Our Year in Food: 2023

Here we are at the end of another year, and it was another year of not updating nearly as much as we should have. 2023 brought a lot of difficult times, but also a lot to be thankful for, including being able to continue on our adventures and explorations through food as a family. At the close of the year, a look back at what was our 2023.

The first restaurant meal we ate in 2023: Technically, it was takeout from McDonald's on New Year's Day after a visit to urgent care, but since I don't count McDonald's in these recaps (or it would be the answer to many of these and therefore not a very interesting recap other than trying to figure out just how much we spent at McDonald's over the past year), the first would be a delivery order from local Palestinian restaurant, Ayat. We love their babaghanoush, kibbeh, and other appetizers, but are sad they no longer offer the oven pies (the pizza slice in the photo) for delivery from this location. Our first meal dining out as a family didn't come until halfway through the month at one of our South Indian favorites, Saravanaa Bhavan (delicious).

The first home-cooked meal we ate in 2023: Grilled Oaxaca cheese sandwiches for lunch on the second day of the year (mostly because we wanted to use up our leftover Oaxaca cheese from the tlayudas). Dinner that day was cotechino con lenticchie, the traditional Italian New Year's dish, but unfortunately thinking about that just reminds me of how we rushed through dinner and then took B to the hospital for his illness.

The last restaurant meal we ate in 2023: Excluding the donuts we brought home for snack on New Year's Eve, it would be a belated birthday dinner for my mom at Lobo Loco, where we enjoyed some fajitas, quesadillas, tacos, and fries. We were thankful to find another safe restaurant for B's allergies.

The last home-cooked meal we ate in 2023: A random assortment of pre-made appetizers along with air-fried potato pancakes from a mix and some Chinese vegetables for New Year's Eve dinner, but fully from scratch would be risotto with peas, pancetta, and mushrooms that started from the risi e bisi recipe I used for a challenge this year.

# of different restaurants we tried in 2023 (together and separate): 123 in person and 49 for takeout/delivery. These numbers seem back near 2019 levels, which is probably a good reflection of where we are as a society right now as well.

Places explored (outside the NYC metro area): Washington, DC; Arlington, VA (and a few other spots in Northern Virginia); Goshen, NY (and nearby towns); Beacon, NY; Chicago, IL.

Most frequented restaurant of 2023 (together, in person): If you exclude McDonald's (visit number in the double digits), it would be the Wendy's that we would go to on our Target and BJ's trips, which came in with 7 visits. If you exclude fast food, it would be Bricks Restaurant in Goshen, NY, the hotel restaurant at the Legoland Resort, because they had daily breakfast included, plus we had a couple dinners there during torrential downpours. If you want someplace local that is not fast food, it would be Ayat (mentioned above) with 3.

The massive family-style breakfasts at Bricks

Most frequented restaurant of 2023 (takeout or delivery): We ordered far less delivery this year, so if you exclude all our McDonald's orders to go (not even going to count how many those were), it would be a tie between the same Wendy's (we had a lot of breakfasts in the car on the way to BJ's) and Cloudy Donuts, the vegan donut spot in Brooklyn Heights that we love. Their donuts, cinnamon rolls, cookies, everything are amazing.

Cloudy Donuts!

Progress on Around the World Cooking Challenge: Starting with Angola (unit 8) in the new year, which means we've gone through Afghanistan, Alabama, Alaska, Albania, Algeria (although I still have a couple desserts I didn't make yet and keep forgetting about), American Samoa/Samoa, and Andorra. We've definitely made some progress this year, which means there's a lot of posts that still have to be written/finished.

Pani popo (Samoan coconut rolls)

(We didn't post about any new or past WorldEats restaurants this year, so last year's numbers are still valid.)

Favorite overall meal of 2023: Dinner at Tupelo Honey in Arlington, Virginia on our spring break trip to DC. The service was fantastic, both while there and in advance when we were inquiring about allergens, and the food was delicious. We got the honey-dusted fried chicken, blackened mahi-mahi, sides of grits with goat cheese, braised green beans, and crispy brussels sprouts, and everything was fantastic. B loved his massive grilled cheese sandwich, and we started with their signature cathead buttermilk biscuits with whipped butter and blueberry jam, which were also special for another reason. I had done a Zoom session through Yelp learning about how to make those during the height of the pandemic, and it was so nice to finally try them in person (obviously better than mine). There was so much on the menu that we could order without any modifications that would be safe for B, and it felt so good to have a nice dinner out that was also safe. Truly wonderful dinner and our favorite meal for this year.

