~Double double toil and trouble~

Here are the rules of the award:

Thank the person who gave you this award. Include a link to their blog.

Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.

Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

Blogs I chose:

Marinating Online

Kitchen Inspirations

GlutenFreeGus

Sassy Early Grey

Uni Homemaker

Le Pirate

Maggiesonebuttkichen

Dinner of Herbs

Craving Chronicles

Cake Stories by Rose Sen

Piece of Cake

DessertCrisis

a whisk and a spoon

tart to heart

Bake Love Not War

And 7 facts about myself

1. Muse is my favorite band; I just saw them live for the first time, and boy, was I a happy camper.

2. I eat ice cream at least once everyday (once is an understatement), while ignoring the futile pleas of my doctor.

3. When people make sounds while they eat, I want to rip off my own ears.

4. I’ve never had a pet larger than a fish. I called it Fishy because I’m..clever?

5. My favorite movie is Moulin Rouge, which gave me unrealistic expectations about life and love.

6. My favorite food is pie; it is the not-so-secret secret to my heart.

7. I really want to visit Savannah, Georgia. And I never thought I’d say that. It calls to me.

And now for the main course:

Moroccan Chicken Bastilla

I like to call it “chicken baklava.” It combines both worlds, sweet and savory, into one fantastic dish. The phyllo crust is topped with powdered sugar and cinnamon, but the inside is filled with succulent, shredded chicken, onion, and Moroccan spices. I also chose to add raisins and orange peel/juice for an extra somethin somethin.

P.S. Ate this whole thing for both lunch and dinner everyday for like..a week.

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
1 onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 lbs chicken breast
3 cups chicken broth
1 large onion, chopped
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp fresh grated ginger
1/2 tsp cardamom
1 tsp orange blossom water optional
1 tsp cumin
1/4 cup fresh parsley
1 cinnamon stick
3 oz golden raisins
1 Orange, Zested into large strips, save the juice
salt
5 eggs (I used 5 whites and 1 yolk to be healthier)

2/3 cup almonds
1 tsp sugar
2 Tbsp ground cinnamon

1/4 cup honey
1 pckg phyllo dough
2 Tbsp butter, melted
confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon for dusting

1. Thaw phyllo dough at room temperature. Melt butter in a large saucepan. Add garlic and cook over medium high until lightly brown; add onion and turmeric and cook until slightly browned.

2. Add chicken breasts and pour in broth. Add ginger, cumin, parsley, cinnamon, cardamom, orange blossom water, orange zest, some freshly squeezed orange juice, raisins, and  salt. Bring to a boil and cook for about 30 minutes.

3. Process almonds; then cook in a tiny bit of butter until toasted. Mix in sugar, 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon, a pinch of cardamom, and squeezed orange juice.

4. Remove the chicken from the stock and set aside to cool. Reduce the stock to 1/3 cup. Remove the cinnamon stick and peels.

Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then cook in a skillet with thickened broth/sauce. Stir to scramble and cook until no longer wet.

4. Shred chicken in a food processor and add to the egg mixture. Make sure this mixture is not too wet.

5. In a cake pan, layer 6 sheets of phylo, brushing each layer with melted butter. The sheets should drape over the sides of the pan. Fold 2 sheets of phyllo in half and place in the center for stability.

6. Place half of the almond mixture down in the middle of the pan, then all the shredded chicken/egg mixture down, and top with the remaining almond mixture. Drizzle additional honey. Fold another 2 sheets of phyllo in half and place on top. (I had quite a bit of chicken mixture leftover.)

7. Fold the overlapped phyllo from the bottom over the top of the bastilla. Brush with melted butter to make sure everything sticks together. Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes, until the phyllo is brown and crisp.

8. Invert onto a large baking sheet. dust with confectioners’ sugar and 1 Tbsp of ground cinnamon.

The past couple of weeks have been crazy with schoolwork, which has unfortunately prevented me from posting sooner.  For that I have to apologize.  Thanksgiving was great, full of cooking, baking, and enjoying good food as well as great company.  Yet even though I was on break, papers and projects managed to infiltrate my time at home.  Luckily, things will be more manageable after this weekend.

At any rate, I finally present to you day one of the Diamond Jubilee weekend when I was still in England.  I’ve actually had it written since my train ride back to Brighton that evening, but I only just got around to sifting through the many photos I took.  So let me take you back to June 3 and the jubilistic celebrations going on in South Bank, London…

The London Eye

This weekend marks Queen Elizabeth II’s 60th year as the sovereign of England.  To celebrate, everyone has a four day weekend!  Events throughout the weekend have been planned, and today I went into London to watch the over 1000 boat flotilla down the Thames, lead by the Queen and royal family (well, the rowers actually went first – which makes a lot of sense when you think about it!).

