Braised Chicken Garnished with Green Olives and Onions (p. 421)

So, this was actually supposed to be braised rabbit, which is why I've held off on cooking it for so long. After lots of going back and forth, Matt (and the cookbook itself) convinced me that it was okay for me to substitute chicken for the rabbit because a) rabbit is hard to find and b) rabbit is super extra expensive. Fresh Market sells it, but only frozen, and it's $30 - $40 for one whole rabbit. I have three rabbit recipes, so that starts adding up to be way too costly.

So, braised chicken. Delicious braised chicken.

The only lengthy part of this recipe is that the chicken needs to marinate for several hours. I started mine yesterday morning in a marinade of sherry (the recipe called for dry white wine, but now that I'm with child, cooking sherry is about the only similar thing I had around the house, and it feels crazy to buy wine and then not be able to drink it), olive oil, minced parsley, salt, dried thyme, a bay leaf, and a combination of herbs that came from my CSA last week. I tossed this in a tupperware in the fridge until closer to dinner time.

When you're ready to start preparing the actual dinner, brown tiny onions in olive oil, and then set them aside.

Using the same oil, brown the chicken pieces (removed from the marinade and patted dry) on both sides until they are nicely colored. Add some flour to the top of the pieces and continue cooking, distributing and browning the flour.

Put the onions back in the pan, as well as the rest of the marinade and some extra liquid (I used water, you could use wine) and bring to a boil.  The recipe says to cover and simmer for about an hour, until the meat is falling off the bone, but since I used boneless chicken that was clearly cooked by that point, I just let mine simmer until the sauce was getting thick, and then removed the chicken and onions.

To make the sauce, strain the remaining liquid to get rid of the marinade aromatics and put the leftover sauce back into a pan. Heat until thickened and then add green olives briefly, just to warm them.

Pour the sauce over the chicken and onions, and serve!

We both really enjoyed this. The chicken was tender and extremely flavorful from the marinade, and we mopped up all the sauces with bread.

chicken -- $3.87

onions -- $3.99 (about half the bag is left)

olives -- $2.50

Total Cost of Braised Chicken Garnished with Green Olives and Onions: $10.36

($2.60 per serving)

A Seafood Extravaganza with Oranges and Ouzo (p. 385) and Provencal Marinated Fennel (p. 320)

How can you not make a recipe that refers to itself as a seafood extravaganza? It's begging to be cooked. And cook it I did.

The base of the recipe is sliced red onions, garlic, and fennel along with tomato, all cooked in olive oil down into a thick sauce.

Fresh squeezed orange juice, orange zest, and Greek ouzo give the sauce a punch of flavor.

White fish and peeled shrimp cook directly in the sauce. Once thoroughly cooked, stir in pitted green olives, chopped fennel greens, and salt and pepper and serve immediately.

This was quite lovely. The white fish sort of fell apart and made it pretty soup-like, but the flavors were great, and I liked the different textures in the dish. The green olives added a lot of salt, though, so careful on how much extra you add.

With my extravaganza, I cooked up some Provencal Marinated Fennel, which is quick and easy and surprisingly delicious. Trim up your fennel bulbs and cut them into slices. Cook these in a skillet with olive oil, salt and pepper, sliced celery, and crushed garlic. Add in bay leaves and pine nuts and simmer everything together for about 15 minutes.

Toss in some currants, keep over the heat a bit longer, and then serve.

We were both really surprised by how much we liked this. The currant and pine nut topping had a lot of flavor and really complemented the softened fennel.

fennel -- $4.47

shrimp -- $4.63

fish -- $14.42

red onion -- $1.97 (half left)

orange -- $.62 (half left)

tomato -- $1.20 (half left)

olives -- $3.50

Total Cost of A Seafood Extravaganza with Oranges and Ouzo -- $30.81

($7.70 per serving)

fennel --$4.47

Total Cost of Provencal Marinated Fennel: $4.47

($2.24 per serving)

Neapolitan Cauliflower Salad (p. 84)

This cauliflower salad, Insalata di Rinforzo, is a Neapolitan Christmas tradition, and is nice and quick to throw together.

