Chicken Salad with Tarragon

Inspiration for good food can be found anywhere, even Starbucks, where I had a delicious chicken salad sandwich recently. The key ingredients other than chicken? Cranberries and tarragon. French tarragon is a distinctive herb, with a slight anise or licorice aroma. We don’t use it that often; I grew some last year and don’t think we used it more than once or twice the whole season. But it does pair well with chicken. The dried cranberries add some sweetness to the chicken salad, and the lemon juice just enough acidity to brighten all the flavors.

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Chicken Salad with Tarragon Recipe

  • Prep time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 cups chopped, cooked chicken meat*
  • 1/4 cup dried cranberries, finely chopped
  • 1 stalk celery, finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup mayonnaise
  • 1-2 teaspoons dried tarragon (or 1-2 Tbsp fresh chopped tarragon)
  • Salt and pepper to taste

* Poach about 1 1/2 lbs of skinless chicken breasts and thighs, preferably bone-in (for flavor), in a quart of salted (1 teaspoon) water, for about 20 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove from water, let cool, remove bones, chop the meat into 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch cubes.

Method

Mix all of the ingredients together. Adjust seasoning. Serve with lettuce for a simple salad, in a tomato that has been cut open for a stuffed tomato, or with slices of bread for a chicken salad sandwich.

Grilled Romaine Lettuce

One of the great things about being a food blogger is that it compels you to be somewhat adventurous in your food. If you had told me a few years ago that I would not only be happily eating grilled romaine lettuce, but encouraging others to do the same, I would have thought you were nuts. Why in the world would anyone want to grill lettuce? Lettuce just isn’t part of the grilling food group people! You know, burgers, ribs, beer can chicken. Grilled lettuce? Why that’s just… just pretentious, that’s what. Well the joke’s on me, and anyone who loves salad and also loves grilled things, but hasn’t tried to put them together. Lettuce is a vegetable, or at least we eat it like one. And we do grill vegetables. And they are good. It stands to reason that the vegetable we call lettuce, if endowed with enough structure, which romaine has, would also be good grilled. And it is!

That said, as much as I like it, my mom likes it, and my friends like it, you may not. But I do encourage you to try it, especially if you have some romaine hearts around. When you’re done with the grilling, you can either serve them whole (one romaine heart per person), or slice them crosswise, and toss them in a bowl for a grilled salad.

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Grilled Romaine Lettuce Recipe

  • Prep time: 10 minutes
  • Cook time: 10 minutes

What are romaine hearts? Just the inner leaves of romaine lettuce that stay somewhat tightly together, not the outer leaves.

Ingredients

  • 3 to 4 romaine hearts
  • 3 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar (or cider vinegar)
  • 2 teaspoons chopped fresh herbs such as rosemary, thyme, oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried mixed herbs)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • Pinch freshly ground black pepper

Method

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1 Prep the romaine hearts—pull off any old leaves. Chop off the top 1 or 2 inches of the lettuce head, and shave off the browned part of the root end, leaving the root end intact so that the lettuce head stays together.

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2 Prepare your grill for high, direct heat. Paint the lettuce hearts all over with the vinaigrette. Prepare the vinaigrette. Put the oil, vinegar, herbs, salt and pepper in a small bowl and whisk with a fork to combine.

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3 Grill the romaine hearts until lightly browned on all sides, turning every minute or two until done.

Serve immediately. You can either serve the hearts whole, or chop them and toss them for a salad.

I have one last question in this week of room for debate. But I can’t decide if it’s “does oil belong in brownies?” or “WTF?”

As I’ve probably noted too often, I spend way too much time on what I call pol porn, blogs that obsess on all the things sane Americans tune out while going about their real lives of just getting by. But there is one upside to my obsession, and that’s that I’ve found the same people who obsess on things they might be able to change in the world are also seriously fascinated with food and cooking.

The latest evidence was over to Balloon Juice, where the proprietor was wondering why so many food teevee programs call for canola or vegetable oil when he uses only olive, peanut and sesame. I thought the answer was obvious: Cheap starts with c, which symbolizes pennies, not big bucks. But his followers weighed in overnight with all manner of answers, not many of which would survive scrutiny in the light of day. (Olive oil isn’t as healthy when heated? What’s Latin for WTF?)

But the weirdest bits pertained to baking. Do people really make brownies with canola oil? I always thought the equation was butter+chocolate+sugar, and I grew up in a household where baking chocolate was never seen nor tasted. We could only follow the old Betty Crocker formula of cocoa powder+margarine to make brownies possible.

Bottom line: Peanut oil is my frying/Keller-vinaigrette go-to oil. But not even in the interest of science would I use it in sweet baking. The first thing I get out of the freezer for Buzz Bars is a stick of butter.

Spicy Dill Sauerkraut, Stage 2My Spicy Dill Sauerkraut, with and without carrots.

Have you heard about the benefits of naturally fermented foods like yogurt, kombucha, sauerkraut and pickles, sourdough bread, and naturally cured meats? Ever wonder why they’re so good for you? Did you know you can make them at home? It’s fun, easy, cheaper than buying them ready made, and you can control the ingredients.

There is no necessity to get excessively anxious if you have experienced a bad credit scoring. And that will be a good alternative for you if you’ve experienced certain problems with credits in times past. This is because direct payday loans might still assist to determine your fiscal difficulties in spite of this obstacle.

