I really love a good fritter but I am often disappointed in the fritters we make at home. We have made a few different versions of zucchini fritters at home (here and here) and both times I found the texture of the fritters to be disappointing. They were soggy and a little oily. Even when the flavor of the fritters is perfect (like it was with these Sweet Potato and Kimchi Pancakes), I just can't get them to crisp up enough. One exception to our fritter disappointments was this Thai recipe for Corn Fritters. They were delicious and had great texture. Somehow our fritter disappointments haven't in any way dissuaded me from making more fritter attempts. This version was among the most successful and I think I have discovered the trick to making fritters at home - you don't want a batter per se. Instead you want a mixture that barely holds together with chunks of vegetable and just enough flour and egg to bind the fritters together. All of our fritter failures have featured batters with more liquid than vegetable (or included watery vegetables like zucchini). And that is totally where we went wrong. This recipe made for a very thick batter that had almost no liquid to it at all. It was almost like a chunky dough rather than a batter. Of course that type of consistency makes the fritters a little more delicate because they have so little filler. They are hard to flip and don't hold together particularly well, but the flavor and texture of the cooked fritters are both excellent. The fritters tasted gloriously cauliflower-y. I liked the flavors of garlic, lemon and salty feta. I also thought that the contrast of the heat from the cayenne and crushed red pepper flakes against the smoky cumin-flavored yogurt and the sweetness of the pomegranate seeds made for a really interesting and flavorful dish.
Recipe after the jump!
It seems that most of my best menu planning recently has spontaneously occurred while stretching after spin class. I'm not sure why that is, but it seems that everytime I go to spin class on Sunday afternoon I come home with a bunch of new ideas for dinner and/or lunch. For example, the Char Siu Noodle Soup that I made last weekend and the Sping Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls were both post-spin class ideas, as were this guacamole and the red snapper tacos that I served it with. As I was sprawled on the rubber mat at Equinox yesterday I kept thinking about the number of avocados (4) we had in the apartment. I bought the avocados for a salad we made a few days ago and we had a ton left that I didn't want to go to waste. The logical conclusion was that we needed to make some guacamole. I already had a recipe in mind for Sunday lunch, but I decided to scrap it (or save it for dinner) and make some guacamole instead. The guacamole that immediately came to mind was a version we had at La Condesa in Austin, Texas that included queso fresco, pomegranate molasses and pomegranate seeds. It sounded like an odd combination but it was really tasty. And then I thought, ok, let's make some guacamole with pomegranate seeds and serve it with fish tacos (more on the tacos later). Since we had a bunch of mangos left over in the apartment from a recent trip to Whole Foods, I decided that I would make a mango salsa to serve with the fish tacos. Then I stumbled across this recipe and decided that rather than make a mango salsa for the tacos and a pomegranate guacamole for the appetizer, why not make a mango, pomegranate guacamole and kill two birds with one stone? Perfect!
I think that this guacamole was a fun variation on traditional guacamole. I liked the bursts of sweetness from the mango and the pomegranate seeds. Alex can't make homemade guacamole without a pinch of ground cumin (it's kind of his thing) so he threw some in while I was putting together the fish tacos. I still think that the pomegranate guacamole we had at La Condesa was better so the next time I start jonesing for some pomegranate guacamole I will try to recreate that one. But if I were to have people over and offer up a guacamole and salsa bar with several versions of each (maybe for Cinco de Mayo), this one was totally interesting enough make the line up.
Recipe after the jump!
I have to be honest - sometimes I make food because it is just too darn pretty to resist. Look at this salad for one. My picture doesn't do it justice, but if you check out the original recipe at Bon Appetit and the version from Smitten Kitchen, it's just gorgeous and so very festive - I love the colors of the white bowl or platter, the greens, the proscuitto and the pomegranate. And I love the combination of proscuitto and fruit, whether it's pomegranate or melon. The fennel made me a little nervous because neither Alex nor I is particularly enamored of the licorice/anise flavor of fennel, but sometimes you have to live a little. When I was thinking of a salad to go with the Spicy Chickpea Soup I was making for dinner I jumped at the opportunity to make this one and then didn't bother to tell Alex what I was making, except to say that he would like it because it includes one of his favorite ingredients. I believe Alex said something along the lines of "sure" and then went back to fighting the good fight with Turbotax. When I put the salad out on the dinner table I was hoping that it was every bit as tasty as it looked and it absolutely was. The pomegranate seeds gave the salad a wonderfully sweet and tart flavor that balanced nicely against the salty porky flavor of the prosciutto and the anise flavor of the fennel. For those of you who might worry about the inclusion of the fennel, I think that tossing it in evoo and salt prior to adding it into the salad mellowed out the intense flavor of the fennel. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it worked in the salad.
And given how much we both liked the salad, I think it definitely made the cut for recipes that we will making again in the future. I would definitely serve this salad for company (or for the holidays) because it looks and tastes fancy, even though it is supremely easy to throw together. I know this is completely superficial but it would look so perfect on the table for Christmas dinner or any dinner party, and sometimes, you just want to look perfect.
Recipe after the jump!
