This month’s Daring Kitchen challenge is Gumbo!
Gumbo is a stew from Louisiana that is often made up of meat or shellfish, and is thickened with a dark roux, okra and/or filé powder. I was already excited to try cooking a dark roux again (for the second time ever), but things got even more exciting when I realized I had to get a new seasoning – filé.
Continue reading Daring Seafood Gumbo
What the heck is a cassoulet? I had heard the word before, but wasn’t too sure what it was before it became the Daring Cooks’ challenge for January.
Cassoulet is a particular kind of white bean stew that originated in France. It’s become one of those dishes that ignite debates over who made it first, and what recipe is authentic. Sorry to offend, folks, but mine isn’t especially “authentic”, being vegetarian. There is usually a lot of meat involved.
One of the things that you see in many cassoulet recipes is duck confit. One of the requirements of the challenge was to make some kind of confit, and again there were some veggie options. I had to look up what a confit was, exactly, since I’ve always heard it associated with duck. Basically, ‘confit’ is used to describe a few things, in particular a method of preserving food by cooking it in a fat. In the case of meats, they are usually cooked in their own fats. For things like garlic, it is cooked in oil.
I made garlic confit.
So what exactly does one use garlic confit for? You can use it much the same way you might use a baked garlic – the cooking process mellows out the flavours, and gives it a creamy spreadable texture. This makes it (and the oil it’s cooked and stored in) easy to use in dips, soups, sauces… just about anything. Being a big lover of garlic, I thought this would be a fun thing to try making.
That done, I had to decide how to retain the spirit of a cassoulet without the meat. I opted to make the seitan sausages from last month’s challenge, and use them in the stew. I also added some smoked paprika to add some depth to the flavour.
I’m pretty sure it didn’t taste like a real cassoulet, but it was really good!
Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.
Recipes after the jump!
Continue reading Daring Confit & Cassoulet
Qormeh Sabzi (also written as Ghormeh Sabzi) is thought to possibly be the national dish of Iran, and after just one bite I could understand why.
Although made up mostly of an assortment of fresh herbs, there is no doubt that the real stars of the show are the Persian dried limes, leemoo-amonee (or “Limu-omani”). They aren’t exciting to look at, in fact you might find them kind of ugly (J thought they looked dusty), but they add the most amazing flavour to the dish that I’m sure can’t be replicated. I was lucky enough to find some at Akram’s, in Kensington Market.
Kensington Market is also a great place to find lots of fresh herbs at a decent price. I bought almost all of the herbs I needed there.
How to describe Qormeh Sabzi? It’s a rich, dark green stew made up of lots of herbs, kidney beans, lamb and the leemoo-amonee. It’s kind of hard to describe how the herbs taste in it, because it’s very different from using fresh herbs to a dish – it’s more like when you cook with leafy greens, like spinach. The dried lime doesn’t make the stew incredibly sour – because they are whole, and dried, a mellow lime flavour comes out. That is, unless you press the liquids out of the lime after cooking – this will intensify the lime flavour, and is sometimes best done in your own dish, if you are serving a group.
If you want to live on the edge, you can even eat the lime. I like to eat the outer parts – they are very strong, and a little bitter, but so much fun!
The lamb is actually a pretty important part, and this time around I opted to go without it. I haven’t cooked meat in about 15 years, and this is the first dish that has made me want to change that. Anyone that has had lamb knows that it has a strong flavour – this is why I like it, and why others don’t. That’s why, for me, it really is important in Qormeh Sabzi. My version of the dish was missing that aspect of the flavour. Other people make it with beef instead, which would make it taste a little bit different (good for folks who don’t like lamb).
Not the prettiest picture, but soooo delicious.
If you haven’t had Persian food before, you are missing out!! So was I, until earlier this year. If you like complex flavours, stews, interesting ingredients, you should definitely try this. People who like Indian food will probably like this — sure, there are lots of differences (for one, Persian food is not nearly as spicy hot!), but there are some similarities as well (basmati rice, stews, legumes).
People in Toronto should try Pomegranate restaurant, on College St. near Bathurst. It’s usually busy, so be sure to make reservations!! You won’t regret it!
Since I haven’t issued myself a month-long challenge for May, I’m taking on a couple of one-off challenges. This challenge was issued by Nupur, who writes for One Hot Stove. The goal is to find a recipe posted on another blog, and change something major about it and repost, with a link to the original blog post.
This probably isn’t a surprise, but I chose to veggify a meat dish. This dish could also be made gluten-free by using a non-wheat flour to thicken at the end (er, and by not using seitan, which is basically all wheat gluten).
I chose to make a South African Tomao Bredie (stew), which was originally posted by Asha, who writes for Fork Spoon Knife.
The reason I chose this particular recipe is because it is a South African dish that makes use of many spices that I’ve been ignoring lately. This is a very aromatic dish, featuring LOTS of ginger, allspice, cloves, cardamom and peppercorns. YUM! I’ve never tried cooking any South African dishes before, so I thought this would be a great place to start.
Also, the poster wrote about the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books when describing why SHE chose the recipe… while I haven’t read the books, I really enjoyed the TV series on HBO (Miss 97%!). So… yes, I choose recipes for a combination of reasons, some that make sense and some that do not.
I suppose I need to adapt the inspiration for this dish as well, instead of just stealing the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency reference… If I try really hard, I can just imagine Wikus Van De Merwe eating this (before his run-in with the aliens) in Joburg.
This was a great dish to have on a cool fall day. Yes, I know it is the middle of May — it FEELS LIKE FALL this week! I’m trying really hard not to be angry at the weather man, filtering some of the anger into cooking. Enjoy!
The original recipe can be found at Fork Spoon Knife.
Marinade Ingredients:
Stew Ingredients:
Aromatic Rice Ingredients:
Preparation:
