Jerusalem Addendum: Saffron Chicken & Herb Salad

Jerusalem didn't work for me as a book I wanted to cook out of all in one shot, so I don't feel that I necessarily gave it a fair shake. I figure that I may as well write a brief post about it when I sporadically make a dinner here and there, in the interest of giving my complete impression.

Saffron Chicken & Herb Salad (pg 188) is unlike any other salad I've ever had. To start, you simmer a sectioned orange, skin on, with water, honey, white wine vinegar, and saffron for an hour, then puree it until it's a runny paste. Toss with chicken (I took a shortcut and just used a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket), fennel, basil, mint, and red chile. I also mixed in arugula, because it needed bulking up. It was supposed to include a bunch of cilantro, too, but I couldn't get my hands on any.

This salad tasted very orangey and sweet, with a nice soft heat from the red chile. The directions say to add lemon juice, if necessary. I think I should have added a bit, just to cut the sweetness. Next time, since there will be a next time.

Thank you for not sucking.

Conclusion: Liked it. Relatively easy, unique, and flavorful. I'm certain Matt will still be hungry after he eats it, though. It's not as bulky as one might like. The recipe says this would serve 6. I can't imagine how.

Wrapping Up Jerusalem

I have mixed feelings about Jerusalem. There are still so many recipes that make me drool when I look at their pictures, but that I didn't try for a number of reasons. Either they didn't abide by whatever diet I happen to be trying to lose weight for my brother's wedding next month (which I acknowledge is unfair to the book), or they were too involved and time-consuming for a weeknight meal, or they relied upon ingredients that aren't in season right now, or I lost confidence in the reliability of the recipes, and didn't want to be bothered with another recipe that I wasn't sure would turn out right. I'm surprised that I've only made 13 recipes in 3 months. That's ridiculous. Of those 13, I actively disliked or hated 5, and liked or loved 5. I was indifferent to 3. That's not a rave review.

Seasoning caused problems for me. Following Ottolenghi's measurements, a lot of this food was way too salty and way too spicy. Often, it felt like the ingredients were not coming together the way they were supposed to.

Even if I hated everything else I cooked from Jerusalem, I'd keep the book for the Baby Spinach Salad with Dates and Almonds alone. Best. Salad. Ever. It is so delicious. I've been keeping a perpetual supply of the simple Spiced Chickpeas in the fridge for the past few weeks, and tossing them in salads, eggs, or reheating them as a quick side dish.

The desserts look amazing. I WILL make Cardamom Rice Pudding with Pistachio & Rose Water, Chocolate Krantz Cakes, and the Spice Cookies. I still want to make Hummus. I still want to make Falafel. And Open Kibbeh. And Saffron Chicken & Herb Salad. And...and...and...

There seem to be as many post-it notes flagging recipes today as there were at the beginning of April. When I look at the book, the photography is so gorgeous that I want to reach into the page and start eating. My enthusiasm totally dies when I think about actually cooking, though, because the recipes have failed me 50% of the time. Tricky.

I will still cook from Jerusalem. There are lots of dishes yet to try. It's not a book that I recommend attempting to burn through all at one time, though. The recipes are unforgiving, the tone is one of "if you're not going to do it exactly as written, don't bother" (which makes me not want to bother), and if you cook from it a lot, the defeats begin to overwhelm the experience. For me, at least. I've never read another bad word about the book, so maybe I just suck. Listen to  me. What has Ottolenghi done to me? Cookbooks should bolster your confidence in the kitchen, not deplete it.

It's a keeper, but I do want to go on record as saying that the book is overhyped. Gorgeous photos, enticing recipes, but, either because our tastes don't align, or because the recipes don't work as written/I messed up somehow, they are unreliable. I would NEVER serve an untested recipe from this book to guests. NEVER. I have to believe that the rave reviews are based upon layout and concept (Muslims and Jews can get along), not from use. I can't be the only person on the planet who cooked some disgusting food from this book.

I leave for NY tomorrow, so I may or may not be around for the next month. I'm not bringing any cookbooks with me, but I'll see if my mom has anything that I want to cook from. She's not a big cookbook collector, but she mentioned that she bought Barefoot Contessa's Foolproof recently. I'll flip through and see if I feel like it.

A Starting Point

I wasn't blown over by Jerusalem's recipe for Roasted Cauliflower and Hazelnut Salad, as a whole, but I did very much enjoy the combination of roasted cauliflower and toasted hazelnuts. The other flavors--maple syrup, vinegar, cinnamon, allspice, parsley leaves, celery, and pomegranate seeds--all seemed to compete against the two core flavors. They were distractions from the cauliflower/nut combo, which was perfect on its own with just some salt and pepper.