In boiling water, cook cauliflower florets until just tender, then remove them from the heat and drain.

Combine the cauliflower in a bowl with julienned veggies (celery, carrots, and roasted red pepper) as well as crushed red chili pepper, black and green olives, capers, and chopped parsley.

Once all the veggies are combined, top with a dressing of olive oil and white wine vinegar (as well as salt and pepper) and set the salad aside so the flavors from the dressing can soak in to the rest of the salad.

We ate this with a delightful pizza we whipped up.

Cauliflower has never been my favorite veggie, but this was really good. The dressing has a lot of vinegar in it, so it adds a real kick to the salad, and the roasted red peppers add a different flavor dimension. I'll be eating this all weekend while Matt's out of town, and I think the flavors will continue to develop the longer it sets in my fridge.

cauliflower -- $2.64

celery -- $1.37 (only used one stalk)

olives -- $3.70 (the leftovers were used on the pizza)

red pepper -- $2.64

Total Cost of Neapolitan Cauliflower Salad: $10.35

($1.29 per serving)

Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy (p. 184)

This was my last recipe of the old year (I made it for NYE dinner), and also the last pizza recipe in the book. Sad! The recipes are starting to dwindle!

A double-crusted pizza is more like a savory pie than a pizza, because it has crust on both the bottom and the top, with the pizza deliciousness housed between the two layers. I was inspired by a recent pizza I had from Capital Creations that had a cornmeal crust (that, and the fact that I'm low on regular flour) so I made The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook's Basic Pizza Dough but used cornmeal instead of whole wheat flour. It turned out nicely.

The innards of the pizza came together quickly -- sauté yellow onion and smooshed garlic cloves in olive oil until soft and then add in your washed greens (I used spinach) until they're nice and soft.

Then add in chopped olives (kalamata -- yum!), plumped golden raisins, and pine nuts and cook for just a few minutes. Flavor with salt and pepper. The recipe also called for anchovies but knowing Matt wouldn't love them I left those out.

Once the pizza dough was ready, I lined a pie dish with about half of it and then filled it up with everything in my skillet. I formed a circle with the rest of the dough and placed it over the top of the pie, brushed it with a beaten egg and cut some slices in it it so that it wouldn't all explode in the oven.

And then into the oven, and out it came, perfect and beautiful.

We liked this. I think I prefer a single-crusted pizza, but this was definitely enjoyable.

Very filling, but enjoyable.

spinach -- $3.29

yellow onion -- $1.00

olives -- $3.90 (some left)

golden raisins -- $3.15 (tons left)

pine nuts -- $4.20 (about half left)

Total Cost of Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy: $15.54

($1.94 per serving)

Roasted Chicken with a Middle Eastern Stuffing (p. 406) and Spinach with Onions and Black Olives (p. 309)

It's been over a week since I've last posted -- the holidays make for a busy time! I've done very little cooking over that week, but I did make a big Christmas dinner for me, Matt, and my dad. I wanted to do something semi-traditional, so a roasted chicken seemed the perfect thing.

On  Christmas Eve my dad and I hit up the Fresh Market in Asheville to get all the necessities. The recipe calls for a 5 pound chicken but all the was left was 3.5 pounds, so I had to make do. I think the guy who helped me was just filling in at the counter, because the chicken was wrapped ridiculously.

Also, when I unwrapped it, the giblets were nowhere to be found. No giblets? What's up with that? They were supposed to be cooked down to become part of the stuffing, but I had to skip that step.

I rubbed down the bird with a mixture of garlic, salt, olive oil, and lemon juice and let it marinate in the fridge for a few hours.

