grilled lamb chops with salmoriglio sauce

wow for someone who was vegetarian for about a decade, i do seem to eat a lot of meat now!! it's not something i'm necessarily happy about. i would be lying if i said i didn't like the taste of certain pieces of meat. but i would be definitely lying if i said it didn't make me feel morally conflicted.

i try to assuage this conflict by at least only buying locally raised meats from the farmer's markets. this past weekend i went to a new farmer market (new for me folks, and that was thankfully light years better than that other one i tried out) and some of the farms even had photo albums of all their happy chickens, sheep, pigs, and bison in real fields and mucking grounds. it certainly convinced me that, indeed, these animals probably lived their lives as naturally as possible. but it made it that much harder for me to look at those photos and then buy a piece of cryovacked loin. but like i read somewhere recently, these chickens had a really good life for several months and then one very bad day.



i don't mean for this to devolve into a manifesto of sorts, although i do believe too little attention is paid to what we put into our bodies. i spend the majority of my disposable income on food. i believe that i should spend an equal amount of thought and conscious effort in making sure i know the provenance of that food. if not because of the animal i am eating, or the inevitable environmental damage, but at least because of the very fact that i am ingesting it!

i might think a lot about food, but when it comes to cooking, simpler is a lot of times better! i was looking for a new lamb chop recipe and came across this unassuming idea. salmoriglio is a strong, pungent lemon-herb sauce, originally form calabria and sicily. i could not believe how delicious it was! if you like lamb, please try this recipe! and then we can go back to debating whether i should be vegetarian again :-)



grilled lamb chops with salmoriglio sauce: serves 4
from gourmet (may 2000) - printable recipe click here

1 1/2 tb finely chopped fresh oregano
1 1/2 tb finely chopped fresh thyme
2 tsp freshly grated lemon zest
1 1/2 tb fresh lemon juice
1 tsp coarse salt
salt + pepper to taste
6 tb olive oil
4 shoulder-blade lamb chops

1. grind herbs, zest, lemon juice, and 1 tsp coarse salt to a paste with a mortar and pestle. transfer to bowl and add oil in slow stream, whisking until emulsified. season with salt and pepper to taste.

2. pat lamb dry and season with salt and pepper. heat a lightly oiled well-seasoned ridged grill pan over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking. then grill lamb, turning once about 4 minutes on each side for medium-rare.

3. spoon sauce over lamb. if this is how the sicilians eat, then i need to move there.

chicken fajitas with mojo de ajo

when i lived in new york city i had a favorite quick, cheap mexican place as a go-to for dinner. it wasn't nearly "authentic" mexican, but somewhere between that and the oozy, greasy, cheesy, incarnation that tex-mex often becomes. it had all the usuals, and normally i like fajitas because i'm such a sucker for sizzling platters of food! but i wasn't terribly fond of the fajitas at this particular place because while sizzling in temperature, it never seemed to really dazzle me in flavor.

so when i saw this recipe in martha's magazine a couple months ago i definitely wanted to try it. and fajitas are one of those recipes where one can think, do i really need a recipe? cut up some peppers, onions, meat and toss it in a hot skillet! and true, it doesn't really get (and shouldn't get) much more complicated than that. but i was really curious about this "mojo de ajo," especially since we loved bobby flay's mojo on a grilled pork tenderloin.

evidently mojo is the cure-all because it's definitely what my go-to place was missing in their fajitas! plus the combination of thighs and breasts (gee, that phrase seems awkward, huh?!) made it so much more flavorful. we only served ours with guacamole and pico, no cheese or sour cream (the guacamole is creamy enough!) i think this is a perfect dish for impromptu summer dinner -- quick, easy, and ready to share with friends or family!



chicken fajitas with mojo de ajo: serves 4
adapted from martha stewart living (june 2009, click here)

mojo de ajo
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tb minced garlic (4-6 cloves)
3 tb fresh lime juice (about 2 limes)
1 tsp red-pepper flakes
1/2 tsp coarse salt

fajitas
1 tb olive oil
1/2 large onion, cut into 1/2 inch thick slices (about 1 cup)
1 large green bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch thick slices
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced 1/2 inch thick
8 oz boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 2), slicked 1/2 inch thick
8 small 6-inch flour tortillas, warmed
salt + pepper to taste
guacamole
pico de gallo

1. make the mojo: cook oil and garlic in small saucepan over low heat until garlic is soft and fragrant, about 8 minutes. remove from heat, stir in lime juice, red pepper, and salt.

