Kim's Moroccon Lamb Stew

So, for the mystery dinner that was awaiting my love.......

Moroccan Lamb Stew ala Kim.

I looked at 4 or 5 different Moroccan lamb stew recipes and threw together my own inspired by them. I mixed cinnamon, cayenne, ginger, cardamom, turmeric, curry powder, cumin, cloves, paprika, some red pepper flakes and nutmeg. One 1/4 to 1 tsp  of each and around 2 teaspoons of kosher salt.
I coated the lamb stew (2 lbs) in the spice mixture and seared the meat in about a tablespoon of olive oil and threw that in the crock pot.  I then took a walla walla onion and coarsely chopped it and seared it in the same pan in about 2 tablespoons of butter until soft.  That went into the crock pot next.  Here is what went in next:
3 carrots peeled and chopped
1/4 cup chopped dried black mission figs
1/4 cup dried chopped apricots
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can garbanzo beans
1 tablespoon chopped garlic or more
juice squeezed from half a lemon
4 tablespoons of orange infused honey
2 cups of my homemade lamb stock and 2 cups of canned chicken stock.  I would have used all lamb stock, but I was down to my last 2 cups and I don't have fresh lamb bones to readily make more, so we went with chicken stock.  Beef or veggie would have worked just as well.

This all sat in a crock pot for over 9 hours.  Man did the house smell good when I walked in!

When my Superman got home I cooked up some Near East cous cous, he heated up some Pita bread with some cheddar cheese melted inside, and we topped our stew with some plain Greek yogurt and Sirachi.  And dinner was served..... ( I meant to serve this with cilantro - but forgot.  Oops!)
And damn! It rocked!

What will be next? Hmmm............

New Beginnings...

Life has been supremely busy.  My wonderful man, Kelly has found a good job here in my neck of the woods and we have been in the process of moving our two households into one.  He, unfortunately, is having to do it from 230 miles away, while I am only 8 miles away, but it's coming together perfectly.
This is our new home in Sunny Fortuna

For me, this has been the easiest move ever.  Not stress free by any means, but easy, in that I have a true partner, team player, Superman, by my side making it all happen.  We're working hard together and on the same page.  Communication has been open and honest and has made this whole process so much smoother then my past 12 moves.  It's been perfect.

Even Gracie would agree.....

This is our new kitchen by the way.  Not my first choice in decor, but it is a rental, and, believe me, Kelly and I will make this kitchen rock and roll!  I'm just thrilled to have a good gas stove/oven, a dishwasher (other then myself) and a garbage disposal.  And get this!  This house has 3 toilets!  That thrills me beyond all imagination!

Let me move on from the potty humor and share the first some what home cooked meal I made in our new home.

Fried rice.  We have been living on restaurant food, take out, and frozen stuff.  We're getting sick of it.  We had some leftover Chinese take out in the fridge.  I took the steamed rice, and the fried rice and made Kim's Fried Rice out of it.  I scrambled and cooked two eggs - flat not fluffy - and sliced thin strips out of them.  I fried up some leftover steak, and the chicken Teriyaki from one of the take out dishes in olive oil and sesame oil and some oyster sauce.  I fried up the steamed and fried rice in olive oil and sesame oil with some oyster sauce and soy sauce.  I added in some leftover broccoli from dinner the night before.  I had fried up some celery, onion, chopped carrots, and garlic earlier which I added into the mixture.  I put a dash of powdered garlic  in it.  I added in the meat and the egg and voila!  Kim's Fried Rice!  My first somewhat home cooked meal in our new home.
And the leftovers were awesome for lunch!

Now, tonight my love is off picking up his last load and won't be home until tomorrow.  I, also had to work late tonight, so when I got home I, once again, got a frozen food crappy dish and slammed that down.  Then I spent my time digging through boxes to hunt down Kelly's Crockpot.  I found it!  After about an hour and a half, but I found it!  So I spent my evening getting tomorrow night's dinner ready so when my Love gets back with his next load of stuff, he'll have a warm meal waiting for him when he gets home.  This will be my second home cooked meal in our home together, and this one will be home made and not built and put together from take outs and so on.  This one will be a truly yummy home cooked, slow cooked healthy dinner.  I can't wait to feed my man this meal.  I really hope he likes it.