I also disagree that this salad should sit and be served at room temp. I ate some as soon as it was ready, and it was a lot fresher tasting then than it was two hours later, when Matt got home. By then, the 5 TB of oil had settled out, and the cauliflower was sitting in a pool of it. Warm, the salad was just lightly coated in oil, with no puddle.

Conclusion: Just okay, but really like the roasted cauliflower and nuts without the rest of it. It's disgustingly hot here all of a sudden, so turning the oven on is not ideal, but come Fall, I'll make this often.

I'm Not Sure We Can Be Friends

I really do feel like I'm the lone person who has cooked/is cooking from Jerusalem who is experiencing more flops than expected.

A few weeks ago, Tara over at Tea & Cookies blogged about Ottolenghi's Shakshuka (pg 66), which she prepared for guests. On a side note, Tara writes a lovely blog and you should go check it out. She's who I want to be when I grow up: a writer, a grower of abundance, a photographer, a lover of Nature, who gets out and appreciates where she is, in the now. I planted some vegetables this year--that's a step in the right direction.

Anyway, Tara made shakshuka sound pretty awesome, and I'm sure it was, when she cooked it.

Not so much, in my kitchen.

Shakshuka is a fun name for peppers and tomatoes cooked down into a thick sauce with harissa, cumin, tomato paste, and salt. I used a lot less harissa paste than called for. Once again, Ottolenghi instructs for 1 TB. This man must suck on habanero peppers for fun. I put in a dab. It was plenty. Once that's all soft and good-looking, you make divots in the sauce and crack an egg into each divet. Simmer gently for 8-10  minutes, until the whites are set and the yolks are still runny.

I timed my eggs for 8 minutes on the lowest flame my stove could muster. Things looked good when the buzzer rang...

Perfect, right?

No. The yolks were cooked through, and the whites had acquired a disgusting rubbery texture.

Ewwwww. Worst yolk ever.

Couldn't eat the egg. It was gross. I did eat as much tomato and pepper glop on mashed black beans as I could muster. I'm still hungry.

Methinks my time with Yottam is nearing an end. I'm heading to NY in two weeks, so I'll stick with him until then, but I'm no longer itching to cook from this book, beautiful as it may be.

Conclusion: Disliked. A lot.

My Bad

Did you know that if you leave dried chickpeas to soak for 2 nights instead of 1, mystery blobs appear in the water? I didn't.

Ew. I think?

I planned to make Ottolenghi's hummus yesterday, but didn't get around to it. I figured no harm would come to the chickpeas if I let them sit an extra night. Worst case scenario, they wouldn't have to cook very long. Right? Wrong.

What is that????

Time to start over. 

This Burger Has No Integrity

In Jerusalem, the photo of Turkey & Zucchini Burgers with Green Onion & Cumin (recipe on 200) is gorgeous. Bright green shreds of zucchini contrast against the reddish browning on the patties. Irresistible.

They didn't turn out at all as I expected.  The outcome may have been different if there was a step in which you drained the shredded zucchini for a half hour, but there wasn't, so these burgers were wet. I don't mean that they were moist and delicious. I mean that they were wet. I found it unpleasant to eat, and they were hard to cook. Because they were so wet, the patties lacked integrity and were falling apart in the pan. Very difficult to flip. The zucchini released so much water that the oil was spitting all over my stovetop. It aggravated me, because it felt like a poorly written recipe. Something must have been missing, because I can't imagine they're meant to be so difficult to work with. I did not make the yogurt dressing for the burgers, because I'm not supposed to eat dairy on my diet. I'm sure the sauce would have jazzed it up a bit, but the burgers themselves weren't very flavorful, despite all the mint, cilantro, garlic, cumin, cayenne, and sumac (which wasn't technically part of the burger recipe, but it was part of the sauce, so I added it to my meat). If I had to describe these burgers in one word, I'd stick with "wet."

They looked much more fetching in the book.

Conclusion: Disliked. I didn't even keep the leftovers. Charlie did eat half a patty, but I disliked these enough that I will not be making them again.

I also made Spicy Carrot Salad (pg 65). I was excited to try out my new tube of harissa paste. Holy mother of God. A tablespoon of harissa is WAY TOO MUCH spice for 3 stinkin' carrots. I'm just glad I'd halved the recipe, because this salad was inedible. Even Matt, who enjoys much hotter food than I do, stopped at one carrot slice. These went right into the garbage.

MOLTEN LAVA.

Conclusion: Hated it.

