Butter Chicken

People who know me know that I love Indian food.  Curry is one of my favorite spices to cook with and I have a ton of recipes available on Clearly Delicious that take advantage of said spice (see Curry in a Hurry and Curry Rice).

When my friend Lydia first introduced me to a recipe in the Curry family called "Butter Chicken" or "Murg Makhani," I knew that it had to be clearly delicious--consisting of cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns, cumin, and much much more, the sauce and chicken combination promised a full bodied flavor that was melt-in-your mouth authentic in the Indian cuisine family.

Although the name of this recipe "Butter Chicken" suggests a sauce that is primarily butter based, the name is indeed a misnomer--instead of being butter based, the sauce consists of greek yogurt and tomato sauce with melted butter added at the end (2 tablespoons).  This recipe is significantly healthier than one might think.  Regardless of its name, the sauce is a creamy, flavorful, mildly spicy sauce-based dish served over white or brown rice.

Butter Chicken
Lydia found this recipe on the About.com website (recipe can be found here).  The recipe is written by Petrina Verma Sarkar, one of the About.com Indian food writers.  Follow the below recipe for an authentic, tasty Indian entree, but if you can't find a couple of the exact spices (i.e., kasuri methi), don't worry too much--the other spices easily balance out one or two missing spices.

Ingredients:
* 1 kg boneless chicken skin remove
* Juice of 1 lime
* Salt to taste
* 1 tsp red chilli powder (adjust to suit your taste)
* 6 cloves
* 8-10 peppercorns
* 1 inch stick of cinnamon
* 2 bay leaves
* 8-10 almonds
* Seeds from 3-4 pods of cardamom
* 1 cup fresh yoghurt (must not be sour)
* 3 tbsps vegetable/canola/sunflower cooking oil
* 2 onions chopped
* 2 tsps garlic paste
* 1 tsp ginger paste
* 2 tsps coriander powder
* 1 tsp cumin powder
* 1/4 tsp turmeric powder
* 1 can (400g or 14 oz) of tomato paste
* 1/2 litre chicken stock
* 2 tbsps kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves)
* 3 tbsps unmelted, soft butter
* Salt to taste
* Coriander leaves to garnish


Other Accompanying Dish:
* Prepare 6-7 servings white, or brown rice.  (Note: I use a handy-dandy, rice cooker.  I'll never have to wait for water to boil again!)


1.) Begin by marinating the chicken: add the juice of one lime and 1 tsp chili powder in a bowl with the chicken.  Mix and cover the chicken thoroughly; wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.

2.) Roast cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, bay leaves, and almonds till lightly dark.  Cool and add cardamom seeds.  Grind until powder in a coffee grinder.

3.) Mix yogurt with the above ground spice powder with cumin, coriander, and turmeric.  Add to chicken mixture.  Mix thoroughly and allow to refrigerate for another hour.

4.) When chicken mixture has marinaded for an hour, sauté onions in a saucepan with a tablespoon of olive oil (or butter) until golden brown and translucent.  Add garlic paste and ginger. Sauté for one more minute.

5.) Add chicken and cook with garlic/ginger/onion mixture.  Chicken should be browned, but not cooked completely (you'll want to finish cooking the chicken in the sauce with the next step).

6.) Once chicken is thoroughly cooked, add tomato paste, chicken stock, and remaining yogurt sauce mixture.  Cook till chicken is tender and sauce has reduced by one half.

7.) Melt butter in separate saucepan and pour over chicken and sauce mixture.

8.) Mix to integrate and pour sauce mixture in a deep serving pan.  Serve with white or brown rice.  Makes 5-6 servings.  Enjoy!

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Edamame with Thyme

Preparing an appetizer doesn't need to be a huge process.  Chances are good that you've spent plenty of time either grocery shopping, prepping the food, cooking it, and even thinking about a big meal.  Further, although fancy appetizers and tappas are great, why prepare an appetizer that overshadows your main course? Worse, why prepare an appetizer that's so heavy (either calorically, or in composition) that you find your main course seemingly unimportant?


The solution? Edamame.  Edamame is a baby soy bean found more and more commonly on menus and restaurants these days.  Asian restaurants famously serve them in their pods as a light appetizer before eating sushi, but many times, you can find them sans pods in the freezer section of Whole Foods, or other grocery produce sections.


Prepare this dish as a light appetizer to any number of Asian or Indian cuisine meals.  Lightly toss with salt, pepper, and fresh thyme, and you'll have an appetizer that is both healthy and clearly delicious!


Edamame with Thyme
This recipe comes from nowhere in particular, but the result of cooking tons of edamame for the Curry Rice Recipe (available here).  The great thing about this dish is that you can adjust the seasonings to whatever you have available (i.e., rosemary instead of thyme, or mint instead of thyme).  Adjust seasonings to your personal preference.


