Turkish Chicken Yogurtlu Kebobs and Cauliflower Salad

Sometime last fall Alex and I tried a Turkish restaurant called Peri Ela on the Upper East Side based on a recommendation from a friend.  The food there was pretty good, but my absolute favorite dish that we had there that evening was a dish called yogurtlu chicken adana (which the menu described as "spicy ground chicken, sliced and served over yogurt-garlic and pita bread").  I was essentially picturing a wrap/open-faced sandwich or pizza of some sort, but it was so much better than that.  The pita bread was toasted and cut or torn into large croutons and then topped with spicy chicken kebobs, onions and peppers and a garlicky-yogurt sauce.  The croutons soaked up the juices from the chicken kebobs and the sauteed onions and and peppers but still retained some of their crunch and texture.  The chicken kebobs themselves were nice and flavorful.  It was totally spicy, creamy and delicious.  Sunday afternoon I picked up some Turkish bread from Zabars and immediately starting thinking about trying to recreate that yogurtlu chicken adana with the bread.  Seeing as I am far from an expert on Turkish food I tried to find a recipe to follow online but I couldn't find any.  I found plenty of lamb or beef kebob yogurtlu recipes but nothing with chicken.  So I decided to just make something up.  I always like  yogurt-marinated chicken so step 1 was marinating the chicken in labneh, herbs and spices.  Step 2 really winging it since I couldn't find a really good recipe to follow.  We did take inspiration from the various lamb or beef kebob yogurtlu recipes but from that point we basically threw in whatever ingredients seemed to make sense. 

Given that I basically had no idea what I was doing here, I thought the end result was surprisingly successful.  The chicken itself was my least favorite part (next time I will tweak the marinade to make it more flavorful or make chicken adana), but the pide soaked in the tomato sauce and yogurt sauce was pretty delicious.  While we were eating Alex and I both came to the conclusion that next time we might want to cook the chicken 90% of the way and then add the bread, chicken and tomato sauce to a shallow casserole or baking dish and throw it in the oven for a few minutes.  I think that way the bread will absorb more flavor and the dish will just meld together a little better.  Even if I don't bake the combined dish in the oven, I will serve the dish in shallow bowl or baking dish because serving it on a plate is just asking for trouble.  As Alex and I tried to toss the bread, chicken and sauces all together it was a battle to keep everything on the plate and not fling chicken, etc. everywhere.  While our execution wasn't perfect, the flavors were pretty good.  I thought the combination of the tangy-ness from the yogurt sauce, the sweetness and slight smoky flavor from the tomato sauce and the heat from the cayenne in the butter sauce worked really nicely together.  I was worried that the cauliflower salad would be too heavy/dense to serve with the kebobs but it was surprisingly light.  I really liked the lemony dressing, which was bright and fresh but not too acidic.  I also liked the slight hint of heat of the crushed red pepper flakes.

Recipes after the jump!

Red Curry Chicken Kebobs with Minty Yogurt Sauce

Alex and I are going out of town next week so I am currently fighting a battle to use up everything in our fridge.  I happened to buy some chicken breasts and labneh at the grocery store last week and some mint and other herbs this week that I wanted to use.  This recipe was great because it helped me use some of the chicken (the rest we froze), along with some of the herbs and the labneh.  It was also really easy to prepare (which was key because I was throwing the marinade together and chopping the chicken while making Mediterranean Salad with Prosciutto and Pomegranate and Spicy Chickpea Soup for dinner Tuesday night, as well as egg salad for lunch).  I read the reviews on the Food & Wine website and knew that I probably wasn't going to be blown away by the flavor of the recipe as written, but I figured we could make a few variations and bump up the flavor a little bit.  Sadly, I still wasn't blown away with the flavor.  I doubled the amount of red curry paste in the marinade and the chicken kebabs still weren't very spicy.  And the minty yogurt sauce just tasted like yogurt and mayonnaise to me.  So we added more lime juice and threw in a few other ingredients and it still mostly tasted like yogurt and mayonnaise.  But at a certain point, we came to the realization that nothing we did was going to create a really killer sauce with the base we had.  So we declared it good enough for government work and sat down to dinner.  Don't get me wrong - it wasn't bad.  Nothing about dinner was bad.  Even with all of our modifications we still weren't blown away by the flavor.  We ended up serving our kebabs with warm naan and an Asian kale salad (which I will post later) and it made a pretty decent, reasonably easy midweek meal.  It wasn't amazing, but it was ok.  And sometimes ok is... ok.

Recipe after the jump!

