Ingredients

• 3 -4 cups diced cooked chicken
• 1 lb pork sausage
• 1 stalk celery, chopped fine
• 1 tablespoon onion, chopped
• 1⁄2 lb mushroom, sliced
• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 16 ounces frozen cauliflower, cooked well and drained
• 8 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
• salt
• 1⁄2 teaspoon pepper
• paprika (optional)

Method

1. Brown the sausage with the celery, onion and mushrooms.
2. Stir the softened cream cheese into the sausage mixture until well blended.
3. Coarsely chop the cooked cauliflower.
4. Mix all ingredients and spread in a greased 9"x13" baking dish.
5. If desired, dust the top with paprika.
6. Bake, covered with foil, at 350º for about 30 minutes.
7. Uncover and bake until hot and bubbly and top is lightly browned, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Attempt 1

This first try came out sub-mediocre. Instead of 4 cups of diced chicken I used two pounds of ground chicken. I didnt' have any foil, so I just cooked it for 35 minutes. My largest casserole dish is not quite 9x13, so I used it plus another dish. Next time I might want to try this version of the recipe.

I decided to this recipe a try since my last attempt at Brussels sprouts was surprisingly good. It's easiest for me to buy Brussels sprouts in 12 oz frozen packages, so I re-proportioned the recipe by cutting down the quantity of sprouts, but nothing else.

Ingredients

• 12 oz. frozen Brussels sprouts, thawed
• 3 Tbs unsalted butter
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 Tbs fresh lemon juice

Method

• Halve the sprouts, unless they are really big, in which case quarter them.
• Melt butter over medium high heat, put in sprouts, salt, and cook 5-10 till they are spotted with carmelized brown spots.
• Add cream, wait till it boils, then turn down the heat to a simmer.
• Simmer the sprouts for 20-30 minutes, covered, stirring occasionally. The cream should become a very light brown.
• Remove from heat. Check for flavor. Add salt or pepper to taste if desired. Mix in lemon juice.

Result

I liked 'em.

Source: http://orangette.net/2006/12/the-best-thing-since-brussels-sprouts/

2023-04-20:  Made 'em again, but my memory misled me, so I used 24 oz of Brussels sprouts and browned them in olive oil.  When they were caramelized, I drained the oil and threw in some butter for the flavor.  i doubled the other ingredients, which might not have been necessary.  Really liked the result.  Salt-lovers might want to add some, but I enjoyed the subtle flavors of not having too much salt.

Serves 5-6

Ingredients

• 24 oz frozen brussels sprouts, thawed and halved
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 6 oz feta cheese, crumbled
• 1/2 cup pecans
• 1.5 tablespoon maple syrup
• 1.5 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• Olive oil
• Salt & pepper

Method

1. Soak cranberries in just-boiled water for five minutes. Drain.
2. Heat brussels sprouts, cranberries, and olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Season with salt & pepper. Cook for 8-10 minutes.
3. Toss with maple syrup and balsamic vinegar until sprouts are coated.
4. Toss in feta and pecans

This is the first time I've liked a dish with brussels sprouts. Actually forgot the pecans this time, but it was still good. Next time I'll make half the quantityI made this time.

2015-03-10: This time I used pomegranate molasses instead of maple syrup. That was good. It might be interesting to use mulberry syrup some time.

Turkey bigos with cumin and chipotle

The recipe for unstuffed cabbage is one of my favorite these days, and I keep on trying a variety of variations. Today's version uses ground turkey and canned tomatillos. "Bigos" is a Lithuanian/Polish dish with chopped cabbage and meat, so I'm claiming it for my generic name for the dish.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 lbs ground turkey, as fatty as you can find it
• 1 chipotle, say about the size that would give you 1 tbsp ground
• 1 tbsp whole cumin
• 1 tsp black pepper kernels
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 28-oz can of tomatillos
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 small head of cabbage, chopped

Method

1. Fry the onions until soft in a big frying pan.
2. Add turkey. Fry till mostly cooked.
3. Grind chipotle, cumin and pepper in a spice grinder
4. Add spices to meat and onion mixture.
5. Put garlic through a garlic press. Add to the meat/onion mixture. Cook for about a minute.
6. Drain tomatillos, reserving the brine. Run the tomatillos through a blender. Add to the meat/onion mixture. Add maybe a half a cup of the reserved brine. Add salt.
7. Add chopped cabbage to mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until cabbage is soft. Serve.

This turned out adequately, but no great shakes. Next time I do it, instead of adding 1/2 cup of the brine, I'll add a cup of chicken broth (from powder or bouillon cubes), which I think would change it from being merely okay to tasty.

