Chicken with vodka sauce

Tonight is my last night home. I cheated.

Got chicken breasts on clearance at Target, had husband get vodka sauce from George's Pizzeria and I added frozen spinach and broccoli. I'm serving over rice cooked in my homemade chicken stock.

Fig marmalade

Bear with me here...

Yesterday I got a much needed haircut. I had a little more than a half hour before I needed to retrieve my husband from the office for lunch.

I stopped at the Mediterranean Deli because it was Friday and Friday is lamb shawarma day and I never manage to get there before they sell out.

I did yesterday. Talk about a great start to the weekend.

While I was waiting for my sandwiches, I bought yogurt, zaatar bread, hummus, medjool dates and pita. 

Then I grabbed a jar of fig marmalade.

Delicious. If I may state the obvious, it's like eating fig newtons without the cake. But what surprised me was the nutritional info:

1 tablespoon =

• 10 g sugar (5% RDA)

• 40 % RDA vitamin C

• 2 % RDA calcium

• 25 % RDA iron

Steak and pepper egg sandwich

My husband suggested cheese steaks for dinner except we didn't have rolls or much cheese...

So we brainstormed and came up with chip steak and three colors of peppers made into an omelette and served on half a bagel with salsa.

We were low on bagels too. 

Sweet potato chili

Preliminary tastes have suggested this will be a blend of sweet and spicy.

- About 1/2 large can peeled italian plum tomatoes mashed

- garlic powder

- cumin

- tons of chili powder

- paprika

- about 1/4 cup lemon juice

Bring to boil

Add

- 40 ounces sweet potatoes in syrup, mashed

- about one cup no salt white great northern beans

- two 15.5 ounce cans reduced sodium black beans

Simmer until dinner

Somali style chicken and eggs

I came across suqaar with eggs and loolah on a somali cooking blog this morning and couldn't let it go.

Except suqaar= beef cubes.

So I used chicken.

And I didn't have the right spices.

But not following directions is a specialty of mine.

I started by chopping three chicken breasts and browning them. Then I added a couple tablespoons oil with parsley, garlic powder, cumin and paprika. 

Next I separated peeled plum tomatoes from a can with my fingers. Four. Poured in some extra juice. When that cooked, I added the eggs.

Lohah

If you've read the early posts of this blog, you'll know that at one point I made, from scratch, 90% of my family's bread products.

Today, I went to google the name of a specific flatbread and I stumbled upon lohah, the Djiboutian/Somali/Yemeni bread that is a cross between a pita and a pancake.

I felt inspired. I scanned some recipes from the Internet and decided to have at it.

Phase one: the dough

Ingredients

• about 2 teaspoons yeast

• about four cups warm water

• a hearty squirt of honey (about two teaspoons sugar of whatever form-- you want to feed the yeast)

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• about 1/2 teaspoon salt (I got fancy and used my pink Himalayan salt)

• about four cups flour (I used organic, unbleached Gold Medal that I found on clearance at Target for $2.94 for a five pound bag; I read this should be made with sourgum flour which I have worked with in the past. My friend said it requires millet.)

Now, this is a fermented dough. You stir it up and leave it sit. At least 30 minutes. I'm aiming for 2 hours. I covered it with a dish towel, dampened with warm water and set it near the cracked oven door. The oven had been 350 degrees previously. I'm trying to mimic the warmth and humidity of East Africa.

I let it rise two hours, and it presented with some fabulous volume.

At this point, the directions said to stir as a form of kneading. I did so, pleased to find a great blobby, elastic texture. Volume fell by about 1/3 at this point.

The next rise will be about an hour. I'm winging it. 

Mine got really stringy-- fry until bubbly and mostly dry on one side and cover the pan for a little bit more to finish.

Vacation via food

We visited two local restaurants for the first time. Posted on my web site, angelackerman.com: http://bit.ly/1J76Lp8

George's Pizzeria, penne with vodka sauce

Full of Crêpe, Triple S