I'm beginning to suspect that Ottolenghi and I have very different food preferences. Too many of these recipes are too much--too salty, too spicy--for my taste. However, the ones that are good are great, and there are lots more I want to try. It's unsettling to me that the recipes yield such unreliable results, though.

Getting to the Good Stuff

I've mentioned my frustration about not being in the right place at the right time to find lamb around here, either at a butcher or at the local supermarket. Not that it's the freshest quality, but it turns out the Commissary has ground lamb and chops in their frozen meat section. I'm so hard-wired toward "fresh" that it never occurred to me to look there. Fortunately, my friend filled me in on the glories to be found in the frozen meat case. Jerusalem contains several ground lamb recipes, so I loaded up (to the extent that my teeny freezer would allow).

Kofta B'siniyah (pg 195) caught my eye, primarily because of the pretty picture in the book. These are lamb and veal meatballs (I may have a tough time finding lamb, but veal is all over these Italian supermarkets), mixed with onion, garlic, toasted pine nuts (which I totally forgot to add. I had them, but I didn't use them), parsley, red chili pepper, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, salt and pepper. The meatballs are sweetly spiced and lovely on their own, but then they sit in a little pool of tahini sauce. Yup. Yup. These were good. They want to be surrounded by gyro fixins and shoved into pita or something. Matt did just that with leftovers last night after deciding that the fajitas I made were not filling enough.

Conclusion: Liked it. These were no harder to make than any other meatball, and satisfy my "What can I cook that's not Italian food?" craving. If you didn't know, there is very little diversity here, restaurant-wise. Not that I'm complaining about Italian food. It's phenomenal. Sometimes a girl just wants a lamb meatball and some tahini sauce, though.

I made Balilah (pg 102) as a side dish. More chickpeas. This time, mixed together with a butt-load of parsley, green onions, olive oil, cumin, and a chopped up lemon. I ate plenty of it while trying to determine whether or not I liked it. In the end, I decided that I'd rather eat the spiced chickpeas from last week. These leftovers tasted alarming in my scrambled eggs. In case you were wondering, lemon does not improve eggs.

Conclusion: Just okay.

I get the feeling that Ottolenghi would be horrified if he knew that I was using canned chickpeas for his recipes. There are some cookbooks that seem to encourage you to play with or modify their recipes. This is not one of them. There is at least one instance where an intro quotes the person who gave him their recipe as forbidding any changes. I can't pinpoint why, but the book just seems to have a "do it exactly as I write it or don't do it at all" vibe. And he's probably right. Still, I'm using canned chickpeas. Don't tell.

A Change of Plan

There's nothing in the world worse than listening to someone babble on about their diet, so I'll be brief. Much the same as it did last time I tried WW, tracking points began to frustrate me. A lot. I've decided to follow a friend's lead and trying out the slow carb diet. It's like no carb, except for two crucial differences: beans are a staple, and you get 1 cheat day per week. I'm telling you this mostly so that you're  not like, "Why the hell is she eating so many beans?" or "I don't think ground lamb is WW friendly." It's only been a few days, but I'm already feeling better than I was on WW (or before starting any diet at all), and it hasn't been difficult yet. I think that this diet is much more realistic for someone who wants to cook real food. My books are full of meat and bean recipes that look good, just as they are. It's much harder to try and cram a non-diet recipe into a points system. So. That will be the last I mention of it.

I'm moving on from the WW book. I was starting to get bored. There are still a good bunch of recipes that I'd make and happily eat, regardless of diet status. I re-made their chili 2 days ago, and upped the beans and meat in it. It's good to have someplace to go for healthy recipes that are decent, so I'm keeping this one. For the most part, the recipes turned out a lot better than I expected.

Fortunately, this change in diet opens up a whole world of Jerusalem that would have been pretty difficult to fit into WW's parameters.

Last night, to accompany a roast chicken, I made Spiced Chickpeas & Fresh Vegetable Salad (pg 56). I wasn't impressed with the salad portion. It was similar to any other Middle Eastern salad I've ever had. Cukes, tomatoes, red pepper, red onion, radishes, and parsley are mixed up with a vinaigrette. Pleasant enough, but very familiar. I liked the crunchy addition of the radishes.

However, the spiced chickpeas were veeery tasty. And easy! I used canned chickpeas and had to alter the spices, but they came out great. All you do is roll the chickpeas around in a mix of cardamom, allspice, and cumin, then cook them in a tablespoon of oil for a few minutes. I used up what little allspice I had, then added nutmeg and garam masala to make up the difference. This one will be a regular.

Conclusion: Loved it. They were even good in my scrambled eggs this morning. Charlie ate 2 plates of chickpeas!

Getting My Freekeh On. Not Really. I Just Wanted to Type That.

