Paprika chicken stew

My mom's goto dish. The amount of cream used is something I still dream about. No way I could eat it that way any more, and my mom also mended her ways and reduced the amount of fatty goodness. One does need to use some good full-fat sour cream though to balance the flavors.

This is best eaten with bread dumplings, nothing, I mean absolutely nothing beats the combination.
Other options are crusty bread, mashed potatoes, spaetzle, pasta, even rice.

Just the chicken!

This is a great way to prepare chicken to be used with other dishes. Even the much lighter version of the paprika sauce is pretty heavy, so you may not want to always make it. Simply let the chicken cool, and then pull the meat off the bones in nice chunks. Here is how one can use it with spinach sauce and mashed potatoes.

Chicken drumsticks that I like to use in this recipe have a wonderful property that it is really hard to dry them out. When you remove the skin, the drumsticks become fairly lean as there are no pockets of fat that I always find in thighs. Chicken breasts are simply too lean for this preparation - lately I have only been making them sous vide to avoid drying them out.

Ingredients

• Chicken pieces - I like using drumsticks with skin removed. Quantity - you need to be able to have them in one layer in your pan.
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 TBS butter or oil. Coconut oil works very well.
• 1/3 cup paprika, or adjust as you wish
• 1 TBS ancho chili, optional
• 2 TBS tomato paste (approx)
• 1 TBS or more dry marjoram, optional
• low sodium chicken broth, enough to cover the chicken half way
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup full fat sour cream. Sorry, no-fat cream will yield a miserable result.
• 1-2 TBS of flour

Preparation

Select a wide preferably shallow pan for which you have a lid. In the pan, on a medium heat, saute onions until they become translucent. Then add garlic, and saute until you it starts to release fragrances. Add paprika, stir and cook for a minute of two. Make sure the heat is not too high so that the paprika does not burn. The flavor of paprika changes substantially to the better when you fry it for a bit.

Arrange chicken in one layer in the pan and season each piece with salt. Add enough chicken broth to cover the chicken half way up, or a bit more. Also add rubbed marjoram and tomato paste. Cover and simmer until the chicken is cooked, turning the chicken every 10 minutes or so. After about 30 minutes the chicken should be cooked.

Take the chicken pieces out and collect them in a bowl. Pour the braising liquid into a gravy separator and wait until the fat collects at the top. 

Carefully pour the liquid from the gravy separator in a fresh pan, leaving the fat behind. Add flour, about 1TBS per cup of liquid, or less if you want a runnier sauce. Add sour cream. Mix everything with an immersion blender - this is a sure way to avoid flour clumps, and also a sure way to get rid of any onion piece that was not caught by the gravy separator.

Alternatively, mix flour, sour cream, and some cold water to make a slurry.

Bring the liquid to a boil on a medium-high heat while whisking slowly and continuously, preferably with a flat whisk. Cook for a couple of minutes so that the gravy thickens. Return the chicken to the pan, heat it up and serve a piece of chicken on top of some gravy. 

Quick rhubarb sauce

Rhubarb!!!! Kind of hard to get in the Bay area, and also kind of pricey for funny looking stalks few people know how to use. No idea why. Milk Pail has it when it is in season, which is the case now. I was going to make some rhubarb crisp, and I ended up using some rhubarb to make a quick sauce to go with the trusty ricotta sourdough almond pancakes.

The good thing about rhubarb is that it is so tart, and one can use that to balance out the flavor of the dish. For example, plain apple compote tastes, well, somewhat plain. Add some rhubarb, balance out the sweetness, and the whole dish goes from plain to ballistic.

That was lots of rhubarb sauce, a bit less may be more reasonable

Ingredients:

• 1 TBS butter or coconut oil
• 1/2 cup sugar; use a bit less or more, to taste
• 2 cups of thinly sliced rhubarb, about two stalks
• a dash of freshly ground nutmeg
• rind of one lemon or orange, or a few drops of orange flavoring

Preparation:

In a pan dissolve sugar in the butter over medium heat. Add rhubarb slices.  Initially some caramel may form, but it will dissolve as the cooking goes on. Stir occasionally until the rhubarb is almost cooked. Add the nutmeg and citrus rind, stir well and cook for another minute or so until rhubarb is cooked.

