With fresh garlic, ginger, and turmeric root blended in a sauce of lemon and tomato how could anyone resist this? My 100% authentic Indian girlfriend, Farheen, suggested which spices to use and taught me the importance of using fresh whole spices to toast and then grind before use. The difference between doing this and not, is the difference between smelling and, well, NOT SMELLING. The fragrance and flavor is immensely improved when you toast your spices whole and grind them fresh. I simply use a food processor. 100% worth the extra step.

The fragrant preparation of dry toasting whole seeds of cumin and coriander in a pan is very rewarding. Grinding and pounding with a mortar is extra fun for the kids- or a stressed out adult. I combine the toasted spices with paprika and some cayenne to achieve the awesome flavor imparted to tikka masala. I use only fresh turmeric and ginger. Fresh turmeric root has such a powerful flavor and is very beneficial for your health. Aside from the stained yellow fingers, this is one fabulous root to incorporate into savory cooking for a major flavor impact. 

The mariande involves a deliciously zesty yogurt-lemon-spice sauce that the chicken bathes in overnight, or at least 2 hours. I use chunks of chicken breast because it is a lot less preparation and eliminates the whole step of chucking the meat off of the bone after it cooks. Because this recipe uses a flavorful marinade and simmer sauce, juiciness is not compromised at all. 

Once all those flavors get well acquainted with the chicken, you char-grill it or broil it in your oven. Grilling tastes much better, of course. 

 The chicken does not need to be cooked through while grilling or broiling, as it will still simmer in the tikka sauce. 

I use a tablespoon of olive oil or coconut oil + a tablespoon of ghee (clarified butter or “samna”) to impart the essential buttery flavor, without having to use the 4 heaping tablespoons of ghee originally called for! 

discount viagra no prescription The large number of prostate fluid is need during sex life. A couple should constantly try to improve their communication skills and sort out their problems. generic cialis levitra Keep in mind that you should always talk to the doctor about the complete free shipping viagra history of your health and condition. The companies on one side has been lifting its expenses for advertising but at the same time affordable for people unable to bear expenses of surgery. best price for viagra

let it sizzle…

 …until nice and caramelized with some tasty burnt parts!

Tomatoes, lemon, and cilantro are then added and pureed with an immersion blender.

Add milk or cream- whatever your dietary preference is.  Cream and butter are traditional and necessary for the classic creamy and buttery taste, but even I feel that would be too heavy. I prefer a dash of cream or milk with lemon and tomato being the dominant flavors of the sauce.

Add the chicken and the remaining chopped cilantro and serve with rice or naan. SO GOOD.

Chicken Tikka Masala

2014-02-01 15:14:58

Serves 6

A hearty and flavorful chicken dish, full of lemon, garlic, and fragrant spices!

Write a review

Save Recipe

Print

Prep Time

1 hr 15 min

Cook Time

25 min

Total Time

1 hr 40 min

Prep Time

1 hr 15 min

Cook Time

25 min

Total Time

1 hr 40 min

Ingredients

1. 7 pounds chicken breast pieces, skin removed
2. 4 tablespoons toasted ground cumin
3. 3 tablespoons toasted paprika
4. 3 tablespoon toasted ground coriander seed
5. 2 teaspoons fresh turmeric root
6. 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
7. 12 cloves garlic, 8 whole, 4 minced
8. 4 tablespoons fresh ginger root
9. 3 cups plain yogurt
10. 1 cup fresh juice from 6 to 8 lemons, divided
11. Kosher salt
12. 1 tablespoon butter or ghee
13. 1 tablespoon olive oil
14. 1 large onion, thinly sliced
15. 1/4 c sliced shallots
16. 3 cups diced tomatoes
17. 1/2 cup roughly chopped cilantro leaves and tender stems
18. 1/4 c cup heavy cream (optional)
19. 1/4 c milk
20. 1/2 c vinegar for washing (optional)

