Feeding Friendship: Winter Citrus

It's time once again for a Feeding Friendship post, or, really, past time. I had very good intentions of posting last Thursday, but I made a dish that I disliked so strongly that I didn't want to post it at all. So now it's time for a little make-up citrus!

I didn't go to Wegman's this weekend because I didn't need enough items to justify an hour in the car, but this meant that I was stuck with the local produce selection, which is somewhat awful. I had good intentions toward a kumquat and lime pie I found online, but encountered a distinct lack of kumquats in regular stores. I ended up with 4 cheerful looking navel oranges and set out to make them into something respectable. I thought about a lot of options here, but ended up with this recipe from the Food Network for Orange-Cinnamon Rice Pudding. Now, I'm not going to recreate their whole recipe, because I do not want to infringe on their intellectual property, but here are the ingredients you will need:

2 oranges: 1 for orange peel strip & other for zest
2-3 cinnamon sticks
pinch Kosher salt
1 Tbl unsalted butter
1 cup Arborio rice (Aroborio is best, but a short grain rice is imperative)
4 cups whole milk (I used 2% though)
3/4 granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
8 oz mascarpone cheese
cinnamon for sprinkling (optional)
powdered sugar for sprinkling (optional)

I realized that you get a lot of the orange flavor in this dish from the orange peel you boil with the rice, so I wanted to use a large strip for lots of flavor.

I then cut the strip in two pieces so more of it would be in the water as it boiled. You basically combine the butter, salt, 2 cups of water, rice and peel in one saucepan (let the water boil before adding the rice) and the milk, cinnamon sticks, sugar, and vanilla in another large saucepan. 

I substituted part of the regular white sugar for tangerine sugar from the Spice and Tea Exchange for an extra citrus flavor punch. 

Once your rice has absorbed the water, you remove the orange peels and transfer it to your simmering milk saucepan. 

not quite absorbed yet here

I have been making rice pudding (or arroz con leche) since I got back from Spain, and this recipe is very similar to what I do, except that by adding the rice that has already absorbed the water to the already warm milk and allowing it to absorb that too, it cuts down on your chances of the rice burning and sticking. I usually start with the rice in the pan and then add milk slowly after the water is absorbed. This way is much more foolproof! Just keep an eye out for boil-overs and stir occasionally. After a while your milk will be almost totally absorbed. Now it's time to add the orange zest. The recipe called for a 1/2 tsp, but I nearly doubled it and didn't think it was too strong. 

Next, you add your mascarpone. The recipe says to add half and then serve the other half over top of your portions. This sounded strange and gross to me, so I just incorporated all the cheese into the pudding. Here you have it! 

It had a delightful citrus smell while cooking, and the taste was still subtle, coming on after you taste the creamy flavor and the cinnamon. Easy to do, and tough to burn- what more can you ask for?  

Feeding Friendship: Greek Yogurt

Our ingredient for this challenge, as chosen by Veronica, is Greek Yogurt. I was intrigued by this choice, since I knew there would be a lot of options for what type of meal I could make, and yogurt is very good for you, but I don't eat enough because I don't like it straight up. I found lots of great ways that you can substitute Greek yogurt for sour cream in a lot of recipes, but I didn't end up doing that. I also decided that I'd made enough dessert in December for a while and that I wanted to make something savory.

I've been fairly active on Pinterest lately, and I've been using it as both a source of recipes and a good place to save recipes I find on the far corners of the Internet. (for those of you who aren't familiar, Pinterest is a place to "pin" pictures and links on a series of virtual bulletin boards and then share them in a social networking kind of way. You can follow my pins if you care- I'm sarahmk16). Some random person had pinned a slow cooker Chicken Tikka Masala recipe from a blog called Smells Like Home. This is my favorite Indian dish, and I knew that if I made it that I could control the level of spiciness. Plus, I got to use my crock pot, which is one of my favorite ways to cook since it produces such tender meat and magically has dinner ready when you want it.

Here is the link to the original recipe she posted. It made me feel good that this cook and blogger is not someone who fixes Indian food a lot, so I thought that lowered my chances of messing it up. I followed her process exactly, but made a few key substitutions. First, I halved the recipe, as she said she did. I also used 3 large chicken breasts cut into roughly 1-inch chunks because I don't cook much with chicken thighs and had a lot of chicken breasts in the freezer. I also substituted some leftover diced green chilis from a can instead of using a jalapeno, since it scared me. Here are the ingredients for the dish as I made it:

For the chicken:

• 3 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/2 tbsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tbsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 7 0z 2% Greek Yogurt
• 1 Tbsp diced green chilis (or use 1 whole jalapeno, piereced several times with a knife)

For the Sauce:

• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 3 cloves equivalent of minced garlic
• 1/2 tbsp of kosher salt
• 1 1/2 tbsp garam masala spice
• 1 piece of fresh ginger about 1/5 inches long, grated (freeze first to make grating easier) 
• 2 cups crushed tomatoes (I used fire roasted Muir Glen brand) 
• 1/2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tbsp heavy cream 

To Serve:

• 2+ cups cooked rice
• cilantro garnish (if you want) 

I started out by chopping up the chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks. I dumped these into the crock pot bowl, sprinkled in the coriander, cumin, and salt, and gave it a good stir to try to coat all the pieces with spices.

Next, I added the yogurt and combined it with the chicken evenly.

Once I stirred in the yogurt, I put the peppers on top. 

Then I got all my elements for the sauce ready to go- diced the onion, minced the ginger, and got out the garlic, butter and spices. You may want to open your tomato can ahead too, just to save time. Then I melted the butter in the pan and then sautéed the onion, garlic and salt on medium high until it started to brown. I turned the heat down a touch because it seemed like the butter was cooking pretty hard.  

After the onion looked slightly browned, I stirred in the garam masala. I thought my go-to spice store would have it, but their website doesn't list it, so I just got some at the grocery store.  

That put some scent in the house, let me tell you! A minute later, I added the crushed tomato and sugar. Stir it all up, making sure to scrape any caramelized action off of the bottom of the pan. Mine looked like this: 

...and smelled amazing. Now, into the crock pot! Resist the urge to stir, readers! You don't need to mix the yogurt chicken and the tomato sauce at this point. 

The recipe called for 5 hours on low. I started a little late in the day, so I cheated with an hour and a half on high and then 2 hours on low. Let me say that this is not a meal you're going to cook on the sly or not notice. It announces: Indian food! all day long, so it makes it hard to wait until it's done. Your neighbors may smell it too ;) During the last hour, or last 15 minutes (depending upon whether you have minute rice or not), make rice to go along with the chicken. I made 4 "servings" of rice, since you can always repurpose it later if you have too much. I had brown minute rice, but you could use just about any long-grain variety. Once your chicken and sauce has been in long enough, or you can't wait anymore, give it all a good stir to combine the chicken and tomato elements. Then the recipe said to add in the heavy cream, stir again, and cook for another 10 minutes. Honestly, I completely forgot about this part with no ill effect, in my opinion. It does account for why her sauce looks a little more orange and mine a little more red though. Here's how it turned out: 

It was delicious! It had a ton of flavor without being too terribly spicy. As a person who is a little timid about cooking Indian dishes, I was really pleased at how it came out. You should try it!