Eat with pancakes, as a jam on bread an butter, use as crepe filling, ...

Clafoutis

A couple of months ago I found a collection of recipes for, so they said, simple but extraordinary French food. I forgot where I found that collection, I forgot about all the dishes but one - clafoutis. A custardy goodness that really is trivial to make, yet the result is nothing short of extraordinary. I cannot believe I was not familiar with that.

Basically, all there is to clafoutis is a simple custardy batter that one bakes slowly with some fresh fruit. The classic seems to be a cherry clafoutis, which I tried immediately using frozen cherries. My mom happened to be visiting and she was seemingly in heaven.

I got a box of very nicely ripened ataulfos mangoes, speculating that mango clafoutis may be the thing to do. Mango has a nice mix of sweetness and acidity that I expected to go very well with the custardy batter. A short poke around Google search, and I quickly learned that I was not the first person to have this idea. I decided to make a simple basic variety of clafoutis, and next time I might play with adding some grated ginger and other goodies, and possibly baking it in individual ramekins.

If you have gluten intolerance, clafoutis is still within reach. Instead of using all-purpose flour, use gluten-free flour. If you are fortunate to have a grain mill, I recommend a making millet four and combining it with almond flour. It does change the texture - I think to the better.

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour. For gluten-free version use gluten free flour. I used 1/2 cup almond flour and about two TBS millet flour. 
• 1/3 cup sugar, or honey. 1/4 cup is likely enough.
• 1 cup milk. Buttermilk adds to the experience.
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Recommended: rind of one lemon and juice of the same lemon
• Optional: 1/2 cup fresh coconut or 1/3 cup shredded coconut. Blend at high speed with milk for a completely smooth texture.
• 1-1.5 cup fresh or frozen pitted cherries for classic clafoutis, or 2 -3 mangoes, peeled, cut into about 3/4 inch chunks, or pineapple chunks
• Recommended: A splash of grand mariner
• 1-2 TBS butter or coconut oil

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350F. Set a 10 inch cast-iron skillet on a medium heat on a stove. In a bowl, whisk the eggs, the flour, and the sugar. Gradually whisk in the milk, this way it will be easier to keep the batter smooth. Also add vanilla and lemon rind.

Add the oil or butter to the skillet, when it melts, add the cherries. Stir gently and cook just enough for the fruit to warm up some, maybe for a minute or two. Pour in the batter.
Note: If you are using pinepple, you may choose to brown it a bit, or even sprinkle lightly with sugar and then brown

Bake for 40 minutes until the custard is set and the clafoutis is nicely browned on the top.

Serving:

I prefer clafoutis at a room temperature, dusted with powder sugar You might like it either hot or cold, you never know until you try.

Cream of kohlrabi

I agree that kohlrabi has an odd name. According to Wikipedia the name kind of means cabbage turnip, and is popular in German speaking countries and Vietnam. Now we know.

Typically we ate it cubed in vegetable soups, though raw and roasted are both tasty way to consume this vegetable. When I was growing up, we would only eat the root. Eating green leaves was never even considered. It took many years and a move across the ocean to start to appreciate the goodness of leafy greens!

This is a full-meal cream of kohlrabi with no cream. I added some carrots, steel-cut oats and cooked kidney beans to add some carbs and boost the fiber, even though kohlrabi itself already has lots of fiber. Extra smooth tofu is there for proteins, onion and garlic help with the depth of flavor, and lemon balanced everything out nicely.

With any cream of X soup, I have learned that having the best blender one can afford makes an enormous difference. We have been using our VitaMix for almost 10 years now and every time we make a soup, we still marvel in its smoothness. The VitaMix run has not been totally issue free, we are on the second blending jar and I replaced the potentiometer, but the motor is still going as strong as when it was new.

