Why try? The exotic aromas and comforting flavors of this delicious tagine will transport you to North Africa’s Mediterranean shores with every bite.

Image: The Food Channel

Though the number of ingredients in this recipe may appear daunting, the dish can be assembled quickly. Only the onion, preserved lemons, cilantro and parsley require knife work; the rest of the work is just measuring. All the ingredients should be available at your local supermarket with the exception of the preserved lemons, which may be purchased at specialty stores or can be easily prepared at home (though they can take weeks to become fully preserved). Click here for The Food Channel Preserved Lemons recipe.

This is a great dish to serve company. The combination of spices is a bit off the beaten path, so it will please the foodies on your guest list. However, all the flavors are familiar, so it won’t scare off any guests with conservative palates.

Foodie Byte: To reduce the spicy-heat of this dish, cut back on the cayenne pepper. Though the tagine is a one-pot meal, it is even more delicious served over basmati rice or couscous.

Prep Time: 3 1/2 hours
Cook Time: 1 hour
Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 8 small chicken thighs, bone in, skin on (approx. 3 pounds total)
• 2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
• 1½ tablespoons ground black pepper
• 2 teaspoons turmeric
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 5 tablespoons + 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion sliced 1/8 inch thin
• ½ cup flat leaf parsley, chopped
• ½ cup + 2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 can (14 oz) chick peas, drained
• 1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes, drained
• 1½ preserved lemons, rinsed, pulp removed, cut into strips 1/8th inch wide
• 1 cup kalamata olives

Preparation

1. Rinse chicken, pat dry and set aside.
2. Mix together salt, coriander, cinnamon, cumin, cayenne pepper, black pepper, turmeric and garlic powder. Stir in 5 tablespoons olive oil. Coat chicken with spice/oil mixture, place on a plate, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 3 hours.
3. Remove chicken from marinade, reserving any marinade left on the plate.
4. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown chicken on both sides, in batches if necessary, approximately 5 minutes per side. Transfer to a clean plate.
5. Add onions to the Dutch oven and cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent. Add reserved marinade, parsley, ½ cup of cilantro, lemon juice, chick peas, tomatoes, preserved lemons, olives and reserved chicken. Reduce heat to medium-low and cover.
6. Cook until chicken is falling off the bone, approximately 60 minutes. Adjust seasonings to taste and sprinkle with remaining cilantro. Serve 2 thighs and a few large spoonfuls of the chunky sauce per person. Serve over basmati rice or couscous if desired.

This recipe is part of The Food Channel’s Holiday Gifts for Food Lovers series.

Post from: Blisstree

Chicken Tagine

There’s a chill in the air, and Halloween is just around the corner. This fall holiday has increasingly become one of the most popular American celebrations. It’s come a long way from just trick-or-treating. Adults love the spooky atmosphere, as well as the chance to dress up and pretend to be someone else for an evening. Throwing a creepy party for your friends takes some effort, but you might just find yourself hosting it annually after the first one.

Image: sxc.hu

Setting the scene is one of the most important things to do for your Halloween party. Decide if you want it to be goofy, spooky, or downright creepy. I prefer spooky, so I have furry bats, ghosts, and witches hanging from the ceiling. Homemade Jack-o-lanterns (or store bought ones) play a part in the much needed mood lighting, as well as the flicker light bulbs that mimic real flames. Candles are always great mood lighting, and now you can even use flame-less candles in luminaries, a great way to show the path to the bathroom.

Make sure you don’t neglect the bathroom when you are decorating. Everyone will end up in there at some time during the night. It’s the perfect place to change out your light bulbs for black lights and have a cackling motion sensor to give your guests a little scare.

Inside or out, strings of lights are becoming a common sight for Halloween. In addition to the usual colors, look for some peeper lights to put on the trees or shrubs by your house. The pairs of eyes flash independently. They turn your front yard into a haunted forest. Add some fake tombstones, lit carved pumpkins, and a few luminaries to lead your guests into your lair. You can add a surprise pirate that has a motion senor that lowers it to talk up close with your guests.

Each year, add a few pieces to your collection, and before you know it you’ll have more than enough to make your own little haunted house. Don’t forget to check the sales after Halloween. Items are usually marked down by half off or more. I pack them up with the decorations I used that year. When I open up the storage box the next year, I’ve left myself the perfect Halloween surprise!

If you don’t have any decorations yet and are on a tight budget, get some construction paper, brown paper lunch bags and some scissors. You can cut out bats, pumpkins, and ravens to tape on your walls and doors from black construction paper, and make luminaries out of the paper bags. Even Martha Stewart is doing groupings of plain, black silhouettes in her Halloween collection this year.

