by | April 1, 2013 · 3:40 am

Karl’s Greek Lemon Pilaf

Adapted from anonymous 

Usually when I make Greek lamb I make potatoes. In fact, it is a bit of a rut. To break the mold, I looked for a Greek rice side dish. Finding one that was close on Food.com, I adapted it to my personal style. Jan doesn’t like white rice, so I switched to brown.  For my family there are never enough onions. And who can make a Greek dish without garlic and pepper?  Most of the other dishes would be heavy on the herbs, so just a little parsley as an accent in flavor and color.

Karl’s Greek Lemon Pilaf

Karl’s Greek Lemon Pilaf

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by | April 1, 2013 · 3:34 am

Karl’s Spanakopita Rolls

Spinach seemed like a good vegetable to go with my Greek Easter Feast. I have been wanting to try to make spanakopita, but for several reasons I have hesitated. First of all, Jan generally does not like dishes made with fillo (actually she does, but all the butter used to make it flaky doesn’t like her). Also, the two ways of making this dish gave me problems. Struggling with the thin sheets of buttered fillo to make little triangles seemed too fussy. The second way, as a pie, buries all that buttered fillo under the spinach so that it never gets flaky  What is the point? There has to be another way.

Karl’s Spanakopita Rolls

Karl’s Spanakopita Rolls

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by | April 1, 2013 · 3:30 am

Jan’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

Jan adapted this from two on-line recipes Baking Bites and The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen for our Easter feast.

Jan’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

Jan’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

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by | March 28, 2013 · 5:31 pm

Jan’s Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake with Kalua Whipped Cream

Adapted from a recipe from Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food by Sam Mogannam and Dabny Gough, found on Two Peas and Their Pod

Around our house the birthday options include: cake, pie or mousse. For his birthday Chris wanted cake. So Jan found this Bundt recipe. She thought this recipe had way too much butter, but it was not her birthday. Jan uses Dagoba organic chocolate power for the cake. In Dutch processing alkaline is added to the chocolate power, so she prefers not to use it.

Many Americans like their cakes really sweet. Jan and the kids think that this is just cloying.  For this recipe she cut the sugar by almost half and dropped the sugar out of the glaze all together. She also added a tablespoon of coffee to enhance the chocolate flavor in the cake without adding to the sweetness.

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by | March 25, 2013 · 3:15 am

Karl’s Moroccan Oxtail Tajine

Adapted from a recipe by Mamatkamal El Mary K

This week is Chris’ Birthday. Myr is taking him out for steak on Saturday, so she wants something heavy on the vegetables. Jan really liked the Chicken Cassablanca I made last week, so she wants a North African tajine (tu-jeen). I have some French green lentils that I have wanted to try out (A Taste of History idea). Chris (who just landed from a trip to Germany) got in the last word, he wants oxtails. This I can work with.

Karl’s Moroccan Oxtail Tajine

Karl’s Moroccan Oxtail Tajine

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by | March 25, 2013 · 3:03 am

Karl’s Moroccan Spice Mix (a “Ras el Hanout”)

The Moroccan spice blend Ras el Hanout is shrouded in mystery, the closely held family and trade secret of the Moroccan spice merchants.  Ras el Hanout means “head of the shop,” and each shop’s owner has their own unique mix, the best spice mix their shop can provide. Some blends have as few as ten ingredients, but others are said to have as many as fifty to one hundred spices. Some include such exotics as: grains of paradise, orris root, monk’s pepper, and nigella. Some purportedly included aphrodisiacs like Spanish fly, but if it is a secret how would we know? The result of all of this secrecy is that the blends, that all go by the name of “Ras el Hanout,” can be radically different from one shop to the next on the same street, let alone from towns in the north or south of Morocco.

Thirty Spices Measured Out

Thirty Spices Measured Out

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by | March 25, 2013 · 2:54 am

Karl’s Moroccan Artichoke Dip

In making my Moroccan Oxtail Tajine I trimmed a bunch of artichokes down to their bases.  This left we with a pile of leaves and stems that I was loathed to just throw away.

My mother, Claudia, raised me to not waste food. I feel like it is an absolute sin when, for example, a recipe for chicken stock has you boil a whole chicken with vegetables and then instructs you to throw away the “solids.”  These are recipes written by people who have never been hungry a day in their lives. I simply cannot do that!

Karl’s Moroccan Artichoke Dip

Karl’s Moroccan Artichoke Dip

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by | March 24, 2013 · 10:58 pm

Miriam’s Cream of Mushroom Soup

Many people associate cream of mushroom with Campbell’s-assisted casseroles.
20130324-160732.jpg I did not grow up with these, so got to discover them as an adult (along with butter and cream). But that handy concentrated glop, even diluted, is nothing like cream of mushroom from scratch. I even convinced Chris of this fact, with this recipe. It’s loosely adapted from 500 Greatest-Ever Vegetarian Recipes‘ wild mushroom soup.

Miriam’s Cream of Mushroom Soup

Miriam’s Cream of Mushroom Soup

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by | March 18, 2013 · 2:24 am

Karl’s Roasted Salmon with Leeks

It is St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow, and no one in this household likes what is sold as “corned beef” in the supermarkets (I understand that if you can find Italian corned beef it is much closer to the original). In fact, except for Chris, my son-in-law whose family is from Boston, we do not favor “boiled dinners” (everything thrown into the same pot and boiled). For us the classic Irish main dish is the Salmon of Knowledge.

St. Patrick's Day Dinner

St. Patrick’s Day Dinner

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by | March 18, 2013 · 2:15 am

Karl’s Colcannon

This is a recipe I have been making for years, because every other recipe I had tried struck me as bland. Please notice the absence of any word like “traditional” in the title. Today, I have just been reading a “rant” about “Traditional Irish Soda Bread,” which I found through a Karen Boatman’s “Home Plates” article. In many ways I have to agree with his sentiments.

Karl's Colcannon

Karl’s Colcannon

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