Warm Smoky Roasted Cauliflower Salad

Crunchy, smokey and healthy

It’s one month in to 2012 and we’re proud to say that we’re sticking to our goals. Beyond sticking to them, even. We one-up’ed ‘em this weekend.

The original goal is just to get our bums moving and spend some quality time in the running lane down Ocean Parkway, oh maybe three times a week. Throw in some crunches and push-ups for good measure. Nothing too crazy, of course.

Chop coarsely - this is a quick and easy dinner

Inspired by the overflowing bins and cartons at our beloved Ditmas Avenue fruit and vegetables stands, we’re making an extra effort to put the earth’s bounty to good use in our kitchen. We hope to replace a good portion of our refined starches with vegetables. Zucchini instead of pasta. Squash instead of russet potatoes. Cauliflower instead of rice.

We started with cauliflower a few Sunday nights ago. So far, so good. In the past, we’ve roasted the white florets with garam masala spices and served with chickpeas or yellow dhal (rice optional). We’ve tried the saffron seasoned version with nuts and raisins offered up at StoneSoup with great success. Sunday’s version, though, is my current favorite. We skipped heat of masala and used smoked Spanish paprika and sea salt on our veggies. The smoked pepper turned out to compliment both the slightly bitter cauliflower and the pork chops we served them with. A little fresh spinach and apple cider vinegar completed the meal.

Lo, and behold! Two servings of vegetables in a leisurely Sunday evening meal, new year’s plans none-the-worse. In truth, a little better.

Healthy Dinner!

Beer Butt Chicken: A Blogiversary Dinner

Roast chicken is a like a little Thanksgiving in September. Or May Or whenever.

One year in the same apartment is a pretty serious relationship by New York standards.

And one year with the same blog? True commitment.

We recommended that you use the injector to get beer into the bird, not the cook.

Our first apartment anniversary came and went with our summer vacations – mine to visit family in Zamboanga City, Raphe’s to visit friends in Seattle. The event passed without fanfare. The blogiversary of Kensington Kitchen, however, will not be treated so lightly.  Now, we share with you one of our very favorite recipes – a dish we cook for friends and family, to celebrate small triumphs or comfort small losses.

Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?

The chicken sits on this can of flat beer, onions, garlic and aromatic spices for two and a half hours

Cooking is what Raphe and I do best together – its been central to our relationship from the beginning  (his big line on our first date: “by the way, I make my own barbeque sauce.”  I was hooked.)   Writing is something that I feel compelled to do.  When I found my personal blog overrun by recipes and food musings – mostly inspired by the cooking Raphe and I were doing together – we started talking about offering our food to the world.  We settled into our cozy attic apartment, returned to the kitchen, adopted Snowball and somewhere along the way decided to start a blog. Thus, the Kensington Kitchen was born.

Getting the chicken to sit up on the damn can can be a challenge.

Which brings me to today’s recipe: roast chicken.  We’ve kept it to ourselves for so long, but it’s time to share.  We roast our chicken over a can of cheap American beer, but the result would be equally at home in any number of international cuisines.  My Filipino family shared lechon manok with rice and lechon sauce (a sweet gravy made from chicken or pork livers) more than once in the time I visited. A European family might serve their chicken with roast potatoes or ratatouille.  South Asian cuisine generally recommends cut up chicken rather than whole for marinating and roasting.   Raphe and I  usually eat ours southern American-style, with onion beer rice and gravy, spinach, green beans or sweet potatoes on the side.  In every version of roast chicken the general idea remains the same: rub down a chicken with oils, flavoring liquids and spices and cook it in dry low heat for a few hours.  The process yields crispy, spiced skin and juicy meat for immediate consumption and a carcass for stock afterwards.

Everybody wins.

More meat in the Kensington Kitchen

• Hamonada: Braised Pineapple Pork
• Fil-Am Hamonada Sliders
• Cassoulet

Prawn Adobo a la Zamboanga: Ode to the “Dirty Kitchen”

Prawn adobo and sinigang over jasmine rice

Sometimes, I’m truly taken aback by how spoiled we Americans are when it comes to our homes.  I’m specifically thinking about our kitchens here.  My kitchen is small by American standards (although large by NYC standards) – four burner gas stove with oven, full-sized refrigerator, large sink and just enough space for a table and chairs.  Almost all Americans have a kitchen with a 4-burner stove and an oven. Some of us have six burners and two ovens.  We’re hardly accustomed to eating without electricity or municipal gas lines for hours or even days.

