Thanksgiving in January Continues: Turkey Pumpkin Chili

What do you do with leftover roast turkey and leftover roasted pumpkin?  Well, other than turkey-pumpkin surprise, you could try this recipe, which I pulled from the Whole Foods website.  I thought the flavor was great, and while it looks very similar to a generic tomato-based chili, it's definitely a lot more complex, and probably more healthy to boot.  There's a mild hint of sweetness from the pumpkin, and a nice earthy complexity from the use of turkey instead of ground beef.  I would make this again if presented with the same leftover ingredients, but I wouldn't go out of my way to roast a pumpkin for this dish, for what it's worth.

Turkey Pumpkin Chili
Whole Foods

Serves 6

• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion, chopped, chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped
• 2 jalapeños, seeded and finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 lb ground white or dark meat turkey
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, with their liquid
• 1 can (15 oz) pumpkin purée
• 1 cup water
• 1 tbsp chile powder*
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Ground black pepper, to taste
• 1 can (15 oz) kidney beans, rinsed and drained

*First, note that one of the ingredients is chile powder - this means chile peppers, and nothing else.  Otherwise, you're just getting a stale mixture of the other spices that are already in the ingredient list.  So this means that the best thing you can do is make your own, which is what I do.  Grab some dried chile peppers from your local latin market or the latin section of a regular megamart.  I recommend ancho and guajillo.  Tear off the stems, remove the seeds, and warm in a dry skillet over high heat.  Now tear up and place in a spice grinder to powder the chile peppers, straining through a mesh screen to catch unground pieces.  Store this in an airtight container for up a few months.  For me, 7 chile peppers got me about 5 tbsp of chile powder.

Making my own chile powder - it's not too hard, it's fresh, and you only have to do it once in a while

Heat oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add onion, bell pepper, jalapeños and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add turkey and cook until browned. Add tomatoes, pumpkin, water, powdered chiles, cumin, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low and add beans. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes more. Ladle chili into bowls and serve.

I used cooked leftover turkey, and skipped the browning step.  Note the fresh roasted pumpkin instead of canned - makes a big difference

If using leftovers, add the meat, saute for a few minutes, then continue with the recipe

No, it's not baby food.  It's home roasted pumpkin.

Spicy German Mustard

This mustard accompanies my soft pretzel recipe, both of which were made this past week for an Oktoberfest party.  I was amazed with how easy this process was - soak the mustard overnight in a few spices and vinegar, then blend.  Good lord, why have I been buying mustard at the store?  I know one reason - I hadn't felt like chasing down two different colors of mustard seeds until I decided that I had to try this, at least once.  And now mustard seeds will become a staple in my pantry, because I want to be able to make this at all times.

I thought this mustard was tasty - a bit tangy, slightly spicy, just a hint of sweetness.  I was expecting a darker, sweeter mustard, so I might tinker with this a bit to adjust the flavors to what I was hoping for.  But this was delicious in its own right, so I'm excited to pass this along to everyone with the pretzel recipe.

Spicy German Mustard

By Diana Rattray, About.com

Makes about 1 1/2 -2 cups

• 1/4 cup yellow mustard seed
• 2 Tbsp. black or brown mustard seed, heaping
• 1/4 cup dry mustard powder
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
• 1 small onion chopped
• 2 Tbsp. firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 garlic gloves, minced or pressed
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground allspice
• 1/4 tsp. dried tarragon leaves
• 1/8 tsp. turmeric

In a small bowl, combine mustard seed and dry mustard. In a 1- to 2-quart stainless steel or nonreactive saucepan, combine remaining ingredients. Simmer, uncovered, on medium heat until reduced by half, 10-15 minutes. Try to be patient and cool the mixture as much as possible before pouring over the mustard mixture; it turns out that both heat and acid will dull the pungent heat developed by mustard seeds, but my guess is that heat will do it faster, while also killing a lot of the flavor.  From About.com:

"It is the chemical reaction between two compounds, myrosin and sinigrin, that combines to turn up the heat when the cells of the seeds are broken and mixed with cold water. "

So my suspicion is that the use of cold vinegar will allow for a slow reaction between these compounds for a while, but eventually it gets in balance, and can be kept refrigerated until the reaction peters out, yielding a stable final product.  If you want to experiment with this (and you can bet I do), try soaking two small quantities in water and vingear, pureeing both and tasting the difference.  I also plan to try experimenting with warm vs cool vinegar liquid poured over the seeds, as well as the total soaking time, to see if these things make a difference.