Another one of my favorite bargain decorations is to make scary face luminaries. Use aluminum foil and tear off a piece long enough to go around a small bowl or salad plate. Place it on your face and lightly press the foil to get the landscape of your eyes, nose and mouth. Once you take it off, mold the foil so that the features are more pronounced. Cut holes where the mouth and pupils would be. Tape this around a bowl or plate and light a candle to create scary monster luminaries.

Now that you have the perfect atmosphere, you need to think about a drink that fits your theme. Food2.com has some great cocktail recipes to get you started. Candy Corn Cordial, Split Your Melon Open, Bobbing for Apples or Thyme Martini are all worth considering. If you are looking for a non-alcoholic drink for your guests, think about trying out Martha Stewart’s Shrunken Heads in Cider without the rum. It does double duty as a perfect table decoration and a tasty drink.

Set up your Halloween snacks on dark plates to add to the mood. My two favorite styles are made by Noritake, Black Pepper and Stone Charcoal. The black plates and serving platter are great to show off your green guacamole dip and they even make Cheetos look like a fancy treat. You can search on Food Network or Martha Stewart’s site for tons of Halloween recipes to surprise your friends with. Just make sure that they are still appetizing as well as creepy or you’ll find yourself with tons of leftover food!

Dress up and put on some scary music to make sure you’re in the Halloween mood. After all it’s your party, so make sure to enjoy it.

Post from: Blisstree

Set the Scene for Halloween

I live in an apartment, but I have a patio area and when I’m entertaining, we always end up out front. I have set it up to be as garden-y as possible with lots of plants and two small seating areas. When the weather allows, I pull out a portable fire pit and we sit around the fire.

I found this Summer Living® Slate Party Bucket for about 50% off at Kohls. It’s portable, so perfect for the patio. When the weather changes and Winter arrives, it will be easy to store. It is 28 inches high and the insert is made of a lacquered copper. The frame is steel.

Fill the insert with ice and some Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, brewed down the road from me, and you are good to go. 

Image credit: Kohls.com

Post from: Blisstree

Summer Living Bargains

Gramercy Tavern Cocktail Mixes
Suggested retail $15.95, on sale for $5.99

The Cranberry Daiquiri mix and the Gramercy Parksider mix are both included in this sale. The Cranberry mix is a combination of cranberry and orange juice that match well with dark rum. The Parksider is meant to mix with either vodka or gin. It contains a mixture of basil and lime, sweetened with sugar.

Eleven Madison Park Cocktail Mix in Spiced Pineapple Cooler
Suggested retail $15.95, on sale for $5.99

A bright combination of pineapple, lemon, and spices. Goes great with rum.  Sounds like the sort of cocktail you’d find on a tropical vacation. Yum.

Margarita Caddy
Suggested retail $29.00, on sale for $9.99

The caddy contains a combo of three mixes: Lemon Lime, Mixed Berry, and Mango. Lemon Lime features the juice of Key limes and Eureka lemons, with a touch of orange. The Berry contains strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, and blueberry juices. Mango features exotic Alphonso mangoes from India.

The Margarita Caddy collection would be a great gift for your host. Each bottle makes between 3-4 margaritas.

Image credit: Williams-Sonoma.com

Post from: Blisstree

Big Savings At Williams-Sonoma

To be honest, it wasn’t a total disaster. I just violated some common sense rules of hosting. Like, stay within your comfort zone. We hosted a couple we only barely knew. They had invited us to dinner at their house in December and it took us three months to return the favor. We had a lovely time then. But because of holidays and illnesses, we just couldn’t synch our schedules until last weekend. The problem with hosting people you only barely know is that if disaster happens – like the food getting burned or the kitchen catching fire – you can’t really laugh it off because these new folks don’t know you well enough to understand that doing something stupid is just your nature. And so, they may end up talking about “the disastrous night at the Journeys” for years to come. Thus, it sometimes is best to plan dinners out until you know your guests are comfortable with any dinner disasters that may arise. 

I began cooking early in the afternoon – browning diced pancetta and ground chuck, veal and pork (it needed to cook 45 minutes in order to form a crust) and then toasting and grinding my own juniper berries for Frank Stitt’s Bolognese, as published in his new book Bottega Favorita. I had made the dish before and it is fabulous. What I didn’t realize is that one of our guests grew up in an Italian household. I discovered this tidbit when he announced that there are only a few Italian restaurants where he will actually go eat because he grew up eating good Italian food. I should have remembered this from December, but I didn’t. His last name is SMITH, for crissake. So I violated another rule of entertaining – don’t prepare foods your guests are experts in eating. If you’re not from the South, don’t make Southern food for a Southerner; if you’re not from Italy, don’t make Italian food for an Italian.

