caramelizing onions overnight

At Dstn's place, we put about 2 lb of sliced onions, 1/4 lb butter, and 1 tsp salt into an oven-proof pot. We heated it up on the stove enough to melt the butter, soften the onions a tiny bit, and make it possible to mix it all up. We then put it, covered, into a 200 F (90 C) oven for 10 hours. Bingo, caramelized onions! They went great with a Dutch cheese selected by the 'fuzz.

Chicken Tagine with chickpeas, apricots and almonds

I made this without a net and it was a hit with the fam' tonight.

• olive oil
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp coriander
• 6 deboned chicken thighs
• 3 cups cooked chick peas
• 1/2 c dried apricots, cut in large pieces
• 1 c raw almonds, chopped coarsely

Fry onion in olive oil until edges brown. Add garlic and cook until fragrant. Pour into tagine. Mix spices. Dredge chicken in spice mixture and fry briefly to toast spices and give chicken a bit of colour. Place chicken on onions. Add 1/2 cup water to pan, scrape pan and pour liquid over chicken. Add chickpeas and apricots to tagine. Cook about 2.5 hours at 300F. Fry almonds and pour over chicken and chickpeas.

I served it with cousous and a carrot and orange salad.

corned beef hash

corned beef and cabbage

(The secret ingredient is pickling spice.)

tuna pasta

Here's a crowd-pleaser in high rotation chez Hogg: While pasta (1/2 to 3/4 lb) is boiling, put together a few minced (or pressed) garlic cloves, one finely chopped shallot (or most of an onion or most of a leek), and a can of oil-packed tuna in some additional olive oil (enough for the pasta). Heat it up until it gets fragrant and then turn off the heat. Add salt, pepper, lemon juice, chopped parsley, and chopped, oil-cured olives. Maybe also pine nuts, capers, lemon rind, be creative!. Mix cooked pasta with tuna mixture. Serves 3 1/2 (that is, less than 4) but it is easy to double.

winter vegetable stew

Try out cut-up bacon with olive oil. Soften onions, garlic, carrots, and celery, chopped coarsely. Add some wine (red or white), white beans, canned tomatoes, vegetable stock (or water I am sure would work), thyme, salt, and pepper. Simmer for half an hour. Meanwhile, blanch chard, drain, chop, and add for the last few minutes of simmering.

Serve with hard cheese and crusty bread. This stew looks beautiful at every stage of cooking and pleased the 'fuzz. Apologies to PMC that I didn't take a photo.

lasagne

I have repeatedly found, checked (by experiment), stopped believing, and then re-checked (by more experiments) the obvious and yet completely unknown fact that you don't have to pre-boil lasagne noodles before making a lasagne in the oven! Here's my dumb recipe, which sure ain't rocket science:

Fill an oven-proof pan with various layers. For this one, I did a bottom layer of chopped onions and carrots, olive oil and a tiny bit of crushed tomatoes, then a layer of raw, rigid noodles, then a layer of crushed tomato with some cheese, then noodles, then an enormous layer of raw baby spinach with some hard cheese, then noodles, then a layer of tomato and cheese, then a layer of noodles, and then a top layer of tomato, mozzarella, and hard cheese. It was mounded up in the pan like this:

After one hour in a 400 F (200 C) oven, it looked like this:

All noodles cooked. Adjustments for next time: Put more cheese in the layers; add garlic to the bottom layer; salt and pepper each layer. Remember: Pre-boiling is for suckers. And no, I didn't use the "pre-boiled" or "oven-ready" noodles either (those are fine though, I hate to admit).

bean "gravy" for roast chicken

PMC, in his infinite wisdom, dumped two cans of white beans (we could have used dry beans boiled in water until tender), a few sprigs of rosemary, and some roasted garlic into the pan in which we were roasting two small chickens. This, in the last half-hour of roasting, turned into a bean gravy that went beautifully with the chicken and mashed potatoes. All the awesome of gravy, more food value than gravy, and none of the effort of gravy! (Note: We skimmed off no fat, so this was pretty damned rich!) Well done, PMC.

"vegan" mashed parsnips

As our loyal reader knows, we love to mash vegetables here in the F,NRS NYC office. Recently, parsnips have come under the masher, to good effect. I only post it here because we mash these babies for Liz and Lisa, who eat kosher and therefore can't have milk or butter in the mash (if it is to be eaten with chicken, as it so often is), and Liz needs the recipe. These mashed are vegan so that we can all eat meat, if you know what I mean.

Before starting, if you want them garlicky, put many peeled cloves of garlic into a dish with many tablespoons of olive oil and put it into a low oven (say 300 F) to soften and sweeten. Then cut up—no need to peel, as far as I am concerned—parsnips, potatoes, and carrots into substantial chunks for boiling. I usually go something like four parsnips for every potato and carrot, but mix it up! Boil the parsnips for 30 minutes and the carrots and potatoes for 20. That is, you want the parsnips very done. Save some of the cooking water (remember, no milk will be permitted). Mash it all with the garlic and olive oil from the oven (or just plain olive oil if you don't want to go garlicky), insane amounts of salt and some pepper, and just enough cooking water (not much) to get them mushy.

These mashed parsnips are so sweet, you can't help asking: Parsnips, where have you been all my life?

Moroccan-style chicken stew

These days, in high rotation at home, and inspired by our friend Ness, I have been making this ultra-simple crowd pleaser: Heat up a dutch oven and put in as many pieces of chicken as people (double up if you are serving Marines). Once the chicken gets to releasing some fat, throw in about as much chunky chopped leeks, carrots, and celery (if you have it) you can stand to cut up, and anything else you like. Add one chopped preserved lemon for every five or six people, and about the same volume of salty olives (like Kalamatas for example, pitted if your crowd is liable to break teeth). Add a mixture of red wine and water (or just water if you are out of wine) to nearly cover, and obscene amounts of salt, some pepper and a bit of harissa (maybe half a teaspoon per four people), and simmer for enough time to give the chicken a total start-to-finish cooking time of 35 minutes. Don't over-cook!

Serve with couscous and extra harissa for the heat-lovers. You can extend this with chick peas if you are short of chicken or heating up leftovers. As you can imagine, it is even better the next day.