While the bird was getting itself all juicy and flavorful in the fridge, I made the stuffing -- sauteed onions, toasted pine nuts, ground beef, pepper, cooked rice, currants, cinnamon, cumin, and saffron sounded like it would make for a pretty amazing combination. I filled the bird up and cooked her for about an hour and a half altogether, adjusting the oven temperature and basting as needed.

The chicken was amazingly moist and delicious.

We all really enjoyed it, especially the crispy skin that the marinade had coated. I was kind of bummed about the stuffing, though. It was good, but with all that stuff in it I had thought it was going to be the best part of the meal. Maybe it was the lack of the giblets?

With this, I prepared a simple spinach side. Just steam down the spinach until it is super tender and then chop it up. In a skillet, sauté sliced scallions in olive oil until soft and then stir in chopped olives and add the spinach back in.

Add black pepper and red wine vinegar, keep over the heat until the vinegar has mostly cooked away, and then serve.

Matt and my dad were kind of dreading this because neither loves cooked spinach, but this dish was surprisingly good -- I think olives can make pretty much anything delicious. This was actually the first part of the meal to disappear.

All in all, a very successful Christmas dinner.

chicken -- $6.59

lemon -- $.89

onion -- $1.20

ground beef -- $2.59

currants -- $2.75 (only used 2 tablespoons of a bulk container)

saffron -- $7.40 (used a large pinch, still plenty leftover)

Total Cost of Roasted Chicken with a Middle Eastern Stuffing: $21.42

($4.28 per serving)

spinach -- $2.50

scallions -- $.88

olives -- $3.30

Total Cost of Spinach with Onions and Black Olives: $6.68

($1.33 per serving)

Moroccan Chicken with Preserved Lemons and Olives (p. 412)

Another recipe using preserved lemons!

Take one small chicken (4 pounds was about the smallest I could find, though the recipe really calls for two 2.5 pound birds) and rinse her out with cool water. Give her a nice rub down of salt and lemon juice and stick her in the fridge for at least a half hour. Set aside her packet of giblets and livers for later use.

Now for the sauce part; mix together minced parsley, garlic, cilantro, ground ginger, black pepper, and a chopped preserved lemon. Add in some water.

After the bird has sat for long enough, rinse her out again and give her another rub down, this time with the mixture above. Put her in a heavy duty stock pot and set over low heat.

Add lots and lots of thinly sliced onions and some olive oil and let the bird and giblets simmer for about half an hour. Then add in the livers and paprika, cover, and let cook for another hour to an hour and a half.

When the bird is thoroughly cooked, cut the meat off and arrange it on a platter.

Continue thickening the sauce left in the stock pot by turning up the heat. Remove the livers, chop them up, and return them to the sauce. Add olives and ladle the sauce over the bird.

This was kind of a pain to cook, as is any time you need to deal with the entirety of an animal. We both really liked the flavors of the marinade and I would totally do it again, but only with boneless pieces of chicken.

chicken -- $4.20

lemon -- $.69

olives -- $2.15

Total Cost of Moroccan Chicken with Preserved Lemons and Olives: $7.04

Tunisian Fish with Preserved Lemons and Olives (p. 373)

My Moroccan Preserved Lemons have been ready for use for a week or so, so I've picked out two recipes this week that will use them. I made the first last night using tilapia as my fish because Harris Teeter was having a sale ($3.99 a pound!)

I rinsed and patted dry the tilapia fillets, salted and peppered each side, and then set them aside while I made the sauce. It's pretty basic -- garlic and onion sauteed in olive oil until they're soft, and then an addition of strips of sweet pepper (I also threw in some spicy, because they were in my fridge) and shortly after that finely diced tomatoes. I also tossed in some dried red chili flakes for an extra kick.

I cooked the sauce down until it was jammy and then made room for my fish pieces. They cooked pretty quickly -- maybe about 8 minutes, with a flip to the other side halfway through.

