Sultan's Delight

Well hello, blog. Long time no see. I apologize to all my loyal readers for the several month delay in posting, but I blame the working life. It's much harder to write blog entries when I'm not sitting on my couch all day every day.

Anyway, for my triumphant return, I will tell you all about the most amazing food that I have ever had a hand in making. It's called Hünkãr Begendi, which is Turkish for Sultan's delight. And delight it does. Because I am not at all creative, I choose to recreate my favorite dish from my favorite restaurant. This one is from Zaytinya and, according to the menu, it's a traditional Turkish braised lamb shank eggplant-kefalograviera purée. The lamb and it's juices sit on top of the eggplant, and you use pita bread to scoop it all up and eat it. Man, now I'm hungry.

So, part one of this dish is the eggplant puree. To make it, I got a giant eggplant (about a pound) and put it (whole, with skin on) in the oven at 425 for about 45 minutes until the skin was kinda wrinkly. I think it might have been easier to cut it up first, but I was winging it. Anyway, when the giant wrinkly eggplant cooled down a little, I peeled the skin off, cut it into chunks, and let it sit in a strainer for like 15 minutes. I read somewhere that if you don’t drain an eggplant, it will be bitter, but I’m not sure that this step did me any good because not much drained out, but at least I tried. Then I pureed the eggplant with a tablespoon or so of lemon juice. Ideally this happens in a food processor, less ideally in a 10 year old blender, but that's what I had. It was not fun and took forever and I complained about it to my mom and got a food processor for Christmas! I know this looks like nasty oatmeal, but trust me, it's delicious, even if it's a bit lumpy:
The next step was for me to make my very first rue! reaux? Whatever. 1/2 cup butter and flour, cooked for a few minutes. It started off very liquidy and I was worried that I had messed up, but then I added about a cup of warm milk and as soon as the 2 liquids combined, it got very thick! Two liquids combine to make a solid, like magic! So then I mixed the eggplant and the rue together, and grated in about a cup and a half of kasseri cheese. It was the only Greek cheese I could find at whole foods. Apparently the kind they use at zaytinya is similar to peccarino romano, but we gave the other cheese a go and it was very tasty. Lastly, I added salt and pepper to taste.

As for the lamb, NP was in charge there. He braised a shank and a leg in chicken stock with carrots, celery, onions and a jar of tomato paste. In the oven for about an hour until it was falling off the bone. Served on top of the eggplant puree, it was heaven. Mmm.

Thailand via Dupont Circle

I don't usually like vegetables, but there's one dish that I actually enjoy: mixed vegetables with chicken from Thaiphoon in Dupont Circle. Other Thai restaurants won't do, it has to be from Thaiphoon. I used to live a few blocks away and could get takeout a couple of times a week, but I recently moved several blocks in the opposite direction so it's not very convenient to eat on a regular basis. I finally decided to take matters into my own hands and learn how to make this dish, which is just vegetables and chicken in some sort of savory, broth-y brown sauce.


I barely cooked at all until I met NP, and I'd certainly never tried to make Asian food before, so this was a new challenge for me. For reasons I will not go into now, I went to whole foods before I had the chance to look up any recipes. I was also bogged down by a huge, giant printer/scanner/fax machine that was too big for the cart I had brought to transport it. And to top it off, I was there during the post-work rush hour and the store was packed. These conditions were not conducive to googling via iPhone possible ingredients, so I had to wing it. Not the best start to my thai cooking adventure, but I was determined to get my thai chicken veggies so I perservered. My first step was the ethnic food aisle, where I bought every type of sauce and seasoning that seemed like it could possibly be in the dish. When I got home, I realized a lot of the things I got were for Japanese or Chinese food, but I did happen to get one Thai product: fish sauce!



Most of the vegetables were easy (broccoli, asparagus, carrots, shitake mushrooms), but I struggled to find the sort of soggy lettuce-y stuff that's in the original dish. I bought something that looked like a head of iceberg lettuce, except that the leaves were a little crinkled. It turned out to be savoy cabbage. I have no idea if this is used in asian food, but it looks cool, so here's a picture:


After all of my trouble at the grocery store, NP ended up working until after 1am that night so I didn't even get make the dish for dinner that night. Instead I made it for lunch the next day, without NP's help. I couldn't find any recipes online that sounded right, so I just kind of threw everything together, and it turned out awesome.

First, I cooked 1 clove of garlic in some vegetable oil, then added asparagus, cabbage, and pre-sliced carrots, bell peppers, broccoli, and mushrooms. Then I added a bunch of chicken broth, because the original dish is kind of soup-y. I put in a little soy sauce, but I didn't think that tasted right, so I used regular salt and pepper. I then put in about a teaspoon of the strange looking fish sauce, and I think that helped it a lot. I also added about a teaspoon of brown sugar. Not enough to make it sweet, but it made it taste better. Lastly, I put about 2 teaspoons of butter to make the sauce a little bit shiny. I kept adding more chicken stock as it evaporated, I probably used about a cup total. Lastly, I thinly sliced some chicken I had gotten from the salad bar and let it heat up.


