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Well, time flies and May is almost over, hard to believe! We are “suffering” through just about the worst spring I’ve ever encountered in Northern California, I doubt we’ve had a single day in the 80es yet, lots of rain, cold wind, overcast skies. Not my kind of weather and certainly not inviting to cook anything much outdoors.

Lots of other things kept me busy too, the kids, art classes, photography, cooking was mostly some quick standards over the recent months. Not that that’s bad food, a quick standard can be anything from steak with potatoes and salad, curry chicken with naan bread and salad, variations on pork, etc. Just nothing out of the ordinary, but hopefully that will change quickly now!

The bad weather also kept me from the farmer’s market, or we were out of town, but during a recent stop at whole foods they had piles of fresh in the shell chick peas (garbanzo beans) and I jumped on them. I had recently read about them and thought about frying or roasting them, of course I could not find the recipe (magazine? recent cookbook? Old cookbook recently read?) and unfortunately they were a bit less fresh or older than I thought, so me and the kids spent quite a while shelling them. Not too much fun, I could shell fava beans for a day, but these are pretty cumbersome in comparison.

I decided to steam them until almost tender, then toss them in the frying pan with some butter, salt and a touch of cayenne. Came out really tasty, if I can find fresh shelled ones I’d get them and happily pay for the shelling. I used them as a side dish with bone in skin on chicken thighs with pesto and pancetta. Aside of the work the peas require, this is a quick mid week dinner. I used the already diced pancetta from Trader Joes, as well as their organic chicken. The pesto is from Costco, their Kirkland Cibo Naturals pesto. It comes in a large plastic jar and IMO is as close to home made as it gets. Certainly the best ready made pesto I’ve ever found. I squeezed some lemon juice in it too I think.

First I cooked the pancetta until browned, then I roasted some halved baby garlic that I also got at Whole Food. I love baby garlic, too bad it’s only around in spring! Once all that was browned I took the garlic out and added the chicken, which marinaded in a good covering of pesto. Cooked until nicely browned, I added some water to the pan, made sure all the good brown bits were scraped from the bottom and put the baby garlic on top to finish cooking through by steaming in the covered pan. This came out very tasty, takes maybe half an hour. I served some fresh red dandelion salad on the side with a lime dressing. And – as I finally remembered to take some pictures again – here they are:

fresh steamed chick peas

Pesto Chicken with Pancetta, Baby Garlic, Chick Peas and Dandelion Salad

The next larger project is my little one’s 3rd birthday party this weekend, hopefully the sun will return by then! I’m considering either a brisket or pork shoulder low and slow in the Big Green Egg and some brats and hot dogs for the kids, a big fresh salad and maybe something like fire roasted beets and onions.

Well, for several reasons my cooking has been on the down low lately, at least I did not get around to making anything out of the ordinary and never got around to posting. What I did cook a couple of times now is a simple Indian style curry chicken. I bought some very tasty curry mix in a Persian store, Madras Curry Powder and the brand seems to be Camel. Comes in a pretty green tin and only costs $3.99 for 500 grams! Can’t beat that. The mix is very pleasant with a wonderful “curry aroma”, not too spicy either, which is great for the kids.

To make my curry I first cook some onion in oil until translucent. Then I make a hole in the middle of the pan and dump in a good tablespoon of curry powder and let it cook up for 30 sec or so – the “hole” gets dry very fast and allows me to toast the spices in the same pan. Then I mix it all together and add chicken pieces, usually skin and boneless chicken thy as it’s cheap and tastes better than chicken breast. I cut them into bite size pieces. I let this cook and brown, scraping the nice browned bits back into itself, sometimes have to add a bit of water. Of course you can get creative here and add other things, last night I used up a container of mild salsa and once off the heat added about two tablespoons of sour cream, both left over from a burrito dinner last week.

I serve this with one of my kid’s favorite things, “yellow rice”. I add about a scant tsp of tumeric (or sometimes some saffron) to the rice and mix it in, add some butter once finished at times. Some salad or simply a handful of scallions cut into 1 or 2 inch pieces to nibble on – or sliced and sprinkled on top. A quarter lemon or lime to sprinkle over on each plate looks nice and adds some nice acidity according to each diner’s wish. Tastes great, the house smells fantastic, and it’s so easy that I’m wondering why I used to buy simmer sauces or things like that.

I’ve also added sliced mushrooms to the onions before, tomato paste, things like that. Variations are easy to invent for this quick and easy midweek dinner. Make twice the amount of chicken and you have some wonderful leftovers that you can turn into a great curry chicken salad – add some currants, a bit mayonnaise, things like that.

Sorry, no picture, but it should be easy to envision the yellow and green colors on your plate.

The weather seems to finally be turning towards the better here in Northern California and I have many plans for open fire cooking. For one on my big green egg, which is probably the single best cooker I’ve ever bought or used, but I also want to cook on a fire pit and fire up the good old weber really soon. Matter of fact, I think I’ll check the freezer now and see what we could make tonight

More to come, I also plan to cook quite some food from Ad Hoc at Home, a fantastic book. Inspiration seems to be catching up with me again, the gray skies are gone, flowers start to bloom, hopefully we’re done with the winter gloom now. Farmer’s market tomorrow!

Wow, hard to believe that a month is gone since my last post! All the Christmas stuff kept us busy with family and since then school started up again, I’m taking two different painting classes (plus a weekend workshop) and my time in the kitchen has been limited. Mostly quick meals, sandwiches, things like that. I made more bacon and roasted my first brisket in my Big Green Egg. That was a bit of an adventure, I had a wonderful brisket from free range beef that I put in there a good 5 hours before dinner. It was not very big, somewhere around 4-5lb I believe. Temperature rose nicely and steady smoke came out the chimney, until it suddenly stopped warming up for a looooong time! I could not figure out why, temp inside the egg was around 225, and every other meat I ever had in there continued to go up in temp at a steady pace. Luckily I got some insight from online friends: eventually the meat reaches a temperature where the collagen is transformed into gelatin. That’s when the temp stops rising, until this process is finished. Depending on the amount of collagen in your cut, this can take a very long time, several hours for large cuts! We had guests that evening, with little kids, so waiting until 9pm or later was not possible, I had to take it off a bit early and just see what happens. The meat was fully cooked, just not at the suggested 180 internal temp, more around 165. All was fine luckily, the meat was wonderful, very tasty, tender and juicy! I’ll add a whole bunch of photos below, some of the brisket among them. Next time I will put this cut on early in the morning though, or for a larger one even the night before. I learned that once a brisket is done you can wrap it in foil and put it in a picknick cooler where it will keep it’s temperature for a very long time. A great tip that can be handy in so many ways! Picknick, potluck, or just a nice dinner with friends where all you have to do is cut the meat and get the side dishes ready. Roasted veggies or potatoes in the oven for example. Little work while guests are there, with wonderful food to share!

Well, I hope to get back into the kitchen soon, maybe even this weekend. I want to make some things from Ad Hoc at Home as well as some other books I got recently. Lots of ideas to play with, just have to find the time!

I promise, the next post will contain some cooking