For now - what that meal is going to be shall remain a mystery until he gets home and gets to try it.  But here is a preview.....

I'm loving my new home, in spite of all of the boxes...


I am so happy and content, I am with the Man of My Dreams. I am the luckiest woman alive right now.  And I get to spend time in the kitchen with someone who has just as much desire to be there and learn and nurture his family as I do. I see big things in our world of food coming up, and coming up soon! 

Loleta Meat Market

Yesterday I received tragic news.  My favorite butcher, a person I felt was becoming a friend ( and I think still is) was given a 60 day notice to vacate her place of business.  This person is Pixie.  Pixie is the coolest female butcher on the planet in my honest opinion, and she owns Loleta Meat Market.  When I got the news I was horrified and quite frankly pissed off.  Why?  Because the people who are evicting her are none other then the owners of the Loleta Bakery.  New comers, from Healdsburg, CA. 

I will give you some background on these people, the Van der Zee's.  This is what I know,  they moved here from Healdsburg - Bay Area - bought up a bunch of property (including Pixie's building) that the deceased Fred Deo's estate owned and proceeded to improved and revitalize.  At first I can say I was excited about this, as were many Loletian's.  But then one day the Victorian Bar that they had redone and had up and running shut down ( The Guilded Rose).  Then the rumor was, they were going to open a bakery and they had moved their liquor license to the little market in town.  Ok.  Well.  That didn't sound so bad.  But.... Mrs. Van der Zee got herself voted onto the Loleta School Board.  The first time I met her was at an open house at the school and I had an instant dislike for this woman.  I'm not sure why, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up when she spoke.  Instincts are important to pay attention to. 

Time went on.  Mrs. Van der Zee pulled a few stunts on the school board that set the town parents on fire.  She backed off, but she did not learn her lesson. 

Yesterday I got word about the eviction.  I decided that I would publicize this on my blog and put it out there that, even though Mrs. and Mr. Van der Zee own the building that Pixie runs her building in, what they are doing is so very wrong.  In a time when we are trying to push local business and fight chains and fight out of town businesses.  We're supposed to be supporting LOCAL business, and here we are with two people from HEALDSBURG shutting our LOCAL beloved butcher shop down.  I grew up in a small town.  I have suffered people like this all of my life, and I am done with them!  Let them go home to Healdsburg where they belong.  They have no sense of community and they are greedy selfish, self important people that our little town does not need. 

These people set up a nice business and put out good food.  That's fine.  That's great.  That's dandy. But they do not get the idea of good business practices.  Their business compliments Pixie's Meat Market as it does the Loleta Cheese Factory.  The smartest thing to do, would be to create a cooperative between the three and bring more people into town for business.  But the Van der Zee's don't work with others.  They work for themselves, and they do it in an unwise fashion.  I think today they have felt the payback of their bad choices.  The community has rallied behind Pixie, and the support is only growing.  In the hundreds of posts I've seen (maybe the thousands at this point) on facebook about this, only 2 have been negative against Pixie, and even then those people were waffling. 

I will say, I know Pixie.  Not well, I've only known her as an acquaintance for about 6 or 7 years, then I really started spending time talking to her and trying to get to know her over the past couple of years.  I consider her a friend.  I consider her a hard working, talented and extremely altruistic and giving woman and sweet to a fault.  What really pissed me off is Peter and Jeannie Van der Zee have taken advantage of this woman's sweet and trusting personality.  They have, in a sense, raped her.  They are shallow unforgivable people who need a hard lesson of their own, and I'm seeing it come down the pike as we speak.  The outpouring of support and love that has come Pixie's way has done my heart good.  I will say, I'm not surprised.  The day I first met Pixie, I instantly liked the lady.  She's got some rough edges, but hey!  She's a butcher for God's sake. She is one of the sweetest, most gentle, kindest people I have ever met!  She is a Buddhisthava .  I have never heard her say an unkind word against another.  Even when I tried to goad her into it.  It's against her nature to do so.  She is VERY hard working, she is VERY forgiving, she is no model, but EXTREMELY beautiful.  When she smiles the room lights up.  She is a good soul who takes care of anyone and everyone she can.  To do what the Van der Zee's are doing to her is blasphemous. 