Ingredients:
* 1 cup cooked edamame
* sprigs of fresh thyme, to taste
* salt and pepper, to taste


1.) Bring a small pot of water to a boil; add 1 cup edamame.


2.) Boil at medium-high heat for 5-8 minutes, or until edamame is fully cooked (soft, but still retaining a bit of crunch).


3.) Pour out edamame and water into a large strainer.   Allow to cool for a few minutes.

4.) Transfer to bowl and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and fresh thyme.  Toss to combine and serve.

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Cranberry Nut Bread with Citrus

There are a handful of sweetbreads that I regularly make for my friends--banana bread, pumpkin spice bread, and this one, cranberry nut bread.  When scrolling through Elise Bauer's "Bakery" section on Simply Recipes, I was thrilled to see this variation--a cranberry nut bread that calls for citrus and juice.  The first time I saw this recipe, I was lying in bed, thinking about what I wanted to bake that morning (yes, baking urges often come first thing in the morning) and I thought, "My...with a little bit of spice and vanilla extract, that would be clearly delicious!" Below is the resulting hybrid recipe from Simply Recipes & Clearly Delicious.  See Elise's for a basic recipe, and mine for a spice and apple sauce infused item that really is clearly delicious.



Cranberry Nut Bread with Citrus
The original of this recipe comes from Elise Bauer over at Simply Recipes and you can find it here.  However, the below recipe calls for multiple changes--instead of using orange juice (which works FANTASTICALLY), I use a combination of apple sauce and apple juice, whole wheat flour instead of all purpose, and a handful of spices to give it a little oomph.

Ingredients
* 2 cups whole wheat flour
* 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 cup granulated sugar
* 1 tablespoon cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1 teaspoon almond extract
* 1 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1 teaspoon orange peel, freshly grated, or preserved
* 1 cup chopped cranberries
* 3/4 cup chopped walnuts, or pecans
* 1/2 cup apple sauce
* 1/4 cup apple juice
* 4 tablespoons butter, melted
* 1 egg, beaten

1.) Preheat oven at 350F.  Begin by combining dry ingredients: flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and mix to integrate.  Add chopped cranberries and nuts and stir to coat thoroughly with the flour mixture.  Set aside. 
2.) Hookup your Kitchenaid mixer (or other electronic mixture) and add the following ingredients into the metal basin: melted butter, beaten egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange peel, sugar, apple sauce, apple juice, and extracts.  Mix on low until fully integrated.
3.) Add dry mixture to wet mixture SLOWLY. Remember Alton Brown's anthem: "Speed Kills" both in baking and other arenas (as I have been told).
4.) Coat a bunt pan with butter and flour and pour batter into pan.  Smooth out thoroughly (as this version yields a rather thick batter) and bake for 30-45 minutes.
5.) Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes.  Enjoy!


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Pumpkin Spice Bread

I first found this recipe last year when, in the hopes of satiating my friend John Browning's desires for something delicious and pumpkiny, I turned to the Elise Bauer blog, Simply Recipes.

Since making this bread this time last year, I have probably baked this recipe 12-20 times. This number is not an inflation: so many people love this bread that I am often requested to make it again, again, and again, and asked for the recipe.

However, I cannot by any means take any credit for this recipe. In its current form, it's damn near perfect: the recipe calls for a olive oil instead of butter (a minor ingredient that leads to the moistest, tastiest pumpkin spice bread you've ever had), and also calls for a decent handful of spices (i.e., nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, etc.) that give you that perfect Fall feel. Furthermore, the recipe asks that you add a bit of water to add to the recipe's moistness. Trust me, if sweet, melt-in-your-mouth pumpkiny flavour is what you're looking for, this bread is exactly that concoction.

Here is the recipe courtesy of Simply Recipes. You can find the official recipe here.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (210g) flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup (200 g) sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (1/4 L) pumpkin purée*
1/2 cup (1 dL) olive oil
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup (1 dL) chopped walnuts

* To make pumpkin purée, cut a pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds and stringy stuff, lie face down on a foil or Silpat lined baking sheet. Bake at 350°F until soft, about 45 min to an hour. Cool, scoop out the flesh. Freeze whatever you don't use for future use. Or, if you are working with pumpkin pieces, roast or boil them until tender, then remove and discard the skin.

Method

1 Preheat oven to 350°F. Flour, salt, sugar, and baking soda should be sifted together.

2 Mix the pumpkin, oil, eggs, 1/4 cup of water, and spices together, then combine with the dry ingredients, but do not mix too thoroughly. Stir in the nuts.

3 Pour into a well-buttered 9x5x3 inch loaf pan. Bake 50-60 minutes until a thin skewer poked in the very center of the loaf comes out clean. Turn out of the pan and let cool on a rack.

Makes one loaf. Can easily double the recipe.