Doro Wat is a popular Ethiopian dish.  Literally translated as “chicken sauce” it’s spicy, chickeny and delicious.  And not too hard to make!  The only ingredient that your local grocery store probably won’t have is berebere.  In Seattle, head to Tana Market and get yourself some injera to go with it.  Once you have berebere in hand, plow ahead.  Or substitute something chili-powder like if you’re desperate.

Start with:

• 1 whole chicken
• 1 or 2 lemons, juiced
• 1t salt

Cut chicken into 8 pieces.  Marinate in lemon juice, salt for 30+ minutes.  You might want to stick the chicken carcass in another pot with water and boil it for stock.

• 2 onions chopped

Saute first two onions *without oil* on medium heat until transparent, moving regularly.  They say not to let it brown.  Use a good sized pot like a soup pot since everything is going in here.  While this is happening…

• 1 more onion
• 1 chunk of ginger, peeled (about 2 inches, maybe 3)
• 6 cloves garlic

Food process the extra onion, ginger, garlic.  When the first onions are ready, throw this tasty stuff into the pot along with…

• 4T butter (clarified Ethiopian butter if you’re cooler than me)
• 2T Paprika
• 4T Berebere
• 1t ground cardamom
• 1t ground fenugreek
• 1/2t ground nutmeg
• 1t salt

Note that you can trade berebere for paprika.  More berebere = more spicy.  This formulation is somewhat spicy.  Cook this stuff together for a few minutes, so it’s hot and well mixed. If you want a deep warm umami flavor, let this mixture saute for 5-10 minutes before moving on.  If you want it sharper and brighter, don’t linger here so long.

Next step, throw in the marinated chicken and:

• 1 cup chicken stock (about)

Slightly tricky here to add enough stock to cover the chicken, but not so much to make the sauce watery.  Have some faith that the chicken will “cook down” as its proteins are denatured.  Adjust heat to a simmer and wait for the chicken to cook, probably about 30 minutes.  We’re almost done.  A few last things.

• 6 hard boiled eggs

Cut slits into the sides of the eggs so they get more saucy goodness soaked in.  Add them to the mix about 10 minutes before serving.  Be gentle with them!  Also, if you’re so motivated, you might pull the good cooked meat off the boiled carcass, and throw it in too.

Now you’re ready to serve the traditional preparation.  My alternative variation is to keep simmering before the eggs for about another hour so the chicken is literally falling off the bones.  Remove bones, skins, knuckles, tendons, menisci, etc.  Then you get something that’s a lot more like “chicken sauce” with meat and sauce all mixed together.  It’s really good!

Oh and of course, serve with

• Injera

and eat it with your hands.

Mix:

• Pignolias (pine nuts)
• Dried blueberries (Trader Joes has good ones)

Not the highest calorie/$ ratio.  (Stick with GORP for that.)  But it sure does make a tasty treat!

Ingredients:

• Largish (5lb) whole chicken
• Spice Rub:
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Sugar
  • Cumin
  • Chili powder
  • Turmeric

Preparation:

Mix all spices together in a small bowl. Rub onto the outside of the chicken. Chicken now appears as such:

To prepare the roasting apparatus, dig a firepit in your back yard. Line with rocks. Assemble a mechanical rotating apparatus of your choice (hereafter referred to as the “spit”). I’m using two bicycles welded together with a meat-frame and a washing machine motor to drive them as such:

Throw in a bunch of wood, and light the fire. (Be sure to check with your local fire marshal to ensure that open cooking pits are allowed in your locality.) I suggest a tasty hardwood like Alder. Once the wood has reached a nice even temperature, attach the chicken to the spit. String could work, but for durability in the fire, I recommend metal wire, as such:

Allow the chicken to spin on the fire for about 60 – 90 minutes. Periodically check internal temperature with a meat thermometer to ensure food safety. Remove from heat and enjoy.

Conclusion:

The slightly smoked flavor is amazing. I’m really looking forward to roasting a whole lot more meat this way.

1 Portabello Mushrooms, grilled with olive oil, salt, pepper
1 large sweet onion, cut into 3/4″ slices and grilled until soft and a bit blackened
1 ripe avacado, cubed
1/4 cup sliced or slivered almonds
4 oz baby spinach
1 medium tomato, cubed
Yummy italian olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Yum!!

