Kitchen Epiphanies

KITCHEN epiphanies

Exploring diverse foodways...

Chicken

Mulligatawny – a Comforting Cultural Hybrid

Mulligatawny, an Anglo-Indian dish, comes in many guises.  For some cooks it is a spicy broth, for others a soup of various densities and for still others a stew.  For me, mulligatawny is a silky curried soup with a garnish of chicken, vegetables and herbs, a perfect warming meal on a snowy night. Mulligatawny was …

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Musakhan — Sumac-Spiced Chicken with Onions on Taboon Bread

I discovered Musakhan — Sumac-Spiced Chicken with Onions on Taboon Bread– several years ago when I was preparing for a family trip to Jordan.  I often make lists of sights to visit and foods to try before traveling and the adjectives describing Jordanian food – festive, peasant, rich, rustic, simple, meltingly tender, lemony, zesty, scrumptious, …

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Chicken Salad with Spinach, Fennel, Buckwheat and Purple Cabbage Mousse

Simple ingredients assembled innovatively can make a delectable meal.  This composed Chicken Salad with Spinach, Fennel, Buckwheat and Purple Cabbage Mousse is my adaptation of a salad I enjoyed at lunch several weeks ago in Kyiv, Ukraine.  The menu simply said Chicken, oven baked with sweet cabbage, violet mousse and grains.   When the dish arrived, …

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Malaysian Chicken Curry Kapitan with Roti Jala

This Chicken Curry Kapitan is a product of centuries of migration to, and colonization of, the Malay Peninsula by Indians, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and British and is an inspired adaptation by Malay cooks.  I first encountered this curry near Phuket, Thailand on the Malay Peninsula close to the border with Malaysia, a region where a …

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Revitalizing Ukrainian Cooking with Masterchef Evgeniy Klopotenko

The most interesting experiences often arise from serendipity.  I recently shared a kitchen and an evening of Ukrainian cooking with 31-year-old Evgeniy (Zhenia) Klopotenko, winner of the 2015 Ukraine’s Masterchef contest, a graduate of Paris’s Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, a Ukrainian TV personality and producer of jams and marmalades. Young Zhenia is a trained …

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Peruvian Causa – Colorful and spicy mashed potato starters with chicken or shrimp

l never thought of eating cold mashed potatoes flavored with various citrus juices and hot peppers as a salad or appetizer until I discovered la causa rellena (literally translated as “the stuffed cause”) in Cusco, Peru’s imperial city high in the Andes Mountains. Until I traveled in Peru, I was dismissive of leftover mashed potatoes.  I …

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Cornish Hens Tabaka – a Classic Georgian treat

Cornish Hens Tabaka are a traditional dish indigenous to the Republic of Georgia, a country of nine million inhabitants in the Caucasus Mountains. Its Georgian name originates from “tapha,” the cast iron pan with a weighted, screw-tightened lid used to prepare this succulent dish.  It is sometimes also called Tabaka, Tapaka, Chicken Tabaka, Chicken Tabak, …

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Country Captain

  Country Captain, a chicken classic of southern cookbooks, became a staple in my childhood home after Mama read that it was a favorite of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  As the story goes, whenever President Roosevelt traveled by train to his Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia, his assistant would warn Mrs. W.L. Bullard, a …

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