Week 21 - Stone Fruit

I'm not the biggest fan of mixing fruit with savory dishes, but I was hoping to find something for this challenge week that wouldn't be too sweet. It wasn't really stone fruit season here when I did this challenge, so I decided to go with some preserves. We had apricot preserves left over from Easter when A made hot cross buns, so I went with apricot chicken, based on a recipe I found on Savory Nothings.

The first step was to brown the chicken and then add onions. This step unexpectedly took a while, and the chicken got a little overdone, because apparently this chicken was super watery, maybe because it was super huge. I think we got it from BJ's, where the four chicken breasts were over five pounds, and maybe the biggest I had ever seen. But once the chicken finally browned, it was time to deglaze with some orange juice, add a cup of apricot jam (had just enough left), a couple tbsp of soy sauce and BBQ sauce, and a tbsp of honey, reduce the sauce, and then top everything with scallions.

We thought this was really good. I could taste the sweetness of the apricot, but it wasn't cloyingly sweet. instead nicely balanced by the other ingredients. It was also not as sticky as I thought it would be. B didn't eat any of it (the whole sauce thing again), but we liked it. It reminded us of the sauce for sweet and sour chicken. I'm not as into sweet sauces, so we might not do it again, but it was good for the challenge

Week 47 - Macanese

We've been to Macau once. It was a one-day excursion over 17 years ago during a trip to Hong Kong, and I don't remember much. (Of course, I was behind on recapping anything back then too, so I never got up to it and now most of those memories are gone.) I remember taking the ferry there, trying to go to a casino just to look around (Vegas-style) and having our water confiscated and then not staying long anyway, a lot of walking around and difficulty getting taxis, having more luck understanding things in Portuguese than Chinese, and having some traditional Macanese dishes for lunch.

Years ago with everything under construction ... It looks so different now

I have vague memories of what we ate (the photos help with that), but only one dish name persisted in my memory - minchi. (I know now that the others were some assorted fritters and African chicken, but that took some researching.) It seemed like an easy choice to make minchi for this challenge in honor of that trip. I couldn't remember exactly what it tasted like, but I was hopeful that following a recipe (like this one from What to Cook Today) might awaken some long-buried memories.

Minchi is a simple dish of ground meat and potatoes, often eaten with rice and topped with a fried egg. With B's allergy, we were definitely skipping the fried egg, but the rest of it looked doable. I substituted Impossible Burger for the ground beef, but otherwise generally followed the recipe, hoping that it would reawaken those memories. The first step was to air-fry the potatoes, then to cook onion and garlic in a skillet, add bay leaves and ground meat, add cumin and all the other seasonings (soy sauce, Worcestershire, brown sugar, and white pepper), and then when everything is cooked, add in the fried potatoes.

The dish looked fairly similar to our photo of minchi from Macau (other than the egg on top of that one), but did it taste the same? I don't know if I can say it's exactly like that one since it's been too many years, but it was close enough to taste somewhat familiar, which was good enough for me. It also just tasted really good, whether or not it was the same dish, so we were happy with dinner. B wasn't that into it, but he's kind of anti-sauce at the moment, so not that surprising. Very glad the challenge had a Macanese week so we could explore this, and would absolutely make this again.

Week 49 - Modernist

Back in 2014, the first year I (unofficially) did the 52 week cooking challenge, one of the themes came up as molecular. It was one of the few challenges that year that I skipped (more here), since I didn't want to buy any new ingredients or equipment that I was probably not going to use again, and I also just couldn't find anything I wanted to make. Fast-forward to 2022, and my philosophy about it hasn't really changed, but now I actually had to do the modernist challenge if I wanted to complete the challenge for the year. What was I going to make?! Thankfully, someone linked recipes from the Modernist Cuisine site/cookbook, and there were a couple there that piqued my interest.

One thing I hadn't realized until scrolling through those recipes was that food made in microwave could also fall under the umbrella of modernist cooking. That made a huge difference in getting this challenge done! We've made fish before in the microwave, so I didn't want to do that again, but I was very intrigued by their recipe for a microwaved eggplant parmesan. 

