Food Friday

One of the nice things about being an adult is that you get to cook the things you feel like eating.

 

When I looked in our fridge to figure out how to flavor this Shabbat’s chicken I spotted half a cabbage. I decided to make stuffed cabbage flavored chicken.

 

I shredded the cabbage and put it in the bottom of the roasting pan. I topped the cabbage with the chicken and added a couple of cans of diced tomatoes and spiced as I do stuffed cabbage with cinnamon, allspice paprika, ginger, brown sugar  black pepper and sour salt and raisins.

By the time the chicken was done the pan was filled with lots of watery looking juice. I asked my son to cook it down until it was somewhere between the viscosity of maple syrup and honey. My son was happy to comply.  He had initially suggested adding something like couscous to absorb the liquid.  he’s right, it would have worked, but I wanted the meat liquids to be thick and syrupy, and not at all starchy. My son  seems to be my child. He was fascinated by the process of thickening the cooking juices and how the flavors get concentrated. I love cooking with him.We added the chicken back into the thickened chicken juice and it ought to be delicious.

 

I still haven’t made tonight’s salad but asparagus and carrots and amba will be involved.

 

My birthday was a few weeks ago and my husband took me out for a fancy Indian lunch. The food was really elegant refined and quite delicious. dessert was three small cubes of ice cream. Two of the flavors were forgettable ( mango and strawberry). One of those cubes has been haunting me, cardamom ice cream.

I realized that if I steeped cardamom pods in coconut milk and sugar on a low heat for a while I could infuse the coconut milk with the cardamom flavor.

I cheated and added a few shakes of ground cardamom.

After a couple of hours of steeping, I ran the mixture through the blender and now it’s churning away in the food processor. I think I will top the results with Old Krupnick, the Polish honey liquor . I just snitched a taste from the ice cream maker. Wow! There isn’t very much but it’s incredible.

 

Shabbat Shalom!