So I am here to support Pixie and Loleta Meat Market.  I am here to say I will never spend another dime with with Loleta Bakery.  As Forest Gump says, Stupid is as Stupid does. I will enjoy watching them shoot themselves in the foot.  I will spend my money on Pixie's delicious sausages and other delicious meat products, and I will do what I can to keep this lovely woman in business. Integrity counts and Pixie has more then enough of it!  Rock on Pixie! Rock on Loleta Meat Market!

Thanksgiving Feast 2012!

This year my girls are with their dad for Thanksgiving.  They will be getting a chance to spend Thanksgiving with there Grandfather, who is a wonderful man, and all of that side of the family.  So Kelly and I will be going to spend Thanksgiving with my family in Reno, which I'm excited for, but I was a little bummed that we wouldn't be getting to cook our own Thanksgiving dinner together.  So a last minute decision was made that he would come this way the weekend before, while I had my girls on an off weekend and we would throw together a little family Thanksgiving dinner of our own.  Since it was a last minute decision and I'm working a lot these days there wasn't enough time for me to do my normal "from scratch" cooking with everything - so we had, as Sandra Lee says, a semi homemade Thanksgiving.  And it was DELISH!

Here is the menu:
A brined and smoked turkey (pre-brined and spice rubbed by Foster Farms)
Cranberry Sauce with Port and Dried Figs
King Hawaiian Sweet Rolls
Simple Is Best Dressing
Celery root mashed potatoes
Shitake Mushroom Gravy
Cucumber, Pear and Fennel Salad
Steamed Carrots and green beans in butter and tarragon.
Dessert:  Hostess Ding Dongs and Ho Ho's - just because it's our last chance!  There would have been Twinkies too if any were left on the shelves.

And now.....for the recipes (how to's):
The Turkey was a pre-brined Foster Farms turkey rubbed in paprika, onion and unspecified spices.  It smelled quite good for a commercial rub!  Kelly smoked it on my charcoal Weber Bar B Q over apple wood.  This is hard to explain, other then you need to cook it over indirect heat and keep a meat thermometer in the turkey and cook it until around 155 degrees.  Instructions will tell you 165, but if you take it off at 155 and let it rest under foil, it will finish cooking and you won't have a dry turkey, but it will be cooked all the way through.   Once charcoals are ready, move them to one side of the bbq and set the turkey over the other side.  Put the lid on, and remove it as little as possible.  Be sure you've soaked the wood chips, and put them on about half way through cooking.  I would say it took around 3 1/2 hours for us to cook a 12 lb turkey.

Cranberry Sauce:
I've been making this sauce for years and it's ALWAYS a favorite.  Way better then that weird jelly stuff in a can, and very easy!
1 2/3 cup ruby port - I usually use Tawny port and it turns out just fine
1/4 balsamic vinegar
8 dried black Mission figs, stemmed and chopped
1 6 inch sprig of fresh rosemary
1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 12 ounce bag of fresh cranberies
3/4 cup sugar.
Combine the first six ingredients in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil.  Stir until the sugar dissolves.  Reduce heat to low and simmer 10 minutes.  Remove the rosemary sprig.  Mix in the cranberries and 3/4 cup sugar.  Cook over medium heat until the liquid is slightly reduced and the cranberries are burst, stirring occasionally.  This takes about 6 minutes.  Cool and transfer to a bowl and chill.  This can be made a week ahead of time, and it makes 3 1/2 cups.

The Hawaiian Rolls - stop at your nearest grocery store and pick some up.  ;-)  I have seen a recipe for these and hope to one day try that out.  But for now - store bought worked just fine

Simple is Best Dressing from November 2012 Bon Appetit Magazine.
I cut this in half for just the 4 of us:
3/4 stick of unsalted butter, plus more to grease baking pan.
7 1/2 oz of dressing croutons ( the Bon Appetite recipe used day old white bread torn into 1 " pieces dried out in an oven for 1 hour)
1 1/4 cups chopped Walla Walla onion - grown in Kelly's garden.   - the original recipe calls yellow onions
3/4 cup chopped celery
1 tbsp of chopped fresh sage
1/2 tbs of chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 tbs of chopped fresh thyme
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 1/4 cup homemade turkey broth (original calls for low sodium chicken broth.)
1 large egg.

