Grinds: Naranj Pilaf

I just stumbled on a dish that is going right into my repertoire of I feel like showing off in the kitchen look what I can do! It's an Iranian dish called Shirin Polow & chicos: trust me on this one, it's good. It's a saffron and orange-scented chicken pilaf unlike anyting I've had state-side. My whole house smells like saffron right now, and this spice is worth every dime. You want to seduce me? Diamonds may be grand, but saffron is this boy's best friend.

I had never heard of this dish before the past weekend, when I read this in the New York Times: At Bahar in Elmhurst, the best Afghan restaurant I have found in New York, the naranj pilaf is a rich, glowing orange color, thickly larded with shreds of orange peel, soft almonds and pistachios.

Well, Bahar in Elmhurst is a bit far for me. Nothing I googled sounded that good, so I went to Tribe and asked around. It was mostly radio silence, but CoPPeRsGyPsYaNgeL offered this recipe that she found on the Iran Chamber Society:

Shirin Polow
4 Servings

• 500 grams basmati or long-grain rice
• 800 grams chicken
• 2 spoons butter
• 50 grams almonds
• 50 grams pistachios
• 100 grams orange peel
• 500 grams sugar
• two large onions
• 1/2 teaspoon saffron
• cooking oil
• salt & black pepper

Directions:

Soak rice in warm water for 2 hours. Wash chicken. Peel and thinly slice onions. Fry in oil until slightly golden. Add chicken pieces and fry until color changes. Add a glass of hot water, salt and pepper and cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes. Add more hot water during cooking if necessary. About 1/2 glass of water should be left at the end. Remove chicken bones.

Save 2-3 spoons of sugar for later use. Add remaining sugar to a glass of hot water and bring to a boil. Add chicken juice, 2-3 spoons of oil and saffron, and mix well.

Thinly slice almonds and pistachios. Soak almonds in cold water for an hour. Thinly slice orange peels. Boil for a few minutes, drain and repeat. Soak in cold water for an hour, drain, and repeat. Finally boil for a few minutes with three spoons of sugar, and drain.

Prepare rice using the recipe for polow. When rice is rinsed, pour a bit of oil, butter and hot water in a pot, and add 1/2 of rice. Spread chicken pieces over the rice, and cover with 1/2 of remaining rice. Spread half of almonds and orange peel over rice and cover with remaining rice. Pour sugar and chicken-juice mix prepared earlier over rice.

Cover and cook over low heat for about 30 minutes. Add remainder of almonds, orange peel, and pistachios, and mix well.

I copied that verbatim. Not all of it makes sense when you get to the actual cooking, so I winged quite a bit of it. I was too lazy to convert grams, so I just pretended that 1 gram was the same as 1 milliliter, and then didn't bother to measure anything anyways. Other changes: I used bomba rice, 1 onion, and four chicken thighs with skin and bones. If you try this recipe with skinless and boneless chicken then go away. You are not my friend. I used half the amount of sugar, and added one julienned carrot with the onnions. I cooked it all stove-top in a paella pan.

And ... oh my. Saffron, almonds, and pistachios - why is our nation in conflict with people who can cook like this? I have a suggestion for a new world order: let's choose our allies based on who's got the best cuisine. We'll lose England, but gain Morocco. Sounds fair enough to me.

The article mentionned that the crusty rice on the bottom of the pan was reserved for the elderly ladies in the house. Since I don't have any Iranian widows staying with me at the moment I ate it all myself.

I've offered to cook meals at the Aikane Surf House this December, and this one is going on the agenda. I'm pretty sure the boys will like it.

Grinds: Kim Chee Potato Pancakes

First up - If anyone on blogspot knows the html codes for arranging archives, please let me know! I want to organize mine by topic rather than date ... but I'm stuck on how to move forward.

This one will be filed under grinds. I've been experimenting with two recipes this week, both of which are keepers. One I have down, the other needs a bit of work.

