Tag Archives: tastes like chicken

A variant on kheema

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My mother swears by a kheema recipe she found in a 1980s cookbook – I modified it the other night, and present it to you thus:

Kheema with turkey and spinach

Ingredients

  •  300 g ground or diced turkey
  • 2 tbs canola oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 tbs fresh ginger, diced
  • 2 tsp ground cumin (I prefer to buy whole cumin, toast it in a cast iron pan until browned, then crushed in a mortar. It tastes a million times better than what you get in stores)
  • 1 tbs coriander seeds, crushed
  • 1/2 tsp chili flakes
  • 1-1/2 cups hot water
  • 1 cup frozen peas
  • handful of baby spinach, shredded
  • 2 tsp salt
  • 1 tbs garam masala
  • Juice of half a lemon

Steps toward delicious

  1. In a cast iron pan or heavy wok over medium-high heat, heat 1 tbs of oil. Drop in the turkey and cook until it it just cooked. Be sure to break up the turkey as it cooks.
  2. Remove the turkey from the pan, tamp out the moisture. Add the rest of the oil to the same pan, then add the onion. Cook until the onion is soft.
  3. Add the garlic and ginger. Cook until the onion is browned.
  4. Add the cumin and coriander and chili flakes. Stir stir. You may decide to add more oil at this point, but it’s up to you. Turkey can be a lean meat.
  5. Add the turkey, giving it a stir to coat everything with spicy goodness. Then it’s time to add 3/4 cup hot water (I use water just off the boil from the kettle). Bring to a boil, then reduce to medium-high, cover, and cook for 20 minutes.
  6. Remove cover. Stir it up. At this point, the mix should still be plenty moist.Add the salt, garam masala, lemon juice, and remaining water. Stir, re-cover, cook for another 10 minutes.
  7. Uncover. Taste. You may decide to add more salt at this point.
  8. Add the peas and the spinach. Crank the heat up to high, stirring constantly. At this point, you want to accomplish three things: heat up the peas (already cooked in the freezing process), cook the spinach out, and get rid of the rest of the water.
  9. When that’s all done, serve over rice or quinoa.

Most recipes call for ground lamb or beef, but I prefer poultry myself. It’s even better the next day.

Homemade Chicken Soup with Quinoa

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So it goes a little like this:

A few weeks ago, I roasted a chicken and saved the bones and stuff with the vague idea of making stock. I ended up freezing the bones (for optimal freshness).

And it goes a little like this:

Roast chicken stock

  1. Take the reserved bones, skin, joints, meat scraps, etc, and chuck them in a soup pot.
    1. If you kept it, throw in the refrigerated roast drippings for added flavour.
  2. Add water to cover the bones, then some more.
  3. Chop an onion, two ribs celery, one large carrot, and throw into the pot
  4. Also add the following spices:
    1. 2 bay leaves
    2. a handful of peppercorns
    3. one clove
    4. a whole dried chili
    5. a pinch of thyme
    6. and a pinch of oregano
  5. You may want to add some salt.

Bring all this to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook for about two hours, adding more water to keep the bones covered.

A note: Unlike making stock from a raw chicken, you may not have to skim the scum from the top. Your milage will vary.

After all this is over, fish out the bigger bones and stuff with a slotted spoon. Then strain the soup into a big bowl. With a flat spoon, skim off as much of the fat as you can.

Go team.

Chicken Soup with Quinoa

This one is really easy.

Into a pot:

  1. 1.5 cups chicken stock (see above)
  2. 0.5 cups cooked quinoa
  3. Bring back to a boil.
  4. You can also add some cooked chicken meat. Chop it up though.
  5. Before you serve, taste for salt.
  6. Serve with a bottle of hot sauce. I use Frank’s (I put that stuff on everything)

The quinoa gives it a bit of chew.

Roast chicken

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Yay! I have made my first roast chicken ever and it was a success!

Roast Chicken with Yams

Ingredients

  • Raw chicken from the store (roasting chicken if you got it)
  • Carrot
  • Celery
  • Onion
  • Head o’ garlic
  • Seasoned salt (I use non-msg Lawry’s)
  • Powdered garlic
  • Ground pepper and salt
  • Olive oil
  • Also, several yams.

Steps

  1. Preheat oven to 450F
  2. Rinse the chicken. Rinse it good. Inside and out. And if inside your chicken there is a little paper bag of goo, it is all right. That’s just the heart/kidneys/gizzard. If you don’t want to deal with this concept, throw away the bag unopened. Otherwise, rise and drop into pan alongside the chicken for added flavour.
  3. Place chicken breast-up in a roasting pan.The kind with sides.
  4. Chunk one carrot, one stick celery, one onion. Peel the garlic cloves. Arrange artfully around the chicken.
    1. If you’re super-keen, you can loosen the chicken skin from the breasts and shove garlic cloves under the skin. It imparts a nice flavor to the breast meat.
  5. Season the chicken lightly with seasoning salt, pepper and granulated garlic. Season the veg too if you’re so inclined.
  6. Put roasting pan into the oven. Immediately reduce oven temp to 350F.
  7. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
  8. You will now enter the patience part of your day. The chicken needs to roast about 25 minutes per pound, or about 2.5 hours. Take the chicken out of the oven ever so often to baste the skin with the chicken juice, but not too often. Future self, keep in mind that taking the chicken out of the oven ever 10 minutes to see if it’s done only make it take longer.
  9. Midway thru, you may need to add a little olive oil to the skin to maintain that overall roasted thing – just keep an eye on things. Later on in the roasting process you’ll be able to baste the chicken with the chicken juice. See above re keeping said chicken in the oven long enough to roast.
  10. Keep on roasting until a meat thermometer registers ~180F in the meatiest section of bird.
  11. Remove pan from oven. Cover with a lid or with foil. Let bird sit for ~10 minutes before carving. Make sure to eat the veg too, they’ve been simmering in chicken juice for 2 hours and are delish.

Sub-set: Yam yam yam

  1. Wash yams and trim the eyelets. If they are large yams, cut in half.
  2. Place in oven-proof pan.
  3. Drizzle with olive oil.
  4. Sprinkle with garlic, salt and pepper.
  5. Roast for 350F for about an hour, until soft when you poke them with a meat thermometer. You can put these into the chicken oven an hour before dinnertime if you’re being economical with time.

Serve all of the above with some kind of green vegetable (I prefer kale myself) because no matter what some carnivores say, chicken is not a vegetable.

Happy eatings!

Beef Jerky Stew

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So this is what I get when I start running out of ingredients and ideas midway through making dinner.

Ingredients:

Onion, diced
Pound or so of lean ground beef
Two cans of chickpeas, drained
One can of diced tomatoes, not drained
Spices:
Cumin seeds
Mexican chili powder
Garlic powder
Smoked paprika (I like La Chinata)
Salt n peppa

Steps after the cut Continue reading →