The ingredients for this challenge were:

- eggplant, about 1 lb

- olive oil

- garlic marinara sauce

- ricotta cheese

- mozzarella cheese rounds

- 1/2 cup torn basil leaves

- grated parmigiano reggiano

- panko breadcrumbs

We ate some tomato parmesan focaccia from Trader Joe's on the side (was hoping for more olive fugasse but they had none). I intended to price this out, since I was curious about how much these challenge meals were adding up to considering the increased price of groceries, but it's been over three months now, and that's just too much work to figure out.

I was actually impressed by how this turned out and how simple it was to make in the microwave. The first steps of microwaving the eggplant were easy, and it really did end up with very tender slices. The only issue with our eggplant was that it wasn't "strong" enough to hold the rest of the ingredients in the stack, but I had to use baby eggplant because all the larger eggplant at two different stores that day looked terrible. So instead of one large circle wherever eggplant was required, I had two or three smaller pieces instead. Still turned out okay!

As far as flavor, we thought it reminded us a little more of lasagna than eggplant parmesan, but that could be because the ricotta was a pretty dominant flavor and the eggplant got a little bit lost since the pieces were so small. Either way, it was delicious. Would I make it again? Not sure. It was pretty simple to make, and it did taste good, but I haven't made eggplant parmesan the "regular" way, so I don't know yet which way we like better.

Week 51 - Georgian

When I think of Georgian food, the dish that immediately comes to mind is khachapuri. We've never been to a Georgian restaurant to try it since we've often seen egg included in the middle of the boat with the cheese, but in researching dishes for this challenge, I learned that there are actually multiple variations of khachapuri! I guess it's just the general name for Georgian cheese-filled bread (learn something new every day). The one we're most familiar with (the cheese boat one) is adjaruli khachapuri, but I found another type - imeruli khachapuri - that, based on recipes, didn't have to include egg. I did check out a bunch of other dishes, but kept coming back to this. After all, khachapuri is Georgia's national dish, so a logical first choice to start our exploration of the country's cuisine.

I looked at three different sites to see how they made imeruli khachapuri (1, 2, 3), and from there, came up with an adaptation of it which I hoped would work. Having never eaten it before, I have no idea how close it is to the real thing. The ingredients I used were:

- 300g all-purpose flour

- 150g oat milk (lukewarm)

- water (added little by little)

- 6g instant yeast

- 6g salt

- 16 oz shredded mozzarella

- 2 flax eggs

- 2 tbsp melted butter

To make the dough, the flour, milk. and yeast were mixed together, with water added little by little, and then salt at the end. After kneading the dough for a while, I let it rest for about 2 hours. I was aiming for more but I got a little sidetracked by watching the Netherlands-Argentina World Cup match and started far later than I planned. Well, that and the time spent trying to figure out if our yeast was still alive. We bought it back during the bread-baking stage of the pandemic and froze it, taking it out a little at a time, but this batch was in the fridge for a while and I wasn't sure if it would work. (Thankfully it did, but that was another 10 minutes' delay.)

I was a little concerned when I pulled the dough out after it rested, because it did expand a little in size but nowhere near as much as I was expecting it to. I split it in two pieces, rolled them out, and then made the cheese mixture to go inside. This is where most people seemed to add eggs, so I added a couple of flax eggs to help bind the mixture together. I was going to do a mix of half mozzarella and half feta, since that seemed to be the recommendation if you couldn't get actual Georgian cheese, but our feta didn't smell so great anymore, leaving us with just mozzarella inside. We didn't have any other cheese at home besides shredded Mexican cheese or jalapeño goat cheese, so didn't have much choice.

Rolling out the dough with the cheese inside was easier than I thought it would be, although I did get some holes in the dough from overstuffing it. After the first one burst in two spots, I put less cheese in the second one, but the same thing happened again (but smaller holes). I baked them at 375 degrees for about 17 minutes, and then after they came out, brushed them with butter and let them sit on the pan for a bit longer while I cooked other things.

I didn't have high hopes for this after the dough not rising much, not having the feta cheese, and all the leaking cheese on the baking sheet, but we thought they came out really well! The dough had a good chew to it, and it was fluffier than I was expecting. The cheese tasted good, but it really was missing that saltiness and brininess from the feta.