Most Brits associate mincemeat with Christmas – its intoxicating mix of fruit, spices, booze, nuts and mixed peel provide Pavlovian stimuli, stirring memories of cherubic choirs a-caroling, roasted poultry, and the Queen’s speech – whereas I associate it with Easter, because it was always around then that we finally ran out of mince pies. I use the term “ran out” quite deliberately, as mince pies were the kind of thing that, growing up, were considered within the realm of “supplies”, so numerous were they. Every year in early December, my industrious mother would make at least six, but often as many as ten, dozen individual mince pies, fashioned lovingly from homemade mincemeat she had prepared several months in advance.

These seasonal confections then proceeded to appear on the table each and every mealtime, during tea breaks, whenever we had company over and any other time people were sat sitting and might be persuaded to have a smackerel of something, until everyone was thoroughly sick of the sight of them. Towards the end of March, the sight of the poor, battered-looking stragglers, that had been taken in and out their box so many times that their pastry shells were all dented and crumbly, was particularly sad.

The derivation of the word mincemeat, which today contains no minced meat, is Medieval, from a time shortly after Marco Polo had returned from the East, and every cook worth his salt was finding new ways to disguise and preserve rotten provisions with the spices he popularized. Adding cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to ground meat, dried fruits, candied peel and chopped nuts before soaking the whole lot in high octane liquor must have been a hit at the time, which probably speaks more to the concurrent lack of fresh meat than to whether this was, in fact, a delicious preparation. Either way, it caught the imagination of a nation, and though the ground meat has largely been dropped, the tradition of using these spices to perfume pie filling continues strongly.

Another reason mincemeat was such a hit way back when is because once made, it can be expected to keep, unrefrigerated for as long as 2 years – something my mother bore in mind, as she often made hers over the first weekend of the New Year giving it ample time to “improve” over the next 12 months. Throughout the year, she would occasionally rouse it from its slumbers, turning it over and adding a touch more brown sugar or booze as she deemed necessary. Suffice it to say that by the time Easter came around, and the last mince pies were served, their mincemeat contents was nearing its second birthday, and was so highly perfumed that to inhale deeply close to a warmed mincer was to risk singed nose hairs.

Following my mother’s established tradition, I was well prepared, having put together my mincemeat last January, and fed it occasionally throughout 2011, so that it was rich and boozy by the time the Holidays arrived. Unfortunately, the energetic screams of our firstborn put paid to any intentions I may have had of making batches of personal mince pies before Christmas, so I had plenty of mincemeat leftover to ring in the New Year with. Inspired by a desire to produce something that people would actually eat before the next Christian festival hove into view, I quickly prepared this mincemeat stuffed quince. You could quite equally pair it with a vanilla custard/creme anglaise or, as I prefer, a whisky-laced whipped cream, but I lost my dander somewhere along the way and just shook some powdered sugar over it to evoke the wintry season instead.

I could have used apples in this recipe, but opted for quince largely because it’s one of those fruits that was, coincidentally, first popularized in the UK during Elizabethan times and has, rather sadly, since fallen out of favor. Brought originally from Asia and sometimes known by the moniker “love apple”, quince isn’t dissimilar in taste and texture to the apple — to which it is botanically related and which would make a fine substitute here — but when you’ve got the strains of “Good King Wencelas” with its frosty and feudal lyrics echoing in your mind, quince just feels right. [For more on quince, check out our friend Rachel Eats.]

Oven-baked quince are really, really good: rich, almost custardy in flavor and not overly sweet. A perfect dessert for the Holiday period, providing enough time is taken between courses. It’s probably not worth making a batch of mincemeat just for this purpose, but they are they dead easy and quick to pull together, and will be eaten in no time, allowing you and your family to leave Yuletide flavors safely behind you before the end of January.

One of the great joys of parenting is being able to do stuff with your kids, you know, like playing with them and watching them laugh. One of the great responsibilities of parenting is doing things with them because you have no choice, as this morning when I reached a stalemate with our 11-month old: either he needed to stop being so clingy for a few moments or I wouldn’t be able to get off the toilet. Depending on what kind of parent you are, you’ll find that one of these scenarios is more common than the other, and we’re totally not judging.