I have to say that I feel pretty darn lucky to be here and take part in this historic event.  After all, how often will I get to witness and take part in a time when the people of Britain are decking themselves out in flags, face paint, and generally celebrating who they are?  It was awesome!

I arrived in London around noon, and decided to make my way over to South Bank by tube.  The train stations have been decorated with many flags to celebrate the occasion (bunting!), as was China Town near Les Mis yesterday (see http://theadventureisafoot.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/and-the-world-was-a-song-and-the-song-was-exciting/)!  Why South bank?  You see, there is also a world street food festival going on during the long weekend over in South Bank.  Does it come as any surprise that I then found myself there?

“They’ll call me freedom, just like a waving flag”

As I left Waterloo station and made my way to the river, already hundreds of people were lined up and waiting.  Knowing I had a few hours before it began, I figured out where the street food was first.  I’d like to say “I followed my nose”…but it really came down to some helpful “you are here” signs and a general idea of where it was.  Though not huge like you may be picturing from the word “festival”, it still had a good amount of stands.  As a chronic sufferer of indecisiveness, the more manageable size was actually a very good thing.

By the time I examined every stand and took pictures, I was beginning to get hungry again.  And so, it was decision time – and this time it came surprisingly easy!  Though everything looked and smelled wonderful, I went with one of the foods that had stood out to me as I wandered.  So I found myself with this intriguing looking thing called a chicken bastilla.

A chicken bastilla is both savory and sweet, having chicken, almond, and cinnamon in an orange blossom sauce, wrapped up in flaky pastry.  Readers, it was a delectable choice; I’m very glad to have been able to try another new, interesting, and tasty food.  And so, if you ever stumble across a chicken bastilla yourselves, I would definitely recommend going for it!

And right in the middle, there? That be the tasty food item I settled on…

The South Bank Festival Center is right there as well, which was great for multiple reasons.  The first of which being the availability of free, and clean, bathrooms.  They were also showing the Flotilla on two screens in their ballroom area, free, being broadcast by BBC 1.  This would come into play later…

I happened to be in there right as things were starting and watched the Queen enter the boat she would be trekking down the Thames in.  After watching that bit, I went back outside, to the riverfront, and walked up and down trying to find a decent spot or push my way through.  Unfortunately, my conscience felt it would be wrong of me to cut in front of the people who had been waiting there as I stuffed my face with delicious Moroccan food.  So I found a little niche for myself in front of lovely, slightly older couple and behind a lot of people taller than me.

Taken on my very tip toes and arm raised as high as possible. Not bad, really!

Oh well, at least I could see a bit of the river here or there standing on my tip toes.  And so, we played the waiting game.  The Flotilla started at Battersea Park, and was ending at Tower Bridge; South Bank was right about on the middle, so by the time I found my spot to stand we were waited for nearly an hour and half before the first boats (the hundreds of rowers – props to them!) came under the Golden Jubilee Bridge and into view.

The most eventful thing to happen while waiting were the two people who managed to climb trees lining the walk along the river.  A cheer went up when the first guy got up, followed by another when a girl (risking her white pants – brave one, she was), climbed up the next tree down.  It was all good for a minute…until the cops came.  (Cue the booing crowd)

We had been waiting and waiting for the boats to reach us – and then this happened.

The girl had to climb down which we all thought was a bummer.  It was another couple minutes before they realized the guy was in another tree, however his story ended no differently than the girl’s.  Well, someone had started a short chant of “higher, higher” before the kid finally made his way back down.  The police took him back to chat with him, but when he was released and made it back to our area, he was the hero of the moment!

Finally, close to 4 pm, the first rowers made their way under the bridge and rowed past us.  There were flags from all over the world represented on the boats, but especially those of the British Commonwealth.  And of course the Union Jack and Flag of England were fairly prominent as well.  People pushed as close to the rail as they could, but, as one person near me pointed out, at least being so close was keeping us all warm!

You had to admire these rowers for their effort and being the least protected from the cold and the drizzle!

The Queen went by about fifteenth minutes into it, and the crowd cheered, waved, blew horns, and held up flags.  There were people with paper masks of the Royal family, these clever mirror things for people to see higher up, painted cheeks, nails, even lipstick flag designs, flags worn like capes, hats, glasses, and more!  Despite the crowd, I stood on tip toes and did my best to get some good pictures and see what I could with my own eyes.