2. heat large skillet over high heat, add oil and gently coat. add onion and bell pepper, season with salt. cook, stirring frequently, until onion is bornwed in spots and pepper has softened slightly with blistered skins, about 5 minutes.

3. add chicken, salt, and stir and cook until chicken is browned and thoroughly cooked, 5-7 minutes (you can finish in the oven if you chose).

4. add mojo de ajo, and stir to coat. season with salt and pepper. serve immediately with guacamole, pico de gallo, and warm tortillas!

pork chops with rhubarb-raisin compote

yes, yes i'm still here!! although i have had a lousy track record, these past two weeks were not entirely my fault for not posting. i finally started a new job, yay! but it meant leaving my beloved new york city, sniff sniff.

except i haven't had really any time to mourn the loss of living in the best city in the USA because i received the offer one week, and moved myself down the next weekend (with the faith that i would be lucky enough to find an apartment in a day, and not be camping out on a park bench), and started working last week! i'm still living in a basically empty room -- i'm living on an aerobed and not much else! -- because the rest of my belongings don't come down until next weekend. and hopefully mr. mimi will follow soon thereafter.

so you see my absence was not intentional, and to prove it here's a post about an obviously previously made dinner. why obviously? because folks, it has rhubarb!! and we all know the peak rhubarb season is only in spring. i was a little late to the party because i was in nigeria, but there were still some good bunches left in june.



we didn't have cherries so we used the raisins from the pantry. the compote (as expected) was delicious and could easily be used with a chicken dish as well. in this heat of august you probably won't find any good rhubarb around, but bookmark this for next spring and i'm sure you'll love it!

for the recipe, click here.

tangy sweet coleslaw

wow, you're still here?! thank you for hanging in there with my non-existent blogging. i'm not sure why i've been so quiet since i returned from nigeria.

i think part of it was because i kept a daily journal while i was there in order to reflect on what i saw and felt and also to keep my sanity when i was lonely. and when i was really, completely, desperately bored and lonely i would actually write backwards. yes, longhand writing but with the letters and sentences written backwards -- sort of like in a neurotic heeere's johnny kind of way. so to be back home and not have to write at all felt liberating.

another reason was because my taste buds were so disappointed when i first came home. my last week in nigeria i really started thinking about foods from home. i mean, the best thing about living in new york city is its sheer variety of cuisines. but when i came home, nothing tasted good at all. restaurant or home cooked -- everything was bland, nothing was satisfying. i was cranky and that made me crave even less, which only made me more cranky.

what slowly pulled me back to american style food was the grill. and everything that dining al fresco in my own backyard brings with it -- the charred meats, longer nights, white wine, and relaxation.





one of the first grills we had was baby back ribs, something i've never had before. actually i don't think i've ever had any kind of rib before. i liked them, although i don't know if i'd necessarily make them again [mr. mimi interjects here, "whaddaya mean?!? they were great, you loved them!" -- i did?! i honestly can't remember, which makes me believe that i didn't.]

but i found a great slaw to go with it. coleslaw is so easy to make, there's no reason to buy supermarket slaw that's gooped up with heavy mayo and all sorts of preservatives. this slaw by martha uses half mayo, half plain yogurt and it was refreshing. i was on the fence about the tomatoes -- i like tomatoes, and it adds color, but i didn't like the soft texture with the rest of the crunchy slaw. either way, if you invited me to your potluck grill, i might bring this side with me! for the recipe, click here.

good-bye nigeria, hello new york

my workday lunch spot

it's been a week since i left nigeria. it all went by so quickly. you wouldn't know it since i haven't posted anything in like forever, oops!!

people keep asking me if experienced "culture shock" in nigeria? honestly, not at all. i'm not sure why? i guess because i lived in the capital city and my travels were to large cities as well. i mean, yeah life was a little different here and i ate different food and listened to different music and saw some of the poorest of the poor. but it's not like i was living in a bedouin tent in the middle of the sahara, going to work on camel back for the past three months.

