We went over the mountains to my parents’ house this weekend for band practice. When my father and I put our heads together to come up with an interesting but soothing dinner, this is the recipe that turned up: chicken legs rubbed with cardamom and other spices, pan-fried with onions, then braised until tender. If you don’t care for cardamom, avoid this one, but if you like its fragrant pungency as much as we do, then by all means try it. Yet another winner from the book 660 Curries, this is a great thing to do with cheap drumsticks – although it would also be swell with boneless chicken thighs. The sharpness of the cardamom could be quelled a bit by adding some yogurt, cream or other dairy product.

We seeded cardamom pods by hand, then blitzed them to powder and mixed them with other spices. This got rubbed all over skinned chicken drumsticks, which then marinated for half an hour.

The chicken went into a large skillet with diced onion, bay leaves and cinnamon sticks, and we sauteed it until the onion was soft and the spices were all sticking to the bottom of the pan. We added water, covered the pan and let it all simmer for half an hour.

We tossed a handful of fresh cilantro in, then lifted out the chicken legs, bay leaves and cinnamon and set them aside.

We cooked down the liquid a bit, wilted baby spinach in it, poured everything over the chicken, and voila! A warmly fragrant dinner for a February day.

Cardamom-scented chicken legs

adapted from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer

• 2 Tbsp fresh ginger, microplaned
• 1 Tbsp garlic, pressed
• 2 tsp cardamom seeds, ground
• 1/2 tsp cayenne (half of what the original recipe called for, but it was plenty spicy)
• 1 tsp salt (we actually forgot to add the salt, but it hardly needed it)
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 8 chicken drumsticks or thighs, skin removed
• oil
• 1 small red onion, diced
• 4 bay leaves, fresh or dried
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2 Tbsp cilantro, chopped
• 8 oz baby spinach (optional)
• yogurt or heavy cream (optional)

Combine the ginger, garlic, cardamom, cayenne, salt and turmeric and smear the resulting paste over the chicken pieces. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes or overnight.

Heat a few spoonfuls of oil in a large skillet with a well-fitting lid. Add the onion, chicken, bay and cinnamon. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft and the chicken has browned, about 20 minutes.

Add a cup of water, scrape the pan bottom to deglaze it, bring to a simmer and cover the pan. Cook gently about 30 minutes, stirring once in a while. Stir in the cilantro.

Remove the chicken to a platter and boil down the sauce in the pan until it thickens a bit. Toss in a pile of spinach leaves to wilt, if you like, and perhaps a half cup or so of plain yogurt or cream. Serve the greens and sauce with the chicken legs and some steamed basmati rice.

Guest post by our house mixologist, Jon!

I first discovered cardamom as a freshman in college. I was making a recipe from the Tassajara Recipe Book for an apple-cardamom quick bread. A trek to the More-4 (the grocery store in Northfield at that time) proved successful, and I immediately fell in love with the spice.

Fast forward a couple decades to my current fascination with the world of cocktails. Bitters are a key ingredient in many cocktails (some would argue that a true cocktail, by definition, has bitters in it). I started with Angostura, of course, and then tracked down bottles of Peychaud’s and Regan’s Orange Bitters #6. And then I heard about Scrappy’s. Scrappy’s is a local company (in Seattle), and they make…cardamom bitters!

I must have some of these cardamom bitters, I said to myself. And I’ve kept saying it to myself for the past year. You see, the only places I’ve found that carry Scrappy’s? They’re all out of the cardamom bitters. The bars where I’ve been able to taste it? They’re running low. From what I can tell, Scrappy’s cardamom bitters have been a victim of their own success. Supply can’t keep up with demand.

Meanwhile, life has gone on. I’ve looked up recipes on how to make bitters (including Jamie Boudreau’s ridiculous recipe that makes over 5 liters of the stuff), but the time was never right. And then a couple of weeks ago, the snow fell. And fell. And fell. School was cancelled for a week. Our one significant outing took us by a liquor store that had one bottle of Everclear, and I bought it.

And the experimentation began!

I started by following the recipe for a cardamom tincture in Left Coast Libations. That recipe says to steep 1 Tbs of decorticated cardamom seeds in 2 oz of neutral grain spirits (Everclear) for 4 to 6 weeks, shaking everyday. I was prepared to believe it, but the mix was noticeably colored after just a few days, and I just had to taste some after a scant week – already very strongly cardamom scented and flavored. I forced myself to leave it for most of another week, while I got a second tincture going. This one was coriander seed, in the same quantities, and I let it steep for just one week.