Wishing you a wonderful 2024!

40s (2023)

Time for some challenges from the weeks in the 40s!

Week 44 - Halloween

I'm not big into "decorative" food (kind of lacking in artistic ability), so I wasn't sure what to make for this challenge. A lot of internet searching led me to a Food Network recipe for white ghost pizzas, and that seemed doable so I went with that. Of course, Trader Joe's didn't have any plain pizza dough that week, so we ended up with garlic and herb pizza dough (which we normally like, but this was for ghosts). I consider this a semi-fail not because of that, but because of my inability to truly shape them as ghosts. The pizzas were topped with an olive oil and garlic base, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, and some black olives for eyes. They tasted good, but I don't need to make these misshapen ghosts again.

Week 45 - drying

Another theme I wasn't especially excited about, because I had no intention of dehydrating food, and most of the already-dried food I could think of was fruit, meaning I had to mix fruit with savory, not my favorite flavor profile. I eventually settled on a caramelized onion and fig pizza from Taste of Home, which sounded like a good combination using dried fruit. The pizza had a cream cheese-olive oil-thyme base (which was useful, because I had a block of cream cheese in the fridge that I needed to use), and it was topped with caramelized onions (one giant onion I got from TJ's), chopped sun-dried figs, prosciutto, pine nuts, and cheese (quattro formaggi from TJ's). The combination was good, but other than pineapples (and I guess banana curry pizza), I still prefer my pizza without fruit.

Week 46 - gourds

I chose a bit of an easier route for the gourds challenge, opting to use canned pumpkin, and make a pumpkin pasta bake from Skinnytaste. It was a recipe we had tried before, mixing in some greens and canned pumpkin, and topped with breadcrumbs and cheese. I don't know where my head was at that night, because for some reason I threw on the breadcrumbs before the cheese instead of the other way around, which just wasn't as good. Lesson learned for next time.

Week 48 - grains

The grains challenge came up right around the time we needed to use up some just-expired wild rice in our pantry, so this wild rice stuffing from Iowa Girl Eats was perfect. I had tried using some of the wild rice blend previously on its own, following the package directions, and it was too crunchy and seemed undercooked despite doing everything we were supposed to do. I was kind of dreading making more of it in case the same thing happened, but this recipe was just right. The rice texture was great, chewy but cooked enough, and with lots of flavor thanks to everything added in (bacon, shallots, mushrooms, celery, cranberries, walnuts, and cheese). I would absolutely make this again.

Week 49 - clear

When I think clear, I think soup (also jello and broth, it hasn't been that long since my colonoscopy diet), and one of my favorite soups of all time is Italian wedding soup. I thought trying a new recipe for that would be perfect here, especially with the colder weather setting in. There was a wedding soup recipe on Once Upon a Chef, a site I have found good luck with before, that sounded a little different since it combined ground beef (used Impossible) and sweet Italian sausage (we had one in the freezer already) with garlic, herbs, cheese, and breadcrumbs for the meatballs. It really did make for some flavorful meatballs that were excellent both on their own and in the soup. Looking forward to making this again soon.

Week 50 - root vegetables

Back in 2015, I made a loaded baked potato salad based on a FoodieCrush recipe for the picnic food challenge, but since I wasn't officially participating back then, this root vegetables challenge seemed like a great time for the recipe to make a return. It has been years now since I made it, but it was just as good as I remembered. It could have used a little bit more bacon (some of ours was too overdone) and maybe some more cheese too (I don't think I used the full amount), but it was excellent and made enough leftovers for multiple lunches. I could have used multiple recipes that week for the root vegetables challenge since we left BJ's with a 5-lb bag of Idaho potatoes and a 3-lb bag of sweet potatoes, but it was nice to make this again.

Week 51 - Hungarian

How is it already the last week of the year?! I better step up the pace on these challenge recaps, because there are still some unfinished/unwritten 2022 challenge posts, and I don't want to add another year to that list!