“No garlic!” Jenny screams looking at the pan full of onions and papaya with a sad face. She was convinced that her simple request for drunken late night eggs was turning into a disaster of silly opportunistic ingredient adding.

But the garlix went in and then…

Half a small white onion, chopped
half a papaya chopped peeled and seeded
Ginger
2 cloves garlic
1t tumeric
2t Corriander
2t crushed red pepper
Half a tomato, chopped
5 eggs whipped with milk and salt and pepper.
1/4 lb cocktail shrimp
grated cheese

YUM!!!

Background

I’ll admit it — sometimes I’ll post receipes that aren’t fully tested. I’ll cook something off the cuff that turns out wonderfully, and I want to share it. So I try to recreate the chaotic process that went on in the kitchen in words and numbers. And I don’t always get it right. Which is why I tell you to think about your food and try to imagine how it would taste if you changed it around.

But this recipe is well tested. I’ve cooked it probably a half dozen times in the last several weeks, measuring ingredients carefully and refining them. It’s really good now. Mark, thanks a ton for letting me borrow your grill. I’ll wheel it back real soon now, I promise!

Ingredients

Yummy Sauce:

• 4 T thai fish sauce
• 3 T black chinese vinegar
• 3 T sesame oil
• 1 T garlic finely chopped
• 1/2 T oyster sauce
• 1 t black pepper (fresh cracked)
• 1 t sugar
• 1 t hot sauce (hot cock sauce, tapatio, whatever)

Delivery vehicle:

• 2 lbs chicken thighs, with bone

Directions

1. In a medium sized bowl, mix together all the ingredients for the sauce.
2. Pull most of the skin off the chicken, but leave the bones. Dump the chicken in the bowl with the sauce.
3. Using a fork, poke lots of holes in the chicken, especially on the smooth side that had skin on it. This lets the sauce in deeper.
4. Fire up the grill on maximum heat.
5. Wait for 15-20 minutes while the chicken marinates.
6. Drop the chicken on the grill. Leave heat on high.
7. Every few minutes, baste sauce on the chicken, flip it, and baste the other side.
8. Measure internal temperature with a digital thermometer. Pull it off when the meat is consistently above 170 degrees when you measure it in several places.

Serves 2-4 as a main course, depending on how many supporting dishes you have.

Flavor Notes

Heavy umami flavor. Not very tangy. The oyster sauce is powerful. The sweetness of the sugar and the sesame are balanced by the peppers. The vinegars help the flavor stick, but can’t compete with everything else. The fish sauce makes it salty enough. Goes well with simple, light and crisp foods — steamed vegetables or a salad, or a classic Geoff Salad.

You can also try adding 1-2 T finely chopped red onion.

If you leave the oyster sauce off, it still works out really well. It ends up tasting much more like a classic (but very good) teriyaki. It’s not as heavy or rich.

This works really well on white fish too. Or any light-flavored meat.

Other Notes

Brushing the sauce on the chicken keeps it moist as it cooks. Be prepared for some really tender chicken. It can also cool it off, so be sure to use a good thermometer to see when it’s done.

Oil drips can catch fire on the grill below. This can cause little flame spurts or even sustained fires. Avoid these. If a fire does start, move your chicken away from it until it goes out. This process looks neato, but the smoke will give your chicken a dull grey color and matching flavor. The smoke’s really not good for you either.

Background

Okay garlic hounds — here’s your chance to strut your stuff. Show off your knowledge of garlic. Let your guests see what you can do with it. The bread is your canvas on which to paint with a thick garlicky brush. (I’ve been really enjoying my new silicone brush, BTW.) Garlic can take on so many different flavors — practice getting it to your favorite preparations and slather it on some nice white bread.

This dish is great because it’s an opportunity to explore what garlic tastes like in a controlled almost scientific environment. The only things to get in the way are some butter and bread. Pay close attention to what the garlic tastes like as you’re preparing it. You can learn a lot with this.

Ingredients

• 1 loaf crusty french bread
• 1-2 heads garlic (That’s heads not cloves.)
• 1 stick salted butter
• 2 T olive oil

Directions

1. Cut your loaf in half length-wise.
2. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
3. Chop up all the garlic.
4. In a small sauce pan, melt the butter with the olive oil.
5. Slowly stir in the garlic, starting with the largest chunks and ending with the finest chopped bits
6. When all the garlic is soft and has lost its bite, remove from heat.
7. Brush or pour the garlic/butter mixture evenly across both surfaces of bread.
8. Put the loaf back together. Wrap in aluminum foil.
9. Heat in oven for 15 minutes.
10. Open foil. Place 2 halves of bread on a cookie sheet, garlic face up. Broil for 60 seconds or so until toasted.
11. Cut into slices and serve.

