Soul Food Success: Fried Chicken, Sweet Potato Wedges, Corn Pudding

As promised, following up from last weekend, here are the results of the Mother’s Day soul food feast. I think the pictures practically speak for themselves. The food was a triumph! The only problem now is that since I know how very easy it is to make perfect fried chicken at home, I’ll want it all the time. I made a few adjustments to the recipes that were new to me (I can never resist). Keep reading for notes on how I made the perfectly fried chicken, sweet potato wedges and corn pudding.

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Zesty Avocado Quinoa Salad

Now that warmer weather has finally come our way, I find myself craving fresh bright salads for dinner. I don’t know about you, but I can’t often satisfy myself with just greens. I’d have to eat a mountain to be full and it wouldn’t really be a nutritionally complete meal. That’s why I’ve been toying with mixing grains into my salads.

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Deviled Egg Salad

I had a terrible craving for eggs this week. Not just any eggs though. I wanted deviled eggs… and a lot of them. A normal person would take that as a sign and just make them – I mean, why mess with a perfect thing, right? Not me. I’m far too lazy for that.

To make a good deviled egg, you’re supposed to lay the eggs on their sides overnight to get the yolk to sit nicely in the middle. You’re supposed to let them adjust to room temperature before boiling so they don’t crack when the water gets hot. You even have to worry about how old the eggs are, since fresher eggs don’t peel well after being boiled. You have to boil them perfectly and hope none of the them break. You have to rig up some kind of piping device and fill the egg whites up prettily, all the while losing a tiny bit of that deviled yolky goodness to every surface it comes into contact with. And after all of that work, you have to constrain yourself from eating all of them at once, for the sake of your health, and because you know it will be a long time before you muster up the patience for such a project again.

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“Unfried” Black Beans

I love refried beans, but I’m trying to pay more attention to the amount of processing food goes through before it gets to me. Refried beans vary greatly between companies and sometimes have ingredients I wouldn’t want to use in every situation (lard and preservatives, for example, in the non-vegetarian varieties). They are often high in sodium, as are many processed foods (though I have to admit, canned beans can have a lot of added salt too).

On top of all of that, they can be pricey. I’ve found that most of what I’m paying for are things I don’t really want. The first time I realized that I could make a similar paste out of any beans I had on hand, I never looked back. I like black beans best, so this recipe features them, but pinto beans and other similar beans should work the same way. Season them any way you please, though I find that the beans have enough of their own flavor and do not require much but some salt and pepper and a bit of hot sauce or cayenne for a kick.

Note: This may work with dried beans if you soak them before hand, but I prefer canned so I’m not sure how long they should soak. If anyone knows, please feel free to chime in, as always.

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Dilly Potatoes

August went by quickly. I took a vacation with family, and it ended up being a “vacation” from this site as well. It has not, however, been a vacation from cooking. In fact, as the summer has been winding down, I’ve been experimenting with entirely new techniques to add to my repertoire. Expect more to come on those soon!

I’ve been cooking with dill a lot lately. It all started with an experiment I have been planning to write about for some time. A bunch of dill, while not too pricey in my neck of the woods, is large. I split a bunch with a friend and I still had more fresh dill than I knew what to do with. After using as much of it as I could in my mysterious experiments, I still had plenty left for a fresh batch of tzatziki  sauce. I only used the fuzzy little leaves in the sauce, but I didn’t want to throw away the stems. I took a taste of one and the dilly flavor was intense. I just couldn’t throw away such flavorful stems, so I reserved them until I could figure out what to do with them.

The day, shortly after, when tiny red potatoes were on sale.  I thought of the dill stems and came up with this simple dish to make the most of the flavor. Since the recipe is so simple, I’m not going to post amounts, just general guidelines.

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Collard Greens with Chick Peas

With very little effort, search this dish reminds me of a Syrian dish my grandmother used to make with lamb, Swiss chard and chick peas. Collards are an amazing leafy green that are  relatively easy to find in the frozen section of grocery stores all year round in my region. This hearty side is packed with nutrients and deep flavors and can help stretch any meal as a side dish. It keeps well and is great for adding to packed lunches or bentos.

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Egg White Avocado Salad

I love egg salad, but whenever I eat it, I can’t help but feel guilty. My guilt probably stems from the fact that I’d never sit and eat more than two hard boiled eggs, but I would eat several heaping servings of egg salad without a second thought. I have the same difficulty saying no to avocados, but, as I mentioned when I wrote about avocados, I’ve just decided not to care.

One day though, something magical happened. I was at a catered party and they had the most delicious egg salad on little toast rounds: just egg whites and avocados. It had all the simple creaminess of egg salad, but felt much lighter and cooler due to the lack of yolks. And absolutely no guilt, though maybe there should have been, as I easily downed a dozen of them.

