Week 26 - Blended

I had been using our immersion blender a lot this spring, making sauces of various types, and then the Week 26 theme came up as blended and my mind drew a blank. I couldn't even remember which sauces I had just made with the blender, much less come up with an idea for a new one! After a bit of googling, I stumbled upon chermoula, which was actually a perfect fit since we were in the Algerian section of the AtWCC, and chermoula is, per Wikipedia, "a marinade and relish used in Algerian, Libyan, Moroccan, and Tunisian cooking." We also love green sauce of all types, so it was an easy choice.

Chermoula consists of fresh herbs with citrus and spices, and there are a bunch of variations. From what I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the recipe I used from Epicurious is the Moroccan variation (it's in the recipe description) but also seems like it could be Algerian. (Wikipedia doesn't give an Algerian description specifically.) For that reason, I'm going to count it for both Morocco and Algeria for the AtWCC. I didn't discover until later that some varieties also include preserved lemon, and since we still have one in the fridge left over from some other recipes, maybe we'll be making more chermoula in the not-so-distant future.

The version I made (with some adaptations/shortcuts on the spices) used the following ingredients:

- ground coriander ($0.10)

- ground cumin ($0.10)

- a few garlic cloves ($0.10)

- 3/4 cup olive oil ($1.20)

- lemon zest from 1 lemon (see next)

- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice ($0.34)

- smoked paprika ($0.05)

- salt ($0.02)

- red pepper flakes ($0.02)

- 1 pack of cilantro ($1.99)

- 1 pack of parsley ($1.99)

- about 15 mint leaves ($0.85)

I haven't done an estimated cost in a while (although since everything is posting all out of order, it may not appear that way), but the chermoula itself was about $6.76. Add on some couscous for about $1, chicken tenderloins ($5.44), zucchini ($2.29), carrots ($0.60), red onion ($0.85), and oil/seasoning for roasting ($0.60), and the total was around $17.54. It made a lot of food (no leftovers though), but not bad for dinner for three, considering the way prices have increased since I was last doing these comparisons.

The sauce was really easy to make. Blend everything other than the herbs, and then blend the herbs in. I was a little concerned in the beginning because it looked more orange than green, but once all the herbs were in, it was the green sauce I was expecting. It tasted really good on its own, but we've been known to eat various green sauces by the spoonful, unaccompanied, before, so this was no different.

Typically used with fish or seafood (according to Wikipedia), chermoula is also used with meat and vegetables, so that was what I did, making it a topping for some grilled chicken (re-used the chicken souvlaki recipe from the Week 24 challenge because of the complementary flavors, just without the sticks, more on that another time), couscous, and roasted vegetables (zucchini, carrots, red onions). We really enjoyed it. It was a little lighter on the spice than the original recipe because I toned it down for B, even though he didn't actually end up eating any of it. Would make this again!

Week 16 - Layered

When I hear layered, my first thought is usually lasagna, but I had no interest in making lasagna for the Week 16 challenge. After googling "layered recipes," I stumbled on a 5 layer casserole on Taste of Home that was attributed to Dolly Parton. I couldn't find any actual evidence of Dolly Parton making said casserole or talking about it, but multiple sources mentioned that this famous layered casserole is supposed to be one of her favorites, so why not try it?

The five layers were potatoes, meat (used Impossible Burger), onions, tomatoes, and green peppers. I seasoned each layer (twice for the potatoes, since there were two layers) with salt, pepper, sometimes onion powder, sometimes the green goddess seasoning from Trader Joe's (love that stuff), and also added cumin, paprika, and garlic powder when I cooked the meat. I don't know how much seasoning would have been in the "original," but ours had plenty.

Outside of cooking the meat, everything else was just prep, and the casserole cooked in the oven for two hours. Long cook time so it was a late night, but if I had started on time, things would have gone better. Overall, we thought the casserole was really good. Again, no idea if it's really Dolly Parton's or if it's just a rumor, but it was a great dish.