Instructions

1. Wash chicken pieces with vinegar and salt. Place in a large rimmed baking dish.
2. Toast cumin and coriander seeds in a pan over medium heat, moving around frequently so that it does not scorch. Grind in a food processor or spice mill. Toast the paprika over medium heat in pan.
3. Combine cumin, paprika, coriander, and cayenne in a small bowl and mix well. Set aside 4 tablespoons of spice mixture.
4. Combine remaining 7 tablespoons of the spice mixture, 8 whole garlic cloves, 2 tablespoons ginger, turmeric root, yogurt, 1/2 cup lemon juice, and 2 tablespoons of salt in a blender or food processor and pulse until combined, and garlic and ginger are minced. Pour marinade all over chicken pieces, stirring well to ensure good coverage. Cover and refrigerate for 1-4 hours.
5. GRILL: If cooking on a grill, preheat the grill and spray olive oil onto the grill tray. Scoop up chicken pieces and shake off excess marinade off of chicken and place over hot side of grill. Grill without moving until well charred, 2 to 4 minutes. Flip chicken and cook until second side is charred, another 2 to 4 minutes. (Chicken may not be completely cooked through, which is fine as it will cook more in the simmer sauce). BROILER: If cooking in the oven under the broiler, line a pan with heavy duty aluminum foil (to prevent charring and stuck on stains) and preheat the broiler to high with the rack set as close to the top broiler as possible to fit a pan under. Shake off excess marinade off of chicken and place on foil-lined pan. Broil until charred and blackened on surface, about 7-10 minutes, depending on your oven (chicken may not be completely cooked through, which is fine as it will cook more in the simmer sauce). Be careful not to dry out the chicken!
6. Meanwhile, heat ghee in a large pan over medium-high heat until melted. Add onions, remaining 4 cloves of grated garlic, shallots, and remaining 2 tablespoons of ginger. Cook, stirring frequently, until dark and beginning to char in spots, about 5-10 minutes.
7. Add the olive oil and allow to heat then add the reserved spice mixture stirring frequently for about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and half of cilantro, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan with a spoon. Simmer for 15 minutes until tomatoes are juicy and soft. Puree using a hand blender.
8. Stir in cream and milk and remaining half cup of lemon juice. Season to taste with salt, then set aside until chicken is cooked.
9. Transfer chicken chunks to the pan of sauce. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook, stirring frequently, until chicken is just cooked through, about 10 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining cilantro, then serve immediately with rice or naan.

Notes

1. *The marinade yields a large quantity. I save half of it for later and cook only 3 pounds of chicken at a time for my family, but make the same amount of the simmer sauce for 3 pounds of chicken as it is so delicious and good on the rice or naan! Make the entire quantity if cooking for 6-8 adults.
2. *Cream and butter may be completely omitted and the dish will still taste fantastic but this will take away from the traditional and characteristic creamy Indian tikka masala flavor. I substituted some milk and used just a bit of ghee to impart the buttery flavor. Making ghee at home is very easy and smells/tastes amazing! If you are interested in seeing this method, leave me a comment below!

By Noha ElSharkawy

Adapted from Serious Eats J Kenji Lopez-Alt

Adapted from Serious Eats J Kenji Lopez-Alt

Sugar & Garlic https://sugarandgarlic.com/

These pumpkin spice biscotti are the perfect treat for these dreary cold autumn days. Made with fresh sugar pumpkins and the perfect blend of fragrant spices, these little cookies will make the perfect dunkers for your coffee or tea. The best part of all: they whip up quite quickly and are easy to pour and slice! No shaping perfection is necessary with this recipe.

This has been my ongoing dilemma all through October and these unexpectedly freezing cold November days:

This cold and rainy (er and snowy?!) weather beckons me to turn on the oven and bake something comforting and delicious and curl up on my chair to enjoy some scrumptious fall goodies.

Yet…. I also should not eat dessert all day.

But it’s oh so tempting to have that warm oven baking all kinds of goodies in this weather. My kitchen will smell so good! Of course, I have to taste everything I make!

Then again, I really want to get into shape, and maybe work on my running routine as well…maybe…

Anyone else face this dilemma??

Well, these lovely pumpkin spice biscotti exude all the warmth and aromas of autumn, and you don’t have to feel super guilty about it. They are small-ish bite size portions but full of delicious pumpkin goodness. As always, I use fresh whole ingredients like a whole pie pumpkin that I bake in the oven to puree, the finest and most potent spices, and pure organic, grass fed butter. 

Biscotti is the Italian word for these cute little cookies made perfect for dunking into tea or coffee. Biscotto is the singular form, and in Arabic my mother referred to them as “biscot yansoon”. Yansoon is Arabic for the anise seed she would grind and add to the cookie. My mom makes the best biscotti. Of course I may be biased, but it is the perfect texture, right amount of anise, and has the perfect crunch. It is not too hard and crumbly like the ones you may buy pre-packaged. I curl up into nostalgic comfort dipping her biscotti into my tea, and these cookies were my best friends during my first trimester nausea in both my pregnancies. Actually, I think it was my only source of nourishment for a few weeks!