The same might be said of eating homegrown produce: some of it you thoroughly enjoy eating; some of it you eat because you have to. Our first real summer as more or less fully-fledged gardeners has certainly not been characterized by optimal growing conditions but we’re still finding that while there are joyous occasions when being creative with our horticultural bounty is a true pleasure, there are plenty of others when facing eggplant for the fourth time in a week becomes a chore.

Like parenting challenges surmounted, finding new and delicious ways to enjoy eggplant – of which, in truth, I’ve never been the world’s biggest fan – provides a great deal of personal satisfaction even if at the time it’s frustrating, because in both cases you emerge mostly unscathed but with a new-found appreciation of both the baby and the ingredient.

The recipe below – baingan bhartha – makes use of eggplant’s previously unappreciated attribute of being able to bind a sauce. Like its nightshade cousin the tomato, eggplant seems as comfortable in this role as any other we’ve tried with it. The smoky flavor gained through roasting is quite startling in its profundity – and it would be remiss of us if we were not to warn you that roasting eggplant over direct flame, like some aspects of parenting very young children, can lead to messy explosions. But we learned that the long-cooking and removal of skin diffuses that slightly cough-inducing, throat-irritating quality we’ve always noticed, replacing it with something approaching a sweetness, believe it or not.

First eaten at our neighborhood Indian restaurant, Kinara, this roasted eggplant and fragrantly-spiced sauce is typical of the Punjab. Best known these days among Westerners for the inimitable musical stylings of Punjabi MC, the Punjab is a region of densely-populated river valleys now shared between India and Pakistan but with a historical relationship with the Persian (Farsi)-speaking, Islamic peoples of to the north and east in Afghanistan and Iran. In fact, Punjab (Panjab in Farsi) means “five rivers”, and it is in this relationship to the baba ghanoush-eating natives and co-religionists of the Middle East that the dish’s roots lie.

Future preparations to try before either the season ends or we turn into eggplants ourselves include, of course, babaghanoush, but also other recipes from both near and far: preserved/pickled eggplant, pasta alla norma, moussaka and miso eggplant.

**Recipe note: If your spices are relatively old and not as pungent, try adding more of them to this recipe. I found that the eggplant really just sucks up anything that is added to it and I ended up adding a few more pinches of all of them. Taste along the way and, as always with cooking, adjust seasoning to your liking.

While Queens may have the reputation for being the most ethnically diverse area in the United States, our very own borough of Brooklyn is certainly not bereft of global flavors. From the side-by-side Mexican and Chinese neighborhoods of Sunset Park to the century-old Italian areas of Carroll Gardens and Bay Ridge, to the more recently established Caribbean community of Crown Heights, there is rather more than a smattering of diverse flavors available to the curious epicure. Even gentrified Park Slope and Prospect Heights reflect the enduring presence of their Puerto Rican and Dominican populations with a wide selection of places offering “Spanish food”, a phenomenon which took me a while to decipher as it certainly isn’t Spanish in the European sense.

Dishes typical of Spanish-speaking countries, especially those ringing the Caribbean, but which also may be derived from actual Iberian cooking — known predominantly on the east coast as Spanish, or Spanish American — it’s basically a catch-all term that to me connotes delicious, often with tropical ingredients, but always complex and filling food. We’ve made mention of several of these neighborhood eateries in several previous posts – El Viejo Yayo, Los Pollitos, Bogota among them – but our most recent crush is on the wonderful Windsor Terrace institution, Elora’s.

Serving Mexican and Spanish food, whereby you can select from the greatest hits of Mexico as well as these Spanish-speaking Caribbean classics, Elora’s serves all these in such volume that one dish could easily feed a hungry family of four. And it is perhaps because of this, and their consequently narrow profit margins, that our regular server at Elora’s should, by rights, be enjoying the benefits of a comfortable retirement.