When I was in Russia last summer, I was looking for palm oil to make plov. To my surprise I spotted горчичное масло mustard oil in a Bekhetle. Mustard is used widely in India as a cooking oil. This is not the intense mustard oil used as a spice, but the vegetable oil derived from the mustard plant as a cooking oil. That caught my interest, so I bought a bottle and brought it back to the States. Turns out that in the States you cannot label this stuff as cooking oil because back in the 70s the erucic acid it contains was associated with toxic effects on the heart at high levels. (Thanks to the Wikipedia article for that info.) No negative effects in humans have been scientifically demonstrated. My general attitude to low-level associations with bad health is to say, “I don’t have time to be worried about this low-level crapola.” In various areas it is the traditionally preferred cooking oil. So I purchased myself a bottle.

Tonight I cooked with it for the first time, trying it in a dish where I thought it would show off its unique taste fairly simply: a bit of stewed cabbage. Here is what I did.

Ingredients

• mustard oil
• 1/2 of a large head of cabbage
• 1 tbsp powdered onion
• 1 tsp powdered garlic
• 1 tsp caldo de pollo (powder)
• 1 cup of water

Method

1. In a 12" pan (measured top rim-to-rim) cover the bottom of the pan with mustard oil. Turn the electric burner to half way. Chop the cabbage. Add the cabbage to the oil.
2. In the meantime mix the caldo with the water and heat it to just shy of boiling in the microwave, which will cut down your cooking time.
3. The cabbage should fry gently, stir it occasionally. You don't want it to brown, just to begin softening. When it is approaching softness, add the onion and garlic. Mix. Let cook for a minute.
4. Then add the caldo broth. Cook until the cabbage is soft.

Result

This turned out fine: a subtle cabbage dish. I had been expecting a much more aggressive mustard/brassica flavor, but that turned out not to be the case. I'd make it again, even for guests who didn't like spicy or aggressive food. I find myself wondering whether the version I bought was a particularly mild form to suit the delicate Russian palate. So I'll finish off the bottle, and then I'll be the stuff here in the US. Here it is not allowed to be sold with food labeling. Instead it is sold as massage oil, but people cook with it anyway. Cooking with massage oil... now that would bring a smirk to my face... and I can think of several people I would love to serve it too.

This is a dish I cook fairly regularly with variations on the spices. This time around I'm using some Indian chile that the Tadjik lady at my local market said would be spicy.

Ingredients

• sunflower oil
• 5-6 small onions chopped coarsely (two ordinary onions)
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp of whole cumin seed, ground in a spice grinder or pestle
• 1 tbsp of Indian chile
• 1/4 of a huge head of cabbage (half of a medium head), chopped
• 750 grams of ground chicken (~ 1 2/3 lbs)
• 1 cup of boiling water
• 1 chicken bouillon cube

Method

1. Chop onions coarsely.
2. Pour enough sunflower oil into the bottom of a frying pan to cover it. I'd guess the pan can be from anywhere from nine to twelve inches in diameter. Put the frying pan on medium heat.
3. Pour in the onions. Stir occasionally so that they all approach transparency together.
4. Once the onions are barely beginning to brown, add the garlic and cook till fragrant, which should be about a minute, maybe two.
5. Add the cumin and chile. Cook for one minute or so, stirring, to release the flavors into the oil.
6. Add the ground chicken. Fry. Stir occasionally, breaking up the chicken into smaller and smaller chunks.
7. Pour the boiling water into a cup. Add the bouillon cube. Mix it up till it is a broth.
8. Once the chicken looks roughly cooked, add the cabbage. Add some of the broth. Cover. Let it cook a while.
9. Stir occasionally. Add more broth if it seems like it needs it. The goal is to get the cabbage cooked and all the flavors mixed.
10. As the cabbage approaches being done, remove the cover so that the excess broth begins to evaporate and concentrate. It's okay if there is some liquid left, but we aren't aiming at a full-fledged stew.
11. Once done, turn off heat. Cover with a splatter guard so that more liquid escapes and flies don't land on the finished product.
12. Once you think it's ready, serve.

Notes:

Any time a Russian tells you that something is spicy, don't believe ’em. This recipe did have a minor bite, but it was not as spicy as the spice lady at the farmers' market said that ?Indian chile? would be. Okay, she was actually a Tadjik, still...

Nonetheless, this dish turned out great.

I'm currently in Russia. Back in the States we often cook with neutral tasting oils like safflower oil or Canola oil or mixed vegetable oil. That's understandable. They allow the taste of the ingredients to come forward. But I find myself liking Russian sunflower oil more and more. It has a distinct odor as it cooks, and a pleasant, subtle flavor in the resulting dish. Frankly, I'm tempted to try cottonseed oil and mustard oil before I leave Russia. The latter is legal here, but not in the States.

Buckwheat with onions and mushrooms is a beloved Russian side dish. Decided to make it tonight. Below you will find not a standard recipe, but what I simply experimented with.

