Wrapping Up and Up Next

I've been dragging out my goodbye to The New Persian Kitchen, because it's lovely, and the recipes are awesome, and I wish that I'd made more. I'm not ready to say goodbye. Definitely a keeper. We had some delicious meals out of this book, and I know I'm going to refer back to it often, especially as the seasons change, and different produce is more readily available.

I've already made that potato salad for a second time, and I'm sitting here thinking about those sesame carrots.

However, it's time to move on. I'm trying to ramp up my vegetable game even more than I already am, so the behemoth The New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison, jumped out at me as an obvious choice.

I've cooked a few recipes from this, but I have a hard time getting into enormous, dense, pictureless cookbooks. Admittedly, you wouldn't be able to pick this thing up if they had included pictures, but recipe titles alone are not usually that exciting. I'm looking forward to this one! I've heard so many great things about it, it's high time I did a deep-dive.

A drawback

One of the few drawbacks I can think of with The New Persian Kitchen is that it's fairly slim on recipes. Several sections contain 6-8 recipes. Several recipes prominently feature ingredients that aren't in season. I suspect Seared Chicken with Peaches is delightful, but I'm not going to bother making it until summer. I'm still on the prowl for rhubarb. I keep asking at the supermarket, and they keep saying it's not ready yet. I thought now was the time, or a little past the time, but I'm not a rhubarb expert. I have loved what I've made, but I feel like I'm running out of recipes that I can or want to make (I limit my grains, so that's like a whole section that I can't use). There's a lot of gold in this book, though!

I did make Vinegar Carrots with Toasted Sesame Seeds last week, and it was delicious. The sesame oil and rice vinegar were flavors that I wasn't expecting from Persian food, but it was balanced and tasty. Batman even ate some of them (it's impossible to feed him vegetables. Even when he was a baby.) He said he liked them, and that they tasted like McDonald's.
I said, "Your carrots taste like McDonald's??? HOW???"
He said, "Because they're salty and good."

Okay, that's a description I can stand by and approve of. haha!

Also, these kept for a week in the fridge, and were just as good, thrown on salads, as they were the first day.

Conclusion: Liked it.

I also made Naturally Sweet Dried Lime Tea. I ordered dried limes on Amazon, and everything. The whole process was like some weird science experiment, and those limes did SMELL like lime candy.

The finished product tasted like boiled water. I have no photo, because it looked like slightly greenish boiled water.

I have 18 dried limes left, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be carting them around with me for the rest of my life.

Conclusion: Hated it.

Ick

It was bound to happen eventually. Chicken with Potatoes and Olives sounds mundane. I like all the ingredients. It calls for pre-cooked chicken (I went the rotisserie route). I thought it was going to be a fast, unexciting, chicken-saladish dish to pull together. (Everything is bound together with yogurt)

It WAS fast. It was also nasty.

You don't LOOK revolting.

The problem, for me, was the spice blend. You toast fennel, coriander, and mustard seeds, grind them in a coffee grinder, then add to the mix.

1 tablespoon of mustard seeds is a lot of mustard. Like, A LOT. A ton. A mountain of mustard. My optimistic self thought that all the flavors would balance out. Nope. This was sinus-clearing, horseradish-level mustard flavor, with a floral backnote (the coriander?). I couldn't eat it. I picked at it, dumped it, ate and apple and almond butter, and called it a night. Needless to say, I woke up starving.

Oh, yeah--there's the ugly. All of this got tossed. It hurt my "waste not" heart.

Conclusion: Hated it.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Apple Matafan AND Viennese Sables

I'm pretty pleased that I managed to get both of the April recipes selected from Baking, Chez Moi baked this month, even if the first one was not made in time to post last week. So I'm pulling a double here.

I had no clue what Apple Matafan even was before I read the recipe. It sounded exotic and fancy, but really, it's like a giant apple pancake that cooks in a pan. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Dorie handles apples in the best, most appley way possible. The flavor isn't masked by cinnamon or caramel or anything else. I've actually started calling her Saint Dorie of the Apples in my head, because I'm cool like that. Ha!

Anyway, so I prepared this as my treat, the day after completing an 80 day workout program (which was AMAZING, and I'm about to start my second round of it next week, if anyone wants to join my Success Group. I'm happy to send you more info on it.) It came together easily (like I said, it's basically a pancake batter, with some extra touches). Batman sniffed his way into the kitchen and said, "I KNOW this is going to be good, just by the smell of it." He was right.

This would be a lovely Mother's Day breakfast, or a great brunch component. Not too sweet, not too filling. Perfection.

Conclusion: Loved it.

Yesterday, I made Viennese Sables. The dough was easy to make, but I definitely could not make shapes out of it using my super high-tech Ziploc bag piping technique. I tried that for two, made a mess, and then just made little logs. Or, as Matt put it, "So you decided to take the turd approach?"

Can you guess which 2 are supposed to be W's? HA!

That is correct, and I threw sprinkles all over those little turds, because sprinkles make everything better. EVERYTHING.

Dorie likens them to the Danish butter cookies that come in the blue tin. She says "You get an initial crunch, a hit of flavor and then they melt in your mouth."

Maybe I left mine in the oven a minute too long? Mine are dry. They do not melt in your mouth. They also taste kind of bland. I mean, they're fine, but they don't make me want to eat them. This is probably a good thing. I smeared nutella on one, enjoyed it, and was done.