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of kohlrabi, I used 4 roots and also the leaves
• a handful of carrots, brushed or peeled, and chopped roughly
• a handful of quick-cooking steel-cut oats; use rolled oats if that is what you have in the pantry
• a handful of cooked kidney beans
• 3-4 cups of low-sodium vegetable stock, chicken stock works fine too
• 1 medium size onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 package (11oz, 300g) of extra-soft tofu (Soondubu), liquid discarded
• juice of one medium-sized lemon
• vegetable oil or coconut oil, a couple of TBS

For mise en place chop kohlrabi roots, no need to peel them, just wash them well. Wash and chop roughly kohlrabi leaves. Also clean and chop the onion, carrots, and garlic.

In a 3 to 4 quart pan heat the oil, add onions, season with a pinch of salt, and sautee until the onions soften a bit.

Add chopped carrots and chopped kohlrabi root, sautee some more until the vegetables start to soften.

Add the garlic and sautee for another minute.

Add the vegetable stock and steel-cut oats, cover, bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the chopped kohlrabi leaves, cover the pot and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Transfer the soup to your blender.

Add tofu and cooked beans.

Add lemon juice.

Blend until smooth. Taste, add salt if necessary.

Serve in a bowl with some nice garnish. I used pine nuts and a touch of pumpkin seed oil - the green-on-green combination worked well.

Crepes

Crepes are a tough memory for me. One time, way way back when I was still in undergraduate, I had a bunch of friends over, and the plan was to make crepes. Easy, right - mic flour, milk, eggs, and butter so that you get the right consistency, then fry them up. The batter I made was a complete disaster, now I know there was not enough flour, but then I was extra clueless. That experience left believe that crepes were hard and that I don't have skills to make them. So for years, I relied on Jasna to make crepes.

I was wrong. Very wrong. Crepes are easy, all it takes is a good base recipe which one can adjust pretty liberally, and things still work. My basic recipe is as follows:

Whisk:

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• pinch salt
• 1 TBS sugar - optional, skip for savory crepes

When the mixture is smooth, add

• 1 cup water (or milk)
• 1/4-1/3 cup melted butter

Whisk well. Let rest in the fridge for a couple of hours, overnights is fine. If you are in a rush, leave out for about 1/2 hour and make crepes right away.

To cook crepes, preheat a crepe pan on a medium-high flame. My favorite pan is a 10 inch cast iron griddle. When I am in a rush, I reach for non-stick pans like this one, mine is a discontinued model from Calphalon. Traditionally, one uses shallow steel pans - just like a carbon steel wok, these need to be seasoned before use, or the result will be a complete disaster. The truth is that any pan will do - non-stick ones are a bit easier to start with, but not really needed.

When a pan is hot, I usually add some cooking oil - avocado oil is my choice because of it's high smoke point. Swirl the oil around the pan, and make sure the pan is not so hot that the oil smokes.

Ladle some of the batter into the pan. For my pans, I use about 2.5 ounces of batter. I got a 3 oz ladle for this, it makes things easier when I use 3 pans at once. Swirl the batter to spread it evenly around the pan, or use a crepe spreader that you have dipped in water.

Cook on one side for 30 secs to a minute, depending on how hot your pan is. Flip with a heat-safe spatula, cook for another 20-30 seconds, and remove the cooked crepe off the pan. I like to stack cooked crepe on a large plate.

One can get fancy and flip a crepe with a wrist flick. I am faster with a spatula, no fat is splattered, and no crepe ends up on the floor. Your choice!

Repeat until you use all of the crepe batter. I do not add any oil or butter after making the first crepe, but you can if you wish. I get 12 to 20 crepes out of this recipe, depending on the size of the pan I use.

Fillings

While one can eat crepes as is, fillings are what crepes are all about. Here are a few options:

• spread some jam over the crepe and roll it
• Nutella is always a favorite with my friends
• melted and preferably tempered chocolate, whatever kind you like
• sliced fresh fruit is awesome, and you can add some whipped cream on the top
• mix sour cream, some sugar, and some ground almonds - ratios are your choice, I go heavy on almonds, lighter on the cream, and light on sugar
• lemon juice and sugar mixture
• orange butter, and if you choose to flambe the crepes, you get Crepes Suzette
• a mixture of ground walnuts, sugar, cinnamon

For savory fillings, I really like a simple slice of cheese, and sometimes a slice of prosciutto or ham. I like to fold the crepe in half and toast it on the pan so that the cheese melts. Yum! Pretty much anything goes here - sauteed mushrooms are great, scrambled eggs are fun, steamer vegetables, steak and avocado... Really, crepes are an awesome vessel for a variety of flavors, only our imagination is the limit.