Pushing 80 years old, Don Nicolas is without doubt the oldest but also the most charming and interesting waiter we have ever had the good fortune to be served by. Born to Sicilian immigrant parents in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and trained as a tango and opera singer, it is his daughter for whom the restaurant is named. His musical career spanned several decades and took him the length and breadth of the Americas, before he retired from singing, settled in Brooklyn and went into the restaurant business with his marital family.

On our most recent visit while we waited for our heavily-laden plates to arrive, Don Nicolas was explaining to us the secret of his youthfulness – “if I stop moving, I become stiff and I might not get started again! When you are young you don’t think about these things and spend all your time on the couch!” Indeed, many less energetic thirty somethings might have struggled with the amount of food he was charged with lugging from the kitchen. But manage he did, depositing immoderate orders of pernil, bistec encebollado and chicharrones de pollo on our table before returning spritely with sides of beans, rice, and tostones. Still not done, he surveyed the table and in a trice was back with a deep bowl of raw garlic in oil. “Prefieren un poco de salsa de ajo por su tostones, no?” (you’d like a little garlic sauce for your plantains, right?), he asked.

When we congratulated Don Nicolas on his fitness and asked if his health is reflection of his restaurant’s hearty fare, he responded diplomatically that he enjoyed the beans and rice and the pollo guisado (stewed chicken) most weeks, but found the Mexican dishes to be too hot for his Argentine tastes. “No tenemos alimento picante en Argentina,” (we don’t have spicy food where I come from.) he explained.

In fact, chicharrones de pollo, deep fried chicken, or more accurately translated as chicken cracklins’, are a popular Dominican dish, sometimes also claimed by Puerto Ricans as their own — we’ll leave it to them to fight over where it truly originated — in which chunks of chicken are marinaded for a lengthy period in adobe, lime juice, rum and either soy sauce or worcestershire sauce before being lightly dusted in corn starch and tossed into hot oil. If you like fried chicken (and those who don’t must ask themselves some searching questions) then you should try this recipe. It goes perfectly well with the tostones we had at Elora’s or the beans and rice we prepared more recently, but it is just as good on its own with a jigger of hot sauce and a cold bottle of Presidente Dominican beer. And, sure, it won’t necessarily help you live well into your 80s, but it will make the next couple of hours more enjoyable.

According to British and Irish tradition, black pudding has an esteemed place next to the bacon rashers, sausage links, fried eggs, mushrooms, fried tomato and fried slice in an old-fashioned greasy spoon breakfast, but its almost complete absence from the American breakfast table is confusing, especially given our known preference towards an injection of cholesterol to kick-start the day.

This phenomenon might be partially explained by the less euphemistic title of “blood sausage” in use on these shores. The more descriptive terminology acting as a major deterrent. In fact, blood sausages are an integral part of the diets of many European countries — the morcilla of Spain and French boudin noir, among them — and their former colonies in the new world, especially South America, with the Cajun country cooking of Louisiana and the Canadian province of Quebec being the only areas of North America to demonstrate any real enthusiasm for these dark mystery bags.

Supposedly a corruption of the English word “pudding”, boudin are common throughout France in various colors and flavors, and in many ways the term refers to fresh sausages in general, with the more familiar cognate, saucisson, reserved largely for salumi/preserved sausages. Boudin blanc, made with veal and pork are commonly seasoned with quatre epices (white pepper, ginger, nutmeg and cloves) and closely resemble many of the sausages I remember growing up in England where pale colored pork sausages, flavored most commonly with either apple or sage, were a weekend breakfast table favorite. However, it’s the boudin noir, made with pigs blood, grains, fat and seasoned with white pepper and nutmeg that I am most interested in, perhaps, because of a fascination with just how one makes sausages out of congealed pigs blood, but, principally because their gruesome reputation belies their extremely delicate texture and taste. Their rich color, unique minerally-flavor, and loose, unctious mouth-feel, is obscured by our collective fear of blood, though given the current inexplicable popularity of all things vampire-related, whether this is shared by younger generations is unknown.