The original plan was to have equal quantities of the two, with which I could then experiment with blending until I found just the right proportions. A mishap while filtering cost me about a quarter of the cardamom tincture, though, and I didn’t really want to waste what I had left fussing over ratios. Okay, okay. I got impatient. I mixed my remaining 1½ oz of cardamom tincture with ½ oz of the coriander, and called it good. It may not truly be “bitters,” since it has no gentian, or milk thistle, or any of the other bizarre ingredients used to add bitter flavor, but it is good. Very good.

At this point, the only way I’ve tried the finished cardamom-coriander tincture is by adding a few drops to a glass of seltzer (which frankly, is a really nice way to enjoy them).  I bet they’d be good with rum, and they’ll make an exciting change to an otherwise classic Manhattan. The remaining coriander tincture I envision using in a gin-based drink – perhaps with Hendricks and cucumber. We’ll report our findings.

I wasn’t going to post on this dinner, as it’s really unpreposessing-looking (brown meat, brownish-yellow cabbage, brown pickle – all we needed was a reddish-brown dal to make the plate truly unappetizing). And I’ve already talked about the pork stewed with ginger, chiles and rai masala (a regular dish in our meal rotation). But I don’t believe I’ve told you about this cabbage dish, which is easy to make and amazingly good, especially with a side of yogurt and a good Indian pickle. Despite its looks, it’s worth trying – sweet and a little spicy, with a lingering fennel note and just a hint of bitterness from the fenugreek. I generally make it a little differently each time, depending on my mood and what we’re serving it with. This is the version I made last night.

Buttery Cabbage with Fennel and Green Chile

Loosely adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s Spice Kitchen

• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 small green cabbage, cored and finely sliced
• 1/2 tsp cumin seed
• 1/4 tsp mustard seed
• 1/2 tsp fennel seed
• 5 fenugreek seeds
• a clove or two of garlic, chopped
• 1 green chile (we use serranos), chopped
• 1 nugget fresh ginger, chopped
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• kosher salt
• 1 Tbsp butter
• pinch garam masala
• juice of half a lemon

Heat the oil in a large skillet (one that has a well-fitting lid) and add the cumin, mustard, fennel and fenugreek seeds. When they have begun to toast, add the onion and saute until it softens. Add the garlic, ginger, turmeric and chile and cook for a minute or two, then dump in all the shredded cabbage (this is why you needed a large skillet). Saute until the cabbage wilts and combines with the onion and spices, then add some salt and the butter. Stir it all up as the butter melts, then put in a splash of water, cover the pan and lower the heat. Let it simmer 15-30 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure it hasn’t boiled dry.  Then take off the lid and slowly saute again, stirring frequently, so that the liquid boils off and the onion and cabbage caramelize a bit – another 15-30 minutes. Sprinkle in the garam masala and lemon juice, taste for salt, and serve.

Not the prettiest dish in the world, but extremely good. And easy!

The sauce, a mixture of tomato, cream, green chile, cilantro and spices, is straight from a Madhur Jaffrey recipe, but she wants you to serve it with prawns. We made it that way for a while, then hit on the idea of stirring in lightly cooked peas instead of shrimp. We’ve done it this way ever since.

First, your tomatoes. I often use one of those small cans of Hunt’s tomato sauce, but any tomato puree will do. Then measure in the garam masala, salt and ground cumin, and just a pinch of cayenne. I like to grate the chile and ginger on a microplane, but you could chop it by hand if you like little bursts of flavor. Add a handful of chopped cilantro and some lemon juice. Stir it all together. Then pour in some cream. Cook the peas lightly in boiling water, drain, and stir into the sauce. Eat over rice.

Or, make the sauce, hold the peas, and serve it as a chilled soup. That would be pretty awesome. Leftovers of this, with or without rice, are rather good with scrambled eggs. Or just eaten straight for breakfast with a spoon.

Peas in Spiced Tomato-Cream Sauce

Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s Spice Kitchen: Fifty Recipes Introducing Indian Spices and Aromatic Seeds

• 8 oz tomato puree or sauce
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 3/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• pinch cayenne (or more if you’re a heat fiend)
• 1 green chile (serrano or jalapeño), chopped or grated
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, chopped or grated
• 3 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1-2 cups frozen or fresh peas (depending on how saucy you want the final dish), lightly boiled and drained

Combine everything except the peas and stir well. When the peas are cooked (as much as you want – I like them still a bit firm), drain them and stir them into the sauce. Serve warm or room temperature.