Another rule I effectively violated was – don’t do something stupid. Like, say, dump the food you are about to serve your guests on the floor. I’m not sure if it was that there was almost no lip on those fabulous Z Gallerie dishes I got last year or the olive oil on the pasta, but the minute I picked up a plate in each hand, one teetered toward the hardwoods and its contents went splat on the floor. As I stood in amazement the second plate mysteriously wobbled and followed suit. I was left holding two plates with about three noodles left on each. Hearing my gasp, my husband ran into the kitchen and, like any dear husband, shot these photos.

Based on the wine glasses, you’d suspect I was blitzed. But I honestly wasn’t, and certainly not early in the evening when the dinner dumpage occurred. On a positive note, we served what was left of the pasta and talked until late into the night as their toddler slept in the bedroom and Truman quietly watched Sponge Bob in the other room until he, too, gently drifted off to sleep on the couch. I suppose we’ll see if the Smiths actually talk to us again. Until then, I’m going to stick to ordering pizza for our dinner guests.

(photo of Martha Stewart, Flickr, Art Comments)

JWJourney

Post from: Blisstree

Tips To Avoid Dinner Party Disasters

We decided to throw a Super Bowl party this year and invite over a bunch of friends and co-workers. I don’t think we’ve ever had such a large amount of people coming over in the past, so we’ve been working on our game plan for the last week, trying to make sure we’ll have enough food for everyone!

We decided to go with a large amount of snacks so that we’re not working away in the kitchen all afternoon and people can pick and choose what they want.

In the line-up are pinwheels (flour tortillas with cream cheese, green onions, turkey and spinach), buffalo wings, tortilla chips and chili dip (queso cheese dip with chili kept warm in a little crock pot), little pizza bites for the kids, peanut butter cookies, chocolate cake balls, veggies and dip, mozzarella cheese sticks and marinara, franks in a blanket and jalapeno poppers. Of course, there’ll also be lots of chips, sodas and other tasty beverages!

We’ve also asked our friends to bring their favorite treat or snack so that’s always fun to see what they’ll show up with. What’s on your menu for the Big Game?

[image: flickr]

Post from: Blisstree

Super Bowl Snacking: What’s on the Menu?

Three Foodie Obsessed readers will get the opportunity to stock their fridges with Santa Barbara Bay refrigerated dips and spreads. They’ll get five of the yummiest best-selling dips (including Artichoke Dip, Caramelized Onion & Roasted Garlic Dip, Garden Dill Dip, Spinach Dip and Chili Con Queso Dip), as well as several recipes for fun, inventive party appetizers, such as the easy, elegant five-layer dip pictured above.

With a playbook of winning recipes –- not to mention an all-star lineup of delicious dips -– each giveaway winner can be this year’s Super Bowl host with the most!

To Enter:

Leave a comment here telling me what you do Super Bowl Sunday — do you go to a party? watch at home? That’s it!

* Contest closes at 12:00 noon PST tomorrow, January 27 (so the dips can be sent to the winners on time for the Super Bowl this Sunday!). Winners will be notified by email and will have 24 hours to respond with contact information before a new winner is chosen.

* Open to US residents only.

* One entry per household. Multiple entries will all be discarded.

* Three winners will each win a selection of dips and spreads.

* All current Bloggy Giveaways at Foodie Obsessed may be entered one time each. Good luck!

Post from: Blisstree

Bloggy Giveaway: Santa Barbara Bay Dips and Spreads

Edamame “Hummus”

2 cups shelled frozen edamame, cooked per package directions
1 cup silken tofu, drained of excess liquid
1 avocado
1/2 – 1 tsp kosher salt, or to taste
3-5 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 – 1/2 cup lemon juice
2 – 3 tsp cumin
dash cayenne

Place edamame, tofu, avocado, salt, garlic, oil, lemon juice, cumin and cayenne in a food processor and process until very smooth, approximately two minutes. Season with additional salt and pepper, and add more lemon juice if desired.

For a change of pace, add a small jar of marinated artichoke hearts in with the initial processing

Post from: Blisstree

Super Bowl Snacks: Edamame “Hummus”

After writing about cooking with champagne the other day I did a little searching for some fun drink recipes.

The above video by Marie Guaragna-Beirne illustrates a simple idea for a holiday champagne punch, perfect for a New Year’s Eve get-together!

Check out other videos for artichoke dip, quick and easy appetizers, and warm raspberry brie.

Post from: Blisstree

Holiday Party Champagne Punch

I love eggnog but have yet to make it from scratch, and truth be told I don’t think I’ve ever had it with alcohol in it either!

The video above, made by Lauren Braun Costello of Gotham Caterers, makes it from scratch with a recipe used by George Washington. It uses two cups of brandy, one cup of dark rum, one cup of rye whiskey, and one cup of cream sherry!

A happy holiday indeed!

Post from: Blisstree

Eggnog the George Washington Way