Harissa Chicken in Soured Cream Crust & Spiced Lamb Koftas
We rented a house (that word is used liberally) on Crete for a month in 1973.
Our first passport for our year in Israel. I’m sure my Nonnie and/or Dee Dee made those matching dresses.
Once a pain / always a pain. My uncle once described me as “Donald Trump as a toddler”. Oof. (This was pre-presidency, but still….)
This was pre-Israel so this rockin’ caftan was not from there. But, look how foxy Mom is! (This is the type of thing she would wear to her dinner parties.)
What do you crave when you are hiking and camping north of 13,000 feet for 20+ days in Colorado? Well, I wouldn’t personally know. But, according to my sporty daughter she craved spanakopita! My husband is out of town and my daughter asked that we do something together on Wednesday night. Thinking about my own “Girls Dinner” memories with Mom when Dad was out of town, I proposed that we eat out. My daughter suggested a local Greek restaurant named Opa!, which I had forgotten about. It’s got a great breezy courtyard (if you are wondering, the breeze is entirely fabricated - it is a SWAMP in Texas right now), it’s walking distance from our house, and it serves the classics. We got dolmas, hummus (my baby food - more about that below), and, you guessed it, spanakopita! As we chowed down I regaled Luca with stories about brushing endless layers of filo pastry with butter and rolling hundreds of grape leaves for Mom’s cocktail parties. That lady would put us to work! But, my sister and I had a taste for these flavors and could understand why it was all worth it.
How did we have that taste? Well, when I was one year old my dad got the offer to spend a year teaching in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University. What did he teach? I’m pretty sure he taught about the American South. I know he will correct me if not. It’s fascinating how many different people are interested in something that I basically take for granted. This topic has granted my parents teaching and speaking opportunities all over the world. Thanks, rednecks! (I’m not even joking, Dad was one of the first to write about Southern stereotypes, check out his book Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy.)
While in Israel we did a lot of traveling around Europe and the Middle East. Of course there was a freaking WAR going on. !!! But, ever the adventurers, my parents thought that was great because it weeded out the tourists and we had the attractions all to ourselves. Well, the war wasn’t great but they saw a silver lining in the situation. We spent a few weeks on the Greek island of Crete in a farm hut with no running water. Apparently we all got the stomach flu. Can you imagine?! I was too prissy to travel internationally with my kid until she was 6. I was worried about disrupting her sleep schedule. And, here you have two 30 year old parents with a baby and a 4 year old traipsing around a war zone and roughing it pre-AirBnB. They were made of tough stuff, that John and Dale!
We brought a lot from the year abroad back with us to North Carolina. The bad stuff? Possibly a little bit of trauma, ha ha. As a reasonably woo woo parent now, I do have to wonder about air raids affecting our developing nervous systems (!). The good stuff? Well, there was so much: a sense of adventure, a knowledge of the Greek alphabet (actually I mainly learned that in the car going to Tennessee), a broadened palate (my sister made hummus for lunch after church most Sundays), and some *really* groovy clothes for Mom. Mom and Dad used to love to have formal dinner parties with their friends. The ladies would wear long dresses. Mom’s solution was often to wear one of her gorgeous, embroidered Middle Eastern dresses. Think: the ultimate boho chic!
Mom also brought back a lot of cool jewelry. She had amber beads with bugs trapped in them, stuff made from Roman coins, lots of chunky things that would now be considered “statement” necklaces. I’m not sure how it came about but one day she loaded up all of her jewelry into an Igloo cooler and brought it to my elementary school for a presentation. It was kind of embarrassing but also kind of cool. I remember being conflicted that she was wearing a checkered wool mini skirt and knee-high boots. It seemed too hip. Now I think that it is AWESOME that she was wearing a checkered wool mini skirt and knee-high boots. (Much like how my daughter must feel about me in my ever-present, ill-fitting yoga pants, amiright?!) Now, back to that Igloo cooler. It was a fixture of my childhood, we took it to every BBQ and picnic. It was blue and white. You know the one, you push the button on the side and the top swivels over? Ours had the large letters “REED” written in Sharpie on the side. I always thought my parents were just unusually protective of their cooler, but it turns out there is a bit of a back story to it. Apparently, it used to have someone else’s name on it and Dad wrote over that (hence the SIZE of REED). Evidently, one night some students in the house next door were having a noisy party. Mom and Dad spied out the window growing increasingly annoyed. At some point the party spilled over into *our* yard and some yahoo parked his igloo cooler at the base of one of our trees. Well, I’ll be damned if Dale Reed didn’t sneak out and steal it! Dad says that he and Mom spent the rest of the evening watching with amusement while the guy stumbled around the yard looking for his lost treasure. Dad reports that he still has the cooler.