Another opportunity for some progress on two challenges at once! I hadn't made anything for Hungary for the AtWCC yet since we are still in the As (and will be for the foreseeable future), but our experience with Hungarian food in general is slim. We had chimney cakes at the holiday market one year (something that I have no idea how we would replicate for the AtWCC), I had goulash at a tiny cafe in Connecticut over two decades ago, and we had something called a Hungarian pancake years ago in Chicago, but at a Polish restaurant, so possibly not even really a Hungarian dish. This challenge was an opportunity to try out a dish I've been eyeing for a long, long time - chicken paprikash (paprikás csirke).

Chicken paprikash features chicken (obviously) in a creamy sauce with lots of paprika (also obvious from the name). In the recipe I followed from Daring Gourmet, you start by browning the chicken, and then putting together a vegetable base consisting of onions, garlic, tomatoes, and Hungarian bell pepper. We don't live in a heavily Eastern European area, so there were no Hungarian bell peppers here. But in the comments, I saw that they are relatively mild and similar to banana peppers or cubanelle peppers (aka Italian peppers), the latter of which we definitely have here, so I went with that. Seasonings were a lot of paprika (used regular paprika because our spice shelf is already overflowing with no room for new ones like the imported Hungarian paprika they suggested), and also salt and pepper.

The chicken gets added back in, then covered in chicken broth to cook for a while. Once the chicken has cooked through, the sauce is made by adding in a mixture of flour, sour cream, and heavy whipping cream (used the new vegan version from Trader Joe's for the whipping cream, which seemed fine, but I really have no basis for comparison). The sauce took far longer to come together and thicken than I thought it would, so dinner ended up being far later than planned. We ate everything over some pasta (can't do egg noodles here, so just used some mafalda corta, which was a good match), with roasted asparagus and onions on the side. The total cost was approximately $16.91 for the chicken alone, about $23-24 with the pasta and vegetables. Definitely not the most expensive challenge meal we've done, and I don't know how much of that is the ingredients themselves versus the inflated grocery prices right now. Guess I will have to price the dishes out more consistently like I used to if I'm going to figure that out.

The problem with trying out a new dish you've never had before is that you're never quite sure if you got the flavor right. It tasted really good, and the sauce was very creamy with lots of paprika, but was it right? No idea. It was very rich and heavy from the sour cream and heavy whipping cream, not our most-preferred flavor profile, so we probably won't make this that often (besides the fact that it took a long time to prep and make), but it was delicious. Looking forward to the day when we can try it at a Hungarian restaurant and see how we did!

20s (2023)

Another group post! Some with great results, some stuff that we probably won't make again, but always good to try new things.

Week 21: hot sauce

Hot sauce was a tough challenge, trying to make something that would be palatable to a 4-year-old who doesn't really like spice yet. I didn't want to make my own hot sauce, didn't want to buy a new hot sauce that we weren't going to use much of, and didn't want to really make hot sauce the focus. After a lot of searching, I found a recipe for yuzu hot sauce pound cake on Ciao Bella Kitchen, and decided that would work. It used the yuzu hot sauce from Trader Joe's, which we already had and enjoy adding to various dishes, so at least it wouldn't be a purchase gone to waste. The cake was fine, but I learned I don't really prefer my cake with a little zing.

Week 23: boards

I'm not a huge fan of the "arranging" or "plating" type challenges, so A helped me choose what type of board to make that B might actually eat. We went with a chopped salad with red onions, tomatoes, olives, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, cucumbers, and artichokes with a homemade vinaigrette consisting of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, and dijon mustard. Really good salad!

Week 24: most requested

This challenge choice was a little tough because what did it really mean? Who was doing the requesting? In the end, I consulted Food & Wine's list of the most popular recipes of 2022 and chose the first on the list, an Italian wedding risotto. I love risotto and have been making it more and more (got to use up all the rest of the arborio rice!). This turned out well, and we could see why it was so popular last year.

Week 27: alliteration

I was really ambitious for the alliteration challenge, at least with the name. I had started out with chicken corn chowder and carrot cake cookies, but then just kept adding to it until I ended up with cheesy chicken, carrot, celery, and corn chowder with crushed cheez-its covering + carrot cake cookies with cream cheese and confetti coating. The soup was based on a recipe from Lil Luna, and we really liked it. I would definitely make that again, although the cheez-its weren't really necessary. I just wanted more letter Cs.