Anyway, let mixture stand, covered, at room temperature for 24 hours, adding additional vinegar if necessary in order to maintain enough liquid to cover seeds.  Process the seeds and mixture in a blender or food processor until pureed to the texture you like, which can take at least 3 or 4 minutes.  If it gets too thick after a few days, stir in additional vinegar.  Scrape mustard into clean, dry jars; cover tightly and age at least 3 days in the refrigerator before using.

Mustard, in 3 easy steps: 1: Mix up the vinegar with spices

2: Pour over the mustard seeds, and let sit for a few hours (up to 24).

3: Puree.

Wild Mushroom, Barley, and Spicy Sausage Stew

After a bit of a pause, I am back to start posting again.  Wanted to start with a real winner - one of those that everyone who has tried it has had rave reviews on.  A soup that caters to the gluten-free without sacrificing anything.  It's spicy, rich, filling, somewhat simple, and just plain delicious.

I adapted the recipe from Cooking Light: Soups, a book I highly recommend that is a collection of their most popular soup recipes.  Everything in there is golden.  The main changes are the mushroom type and the grain, for which I present an alternative (brown rice) for dietary restrictions.  Barley is slightly preferred for a bit more bite, but only slightly.  Some pictures are for the barley version, and some for the brown rice, but only because they follow almost an identical cooking process, and I have made this multiple times with progressively better photography skills.

A forgiving recipe packed with flavor, great for a cold night

Wild Mushroom, Barley, and Spicy Sausage Stew
adapted slightly from Cooking Light

• 2 tbsp olive oil 
• 2 cups thinly sliced onion
• 8 ounces spicy Italian sausage (turkey or pork)
• 1 cup chopped celery, about 2 stalks
• 1 cup sliced carrot
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 cups dried wild mushrooms, or 5 cups fresh
• 1 1/2 cups chopped portobello mushroom
• 3/4 cup uncooked brown rice, or 1/2 cup uncooked pearl barley
• 42 ounces low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons brandy
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh parsley

Quite a few ingredients to prep, but the cooking is completely linear and almost idiot proof.

Prep the ingredients.  If using dried mushrooms, reconstitute in boiling water for up to 20 minutes.  Drain, and chop into coarse bits.  Slice onions thinly, remove sausage from casings.

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat.  Add onion, and cook for 5 minutes or until slightly soft.  Add sausage to the pan, cooking 8 minutes or until sausage is browned and stirring to crumble.  Break up with the edge of a spoon, but don't break up too finely or you'll destroy some of the body from large pieces of cooked sausage.  Add celery, carrot, garlic, and bay leaf; cook 10 minutes or until onions are golden brown, stirring frequently.  Stir in the mushrooms and cook 10 minutes or until mushrooms release moisture.

Make sure to brown the sausage, but you have a healthy error margin on this recipe.  Just keep cooking until things start to develop caramel flavors, then add broth and cook for an hour.

Once all vegetables and fungi are incorporated, stir in the barley or brown rice, chicken broth, brandy, salt, and pepper.  Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 hour or until barley is tender, or 40 minutes for the brown rice version.

Discard the bay leaf.  Sprinkle with chopped parsley, and serve immediately with crusty bread and a salad.

Chipotle Chicken Soup with Lime Crema

You may have heard of tortilla soup, which is a strange name for what is often either a cheese-based cream of chicken soup or a brothy minestrone with chicken.  What makes it 'tortilla' soup is the presence of some tortillas shoved in there against their will, either fried or dissolved right in.  While this can be quite delicious, if you focus just on the soup itself, and not on the tortilla part, you can go one step further.

My family this recipe in some magazine years ago, but I have since tweaked it to enhance the flavor some.  It relies on chipotle chiles, which have become amazingly popular recently.  Chipotles are nothing more than jalapeno peppers that have been smoked, and they are either found dried, or canned in a spicy sauce seasoned with adobo, a latin seasoning.  But since adobo just means 'seasoning', I can't quite tell you what's in it, other than that it's good.

Save yourself some time on this one and buy a store-bought chicken.  But if you happen to have roasted your own, and you happen to have made a stock from the bones of that chicken afterwards, I'm not going to stop you from using them to make quite possibly the best combination of those things that you could get in your mouth without committing some kind of crime.