The Royal Family’s ride; the Queen is in white at the center of the boat. Cheers went up and hands/flags were waving as it passed

When the Queen went by I did take out my iPad to get a video, and used that for the next 15 or 20 minutes to take more photos.  It was nice, actually, because I could hold it up and then see what was on the river clearly through looking up at the screen.

Some people behind me thought the same thing as I heard kids go from, “Mum I can’t see!” to “Mum, look!  I can see everything from the iPad!”.  A guy not too far away had been doing that as well, to the appreciation of those behind him.  So, especially because of the kids, I felt compelled to hold the iPad up for as long as I could to provide a view for them.

And while it had been sort of sprinkling when the boats started coming our way, it now began to rain harder.  Having seen the Queen and stood in a crowd for 3 hours, I felt I could treat myself to a dessert from the street food festival.

I was debating between the churros con chocolate or a brownie from Outsider Tart (whom I had seen at the Foodie’s Festival and gotten an awesome monster cookie from).  I opted for the brownie, getting their most popular one, “the Hepburn”.  The Hepburn was a chocolate (extreme chocolate!) and cinnamon brownie and it was so good.  I devoured, yet savored it, appreciating the cinnamon and cinnamon chips in it, which went so well with the dark chocolate!

Outsider Tart is two for two in my book

Brownie in hand, the rain was really coming down at this point.  So I made my way back to the festival center where I enjoyed watching the remainder of the boats on the two large screens (where I was as the Flotilla began).  I’m so glad I did stay to catch the rest, too!  The last boat was the Philharmonic Orchestra and choir boat, and they played and sang some very British songs and fanfare.

The very last one was “God Save the Queen” to which everyone in the room stood up and sang.  All in all, it was very neat and I’m glad to have taken advantage of my being there during the celebration.  Now I’m heading back to Sussex to rest up for day two of the Jubilee festivities – so stay tuned!

Well, readers, what do you think?  I hope I’ve painted a decent picture of one of the main events of the weekend in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II.  I promise to have day two of the Jubilee weekend up soon, in which there was a huge concert featuring many big name British musicians.

Time for me to sign out and get a good night sleep so I’m up and at em’ for my poster session at a history symposium tomorrow!  Happy weekend – and to those of you students reading this, take a deep breath, keep calm and carry on (had to be done!).  Thanks for reading, cheers!  Until then…

Mischief managed

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Erin and I venture to Coxwell station to get here. We walked down the street a bit and reach Walima Cafe. The atmosphere was really nice and cozy. I felt at any moment a belly dancer out. I love the music! Highly recommend this place!

Moroccan Mint Tea – Sweet and Refreshing* I highly recommend this !

Tagines – Lamb Shank Berner Tagine with seasonal vegetable. – Very Savy and the lamb was cooked perfectly. I love this dish. The lamb just fall off the bone and the meat is very tender. I highly recommend it.
Chicken Bastilla – wrapped in crispy pastry pie, sweetened almonds, shredded chicken, eggs, onions and sprinkled with powered sugar and Cinnamon. – I enjoy this, but it is my cup of tea. The sugar and the cinnamon was delicious combined with chicken. It has a very good texture and a unique taste. I would highly recommend it.

I was hoping that this visit was going to be en par with a recent visit to another Moroccan eatery in the Dupont Circle area.  Some friends and I had originally planned to have brunch in another location on the same street on a freezing Sunday afternoon.  After being told that the wait was around 40 minutes and in the state of famish that we were in, we hauled ourselves down the street and walked through the doors of Marrakesh P Street Restaurant.  It is located on the former spot of a seedy gay bar that was renowned for its campy drag shows.    However, with some dramatic cosmetic transformation (yes, pun intended), the location has taken on a new look and feel, far from its former life.

Walking into the foyer, you are immediately whisked away to North Africa with its terra-cotta colored and tiled walls, plush deep-red velvet cushions on a sitting area, and exotic brass ware everywhere including the perforated overhead light fixtures.   The dining rooms are divided into the lower casual eating section and the upper “blue room” reserved for dinners.  Small mosaic fountains and large urns are placed around the space evoking a sense of distant exoticism and beauty.   Perusing the menu, the dishes are divided into simple and understandable sections: Hot Tapas, Cold Tapas, Couscous, Tagines, and Brochettes.

