Moot Thoughts & Musings

My mother-in-law got me a subscription to Cook's Illustrated for Christmas, and I'm loving it. It's great because it doesn't try to outdo itself with snazziness in every issue but tries to perfect the basics in order to get to the snazzy--down to techniques, equipment, and ingredients. For example, they'll offer a recipe for baked chicken with balsamic vinegar, then they'll try 10 different balsamic vinegars giving prices, results, and their favorite after testing. (I was pleased to note that the Whole Foods brand of balsamic vinegar that I use came out on top, beating its much more expensive contenders, and I already had the idea of cooking chicken in balsamic vinegar--it's always tendery and tasty.)

My new favorite recipe from this past year's issues is for an Indian dish: "Chicken Biryani". I've altered it some just for the sake of time and the way I particularly use my ingredients for maximum "stretch" value.

• First cook the rice, throwing in a few cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, ginger piece, whole cloves, and cumin seeds in the water. You can pick out the big chunks in the ends. I personally like leaving in the cardamom and cumin seeds and mixing them in with the rice, for extra bursts of flavor on my plate.
• Sautee onions, minced garlic, chopped fresh mint and cilantro, and fresh jalapeno or jalapeno chiles. (I use the former, because they are growing in my garden, but I think the recipe actually calls for the latter.)
• If you're going to cook whole chicken pieces (wh. should be salted on either side before cooking), set this onion mixture aside; if you're like me and scimp on meat, I mix into the onion mixtures some chicken bits or a chopped up chicken breast and lightly salt as it sautees. To really scimp with the meat, also add thinly sliced cauliflower, wh. is actually really yummy even if you're not being frugal.
• When everything is cooked all the way through. Add the onion mixture back with the meat (if you separated in the first place). And serve the meat mixture over the rice.
• Top with a yogurt garnish, made up of plain yogurt, chopped fresh mint, and some minced garlic all mixed together.

This is the fastest, cheapest incarnation of this recipe that I've come up with, and it's SOOO yummy and flavorful. The yogurt really makes come alive.

If you don't like monochromatic food, try using red peppers.