Serves 8 as a side dish.

Flavor notes

The biggest mistake people make with garlic bread is to put raw garlic on the bread and hope it will cook in the oven. It won’t. The key to understand here is that the garlic your guests will eat is the garlic that goes onto the bread. If it’s raw, everybody’s in for a sharp smelly evening.

You can cook the garlic a bit in the broiler, but be very careful if you’re relying on this. It’s really easy to burn your bread. And the garlic probably isn’t going to soften or warm much. But you can do a little bit this way.

When you chop your garlic, don’t make it all the same size. Leave some of it in big chunks — the size of dried lentils or even peas. Chop some of it down to the size of grains of salt. Go for a continuum between the two. This is why you can’t use a garlic press — it gives you no control. This is really an exercise in layering garlic.

Add the big chunks first — they’ll roast slowly and give you that wonderful warm heavy sweet roast garlic flavor. You can tell they’re ready when they turn golden brown and fall apart easily. If you do have pea sized chunks, you’ll need to cook them slowly for a while to get here. I generally try not to leave much that big. Maybe half-pea sized at the biggest.

Just before you pull the mixture off the heat, add several cloves of really finely chopped garlic to get some high sharp notes. If you like that raw garlic kick, you can even add some after the heat is off. If you do this, don’t use too much — maybe 4 cloves. This is a perfect use for a garlic press, as it will break it down to super fine droplets that will soften even in the residual heat of the saucepan or the brief heat of the broiler.

Other notes

You can sprinkle cheese on top before broiling. That can be nice. Pesto can add a cool variation too.

Background

I’m not going to call this a marinara, even though it might seem appropriate. I’ve haven’t been to Italy (yet) and have only studied the cuisine casually. I think a proper marinara has a lighter simpler flavor than this. But I’m an umami junky, and this is the way I like my food — rich, deep and warm. My friends seem to like it too. This works really well as a lasagna sauce or a sauce for a pasta side dish.

Ingredients

• 28 oz crushed tomatoes (1 big can)
• 1-2 heads garlic, chopped
• 1 large yellow onion, chopped
• Fresh basil, finely chopped. About 1/4 cup. (or about 1 T dried)
• Oregano, same amount.
• Honey
• Lemon juice

Directions

1. Heat a large heavy skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the chopped onion and about a quarter of the garlic. Ideally you’d put in the garlic that is in the largest chunks first.
2. As soon as the onion starts to turn a bit brown, turn the heat down and add more garlic. Continue cooking, stirring, reducing the heat and adding garlic until the onions are translucent and soft.
3. Pour in the tomatoes. Reduce heat to a simmer. Add more garlic.
4. Mix in basil, oregano. Let them simmer for a while. The flavors will leech out into the sauce as they simmer.
5. Taste the sauce. Correct the seasoning with honey, lemon juice, and more herbs/garlic.

Serves 4 as a sauce over a pasta side dish. Covers about 2/3 lb dry pasta.

Flavor Notes

This is a pretty simple recipe, but it’s written assuming you know how to layer garlic and carmelize onions. I’ll be writing specific articles on these techniques real soon. When I do, I’ll update this recipe with the cross-references. Apologies for leaving this somewhat incomplete right now.

I always add some salt to the onions when they first go in the pan. Sometimes I’ll add some sugar as I’m carmelizing them. I read something once about how having pure sugar around helps the chemicals in the garlic/onion carmelize into sugary chemicals more so than if it wasn’t, but I’ve lost the reference. When I say “some” I mean a light sprinkling over the entire surface of the pan. It totals out to maybe half a teaspoon of each.

You probably don’t want to carmelize the onions as far as you would for an indian curry. Add the tomatos when the onions still have a bit of structure to them. I wouldn’t go all the way to uniformly brown. Unless you’re planning on layering the onions — I bet that would work really well, although I’ve never tried it.