The cookies came from Love and Lemons, and while tasty, I only have a mild like for carrot cake, so that one might not be repeated. We do still have some in our freezer though since it made a bigger batch than we could eat at one time, so we can still have more!

Week 29: candying

My original plan for this challenge was to make tanghulu, but I never got around to it and then made some candied lemons. I don't remember what recipe I followed, but I think most candied lemons are made the same way, so anything on Google would probably work. I think my expectations were completely off though, because I was expecting something like those sugary lemon slices that you could just eat as candy, and these were... not. The rind was a little too hard, and they were extremely sour, even with all the sugar that was added to them. I think maybe my brain and taste buds were expecting actual candy versus candied lemons, but once I realized how sour these were, I had no idea what to do with them. We tried eating some plain, but never figured it out before they were out too long and ended up tossing a bunch. I don't think I would do this again without a specific plan for them.

Week 43 (2023) - American Southwest

The dish for the Week 43 theme, American Southwest, was surprisingly hard to choose. You would think that, with all the research I've been doing over the years for the AtWCC, I could easily pick something from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, or other areas considered to be part of the American Southwest, but there were all sorts of reasons why one dish or another didn't work for us right now (mostly having to do with spice level, since B doesn't like spicy at the moment). After some searching, I found a recipe for baked Santa Fe chicken on Kevin Is Cooking, a blog I've had success with following in the past, and figured that since Santa Fe was in the name, it should count.

I didn't really know what Santa Fe chicken was, and the only thing the name reminded me of was the Lean Cuisine Santa Fe-style rice and beans that I had eaten a lot of growing up, because I really liked the cheesy, creamy dish. Santa Fe chicken seemed to be similar - chicken with beans and melted cheese, but also assorted vegetables from the region (like corn, squash, peppers) and in this case, enchilada sauce for the salsa.

This recipe was super easy to make - a layer of black beans and seasoning, a layer of chicken pieces with seasoning, a layer of onions, bell peppers, green chiles, corn, and some enchilada sauce all baked, and then topped with pepper jack cheese and the rest of the enchilada sauce for a final bake once the chicken was fully cooked. It came together beautifully, and it was really tasty. B liked the chicken and some of the plain/raw vegetables, but was not much of a fan of the finished dish, probably because of the chiles, sauce, and mild spice. Maybe we'll try it again whenever his spice tolerance goes up!

30s (2023)

I really, really, really need to get better about posting and documenting things here before I am two years behind on cooking challenge memories. We're in Week 40 now, so this is probably as on-time as I've been in a while. This set is from the "30s" weeks and anything not covered separately/by the AtWCC.

Week 31: mint

I wasn't feeling very creative when the mint challenge came up, and even after doing some internet research, my best options seemed to be either a sauce with mint (similar to the yogurt sauces we were doing during the Afghanistan AtWCC) or a salad. Since it was the middle of July and I always want salads when it's hot, that was an easy choice. I decided on a summer salad with mint that I saw on The Clever Meal, with chickpeas, roasted red peppers, cucumber, feta, and of course, the starring ingredient for this challenge, mint (both chopped and whole leaves used as a garnish).

I don't often buy mint for salads, even though I know it's great in them, because it just goes bad so quickly, so this was a nice change. The dressing consisted of olive oil, fresh lemon juice, garlic, agave (swapped for honey), dijon mustard, salt, and pepper, and it went really well with the salad. Very nice, refreshing salad side dish. The only negative here was that the salad ended up costing around $12, with the cost of feta (since we ran out of our Costco-sized box and I had to get it from the local store) and mint being about 54% of that total. I haven't been doing the cost breakdowns as much as I used to (just not as much time with a little one running around and playing, which also shows in how rarely I get a post up timely), and it was a bit of sticker shock when I finished doing the math. Not the fault of the recipe, but the cost of groceries is just so high right now!