I was planning to roast a chicken for dinner last night, but upon flipping through Jerusalem, I realized that I had almost all the ingredients for Poached Chicken with Sweet Spiced Freekeh (pg 182-3). I was missing parsley, which I'm sure would have been a good addition, and freekeh, which is described as "a wonderfully aromatic smoked green cracked wheat." The instructions say that bulgur is a good substitute, so I decided to forge ahead with the recipe.

A lot of the recipes in this book look dauntingly involved, but this one was pretty hands-off. Put a chicken in a pot. Add cinnamon sticks, carrots, bay leaves, salt, onion, and parsley. Cover with water. Boil. For the bulgur, semi-caramelize thin-sliced onion for 15 minutes, then add bulgur, allspice, coriander, salt, pepper, and some of the cinnamon-spiced chicken broth. Simmer for 5 minutes, then let it sit covered for 20. Piece of cake. Then you brown sliced almonds in a bit of butter and pour on top. I didn't think the butter was necessary, though the nuts gave a nice crunch.

Because of the cinnamon, the chicken smelled incredible while it was poaching. Unfortunately, I didn't pick up on any of that flavor seeping into the meat. The chicken was falling off the bone by the time I pulled it out of its broth, but it tasted like any other poached chicken. Not a bad thing, but nothing remarkable. I prefer a roasted bird.

However, Matt and I both LOVED the bulgur. I was a little worried that it wouldn't cook properly, because the recipe's instructions were so very different from the instructions on the box (boil for 20 minutes), but it came out chewy and perfect. By adding a touch of cinnamon to store-bought broth, this is going to be a new standby side dish for me, sans poached chicken.

17 points???

Unfortunately, I started cooking this before figuring out the WW points. Holy mother of God. Even when I think a recipe looks reasonably healthy, it's not, in the world of WW. Perhaps my problem is that I don't think olive oil is a bad thing. Because of the almonds, 2 tb olive oil, and 1 tb butter, and even when cutting the serving size of the bulgur in half, this recipe comes in at a whopping 17 points per serving. Whaaaaaaat? It's a poached fricken chicken, whole grains, and mostly-healthy fats. No fair. Oh well.

Conclusion: chicken was okay, loved the bulgur. I'm counting this as 2 recipes, even though it's 1 in the book.

Woops

Well, hello there. Sorry it's been a while. Life got all busy on me for a bit, but it should smooth out now, and I'll try to post more.

Not only have I been an absent poster, I also haven't been cooking much from Jerusalem or The Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook. I do have a couple of recipes to report on, though. This will be quick, because, well, I made them a while ago. None of them left much of a mark in my memory.

First, from the WW book: Caribbean-Style Pork Tenderloin. I barely remember it. My note in the book says "Bland. Took 2x as long to cook as it said it would." So there you have it. Orange zest and juice, lime zest and juice, garlic, cumin, salt, pepper, and cayenne left no lasting impression.

Conclusion: Dislike. Won't make it again.

I served the pork with Cuban-Style Rice and Beans. This was good, in much the same way that the chilis from this book are good. Black beans and brown rice are bulked up by red pepper, onion, and tomatoes and seasoned with garlic, oregano, bay, and vinegar.

Conclusion: Just okay. Not bad, but not very interesting.

I have mixed feelings about my one Jerusalem offering: Butternut Squash & Tahini Spread. I made this spread for a vegetarian friend of mine who came to visit (then we went to Krakow, which was SO beautiful!). The dip was good, in a cinnamon-spiced pumpkin pie kind of way, but the garlic back-note annoyed me. It just didn't jive with the rest of the flavor. Also, I expected the tahini to nudge this dip closer to the savory side. It was a lot sweeter than I expected. I like sweet, but it tasted odd on salty pita chips and tomatoes. Maybe carrot sticks would have been a better choice.

Conclusion: Liked it, but not compulsively eatable in the way that I normally find dips to be.

It appears that I took no pictures of any of this food. Weep not.

Holy Salt-Bags, Batman!

Woah. Jerusalem and I are having some problems. Tonight, I made Lemony Leek Meatballs (pg 44, 9 points, I think, though nothing about the recipe seemed right, so I make no promises.)

I couldn't help but feel, all the way through, that something was wrong. First of all, I was a little short on leeks. The recipe calls for 6. I had about 4. When the steamed, pulsed leeks were mixed together with ground beef, a cup of breadcrumbs, and eggs, this was still a big bowl of meat, given that it was only meant to make eight 2 3/4 by 3/4 inch flat patties. I don't understand. Mine were giant hamburger size, and would have been even bigger if I'd used the correct number of leeks.

