Stinque Recipe Challenge

Having eaten Moroccan food at the source, let me tell you: it’s awesome! A very under-appreciated cuisine in the U.S., the fact that France is home to thousands of Moroccan restaurants should give a pretty good indication of the quality of the food.

Wow! Looks quite tasty and not too difficult.

And curses upon you for making my morning bowl of oatmeal that much less appealing. :-(

@pinkoscum: Level of difficulty = not too bad, and the result was unbelievably delicious, due in no small part to the ras al-hanut. I should have said – I used only 4 chicken breasts but made a full batch of the other stuff, which I wanted. The chicken was amazingly tender – granted, I started off with free range chicken that’s more expensive, but still. I urge you to try this.

And can I get some backup out there? Someone gonna cook this and tell me I’m sane?

@blogenfreude: I’m down, even though I’m about to go vegetarian (again!). Contemplating the ingredients of meatloaf mix will do it to you.

Oh, tried some Garam Masala in stuffed peppers in lieu of basil, used fresh moz instead of smoked — really, really nice!

Those are some honkin’ big onion slices. Did you want them that big?

@blogenfreude: It all looks delicious. To repeat: check out Claudia Roden on the subject. She’s the Elizabeth David of middle-eastern cuisine. If you can get your hands on real lamb this dish will make you cry.

I’ve been eating brown rice cooked by noted Arab Jew who haunts the house. A tablespoon of oil, heated, pine nuts toasted with vermicelli broken fine. Then rice and water (or broth) added and cooked. There is a whole ritual of cooking the rice slowly and long so that it forms a thick toasted crust lining the pot which can be upended and served like a cake with a sauce made of eggs and lemon like a hot mayonnaise. But we don’t do that. I’ve been eating the rice with fresh lima beans and baba ghanoujh (sp?) bought in a can.

You might also consider cooking the cous cous in the authentic manner. I’ve done it a few times. It involves a colander and rinsing and draining. It can be fussy but is so worth the trouble if you feel like it. The cous cous comes out like a cloud. There is a special pot, natch, I’m sure available at Zabar’s but it can be done without.

I’m surprised that this cuisine is not more popular here. It combines the best of Indian (without all that oil), and Mediterranean (fresh ‘n’ zesty).

A sloane-ranger friend of mine, who knows her way around a plate of grub, claims that the best food she ever tasted was in Syria.

@JNOV: You can cook this completely vegetarian and it’s superb. This style of food has a huge repertoire of vegetarian dishes.

Today’s brown bag lunch: cold fresh trout over brown rice and mixed greens with kalamata olives and balsamic vinegar. I wish I had some red onions when I was putting it together.

Add: caught the trout (a rainbow and a brown) on Friday in the Pecos Mountains on a gold ribbed hare’s ear nymph.

@blogenfreude: That’s not ras al-hanut, that’s salsa (sorry, trying to get some legs for the Prom meme).

Srsly, looks awesome. My dinner? PB&J on fookin white bread. I’ve eaten more white bread in six months than in 20 years prior. But also some of the best curry, so there’s that.

@Benedick: One of the best tapas I had last week was a lima bean and jamon iberico dish. Delicioso!

@redmanlaw: I’m fasting through my 2 PM doctor’s appt for a physical. I want my cholesterol numbers low so my wife will get off my case about how bad my diet is.

@Dodgerblue: Good luck with the doc.

@Dodgerblue: So glad you’ve got a handle on the healthy living thingy.

@Benedick: Excellent! My poor kid is dreading the introduction of tofu and lentils, dark greens and such into his diet, but we’ve both got two sticks of butter on crack riding skateboards to our hearts (stole that from a friend).

If anyone is interested in vegan pumpkin pasta with a pine nut dressing, let me know. The only problem I run into when I make fresh pasta is that my cats try to eat it while it’s drying. Sneaky little bastards.

@Benedick: My wife, who is 5-0 and 105 dripping wet (a situation I find very appealing) found an old belt of mine that she’s using for hiphugger-style pants, or whatever those low-rise things are called. I told her I couldn’t believe that I had ever cinched that thing around my waist — the buckle marks indicate that I had worn it on the smallest circumference — whereupon she reminded me that I weighed 180 when we met. I’m at 225 now. You see what I mean here.

@Dodgerblue: Total cholesterol here? One friggin fifteen. If anything, I need to get the good stuff higher.

ADD and mild overshare: I found out my resting HR was 45 when I had my ‘scoping done. Then I realized that I could will it lower, to the point that the colorectal nurse tech (how’s that for a job title?) just turned off the monitor because the beeping was giving people fits. If I ever actually got off my ass I could rumble across the cobblestones with all those other twiggy bike riders.

@Nabisco: Dude, you need to eat some donuts or something. That’s the lowest total chol number I’ve ever seen. And 60 is the lowest I’ve ever gotten my resting heart rate.

@Dodgerblue: @Nabisco: The beauty in not having health insurance, for me, is not having to take those freaking tests and listen to lectures and my diet and exercise habits, which are deplorable and totally unlikely to change.

@Dodgerblue:
Does this include the prostate exam? Or not one of those physicals.

@Nabisco:
Jeez.

45 resting? When I was a hardcore runner, it never got lower than 54.

@ManchuCandidate: Yes, or as I think of it, the search for the City of Gold, up my ass. I’ve stayed off the spin bike for the last 10 days out of a desire not to repeat my experience from two years ago when my PSA number rose dramatically, leading to Cortez and his army taking a run at me from behind — all for nothing because, when I stopped spin class for a while, the PSA number dropped like a rock.

@Dodgerblue:
My doc and I wouldn’t look each other in the eye after my last exam.

@ManchuCandidate: My wife thinks I’m a wuss for complaining about the exams, compared to pelvic exams, despite my pointing out to her that one’s ass is not designed to have babies come out of it.

@ManchuCandidate, beesko, DB: I shoot the shit about kids and politics with my doc, listen to him bitch about his plane, tell him what’s up and he’ll either write an Rx or tell me whatever I have will go away in 10 days or six weeks. That has not been the case with my ski injuries (shoulder still hurts after 6 months), so I think I gotta see a pro for that stuff. I might even wait until after Christmas to get it fixed if that’s the case. I still have a ton of stuff to do between now and December (pilgrimage, cutting and haulting firewood, deer/elk/turkey hunting), so I really couldn’t be laid up for any length of time.

@Nabisco: Show-off. :)

@Dodgerblue: @Mistress Cynica: @ManchuCandidate: @mellbell: It’s all genetic. If I were to actually do any sustained cardio work, that HR would probably be nearly flat. As for the cholesterol, again, good genes. My HDL is a little too low because of those bad years on the smokes. But I can pretty much eat any and all fried food I want, which is a huge plus.