In France, there are various centers of boudin production, but it is relatively easy to find throughout the country. The meal above is a take on one we ate in the charming medieval town of Arras (more famous for its wall-hanging carpetry than its gastronomy) in north-eastern France around New Year 2009. The potato gratin and green salad of that meal being substituted here with puy lentils and some charmingly minute steamed vegetables – zucchini in this case – and pickled pattypan squash. The latter picked up during some holiday impulse buying at a supermarket outside the nearby town of Noyon, and the jar breached for this special recreation. This dish was extremely good, though the boudin did deflate somewhat during cooking which I took to be an indictment of the particular sausage-maker’s art rather than a facet typical of blood sausages in general. Should you wish to avoid that possibility altogether though, I would certainly council frying thick slices of boudin on a hot plate, or similar device, until crispy on the outside. The contrast with the lentils and the soft interior of the sausage would be even better than what’s pictured here.

There is so little information available about Burma (or Myanmar, depending on how you rock it) that after the inevitable Wikipedia entry, the CIA World Factbook is the second item that appears in Google’s search results. This anonymity is largely due to the military dictatorship that has kept the country under lock and key for much of the last 50 years. Even typhoon Nargis, which smacked into the Burmese coast in the spring of 2008 killing 130,000+ Burmese, shamefully failed to change the government’s secretive operations in spite of a large international relief effort.

Burma has not always been so mysterious. During the latter half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th, the country was annexed to the British Raj of India (mostly to arrest the expansion of the French across Indochina from Laos and Vietnam), and quickly became an integral part of the British Empire supplying a rich abundance of jewels, hardwoods and spices to global markets. Indeed, the British, favoring the temperate north of “Upper Burma” over the fetid, malarial Rangoon (now Yangon) in the south, made the previously small, provincial town of Mandalay their capital, opening up that previously undeveloped area in so doing. It was during these heady days of fortune-making, steamy nights and opium dens that the sense of exoticism and opulence surrounding the city of Mandalay developed (which the Vegas casino Mandalay Bay riffs off, despite the fact that Mandalay is more than 500 miles inland).

Indians, Chinese and Anglo-Indians, their businesses and their foods, flooded Burma under the British, as the new rulers exploited Burma’s natural wealth and pushed railroads deep into the Burmese interior. Prior to this period, native Burmese cuisine had contrasted sharply with its neighbors. It had few of the complex spices of Indian cuisine and lacked the fiery heat of Thai food or the sophisticated salty, sour, sweet characteristics of Chinese cuisines, tending to rely on more subtle flavors and simple techniques. Things changed considerably during British rule, and the Burmese adopted or adapted many of the more generic dishes these foreign groups brought with them, so that contemporary Burmese food, while still distinct, displays these recent influences.

Perhaps the most popular dish in Burma though, is a traditionally Burmese dish that has been eaten to celebrate marriage throughout the ages. Own-o Kow-swear (or Own-o Kow-sway/swea’) is a chicken and coconut milk stew flavored with turmeric, garlic and ginger and served over wheat noodles, that due to its bright yellow color is thought to bestow luck on the marrying couple. It is also supposed that the enlivening flavors of ginger and turmeric offer a little extra oomph, shall we say, to the consummation.

We first wrote about this dish back in the very early days of this blog — apparently before lighting was an issue in our photography (or retouching, for that matter) — having enjoyed it at one of the (then) only two Burmese restaurants in New York, not to mention one of the very few such eateries in America. Sadly, this restaurant, Village Mingala, closed earlier this year, leaving its sister restaurant on the Upper West Side to fly the flag for Burmese cuisine in NYC, and so to mark its passing, we decided to give home-making Own-o Kow-swear a bash.

Of course, as my opening line suggests there isn’t much available on the internet about Burmese food, so we turned instead to the only Burmese cook book readily available in English — The Flavors of Burma/Myanmar — written by Susan Chan, a Burmese-Australian woman of Chinese heritage. From her we learned that since chicken (and other proteins, except fish) have typically been (and, to an extent, still are) exorbitantly priced in Burma, this dish came to be served at weddings as a demonstration of the hosts’ generosity and largesse. We also learned, very interestingly, that these days it is also often served — to those who can afford it — as a breakfast dish because Burmese weddings are most commonly celebrated in the morning, with the celebratory meal served around brunch time.