This is a favorite meal of ours for those nights when we don’t have a lot of time, we hardly have any fresh vegetables in the house, and we want something with a lot of flavor and a definite comfort factor. Kheema is like the Indian equivalent of chile con carne, or sloppy Joe mix, or spaghetti sauce. There are many different versions – probably as many as there are cooks who make it – and it can be tweaked to accommodate whatever you have in your pantry, as long as you have 1. ground meat 2. chile peppers (fresh or dried) 3. canned tomato and 4. spices. Onions and garlic are helpful, but not absolutely required.

My favorite kheema recipe for when we have no fresh chiles in the house is from Madhur Jaffrey’s first book, An Invitation to Indian Cooking. It’s warm with onion and whole sweet spices as well as dried red chiles, and tastes wonderful. But our current favorite kheema is from the Parsi cookbook My Bombay Kitchen. It uses whole slit green chiles as well as cayenne pepper, so it has a complex spiciness, and it can be made as thick or soupy as you like, depending on how you’re serving it. We usually ladle it over white rice, but the last time we made it I griddled some fresh chapati and we spooned the kheema into the breads with yogurt and chutney. It could also be eaten straight out of a bowl, maybe with tortilla chips. Why not? Not to mention the possibilities of using it for stuffing samosas, or topping pizza.

And for breakfast, I can recommend making a sort of huevos rancheros with leftover kheema and runny fried eggs over sourdough toast or chapati or tortillas. Oh, yeah.

A note about the recipe: there are a few odd ingredients here, but please don’t be scared off by them. We keep curry leaves in our freezer, but the kheema will be perfectly fine without them. And don’t worry about the dhana jiru or the sambar masala – we happen to have both of those, because Jon loves to make spice blends at home, but you can either leave them out, or do what I do, which is to look up the blend, see what the major flavors are, and just add a few of the more important-sounding ones. I’ve indicated a few possible options in the recipe.

Kheema
Adapted from My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking by Niloufer Ichaporia King

• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 pound ground beef or lamb
• 2 green chiles
• 5-10 curry leaves (we keep these on hand in the freezer)
• 2-3 whole cloves
• 1 onion
• 1 small clove garlic, minced
• 1 tsp ginger, minced
• 1 tsp Dhana Jiru or garam masala or ground coriander (optional)
• 1 tsp Sambar Masala or ground fenugreek and mustard seeds (optional)
• 1/2 tsp cayenne
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, plus more for garnish
• 1 can diced tomato
• 1-2 cups water
• 1 tsp salt

First, get your mise en place ready – you don’t want things burning while you measure spices. It really helps to have everything chopped and standing by before you start cooking.

Slit the green chiles from the tip up to the stem, leaving the stem end intact, and put them in a bowl with the curry leaves and whole cloves. Measure the various dry spices into another bowl. Dice the onion.

If you have fresh cilantro, chop up the leaves (some stems are fine) and set aside. We have cilantro in our garden right now, but if we happen to be out it’s not the end of the world. I love the flavor it adds, though.

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the curry leaves, cloves and chiles. When they have sizzled for a minute or so, add the onion and cook until soft. Add the ginger and garlic and cook a minute more, then add the dry spices and most of the chopped cilantro (remember to save a little to add at the end).

Add a can of diced tomatoes and stir well. Cook for a moment more.

Add in the ground beef and stir it into the sauce, breaking up all the chunks into small pieces, then add as much of the water as you like (you can always add more later to make it soupier). Mix in the salt. Bring it all to a boil, cover, and turn down the heat so it simmers. Cook about half an hour, stirring occasionally. This is a good time to make rice or bread.

The kheema is done when the meat is tender and the oils have separated out of the sauce. Sprinkle on the last of the cilantro, taste for salt, and serve!

Stuffing cheese into a chicken thigh doesn’t necessarily sound like a wise idea, but when the cheese in question is panir, a dry non-melting Indian cheese, all is well. We found this dish in a recently acquired cookbook, Modern Spice (on clearance at Village Books!), which is full of wonderful recipes that fuse Indian flavors with the American pantry. In this case bone-in chicken parts are stuffed with Indian herbs and spices mixed with Indian cheese, but baked in the oven instead of being simmered in liquid on the stovetop, as with so much Indian cookery. The chicken gets crispy on top, and the stuffing takes on the flavor of the bird as well as that lovely cheesy toastiness and a kick of chile heat.

Panir is crucial to this recipe, since no other cheese behaves quite like it (maybe halloumi?), but if you can’t find panir you could still make all the other ingredients into a rub for roasted chicken parts. What’s not to like about butter, chiles, ginger, garlic and cilantro?