Cumin-Coriander Beef Patties and Green Tomato Curry

There are very few dishes that I am instantly completely and utterly enamored of.  Dishes that I never want to change in any way.  Dishes that are completely perfect as is.  I had a good feeling about this meal, but I thought it had the potential to go wrong in a big way.  I was fairly certain the Cumin Coriander Beef Patties would be good because those flavors are ones that we are pretty familiar with.  We use a lot of cumin, cayenne and coriander in the apartment and we know they taste marvelous together.  And let's be honest - ground beef is a pretty forgiving medium.  How often have you had a truly bad hamburger?  And they were very tasty - with a nice crust on the exterior and tender and aromatic interiors.  If you look at the picture above you can see the flecks of cilantro and onion in the patties.  Yum.  But the Green Tomato Curry made me a little nervous - I figured it had the potential to either be surprising and delicious, or just plain weird.  But I think Alex's word's said it all, "This... is awesome."  And I concurred.  It was amazing.  The Green Tomato Curry had the most amazingly vibrant combination of tartness, heat and sweetness.  I loved it.  It was funky and delicious.  It had a lot going on, but everything just worked together so... perfectly.  I think this is the first Sri Lankan recipe we have ever attempted at home and it was a smashing success. Yay!  I knew Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid wouldn't let me down.  Strangely enough, earlier this week I had decided to do both of these recipes this week on different nights before I realized that the cookbook actually suggested serving them together.  Pure genius.  They really worked together, although I suppose you could serve the curry with a number of different kebob recipes or serve the patties with a number of different side dishes.  They don't have to be served together; they just worked very nicely together.  We served everything with frozen garlic naan from Trader Joe's, but I think the recipes would also work with basmati rice or roti.  Anyway, I wish there was more to say about these recipes but there really isn't, except to say that if you like spicy dishes, you should make this one ASAP.

P.S.  I know that neither of these dishes look all that impressive, but don't let that dissuade you from making them because they really are stunning.  They just aren't very pretty.

Recipes after the jump!

Moroccan Lamb Kebobs with Mint Dressing and Middle Eastern Yogurt Sauce

It's almost Easter!  Yay.  When I think Easter, I think roast lamb or honey-baked ham.   And Cadbury Mini Eggs, which are the best Easter candy ever.  If you have never had Cadbury Mini Eggs before I highly recommend running to the nearest Duane Reade (or Sam's Club, which is where my mom picked up the 36 oz package that she bought me) to pick some up.   Yum.  Anyway, I decided we should do some lamb kebobs in honor of Easter.  We obviously weren't going to roast a whole lamb leg or a honey-baked ham, so lamb kebobs seemed like a good compromise.  I found a recipe for a Moroccan leg of lamb with a Mint Dressing on the NY Times website so I stole the idea for the flavors of the lamb marinade and then made the Mint Dressing as written.  And then Alex decided to whip up a yogurt sauce (similar to a tzatziki, but without the cucumber).  So we ended up eating a dinner composed of store-bought pita, lamb kebobs with mint dressing and yogurt sauce, and a simple salad.  All things considered, it was pretty tasty.  My only complaint was actually with the Mint Dressing - which I found to be a little acidic/bitter.  I really wish that the flavor of the mint had dominated, but all I really tasted was red wine vinegar and shallot.  So I would probably cut back on the amount of vinegar and maybe up the amount of herbs - perhaps add in some cilantro?  I don't know.

Happy Easter everyone!

Recipes after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #3: Xinjiang Lamb Kebobs (Yang Rou Chuan) and Naan with Sauteed Watercress

I promised you guys another Chinese New Year meal and I delivered!  Actually, we made fried rice last night as well, but in the spirit of last year I decided not to count it as one of my seven Chinese New Year meals.  I will post the fried rice later as a bonus.  Whoo-hoo!  Go me.  Really I should say "go us" because Alex was instrumental in getting this meal started since the dough needed to rest and the meat needed to marinate for 2 hours.

I am really really excited about these recipes.  They are not perfect, but they are a much better approximation of the Xinjiang food I used to eat on the streets in China than anything else we have made in the past.  We even made naan like they used to make at the Xinjiang restaurants I used to visit (and love).  The kebobs could use a little tweaking, but we are definitely getting closer!  One of the biggest things I wish we could change about the lamb is that it would be that much better if we had a charcoal grill.  I really miss the char and the smoky flavor.  And the spice mixture needs to be tweaked a little - next time I am going to omit the Szechuan peppercorns and cut back on the amount of coriander seeds (I already cut back the recipe a little from what we made).  It was just a little too floral for me and didn't pack quite enough heat.  I like my yang rou chuan pretty spicy.  Alex had a problem with the texture of the meat - he didn't like biting into a layer of spices on the outside of the kebob.  Since that is how I remember the lamb kebobs as being heavily spiced (sometimes even more heavily spiced, almost furry with spices) I have no problem with it.  But I can see where he is coming from.  The bread I thought was a huge success.  The texture is a little different (and it was a little sweeter than I remember), but it was really good - nice and soft and slightly chewy.  We tried a variety of toppings on the bread - one round had sesame seeds, one had cumin seeds, one had scallions, and the other had all of those toppings, plus a few fennel seeds.  In the end Alex preferred the bread with sesame seeds.  I might have to agree with him, although I did really enjoy the combination as well.  The sauteed watercress is a dish that we have made in the past that I generally make with a heavily spiced meal that I don't want the vegetable to compete with.  I love how easily it comes together (and aside from the annoying process of tearing the leaves off the stems, it is a really quick side).