It is hard for us to contemplate eating anything with chicken in it before noon, let alone a bowl of fragrantly-spiced stew and noodles, but, happily, it also makes an excellent lunch or dinner instead. Do not be dissuaded from giving this dish a try, especially if you’ve been nervous hitherto about making Indian or Thai food at home due to the number and/or availability of some of the ingredients. Much of what you need for Own-o Kow-swear can be found in even the most badly-stocked grocery store, and in terms of skills, if you can make a regular beef stew, you can make this blindfolded.

Since, for most of us, visiting Burma or even finding a Burmese restaurant is largely impossible, unless something miraculous happens there politically, this dish is about as close as we’re ever going to get to experiencing the unknown pleasures of that exotic and mysterious nation. The really frustrating thing is that once you’ve tried this dish you just want to taste and know more and more about Burma and its food. Here’s hoping that one day, the government’s iron grip will relax, or be cast-off entirely, and the country and its fabulous cuisine can once again by enjoyed by Englishmen (and people of all countries) like me.

One finds mulligatawny soup on an Indian restaurant menu the same way one always finds buffalo wings or nachos on a bar menu. It just has to be there – if it wasn’t on the menu you just know there’s something wrong with the place. But how many of you have ever ordered it over the papadums or samosas to start your meal?  Like many dishes ordered at your local Indian, it can feel like a bit heavy.   This is a good thing if you make this your lunch or your dinner, which is why I absolutely love making batches of this incredibly hearty and extremely inexpensive soup that lasts for many meals.

The funny thing is, mulligatawny soup has a kind of shady past.  After doing research, I realized that there is no cut and dry history of the soup.  There are so many variations of mulligatawny, it almost makes sense that it was difficult to pin down its origins. One thing we do know, it’s not strictly an Indian dish.  It’s actually based on an Indian dish that was changed into soup to satiate (and placate) the fussy British soldiers during the British Raj (the period between 1858 and 1947 when Britain ruled parts of South Asia/India).

Mulligatawny means “pepper water” and is believed to be loosely based on a stew the Brits loved that their Tamil servants would often serve.  They “demanded” a soup course which, before this time in history, had never been a part of Indian food culture.  The result was a thinned out version of the stew base that they liked so much.  According to research, the British eventually brought the invented soup dish back home where it became a well-loved classic there, but because of its many, many variations, it is hard to know what the original recipe contained.

Some mulligatawny soups contain rice or noodles, some are made vegetarian, but traditionally it should have a meat base (like chicken or mutton).  Some contain cream, others coconut milk or yogurt.  Some add apples for a sour/sweet flavor, others add tomato while some people just dump in some chutney.  Your head could spin with all the recipes out there!

So how did we come up with our recipe?  Well, we went to our main source – our local Indian.  We absolutely adore their mulligatawny soup and wanted to eat a version as close to theirs as possible. This homemade recipe is relatively close to one we found in a Madhur Jaffrey book, but with a bit of help from our local Indian restaurant.  It can most definitely be made vegetarian or even vegan (!) and the lentils provide a great heartiness. Pair with some naan (store-bought for us) and you’ve got an amazing lunch or dinner.  Regardless of it’s history, mulligatawny soup is going to remain a staple in my household.  It’s too easy to make and too delicious.

La Cupertina, at the corner of Cabrera and Godoy Cruz in the charming Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo Viejo, is reputed to have the best traditional Tucuman empanadas in the city. And, certainly, they are rather good. So tasty, in fact, that we bought a dozen for carry-out the day we left Argentina and nursed them carefully all the way back to our freezer in Brooklyn to enjoy nostalgically a month or so ago.

