Middle Eastern Spice Mix

We love to experiment with spice mixes in this family, so we had several favourites in the past.  I found this one recently at Chef Jeena's Food Blog. Very nice!  

We particularly like the idea of making a dip (dunk) out of it.  We mix it into a little olive oil, sprinkle some dried garlic powder into it and a spoonful of fresh lemon juice.  And then we dunk freshly baked bread chunks into it.  With slices or red pepper or cucumbers it is just divine!  The perfect snack. 

Banana cream (Entremet à la purée de bananes)

When we lived in Paris in the mid 70's (me pregnant with our first child conceived on the Côte d'Azur :) there was a cookbook published monthly as a series, to be collected and eventually bound. It was called La cuisine de A à Z. I managed to collect five of them, one of them containing the "entremets". This banana pudding is one of the recipes that appears on our table occasionally, to the delight of all the members of the family. It is recipe of medium fuss, it needs a bit of time with three different steps in the preparation. But it is all worth it in the end!

6 bananas
lemon juice
100ml (1/2 cup) whipping cream or half-and-half
2 tbs rum or 1 ts rum essence
40gr + 35gr butter
½ l (2 cups) milk
4 large eggs
50gr flour
80gr+50gr+50gr sugar
1 ts vanilla essence

Pour the milk into a 2L glass container, retaining 1/2c of it. Bring the milk to boil in the microwave oven. Break 3 eggs, separating them into two bowls, putting only two whites to be whipped, one will be put aside for another use. Now add the fourth whole egg to the three yolks, add the 80gr of sugar, beat them together, slowly adding and incorporating the flour, alternating with the retained milk. Now pour this mix into a pot, slowly add the boiling milk to it, the cook it over medium heat, stirring the mix with a wire whip so it will not develop clots. Alternately, you can pour the flour and egg mix slowly into the hot milk in the glass bowl and carefully thicken it in the microwave, stirring every few minutes. Now add the 40gr butter and the vanilla, beat it in, then put the container in some cold water in the sink to cool it while preparing the bananas.

Mash the bananas and sprinkle lemon juice (about 1 tbs) over the mash to make sure it does not brown. In a saucepan melt the 35gr butter, add the banana mash with 50gr sugar and keep stirring over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Now add the cream and cook it for another 5 minutes, until it thickens a bit. Ad the rum, stir a little loner, then remove and cool it in the sink while you prepare the egg whites.

Beat the whites, slowly adding the leftover sugar, until it forms stiff peaks. If both the cream and the bananas are cool, mix the two, then gently fold in the whites. Cover the bowl with a cling wrap and place it in the fridge to cool it thoroughly. For special occasions you can decorate the top with extra banana slices and/or whipped cream.

Special gourmet tamale pie

Meat mixture
2 tablespoon oil
1 cup chopped green pepper
1 cup chopped onion
1 pound ground beef
3 tablespoons tomato paste
½ pound tomato sauce
3/4 pound corn kernels
2 teaspoons dark cocoa powder
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 tablespoon cornmeal
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoons Tabasco
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup sliced Spanish olives (optional)

Cornmeal topping
2 cups cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
4 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
5 tablespoon s butter, melted
1 – 1 ¼ cup milk
1 egg
4 – 6 oz Jalapenos chopped
1 cup grated cheese
½ cup cheese for the top

Saute the onions with the green pepper in the oil to soften them, then add the ground beef. Stir it at medium heat, making sure that the meat doesn't cump up, until it is no longer pink. Mix in the tomato paste and sauce with all the seasonings and let it simmer on low, covered, for about half an hour.

Prepare the cornmeal topping by mixing everything together in a bowl.

Spread the meat mix in a deep baking dish, carefully dot the cornmeal mix on top, then smooth it over the meat. Finally sprinkle the extra cheese over it. Bake it at 400F for 10 minutes, the reduce the heat to 350F and bake it for another 40 minutes.

Festive meatloaf

I had guests this weekend, but I did not feel like creating something labour intensive. Yet, I wanted "visual appeal". Plus I only had ground turkey at home and it needed to be used up. So I looked around for inspiration on the net, in Images, for a nice meatloaf. The resulting creation looked like this:




Ingredients:
3 lbs ground meat (any kind)
1 1/2 cup soft breadcrumbs
3 eggs
3 garlic cloves
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (or Maggi)
a 4 oz chunk sharp Cheddar, grated
1 cup or more of chopped parsley or spinach
tomato paste
salt pepper, paprika, cinnamon
bacon slices (optional)

Mix together the first five ingredients, add salt and pepper to taste, then take off one third of the mix. To this smaller amount add a pinch of cinnamon, some mild paprika and tomato paste until you like the resulting colour.

Now spread the larger amount of meat onto a square of plastic wrap, carefully arranging so the width would fit the loaf pan. Now spread the steamed and ground spinach (or chopped parsley) on top of the meat, then sprinkle the cheese over it. Finally carefully spread the red meat on top, not quite all the way to the edge on the long side so you can roll it up nicely.

Transfer the roll into the pan and, if you have bacon, cover the top of the loaf with the slices. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake it at 350F for half an hour. Then remove the foil, return the loaf to the oven and bake until the bacon on the top is nice and crisp.

Serve it with celery-lemon rice. I also offered steamed snow peas, pickles and a tomato salad to go with it.

Chicken stew with fennel

I tasted this recipe many years ago at the house of a friend who was born in Morocco. He is a musician and amateur cook who often produces brilliant menus. Fennels were on sale this week and I got two nice big ones, so I called him for the recipe. He graciously shared it with me but after the call I realized that I have some ingredients missing. I still decided to go ahead with the dish and, although the end result was not quite like the memory of the dish I had at their house, I did end up with a very tasty tagine like casserole that the whole family enjoyed. So much so the even though I did take a photo during the cooking, I never got around to take another one with the food on a plate. Here is my recipe:

3 large skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 large fennel bulbs (called bisbas in Morocco)
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoons grated ginger (or 1/2 ts powder)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/8 teaspoon fennel seeds
1/8 teaspoon Ras El Hanout
fresh ground pepper, to taste
1 to 1 1/2 cup water
handful of parsley tied into a bouquet
Stuff I did not have:
1 or 2 handfuls of red olives
1 preserved lemon, quartered and seeds removed

This is how the stew looked halfway through the cooking process.



I cut the chicken breasts into strips. The fennels I quartered, cut out the bottom rooty part (and ate them raw - yum), then I sliced them across into finger width strips.

First I heated the oil and quick fried the chicken slices on relatively high heat, in two batches. I removed them onto a platter. When I was done with the second batch, I ended up with a lot of little chicken morsels in the oil. I added to the pot the fennel seeds, stirred them a bit to let them release their fragrance. I dumped in the finely chopped onion, sprinkled the leftover spices over it, and I sauted it on medium heat until it started to show a few golden bits.

Then I added the fennel. I did not have the Moroccan spice mix, so I just sprinkled in a little extra of what I had: cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, nutmeg and cayenne. By that time the bottom of the pan started to turn brownish from the leftover chicken matter. While stirring, I managed to scrape up most of the stuck morsels, as you can see in the picture.

When the fennel started to soften, I added the chicken and poured water over it to cover up to about 2/3 of the stuff in the pot. At this point I covered it and let it stew until everything got cooked. At the end I adjusted the taste, adding a little extra salt, and served the stew over rice. Of course the real thing would have been eating it with khobz, a crusty Moroccan bread, but besides the fact that we did not have any, two of the family members are also gluten sensitive, so rice it was. Overall, it was a success, that is why I have the recipe up here... :-)