Curried Cauliflower Chicken Pilaf

Curry powder, cardamom and cinnamon, with a kick of cayenne, make this fragrant curried cauliflower chicken pilaf a delicious and easy one-bowl meal for the many busy days when you are short on time.

This recipe is adapted from Patricia Well’s Vegetable Harvest. Amazon affiliate link>

My husband travels a lot on business so friends often ask me if I cook when he’s gone. Absolutely! Since I love to be in the kitchen creating, and I deserved to eat well, even alone, I do cook. I tend to make simple meals, like pan-fried salmon with salad or pasta and broccoli with crispy prawn chilli paste stirred through, which I adore. I buy the paste in Kuala Lumpur when I am there and have it stockpiled; enough to last me till the next visit. This is my favorite brand, but I am sure there must be others, perhaps even where you live.

The dish I'm sharing today fulfills so many of my needs. It’s full of flavor but easy. Served in just one bowl and nothing to cut so I can eat it with a spoon and read my book at the same time. And when it’s just me eating, it is great, dare I say even better, the next day as leftovers.

Ingredients
3 boneless chicken breasts (Approximate weight 4-6 oz or 115-170g each.)
Sea salt
Black pepper
Olive oil
8 ounces or about 225g cauliflower
12 whole cardamom seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 stick cinnamon
1 1/2 cups or 300g long grain rice
2 cups or 480ml chicken stock
Fresh cilantro or coriander leaves or parsley for garnish

Method
Slice your chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces and sprinkle lightly with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Cut your cauliflower up into florets.

Measure out your spices and have them ready in a small bowl. Seriously. Just do it.

Drizzle a little olive oil in a skillet and pan fry the chicken until it is browned and caramelized. Remove it from the pan and set aside.

In a large pot with a tight fitting lid, mix the rice with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Cook over a medium heat for just a few minutes and stir so that the rice is well coated with the oil.

Add in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. If your stock is homemade and unsalted, add in a teaspoon of salt. I had made mine from stock cubes, which are notoriously high in sodium already, so I didn’t add any extra salt.

Add in your measured spices and the cinnamon stick and give it a quick stir.

Add the cauliflower to the pot, along with the chicken. Cover the pot and reduce the heat to simmer.

Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes and then turn the fire off. Leave the pot covered for at least 10 more minutes or until you are ready to serve.

Discard the cinnamon and fluff the rice with a fork, mixing in the cauliflower and chicken.

Warn your family or guests to avoid chewing on a cardamom seed. (Or you can pick these out too, but I didn’t bother.)

Garnish with cilantro or parsley, if desired.

Enjoy!


***This post contains an affiliate link.***

Porcupine Balls

I open the deep freezer with a big sucking whoosh.  I peer into its disorganized shelves and start rooting around for something that looks like it might want to be dinner.  Ah, ground beef.  We haven’t had Salisbury steaks in a while.  “Come with me, my minced friend,” I say.  Now for a starch and a veg.  The veg is easy because I have salad fixings.  But starch-wise, we just had potatoes last night and pasta the night before, so that leaves couscous – a possibility but, nah – or rice.  But rice would require gravy.  And if you are making Salisbury steak with gravy, you gotta have mushrooms in it.  Hey, I don’t make these rules up.  They just are.  And I have no mushrooms.  So.  So.  Let’s think.  And then suddenly, it pops into my head.  A meal I haven’t made or eaten or even thought of for a very long time.  Where it came from, I do not know.  Porcupine balls!   They are relatively quick and certainly easy.  They are a great weeknight meal and I almost always have all the ingredients on hand.  And kids love them.  More’s the pity, I have no kids left at home.  But never mind.  You might.  Porcupine balls, it is!

Disclaimer:  No actual porcupines were harmed in the making of this dish.  

Photo credit: Michael Richert 

Yay for all you organized types who plan ahead, but this is often how the dinner menu gets decided at our house.  Raise your hand if you do the same.  Ha!  I knew I liked you!

Ingredients
For the porcupine balls:
About 1 lb or 500g ground beef
1/2 small purple onion – about 1 1/4 oz or 35g
1 egg
1 beef stock cube
A few good grinds of fresh black pepper
1 cup or 180g white Basmati or other long grained rice

For the cooking sauce:
1 14 oz or 400g can chopped tomatoes in juice
2 generous tablespoons or 60g tomato paste
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 -1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (depending on your taste)
1 large clove garlic

For optional garnish:  chopped parsley or cilantro

Method
Using a hand blender, purée the onion and beef cube with the egg.  Add in the black pepper.

Pour the puréed mixture into the ground beef and mix well.  Then tip in the rice and mix thoroughly.

Roll the meat/rice mixture into small balls.  I divide these using my cookie dough scoop and then roll them smooth.   Set aside.

Put the first five sauce ingredients into a heavy pan with a tight fitting lid, along with some water.  If you use the tomato can to measure the water, about half a can will do.  Grate the garlic into the pan.

With the pan over a medium flame, bring the sauce to a boil.  Stir occasionally.  This should take just a few minutes.