When I decided to make a pumpkin variation of my mother’s biscotti, I could not find a recipe I liked. I experimented again, and again adjusting my mother’s recipe to accommodate the extra moisture from the pumpkin until this was perfect. So here it is, what my taste testers and myself found to be the perfect little cookie!

He may tell about some basic things that can cialis no prescription get transmitted through sex and completely weaken the inbuilt human body’s immunity. The small hand crop grows wild on the stream banks of thick forests in the tadalafil 5mg tablets Amazon region of South America. Obesity or higher cholesterol is very harmful to our soft cialis pills bodies. This cialis online prescription procedure may or may not include the characteristic symptoms of mania, but shares with the narrower phenotypes symptoms of severe irritability and ADHD hyperactive type.

Make Fresh Pumpkin Puree

First of all, I use fresh puree. Always. Fresh puree is just better; it has no preservatives or additives, is not processed, and is SO easy to make. Did I mention it will make your house smell AMAZING?! Just cut the pie pumpkin in half, scoop out the pumpkin seeds ( you can toast these little gems with salt and some oil), sprinkle the pumpkin flesh with some cinnamon and nutmeg or pumpkin pie spice, and place flesh side down on a large baking sheet. Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees (f) for 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of the pumpkin. Your home will smell Ah-MAZING as the toasted spices and roasted pumpkin scents waft through your home. When the pumpkin is soft, remove from oven, let it cool, and scoop it right out of its skin and into a bowl and mash it with a spoon. If it doesn’t soften right up or is more stringy, blend it for 1 minute with a hand blender or in your mixing bowl until smooth.  

Pumpkin  sounds perfect with warm gooey caramel which will highlight the butterscotch tones the brown sugar imparts to the cookie. So I whipped up a caramel sauce and drizzled over my cooled biscotti after they toasted on each side. This makes for an extra treat when dipped into your coffee or tea and the caramel melts into your drink and in your mouth! However, being a dedicated chocolate fan, I also decided to dress some biscottis with a delicate chocolate drizzle. For this, I just melted some semi-sweet chocolate chips and stirred in a teaspoon of oil, and then drizzled some with a spoon over the cookies. The kids also love doing this step, and they really cannot mess this up!

Biscotti is a twice baked cookie. The first time it is baked to a soft cake like texture, then it is sliced and baked again to toast into a crunchy biscuit ideal for dipping into coffee or tea. I personally like my cookie a little softer so I do not bake it as long as required when it gets its second bake.

Most recipes you will find for biscotti call for rolling the dough out into a log. It was nearly impossible to do so with this mixture; it is far too sticky.  Instead we will pour and form the sticky dough into a long, log shape on the pan, and shape it with a spatula dipped in water to smooth the top. When slicing the once baked biscotti, you MUST use a sharp knife, and slice it soon after you take it out of the oven so it does not harden too much and crumble.

 Here you see how sticky the batter can be

Pumpkin Spice Biscotti

2013-10-22 08:25:57

Yields 24

A delicious pumpkin dunker for your tea or coffee!

Write a review

Save Recipe

Print

Prep Time

1 hr

Cook Time

1 hr

Total Time

2 hr

Prep Time

1 hr

Cook Time

1 hr

Total Time

2 hr

For the biscotti

1. 6 cups flour
2. 2.5 teaspoons baking powder
3. 1/2 teaspoon salt
4. 4 teaspoons of Vietnamese cinnamon
5. 2 teaspoon of ginger
6. 1 teaspoon of cloves
7. 1.5 teaspoon nutmeg
8. 2 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
9. 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
10. 4 eggs
11. 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
12. 6 tablespoon of unsalted butter, melted
13. 1 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree

For the Caramel Sauce

1. 1 stick of salted butter
2. 1 cup pf dark brown sugar
3. 1/3 cup powdered sugar
4. 1/3 cup of heavy cream

optional chocolate drizzle

1. 10 oz melted chocolate chips
2. 1 tsp oil

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and spices together in a medium bowl. In a larger bowl whisk together the pumpkin puree, 2 eggs, sugars, and vanilla extract. Slowly add the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Pour the melted butter over mixture and stir in gently.
2. This step will be the trickiest, but with my tips you will do fine! Grease the baking sheet with butter, or line it with parchment paper. Carefully pour the dough into two long logs on the baking sheet, leaving enough space between the two as they expand in the oven. The length of the log should take the length of the pan and be the same thickness throughout, about 1/2 inch. The width of your log should be about 4 inches, or smaller if you are making mini biscotti. The width of the logs will be the actual length of your biscotti once you cut it. To smooth any peaks from the dough or shape any odd portions, wet your finger or a small spatula, and smooth the dough into a long even slab as much as possible.
3. Bake for about 20 minutes. Remove from oven, allow it to cool for about 10 minutes, then slice into 2 inch wide biscuits. Turn each biscuit over on its side and bake for 10 minutes on each side.