Recipe after the jump!

Yogurt-Marinated Chicken Kebabs with Red Onion Sambal and Watercress

Unless you're a vegetarian, I'm fairly certain that everyone out there can use another chicken recipe.  I know that I can always use another easy chicken recipe.  I know that I have made yogurt-marinated chicken before, so it's not necessarily a completely groundbreaking thing.  But I love the Yogurt-Marinated Chicken Kebabs with Aleppo Pepper so much that I couldn't resist trying out a new recipe.  Marinating the chicken in yogurt makes the chicken so moist and gives it such wonderful flavor.  I wish we had a grill on which to cook this chicken, or that we had cooked it in the grill pan to give it some nice char.  We broiled it in our toaster oven (which is nowhere near strong enough to give the chicken any char at all) because our actual broiler is terrifying and so small that the chicken would have been so close to the heating element that it would have burnt to a cinder long before it cooked through.  I wish that we had added some more spice to the marinade to just bring another level of flavor.  Or perhaps added a few extra spices - some garam masala might have been nice.  The flavor of the garlic, scallions and lime is very delicate and gently perfumes the chicken.  I probably like the Yogurt-Marinated Chicken Kebabs with Aleppo Pepper a little better than these kebabs because the flavors in that dish are a little more pronounced.  I'm definitely glad that we made the sambal with the chicken because it gave some nice heat and another level of more assertive flavor that balanced the more subtle flavors of the chicken.  I wish it had a little more heat, but our serranos just weren't that hot.  But the sambal still had really nice flavor from the lime juice and shallots (and a hint of slowly building heat).  As for the watercress salad, I thought it was a really nice counterpoint to the kebabs.  It was bright and refreshing (and really simple to make), and I think you could serve it with lamb kebabs or any other really meaty dish.  Actually, I think you could serve it on top of a lamb and feta burger and that would be phenomenal as well.

Recipes after the jump!

Tikka Kebabs with Homemade Flatbread and Cucumber Raita

I'm not sure what drew me to this assortment of recipes, but I have been thinking about making these Tikka Kebabs with some homemade flatbreads or naan for some time now.  I originally wanted to make the Home-Style Tandoor Naan from Mangoes & Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent so that the entire meal would come from the same cookbook, but I didn't have the patience (or the time) to begin preparing the dough for the naan about 4 1/2 to 10 hours before I wanted to eat the naan.  So I went with a recipe for homemade flatbread that I cobbled together from a bunch of recipes I found online.  There are hundreds of recipes for homemade naan or flatbread online so I had a lot of resources to work with.  If you don't want to make homemade flatbread or naan, the kind you pick up at the grocery store will work just fine.  Alternatively, you can serve the tikka kebabs with basmati rice and a nice salad, instead of serving it with flatbread.

I was very happy with this meal.  The lamb was tasty and very tender.  The flavors were very simple, but delicious.  If I were to make the tikka kebabs again I would probably add some more cayenne pepper to the marinade to give the dish a little more kick.  The yogurt in the marinade, plus the yogurt in the raita cooled down all hint of spice and I wouldn't mind if just a little more heat had come through (although I didn't really miss the heat, Alex did bring up that criticism/comment so I thought I would pass it along).  I also might add a little more garlic or something to the marinade - perhaps a little ground cumin?  I don't know.  It smelled delicious while it cooked and it was really nice, but it could be improved.  Our homemade flatbread turned out better than our last experiment with Instant Flatbread.  I might play with the recipe in the future and try to use different toppings with the flatbread.  Or brush it with melted butter once it's done to make it taste more like naan.  I thought that the Cucumber Raita was a very nice accompaniment, particularly if you are planning on serving the tikka kebabs with flatbread.  If you are serving the kebabs with basmati rice I think that the raita would be unnecessary and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice would be more than sufficient.  We added some scallions for color and flavor to the kebabs, but again if you were serving them with basmati rice I'm not sure that they would be necessary.

Recipes after the jump!