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Note: Writing holiday posts has always been a challenge, because for a number of years, even before starting The Best Food Blog Ever, I have always stayed true to the same recipes.  And while tradition once again trumps innovation for this holiday season, when I started to consider how many new followers on Twitter and new readers I’ve gained over three years, it just made sense to repost my entry for roast turkey because, hey, it’s going to be new for someone out there.  First published here in 2008, and you’ll probably see it come around again at this time next year, and the year after that.

I promised to post the Thanksgiving recipes in time for Christmas, so here’s the final, and probably the most critical, one.  As I’ve already mentioned, this roast turkey recipe is a blend of different preparations that I’ve used over the past few years.  I’ve taken the best aspects of every preparation that I’ve used, and this is the result.

When I first decided on a recurring holiday turkey recipe, I started out by using a liberal application of herbed butter under the skin of the bird, which does a better job of flavoring the meat than basting or cavity aromatics would.  If you think about it, basting merely flavors the skin, and no matter how often you ladle pan drippings over the roast, those drippings do nothing but run down the outside of the bird back into the pan.  Psychologically, it’s satisfying, but technically basting accomplishes nothing since the skin acts as a barrier.  The same is true for stuffing things into the turkey’s cavity – no matter what you put in there, the meat will still be shielded from the aromatics by the bone structure of the bird, so the effect is minimized.

Using an under-the-skin application of herbed butter achieves two goals – it flavors the skin from beneath, and it also imparts a wonderful flavor to the meat below.  So, that’s the approach that I used for years, until I discovered brining, and now I use a brine-and-butter approach.

I’ve been putting this post off for so long. I just didn’t want to write about knefe (or knefeh) in Australia because I couldn’t possibly have done it justice. Let me start by explaining what knefe is. First of all, though it is sweet, knefe is not considered to be dessert; it’s a meal all on its own and it’s most commonly eaten for breakfast. A layer of ground kataifi pastry is kneaded with ghee, laid on top of a layer of akkawi cheese (de-salted) and is baked until the cheese goes super-stretchy and the pastry a deep, golden brown. The huge tray the knefe is baked in is called a sidr, and the sidr is displayed outside most patisseries: showing off your knefe creates a swift trade. When you order a knefe, a special sesame seed bun called kaakeh is stuffed till it explodes with cheese and pastry and is then doused with sugar syrup. Knefe needs to be eaten on the spot, hot and stretchy.

To witness peak demand on knefe, you only need to go clubbing in Beirut till about 4am and then on your way back, find yourself a Sea Sweet patisserie. There you will see lines of Lebanese boys and gals queueing up for a post alcohol feast. In reality, nothing is as good as a knefe after a big night out. You really must watch the video of the talented knefe guy in Saida doing his thing. You’ll get an idea how raucous things can get when people are queueing up for the good stuff. I took this video at Jardali patisserie in Saida, but I buy my knefe from Al Basyooni, which has a great knefe and is much more civilised. The knefe cost 2,500LL, which is less than $3 AUD.

If you want a knefe in Sydney, go to Sea Sweet in Parrammatta, or try the Turkish kunefeh at Efendy in Balmain, which is absolutely amazing.

I fell in love with Istanbul; its glorious sunshine, lush greenery and gob-smackingly beautiful, over-the-top ornate mosques. There’s a tangible pulse to the city – the bazars, the endless variety of food, the traffic, the thieving street vendors – magnetic and beautiful. Istanbulites, it seemed to me, knew how to live. Each night, Turkish bars, meyhanes, are full to the brim with raucous Turks eating kebabs that glisten with lamb tail fat and drinking whole bottles of the potent, aniseed-flavored grape alcohol raki like it was going out of fashion. The city is bright and clean while still projecting a deep sense of history and culture. European infrastructure with Middle-Eastern hospitality: an absolutely ideal combination. I just wanted to be there forever.

But Gaziantep was also on the books for me. Of course, Istanbul is only a small part of Turkey and if you’ve only visited Istanbul, Gaziantep will take you by surprise. Sure, the kebabs with lamb tail fat are still there, and the raki is there too, though harder to find, but Gaziantep feels like a completely different Turkey. Only a 1 hour drive away from the Syrian border (2 hours from Aleppo), the city is decidedly more Arab. Immediately when I arrive, the weather is warmer and the scenery is less green and noticeably drier. Gaziantep, too, is more Muslim than Istanbul – apparently, only 2 places in town serve alcohol, though I’m told one could book out the local bathhouse to be served raki and cig kofte (raw lamb kofte) in complete secrecy. The raki-serving restaurant we visit has security guards at the gate as well as metal detectors; drinking is obviously less of a sport here. I have liver kebabs for breakfast and follow them up with lamb testicle kebabs for safe measure. Later that same day, I wait for charcoal-grilled burmali kadayif to cool down and am amazed by how a dingy little shop run by a teenager could turn out a dish so stunning: smoky, sweet, crisp and filled with the best pistachios I had ever tasted.

Gaziantep’s pistachio are among the best in the world. In fact, the Turkish word for pistachios translates to “Gaziantep nuts”, just like the Arabic word for pistachios translates to “Aleppo nuts”. As the two cities are so close and share a common geography, their pistachios are equally proverbial. For another pistachio treat, we are told to try katmer, a very peculiar dessert in which the pastry is made in very much the same way roti canai is. Pliable dough is repeatedly and skillfully stretched over a marble surface until it is almost as thin as cling-film. It is oiled and filled with Gaziantep’s pistachios and kaymak, luscious clotted cream similar to the Middle-Eastern ashta, and then sprinkled with sugar. It’s so brilliantly magnificent one could easily forget Istanbul and stay in Gaziantep forever.

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