If you want to do the bread crumbs from scratch, preheat the oven to 250 degrees.  Butter the baking dish and set that aside.  Scatter the bread on a rimed baking sheet and bake stirring occasionally until dried out - about 1 hour.  Let cook and transfer to a bowl - OR
Put the 7 1/2 oz of dressing croutons in the bowl.

Melt 3/8 cup butter in a large skillet over medium high heat.  Add onions and celery.  Stir often until just beginning to brown, about 10 minutes.  Add to the bowl of bread/croutons.  Stir in herbs, salt and pepper.  Drizzle in 5/8 of the turkey/chicken stock.  Toss gently and let cool.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Whisk together 5/8 stock and 1 egg together. Add to bread mixture.  Fold gently until thoroughly combined.  Transfer to the prepared dish, cover with foil and bake for 40 minutes.  The dressing can be made a day ahead and rebaked, uncovered for 40 to 45 minutes.  If chilled add 10 to 15 minutes.

Celery Root and Mashed Potatoes.
This one I more or less made up.
I took one celery root and peeled it and chopped it into 1/2 inch pieces.  I boiled it in cream and whole milk with a sprig of thyme and a tbs of butter - just enough liquid to cover the celery root - and I boiled it for about 25 minutes until it was softened.  I removed the thyme and puree the celery root and milk mixture in a cuisinart. 

Kelly boiled about 6 yukon potatoes and mashed them together with the celery root mixture with a cube of butter.

Shitake Mushroom Gravy:
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup dry Sherry
3 tbsp butter
 12 oz fresh shitake mushrooms stemmed and sliced.
1 tbsp fresh rosemeary
4 cups of my homemade turkey stock ( or chicken broth)
1/3 cup whipping cream
2 tsp chopped fresh thyme
2 tsp chopped fresh tarragon

Mix flour and Sherry in a small bowl until smooth - shaking them up in a plastic container works great!
Melt butter in a heavy saucepan over medium high heat.  Add mushrooms and rosemary and saute' until they begin to soften ( about 3 minutes)  - this step can be done 3 hours ahead of time.

Transfer any juices you may have from the turkey if you have any - we didn't because we were bbqing - and add enough broth to measure 5 cups.  Add to saucepan with mushrooms.  Add flour paste and whisk until smooth.  Bring mixture to boil, stirring frequently.  Boil until thickened to a light gravy - about 10 minutes.  Mix in cream, thyme and tarragon.  Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Cucumber Pear and Fennel Salad.

This is a recipe that I modified from the 2012 November Bon Appetite magaizine.
I peeled and cut up 2 cucumbers, chopped one small fennel bulb into 1/2" squares, placed them in a bowl and added 1 diced pear and 1 diced apple.  I tossed in some pomegranate soaked dried cranberries and tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette - which consisted of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, walnut oil, and rosemary.

Steamed carrots and green beans:
1 small bag of baby carrots and one small bag of harricot verts.
about 1 tbs butter and 1 tbsp chopped tarragon.

Steam the carrots for about 15 minutes and add the green beans.  Steam for no more then 10 minutes.  Put in a bowl while still hot and toss with butter and tarragon and a pinch of salt.  Easy peasy!

Normally I pride myself on some yummy desserts, but there was no time, and considering my girls have NEVER had a Ding Dong or a Ho Ho ever in their short lives, I thought it would be fun to let them have a little taste of mine and Kelly's childhood. It's their last chance right? And I know they will be indulging in some yummy desserts on Thanksgiving with their aunts, because they're both amazing cooks.  And I know Kelly and I will be getting some delicious goodies from my Aunt in Reno as well. 

So that was our first semi homemade, semi official Thanksgiving together.  And it was awesome!

Canning on a beautiful fall day.....

Ok, today I'm actually back with a couple of recipes.  I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time "talking" about these recipes, because I'm flat out beat right now, but I will get the pictures posted and the recipes published. 

Got my canner going sterilizing some jars and quickly boiling some tomatoes that my fiance' grew in his garden so they would be easy to peel. 

This is the Walla Walla onion my man grew in his garden.  About 1/2 cup of that will be going into the chutney. 