I got a bit experimental and made a lime crema this time, figuring it would balance out the soup.  As peppers are alkaline, meaning that they basic in terms of their pH level, they can be neutralized by acidic things, as well as fatty things.  This is because the capsaicin found in peppers is fat-soluble.  So, if your head didn't just explode there, the moral is that if you mix dairy and an acid, you have a powerful chile-fighting condiment that might not taste half bad either.

Chipotle Chicken Soup with Lime Crema

• 1 chipotle from can of chipotles in adobo
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 chopped red bell pepper
• 3 chopped green onions, greens and whites separated
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp freshly ground cumin
• 1 tsp powdered chiles
• 2 cooked chicken breasts or meat from a cooked chicken, about 3 cups, cut or shredded into small pieces
• 28 oz low-sodium chicken broth, or homemade
• 14-16 oz can chopped tomatoes with green chiles, such as Del Monte or Rotel
• 12 ounces frozen or fresh corn kernels
• 2 tbsp cilantro leaves
• 1/2 avocado, slices

Nothing too crazy in this, but a bit of chopping before you can start

Try to cut things up as evenly as possible to assist in even cooking.  Go for corn kernel-sized bits of pepper.

Finely mince the chipotle pepper, as well as the other vegetables.  In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium-high heat.  Add bell pepper, the white parts of the green onions, the garlic, the cumin, and the powdered chiles.  Saute for 4 minutes until soft but not browning, stirring frequently.

Next, deglaze with the chicken broth.  Stir in the chipotle chile, chicken, tomatoes, and corn.  Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until ready to serve.

To plate, heat bowls and then ladle in soup.  Garnish with lime crema (recipe follows), cilantro leaves, and the tops of the green onions.  Arrange avocado slices on top and serve.

Lime Crema

• 2 tbsp sour cream
• 1 lime
• 1/2 tbsp cilantro leaves
• 1/4 tsp salt

In a small bowl, mix sour cream, zest from the lime, and the juice of half the lime.  If desired, finely mince the cilantro and add to the crema.  Allow flavors to combine in the fridge for 30 minutes if time permits.

Pretty simple, and pairs up well with the spicy soup.

Thai Green Papaya Salad (Som Tam)

If you've never tried it, papaya salad is a refreshing (but spicy) first course served in Thailand.  It's got something for everyone's food allergy, too - peanuts, shrimp, and cilantro.  So be careful who you serve this to.  And don't worry if you can't find shrimp paste, since I didn't feel that it added much to the dish, plus it smells... strange.

The recipe provides a fun exercise in taste testing, wherein you get to adjust at the end for sweetness, saltiness, and tartness using three different ingredients.  So even if you abandoned your dreams of culinary school, you can still practice working out each group of your taste buds and feel like a chef for a fleeting moment.

And if you need even MORE reasons to make this, well, let me tell you about papaya.  Did you know that it is a digestive aid?  That it's high in vitamins B and C, dietary fiber, and other minerals?  That it's being studied as a suppressor of liver cancer, and as a contraceptive?  That it has antifungal properties, and its leaves are used to treat malaria?  Or my favorite bizarre 'fact':

"Harrison Ford was treated for a ruptured disc incurred during filming of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by papain (made from papaya) injections."  -Wikipedia, citing the book Harrison Ford: The Films

This recipe was taken practically verbatim from About.com's Thai food page, which is a really good source of information if you're looking to branch out.

Papaya salad - a good way to wake up your taste buds

Thai Green Papaya Salad (Som Tam)
by Darlene Schmidt

• 1/2 tsp. shrimp paste (if vegetarian, substitute 1/2 Tbsp. Thai golden mountain sauce OR 1/2 Tbsp. soy sauce)
• 2 Tbsp. good-tasting oil, such as olive
• 2 Tbsp. fish sauce OR 2+1/2 Tbsp. soy sauce for vegetarians
• 3 Tbsp. lime juice
• 1/2 to 1 Tbsp. liquid honey, to taste
• 1 small green papaya, OR 1/2 large (your papaya should be very firm, the flesh white to light orange in color)
• 1/2 cup roasted peanuts, or cashews
• 1-2 cups bean sprouts
• 1 to 2 tomatoes, cut into long thin strips, or 1/2 pound cherry tomatoes
• 1 red chili, minced (seeds removed if you prefer a milder salad)
• 3 spring onions, sliced into long matchstick-like pieces
• 1/2 cup fresh basil, roughly chopped if leaves are large
• handful of fresh cilantro

This is what papaya looks like.  I believe the seeds are black when it's ripe

Most of the remaining ingredients.  The shrimp paste is particularly scary

I used a couple of cherry tomato varieties rather than large tomatoes

Prepare the dressing by mixing together the first five ingredients together in a cup. Make sure shrimp paste (if using) and honey dissolve fully.  Set aside.