Replete with savory pastry and chicken, cheese and beef humita (a stew of grated corn kernels, beef, hardboiled eggs, raisins and olives, but more about that in a later post) fillings, we were strolling arm-in-arm along the streets of our own neighborhood when we came across one of the glories of Brooklyn life: a selection of books put out for free on someone’s stoop. Among them was Así Cocinan Los Argentinos (How Argentina Cooks) by Alberto Vázquez Prego — a more timely find would be hard to imagine — and, of course, we immediately grabbed it.

La Cupertina is also famous for other dishes from the province of Tucuman and, in general, its serious approach to the regional specialties from Argentina’s north and north-west — the areas bordering Paraguay and Bolivia — where stews of meats, potatoes, beans and other native ingredients are common. These hearty, one-pot dishes have much more in common with the endemic foods of the peoples of the altiplano (high plains) of Bolivia and Peru due to historic imperial ties to the Inca Empire which once extended south into modern-day Argentina than with the more Europeanized cuisine of the larger cities to the south and east.

Nonetheless, many of them have been universally adopted as Argentine national dishes, emblematic of both the country’s aboriginal inhabitants and the creole (criollo) culture of the first Spanish settlers and gauchos. And, like other national dishes of South American countries, they aren’t the kind of meals that you can, or should, eat every day due to the lengthy preparation requirement and risks to long-term cardiac health. Similarly, there is rarely a single, unified recipe used by all cooks, only certain ingredients which must be included and others which are optional depending on how your mother used to make it and what is available. So it is with locro.

Deriving its name from the Quechua word ruqru, the origins of Argentine locro can be traced to the Andean region of Cuyo in western Argentina from where it spread across the country. Predominantly a winter dish (indeed at La Cupertina they only serve it April through November), locro is most commonly eaten on May 25 in celebration of the May Revolution of 1810 which kicked off the Argentine War of Independence.

In basic terms, locro is a thick soup made by boiling the dry kernels of white hulled corn (hominy/posole) until tender and adding various meats and other vegetables to it. Indeed, what makes locro locro and not puchero or humita, or something else, is the hominy that, by the end of the lengthy cooking process, creates a thick and slightly sweet base. Locro can also be identified by what it does not contain, i.e. anything green. Leafy vegetables are shunned entirely by locro recipes — another reason, perhaps, that one shouldn’t eat it often.

Aficionados of locro usually identify which of the many varieties it is they’re eating by the perceived emphasis on additional ingredients like pig’s trotters (patitas), squash (zapallo), bone marrow (huesos de caracú), chorizo, dry beans (porotos) or beef tripes (mondongo). However, this, of itself, can cause confusion, since some locro recipes call for several of these things. Any uncertainty in this regard, though, should not result in panic. After all, locro is a dish with broad shoulders, a reliable, sturdy presence, that once you get to know it — in all its forms — provides the kind of assurance that is so rare in this flimsy and transient world.

This should not suggest that locro is a one-paced repast, steadfast yet insipid, dependable but dull — quite the contrary, in fact. For not only does it have many faces, but these are given a supplemental spark of personality by the addition of sofrito or quiquirimichi, a spicy, fried lard sauce that is used as a condiment, providing further reasons why Argentines might only eat it on special occasions.

The recipe below, found in Así Cocinan Los Argentinos, and followed reasonably closely in terms of quantities, yields enough locro for a week of lunches of the kind that preclude productive afternoons. If you have a large family or are cooking for a block party, locro is probably the ultimate scalable dish as you can simply add more hominy, beans, broth and pig’s feet as necessary. It’s also great for those type of occasions because all the ingredients are inexpensive, relatively easy to obtain and create a wildly satisfying meal that your guests will be working off until you make it again next year. But, if you’re cooking for fewer people or simply don’t have a large enough pot for all this, you can halve it and still easily feed four adults.

We’re going to make this one short and sweet — the Phillies, my beloved Philadelphia Phillies, just couldn’t do it this year.  What was even worse was that they played the Yankees and I live in New York City in a new apartment building surrounded by Yankees fans.   I just couldn’t face to finish watching the final game as the Phillies handed their World Championship title to the team with not only the richest ball players (who have won the World Series 26 times before) but also to a team filled with wanna-be celebrities (ahem, A-Rod – here doing what he does best, looking in a mirror and kissing himself and, ahem, Jeter) and actual celebrity “fans” and girlfriends (if I had to see stupid Kate Hudson, Jay Z or Rudy Giuliani one more freaking time…).