Once they were cooked through, the fish was removed so that I could finish the sauce. I threw in chopped black and green olives, chopped capers, and a preserved lemon that was rinsed and cut into small pieces.

Have you ever worked with preserved lemons? They're crazy. They're kind of gooey and gross and you chop and eat them with the peels included, because they're so soft by that point.

A little white wine vinegar and cumin finished the sauce, which I poured back over the fish and served.

The fish was nice and flaky and the flavors of the sauce were pretty good. Matt's starting to feel like all these fish dishes that are cooked in and then topped with a sauce taste the same, but at least that same taste is a good one!

tilapia -- $4.04

olives -- $2.00

onion -- $1.14

Total Cost of Tunisian Fish with Preserved Lemons and Olives : $7.18

Lentil and Green Olive Salad (p. 79)

It's very rare that I'm home during the day to make lunch for myself, but yesterday I was and wanted to make something light and healthy but also filling. The last time I made a light lunch I used the Lentil and Walnut Salad recipe, so this time I opted for a variation -- a lentil and green olive salad.

The preparation for this one was pretty similar to that of the previous salad -- the lentils are cooked in water with a whole onion and garlic clove, as well as salt and pepper.

Once the lentils are cooked (about half an hour) they are drained and the vegetables are removed and discarded.

While the lentils were cooking I sliced a red pepper into thin strips and tossed them with coarsely chopped pitted green olives.

These were mixed, along with olive oil and lemon juice, into the cooked lentils. The lentils are laid on a bed of greens and topped with some strips of lemon zest.

I served this with leftovers from a couple of weeks ago -- shrimp with garlic, lemon, and olive oil that I had frozen raw in its marinade. This time I just prepared the shrimp by sautéing them over low heat.

This was a lovely and light little lunch. The salad wasn't as good as the previous one I did, but it still had nice flavors and was enjoyable. I probably wouldn't make it again, but I don't mind eating the leftovers. And the shrimp was just as good (and messy) the second time around.

lentils -- $1.39 (3/4 of the bag is left)

garlic -- $.59 (just used one clove)

mixed greens -- $3.09 (most are left)

olives -- $2.08

red pepper -- $2.99

lemon -- $.46

Total Cost of Lentil and Green Olive Salad: $10.60

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca with Tomatoes, Olives, and Capers (p. 198)

I got home a little early from work today and started making this pasta dish. It took longer than I thought it would to make because the tomatoes needed to melt down into a sauce, but despite the time commitment it was pretty easy.

The sauce is made my sautéing chopped onions and garlic and olive oil. Once the onions softened, I added chopped parsley and anchovies and let them melt into the sauce for about five minutes.

Then I added oregano and chopped tomatoes and let everything simmer together for about 25 minutes stirring frequently until it had a jammy consistency.

While the sauce was simmering, I cooked the pasta so that it finished up at just about the same time as sauce. I removed the sauce from the heat and added olives and capers and stirred them all together. I mixed in the pasta and we were ready to eat!

This was really tasty and the olives added a great salty flavor to the dish. I'm not a huge fan of capers, so if I made this again I'd probably leave those out and just add more olives. Still, a lovely meal!

olives -- $3.00

anchovies -- $4.59 (plenty left for other recipes)

onion -- $1.50

CSA tomatoes -- $4.40

spaghetti -- $2.00
Total Cost of Spaghetti alla Puttanesca: $15.49 (with several portions leftover)

Egyptian Lentil Soup (p. 140) and Red Peppers with Garlic, Sausage, and Olives (p. 330)

Once again, I'm feeling overwhelmed by the number of soups I have left to make. I keep telling myself that once winter comes I'll  want to make and eat all the soups, but I know that's not really true. I'm going to try to start making at least one soup a week so that I can work through them.

Last night's choice was Egyptian Lentil Soup, which can be made either as a vegetarian soup or not. It's also all made in the same pot, which I love.