So, for today’s recipe I thought I would actually give you two. I went through Mom’s files and came up with a Mediterranean chicken dish which uses harissa (which I discovered is actually Tunisian) as well as Turkish lamb kofta recipe. I’m not down much for lamb so you could probably substitute beef. Who knows about vegetarian meat substitute? I think it wouldn’t be sticky enough but I may try it and will report back!
HARISSA CHICKEN IN SOURED CREAM CRUST
(recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi)
** sorry it’s metric!
The richness of the crust is balanced here by the preserved lemon, olives and spicy harissa. Serve this pie warm, just with salad, or wait for it to cool down and set properly, and take it on a picnic. To save yourself work, substitute the crust with some bought-in, all-butter shortcrust pastry.
Serves 6-8.
8 chicken thighs, boned, skinned and cut into 2cm pieces
2 tbsp good-quality harissa paste
About 80ml olive oil
Salt and white pepper
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1.5cm dice
2 leeks, cut into 0.5cm thick slices
2 celery sticks, cut into 0.5cm thick slices
200ml white wine
40g unsalted butter
30g flour
250ml chicken stock
1 tsp ground coriander
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
4 tbsp coriander leaves, chopped
2 tbsp tarragon leaves, chopped
1 tbsp preserved lemon skin, finely chopped
12 large green olives, pitted and quartered lengthways
For the pastry crust
300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
240g cold unsalted butter, diced
½ tsp salt
150g soured cream [or yogurt, labane]
Start by making the pastry for the crust.
Mix together the flour, butter and salt, and work to a fine crumb by hand or in a food processor.
Add the soured cream and work just until the pastry comes together; it can be quite soft.
Smooth out the dough with a little flour, flatten to a thick disc, cover with clingfilm and
Chill for at least an hour.
Place the chicken pieces in a mixing bowl, along with half the harissa, a tablespoon of oil and some salt and pepper.
Heat three tablespoons of oil in a large, heavy-based pan.
Gently sauté the carrots on medium heat for four minutes without browning,
Add the leeks and celery, and sauté for two minutes more, again without browning. Transfer the veg to a large bowl.
Sear the chicken pieces in the same pan in two batches, adding more oil if needed, then add to the veg bowl.
Pour any remaining oil out of the pan and deglaze it with wine.
Reduce the wine until only about two tablespoons of liquid remain, then strain it into the bowl.
Wipe the pan clean, place it over a medium-high heat and melt the butter.
Add the flour and cook for a minute, stirring vigorously.
Whisk in the stock and some salt and pepper; still whisking, cook until the sauce is thick and bubbling.
Continue cooking and whisking for about 10 minutes, then add the sauce to the chicken bowl.
Stir in the spices, herbs, preserved lemon, olives and remaining harissa, and leave to cool down.
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
Line a 22cm loose-based cake tin with baking parchment.
Roll out two-thirds of the pastry into a large disc and line the base and sides of the tin, leaving a little bit of pastry hanging over the edges.
Rest the case in the fridge for a few minutes to set, then line it with more baking paper and fill up with baking beans.
Bake for 25 minutes, carefully remove the beans and paper, and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown.
Remove from the oven and leave to cool down.
Roll out the remaining pastry to make a round lid and chill for a few minutes.
Fill the baked pastry case with the chicken mix and, using a small serrated knife, carefully trim the edge so that it's half a centimetre above the filling.
Place the lid on top and seal it to the baked pastry with your fingertips, trimming off any excess.
Make a little cross in the middle with the tip of a knife.
Return the pie to the oven and bake for 35-45 minutes, until it goes nice and brown all over. Leave to cool down for at least 20 minutes before serving.
SPICED LAMB KOFTAS
(recipe from Delia Smith - Mom apparently transcribed this from TV, which I find adorable)
For 6
1 ½ lbs minced lamb
dry roast and grind spices, to end up with
1 ½ tsp coriander and 1 ½ tsp cumin
chop finely in processor
a very large onion
1 ½ tbsp fresh mint leaves
1 ½ tbsp fresh coriander leaves
add to meat and spices
salt and pepper,
stir thoroughly
make balls a little bigger than a walnut (24)
brown quite well, 6 at a time, so they are crunchy
SAUCE:
med onion, chopped small, sauteed in tbsp olive oil till soft
add 2 minced cloves garlic
1 ½ red ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped
add one stick cinnamon
add meatballs
simmer very gently, lid on, ½ hour
remove cover, simmer another half hour until sauce is thick.
Put in warm deep serving bowl.
She served with roasted yellow pepper halves filled with pilaf of rice, currants, onions etc, and a grated zucchini [grated, salted well in colander until liquid is out, rinsed , squeezed in hands then in tea towel till dry] and potato cake thing [potatoes boiled 5 minutes then grated](w/ beaten egg, feta, maybe more mint), floured, [chill if done early], melted butter on top, baked till golden and crunchy. And greek orange and honey cake.
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