Even though I slept with ear plugs in the night the Yankees won, despite my disappointment, I fell into a deep slumber with a belly full of smoky, spicy Chipotle Wings. A few weeks ago, Challenge Butter convinced us to take on some samples of their unsalted butter and create an appetizer using their product along with some Spice Island and OXO products that they so generously gave us.  It was a way for them to not only get the word out on their amazing product (unfortunately, it’s only available to buy in the Western part of the US) but also on a great sweepstakes they are running until December 31st, 2009 to win a 7-day trip to Montana.

So with sports on the brain and the cooler weather coming in, we dusted the wings with some of the Spice Island spices and baked them Alton Brown-style till they crisped up, then tossed them in a blend of my obsession, La Morena Chipotle Sauce, some Tabasco chipotle-flavored hot sauce and some melted Challenge Butter. Dipped in some fennel-seed spiked Ranch dressing and the worries of my team losing the big game began to fade away – even if it was only temporary.

We’ve waxed poetic about our love for our pressure cooker in We Are Never Full’s past posts.  It is one of the best pieces of kitchen equipment to have if you want that long-simmering/long braising flavor without the time to to do so. It is not used as often as it should be in the American kitchen. So if you don’t have one, before next winter, please, go buy one! We decided to bust out the PC for a twist on the traditional rogan josh (Madhur Jaffrey’s recipe as a base). This is a recession meal – but only if you have all the spices at hand. If you don’t, you’ll be spending an additional $20 on those! Lamb shanks are some of the cheapest cuts of meat – for two pounds of these beauties we paid about $6. The flavor is intense and, if cooked correctly, the meat falls right off the bone. This recipe could be made in a dutch oven and cooked for about 2 hours or you can just use little old pressure cooker to do the work for you in about 45 minutes. Lip smacking, finger lickin’ goodness.

Last week I had off from work for our “midwinter” break.  It wasn’t a very relaxing week but cooking, for me, is very relaxing. Five hours of cooking can actually be quite relaxing as well.  And that’s what happened when I decided to take on the challenge that Joan of Foodalogue put in front of her readers – create a dish from Ethiopia.  I made six Ethiopian dishes and ingredients and, yes, it took me five hours to create all of it.  But, in the end it was all worth it.

Ethiopian cuisine is one that I have only recently become acquainted with and when I first tasted it, I was hooked.  While researching for this post I realized how little is out there on this fabulous cuisine.  Anthonly Bourdain recently said that he believed Ethiopian food would be the next big trend in eating and I have to agree that it should be.  It’s delicious, communal, flavorful, fun to eat and relatively healthy (except the ridiculously high amount of butter used in the dishes).  We’ll see if his prediction is correct.  I mean how can you go wrong when all you have to eat with is your hands and some deliciously sour, sponge and crepe-like bread called injera?

The two biggest staples of Ethiopian food are a spice mixture called berbere and a spiced clarified butter called niter kibbeh (see both recipe below).  Many Ethiopian recipes utilize one or both of these ingredients.  The other staple and accompaniment to Ethiopian food is injera bread which is traditionally made from a specific type of flour called teff and usually takes three days in order for it to ferment causing its sour taste.  I didn’t have teff flour so I utilized Saveur magazine’s recipe which wasn’t as delicious as the authentic type but did the trick.  Brushing lemon on the bread gave it a bit of the sour flavor I was craving.  As mentioned earlier, injera bread is used as your plate, fork, knife and spoon when eating Ethiopian food.  Your food will come in small piles scattered on a a big injera where you will tear off bits of the outside layer in order to get the food in your mouth.  You continue until you eventually have to eat the layer that has sopped up all the flavors of each dish you chose.  These are some of the best bits but you’ve got to get to the end of the meal to savor them.