i bring home many stories with me, some that i will share, some that i will just hold in my visual and mental memory. i might not have experienced culture shock but i definitely understood that my life is very different, and not because of me as a person -- but only because of the sheer circumstance of where i happen to live.

before i left i bought my taxi driver a goodbye gift, we were in the store together and i told him to pick out something for himself. he immediately proceeded to show me an electric hair shaver. i was like umm, ok if that's what you want??!! it cost 2,300 naira (about $18). to me that wasn't expensive but to him (and to anyone of his class), that was a generous gift. but i was thinking -- of all the gifts you want me to buy, you pick out an electric hair shaver??!!

on the car ride home he gave profuse thanks, and appreciated how generous i was and how happy he was. i asked if he had one already but was broken? he said no he doesn't have one, he goes to the barber and his son goes too -- but he worries about HIV/AIDS infection and so he is so grateful that he can now cut his hair and his son's hair at home. and immediately i realized, to me it was just 2,300 naira spent as a gift for a friend here, but to him it meant so much more -- to him, to his wife, to his family.

that's when i realized what the real difference -- the real "shock" -- is between me and everyone i met there. it's not about their culture or what they eat or wear or how they live. it's the fact that i go to the salon and get my haircut and my only worry is i hope it doesn't look like crap. my friend goes to the barber and he worries about being infected with HIV/AIDS.

i tried to anticipate how i might feel when i'm back in new york city. i remember when i came home from a two month stay in geneva. i hated the city, i hated the noise and sidewalk litter. i absolutely hated the MTA (can ya blame me there?!) -- but in about a week i fell back in love again with all the things that's amazing about new york.

this time is a bit different. i've never had to deal with such noise pollution (honk, honk, hooonk, HOOONKKKKK!!) as i've had in the streets of abuja. so now new york city is like an oasis of calm and quiet! but a week later and i still don't feel quite at home. i have less patience for the constant jockeying along the hipness and coolness spectrum that is the circus life of new york -- even if i don't join in on the circus, it's become tiringly annoying to watch. i also don't have my tastebuds back yet -- everything i eat leaves me unsatisfied.

but in my downtime i'm catching up on the (literally) thousands of blog posts i've missed in my google reader and i can't wait to start cooking and baking again -- i promise mimi on the move will be busy again soon!

nigerian field visits photos

As most of you know I'm in Nigeria for four months to finish my masters, working with an international NGO.

This past week I was able to visit the three child protection teams in northern Nigeria -- Bauchi, Kano, and Kaduna.

It was a great experience, and sits with me deeply. All my senses were taking it in -- the sights of the never ending rubbish, goats at every turn of the road. The smells of all those motorbikes, rubbish fires, and at times, sewage. The sounds of all those motorbikes, the hawking, the mosque calls to prayers. The taste of northern Nigeria cuisine, which even the same basic item (fried yams) tasted different.

And of course, the children. I'm not sure what I think. On one hand, it's easy to be angry when every corner in Kano has a bunch of Almaijari boys begging at every car that passes by -- you spot them by their plastic bowls. Boys are sent to the Almaijari "schools" which are Koranic boarding schools where neither the Koran or any form of education is taught. Instead, they are forced on the streets to beg. Millions of boys in northern Nigeria are in this situation.

But it becomes much more complicated when you travel to the communities. Beyond the poverty, you see so many children during the day who should be in school -- in the streets, hawking, working, caring for other children. It's like another world -- especially in Kano, where these communities are basically a hidden world from the main tar streets. But it's not just as easy to say "well, they should all be in school!" At the schools -- the children enrolled are easily identified by their uniforms, but many more children hang around the schools who are not receiving an education.

However the reaction of the children to the foreign oyibos are always the same regardless. With the little ones, it was like a running, screaming mob. For the older ones, we would walk into a classroom, and they would all be hushed by the teacher. They would sometimes sing a song, or merely say in their loudest, proudest English a big "dank you!" -- and once we walked out, it was like pandemonium as squeeling of delight and wonder filled the room. It was impossible not to hear the children and see their laughs and smiles -- and feel relieved and happy. But at the same time -- I always wondered how naive or presumptuous I was to feel that. How cliche, right?


