Daring Cook's Chicken Biryani

Grace, one of our talented non-blogging Daring Kitchen members, was our Daring Cooks’ August hostess who shared with us some of her family’s tried and true Bengali Biryani recipes – all of them delicious and all of them prepared fresh from our own kitchens!

Well I have a limited supply of computer battery as well as internet connection so I'll make this short! (And I'll also be posting a photo later.)

I hope to make chicken biryani again sometime soon but didn't get around to re-doing it before the challenge time was up.

This is the 1st attempt

I definitely made it wrong--it was too sloppy and strong tasting.

But I had lots of leftovers, so after I added more rice to it, it was significantly better and very tasty!

looked and tasted much better with extra rice!

I also tried it with fresh tomatoes and scrambled eggs to make it like fried rice biryani and that was very yummy as well.

Here's what I put in it, but I'll also include the correct ingredients instructions that I will be following next time.

1 c. rice
3 c. water
1 1/2 - 2 onions
1 1/2 tomato
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tbs coconut oil and 1 tbs olive oil
8 chicken tenders
1/2 c plain yogurt
1 tbs ginger

*I was told to follow the directions on the biryani spice box ONLY if I wanted a lot of food for a lot of people!

Chicken Biryani:

Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
2 small cinnamon sticks
2 cardamom pods
3 tablespoons (45 ml) (1½ oz) ghee
2 onions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 inch (2½ cm) ginger, peeled and minced
2 teaspoons salt
1 tomato, skinned and chopped
½ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon coriander powder
½ teaspoon curry powder
1 tablespoon biryani powder
1 chicken, cut into 8 parts
3 cups (750 ml) (550 gm) (19½ oz) basmati rice, soaked for 30 minutes and drained
1 tablespoon (15 ml) (½ oz) (15 ml) plain yogurt
Fresh coriander, chopped
Green chillies, chopped (optional)

Directions:

1. Melt the ghee in a medium sized saucepan. Fry the cumin seeds, bay leaves, cinnamon, and cardamom in it until fragrant.
2. Add the onions, garlic, ginger, tomato, and salt. Cook on medium high heat while stirring for 5 minutes or until the onions start to brown.
3. Add the cumin, coriander powder, curry powder, and biryani powder. Cook for another 2 minutes and add the chicken. Cover the pan, and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.
4. Add the yogurt. Cover and simmer for 2 minutes. Add coriander and chillies and remove from heat.
5. Boil the rice in 6 cups (1½  of water for 5 minutes or until half cooked. Drain any remaining water. In a large saucepan, alternate layers of rice and chicken starting and ending with a layer of rice. Cover the saucepan tightly and cook over very low heat for 10 minutes or until the rice is done.

Costa Rican Tilapia with Rice and Beans

Well I don't have much to say right now except I want to praise the Lord for His provision in getting me a job which will hopefully be a great experience for me! It sounds like it will be.

And why was I so worried all those months ago about having a good job? I know He will provide. Yahweh Yireh--It's what Abraham named the mountain where God provided a ram for him to sacrifice. 

Daily He provides us with delicious food to sustain us. This Costa Rican Tilapia is just one more reason to praise Him. I will likely make this one again. (And that's saying a lot considering I rarely make things twice!)

Costa Rican Tilapia-adapted slightly from We heart food

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
3 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoons kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon sugar
4 tilapia fillets, about 5 ounces each
3/4 cup long-grain brown rice
1 cup chopped onions
3 tbs orange juice
1 can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can (15 ounces) black beans, drained, rinsed
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

For the tilapia marinade, combine lime juice, 2/3 tablespoon olive oil, 1 1/2 tablespoons cilantro,  3/4 teaspoon garlic, 1/3 teaspoon salt, and sugar in a shallow dish. Add tilapia and marinate 15 minutes, turning once.