Ingredients

• 1 1/3 cups of buckwheat groats
• 2 2/3 cups of boiling water
• 1 astonishing chunk of butter
• 4 small onions, sliced in thin half circles
• 250 g (1/2 pound) of button mushrooms (шампиньоны), sliced about 1/4 inch thick

Method

1. I boiled the water in my electric teapot. Added it plus a bouillon cube to a pan that had the buckwheat. Put that over a low flame. Covered the pan.
2. Melted the butter in a heavy-bottomed frying pan. Threw in the onions. Cooked till translucent. I didn't add the mushrooms at the beginning of this step because I wanted the onions to carmelize as the mushrooms where added in the next step, but I didn't want them to burn.
3. Added the mushrooms to the frying pan.
4. When the buckwheat was still just a bit tougher than I wanted to eat, I turned off the heat and uncovered it.
5. I had some extra chicken fat and juice in the fridge from a previous recipe, probably about a quarter cup's worth. I added this to the frying pan. Wow, what a great smell.
6. By this stage there was no free water in the pan with the buckwheat. Once the mushrooms seemed done, I added the buckwheat to the frying pan, along with half a cup of water to complete the cooking process. Once the water was gone, I considered the dish done.

Turned out quite well.

Comments

• In retrospect I shouldn't have added the bouillon cube or chicken stuff later. Instead I should have cooked it so that the flavors of the buckwheat, butter, onions and mushrooms were clear, along with nothing else. My reasoning is that the first time you make something, you should do the really basic version so that you later understand why people do the more complex versions.
• If you don't use bouillon in the buckwheat, you will need to add salt to the water that boils the buckwheat.
• You should also probably add a bit of salt and some black pepper to the frying pan for the last minute or two before adding the buckwheat.
• There are lots of variations on this recipe, but if you are using it as a basic side dish to complement an interesting main dish, then why make it more complex? Not too surprisingly, there are variations that add a bit of sour cream.

Ingredients

• Vegetable oil
• 4 small onions, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• 1 tbsp cumin, crushed
• 1 tbsp ground chipotle
• 1 tsp pepper
• 750 grams of ground chicken (about 1.5 pounds)
• 1/2 head of cabbage, shredded
• 2-3 cups boiling water
• About 1 tsp salt

Pour vegetable oil into frying pan. Add onions. When they are almost translucent, add garlic. Cook for a minute. Add cumin, chipotle and pepper. Cook for a minute. Add chicken. Fry till done, stirring and breaking up into reasonable bite size. Add water and salt. Add cabbage. Bring to a slight boil, cover, and cook until the cabbage is soft. Remove from stove. Serve.

For the chipotle I used ground chipotle powder I had found at Cost Plus (World Market). Awesome. A tablespoon of that stuff gave the dish a bite, despite the fact that the chipotle had sat on the shelf for a year.

The ground chicken I used was made from breast meat, which is nearly fat free. It meant the broth was kind of boring. Next time I'll through in a bouillon cube.

Notes: Properly speaking, bigus is made with both fresh cabbage and sauerkraut, some kind of meat, and often has prunes added, but people in Russia sometimes fudge and call any nondescript mix of meat and cabbage bigus, so that's the name I'm giving this dish.

Ingredients

Cooking oil/butter
1 onion, diced
12 oz frozen chopped spinach
8 eggs
Some fried chorizo (probably about 1 1/4 cups)
2 cups of cheese, shredded

Method

Boil the spinach for 2-3 minutes; drain. Preheat oven to 300°F. Butter the casserole dish. Put oil/butter in frying pan. Add onions, fry till translucent. Add chorizo and spinach to onions. Cool spinach mixture. Beat eggs in a bowl, add shredded cheese and mix together. Add spinach mixture. Place in greased/buttered casserole dish. Bake until top of quiche begins to brown, about 55 minutes. Remove from oven. Let sit 15 minutes before serving.

Comments:

• This turned out well, but I was just a touch concerned about how moist the center still was. Next time give it 60 minutes in the oven, and then let it sit for 15 minutes.

I'm continuing my experiments with palak paneer; this time I didn't do so well. Here is what I did this time. If this is your first time trying the recipe, use the experiment 2 link.

Ingredients

12 oz frozen chopped spinach
2-3 tbsp of neutral tasting oil
1 tbsp of ground cumin (better version is 1 tsp)
10 cloves of garlic, chopped (I forgot the garlic)
1 serrano, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tsp ground coriander (I didnt' have a tbsp, which would have been better)
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
regular salt to taste (I forgot the salt)
1 cup of yogurt (I forgot the yogurt and used Half & Half instead)
10 oz of queso panela
1 lemon (I forgot the lemon)

Method

Boil a big pot of water. Put the spinach in. Once it starts boiling again, boil the spinach for three minutes. Drain. Put the spinach in the blender with 1/2 cup of half & half. Make a paste.

Heat the oil. Add the onions and serranos. Cook until the onions are translucent. Add spices and 1/2 cup of half & half. Mix. Cook until somewhat thickened. Add the spinach puree. Simmer a bit. Add the cheese, then serve once it is all warmed.

Result

This turned out adequately. Next time around I should actually read the recipe instead of trying to simply remember it.