And for the moment you were all waiting for -- yes I took photos, finally!! I didn't get as many photos of images/experiences that I wanted to. Mainly because I was "working" and not travelling, where I could stop as I'd like. And even when I did get to take photos, it never seemed to capture what I was seeing/feeling.

But they are up on flickr, so click on this link to view --

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mimikatzchen/sets/72157615259746736/

three random stereotypes that are relatively true

1. women carry huge amounts of X, Y, Z balanced on their heads -- well, this is only partly true because plenty of men are hawking items along the street, even if the majority are women. but you see them everywhere, balancing a huge bowl of bananas, mangos, water, rice, etc etc while walking down the hot, dusty sidewalks.

i try not to be impressed by such feats of balance but more than once i wish i could try to do such balancing myself without (a) dropping the load on my feet like the lame oyibo i am or (b) appearing condescending or naive like the out of touch oyibo i am.

2. nigerians drive like shit -- ok, you want me to be kinder and gentler? how about they drive like crazy crap. this is something that photos cannot do justice to, nor even mere narrative. i cannot describe what riding around in a taxi is like here -- this is something that can only be experienced first hand. but all those rumors i heard about driving on sidewalks, cutting people off, no headlights at night, burn-out car crashes in the middle of the road etc etc are very much true here.

part of the problem is that there are too many cars. everyone owns his/her own car because taking taxis all the time can add up pretty quickly (i should know). so it's a source of pride -- you always see people cleaning up their cars to a glittering sheen, whether it's a brand new peugot or a beat-up 20+ year old volkwagen with no door handles and cracked windshield.

however, once they get on the road -- it's the law of step aside bitch, me first. i like to believe they don't necessarily do this with malicious intent. the truth of the matter is the process of getting a driver's license consists of forking over the required "fee" and there you go, you're ready to drive! it's all about money, baby. so i say a good majority of the drivers out there have never really "learned" how to drive.

so a road technically wide enough for 3 lanes easily becomes a 4 lane road. or even funnier, when the 3 lane road becomes a 2 lane road -- nigerians seem to love to think of lane markings as what you drive over, as if it's a monorail tracking. i've finally gotten used to 4-way intersections with no street lights where the law of step aside bitch, me first is quite an adventure. basically i hold my breath and hope not to get side swiped. only one taxi ride (out of many) have i ever felt "are these my last thoughts? am i going to die here in abuja, alone, in this taxi?" -- but it still doesn't get any easier.

3. nigerians love obama and think of him as a brother -- this is also very much true from my unscientific sampling of taxi drivers and other local folks. the best conversation i've had about obama though was from a taxi driver who was amazed that a black man could become president of the US -- his voice was filled with awe and he felt that made the US a wonderful country where anything was possible, and he only hoped for such greatness to be able to happen in his country. i admit (and i don't even like obama) that i was pretty proud to be representin'!

tomorrow i leave for nothern nigeria -- bauchi, kano, and kaduna -- for a week of field site visits. bauchi recently had some riot troubles, but the curfew has been lifted and so we're going ahead. i'm pretty excited, especially to see historical kano. this is supposed to be work and i'm not really supposed to act like a tourist but i hope to have time to see the famous dye pits and the ancient city walls (what's left of them). i'm also bringing my camera so hopefully i'll have photos soon!

abuja, nigeria

it’s been over two weeks here in nigeria and i still haven’t written. i guess partly that’s because there is no cooking or baking to tell you about. it is so hot (even by nigerian standards - every day has been easily over 100F degrees) that the thought of turning on the stove or oven seems a cruel punishment. but hot weather has never deterred me before.

then i realized it’s because i don’t have any one here to share it with. i never think of food as purely sustenance. i’m fascinated by the rituals, customs, and habits of people sharing food. i enjoy cooking and baking because i enjoy sharing it with others. my fondest memories are embedded in events surrounded with food. baking is a solitary activity for me - but it's always shared with others afterwards. and my favorite part of cooking is doing it together with mr. mimi. so when it comes to cooking or baking by myself, and for myself - i’m at a loss.

so unless you want to hear random stories about nigeria i probably won’t be writing much here. if i bring out my camera maybe i’ll post some photos. right now i’ve only been using my iphone to take quick photos - certainly not blog-worthy!

until next time, as they say here - you’re welcome!