To prepare the bean and rice mixture, cook the rice according to package directions and keep warm while the tilapia is marinating. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large, high-sided skillet or saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil on medium heat. Add remaining garlic and onions; sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes, stirring. Add 2 tablespoons cilantro, oranges, tomatoes, beans, oregano, 1 teaspoon salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cook, uncovered, until hot, 7 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Transfer hot rice to a 9 by 13 inch or 2-1/2 to 3 quart baking dish. Spoon the bean mixture on top of rice and gently blend. Slightly overlap tilapia fillets on top and scrape marinade over fillets. Bake until the flesh of the tilapia just begins to flake at the nudge of a fork, 16 to 20 minutes. Be sure that the bottom of the tilapia is also flakey and cooked well. (this might require a messy flip of the tilapia fillets.)

This tilapia serves, and there will be rice & beans to spare--which is just what I wanted. Mmm leftovers! :) 

Notes:

-Cut the rice & beans either in half or do 2/3 of it if you're not interested in leftovers.

-If serving 6, just make a bit more marinade for two more fillets and serve with the same amount of rice mixture.

Strawberry Cookie Biscuits

I'm learning Russian these days. While browsing a Russian food blog, I happened upon this cookie/biscuit recipe, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. The taste is GREAT. I will probably continue to experiment with this recipe, however I would definitely feel comfortable sharing a plate of these floppy biscuits with family and friends...and total strangers. They are delicious.

In the future, I may just plop the spoonfuls of dough/batter into a mini muffin tin and see how that works. They're kind of muffin-top-esque anyway. If I do that, I'll try to update this post accordingly. However, I would make these again and eat them again regardless of they're shape. Mmmm.

Strawberry Biscuits

Adapted and Translated from http://www.vsemzastol.ru 

Ingredients:

1 cup fresh strawberries, chopped

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vinegar

1/2 cup greek yogurt

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F. 

Using your fingers or a pastry cutter, combine the flour and butter to make crumbs. Combine sour cream, sugar, and salt. Mix baking soda and vinegar with sour cream mixture, then add to flour mixture and stir until barely combined. Add vanilla and strawberries. Stir gently until evenly distributed.

Prepare a cookie sheet with cooking spray or parchment paper and spoon (~2 tbs per cookie) onto the sheet. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from cookie sheet carefully and let cool slightly on cooling rack. Should make a dozen biscuits.

Note:
-I'm still unsure about the baking soda/vinegar combo. Next time I might just go with 2 teaspoons of baking soda (and omit vinegar), as the original recipe was difficult to translate at this point.

Daring Baker's July Challenge

As humans, we are blind to the future.

I once overheard someone behind me as I was crossing the street.

"It's weird," She said. "I completely trust you and everything, but I've never crossed the street blindfolded before."

I didn't have to look back to know that a good friend of hers was likely guiding her across the street.

Isn't that how it feels sometimes when we try to follow Christ?

We know we're supposed to trust Him, but sometimes it's hard. Sometimes we wonder if there are cars coming. And we also might realize that the moment we let go of His hand and start going our own direction, we could get ourselves in some terrible or dangerous situations.

We can't see the future, so we have to listen close and hold on tight as Christ leads us into it. This isn't easy. But it must be done. If we quit following Him, we've cut ourselves off from the One who can see the future, yet we would still be blind.

Doesn't sound like a great idea to me: wondering around blind with no guide.

Even in cooking we sometimes need a guide. (Especially when we get hungry and our brains don't work as well!)

I could've used a guide for this month's Daring Baker's Challenge. We were guide-less, to an extent. It was a pick-your-own challenge from ANY previous challenge! Overwhelming.

Well I saw a few that seemed do-able but still challenging and I chose ricotta. I chose this because it would allow me to also complete another challenge: cannelloni. Well, the ricotta went really well and I highly recommend making your own.

The cannelloni, on the other hand, I would definitely not recommend making from scratch UNLESS you have a really good pasta rolling method. Please don't try it by hand--unless you have an unlimited amount of time and patience. It ended up tasting and looking wonderful by the end, but I had to throw a lot of pasta away and it caused me unnecessary stress.

This is how the "successful" pasta turned out!