Italians often add a touch of honey to make it taste more like you’ve used genuinely ripe tomatoes. In combination with the carmelized onion/garlic, this can lead to an oppressive sweetness. Lemon juice will cut that down. I’ll typically add 2 teaspoons honey and the juice from half a lemon. I like adding both to give a more complex flavor — they don’t cancel each out.

If you want to go all out, you can of course add fresh tomatoes. The skins are no fun, so you might drop them in boiling water for a minute — then the peel will fall off. When to add them depends on how ripe and yummy they are. If they’re fantastic wonderful bursting-ripe home-grown tomatoes, you probably want to chop them kinda small and add them at the very end — cooking just long enough to heat them up. If you bought them at the store, you should probably add them at the same time as the canned sauce if not a bit before to make sure they’re not still cruncy when you serve it.

Other Notes

This is my basic sauce that is used to support other foods. I made this most recently to go with linguine served with chicken parmesian. If the sauce is more the focus of the meal, then you’ll want to make it more hearty with some veggies. Brown mushrooms at the beginning or add zuchini when the onions are almost done. Chopped olives can go with the herbs.

Adding cheese at the end is another great way to get this sauce to stand out more. Parmesian, mozerella, romano — pretty much any Italian cheese works. There’s almost no limit to how much you can add. The limiting factor is your tolerance for goo. Keep the heat low and keep stirring to be careful not to burn the cheese.

Background

Who doesn’t love seared ahi tuna? The only trick is finding good stuff. I generally go to City Fish in the market. Make sure you go to a reputable high-quality fish merchant and get sashimi-grade tuna. You’re cooking the outside, but the middle is gonna be raw, so this better be good fish.

How to recognize good fish? It’s kinda like porn — I have a hard time describing it, but I know it when I see it. It’s pretty. It’s deep red. It’s clean. Nothing slimy about it. No discolorations. If you’re really lucky you’ll find some without the dark-red-almost-black blood-line, which doesn’t taste as good IMHO.

Ingredients

• 1 lb sashimi grade ahi tuna, cut as steaks about 1″ thick
• Soy sauce
• Sesame oil
• Peanut oil
• 5 cloves chopped garlic
• 1 inch fresh ginger root
• Green onions
• Kitchen timer that displays seconds

Directions

1. Chop the garlic and ginger.
2. Place the tuna in a big flat casserole dish. Sprinkle the ginger and garlic on top. Pour in enough sesame oil and soy sauce to get it wet all over.
3. Marinate for 15 minutes, turning at least once to soak both sides. Get some garlic & ginger on the back too.
4. Use a nice big flat frying pan. Pretty heavy. Put a generous amount of peanut oil on the bottom, and some sesame oil, and heat it up on maximum heat. Turn on your fan to maximum. Open the windows. Get a fire-extinguisher handy. Wait until the peanut oil is just starting to smoke.
5. Drop your fish steak in the pan. It’s gonna spatter. It’s gonna sizzle. It’s gonna be beautiful and dramatic. And it’s gonna make a big mess unless you have a spatter guard on top of it. But don’t seal it — let the steam out. Keep it hot.
6. Cook for about 45-60 seconds per side. This is a personal preference. Some may go as low as 30 seconds, but then there’s hardly any cooked meat. If your steaks are thin, this might be what you need to do. If your pan is super heavy (like cast-iron), or if you have some wondrous 25,000 btu stove cranked up you might want to go shorter too. You’re going for raw deep red in the middle, and nicely browned on the outside. I like about 5mm of cookage.
7. If doing multiple steaks, don’t keep them warm in an oven — they’ll cook through and you’ll be disappointed. Every other steak or so, you’ll want to clean the pan of the now-blackened bits of garlic and ginger lying at the bottom.
8. Sprinkle with some finely chopped green onions and serve. I’ll generally cut the steaks into more pieces than there are people. That way everybody can grab one or two as they like.

Serves 3 as a main course. That is to say, expect people to eat about 1/3 lb tuna each as a main course. I usually buy 1/2 lb per person, since it sucks for people to fight over the fish or feel guilty for eating as much as they want.

Flavor Notes

What’s to say? It’s wonderful. The garlic fries to a nice sweet, warm, caramelized taste. The sesame enhances that beautifully. Ginger gives it a pleasant high note. The soy sauce gives it enough salt. The green onions add color and a tiny bite.

I haven’t done it in long enough to rememeber, but I bet coarsely cracked black pepper would be great on the seared outside, along with the garlic and ginger. I bet it could take a whole lot of it too.