For the caramel drizzle

1. While the biscuits are baking, melt 1 stick of unsalted butter over medium heat. Once melted, add 1 cup of brown sugar and cream and stir well. Allow it to boil for about 1 minute then remove from heat. Cool for about 15 minutes then stir in sifted powdered sugar.
2. In a heat proof bowl, melt the chocolate chips and stir in the oil. Stir well.
3. Once the biscotti have cooled, use a spoon to scoop up the caramel or chocolate and drizzle over the tops of the biscuits while they are still in the pan. Allow the caramel to harden and cookies to completely cool before storing. Store in an airtight container.

Notes

1. Try adding chopped walnuts or pecans into the batter for some delicious crunch.
2. These also make great gifts and are a wonderful seasonal treat easy to dress up with caramel, white chocolate, or chocolate drizzles and wrapped in cellophane!

By Noha ElSharkawy

Sugar & Garlic https://sugarandgarlic.com/

Green bean casserole is one of the best comfort foods out there. With the holidays around the corner, it is time to brush up on this delicious recipe and try making it from scratch as I do here. I use fresh, real mushrooms (sometimes that canned mushroom soup doesn’t really have mushrooms ya know…), usually fresh green beans (frozen works too in a pinch), and a few other easy to find grocery staples. The creamy mushroom soup is really what makes this casserole, so it is important to have a great soup full of flavor. The green beans are best when fresh, because they do not carry extra water from being canned or frozen, but the frozen option has worked well for me before. The flavors of these delicious vegetables are really amplified with the creamy soup and crunchy savory onions. 

No cans are involved here! I have eaten and cooked this classic casserole made with Campbell’s canned condensed soups and canned green beans, and it is good. However, as you may have noticed from my posts, I am avoiding use of any canned foods, preservatives, and unnecessarily long ingredient lists that cause a number of symptoms in our bodies. There is a lot of sodium and preservatives in the canned goods. Once you taste it fresh from scratch, with fresh mushrooms and green beans, you will never want to go back! Now, when I try the canned recipes, it just doesn’t do justice to what this recipe really is. This is also incredibly easy.

All you need is my easy recipe for cream of mushroom soup, some fresh or frozen green beans, and fried onions. I make the soup in advance, which you could do the day before and refrigerate, or days before and freeze. This really simplifies the process the day of. You can also fry the onions yourself (see how to do it in my kushary post),  or use classic crispy french fried onions from the store. These are SO good. They kind of taste like potato chips…I would try frying onions in an air fryer if I had one. I bet it would taste just like the store bought versions! I like the fried onions from Trader Joe’s because they are a little “healthier” and taste just as good, if not better, than home made. Use what you prefer!

Green Bean Casserole

2013-11-26 06:25:19

Serves 6

A Thanksgiving classic dish, this from scratch recipe oozes creamy delicious mushrooms and green beans topped with crispy crunchy fried onions!

Write a review

Save Recipe

Print

Prep Time

20 min

Cook Time

30 min

Total Time

50 min

Prep Time

20 min

Cook Time

30 min

Total Time

50 min

Ingredients

1. 1 recipe of my cream of mushroom soup (2 cups)
2. 2 c fresh or frozen french green beans (washed and trimmed)
3. 1 1/2 c fried onions

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour the washed and trimmed green beans into a casserole dish.
3. Pour the mushroom soup over the green beans and mix well. Spread with a spoon into an even layer.
4. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. After about 20 minutes, take the dish out and stir in half of the onions. This will thicken the casserole. Place back in the oven, uncovered.
5. Remove from oven and sprinkle with crispy onions over the top and serve warm.

Notes

1. You may also add shredded cheese over the top at the 20 minute mark, after stirring in the fried onions.

By Noha ElSharkawy

Sugar & Garlic https://sugarandgarlic.com/