fasolatha soup

I had some beans left over. I tried making bean patties once and they tasted like shit and had freezer burn so they got dumped.
My wife told me not to bother because all my bean dishes are a disaster, she does not like the Israeli Armed forces national dish of Hamin or bean stew and she will opt for no beans in her burritos.

Well, I am old generation I can't throw stuff. So I looked around for a recipe.

 If you look around I got a Celeriac for the Celeriac salad, the Celeriac had the leaves attached to it. I decided to use those leaves in the recipe as for some reason the Greek guy said, "you need Greek wild celery", malaka. Where am I going to find that. The rest is my left over onion, some leftover cauliflower and some carrots. I also added a little olive oil because every soup should have a little fat.

I left too many beans overnight and since I didn't want to spend the next week farting up a storm. I left half on a tray so they can sprout. I will later use it to make mong bean salad.
Sprouting is easy, simply lay some tissue and wet it every so hours.

These are the beans in the water.
I cooked them for 50 minutes till they were almost soft, you bite into one and notice the different white colors. You will see one that looks dry white that is the unprepared part, the rest looks more glossy.

I added some water and all the vegetables.
The reason I added them later, was because I wanted some more crunch and life and not for them to melt into the soup.

After another 30 minutes simply take a can of tomato puree and add it to the soup.
Then let it heat up and leave for 10-20.

Close up, the celeriac leaves add a nice taste.

Southern fried chicken

 Fried Chicken, yeah!!
I usually prefer my own recipe the "Saar Chicken" but have to change every once in a while. I basically took some ideas from TV since I am not "southern" and this is what I got out of it.

Let's get to business, these are the parts from my "carving a chicken post".

 Simply leave them to marinate over night dunked in a bucket of buttermilk. The Buttermilk will make the meat more tender and will give you a nice little coating that will hold the spices and later on the flour. Apparently buttermilk is big in the South.

 This is the butter milk, they don't sell the FAT kind, so i had to settle for the cultured low fat. A least though I found some Organic Valley.

Stick it in the fridge for 24 or more.

These are the main ingredients. The Flour is Whole Wheat. I went for king Arthur flour as of course I am 7th cousin on the earl of Winchesters side, which means I am 6,980,875th in line to the throne.

The rest is what ever spices you want. Most use paprika.

This is the flour in a box you can close with a lid. That way you can shake the meat inside without having the flour fly all over.

Cast Iron pan. These are very cheap. I mean a Lodge is $30 and will last you 10 lifetimes. It can also be used for other things like zonking your husband over the head when he misbehaves etc.
I got mine from the panhandler. I was going to go for used but since it is so cheap new I went for new.

Season the bird parts with the mix you made. TV recommended using a Pizza spice shaker. I think I'll do that next time as it was not easy getting
a good equal covering. My wife also wanted it spicier, so my guess is you can heavily coat them and it won't be too much.

I forgot to add, the flour can be left bare, no spices.
The reason is spices burn rapidly so that way the
spices are protected by the coat of flour.
Alright, dunk in the flour cover with the lid shake
and pull out, then shake it out.

Use the thingie, the oven net ? separator?  grid. Jeez thank you English.
Use the Grid to keep the chicken while you finish the rest.
The recommendation is to leave it on the grid for 4 minutes.
That makes the coating stick better. I tried it and it did.

Heat up the oil in the cast iron skillet.
The oil I used was Canola. I refuse to use vegetable shortening as I have no idea how it is done, some mumbo jumbo hydrogenated nonsense. Seriously. I would have used Lard but that is hard to come by so I went for something y'all can easily find.
Wait around till it starts lightly smoking, you will be able to notice slight whisps of smoke coming out. The camera could not get it well, hopefully you can.

Alright put them in. the oil should be bubbling hot but not burning hot.
The goal is for the meat to be heated so the juices stay in and the oil to be hot enough to try to push in thereby maintaining a balance.
The oil does not absorb water and the bird does not absorb oil.
That way it is healthier for you.
Forgot 12 minutes on one side
then 12 minutes on the other side.

Well, once you open the meat up, the inside will be nice and moist. So if the meat clings to the bone, you probably under cooked it. So either dump it back in the frier, put it for 5 in the oven or eat it anyway and simply memorize more time for the next time you cook this.
You can also use a thermometer, I don't TRUST those infernal science machines. I want to wing it and rely on providence. Obviously, with all the rest of the things in life I take the opposite view ;)

This is the problem with this recipe.
Lucky for my wife, I clean too. 

Celeriac Salad

This is what a celeriac root looks like.To be honest I'd never heard about it till me and my lovely wife hit a "french" place in Hell's kitchen (yes, there is a place named that in NY).
The restaurant looked very oldish from the outside but the head waiter who was smoking outside saw us judging the menu and said we should go in. Personally I just wanted some quiet place where I could talk so the picture of the grandma owner bought me.



Working it.
It is simple enough, just chop the leaves and then using chopping motions peel the skin off. Don't even bother with a potato peeler it wont work well as due to the root structure you will lose I'd guess 20%.

End of the process you should have what looks like a potato
after you peel it.

 Simply slice it into thin chips.

Then simply cut it into long sticks.
It takes while to get the hang of it but hey
gotta have an excuse to work on your knifing skills.
The sticks are very crunchy and have a slight celery taste which will taste great with the condiments.