Week 10 - No Recipe

One of the things I love the most about the 52 week cooking challenge is the way it gets me to try new things, usually by following a new recipe. What was I going to do if I couldn't rely on a recipe for Week 10?

Many years ago, before I started learning how to cook more and before it was easy to find recipes for anything on the internet, one of the things I often made without a recipe/cookbook was turkey burgers. I decided to revisit that for this challenge, and hopefully bring in different ingredients and flavors that I've picked up over the years.

This turkey burger had an eggplant-yogurt sauce inspired by baba ghanoush. The patty included carrots and scallions because we had them in the fridge, and instead of bread crumbs, I used some of the koftelik bulgur I had left from the Turkish challenge (which I will post about at some point...). Turned out well, and would make again!

Week 46 - Potatoes

The problem with a theme like potatoes is that we love potatoes, which means there are too many great-sounding dishes to choose from! When this theme came up, the first thing that came to mind during these cooler days was a warm potato salad, and after some looking around, I decided on Swabian kartoffelsalat from the southwestern area of Germany (based on this recipe from Five Heart Home). Usually when I think of warm German potato salad, there is some sort of bacon involved, but this one was just potatoes and onions, so I was curious how it would turn out.

I usually like to do all of these challenge meals on my own (with some prep help from A when needed so we don't eat too late at night), but A did most of this one after I accidentally crushed my thumb hard with the refrigerator door. It's thankfully better now, but there was no way I was going to be able to peel and thinly slice potatoes with only one working hand (and the other one in throbbing pain). At least I chopped the onion before that happened.

The recipe here was fairly straightforward. Just boil the potatoes until tender, then peel them and slice them thinly. Put them in a large bowl and top with some beef broth, minced onions, apple cider vinegar, and salt and pepper. Then the bowl gets covered with plastic wrap and sits at room temperature for half an hour to let the potatoes soak up all those delicious flavors. Parsley goes on top as a garnish once the time is up, along with mixing in a few tablespoons of neutral oil.

This potato salad was simple but so good! Letting the potatoes and onions sit in the beef broth made such a difference from other potato salads. We ate this with some bratwurst (TJ's) and cucumber onion salad (which thankfully I had made earlier in the day before the thumb incident), and it was a lovely German night for dinner.

Week 42 - Low and Slow

A theme of "low and slow" is not the easiest thing to do when we're trying to make faster dinners for earlier bedtimes. We could have gone with the slow cooker, but I didn't want to figure out how to do that in the Instant Pot, so just decided to make a recipe for Moroccan-style chicken with lentils that I found on BBC Good Food. Cooking for 1.5 hours at a low temperature seemed low and slow enough for me.

Before going into the oven

The recipe was fairly easy. Just make a spice rub out of crushed garlic, ground cumin, ground coriander, and paprika, and then rub some chicken thighs with olive oil and then the spice rub. Brown the chicken, set it aside, then fry a sliced-up onion. Add red lentils, chopped tomatoes, ketchup, chicken stock, a cinnamon stick, and a bunch of whole dried apricots. Cover and stick the casserole dish in a 350 degree oven for 90 minutes. That was it. Sounded so straightforward and easy. Just long.

Unintentional soup after 90 minutes in the oven

We did have one complication though. I tripled the amount of lentils, so figured that I would need triple the amount of chicken stock. But the amount of chicken stock in the original recipe was so far off that we ended up with soup. The broth tasted great, and it wasn't bad having extra to spoon on top of our couscous, but we could have gone with at least two cups less liquid and been just fine.

The chicken was so tender and completely fell apart (in a good way), and the entire dish tasted delicious and nourishing. We really did enjoy eating it, but I didn't add it to our cookbook because putting aside 1.5 hours just for the oven time isn't the easiest thing to do right now. We took a break for the summer, but we've done a fair amount of North African food this year because we're up to Algeria in the AtWCC, so it was nice to get back to the region as the weather is getting cooler. We're definitely glad we tried the recipe, even if we don't know when we'd make it again.