A fusiony sort of dish like this didn’t seem to need a traditional Indian accompaniment, so we recreated a salad we invented on our Paris vacation, caramelizing finely diced fennel in a skillet and stirring in chopped ripe tomatoes. Pure essence of summer, it played beautifully off the spicy cheese and chicken. With a bright Sangiovese rosé, this was a very successful summer-to-autumn transitional dinner.

Panir-stuffed Chicken Thighs

adapted from Modern Spice by Monica Bhide

• 4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs
• 1 garlic clove, pressed
• piece of ginger, grated
• 1 Tbsp melted butter
• 1 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 cup finely grated panir
• 2 serrano chiles, red or green, minced
• 2 Tbsp cilantro, minced
• 1/4 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp red chile flakes (our serranos were so hot we left these out)

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Combine the butter, 1 tsp salt, ginger and garlic. Loosen the skin on the thighs, then rub the paste all over the chicken.

Combine the panir, chiles, cilantro, turmeric, chile flakes and the remaining 1/4 tsp salt. Stuff this mixture under the skin of each thigh. Place the chicken in a roasting pan, skin side up.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until cooked through and the skin is crispy on top. You can either baste the thighs halfway through, or use my technique of just turning them in their juices with tongs.

The weather was beautiful on Saturday, and I had been at work all day, so I was very happy to come home to a glass of rosé and dinner on the grill. Jon had picked up some gorgeous sweet corn from Dunbar Gardens, and there was a ribeye from an upriver Angus farm, as well as some eggplant left over from the last farmer’s market, which I decided to make into another batch of caponata.

Jon rubbed the corn with oil and a dry spice mix before grilling (see his recipe below). I love corn done this way, with just a little char and plenty of salt and hot pepper. He had run out of New Mexico chile powder, so he substituted a little extra cayenne and some dried chile flakes. The corn had quite a kick.

For the caponata, I tried something a little different. First, I used Castelvetrano olives, an unpitted green olive with a meaty texture and wonderful nutty flavor. We happened to have a few left, and I didn’t want to waste them, so I got out the Oxo cherry/olive pitter from my IFBC goodie bag. Astonishingly, it worked like a charm! A very handy little gadget.

 I chopped up the olives and tossed them with olive oil, red wine vinegar, capers, and chopped fresh tomatoes. The eggplant, which Jon dusted with more of his spice mix, was grilled and chopped up, then mixed with the other ingredients.

Finally, the secret ingredient: grilled garlic. I took a head of newly harvested garlic, cut the tips off the top of the cloves, then wrapped the whole thing in foil and set it on the grill. Once everything else was finished cooking, I unwrapped it and popped the garlic out of its skin into the caponata.

This turned out to be a really good idea. Some of the garlic dissolved into the caponata, and other cloves held their shape. It had that sweet caramelized flavor that well-roasted garlic has, without being in the least burnt. I tried fishing out a clove and smashing it onto the corn, which was also a good idea. With a bottle of Willis Hall Cabernet Franc, this dinner really made my weekend.

Southwest Spice Rub (for grilled corn or flank steak)

adapted from The Complete Meat Cookbook by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly

1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chile powder
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp cayenne

Mix all ingredients together. Toss corn into a bag or bowl with some canola oil, then add spice mix to taste and rub it in. Grill as desired.

When I first brought home a library copy of David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop (shortly before we bought our own copy – it didn’t take long), one of the very first recipes we opened it to was this one: a custard-based ice cream with orange zest and crushed Sichuan peppercorns, wow! Jon’s been wanting to make it ever since, and we finally got our chance. We had friends over (fresh ice cream wants an audience) and made Chinese pork ribs and scallion breads, followed by this ice cream for dessert.

It was amazing: rich and creamy, with a deep aroma of fresh oranges, with each bite finishing on a tingle of Sichuan pepper. I can only imagine what it would be like with really fresh, numbing peppercorns.

Also, since it called for the zest of four whole oranges, we had a lovely excuse to have fresh squeezed orange juice the next morning.

Orange-Sichuan Pepper Ice Cream

adapted from Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accompanimentsby David Lebovitz

• 3 Tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
• 1 1/2 cups whole milk
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 oranges
• 6 large egg yolks

Coarsely crush the peppercorns in a mortar. Put them in a saucepan with the milk, ½ cup of the cream, and the sugar, and heat until warm. Zest the oranges directly into the pan. Once warm, cover, remove from the heat and let steep for one hour. After steeping, warm it back up.

Pour the rest of the cream into a bowl. Set a strainer over it.