It is rare that you will come across a restaurant that is open for lunch on Sunday and offering a 3-course lunch special ($12.95) on the weekend.  The first course is a choice of Harira soup or a salad – I chose the soup, suitable for the cold weather.   This traditional soup is made with tomato, lentils, chickpeas, bulgur wheat (I suspect), saffron, cilantro and ginger.  With the first spoonful, the broth tasted rich and complex from the spices and herbs, while the grains and beans added body and heartiness to this wonderful starter – just the perfect entrance to this exotic cuisine.

On another visit, I decided to try a medley of cold tapas as the starter - the Combo Salad.  It arrived with spinach that had been cooked with garlic and preserved lemon; roasted eggplant cooked with fresh tomato, garlic and cilantro; and a carrot salad prepared with garlic, cilantro, and preserved lemon.  This trio was very flavorful, and the dish points to a kitchen that takes great care in its dish preparation.  There was a level of soulfulness in these simple vegetables that matched perfectly with the crusty yet fluffy Moroccan traditional bread that provided the willing backdrop and vehicle to the savory vegetable dips.

For the hot tapas, I decided to go the traditional route and order one of Morocco’s most recognizable dishes – Chicken Pastry or Bastilla.  Baked Phylo dough has been stuffed with a mixture of chicken, egg, and almonds, topped with a dusting of powdered sugar and cinnamon.    This concoction is a study of contrast between the crispy dough and the rather moist filling, the sweet and savory flavors, with the hint of cinnamon adding a certain exotic earthiness to this appetizer.   I have eaten various versions of this dish over the years and although the stuffing was a bit dry (the traditional use of pigeon would make it more moist), it was definitely well-made and worth every bite that I enjoyed.

Moroccan cooking is renowned for its Tagine dishes that have been cooked in domed clay pots.  With this in mind, I decided to order the Chicken Tagine that was part of the 3-course lunch special (the other choice was Vegetable Couscous).  The breast was cooked in a sauce that was flavored with pickled lemons, olives, and a cornucopia of exotic spices that made the sauce very flavorful and delectable, enough for me to wipe up every drop with the spongy bread.   The slices of pickled lemon rind and olives added the brininess and fruit-like notes to the already flavor-packed dish.  I have had this dish before in other restaurants and this rendition was perhaps one of the best that I have eaten.

For the Couscous section, my dining companion ordered the Couscous Royal.  Sitting on a bed of the perfectly steamed pasta grains were spicy Merguez lamb sausage, chicken, lamb, zucchini, squash, carrots, chickpeas and fava beans.  The pieces of meat cooked in a tasty broth were fork-tender, along with the well-cooked large pieces of sweet vegetables that were quite soft but not mushy.  A few forkfuls from this dish confirmed to me that the kitchen really cares about the cooking and is skilful in preparing these traditional Moroccan dishes.  This is another must-order from the menu along with the Chicken Tagine.

The final course for the lunch special was a Fruit Cocktail.  In most places, such dessert would be a banal mix of fruits that would leave the taster rather nonplussed.   However, this restaurant’s version was a mixture of fresh cantaloupe, melon, pineapple, sweet strawberries, and plump blackberries.   It is indeed refreshing to have a fresh fruit salad that has been slightly sweetened by a light syrup perfumed by a heady orange blossom water, especially in the midst of winter.   The traditional dessert of Moroccan pastries were not available during the last visit, but I have enjoyed such dessert fare there in the past and the sweets were good.  A cup of the customary sweet mint tea was also a perfect end to this wonderful meal.

The dishes that I tasted at Marrakesh P Street Restaurant were a far cry from those that I tried at the other eatery mentioned in the opening paragraph, which will remain nameless and unreviewed.   However, here the dishes were flavor-packed, skillfully executed, and full of Moroccan tasty exoticness.   With this Northern African soul food, this restaurant managed to stir my taste buds and whole being with its traditional offerings that Moroccan cuisine is known for, very much like a belly dancer with her exotic, smooth, and alluring gyrations.  But unlike its former life as a drag show venue, this restaurant truly delivers the real McCoy, at least food wise.  I will indeed be revisiting this place in the future for more of the real stuff found in its wonderful authentic offerings.

Those are a couple pictures from the restaurant in Epcot. We had belly dancing entertainment and Aladdin and Jasmine came to eat dinner with us too. It was a very cool experience!

I was really intimidated by the work of this recipe, but really it was a lot of fun and not all that hard!

