancake, which isn’t like any pancakes I’ve ever made before.
The first time I had a macaron was in Paris, and I liked them so much I brought a box home to New York. Fast-forward to three years later and you can buy macarons as easily here as you could in Paris! We’re not talking about Passover macaroons here, which are gross when they come in a box, but I recently discovered are good if they’re homemade. These French macarons are popping up everywhere, but they’re expensive little cookies, some costing around $3 each. So I decided to make them myself.
The best part about eating Indian is the colorful variety. I already made a vivid green palak paneer, so I needed a contrasting side dish: This is an easy solution, and the yogurt has a cooling affect against the peppery spinach dish.
Remember when I made paneer? That was really only so I could make this dinner! A fragrant and spicy spinach dish flavored with garlic, cumin and green chiles. This was a good start for a Syrian cook, spice-wise, since I already have whole cumin in my pantry. So you don’t have to go spice shopping just yet!
I actually couldn’t find green chiles, but poblanos are pretty close, and they sell those at Fairway. Continue reading
I’ve experimented with Indian food before, but when I found an Indian cookbook in the food section of my library, I decided to try again. How to Cook Indian: More Than 500 Classic Recipes for the Modern Kitchen by Sanjeev Kapoor is a great introduction to Indian cooking, and I even renewed it so I could experiment with some more difficult recipes, too. Sorry, neighbors, for smelling up the hallway!
The first and easiest thing I made was paneer, an Indian pressed cheese.
Happy birthday to our big sister, Rayna! This year, instead of a birthday cake, you get a birthday challah:
We already have a few of challah recipes on this blog, but I always like to try new ones. This recipe splits up the process into two days, but I’m pretty sure you can use the same process for most other challah recipes; just make the dough and let it rise overnight in the fridge rather than a couple of hours at room-temperature.
Here, I display my loaves, one 6-strand braid and one 4-strand circle, on my beautiful new challah board that my Aunt Joyce made.
Potato-wrapped fish is like fish ‘n’ chips, but combined instead of side-by-side!
I remember seeing a recipe for this in Bon Appetit a while back, complete with instructions on how to wrap the fish, and I put it in the back of my mind. One day, with not much in the kitchen except frozen fish, potatoes, lemons and some greens, I thought of this technique. It’s a great dish to have in store, too; simple ingredients with an easy execution that looks impressive and fancy.
