Chicken beer stew 鶏のもも肉のビールシチュー

This is my wife's valiant effort to "save the day" while I was at work. I bought some chicken thighs the previous weekend but I ran out of time and could not cook them. I was afraid they would go bad but my wife came to the rescue. She had a day off during the subsequent week and she had this dish steaming hot ready to eat when I got home. What a pleasant surprise! She looked up chicken thigh recipes on the internet and found one using beer and bacon. She figured this could not go wrong and made this chicken beer stew.

It is a complete meal on its own but we served it over rice and topped with crumbled bacon. My contribution was to add florets of rapini and to make a semi-dark roux to finish the dish (this portion is not in the original recipe). My wife also made a number of alterations to the original recipe.

Ingredients:
4 slices of thick cut bacon
2 onions sliced
4 chicken thighs
1 (12-ounce) bottle beer (preferably brown ale)
3  potatoes peeled and cut into bite sized pieces
2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
4 sprigs fresh thyme
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Directions:
Cook the bacon until browned in a pan over medium high heat.
Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate.
Add the sliced onions and cook until translucent in the bacon drippings.
Add the chicken thighs and cover with the beer, making sure it is fully submerged. add the mustard, and potatoes.
Simmer until the chicken is cooked through and fork tender. Serve with the crumbled bacon as garnish

This was quite good. Although we were not sure the beer did much of anything. (My wife, not being a beer connoisseur, thought she had a very dark beer but it was actually a pale ale--she used Samuel Adams pale ale).  Probably a stronger dark beer would have had more impact. The original recipe called for skinless thighs which dredged in flour and then browned. Instead, I finished with medium dark roux (flour 2 tbs cooked in 2 tbs of melted butter until light brown and added liquid from the stew to make the roux and then put int back into the stew and mixed). This was a very good comfort food. My wife can make this dish for me again anytime.

Cinnamon bread シナモンパン

This is another one of my wife's baking. She is always on the look out for interesting bread recipes. Finally she found a block of time to make this one weekend. This is an interesting bread. It is a cross between a quick bread and a yeast bread containing both yeast and baking powder as leavening agents. The original recipe came from King Arthur flour web site.

I forgot to take a picture of the loaf when it came out of the oven.

Ingredients: (My wife doubled the recipe and left out suggested cinnamon chips and cinnamon sugar topping.)
6 cups All-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
4 Tsp yeast
2 Tsp. cinnamon, ground
2 Tsp. salt
2 Tsp. baking powder
2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup melted butter
2 large eggs

Instructions:
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, yeast, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, butter, and egg. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, beating until smooth. Let the batter rest at room temperature for 1 hour, covered. Towards the end of the resting period, preheat the oven to 350°F. Spoon the batter into 2 greased 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf pans.
Bake the bread for 35 to 40 minutes, until it tests done; a cake tester inserted into the center will come out clean.
Remove the bread from the oven, let it rest in the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer it from the pan to a rack to cool completely. Note: Don't slice the bread while it's hot! It'll slice much better when it's completely cool.

(Yield: 2 loaves)

I am not sure about the rationale for using yeast and baking powder but the dough was very soft and sticky and no kneading was required. It had the consistency of quick bread. It was let to rise for an hour (below).

Then, it was punched down and scooped  into the loaf pans like quick bread.

The resulting bread had an interestingly pleasant tender texture. It was similar to quick bread but was firmer with larger holes which I assume was due to the yeast. With this process not much gluten was developed. This bread was flavored with cinnamon and is a perfect breakfast bread. Toasting made it a bit on the dry side and microwaving worked better.

Figgy cranberry sauce Version 3 イチジク、クランベリーソース V3

Last time I made "Figgy cranberry sauce", I could not get fresh or frozen cranberries and used dried and sweetened "Craisin". The other day, we were at a near-by Whole foods and I found frozen cranberries and decided to make figgy cranberry sauce from the frozen cranberries. I have never used frozen cranberries before. This time, I followed the recipe more closely and used orange peel during the cooking. We tasted the one I made from "crasin" and the one I made from"frozen cranberries" as an informal taste test. The consistency and the taste between them is a bit different but both are quite good. The frozen cranberry version is a bit more tart but has a fresh taste.