My recipe for Chicken B’stillia:

1 Chicken roaster, about 5lbs

1 sweet onion, chopped coarsely

1 bay leaf

1 box  good chicken stock- I use the low sodium Pacific Organic

Water as needed

Garlic

A dash of turmeric

Rosemary, Thyme, and Sage

Combine all together in the crock pot and cook in for 10-12 hours (I cook the chicken the day before so that after it cools, I shred it and put it in the fridge along with the left over stock in the bottom of the crock pot.)

When the chicken cools, take off the skin and shred it to fine pieces, which doesn’t take much since the crock pot pretty much took care of that. Put chicken in fridge until needed.
If you put the liquid stock from the cock pot in the fridge the night before it will be jelly like, that is completely ok, just put  1.5 cups of stock into a small pot and cook over medium-high heat until reduced to about 3/4 or so cups of stock. Reserve for later

Liquid from crock pot, Chicken Stock

3 tbsps butter

1.2 an onion processed in the food processor or magic bullet till it is mush

½ sweet onion processed the same

3 large cloves of garlic, minced

Combine these ingredients in a large pot and sauté for about 10 minutes over medium heat.
While the above is cooking, combine all the following ingredients in a bowl:

1.5 cups minced cilantro

3/4 cup minced parsley

2 tablespoons cinnamon

1 tablespoon turmeric

2 tsps kosher salt- if you are using regular broth I would omit this completely or only use a ½ tsp.

1.5 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger

1.5 tsps fresh-cracked black pepper

1 cup dried currants

Herb Mix

It’s really important that you choose high quality fresh herbs… dried ones just will not do for this recipe! It will help meld the flavors and give even taste through out.

When the onions are sautéed nicely add the above herb mixture and combine together cooking for a minute or two.

about 3/4 cups of chicken stock (the reduced stuff)

plus reserved chicken

Turn heat off and add chicken broth, then the shredded chicken and combine till everything is coated well and mixed nicely. You should taste it in case it needs a little salt or pepper, but it should be fine.

Add chicken stock to herb and onion mixture

Add chicken to mixture- I mashed any large chunks left over

4 large eggs, beaten thoroughly

Combine the 4 beaten eggs, and mix again till everything is combined. You can pop this in the fridge the day before, or just until you are ready to put it into the pan

Add eggs and mix together

Use a 10 or 11 inch spring form pan for this pie. It will make everything so much easier!

1/2 cup melted butter

2 sheets Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry sheets, which is what I used and found it to work really well, the original calls for Phyllo dough but this is a serious pie and I found this to work better

Butter the bottom and sides of your spring form pan and then lay one sheet on the bottom and press out till it comes up the sides a little. You will have 4 corners sticking up and that is ok just leave them there! You will place the top sheet on so the top corners fit into the spaces to form a complete surround.

Fill the dough with your chicken filling and smooth out, but not to the edges, it will be a mound shape. Thicker in the center.

Place the second sheet on top, opposite of how the bottom was places, press the corners down into the spaces and then pull up the bottom corners to seal it and pinch any open gaps closed.

Top the entire thing with lots of melted butter, make sure that it’s almost saturated! You can also put this into the fridge all closed up if you are doing other things, and just pop it in the oven when ready!

Butter it all up!

Bake it for 55 minutes, or until caramel brown, in a 350 degree oven.

½ cup of powdered sugar

1 or 2 tablespoons cinnamon

Combine in a bowl for sifting over the pie right before it is ready to be served. You can dust it over the entire pie after you release the spring form, and then again once it is plated for an all over dusting sugar. It is really important that you do not skip this step!

Chicken B’stillia is usually served as an appetizer so before I started working on the B’stillia I cut cubes of New York strip, parsnips, carrots, mushrooms and left over onion and garlic mash in a bag, filled with some chicken broth, marsala wine, bay leaves, salt, pepper, and tumeric, popped it into the fridge and let it marinade for a few hours.

When the B’stillia was in the oven I threw it into a big deep skillet and let it simmer

Marinade bag dumped into skillet

After the B’stillia came out of the oven, I let it rest took a cup of juices from the steak “stew” and boiled it in another pot, and added a cup of couscous, let sit for 5 minutes, and fluffed, plated, and topped with the steak mixture.

Classic Moroccan dish

Our Dinner set up =)

So that was our dinner! It was a lot of continuous work, but it was very very worth it!! It makes me want to visit Morocco badly! Maybe that will be our next traveling adventure =)

I hope you all had a fantastic Valentine’s day! I think this may be a new tradition of ours!