I’ve been dreaming about this salad ever since and last night, I set out to make some hard boiled eggs and like a fool, wandered into another room and forgot about them for half an hour. When I got them off the heat, I realized that the yolks would be too chalky and grey to enjoy. Luckily, I also happened to have some perfectly ripe avocados on pause in the fridge. The accident created the perfect scenario to try this recipe, as I don’t usually have egg whites on their own. I’m reserving the less-than-desirable yolks for another project.

Clearly I didn’t invent the recipe below, but it’s definitely something that is getting added to my repertoire whenever I happen to have the ingredients on hand.

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Curried Lentil “Risotto”

This post was a guest post on a blog that I love, Just Bento, during their Frugal Bento Month. I’ve posted it here for continuity and posterity. I encourage you to check out the other posts on Just Bento (and Just Hungry) as Maki has some of the clearest Japanese recipes you will find on the web (and some non-Japanese as well), and is currently one of my favorite food bloggers.

When I studied in France on my own during college, I had to re-learn how to cook (and shop!) for one. I didn’t have much fridge or freezer space so anything I bought fresh had to be used immediately or it was wasted. For the most part, I lived out of my pantry with the help of my host-mother’s amazing spice rack.

One night, a group of students decided to have a little dinner party. The only thing I had at home that I could stretch for five people was a large can of lentils. My host-mother had recently shared with me her recipe for curry risotto, which I’ll eventually get around to transcribing, and I had curry on the brain. I substituted the lentils for the rice and that night my curried lentil “risotto” was born. My friends loved it and it has been a pet recipe of mine for the last several years. I’ve been tweaking it ever since.

When I got back to the states, I found dried lentils much easier to find. They actually work a bit better in this recipe, so I’m kind of glad I can’t get the canned, wet variety. With dried lentils, however, you need to over-season them a bit because it takes a lot for the flavors of the curry to come through the dense lentil taste. Like rice, dried lentils also soak up a lot of liquid. If you are using dried lentils and would like to use this as part of a bento, definitely make it the night before as I find this recipe far too involved to handle in the morning. Canned lentils will probably cook a bit faster, but it still takes time to get the flavors to peak so unless you really like cooking in the morning, plan this for dinner and save some extra for the next day’s lunch.

For packing in a bento, I would cook the lentils down a bit longer to create a thicker pastier consistency (as shown in the photo above). If you are planning to eat it over a light starch such as plain white or brown rice, or couscous, you might make it a bit soupy (as in the photo below) so that the starch can soak up the juices.

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Brussels Sprouts

Brussels sprouts have a bad reputation. At some point when we were kids, we heard a rumor that they were gross. They were the “punishment” vegetable kids on TV were always forced to eat. Surely they were part of a nationwide parental scheme to fool children into being “healthy.” And who even knew what they were?

Being the adventurous eater I always have been, I always wondered about this mysterious veggie that everyone seemed to hate. What about them could inspire such universal feelings of torture at dinner? My parents never served them, so I never had that childhood moment in which to whine, “But mooom, I don’t want any brusselsprouts!” They were a mystery to me, and one I wanted solved.

Brussels sprouts are pretty much mini-cabbages. If you like cabbage, you might like these sprouts. The first time I actually ate them, I fell in love. They are adorable little green bulbs. They are fairly inexpensive at certain times in the season (which seems to be right around now at New York City produce stands). They are packed with nutrients up the wazoo like most greens. They are incredibly easy to prepare.

When buying the sprouts, look for firm sprouts without damage or loose leaves (as loose leaves will have to be removed later anyway). If you hold one and give it a squeeze between your thumb and index finger it should be firm and not crunchy. Sizes will vary but they generally fall around the size of a ping pong ball or smaller. Smaller sprouts (an inch to an inch and a half) tend to have a milder flavor and are more firm and fresh. Even if the ones on sale are not that small, just try to pick sprouts of similar sizes so that they will cook at the same rate.

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Just Hungry’s “Moffles” (Mochi Waffles)

Many of you may know, that I, like Alton Brown, hate kitchen gadgets that only do one thing. To justify the real estate taken up by a huge gadget like a waffle iron, I try to find as many unusual uses for the thing as possible. That’s why I was thrilled to read about Maki’s “Moffles” on Just Hungry. Moffles are mochi rectangles pressed and grilled in a waffle iron until they become crispy wafers, gooey on the inside. Mochi, for the non-Japan-o-philes out there, is glutinous rice flour dough, which often comes in rectangles.

Jen did all the ironing of these waffles. She brushed sesame oil onto the machine for extra flavor and to aid in removing the finished moffles. Because I’m a broken record, I spread freshly-made guacamole all over mine. Jen had some with guac, some with Japanese Bulldog barbeque sauce and a sweet one with a bit of chocolate syrup, maple syrup and whipped cream.

I give this technique a definite A+ so if you have a waffle iron and can get ahold of mochi near you, head over to Just Hungry for the recipe. This is worth a try. Yum!

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