foody bits (kugel, chicken)

[cellio]

This is the pineapple kugel recipe I mentioned yesterday. My adaptations: low-fat cheeses, 2 16-ounce cans of pineapple, and omitted the brown sugar. (I correctly judged that it would be sweet enough without. Next time I'll reduce the sugar and keep the brown sugar.) This made two 8x8 pans with three layers of noodles and two layers of the cheese and pineapple.

The chicken recipe is from The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden and is described as traditional Moroccan:

Poulet aux Dattes

• 6 chicken quarters [I used boneless skinless breasts]
• 4 T peanut or sunflower oil [used olive]
• 1 pound onions, coarsely chopped
• 2 t cinnamon [used cassia]
• 0.75 t mace
• 0.25 t nutmeg
• 1 T honey
• salt and lots of black pepper
• 0.5 pound dates, pitted [used some chopped & some whole pitted]
• juice of 1 lemon
• pinch of saffron [I mashed the saffron in the lemon juice to draw out the color]
• 0.5 C blanched almonds, toasted or fried [I fried them]

Saute chicken in oil for a few minutes to brown. Remove chicken, add onions, cook until soft. Add cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, honey, ~1.75C water; stir well. Add chicken, bring to boil, add salt and pepper, simmer for 25 minutes [I covered the pan]. Add dates, lemon juice, saffron and cook for 5-10 minutes until chicken is tender. Sprinkle almonds on top before serving.

The recipe advises tasting to get the right balance of spices, and suggests that lots of pepper will be needed to offset the sweetness. I wasn't yet ready to eat meat, so I did it by smell and probably under-peppered it.

Comments

[sdavido.livejournal.com]

Look for Cooks Illustrated magazine. You might like it! vettecat introduced me to it, and it's a magazine which takes cooking to be an artform, and when going over recipes makes an incredible number of variations, in order to find the perfect one!

[cellio]

Thanks for the tip! I'll look for it.