Variations

I almost never use the base recipe, but tend to go for a variation. The basic ratio of eggs to flour to liquid to fat remains pretty much the same throughout. Here are a few options - note that one can combine them:

• Use melted coconut oil instead of butter. I almost always do this.
• Add 1/3 cup of almonds to the batter.
• Use coconut milk instead of cow milk. If you use full-fat coconut milk, you can skip on adding the butter to the batter.
• Use soy milk instead of milk.
• Replace some or all of the flour with buckwheat flour. Pay attention to the liquid so that the batter consistency is good.

Note that one can make buckwheat crepes without eggs. I have not tried that yet - I do not mind adding the egg for some protein to this carb-heavy dish. Besides, if David Lebovitz doesn't bother, I feel that I can postpone that experiment.

Walnut cookies

We love tea and coffee, and sometimes one just needs a cookie to go with a warm beverage of your choice. We find these cookies to fill that role quite perfectly. On more decadent days we were surprised pleasantly how well these cookies pair with the silky chocolate custard.

Apart from tasting great, making these cookies is so simple, the dough can even be made ahead of time, there are just a few ingredients, there is nothing complex in the recipe. Leftover egg yolks beg for a making a custard or brioche!

• 6-8oz (170g - 225g)shelled walnuts
• 3/4 cup (170ml) sugar or honey (feel free to reduce to 1/2 cup - 120ml) 
• 4 egg whites
• 1/2 cup flour (120 ml)
• 1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract 
• pinch of salt

In a food processor grind the walnuts and 1/2 cup sugar, or 1/4 cup if reducing the sugar.

Beat egg whites to a soft peak, add 1/4 cup sugar, and beat some more to get firm peaked meringue.

In a bowl mix, gently, egg whites, the ground walnuts, pinch of salt, vanilla extract, and the flour.

Store in a air-tight container in a fridge for at least an hour, up to a day - this is a very simple make-forward kind of a cookie.

Preheat the oven to 375F. When the oven is hot, line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat a-la Silpat, and arrange heaping tablespoon sized dollops of cookie dough. I like to use an ice cream scoop to measure equal quantities of dough.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, until cookie edges and tops start becoming brown. Cool on a rack, consume right away, or store in an air-tight container for up to three days.

Pan fried tomatoes

When we lived in Canada, good tomatoes were pretty much impossible to come by. Even in summertime, there was no comparison with dry farmed tomatoes we get in California, or the famed Istrian tomatoes. Necessity does seem to be the mother of invention - when Jasna and I went to the Shaw festival, we stayed in a bed-and-breakfast in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The breakfast were somewhat overdone scrambled eggs, and the best tomatoes I had had in years. I could not believe how good they were - and tomatoes were definitely not in season.

We learned that the tomatoes were beyond trivial to make:

• Wash the tomatoes and cut out the stem
• With a sharp knife slice the tomatoes about 1/2 inch thick
• Heat non-stick pan with some oil at a medium high-heat
• Place tomatoes on a hot pan, salt very lightly
• Flip the tomato slices carefully in a 3-5 minutes, again add a touch of salt
• When cooked, use a spatula to transfer on a plate
• Optionally: sprinkle with some fresh thyme or basil
• Eat with a big grin

Tips: Watch the heat so that the tomatoes don't burn. Cooking the tomatoes a bit more or less is entirely your call. I have this recipe in non-stick pans, and in cast iron pans. Both work, and I didn't taste any iron/metal when cooking in cast iron. Maybe because the cooking time is so short.

I like to make the tomatoes this way, especially for breakfast. When one starts with sun-dried tomatoes, the result is stunning. Even when the tomatoes are not at their peak, this quick recipe helps quickly caramelize whatever sugars are in the tomato and converts them into sheer goodness on a plate.