Week 33: Cutthroat Kitchen

I used to watch Cutthroat Kitchen back when we had cable, so when this theme came up, I had no idea how that would get implemented as a cooking challenge. Apparently, a lot of people wondered the same thing, so it was suggested that you basically sabotage yourself in some way. Considering I really hate food waste, and the chances of making something inedible were high if I were to use some of the actual Cutthroat Kitchen sabotages and be surprised by them, I decided to just use two "sabotages" from the start: using the microwave as the only cooking appliance and giving up my usual knives in favor of B's child-safe knives. This did mean I could plan in advance, but neither would have been my go-tos for the meal I chose.

I decided to microwave fish, since I remembered my mom used to do that when I was younger, and adapted a fish recipe from Chew Out Loud. Along with that, I made some microwaved green beans (recipe from Baking Mischief) and brown rice (instructions from Hungry Huy). I was most worried about the rice, because when I used to microwave rice, I had a specialized container that was used for microwaving rice. I wasn't sure how it would do with just a dish towel, but it turned out to be fine. Not as good as the stove or the rice cooker, but fine. I thought the green beans might be a little soft and overdone, but they were actually perfect. Greener than when I cook them on the stove, not overcooked mush, not too crunchy. I think I might do this more. I was pretty confident in the fish, since we'd done that before with other recipes, but I liked this so much that it might become a recurring recipe in our meal plan. I would use my own knives on the onions and scallions though, because these were a bit of a mess with kid knives. Pretty successful partially "sabotaged" meal!

Week 34: chips/crisps

This one was a tough one for me to choose, because I've been trying to choose some healthier meals to make (although the recent week that included both Swedish meatballs and shrimp and grits on the meal plan was a bit heavy...), and chips/crisps don't necessarily lend themselves to that. In the end, I decided to make Frito pie based on a Spend With Pennies recipe. 

A layer of Fritos, a layer of cheese, a layer of meat (used Impossible) mixed with onions, Rotel, tomato sauce. beans, corn, and taco seasonings, another layer of cheese all baked in the oven and then topped with Fritos. I debated counting Frito pie for Texas or New Mexico, but as of the time of the challenge, hadn't found a clear answer on where it originated and whether it started as a walking taco or not, so for now, not part of the AtWCC because I need to do more research (and maybe make it again).

Week 35: Afghan

Usually this type of challenge would lead to its own AtWCC post, but this time, I remade the kebabeh degee morgh that I made from Parwana and already posted about. It was just as good making it from my cookbook notes as it was from the original cookbook page, which felt like a success. Highly recommend this one if you're looking for an Afghan curry.

Week 36: reduction

I was really not inspired when I saw the reduction challenge, as my mind immediately went to sauces, something I don't tend to make much of when cooking dinner. After mulling it over with A, he mentioned making tiny sized versions of foods, and that sparked some ideas. Tiny was probably a bit more work than I had time to do (and no food tweezers), but a reduced size version of chicken pot pie made in a muffin tin? That would work. I used a recipe from AllRecipes and made one with condensed chicken soup, canned chicken, mixed vegetables, cheese, and seasonings stuffed into biscuits. They were delicious, no (reduced) sauce needed.

Week 38: wartime

I first learned of Depression cake (aka war cake) from B's preschool when discussing egg-free cake alternatives. I knew about rationing during the war and shortages during the Great Depression, but not specifically this type of cake which didn't include any eggs, milk, or butter. I wasn't sure what to make for the wartime challenge, but A suggested this immediately, and it seemed like the perfect idea. I followed a recipe from Budget Bytes, and overall it turned out good, except it completely stuck to the pan on the bottom and came out a bit messy. Not sure what I did wrong. Maybe slightly too much oil? The cake parts itself were fine, and the frosting wasn't bad, but it wasn't as "presentable" a cake as I was hoping it would be. At least taste and texture were good!

Another set of successful challenges!

Swedish Meatballs

I wanted to finish off our jar of lingonberry jam and an opened package of sour cream, so the logical choice was to make some Swedish meatballs. I figured I could count that toward the AtWCC since it didn't look like I had made Swedish meatballs for that yet (even though I remembered making them at some point before). I picked a recipe from Damn Delicious, got some Impossible Burger to take the place of the ground beef and pork, and then made a very decadent, heavy, but tasty version of Swedish meatballs.