Homemade pasta is delicious. Invest in a pasta roller :)

Because I didn't take a photo and it didn't go well, I won't include the cannelloni recipe here. Let's just pretend that all didn't happen. So onto the wonderful, simple, delicious ricotta...

This picture makes it look more like cottage cheese than it really did!

Homemade Ricotta Cheese

Originally From the bartolini kithcens
Total time: 30 minutes to prepare, at least 2 hours to drain.
Makes about one pound (about ½ kg) of cheese

Ingredients:

8 cups (2 litres) whole milk (homogenized)
1/2 tablespoon (7 ½ ml) (9 gm) table salt
5 tablespoons (75 ml) white distilled vinegar

Directions:

1.Combine milk, cream, and salt in a large non-reactive pot and stir over medium heat as you bring the temperature up to 85°C (185°F) (about 15-20 minutes).

2. Add the vinegar all at once and stir for 15 seconds; heat for two more minutes before removing from heat.

3.Allow to rest undisturbed for 15 – 20 minutes

4. Using a small sieve or slotted spoon, remove the floating curds and place them in a cheesecloth-lined colander to drain

5.Place colander over a bowl in refrigerator and drain for at least a couple of hours or overnight (I found 2 hours was enough). The longer you allow it to drain, the more firm the results.

6.Remove the ricotta from the colander, place in airtight containers, and refrigerate.

Note:
-don't use store bought cheesecloth. Use a real cloth--some sort of cotton napkin or towel. What's shown in the photo is what I strained it in, and it worked perfectly!

Individual Cheese Curd Strata

We can be so slow to react to God's prompting. I'm pretty sure this is what it means in 1 Thessalonians 5:19. When we know what we ought to do, the Spirit is trying to drop hints all over the place, but we continue on as if we were following our own will. Following our own will is not the Christian's aim. Following our own will basically goes against everything Christ commanded. Yet we do it daily.

Picture the Spirit as a fire. One day, a fire is lit. At first, of course, you are more than excited about the fire. This is what happens when you're cold and alone and just want some warmth in your life. So finally, God sparked a flame and a fire came to you. This fire is tended to well at first. You give it utmost attention and are completely willing to forget many other things of the world in order to keep this fire from burning out. But there will come a time when you get distracted, after a while, and you will stray from tending the fire. It's ok, because the fire kind of keeps burning on its own (after all, there's only so much control you have over such a powerful essence). Then the distraction turns to more. It becomes your sole focus, your goal. It becomes what you want to invest in, rather than the fire. Although instead of just leaving the fire, you begin to feel that it would be a distraction from your new pursuits. So you toss water on it. You're beyond ignoring it, you'd like it to stay out of your mind, out of your way. So you put it out.

This is how you quench a fire. You pursue other things, you let it die, you toss water on it, or spread it out, because it is annoying you that it demands so much of your attention.

This ought not happen with the Spirit. The Spirit, our God should consume our lives. Let His fire roar in your heart, and follow His prompting until your heart is a wildfire that cannot be put out.

And now, an unrelated recipe.

Praise the Lord for delicious food combinations. This is one of those. Put cheese curds in breakfast strata. Do it. God made it good!

Cheese Curd Strata for One

Ingredients:
1 (fairly small) slice of dry sourdough bread
1 egg
1/4 c almond milk
1 tbs greek yogurt
handful of spinach
1 tbs chopped green onions
1 inch long cheese curd (~ 1 tbs?)
pinch of pepper
salt to taste

Layer all dry ingredients in a small (about 2 cup) oven-safe dish that has been lightly greased. Beat egg, milk, yogurt, salt, and pepper together in a separate bowl, then pour on top of dry ingredients. Leave overnight. In the morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees. When the oven is up to temperature, cook for about 30 minutes, making sure it doesn't giggle too much before taking it out. Let it cool for at least 5 minutes before eating.

Swiss Mushroom Oatmeal

I just took a wonderful trip to Wisconsin with my mother. It was good.

