Harissa and Yogurt Chicken with Persian-spiced Pilaf

Sometimes you’re in the mood for Indian food or Italian food or Chinese food. The other day, I was in the mood for Donna Hay food. I’m not sure that even makes sense to me, but I’ll attempt to explain it. Donna Hay recipes are always full of interesting flavors, and the preparations are never too fussy. That was the kind of meal I wanted to make for dinner. In her book, Off the Shelf, there’s a dish called Persian-spiced pilaf with harissa-seared beef, and there’s another one called harissa and yogurt baked chicken. I swapped the chicken for the beef, and that was my dinner plan. You can buy harissa in a jar, but I almost always seem to have some that I’ve made in the refrigerator. I started making it a couple of years ago and figured out it’s a perfect condiment for baked sweet potato fries which is why I usually have some on hand. I make the version from Sunday Suppers at Lucques, and it’s smoky and just spicy enough. So, the chicken was marinated in a mixture of yogurt, harissa, cumin, and mint, and that was sure to be a good thing. The Persian-spiced pilaf brought cinnamon, cardamom, and saffron to the meal, and the spice aromas filled the kitchen and lingered through the house.

Although this recipe doesn’t require the chicken to be marinated in advance, I always feel like chicken for any dish should be seasoned several hours or the day before cooking. But, I forgot this time. I mixed the marinade as suggested with cornstarch, yogurt, harissa, shredded mint, and cumin, and spread it over the chicken pieces. It sat while the oven pre-heated. There was no need to worry since these were big flavors, and they found their way into the chicken without any problems. As the chicken roasted, the pilaf was made with basmati rice steamed in vegetable stock with a cinnamon stick, three green cardamom pods, and a pinch of saffron. You know you’re in for a good meal when it smells as good as this one did as it cooked.

This delivered exactly what I was craving both in terms of preparing it and eating it. The yogurt kept the chicken tender, the spices worked their magic, and my work in making the meal mostly involved sitting down with a book while the chicken roasted and the rice steamed. And, when are you not in the mood for a meal like that?

Toasts Two Ways: Sauteed Mushrooms with Camembert and Harissa, Artichoke, and Mozzarella

I have some extra bread in the house since I’ve been baking from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I started with the pugliese which didn’t turn out quite right. That bread is made from a wet dough and should be very open in structure with a chewy, holey crumb. The process of making the dough went fine, and it came out of the oven looking great. However, when I cut into the first loaf, I was less than thrilled with a somewhat tight crumb lacking those characteristic, gaping holes. Those two loaves went into the freezer for crouton use at a later date. I moved on to ciabatta with poolish. This is the same style of dough, and again, the bread should have been full of holes throughout the interior. Again, it was less than ideal. This time, the flavor was amazing, the texture was moist as it should be, but the structure was wrong. I’ve double- and triple-checked the recipes to be sure I didn’t skip something or do any step out of order, and I’ve concluded I’ll just need to keep practicing. The flavor of the ciabatta saved it from being doomed to the freezer, and I decided to make some cheesy toasts with it to hide the look of the failed crumb.

I received a sample of Normandie Camembert from Ile de France, and thought the earthy notes of the cheese would pair well with mushrooms. So, for the first of two toasts, I sauteed cremini mushrooms with chopped rosemary and scooped them onto slices of my ciabatta that had been toasted under the broiler with a drizzle of olive oil. I added camembert which instantly softened and melted its way around the mushrooms. This was a camembert with character, a red wine kind of cheese, and mushrooms were the right choice to go with it.

The second type of toast is from Donna Hay magazine. I mentioned I had cut several pages from that last issue I read. This toast version was made by schmearing harissa on the toasted bread and then topping it with marinated artichoke quarters and adding fresh mozzarella. Once built, these toasts went back under the broiler so the mozzarella could transform into a deliriously oozy, lovely state. It’s an interesting combination and one I never would have thought to create, but the spicy harissa and marinated artichokes were delicious under the melted cheese. Even if you have perfect bread that can proudly show its face, both of these toppings are worth trying. 

I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.

Spiced Rock Fish with Carrot Puree and Gingered Beets

Last week, I stopped by our Wednesday farmers’ market to see what looked good and what might become inspiration for our weekend meals. It was the carrots and sweet potatoes that caught my eye. Fresh, bright orange carrots, just pulled out of the ground have a crunch and sweetness that makes their distant, plastic-bagged cousins seem completely unrelated. The carrots I bought last week came from Johnson’s Backyard Garden, and it was an enormous and gorgeous bunch of carrots. I remembered reading about a carrot puree and eventually found it in Sunday Suppers at Lucques. That puree was part of a meal including harissa-spiced fish and gingered beets, and Suzanne Goin wrote that it was all inspired by carrots. She once had an abundance of fresh and delicious carrots and came up with this meal to highlight them. That sounded pretty perfect since I was in a similar carrot situation.

In the book, the dish is prepared with snapper fillets, but as I stood before the fish counter last weekend, the rock fish had a shinier and happier look about it. I went with the rock fish, and regarding sustainability issues, rock fish and snapper rate about the same. However, I’m kicking myself now that I realize I could have purchased snapper from a local source at the Saturday farmers’ market. Next time. The first step in preparing this meal was making harissa. Dried ancho chiles were rehydrated, cumin seeds were toasted and crushed, and canned tomatoes were cooked until reduced. All of those items were added to a food processor along with garlic, hot smoked paprika, cayenne, vinegar, and salt and pepper. Once pureed, it was harissa. Remember those sweet potatoes I mentioned? For another meal, they were made into oven fries and served with some of this harissa, and that was an excellent pairing. For this meal, the harissa was coated onto the fish which was left to marinate in the refrigerator for a few hours. Meanwhile, the beets were roasted, and the carrots were chopped. With such fresh carrots, I don’t actually peel them. I wash them and pull off any root fibers, but leave as much of each carrot intact as possible. The carrots were steamed with some cilantro stems while chopped onion was sauteed. The steamed carrots were added to the onion and allowed to caramelize a bit before that mixture was pureed with olive oil. The roasted beets were skinned and then tossed with a vinaigrette of shallot, jalapeno, garlic, ginger, mint, cilantro, lime juice, and olive oil. The fish was to have been grilled, but I pan-sauteed it instead.

There are times when a vegetable puree can be reminiscent of baby food, but this wasn’t one of them. The sauteed onion and caramelization added depth, and the hint of cilantro and olive oil prevented the puree from being too sweet. The earthy beets in vinaigrette were a bright and tangy contrasting flavor to that of the puree. And, the main attraction, the fish, was the star of the meal. The harissa had flavored the fish well, but since most of it was scraped away before cooking, what remained was subtle, smoky savoriness. This was one of those meals that I couldn’t believe I had whipped up in my own kitchen and that it was so easy. I love going out for great restaurant meals, but I’m always delighted when a meal seems that good at home.