Making Swedish meatballs in 2020

And then I did some looking through old posts and found something from the 2020 cooking challenge where I made Swedish meatballs for the retro recipes challenge... and it turns out I followed and adapted the exact. same. recipe. this time. I guess I hadn't counted that one for the AtWCC because, although we liked it, I was going to give it another try to get closer to the taste of the Ikea meatballs. We had used turkey there instead of beef/pork and wondered how it would go with Impossible Burger, which I did use this time without even remembering that was something I wanted to change. Going to count it now since we've made it twice and given it a good effort.

Swedish meatballs in 2023

The meatballs were good - made with Impossible, onions, panko, flax eggs, allspice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper - accompanied by a gravy of butter, flour, beef broth (also had used chicken bouillon here last time instead of beef, but had it this time), and sour cream. Overall, it was good, and I'm glad I made it (again), but still far easier to just get the frozen ones from Ikea if we want a Swedish meatball night at home.

Week 26 (2023) - Served Cold

Remember last year's deconstructed challenge when I made a spam musubi bowl and counted it for the AtWCC, because I was probably never going to make spam musubi without a mold? Well.... fast-forward a year to the Week 26 challenge for this year, served cold. I decided on a Hawaiian-style macaroni salad from the Tastemade Make This Tonight cookbook, and the only not-hot thing I could think to make with it was spam musubi. This turned out even better than the spam musubi bowls I made last time, so this is definitely also counting for the AtWCC.

To make the musubi, I used actual sushi rice and didn't marinate the spam this time, following a recipe from Noodles and Buns which used the can as a mold. It was surprisingly easy. Make the rice, pan-fry the spam and add the sauce, let it all cool a little bit, cut the strips of nori, and then line the can with plastic wrap for use as a mold. The rice gets packed in on the bottom, spam on top, and then it's lifted out, wrapped with nori, and it's done. I was shocked at how well it worked once I got into the rhythm of making them. They tasted really good, and there was also far less sauce than the other recipe which was good for my current need to lower my sodium intake. Now that I know how easy it is to make, the only "problem" is that I now kind of want to make spam musubi all the time, which is not exactly the healthiest diet.

For the mac salad, the main ingredients were elbow macaroni, white onion, vinegar, garlic powder, (vegan) mayo, milk, sugar, seasonings, scallions, shredded carrots, and celery. The recipe also had togarashi but I didn't have time to get that, so added some other seasonings to it instead. Made in advance and chilled for the entire afternoon and evening until it was time to eat, this was delicious. I may have had a small box of it on my own while making the musubi, because I couldn't wait. B may not have eaten much of these other than the spam itself, but A and I were so happy with our Hawaiian dinner!

From Soup to Burgers

First group post for the 2023 cooking challenge!

Week 4: instant

I knew immediately I wanted to make something new in the Instant Pot, since our IP doesn't get enough use, and this potato corn chowder was delicious. It tasted very much like a spring soup since I also added some chopped asparagus into the mix, but that was not unwelcome, even in the depths of January. 

Week 5: mustard

I initially thought about making my own mustard, since during the pandemic I did a virtual class that taught you how to make mustard, but then I got a little scared off when I read someone's comment about needing proper ventilation (our kitchen has no windows). What I ended up making was probably even better though since these smoked salmon toasts with homemade mustard-dill compound butter (well, the combination was homemade, not the butter itself) I found on Food52 were amazing. Like cocktail hour hors d'oeuvres amazing in flavor, so now not only do I have a great toasts recipe, but also a recipe for compound butter that I can put on all sorts of things.

Week 7: dyed

I've been trying to avoid artificial food dyes, so I wasn't sure exactly what to do for this challenge. Then I found a recipe on The Healthy Family & Home for vegan and naturally-colored chocolate coconut eggs, and that seemed like the best option. I used turmeric, matcha, and ube powder for the colorings, although the ube one turned out a little more reddish-brown than purple, which was a little disappointing. They were pretty good though and kept well in the freezer for future snacks, which was another plus.

Week 8: celebrity chef

Years ago, I was an audience member at a few tapings of Beat Bobby Flay, so I decided to make some Bobby Flay recipes from his cookbook, Sundays with Sophie. So many recipes there sounded good, and I made some crunch burgers with BBQ mushrooms and quick pickled onions with a side of pan-fried asparagus with garlic-lemon bread crumbs. Two dishes, but four different recipes in the cookbook, so lots to do but very tasty results. I've already made the asparagus again, and would make the burgers again on a day when I had some extra time to cook.