I use plain old gallon-jug soy sauce for this. I think double-black would come out too strong, but I haven’t actually tried it.

Other Notes

I haven’t gone down this road myself yet, but it seems logical to take the output of this recipe and feed it into something else. Probably a salad or something else cool. Go to a fancy pan-asian restaurant and you’ll get some inspiration. If you’ve got a flair for presentation (which I really really don’t) I’m sure you’ll have lots of great ideas.

Background

I had a big party at my house a few weeks back and somebody left a 3 litre bottle of wine. Three litres! I knew there was no way I could drink it myself, so I invited some friends over to help. Half an hour before everybody showed up, I was in a bit of a panic, debating with Rose not only what food we were going to serve, but whether the menu should be more indian, caribbean or east-asian or italian. Since I’d picked up 3 pounds of the most beautiful Ahi tuna I’ve seen in years, the main course seemed like it needed to be asian. Thinking plain white rice is kinda boring, I decided to spruce up a noodle dish I’ve done a few times. I put it together with stuff lying around my pantry and a bag of snowpeas that came in my veggie box. It turned out great. I was moving fast, so I didn’t measure much of anything, but here it is in rough strokes.

Ingredients

• 2 bundles japanese somen noodles. (They always seem to come in the same size bundles — about 1″ diameter.)
• 1.5 oz dried shitaake mushrooms. (Fresh is of course better. Maybe 1 cup fresh.)
• 1/2 cup snow peas
• 1/4 cup sesame oil
• 1 T double-black soy sauce
• 3 cloves chopped garlic

This should serve about 4 people as a supporting starch.

Instructions

1. If you’ve got dried mushrooms, boil them for 15-25 minutes to reconstitute them. You can re-use the water for noodles.
2. Boil water. Drop the noodles in. Watch them closely. They only need 2-4 minutes. If they’re the really thin kind, check them after 60 seconds. Strain them well. They’ll be a big solidish glob. If you’ve overcooked them, they’ll be a continuous glob.
3. Pour sesame oil and soy sauce over noodles. Mix until they’re coated. I’m not super positive about the amounts here, but the noodles should get nicely brown colored and really tasty just by themselves at this point. Taste them!
4. Chop the ends off the snow peas, and cut them in half. Mix them into the noodles raw.
5. Cut the mushrooms into 1/4″ slivers.
6. Fry the mushrooms in a wok on high heat with peanut oil and some chopped garlic until they start to turn brown.
7. Mix the mushrooms into the noodles.
8. Serve!

Flavor Notes

The overall flavor is a nice rich umami. The somen noodles & sesame do that for you in a fairly non-distinct way. The mushrooms compliment that well, but with an actual distinctive flavor. Then the peas add texture contrast and color. You could easily substitute something else for the snow-peas. Broccolli stem would work well. Fresh water chestnuts if you’ve got the energy. Bean sprouts. Green beans. Something light and crunchy. Throw in some chopped green onions for color if you want. The sharp notes would be a nice compliment too.

When putting the liquids on the noodles, don’t trust my quantities as gospel — start with less and work up. If it’s not tasty without the veggies, it’s not going to be tasty with the veggies. Think about your food — does it need something rich? Try adding more sesame. Something sharp? Maybe a little rice vinegar or chinese black vinegar. Maybe a touch of cayenne.

I fried the mushrooms to get that canned-watery taste out they get after rehydration. Fresh mushrooms will definitely want frying since they start really spongy and a bit flavorless. I tossed on some rice vinegar and a touch of MSG to make them tasty. Dehydrated-rehydrated mushrooms are much chewyer than fresh, but that can be an asset if used properly.

Other Notes

I served 8 with about twice this. I used slightly less noodles than this (3 bundles for double recipe as opposed to 4) and it came out very rich and veggieful, and not quite enough food. (That is, everybody gobbled it all up hungrily.) I wanted this to be more of a filler starch to make sure nobody was hungry, so I upped the ratio of noodles here. Mine was kinda like serving a rissotto as your starch.

I always keep dried shitaakes stocked in my pantry. They keep forever. They come in 3 oz packages at your favorite local asian grocery store and they’re really not expensive.

I ended up cutting the noodles much shorter with a knife in order to get everything to mix more evenly. Otherwise it was a massive ball of noodles with veggies around the outside.