In your stock or soup pot, sauté onion and ground lamb (though just a small amount) until the onion is softened and the meat is very brown.

Stir in cumin and fennel and a dried red chili to add a little spice, and then mix in brown lentils, which make up the bulk of the soup.

Let the soup cook for about 30 minutes, until the lentils are soft. Add lemon juice and salt and pepper and serve.

Um, so, this broth is basically just water, and not interesting at all. The actual content of the soup, however, is really good. When we packed up the leftovers, I strained the water out and just packed the lentil/meat combination for lunches, which I think will be lovely. Still, I wouldn't make this soup again.

Luckily, I made a slightly more substantial dish to go with this -- a mixture of sweet red peppers, garlic, olives, and spicy Italian sausage.

This was my first time opening sausage skins and removing the meat, which is a kind of gross process. Once the sausage is removed, the recipe calls for it to be crumbled and combined with olive oil to be sauteed. Have you ever crumbled a wet meat? It's not really possible. I smooshed it up as best I could, but really I just continued to break it up as it heated.

Once the sausage was thoroughly browned, I set the meat aside and discarded the fat.

Meanwhile, roast red peppers over the stove. Between the sausage, the soup, and the red peppers, I had a very full stove top!

When the peppers are thoroughly roasted, let them cool for a few minutes and then peel the peppers and slice them into thick strips.

Using the same skillet the meat was cooked in, add more olive oil and stir in thin onion slices and garlic. Once the onion is throughly cooked, stir in dry sherry and let it cook for a few minutes until it begins to bubble. Then add the pepper strips, black olives, and slivered orange zest.

Cook briefly and stir in the sausage meat.

Serve and eat! This was lovely, and we both really enjoyed it. 

The sweet red peppers with the spicy sausage were a great blend, and the olives added a salty punch. This will also be great cold for leftovers.

onion -- $.98 (half is left)

lemon -- $.79 (half is left)

lamb -- $1.96

lentils -- $1.79 (tons left)

Total Cost of Egyptian Lentil Soup : $5.52 (with leftovers for several days)

orange -- $1.58 (only the zest was used)

red peppers -- $6.09

sausage -- $2.79

olives -- $4.10 (plenty left for eating)

onion -- $.97 (half is left)

Total Cost of Red Peppers with Garlic, Sausage, and Olives : $15.53 (with leftovers for several days)

Spiced Green Olives (p. 50)

We've been really enjoying marinated olives lately, but I'm running out of recipes. In fact, this is the last one. Unlike the other two recipes, this one calls for green olives, which I've actually never tried before (I'm new to olives.)

Rinse the olives in a colander and toss them dry in a paper towel. 

In a skillet, combine fennel, coriander, and cardamom seeds and warm until they begin to give off fragrance -- this only took two or three minutes. 

The recipe calls for the seeds to then be put in a coffee mill or spice grinder briefly, until they are a coarse texture. I don't have a coffee mill, so I had to work on them in a mortar instead. It took about five minutes, but I think I was able to achieve pretty much the same texture.

Combine the spices with olive oil and freshly squeezed lemon and orange juices. Mince garlic and stir this in as well. The recipe also calls for an optional salt-cured lemon, which is a whole separate recipe that I haven't yet tackled, so I left that out. Instead I added extra lemon juice and zest. 

Mix the olives in with the marinade and leave them for at least 6 hours before serving. 

So, the marinade for this is really good, but I think I just don't enjoy green olives. Maybe with time, I'll learn to love them like I have black olives, but I'm just not there yet. Matt liked them, though.

green olives -- $7.19

cardamom seeds -- $8.48 (Yes, these are expensive. I've been holding off on buying any, but they keep coming up in recipes, so I finally caved. They'll last forever.)

fennel seeds -- $1.96 (tons left over)

lemon -- $.79

Total Cost of Spiced Green Olives : $18.42 (though really most of that is the cardamom seeds)