Carefully immerse the meatballs in the sauce.  Do not burn yourself!  Give the pan a little shake so the meatballs will work their way to the bottom.

Top up with more water, until meatballs are almost covered.

Bring to a boil once more and then simmer, covered tightly for 30 minutes.  Set a timer.  During the first 10-15 minutes of the cooking time, pick the pot up with oven mitts occasionally and give it a gentle shimmy.  Do NOT open the lid.

When the timer goes off, turn off the stove and leave the lid on until you are ready to serve but another 15-20 minutes would be good.  NO peeking.

When you finally open the lid, the rice will have cooked and swollen out of the meatballs, turning them into, voilà, porcupine balls.  Your starch and meat all in one neat package.  Serve with salad or the vegetable of your choice.

Enjoy!

Note:  My backdrop material was created by my talented younger daughter.  It can be seen in its almost entirety here.  

Arroz con Pollo or Rice with Chicken for #RandomRecipeChallenge

My fellow food blogger, Dom, posed the question.  If you had 10 seconds to grab one cookbook, which one would it be?  Quick!  Don’t think too long.  As much as I would have liked to say my newest cookbook, received as a gift from my friend, Jenny, (See exhibit A, below, thoroughly bookmarked with recipes I want to try.)   I knew the only genuine choice is the book that comes in the suitcase with me when we move countries.  My all-encompassing, knows-everything standby since the days before the internet and Skype, the 1980 edition of The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook.   You’ve heard me wax eloquent about it here and here.   And I’ve used its recipes too many times to list all the links.  It’s even made it into the Random Recipe Challenge once before, by default.

Exhibit A - Need to bake so much

This month the great book opened at a dish I’ve eaten many times in my lifetime, sometimes called by other names, like jambalaya or paella.  Frankly, I don’t know what the difference is between arroz con pollo, jambalaya and paella, save the names.  Chicken, sausage, rice.  Other odds and ends like seafood and/or paprika and saffron but essentially the same main ingredients, right?   And before a bunch of angry Spaniards flock here to leave shouty comments, (¡Bienvenidos!) my research reveals that I am correct.  At least as regards, paella and arroz con pollo.  I grew up with both jambalaya and arroz con pollo so I rest my case.

Anyhoo, on to the dish and the fulfillment of this month’s Random Recipe “grab and go” challenge.

Ingredients
1/4 cup or 60ml olive oil
4- to 5-pound or 1.8 – 2.25kg roasting chicken
1 large onion
1 1/4 cups or 295ml water
14 oz or 400g can tomatoes
4 oz or 115g canned or jarred pimentos or sweet red peppers
2 1/3 oz or about 65g black Spanish olives
2 cups or 400g Basmati rice
1 tablespoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
2 chicken stock cubes
16 oz or about 550g smoked pork sausage
8 oz or about 225g frozen peas

Method
Remove your peas from the freezer and set aside.

Cut the chicken up into manageable pieces.  The usual is eight, but, if the breasts are large, as these are, I like to cut them in half as well.

Chop your onion, dice your pimentos and pit your olives.  Slice the sausage into pieces.  Big, small, it’s up to you.

Heat the olive oil and brown your chicken on both sides in your pot, a few pieces at a time.  (Or use another enormous skillet to brown them all at the same time like I did.  Sure, I have another pan to wash, but that takes less time than browning the chicken a few pieces at a time.  Your call.)  Set the chicken aside while you get on with the rest of the recipe.

Cook the onion until soft in the chicken drippings.  At this point I transferred said drippings to the pot I would cook the arroz con pollo in to cook my onions.

Add in the rice and give it a good stir to coat with oil.

Add in the water, the tomatoes, pimentos, olives with all of their liquids along with the stock cubes, salt and pepper.  Stir again to make sure the stock cubes have dissolved.

Now set your browned chicken in the rice pot and bring the liquid to boiling.   

Turn the fire down to low and cover the pot with a tightly fitting lid.  My lid has a little air hole for steam so I covered it first with some foil and then popped the lid on.

Simmer for about 30 minutes or until the chicken is almost fork tender and the rice is just about cooked.  Test a few grains to see.

Add the thawed peas to the pot and cook for about 10 more minutes.   Good Housekeeping suggests that if the mixture seems dry when you add the peas, you should put the lid back on.  If it seems wet, you can cook with the lid off.  I put the lid back on.

Serve with another light sprinkle of cayenne or the hot sauce of your choice.  We used this one.

Enjoy!

Once again, I've waited till the very last minute to post my Random Recipe, but if you'd like to join Dom's challenge in future months, follow this link to Belleau Kitchen. 

                                                   

Easy Black Beans with Smoked Sausage

A traditional meal in the Carioca, that is to say Rio de Janeiro - area of Brazil, black beans with smoked sausage and rice is a tasty staple that will fill you up and bring you comfort.

Moving on is about discovering new places and making new friends. But it is also about finding homes in your new house for memorabilia and treasures from past lives. I have always told my girls that home is where we are together. But, for me, home is also where the special things are.