Our Next Parwana Dinner

Our next experiment with Parwana recipes was also on Eid (last year), a couple hours after the khetayee fail. We hoped that we would have better luck with these two recipes: kebabeh degee morgh (chicken kebab) and naan flatbread.

The chicken recipe was really easy, especially since I adapted the recipe to use ground spices and omit the mortar and pestle. Just brown 1-2 pounds of chicken thighs, then make a sauce with all the other ingredients (tomato sauce, salt, ground coriander, ground cumin, crushed fenugreek, nigella seeds, ginger paste, minced garlic, cayenne, and Greek yogurt). The sauce then gets added to the chicken, coating it completely, and the whole thing simmers for about 15 minutes until the chicken is done cooking and the sauce is thick. Very, very simple instructions. I knew we had eaten fenugreek and nigella seeds before, but it was my first time buying them, and I was curious what specific flavors they would lend to the dish.

The finished dish reminded me of chicken curries we had previously ordered at Indian restaurants (and less of the one we used to order at our favorite Afghan restaurant), and we really, really liked it. It was the best of the three Parwana dishes we made that day. The flavors were deep and nuanced, and I wondered if some of the dishes we made before could have used the fenugreek and if that was the missing piece. At the time, I was excited to try more dishes with fenugreek and nigella seeds, but I don't know if I've touched them in the year since making this, so maybe it's time to find some more new recipes to try.

The cookbook recommended serving the chicken over naan flatbread, so trying out their naan recipe alongside the chicken was a no-brainer. This was my third attempt at Afghan naan. The first time I made it, it was relatively soft, a little buttery, a little fluffy, and pretty good, even if not that similar to the bread we had previously had at Afghan restaurants. The second attempt didn't go quite as well, but the best/salvageable parts of that one were still on the soft and fluffy side. This time... Well, let's just say my Afghan naan-making skills seem to be on a downward trajectory.

This naan was a yeast bread, so I made the dough, kneaded it, and then set it aside to rise using our usual warm microwave method. Once it was ready, I followed the instructions to divide the dough in half and spread it into the baking pans with my hands, evenly spread out and filling the entire pan. It seemed okay at that point even if not perfectly even. They were supposed to bake for about 15 minutes "or until the naans are golden brown and baked through." I ended up doing it for longer than 15 minutes because they weren't golden brown, but I guess I should have stopped earlier because they came out like a brick. (There was unfortunately a lot of brick bread in 2022...) The tops were softer, but that still meant most of the bread was barely edible because of the texture. It also didn't taste like anything special, just kind of a generic bread that was mostly hard as a rock. 

I was so disappointed with how the naan turned out, and it was the same day as the khetayee, which made it even worse. Thank goodness the chicken curry turned out good, because that saved the entire day from being a complete failure. Considering both the khetayee and naan didn't work, I started to think that maybe I should stick to cooking from Parwana and skip baking from Parwana, since that would still give me plenty to choose from.

Khetayee

After two great recipes from the Parwana cookbook (the meat kofta sauce and the bolani), I was really excited to try something sweet. I had bookmarked two different cookie recipes, one that was traditionally eaten around Nowroz (new year at the beginning of spring) and one called khetayee that was traditionally eaten for Eid. So to celebrate Eid (last year), I decided to make khetayee on our day off from school!

The recipe seemed pretty straightforward. Combine the dry ingredients (flour, milk powder, baking powder, confectioner's sugar) and then slowly add the oil while mixing everything together. Then shape the dough into balls, flatten them a little, make thumbprints where the ground pistachios would be added (side note: the pistachios in the recipe photo were bright green, but ours weren't - where do the bright green pistachios come from?), and then bake until lightly golden.

I was excited to make these for a bunch of reasons. First, I didn't really make any desserts for Afghanistan the first time around unlike all of our other geographic explorations. Second, B doesn't get much pistachio in his diet other than some ice cream, and I thought this would be a good way to increase exposure (for prevention of allergy purposes). Third, I had never made anything with milk powder before, and I was curious to see how that would affect baked goods.