Turkey Kebabs with Tomato, Onion, and Cilantro Relish, and "Dry" Potatoes with Ginger and Garlic

I have been craving Indian food on and off for the past few weeks.  Rather than going out to eat Indian, I decided to use one of our Madhur Jaffrey cookbooks to make something since I got home early from work this evening.  Of course once I opened up Indian Cooking there were only about a dozen recipes that appealed to me.  But we had some ground turkey so the decision on what to make for our entree was fairly simple - Turkey Kebabs.  Madhur recommends serving these kebabs in pita pockets with cilantro chutney, or wrapped in parathas.  Since we grilled burgers the other night at a friend's place, I wasn't really feeling what sounded entirely too much like an Indian turkey burger.  Instead I wanted to eat it solo topped with some form of chutney or relish.  The relish that sounded the best to me with the combination of spices and ingredients in the turkey kebabs was her Tomato, Onion, and Cilantro Relish.  Then to go with it I originally wanted to make the Spicy Cucumber Wedges, but then we realized that our English cucumber had seen better days.  So I went back to the cookbook and picked out the "Dry" Potatoes with Ginger and Garlic.  We had some of the world's teensiest and most adorable new potatoes left from our CSA haul last week that I wanted to use and it seemed like a great side dish for our kebabs.

I think that Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks are among the most successful cookbooks I own.  I am very rarely disappointed when I try out one of her recipes.  The kebabs were intensely flavorful, not to mention moist.  I loved the interplay between all of the flavors.  With the addition of the relish they were amazing.  I am a ridiculously large fan of both these kebabs and the relish.  Alex said that the relish at first reminded him of a standard pico de gallo, but then you get hit with the taste of cumin and cayenne and you realize this is no pico de gallo, but something else entirely.  Delicious.  The potatoes were pretty good too, but I'm just not a potato lover - unless of course those potatoes are in really good french fry form.  Alex is a potato lover, but his complaint was that the potatoes didn't carry quite as much of the "spice flavor" as he expected.  Although the potatoes weren't exactly a smashing success, this Indian meal was more successful than some restaurant Indian meals.  Madhur Jaffrey is officially my hero.

Recipes after the jump!

Lamb Kebobs and Quinoa Tabouli

Traditionally tabouli (or tabouleh) is almost all vegetables with very little fine bulgar.  Since I don't have any bulgar in the apartment, but I do have quinoa, I decided to substitute quinoa for the bulgar and ramp up the amount of quinoa a bit to make the salad a little heartier without messing with the traditional flavors of tabouli.  I love the freshness of the tabouli, so I didn't want to mess with that at all.  I just wanted to make it into more of an entree salad and less of a side dish.  Plus I really love the taste of quinoa, so I wanted to make sure that it didn't get lost in all of the vegetables.

Generally I design my meals around the protein, but this time the quinoa tabouli came first and then I had to decide what protein to serve with the tabouli.  Kebabs seemed like a natural choice.  Luckily I had some ground lamb in the freezer that I have been talking about using for a week or two now.  So I threw together some ingredients for the kebabs with the help of my food processor and we had kebabs.  I think the flavor of these kebabs is fantastic.  You get the hint of spice from the cayenne, the warmth of the allspice and cinnamon, and plenty of fresh herb flavors from the parsley and cilantro.  Don't chop the pine nuts too finely because they provide some much needed texture.  The pita keeps the kebabs very moist, but can make them feel a little mushy.  You want to sear the outsides of the kebabs so they have some nice crust and texture to them for some contrast to the moist, soft interiors of the kebabs.

Recipes after the jump!

Yogurt-Marinated Chicken Kebabs with Aleppo Pepper

Yogurt-marinated chicken is one of the world's best culinary inventions.  First there was tandoori chicken, delicious if done properly.  Then I started stumbling across other yogurt-marinated chicken recipes from all over the Middle East and India.  This is our new favorite yogurt-based recipe.  The yogurt marinade renders the chicken super moist, and it gives it a nice tangy flavor.  The lemon is nice and bright, plus the pepper gives it some wonderful slightly sweet heat.  It is such a wonderful blend of flavors.  I love trying new things - new seasonings, new cuts of meat, new everything.  That's how we end up with half of the produce in our refrigerator during the summer, and how we accumulated most of the spices in our kitchen cabinet.  And while I considered buying Aleppo pepper just to make this recipe, I decided that it was slightly silly to buy a spice that I had only ever seen once in a recipe.  Plus the alternative works beautifully in this recipe.  So I stick with the dried crushed red pepper (homemade by a family friend and super spicy) or cayenne pepper, plus sweet paprika blend.  I'm not sure how the recipe would taste with the Aleppo pepper, but I can attest to the fact that it is delicious with the substitution.

My favorite way to prepare this dish is to make the marinade while I am cooking dinner the night before, and then allow the chicken to sit in the marinade overnight.  Last night Alex whipped up the marinade while I started on our Hummus with Cinnamon Lamb and I was excited all day just thinking about the yogurt marinating away in our fridge.  But I have tried marinating it for just a few hours and it tastes wonderful that way too. 

Recipe after the jump!