My mother and my mother-in-law are both collectors of treasure. I saw their houses from a young age (yes, I was friends with my mother-in-law before I started dating her son) and, while the things they had amassed were beautiful, I vowed quietly to myself that I would be more cautious. I would choose a piece or two from each place we lived and make that piece count. I don’t mean to imply that all of their things weren’t special, just that I was looking for a simpler, less cluttered life.

Our first overseas move was Singapore but we didn’t get a shipment and, frankly, we had all kinds of furniture already from the Far East since dear husband came to the relationship with Korean hibachi tables and Chinese cabinets with tiny drawers, a carved wooden Indian room divider screen and even a big Chinese gong.

Our second posting was Sydney and we bought one item: an antique over-mantel piece with a small stained glass cabinet. It cost as much to ship back to the US as it did to buy it. Worth ever penny.

Our purchases in the next location, Abu Dhabi, were primarily Persian carpets. The first was a 3ft x 5ft Tabriz that cost us US$800. A fortune in those days, the last of the ‘80s, for two kids just out of university a few years. The carpet had an identical twin, very unusual, and it is one of our regrets that we didn’t buy them both. But, Lordy, $800 for one! Two was unthinkable! We still kick ourselves over that decision, almost 30 years on.

We moved around for the next few years, judicially, carefully, adding “recuerdos” to our collection. An antique Dutch clock in Balikpapan, Indonesia and a small elegant chandelier from the Marché aux Puces in Paris. Then for five and a half years we called Brazil home.

Early on, I saw a dish I wanted, coveted in Biblical proportions. I confess that sin. Although I guess, technically, it did not belong to my neighbor. Instead, it was at a pottery shop, an hour or two from my house, en route elsewhere, so I wasn’t tortured unduly.

This dish was large! Almost 24 inches from end to end, in a big, brightly colored, hand-painted oval design of peaceful blues and greens. Boy, did I want it. But we all have limits on what we will pay for something. This dish, more that 20 years ago, was beyond my comfort zone at US$100, especially for something decorative, because I could not imagine ever baking anything in a dish so large and pretty. 

So I went back occasionally to visit it and lusted. Through those years, and the magic of devaluation the real fell to almost 50 percent of its initial inflated value and, just before we moved from Brazil, the dish was mine. It has had pride of place in our living room since then.

Until now.

The movers in Kuala Lumpur were simply not careful enough in packing this up for our move to Egypt.

When my heart is heavy, I cook. The only meal appropriate after the discovery of the devastation was black beans with sausage and rice. I had to celebrate Brazil and bring back a happy memory because this one was so painful. Yes, I know it was only a thing, but it represented so much more. A wish fulfilled, a country missed.

Easy Black Beans with Smoked Sausage

In Brazil, beans and rice accompany almost any other dish that might be served. Lasagna for dinner, also beans and rice. Fried chicken, beans and rice on the side. Grilled meats, bring on the beans. We found it most extraordinary when we arrived, but we came to realize that unless there were beans and rice to fill you up, it just wasn't really considered a complete meal there. 

Ingredients
16 oz bag or a little less than 1/2 kilo dried black beans (If your bag is 500g, not problem, just hum the whole thing in.)
At least 14 oz or 400g smoked sausage (More is more in this case!)
4-5 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
Sea salt
Black pepper
Cayenne pepper
14 oz or 398g can cooked black beans

To serve: White rice cooked following package instructions or your favorite method.

Method
Pick carefully through the dried black beans removing any stones or clumps of dirt. Even the best brands have them, so do not skip this step.  Best case scenario if you miss a clump, is gritty beans. Worst case scenario if you miss a stone is a trip to the dentist with a broken tooth.

All the stones and clumps I found, with one bean for comparison.

Rinse the beans with some warm water and drain.

Slice the sausage into 1cm or 1/2 inch rounds.

Add the beans, garlic, bay leaves and sausage to your pressure cooker.

Eye the pot and add twice as much cold water as you have beans. Add about a teaspoon of salt and a good sprinkle of both peppers. Some smoked sausages are saltier than others so we don’t want to add too much actual salt right at the beginning.

N.B. If you are watching your salt intake, wait till the beans are cooked to add the salt. For those who don't use much salt, the seasonings from the sausage may be enough for you.

Put the lid on the pressure cooker and heat on high until it starts to make that loud ch-ch-ch noise that means it is boiling and under pressure. Turn the heat down till the ch-ch is just a gentle chug of a slow train.

Cook like this for about 35-40 minutes and then remove the pressure cooker from the heat. Allow it to cool until it is safe to open. Give the beans a good stir.

Put the pressure cooker back on the stove on a medium heat, without the lid, and cook to reduce the liquid by one or two inches or two to four centimeters and to finish cooking the beans.

Meanwhile, rinse the canned beans in some cool water and mash them completely with a potato masher. (You could also choose to cook a few more ounces or grams of beans and scoop the extra out with a slotted spoon and mash them. I find this easier because one whole bag plus one whole can makes the perfect thickness for me.)

Add them into the pressure cooker and stir vigorously to incorporate them. This will thicken the bean mixture.

Check the seasonings and add more salt and pepper if necessary. Serve over white rice with hot sauce on the side for those who want some extra spice.

Enjoy!

Pin it! 

  .