Ginormous prawns fresh from the market

We had a bit of a scare this past weekend, with hurricane/ tropical storm Irene heading towards New York.  The Kensington Kitchen was not included in any of the evacuation zones, but we decided to high-tail it up to Beacon, NY (70+ north of the city) to weather the storm.  Even in Beacon, we prepped for the storm with plenty of water and food, flashlights and candles.

Garlic and shallot smell wonderful while sautéing, but not so wonderful a few hours later - one benefit of the "Dirty Kitchen" set-up

All the while, I couldn’t help but compare our frantic prep work with the laid-back attitudes towards “brown outs” displayed by my Philippine family.

Where the browner half of my family resides *no one* has an oven or four burner electric or natural gas stove. Instead, one or two burner propane stoves are used in an outdoor cooking area or “dirty kitchen.”  Electrical outages are commonplace. I saw two in the time I was there – one lasting almost three days. Thanks to the brilliance of the “dirty kitchen” set-up, though, we were still able to cook.

Adding the liquid ingredients after the prawns start to cook

In honor of hurricane Irene and those on the Eastern Seaboard who may be limited a propane camping stove this week, I’m posting a Filipino recipe that is intended for such a minimalist  cooking set-up – adobo.

The adobo sauce reduces to a thick glaze over the prawns

Adobo is the national dish of the Philippines. Everyone’s mama makes it differently and everyone’s mama is right. It’s tangy and salty – perfect comfort food for a night hunkering down for a hurricane or typhoon.  It can be made completely from pantry items – garlic, onions, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar – and any meat you might have on-hand.   Best of all, because it requires only a single burner and a short cooking time, it can be made in the middle of a power outage.

Make a pot while you wait out the outages Irene left behind and contemplate the advantages of a  ”Dirty Kitchen.”

Sinigang, heavy on the ginger

This is a submission to the Kulinarya Cooking Club July 2011 challenge. The theme, “Sinigang” was chosen by Trissa of Trissalicious and Trisha of Sugarlace. For more information, visit the Kulinarya Cooking Club blog.

 

By the time this post posts I’ll be on my way to Zamboanga City, Philippines, for some family time.  It seems fitting, then, to begin blogging again with a Kulinarya Cooking Club challenge.   Especially with such a scrumptios theme.

 

A bowl of yummy on a rainy Friday evening

For a while there, soup was just not going to happen in the Kensington Kitchen.  No way.  No how.

When I woke up to a legitimately chilly breeze and grey overcast sky on Friday morning, though, my thoughts drifted towards this month’s Kulinarya challenge: sinigang.

Bok choy stalks are almost like celery in taste and texture - and they smell awesome while sautéing

Sinigang is yet another of those foods I neglected to learn the name of when I was a kid.  I ate it happily and  referred to it vaguely as “that soup with bok choy.”  The association between the two things – bok choy and soup – is strong.  The first time I saw bok choy at a farmers’ market in New Mexico I bought a whole pound for soup – sinigang, as it turns out.

That was the first and last time I made sinigang in the last eight years.

Fish chopped into bite-size pieces.

This week, I called my mom for a refresher course.  We went through the list of ingredients: pork or fish (essential), bok choy (essential), tomatoes (optional), ginger (essential), tamarind (optional), green onions or scallions (essential).

One of my favorite things about “bok choy soup” is that it’s a delicious meal filled with veggies that could easily fit into even a Food Stamps budget (I wish I’d remembered to make it when I was on the government dole).  I made a special run to the Hong Kong Supermarket in Chinatown on the way home from work on Friday, spent $8 and got enough food to make sinigang for 10 people.

Bringing the broth and firm veggies to a boil before adding fish always them to soften slighty

I went with mom’s deluxe version – fish, bok choy, tomatoes, ginger, green onions, tamarind, sea salt – and added some dried mushrooms and soy sauce to round out the broth.  The ginger is what makes the dish sing.  For me it hit home on a rainy night – I inhaled two bowls with rice.  Raphe proclaimed the broth “too fishy” and stopped after one.

Oh, well.  More for me.

Colorful and healthy with a final dollop of tamarind paste

Corned Beef and Cabbage Hash

Corned Beef and Cabbage Hash

Sometimes, I put things away in the refrigerator or freezer and forget about them. If I’m lucky I find them just before they go bad. Like the potatoes that were lounging in the bottom drawer of my “crisper” – not so crisp were they. Clearly, they called for quick action and lots of attention with a paring knife.

Start cooking the potatoes before adding the other ingredients to prevent the vegetables from burning.

So, we cubed them up and fried them with onions, leftover corned beef and cabbage. We topped the hash with a fried egg and homemade ketchup. Tossed a spinach salad on the side and – Bam! – brunch in about 20 minutes.