Ingredients:
Frozen cranberries (10oz bag) (Do not thaw).
Dried figs, coarsely chopped (1 cup)
Sugar 1/2 cup
White wine 3/4 cup
Orange peel, 2 long strips without pith
Salt, a pinch
Orange flavored liquor (I used triple sec), 2 tbs

Directions:
1. Soak the figs in hot water for 20 minutes.
2. In a sauce pan, add the wine and sugar on medium flame. Once it starts to boil reduce the heat and mix to dissolve the sugar.
3.Add, the cranberries, drained figs, orange peel and cook for 10 -15 minutes stirring occasionally until the sauce thickens.
4. Cut the flame and add a pinch of salt and the orange liquor and mix (I also added a bit of fresh orange juice since I had an orange from which the peel was made).

Below is after 10 minutes. You can see the sauce thickened.

Although finding frozen cranberries is a bit difficult (our regular grocery store did not have it), using it to make the figgy cranberry sauce is almost identical to the one made with fresh cranberries. The one I made from dried and sweetened "Crasin" is not bad either with less tart taste and a bit firmer consistency.

Rapini and scrambled egg 菜の花と卵のからし醤油あえ

I have posted a similar item before. When spring comes, one of the items many Japanese associate with the season would be "nanohana"菜の花  or rapeseed flower which I discussed to some extent before. Around here, nanohana is not available so we have to turn to two possible substitutes; rapini or broccoli rabe and broccolini. Broccolini looks similar to nanohana but does not have its bitter taste. While rapini does not quite look like nanohana, it does have a similar bitterness. This time I prepared rapini in the style of nanohana and served it with scrambled eggs.

The contrast of green and yellow feels like spring to me. The rapini is dressed in mustard soy sauce and the scrambled eggs have a slightly sweet seasoning.

For this dish, I cut off only the blossom end and blanched it in salted water, then shocked it in ice water to fix the green color. This process also tames the bitterness (since a lot of people don't particularly like the taste if it is too strong). I then squeezed out the moisture.

The dressing is a mixture of prepared Japanese mustard (from the tube), sugar and soy sauce. After tasting, I diluted it with Japanese "dashi" broth but that is optional.

Scrambled eggs were seasoned with sugar and salt.

This combination is a good one. The rapini has a sharp  mustard taste and a bitterness muted by the addition of sugar which was also carried by the scrambled eggs.

Udon with spicy miso sauce 肉味噌うどん

This is a re-purposed spicy red miso sauce with pork (niku-miso with red miso and pork 肉味噌) I made a few days ago. Since I made it a bit too spicy (I am not sure if it was due to the Sriracha sauce or the jalapeno pepper), but it was a bit much for my wife. So we added yogurt like we often do for Indian curry which made it much milder. That led me to come up with this dish as a final "shime" 締め one evening. I made the sauce for the udon noodles from the spicy red miso sauce with pork and yogurt.

Although adding yogurt may be somewhat unusual for more traditional Japanese recipe of "Niki-miso udon 肉味噌うどん", it went well. I also added spinach which my wife prepared from fresh spinach for spinach soufflé (which we did not make because we ran out of time and energy and were too full to eat it anyway).

For a impromptu dish made from re-purposed ingredients, as leftover control, this was quite good.

I warmed up my spicy pork red-miso sauce, added yogurt (did not measure, plain non flavored) and mixed. When it was warmed up, I mixed in the cooked spinach.

We used dried thin udon noodles, Sanuki undon 讃岐うどん, cooked as per the package directions and rinsed in cold running water after it was cooked and drained.

The addition of yogurt made the sauce mild and creamy without adding much additional taste but a nice smooth texture. It easily clung to the noodles and was a perfect small ending dish for us.

Chicken and pork miso sauces 肉味噌2種類

Nikumiso 肉味噌 is a rather common Japanese condiment meaning "meat and miso". It is used to top simmered daikon or furofuki daikon 風呂吹き大根 or warn cubes of tofu. I had leftover barbecued pork and chicken and decided to make two different kinds of miku-miso; one was spicy with Jalapeno pepper (left) and the other with Yuzu ginger flavor.