In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm milk mixture in, whisking all the time, then pour it all back into the saucepan. Stir over medium heat until it thickens and coats your spatula. Pour through the strainer into the cream and stir. Cool over an ice bath and refrigerate until ready to run the ice cream maker. Freeze as directed.

David recommends serving this with a red wine-poached rhubarb compote - I think we shall have to try this when our rhubarb comes up. But we ate it straight and it was sublime.

This has been a great season for cabbage. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as much cabbage as I have this winter. This is partly due to an influx of wonderful new recipes, but also just an increased appreciation for the flavor of properly cooked cabbage. Plus, it’s way cheap.

The latest installment of “cabbage — it’s what’s for dinner” takes the form of a bulgur pilaf. I love bulgur, for its chewiness, nuttiness, and most importantly, easy-to-cookness. This pilaf accents the sweet earthy flavors of bulgur and cabbage with sumac, allspice, green onion and pine nuts. The sumac provides a cool sour note that makes this a little different than your (meaning my) usual workaday bulgur pilaf. And freshly ground allspice just makes your kitchen smell wonderful.

I made a full recipe of this, which seems to have made enough pilaf for a small army (fortunately the leftovers are excellent with a fried egg). I served it with a salmon fillet coated with a cumin and chile spice rub and seared briefly in olive oil. We also followed the recipe’s suggestion and mixed up some garlic yogurt, which was lovely with both the fish and the pilaf.

Bulgur Pilaf with Cabbage and Sumac

adapted from Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark (original recipe was in metric, this is more or less how I interpreted it)

• 1 ½ cups coarse bulgur
• 1/2 stick butter
• one bunch green onions, cut into half inch lengths
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• large handful pine nuts
• half of one cabbage, shredded
• 1 ½ cups chicken broth
• 1 Tbsp sumac powder
• 1 bunch parsley, chopped

Rinse the bulgur in cold water and drain. Melt the butter in a large pot, add the green onions, pine nuts and allspice and cook for five minutes or so.

Put in the cabbage and saute until it wilts and cooks down. Add the bulgur, then the chicken broth. Bring to a boil, put the lid on and simmer furiously for five minutes (I added a little extra water at this point, since it seemed a bit dry). Turn down the heat to medium low and simmer another five minutes. Stir in the sumac and parsley, then pop the lid back on, turn off the heat and let it rest at least five minutes.

Mix up some garlic yogurt: plop a cup or so plain whole fat yogurt into a bowl, press a clove of garlic into it, and stir well.

Serve with the yogurt, plus some fish, or lamb, or sausage, or a fried egg, or…

Man, this made the house smell good. I love Ethiopian food, and as far as I know the nearest restaurant is 60 miles away, so we have to make it ourselves if we want it. This is a very simple recipe for doro wat, or chicken stew, and the only weird ingredient is the berbere powder (recipe below) – which is totally worth making yourself and keeping on hand, because it’s one of the most delicious things to add to melted butter and onions ever.

The stew is very easy: chop an onion and saute it in lots of butter in a large skillet. Add a few spoonfuls of berbere paste or powder and mix thoroughly. Add some chopped fresh ginger and a cup or so of red wine, then scrape in a pound of finely chopped chicken meat. Stir until the chicken begins to cook through, then add water to just cover, bring to a boil and let simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the liquid has reduced somewhat and the chicken is completely cooked. Some people add hard boiled eggs to the stew, but I like it plain, with condiments on the side.

Serve with spiced curds, fresh bread (injera is lovely if you have it, but sourdough bread is fabulous also) and green peppers pureed with garlic and salt. Red wine is quite nice alongside.

This stuff smells so good, it’s even fun to wash out the leftover containers two days later.

Berbere

adapted from Flatbreads & Flavors by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

• seeds from 2 green cardamom pods
• 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
• 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
• 1/4 tsp coriander seed
• 2 cups dried red chiles, soaked for 1 hour in hot water and drained
• 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp fresh ginger, minced
• 2 Tbsp fresh garlic, minced
• 2 Tbsp chopped onion
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup fresh basil, minced
• 1/2 cup fresh mint, minced

Toast the whole dry spices in a skillet. Grind them to powder in a mortar or spice grinder.

Put the chiles in a food processor and puree, then add the ground spices, cinnamon and salt. Process.

Combine the ginger, garlic, onion and water in a saucepan, bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes. Add to the processor and blend, then add the fresh herbs and blend.

Keep the paste in a clean glass jar in the refrigerator, or:

Spread the paste out on a baking sheet and bake at 200° until completely dry, stirring occasionally. This takes a while.

Or, for a quick n’ dirty berbere powder, just combine dried preground spices and herbs – not as authentic, but it gets the job done.