We went to the zoo (yes we're children at heart) and we ate a lot of good food.

Fav. animals at the zoo: beautiful lions. The King and Queen!

We checked out some delicious Madison restaurants, which I would recommend. One of those is Fraboni's deli. If you want a quick, inexpensive and delicious sandwich with lots of meat, this is the place in Madison.

I also recommend Michael's Frozen Custard (also in Madison), and I don't recommend much topping. I got strawberry banana on vanilla custard, and the custard was SO good that I just wanted to skip it and go straight for the good stuff. So I would maybe just recommend one or no topping. No need to get fancy--but I'm a big fan of simple vanilla anyway (which is odd considering all the other strange things I eat). Unfortunately this nice little treat gave us a nice taste of something that we don't need to be craving all the time. Thankfully we have a few Culver's restaurants nearby and we might be giving them a little bit more business after this nice little trip to the frozen-custard-loving state.

We also spent the night in Wausau, which was a much more happening place than we expected it to be. While in Wausau, we woke up to a not-so-appitizing "hot" breakfast at our hotel, consisting of bread, waffles, coffee, 2 cereal choices, a big pot of oatmeal, and some pre-made fake-looking cheese omlettes. It sounds better than it looks. We decided to venture out for breakfast to a great little diner called Mint Cafe that has been around for a while. There we had some very real-looking omelettes and gobbled them down (I had a pesto tomato feta one and my mom had something with spinach and artichokes). It wasn't too much food--the prices were pretty low so we got what we paid for in our opinion.

All in all, a good trip.

But all this Wisconsin stuff and I don't  even mention CHEESE. Which, of course, I knew I needed to get before returning home. Well, guess what? We ended up buying about 7 lb. of cheese. And so far, so good. I recommend Mullins for a cheese factory store near the Wausau area.

Speaking of cheese, I've got a recipe for some oatmeal that would be great with some delicious Wisconsin swiss cheese (or nearly any other kind of cheese I'm sure). Mmm. Here's the savory recipe:

Swiss Mushroom Oatmeal

Makes 1 big serving or two side servings (would go well with eggs of some sort!)

Ingredients:
1/2 c old fashioned oats

1 c. water

2-3 baby portebella mushrooms, sliced

1 1/2 tbs chopped onion

1/4 tsp minced garlic

1/8 tsp basil

1/8 tsp oregano

1/8 tsp thyme

1/4 tsp worcestershire sauce

salt to taste

1 slice of swiss cheese

Combine worcestershire, water, oats, and herbs and let soak for at least 10 minutes. Cook the mushrooms, onion and garlic in a small skillet (might want some olive oil in there first). When they become limp take them off the heat. Then cook oatmeal in microwave for about a minute. Add mushrooms onions and garlic to the oatmeal and cook for another minute or two. When the oatmeal appears to be done, top it with swiss cheese and stir. Then let set for a few minutes (no burnt tongues!!) and enjoy.

Notes:
-The longer the oatmeal is soaked, the less it needs to be cooked. 
-This might be good if you pour the oatmeal into an oven-safe dish before topping it with cheese, then popping it in the broiler for a bit to get a nice cooked cheese effect! 

-This idea came from this recipe for "oat burgers" from food.com! I've never tried the burgers though--let me know if you have!

Yogurt Sauce for Tuna Burger

So as far as this recipe goes...I wrote it down without many measurements. I apologize. This is fairly embarrassing. The thing is, I said I would post this in the Tuna Burger post. So here it is. (Oh this is also technically an addition to the Daring Cook's yogurt challenge.)

No new photo either:

Herb Yogurt Sauce 

Ingredients for one serving:
1/8 c homemade yogurt (ok, store-bought works too)
fresh thyme
fresh oregano
some worcester sauce
some mustard
3/4 tsp honey
salt & pepper


Mix everything together. My note said that I added more worcester sauce then mustard, so that may be helpful. I remember it being delicious. Just keep tasting it until it's satisfactory and smear it on a tuna burger. Nothin' fancy!
:) Enjoy!