These are the condiments we will use to flavor it.
Salt
Pepper
Nayonaise or Mayo
Mustard

We added capers and to spice
it up we added some Wasabi which
gave it a nice kick.



There are many variations you can go with, it's a french recipe so I am sure there is some "right" way to do it that is taught to young aspiring chefs.
Knock yourself out.

So add it all and mix. Pretty easy no ??
I usually add it as a side to chicken.
Southern Fried Chicken and my illustrious Saar Chicken.

Celeriac Salad a la Layla

Carving a happy chicken

Well if you are like me then you are probably sick and tired of chicken breast.
To be honest it was a national staple back then, just bread it and fry it.
I can't be bothered with that anymore. I want the whole bird.

One day I asked my mom, well how do you carve the chicken. She gave me a lesson
and since then I am pretty much unafraid of butchering and carving my own meat and fish.
Takes some getting used to but in my experience if you buy fresh and the meat is great quality
it has a nice feel to it when you touch it, it also smells nicely.

So chop chop chop.

Let's start with the quality of the bird.

Whole Foods has a ranking system. They call it

Meat: The 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating™
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/5step.php

In short, there are usually a few choices, in this case I got number 4 which means the chicken
had pasture. Yes pasture, I guess it must have been chasing critters or something. It was a small bird and in my experience smaller birds have more taste than big fatty birds.
This bird even had the address of the farm that it grew on.
1932 route 206  Skillman New Jersey
http://www.simplygrazin.com/about/
Which makes it pretty credible. It cost a few extra dollars but like the movie said "every time you reach the till, you vote"  so I vote for happy animals in nice farms with happier farmers instead of some low wage corporation ones.

Simply Grazin bird

I carved this one up to make Southern Fried Chicken so this was the perfect size for a couple.


The carving technique.

Happy bird

Pull the wing towards you and carve.
If you feel around you can carve the connection from the bird
to the wing and that way avoid carving the bone.

See, so easy.

Hold the leg and thigh and pull it towards you, you will be able to cut
into the skin and follow the meat. Keep carving all the way to the back
and you will get a nice size thigh.

One down, second to go.

Cut the thigh and leg into separate part, again if you feel it right
you won't hit the bone but instead cut in between the two bones.

Hold the back in one hand and carve in between the back
and the breast.
You will hit bone but they are small bones so it should be easy to cut.

Hold the breast and carve in the middle. There is a bone there
in between the two breasts so one side will get to keep it
and the other one won't.

and voila, you have all the parts.
2 wings
2 thighs
2 legs
2 breasts
and 1 back.
The back is the tastiest in my opinion.
In this case I cut the back in half and the breasts into halves again
because I wanted smaller parts for the "Southern Style Fried Chicken".

Amaranth with a side of coconut chicken breast

Let's see.

Cooking, well let's cook something.
Today's theme is Amaranth. Amaranth was a staple in America before the Spaniards came in and brought their food. I have never seen it in real life though, so for now I am content with getting the end result. Amaranth is easily available in most health stores and "Whole Foods" which is one of the better supermarkets in America.
I think the fascination with the ingredients in Whole Foods is what started my attempt at elevating my cooking. My wife was a Trader Joe but she was soon converted.
Some might say only the rich can afford to shop there but to be honest if you have great food at home you cut down on the restaurant bills and the Doctor bills.


The end result was the picture above.
Basically Amaranth with a side of chicken breast in coconut milk.


Amaranth has a nutty taste and it has a nice consistency similar to a porridge which takes some getting used to if you are too used to cooking rice (dry) , Quinoa and Couscous.
The ratio is 1:3 1 Amaranth to 3 water. I usually replace one water with soup stock to get more taste.
Simply put all in a pot place on low heat and 30-40 minutes later it is ready.
I recommend stirring it every 10 minutes to avoid it sticking to the bottom of the pot.

The chicken breast was a nice bird. As a child I grew up in an area that was sorrounded by agriculture.
So there were a lot of factory bird growers, they lacked employees so we would always go and work there as teenagers for some change. To be honest if I were a bird I would have not been happy there. The conditions were not the best. So these days I try to get "happy" chicken. My current fix is Eataly as they have Amish and Memmonite chicken, both are grown by "decent" farmers who let their birds run around a bit. You can get similar items at Whole Foods, just look at the stickers they have a ranking system on which had a better life.
So prep
Simply cut the breast into bit sizes.
Chop onion
Chop hot pepper, I used the tabasco one so it wouldn't be that hot.
I wouldn't worry about the hotness as the coconut milk will calm it down.

Cooking
I used coconut oil but vegetable oil would be fine.
Add the onions and fry for 4 minutes for some color
Add the hot pepper for another minute
Then drop the chicken breast.
Your goal is to get color on the breast, just a little color. By color I mean a slight sear
the sear is the taste. Simply  sear=color=taste.
After 2-3 minutes add some coconut milk, you won't lose much in the cooking so
simply as much milk as you want the consistency of the sauce. More milk means more watery sauce (which would be great for rice)    but in this case the amaranth has its own moisture so I added less.
Leave it on low heat while you wait for the Amaranth.

Presentation
simply scoop the Amaranth on the plate and add the breast on the side.
The color is a bit brown, so simply chop any herb you have to give it some nice "green" fresh look.
I used dill but cilantro would be great too.
Then stick your fork into the breast and then move the breast around the amaranth to coat it. After that sink it again in the coconut sauce then eat.

Yum, yum.