I also made rice for the first time! I was shocked that it came out okay. I tried to make it once in college, but it didn't work out for me, so this was a pleasant suprise. Anyway, here's a picture of the final dish! It didn't taste exactly like the version from the restaurant, but it was still really tasty!

Blackened Chicken and Avocado Salad

I don't really like salads as a meal except for this one. I used to get something similar from the Guards for lunch when I worked in Georgetown, and I started making it at home. It's really easy and tasty. I get chicken breasts or cutlets and pound them till they're pretty thin, then coat them with olive oil, salt, pepper, old bay, paprika, and cayenne pepper. I have no idea what is included in a real blackening seasoning mix, but I think this tastes good. Then I cook the chicken in a skillet. Meanwhile, I cut up some cucumbers and tomatoes and dress them with lettuce in balsamic vinegar. Then when the chicken is done, I slice it and put it on the salad, along with slices of avocado. I've been getting some prepared corn and bean salad from whole foods and adding that as well. We usually eat it with a french baguette. Mmm.

The Most Delicioius of All Foods - Ribs

During July, I cooked ribs twice. The first time was at a lake house, where a group of us cooked a smorgasbord of great food. We cooked ribs and a pork butt. The ribs we coated in a rub and let marinate overnight. We then wrapped in heavy duty foil and added about a quarter cup each of margarita mix and OJ. We popped the package in the oven for a couple of hours at about 260. After two or three hours or so, we pulled it out, drained the juices, added some bbq sauce and then slapped it on the grill to get some nice delicious caramelization.



Along with the ribs we served chopped pork bbq (which will get its own post sometime) and grilled asparagus. For the asparagus, I just speared them all on a couple of skewers to make it easier to turn. I then marinated them in a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper.



A couple weeks later I made ribs a second time around. This time, I had no grill so had to do everything in the oven. The beginning stages were the same but instead of taking it to the grill, I used the broiler. I brushed bbq sauce on it and left it under the broiler for a few minutes. Once caramelized, I brushed more sauce on and put it back under the broiler. I did this a few times until the ribs had several layers of delicious sauce.



The first picture is the ribs with just the rub. The second is just out of the oven with the first coating of bbq sauce. The third picture is after the sauce has been cooked on several times. The last is the finished plate. I served the ribs with baked beans, a potato salad and steamed broccoli.

Summer Grilling

So after a month-long hiatus, I'm back with several updates. This post I have two burger dishes. This first one is cooked on the new grill KJC got when she moved into a new apartment. It works quite well, even giving the burgers and veggies some nice grill marks. A charcoal or gas grill is preferable but for apartment living this is not too bad. Well this meal was just simple beef burgers plus the sides of squash and zucchini. I coated the veggies in olive oil and salt and pepper. Very simple yet delicious.




This next meal also involved burgers but probably the best part is the side dish of potatoes. I cooked the potatoes two ways. The first is hash browns with parmesan cheese and parsley. I simply diced then boiled the potatoes and then browned them in a pan with a bit of oil. When they were close to being done, I added the cheese, parsley, pepper and salt. For the second preparation, I thinly sliced the potatoes, coated in olive oil and then grilled. They had great texture and tasted like a cross between potato chips and french fries. I served the potatoes with a burger and green beans. Not a great picture of the potatoes but you get the idea.

Buffalo Burgers

We decided to do the classic burger and fries with a few minor twists - namely buffalo meat instead of beef or turkey. Of course with no outdoor grill, the bulk of the cooking unfortunately had to be done on a grill pan. Also because we decided to do sweet potato fries, the apartment really heated up as they were roasting in the oven.

Anyway, I microwaved two sweet potatoes for about 4 minutes to get the cooking process started. Then I thinly sliced the potatoes and coated them in olive oil before placing on the sheet pan. I roasted them for about 25 minutes at 350 (flipping them when they are crisp on one side). Next time, I would slice the potatoes a little thicker (about 1/2 inch). Also microwaving them before didn't help as much as I thought it would. I would likely not do that step again or would do it for a bit longer. While the fries were roasting, I blanched the trimmed green beans in boiling salted water.

After the potatoes were in the oven about 15 minutes, I threw the buffalo burgers on the grill pan. I seasoned them generously with salt and pepper. I also put some olive oil on the burgers because they are so lean and can dry out. Once the burgers were done I simply dry grilled the green beans - no oil or butter.

Lettuce, tomato, onion and cheddar cheese on the buffalo burger. Salt and pepper on the fries and the green beans. While everything was good, I think the green beans were my favorite. Very simple and light.

C-BATE for breakfast

This was the first meal we cooked in my new apartment, and it was a joint effort. I loved going to Darlington House for their BLATE breakfast sandwich with bacon, lettuce, avocado, tomato and egg. They took it off the menu, so I decided to make it myself on a Saturday morning. I forgot to buy lettuce, so we ended up with a BATE, but I added cheddar cheese so NP demanded that we re-name it the C-BATE. We used toasted potato rolls, turkey bacon and cooked the eggs sunny side up so the yolks would run a little. NP made the hash browns from frozen potatoes, and it was very tasty. One of my all time favorite meals, so good I made it again the next day.