As I added 1 1/4 teaspoons of salt, I thought, "Hmm. That looks like a lot," but I forged ahead and followed instructions.

Once the patties are browned on both sides, you add chicken broth and lemon juice and simmer it for half an hour. Fortunately, I tasted a patty at this point, because the instructions say to add another half teaspoon of salt to the broth. I couldn't see why I would possibly want these patties any saltier than they already were, so I omitted that round of salt.

Again, the instructions seemed off. I needed to use more stock than specified to "almost, but not quite cover the patties."

After 30 minutes of gentle simmering, covered, you're supposed to remove the lid and cook for a few more minutes until almost all the liquid has evaporated. There was nearly as much liquid in the pan as I started with, and I didn't feel like boiling away nearly 2 cups of stock, so I just plucked the patties out.

I meant to put this on top of a salad, but my lettuce was all moldy in its bag. Yuck.

The recipe intro says "what makes these fritters so special is how well the flavor of the leeks holds its own against the meat, while the latter is more in the background..The result is featherlight texture and a sharp lemony flavor."

Um. Okay. I didn't get any of that. I definitely found the beef to dominate the leeks. All the leeks seemed to contribute was a mushy, though not unpleasant, texture. There was no lemon flavor, much less a sharp one. Perhaps if I'd boiled away all that broth, some lemon flavor would have materialized. I don't know. What I expected from this dish did not in any way match the turnout. Definitely wish there was a photo of what these patties were supposed to look like.

My tongue is salt-swollen after eating 1 of 8 patties. What's left after Matt eats will likely dawdle in my fridge, then get tossed.

Conclusion: Like the idea, and maybe it would be good with major tweaking, but dislike how this turned out. Bummer. I will not be making these again.

Uneven Start

Remember when I said I wasn't going to "do" Weight Watchers? Nix that. haha. I signed up for the online plan. We'll see how it goes. I don't intend to talk about it much. However, I do think it's interesting (though annoyingly time-consuming) to figure out the points of real-world recipes that I want to be cooking. Should anyone care, I'll mention the point value of what I'm cooking, best I can figure it out, just in case it would spare someone else the aggravation of "the Recipe Builder."

I received another gift-pile of fava from my landlord's uncle last week. Instead of once again making Marcella Hazan's crazy-delicious Roman Style fava been recipe, I decided to try Fava Bean Kuku (pg 39 of Jerusalem. Wasn't adhering to WW yet, so don't have points for you.) I was undeterred by the weirdness of the recipe, but perhaps I should have been. It's basically a frittata with fava beans, sugar, dried cherries (substituted for barberries, per the instructions), onion, garlic, saffron, and fresh mint. It's also supposed to have a full cup of dill, but I can't find dill here. I bought a seed packet and will try to grow my own, but that didn't help me now. I used some dried dill, instead.

Get out of my eggs, cherries.

This thing was really weird and unpleasant. For starters, it was very salty. The second major problem has to do with instructions. The chopped dried cherries, being the heaviest item in the bowl, sank to the bottom and dumped into the pre-heated pan unevenly. I didn't notice this problem as it happened, but I can't imagine I'm the first person it happened for. A quick instruction to stir the mixture one in the pan would have helped matters. As it was, my first slice of kuku had no cherries. My second had a thick layer that was so discordant with the other flavors that I have a visceral revulsion to the memory of it.

Conclusion: Disliked. The first, cherry-less slice wasn't terrible, but I can't get past how awful my second slice was.

This initiation into Jerusalem left me rattled. Would I be the only person who doesn't love this book?

Never fear.

Baby Spinach Salad with Dates and Almonds (pg 30, 9 WW points) is one of the best things I've ever eaten, and sumac is my new favorite spice. How have I never come across it before? Why did my friend have to go all the way to Morocco to secure some for me? It smells like it belongs in the cinnamon/nutmeg/clove family, but the flavor packs some heat. Yum. I kinda want to throw some in gingerbread, just to see what happens.

So, the salad was easy enough. Soak dates and red onion in white wine vinegar. Toast torn up pita and chopped almonds in butter and oil, then mix with sumac, chile flakes, and salt. Mix the whole lot with spinach, lemon juice, and salt. I also added a shredded turkey cutlet.

Mmmm. I want more RIGHT NOW.

This is a diet worth starving all day for. (Sorry. I'm a dramatic dieter.)

Matt's response after one bite: "That was one amazing mouthful of food. I don't think I've ever said that about a salad before." I must agree.

Conclusion: Loved it. I want to hug this salad. Spicy, sweet, chewy, and crunchy. This one needs to become a regular. Until I run out of sumac, that is.