Unfortunately, the cookies I made were not good. I think that's likely user error, because these cookies would not have been passed down for generations in Afghanistan if they had this texture. They were incredibly dry and hard to eat, so stick-to-your-mouth dry that I couldn't even think about giving them to little B for safety reasons. At least I was able to give him a spoonful of ground pistachios before I made the cookies.

So, what may have gone wrong? First, I used nonfat milk powder instead of whole milk, because I was able to get a big bag of that at Whole Foods. The specialty store had whole milk powder, but I wasn't sure that packet was going to have enough for the recipe in it, and I didn't want to run short. Looking online before buying, it didn't sound like there would be a dramatic difference between the two in baking, but maybe I got that wrong. Second, I had to keep adding flour during the mixing/shaping step, because it was impossible to shape the dough I made into balls. It just kept spreading and would not keep the shape until I added a fair amount more of the flour. Third, maybe I baked them too long. I added a minute or so to the time because they weren't golden on top, but I didn't think that would turn them into bricks of chalk.

Who knows what other missteps I might have made, but the cookies were not good. Edible, but not good. I'd say the best parts of the experience of making these was being able to give B some pistachios and just how soft the dough felt when mixing it. I probably won't make them again after the disappointing results, but I'm glad I tried.

Week 3 (2023) - Oaxacan

We had our first real taste of Oaxacan cuisine in LA over a decade ago (brief look here), and have tried to explore more of the cuisine on each subsequent visit to LA (like our dinner at EK Valley). NYC doesn't really have the depth of Oaxacan offerings that LA does (at least it didn't the last time we checked, back when we did more WorldEats eating), so we tried to take advantage of it every time we flew out there. When this challenge came up, the two things that came to mind based on our previous meals were mole, which we love but I was definitely not going to make right now because of its time-consuming nature, and tlayuda, which I very much wanted to try to cook. Easy choice here.

Tlayuda is like a Mexican pizza (so it counts as our pizza for Mexico for the AtWCC) with a masa base and toppings, usually beans, meat, and cheese with some fresh vegetables on top. The only restaurant one we tried (at EK Valley) was topped with black bean paste, chorizo, quesillo, tomato, cabbage, and avocado, and I aspired to do something similar. I found a Food Network recipe for a chorizo tlayuda that sounded perfect and easy to make, so I used that.

The ingredients were masa harina, salt, and vegetable oil for the tortilla base, refried beans (I forgot they were supposed to be black and just bought refried pinto beans), chorizo (used seitan chorizo because we already had it and it was expiring soon), and Oaxaca cheese for the toppings, and tomato, queso fresco, and cilantro for the garnishes. The recipe also had iceberg lettuce but we didn't remember having that on the ones we'd eaten in the past, and Mexican crema, which I kind of overlooked but also didn't really want to buy heavy cream.

Making the tortilla base was not as easy as it sounded from the recipe, and I found myself wishing we had a tortilla press, because rolling out the dough did not go well. I used the amount of masa specified, but could not make two tortillas that were 10 inches in diameter. Not remotely close. Also the rolling pin was a bit of a disaster, because the masa kept falling apart and coming off on the rolling pin. When I tried it with the layers of parchment paper like in the recipe, it broke apart even worse. What did I do wrong?! I ended up using my hands and making it as thin as I could, but they were definitely not as large or smooth as they were supposed to be.

After cooking the tortilla in the skillet, I spread on the bean paste (took far longer than it should have; it kept clumping), and sprinkled on the chorizo and Oaxaca cheese (which took longer to melt than I expected). It's possible the tortilla cooked too long as the finished product was a little solid and dense. But I guess it has to be solid to hold up all the toppings? (I had made Algerian bread the day before that came out like a brick, and this was at least better than that...) The garnishes were queso fresco, tomato, and cilantro, but I skipped cilantro on one of them for B (but he ended up not eating any anyway because he was sick).

Overall, it was tasty but definitely not as good in flavor or construction as the ones you would get at a Oaxacan restaurant. Both our beans and chorizo were vegan though, so not that surprising that it would taste a little different. I don't know if it would be possible for me to get the base as thin and crispy but also sturdy as the professional ones, and there's just something different about it when it comes off the griddle compared to our non-stick pan. I'm glad we tried it, but it just makes me wish I could get a restaurant tlayuda nearby.