It looks like today is a poultry day. I started off the morning with a post about roast chicken breasts and now I am following it up with roast duck breasts. I have a number of other posts that I could substitute for this one, but I am kind of digging the poultry theme I have going on so I am going to stick with it. Anyway, this duck recipe is what I served Alex and my father for Christmas dinner. There were other sides and such that went with it (including a version of this salad to which we added radishes and cherry tomatoes and a pumpkin cornbread - more on the cornbread later). Since I was cooking I got to pick the recipes and duck was a no brainer because it is is one of my absolute favorite things to eat. As far as I am concerned, a nice Peking duck is one of the finest meals in the world (a nice seared duck breast is a close second). Brussels sprouts were another no brainer because I love them dearly and they are easy to roast. This duck breast is one of those dishes that is more than the sum of its parts. When I first tried the pomegranate-chile sauce I wasn't sure what I thought - it had a lot of flavor from the pomegranate juice, the adobo sauce and the dried chiles. It was interesting, but I wasn't sure how it would go with the duck. In some ways it almost reminded me of a really refined take on a BBQ sauce (if BBQ sauce ever involved pomegranates). Duck is fatty enough and flavorful enough in its own right to work well with fairly aggressive sauces and seasonings, but I was a little worried that this might be taking it a little too far. But once I tried a mouthful that combined the duck, the sauce and the little pomegranate seeds, I realized that it all came together really well. The duck is rich, but the sweet, tart flavor of the pomegranate seeds and the slightly sweet, slightly spicy sauce make a really nice dish. Given that the sauce starts with a caramel, I really expected it to be a little sweeter than it was, but the caramel gave it a nice deep, subtle sweetness to balance out the chiles. I didn't think it was at all spicy (but if you have a more sensitive palate you might disagree), although the flavors of the chiles and adobo were definitely present. You might need to modify the cooking times if your duck breasts are particularly large or small, but as written I think the recipe is pretty spot on for normal duck breasts. This isn't the world's most refined and elevated duck recipe, but it is a very interesting and beautiful one. Plus the colors were pretty perfect for Christmas if I may say so myself.
Recipe after the jump!
We occasionally try recipes for the blog that I can't decide if I like. They are interesting. And I enjoy eating them because they interest me, but I just can't figure out if I actually like them or not. This recipe... intrigued me. It had a really interesting combination of flavors and textures - a healthy dose of acidity from the sherry vinegar, the grassy flavor of the celery, the sweetness of the pomegranates, the floral warmth of the allspice and the flavor of the herbs. It was a very strange but interesting dish. I can't say it was my favorite thing we have ever made, but it was one that will not soon be forgotten. Alex was a little worried about the recipe since it includes a number of ingredients (like celery, dill and parsley) that he isn't particularly enamored of. In the end he liked the recipe, but didn't love it. I definitely liked it more than he did. After some debate we served the barley salad with a riff on Alex's Roast Chicken Breasts. To stick with the Middle Eastern theme we dusted the chicken breasts with a combination of za'atar, sumac, s&p before roasting it. At the end we added a few thinly sliced rounds of fresh lemon to the hot pan when we added the butter and then topped the cooked breasts with the roasted lemon slices.
I wonder if all of Yotam Ottolenghi's recipes will be similarly intriguing. Thus far, I have found the three recipes that we have attempted from his cookbook to be interesting and unusual, but I have yet to be overwhelmed with how delicious they are. I'm going to keep trying new recipes from the cookbook because thus far I have yet to be really disappointed, plus the pictures are so stunning that I can't resist them. And I like recipes that push us outside of our comfort zone. We are not as adept with Middle Eastern flavors and ingredients, but I really want to become more familiar with them. And I keep saying that we are going to eat more vegetables, so a vegetarian cookbook seems like the logical place to start. The next few recipes I have bookmarked to try are his Black Pepper Tofu (definitely not Middle Eastern, but interesting nonetheless) and maybe the Roasted Butternut Squash with Sweet Spices, Lime and Green Chile.
Recipe after the jump!
First and foremost, I wanted to say how excited I was when we bought Yotam Ottolenghi's new-ish vegetarian cookbook, Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi. All of the recipes in there looked so interesting and the pictures were so beautiful, but I kept picking it up and putting it down because we already have so many freaking cookbooks. I just didn't want to buy another. But I am really excited that I finally caved. Second, my pictures of this dish look awful compared to the pictures in the cookbook. Just look at the cover of Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi and you can't help but be impressed by how utterly gorgeous his food (and the pictures of his food) is. And then you look at my picture. And the eggplant kind of looks like a... well I'm not going to say it because it's not at all appetizing. But my pictures are nowhere near as pretty.
Since this recipe is the picture on the front cover of the book and therefore a large part of the reason that I bought the book, I thought it was a fitting first dish for us to make. And if this dish is representative of the other recipes in the cookbook, I am infinitely glad that we did. Of the two of us, I thought that I would be a bigger fan of this dish but it turned out that Alex was. He said that love was too strong of a word, but he "enjoyed" the dish and described it as having an interesting blend of flavors - the buttermilk/yogurt sauce was kind of tangy and the pomegranate gave it a nice sweetness without the whole thing being too sweet. I would agree with all of his comments, but add that the fresh thyme was a really nice herbal (slightly floral) addition. The eggplant itself was almost creamy and with the pop of the pomegranate seeds you ended up with a nice textural contrast as well. My one complaint is that some bites of the dish just weren't as well seasoned as others, but you run into that problem with most roasted vegetables. I know we make that comment/criticism of a lot of roasted squash recipes. The layer of eggplant at the top that really absorbed the evoo and buttermilk sauce was delicious. The layer that you scraped off the bottom (even after the addition of more buttermilk sauce) was less so. All things considered it was a really interesting dish. It was not my favorite dish that we have ever made, but the recipe is definitely worth trying.
Recipe after the jump!