Ethiopian food is like no other – it borrows ingredients from Portugal (chile peppers), the Orient (ginger) and India (spices) to create a taste that is very, well, Ethiopian and very different to anything you’ve ever eaten.  Most of the recipes found below are based on things found in the cookbook Exotic Ethiopian Cooking and a blend of other website recipes I found.  I recommend you all give Ethiopian a try, whether you have five hours to cook or have always been curious to try that Ethiopian restaurant down the street.  Vegetarians and non-pork eaters will have a field day and even the pickiest of eaters will enjoy this fun and fabulous cuisine.  So thank you, Joan, for pushing me to finally create Ethiopian food at home.  Now that I’ve done it I’ll be doing it again.  Now, I hope you will try your hand at it!

BERBERE (Ethiopian Spice Mix)

• 1/4 cup ground red pepper (about 8 Dried Chiles de Arbol, blitzed in a spice grinder)
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon ground fenugreek
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom (about 6-8 cardamom pods, blitzed in a spice grinder)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves (about 4-6 cloves blitzed in spice grinder)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
• 3 tablespoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons dried onions, blitzed in grinder, or 2 tsp. onion powder
• 1 tablespoon salt and 1/2 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper

**Grind chiles in a spice grinder. Toast all seeds for about 3 minutes, allow to cool and add everything to spice grinder and blitz. 

NITER KIBBEH (Ethiopian Spiced Butter) – Makes about 1/3 cup – for the effort you may want to double or triple this recipe

• 1 stick + 1 tablepoon unsalted butter
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and then grated on a microplane or grater
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 red onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• pinch of salt

What to do:

1. Melt butter on low heat and skim off the foamy, white layer that that floats to the top as butter melts (this is how you make clarified butter).
2. Add onion, garlic, ginger and spices and allow to cook on low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Turn heat off and allow to rest for 5 minutes.  Strain the butter mixture using a fine sieve or cheesecloth and store in a cool place.

YEKIK ALICHA (Ethiopian Split Peas)

• 1 cup yellow split peas, soaked for 1 hour
• 1 cup of water (or veggie stock)
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 1 tablespoon ginger (1 inch piece, peeled and grated)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, minced
• 1 tablespoon nitir kibbeh (spiced butter)
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Bring soaked split peas to a boil and then lower to simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Drain if there is extra water and then mash well (they will be very soft and will mash easily with a fork).
3. Add butter  to another pan and stir fry onion and garlic for a few minutes till onion is translucent.  Add ginger and spices and give a quick stir.  Add back the mashed split peas, jalapenos, salt and pepper and a cup of water (or veggie stock).  Reduce for a few minutes until you have a thick puree.  Serve on or with injera.

GOMEN (Stewed Collard Greens and Cottage Cheese)

• 1 lb collard greens, stems removed and chopped
• 1/2 lb of cottage cheese (about 10 ounces), drained
• 1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced and smashed to a paste
• 2 tablespoons nitir kibbeh (spiced butter)
• salt and pepper to taste

What to Do:

1. Boil greens until tender.  Drain and press down to get rid of all the excess water. Finely chop greens.
2. Add butter to a pan and cook onions for five minutes then add ginger and garlic and cook for a minute or two. 
3. Add greens and stir. If you find it needs a bit of moisture, add a touch of water or stock.  Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Transfer to a bowl and stir in drained cottage cheese.

ZIGNI WE’T (Ethiopian Spiced Beef Stew)

• 1 lb minced beef
• 1 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1/4 cup berbere
• 1/4 cup nitir kibbeh
• 1 tablespoon ground fenugreek
• 1 1/2 tablespoons ginger, peeled and minced
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 cup wine (red or white)
• salt and pepper to taste

What to do:

1. Fry onions for a few minutes and add garlic and ginger.  Add berbere plus water, stir.
2. Add nitir kibbeh and sprinkle beef while stirring.  Allow all the beef to cook and all the liquid to be cooked away. 
3. Add rest of spices, stir. Allow to cook until meat is done, about 15 to 20 minutes.  Serve on or with injera.