I topped simmered daikon (cooked in water with a pinch of raw rice to 20 minutes and then simmered with water and a piece of kelp for another 30 minutes) with a side of broccolini (we can not get "nanohana" in the US).  This version was made with white miso and chicken and had a gentle Yuzu citrus and ginger flavor.

The second one is much more assertive with red miso and pork and spiced with Jalapeno pepper, garlic and Sriracha hot sauce.

Niku-miso is usually made of uncooked ground meat but I used cooked pork and chicken since this was leftover control.

Ingredients:

Niki-miso with white miso and chicken:
Barbecued chicken breast, finely chopped, 1/2 cup
White miso, 2 tbs
Sugar, 1tbs
Mirin, 1 tbs
Sake, 2 tbs
Grated ginger, 1/2 tsp
Sesame oil, 1 tsp
Yuzu skin, frozen, 1/4 tsp (or orange or lemon zest)

Niku-miso with red miso and pork:
Barbecued pork, finely chopped, 1/2 cup
Red miso, 2tbs
Sugar 2 tbs
Mirin 1 tbs
Sake 2 tbs
Garlic, 2 cloves, either pressed or finely chopped
Sesame oil, 1tsp
Jalapeno pepper, 1, seeded and veined, finely chopped
Sriracha hot sauce, to taste

Directions:

Both are made similarly. Combine all the ingredients (except for Yuzu skin in the chicken version) in a small sauce pan and mix and stir until the mixture develops the consistency of miso. Add sesame oil and mix. For the one with chicken, take the pan off the heat and the add  theYuzu skin.

The white miso one was very gentle with nice ginger Yuzu flavor. The red miso one was much stronger and I made this a bit too spicy (especially for my wife). She mixed in yogurt which calmed the spiciness down. Both sauces went well with simmered daikon.

Figgy Cranberry sauce イチジク、クランベリーソース

I usually make some type of cranberry sauce during the Holiday season, although we no longer cook turkey. My first encounter with cranberry sauce was the "canned and jelled" kind. Later I learned it is very easy to make cranberry sauce from fresh cranberries and it is much better than the canned stuff. Last year, I made "figgy cranbery sauce" from a recipe I saw in the Washington Post. I did not post this and we finished eating it several months ago. It was a pretty versatile  sauce, however, and went well with chicken or even pork. My wife asked me to make some more even though it was not the Holiday season. It may not be the Holiday season but it is also not the season for cranberries--none were to be had. My wife suggested I make a similar sauce using just dried figs and balsamic vinegar. But I thought it was essential to have cranberries in cranberry sauce and made this using dried mission figs and "Craisins", which are sweetened/flavored dried cranberries. I served the sauce with my "Matsukaze" chicken patties 鳥の松風焼き as an appetizer with a glass of red wine.

Despite using only dried fruit, the sauce came out pretty well and went perfectly with this chicken dish.

Ingredients:
Dried mission figs, coarsely chopped, about 1/2 cup (left below).
Craisins, about 1 cup (right below)
Japanese Yuzu citrus skin (frozen) about 1 tsp (or orange peel or zest)
Orange liquor (I used triple sec), 2 tbs
Sake (or white wine), 1/2 cup.

Directions:
Soak the figs and Craisins in hot but not boiling water (I used hot water from our InstaHot) and let them sit for 20-30 minutes. I drained the liquid reserving 1/4 cup.
In a sauce pan, I added sake and when it came to a boil added the drained figs and Craisins. I stirred and mashed the fruit. During this process I thought it may need more liquid and added the reserved soaking liquid. After 10 minutes or so, the sauce thickened. I tasted it and decided no sugar was needed (Craisins are rather sweet). Off the heat, I added the triple sec and Yuzu skin and mixed well.

This was a success! Without using any additional sugar, it was just right. The yuzu and triple sec added a nice burst of citrus flavor. Now I can make my figgy cranberry sauce any time of the year.