And here are all the magical ingredients:

I found this recipe at An Oregon Cottage and cut it in half based on the amount of tomatoes I had left. 
2 lbs of tomatoes peeled and chopped - I had a variety of Roma's and plum tomatoes.  The Roma's were perfect for this because they're so meaty and not so watery. 
1/8 cup minced garlic
1/2 cup copped onion
3/8 cup of brown sugar
3/8 cup of white sugar
3/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 tbs pickling salt
1/2 lime zested and juiced
1/2 tsp pepper flakes
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup chopped white raisins
Combine all of the above ingredients and bring to a boil over high heat.  Lower heat and cook at a low simmer for 1 and a half to 2 hours, until thickened.  Stir often to avoid scorching or sticking. 
Ladle into 1/2 pint canning jars leaving 1/4 inch head space and boil in a hot water canner for 10 minutes. 

This is what it looked like after about 1/2 hour.  It smelled AMAZING!

This is what it looked like before jarring it.  The smell was so intense and mouth watering.  The taste?  Wow!  If we have a good tomato season next year, all the tomatoes are going to this recipe and I'm never eating ketchup again!  That's how good this is!  As the author from The Oregon Cottage says, this is adult ketchup - and it's delicious! 

So while the chutney was simmering away and I was cleaning, doing laundry and walking the dog in between I started in on this:

14 lbs of apples.  These came from my ex husbands tree.  You may have seen me post on here about them before.  They're HUGE and very juicy.  They may look a bit beat up, but they very good apples.  I'm grateful he was kind enough to share these with me this year. 
So I got into my meditative apple peeling mode and kept going until my hand cramped up too much to go anymore. 

And made it through 7 lbs of apples.  I was thinking about saving the peels and make juice for jelly later, but knew I would be biting off more then I could chew, so I let go of that notion and stayed focused on the applesauce.  This recipe isn't so structured.  My guide is, as always, my favorite canning book, Putting Food By by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan. 
They recommend putting about an inch of water in the bottom of the pan and filling the pan with peeled and quartered or cut into eights apple slices until they are no more then 2 inches from the top.  Their only recommendation on spices is what ever sounds good to you.  So I put in 4 tsp of vanilla, sprinkled generously with cinnamon, and grated about 1/8 of a tsp of fresh nutmeg on them.  They do recommend a sweetener and I put in a cup of a mixture of brown and white sugar.  I would have done all brown, but was out and was not about to make a trip to the store at this point. 

Then this is boiled down until the apples are soft.  This doesn't take long at all.  There were a lot of apples here so it took 10 minutes at the most.  A smaller batch could take 3 to 5 minutes. 
At this point my house smelled wonderful!  So much like fall. 

My final product before canning.  I like my applesauce chunky, because that's the way mom did it.  It takes me back to my childhood, but at this point you could run it through a strainer, a french mill or a cuisinart to make it smooth.  You want to reheat it before you jar it though.

Place it into hot sterilized pint jars ( it took 9 pint jars for 7 lbs of apples) and process in a hot water bath canner for 20 minutes. 

This is my final bounty for the night, minus a couple of jars that are still being processed in the canner. It wasn't big enough to hold all of them at once. 

9 pints of comforting applesauce from a local tree and 1 and 1/4 pints of tomato chutney made with home grown tomatoes and a home grown walla walla onion.  Food tastes so much better when it comes from close to home. 

I can't wait to grill up some lamb burgers and put some of that chutney on them - Oooo, and pork chops and applesauce are going to be soooo good! 

Now, to figure out what to do with the other 7 lbs of apples.......

Regroup - Restart

I have taken quite a long break from here.  Life just got crazy busy and some things just needed to be put aside.  Unfortunately Omnivores Delight was one of those things.  But I'm back!  I've changed things around a little bit.  Let me know what you think.  Too busy? 

I've got a few food projects coming up.  I have a bag of apples that are hopefully still worth using. (Pie? Apple sauce? Chutney, Apple butter?  hmmmm)  A bag of banana's that need to go in the freezer for banana bread later, a bowl of tomatoes that I'm thinking I may make into tomato chutney, and I have another super cool project coming up that I will fill you in on later.  Let's just say a certain hunting season has opened and consequently has opened up a fun little opportunity for me. 
To be continued......

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