Peel the green papaya, then slice it in half and remove all the seeds.  Using the largest grater you have, grate the papaya.  If you have a mandoline, things will be a lot more consistent and will go a lot faster, plus you get the opportunity to get stitches.  Place in a large bowl.

Papaya, after a run through the mandoline.  Note the absence of fingertips from the mandoline blade

Shred the green onions to the same shape as the papaya

Add the sliced tomato, spring onion, chili, bean sprouts, and most of the basil.  Add the dressing, tossing to combine.  Add only as much dressing as you think will be necessary - this makes a bit more than I thought should have been in there, and as a result it became too watery by the end.

Add the peanuts / cashews (I prefer to chop, but you can leave them whole).  Toss again, and taste.  If not sweet enough, add a little more honey.  If not salty enough, add a little more fish sauce.  If too sweet or salty, add more lime juice.  If you prefer it spicier, add more fresh-cut chili or dried crushed chili.

To serve, scoop the salad into individual bowls or onto a serving platter.  Sprinkle with remaining basil leaves plus fresh coriander, and serve immediately.

Chicken Tikka Masala

I'll be the first to admit that I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to Indian food.  But I've made one dish so far that's consistently good, and also fairly forgiving if you screw it up.  Chicken tikka masala, one of the more common dishes on Indian restaurant menus, is surprisingly easy to make, if you look past a possibly intimidating list of new ingredients.  But go to your nearest ethnic food store and you should have no problem finding all of these things.  And to those Indian people who cringe by my saying 'garam masala' because it's a spice blend that varies heavily from region to region (even from shop to shop) in India, I will respond by saying that I am not enlightened enough to appreciate the differences, and bow to you all as the kings and queens of the spice world.  But I do know about at least a few of the spices: I used a sweet paprika with a mild level of heat (not smoked), and I recommend getting whole seeds of cumin and coriander, then lightly toasting and grinding them yourself.  This will bring out a lot more flavor.

If you've got some kind of vacuum marinator, you can cut the prep time down significantly.  Again, this is a fairly forgiving dish.  Don't have long to marinate?  Just thread the meat onto skewers and grill after 30 minutes in the chill chest.  Chicken came out tough?  Just simmer it a bit longer in the sauce.  Ran out of plain yogurt?  Use something mild, like lemon or peach (I used this once, and it was fine).  It's actually really hard to screw up.

Marinade

• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons ground red pepper
• 2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 piece gingerroot, minced (1/2-inch long)
• 1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch cubes

Sauce

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 jalapeno chile, minced
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
• 1 cup half and half

For marinade, combine yogurt, lemon juice, cumin, red pepper, black pepper, cinnamon, salt and ginger in a medium bowl or food-safe plastic bag; stir in chicken, marinate in refrigerator 2-4 hours.

Get the chicken into your marinade (not marinate, that's a verb) and let it party down for at least a few hours in the fridge

Toss the ingredients together to make sure you get even flavor distribution

Skewer the chicken after it's been marinating.  Give it as long as you can stand to let the flavors get in there.

For sauce, melt butter in a large, deep skillet over medium heat, add garlic and jalapeno; cook 1 minute.  Stir in coriander, cumin, paprika, garam masala and salt.  Stir in tomato sauce, simmer 3 minutes, stir in cream; simmer until sauce thickens, then keep on low while meat is cooking.

This dish has a surprising amount of heat, which you can temper by replacing jalapenos with something milder

Saute in butter to get that creamy flavor you won't find with olive oil.

The sauce, after everything is incorporated

Meanwhile, heat grill to medium-high (or heat broiler).  Remove chicken from refrigerator.  Thread chicken onto skewers; discard marinade.  Grill or broil chicken, turning occasionally, until cooked through, about 8 minutes.  Remove chicken from skewers; add to sauce.  Simmer 5 minutes.  Serve with basmati rice, naan, or pita bread.

You don't need to cook these all the way through, just get some char flavor on them.  They finish in the sauce.

Tikka masala, served with basmati rice and spinach (saag)