Conclusion: Just okay. I don't see myself making this recipe again.

I'm In Love

Things have been getting all Persian up in this joint, I've just haven't had a chance to sit down and write about it. Let me dive right in...

A friend who was in town, and her mom, came for dinner on Friday. Matt grilled burgers and asparagus, and I made two dishes from The New Persian Kitchen.

Helper monkey.

First was New Potatoes with Dill and Lemon. This was an easy preparation of potatoes, lots of lemon juice, zest, a ton of dill, garlic, and some turmeric. That list of ingredients doesn't sound like it should be addictive, but it was. I'm going to make this all the time. Flat-out lemony, garlicky deliciousness.

Conclusion: Loved it.

I also made Cucumber and Watermelon Salad. Watermelon isn't in season yet, so I was aware going in that this might be a flavorless mistake, but the promise of summer was too tempting, so I went for it anyway. It wasn't the best melon ever, but it turned out not to be that bad. This salad is really simple--diced melon and cucumber, salt, scallion, and vinegar. That whole tail end of things (salt, vinegar, scallion) also made me  nervous, because I have never ever ever put those flavors on watermelon before. I think it's good to cook recipes that aren't a sure hit. Sometimes they fail miserably, but sometimes, like this time, they are a revelation. As far as I was concerned, the cucumber was extraneous. It just got in the way of the watermelon, whose flavor was amplified and supported by those three other simple ingredients. Scallions. Vinegar. Salt. On watermelon. Who knew?

Conclusion: Loved it.

Last night, I made Oat and Mushroom Soup. Again, a risky choice. Especially because Matt does not always like mushrooms. The ingredient list was so bizarre. Oats, mushrooms, carrot, turmeric, tomato paste--okay. Not that weird, apart from the oats. Then we add milk and a lot of lime juice. I couldn't imagine what this would turn out like, so I obviously HAD to make it.

As I was cooking it, I kept thinking that this was a good Depression meal. Not the mood, but the economic condition. Does anyone else mentally lock away recipes that are cheap to make in the event of widespread economic collapse? No? Just me? Never mind. Seriously, though. You pulse the oatmeal in a food processor, and then toast it in the oven before letting it cook in the soup. It thickens up the broth and turns this into a pretty satisfying meal, despite the absence of meat. I cut the mushroom up small, on Matt's behalf, and much to his surprise, he loved this soup. We all did. Even Batman. He said it tasted like pasta sauce, but I suspect that's just because of the tomato paste, and because I added pasta to the kids' bowls. Both kids wolfed it. Total success.

And as for the milk and lime juice? The milk made it a little richer, and the lime juice added a hit of acid, without making it taste limey. 

Conclusion: Loved it so, so much.

Turmeric Chicken with Sumac and Lime

When I first flipped through The New Persian Kitchen, I immediately flagged Turmeric Chicken with Sumac and Lime, primarily because I didn't need to buy anything except a lime, but it was different enough that I wasn't totally sure how it would turn out.

First, you coat the chicken with a hefty mixture of turmeric, salt, and pepper, and brown them on each side. You don't just brown them, though. You reeeeeally brown them. It says 7 minutes per side. I was afraid it would burn in that time, but it was fine. Then you add water and a lot of garlic, cover it, and let it braise for a while.

I was pleasantly surprised, when I lifted the cover, that the garlic water had mixed with the spices on the chicken and thickened into a sauce, and the chicken itself was completely, beautifully tender. The recipe calls for thighs, but I used breasts, because, despite the fact that every cooking show on earth tells me that dark meat is superior, I think it mostly tastes the same, but there is less of it, and you have to deal with all those gristly, nasty tendons and things. Please don't completely write me off. I'm sorry, Mr. Bourdain. And Colicchio. And all the rest of you. Ha!

Sprinkle with sumac, spritz with some lime juice, dress with the sauce, and dive in. The chicken and the sauce were very salty, so I'm glad I tasted it before slathering it on. With restraint, it was salty in the best possible way.

I always avoid eye contact and hold my breath whenever Batman tries something new. He's getting better about eating a variety of food, but it's been historically difficult. He accused me of putting vegetables in it to turn it yellow. I assured him there were no vegetables in the chicken. He tasted it, and declared it "really good! Salty! Like french fries!" I'd say there was a bit more of a spicy nuance there, but whatever--he ate it! No complaints!

He asked if it was Indian food.
I said, "No, Persian."
He said, "Does that mean it's from Paris?"
"I said, "No, it's from Iran."
He chewed, and nodded, and said, "Cool. I miss Paris. That place was really big, and we ate a lot of dessert there."

We sure did. Paris, in a nutshell.

Conclusion: Loved it. I wish that I'd made double, so I could have leftovers on a salad for lunch tomorrow. This will definitely be a repeat.

Wrapping Up, and Up Next

Part of my problem here is that I'm a cookbook hoarder. Do I want to get rid of Nom Nom Paleo? No, because I never want to get rid of any of my books. Do I see myself using it often in the future? Not really. If I had taken it out of the library, would I run out to buy it? Definitely not. So where does that leave me? Nowhere conclusive.

I'll probably hang on to it for the time being, until I absolutely have to get rid of something if I want to buy a new book. It's going to be first to go, when the time comes, though.

Next up! I've had this book for a few years, and have not cooked a single thing from it. Oops. That mistake must be remedied, asap. I'm excited for this one!