I'll start with the runner-up. Jen on Tribe posted a recipe for Kim Chee Potato Pancakes in the Asian Homestyle Cooking forum. The name alone had me drooling. I'm a junkie for the kim chee fried rice at Big City Diner, and I love [and miss] good potato pancakes. This sounded like the perfect combination of haole and Asia.

First, the recipe:

Kim Chee Potato Pancakes
makes 4 pancakes

• 1 lb. potatoes, peeled and shredded
• 1 cup coarsely chopped kim chee (i'll use even more next time)
• 5 green onions, chopped
• 1 egg
• 1 Tb flour
• 1 Tb kosher salt
• olive oil for frying
• 2 small red chile peppers, sliced into thin circles for garnish (i used a red jalepeno)

In a large bowl, add the potatoes, kim chee, green onions, egg, flour and salt. mix well until potatoes are well coated. In a large skillet, add just enough oil to thinly cover the surface, about 1 tb at a time. turn heat to med high, take 1/4 of the batter and form a ball, gently squeeze out excess liquid, form into a ball & flatten into a pancake about 1/2 inch thick - carefully place in pan. cook on one side til it turns golden brown & the potatoes are crispy on the edges - flip and cook on the other side - adjusting the heat as necessary. i flipped mine twice to make them extra crispy on the outside.

And my results?They start off looking fine, and ended up falling apart like my potato pancakes always do!!! A later batch came out better, but were greasy as all hell. I'm missing something basic about making potato pancakes - I can get the flavor right, but I always end up with hash browns rather than a nice coherent pancake.

But the flavor was nice - and much more mild than I was expecting. If you didn't know you wouldn't even guess how much kim chee is in there. Next time I'll increase how much I use, and there will definitely be a next time.

Eye 2

And the Garden Master writes:

ok buddy, this is your idea!

looked at the pics of what we did last sunday. here's some suggested improvements...

1) the donkey tail...see that bare patch on the lower left? take some hina hina from a big clump somewhere else in the tree and hang it that gap so it looks fuller. you wrap the hina hina gently around the donkey tail and through em so the tails don't break...

2) the hina hina that's on the branch next to the donkey tail? push the left side of it only (over toward the right side about 8 inches...squish it). you want that to be more asymmetrical between the staghorn, donkey tail and hina hina...right now the hina hina looks like laundry on a clothes line...not so natural...

3) you need to put some stuff around the edge of your koi pond that's not under the tree so the edge "disappears"...see what we did with the pond under the tree...most of the edge is camouflaged by plants?

i want you to get some of those one gallon black plastic pots (smallest size of the pots the anthuriums are in)...maybe about 7 or 8 of them... and maybe 3 that are the size of the anthurium pots...and get a 2 cu. ft. bag of potting soil.

dig up lauwa'i in the yard by that big rock and put em in those pots.

if you've got any ferns other than lauwa'i in the yard...plant some of those, too.

4) the orchids on the ladder... scrounge around for clay pots around the yard to put the plastic ones in...it'll look more uniform.

5) we forgot to plant something in that little duck next to the water plant...look for something in your yard that'll stay really small...maybe some keiki bromeliads with very small leaves?

there you go...let me know if you have any questions. g

First, Thanks, buddy! It all sounds easy so far.

And now I'm off to play in the yard ... pics to follow!


oh crap, i forgot...

6) ah...i missed the christmas lights over your window...take em down 'til christmas...



Heh heh. I thought those had slipped by you. I was going to argue that Christmas lights in summer was part of my culture ... but I'd be lying.

Cyber Eye 1

Go to the bar and look at 'em. They come in all shapes and sizes. You think you can pick out gay men on the street, but you can't. Most only stand out if they choose to stand out.

But once inside they cannot hide. I'm convinced that there is some undiscovered interior-design gene that is strongly correlated with male homosexuality. I don't care if they are a doctor or a trucker, it's all the same. They may be butch in the streets, but they are sweet in their sheets of ten-million count Egyptian cotton. There's no dust on the mantle and no clutter under the bed and every piece of furniture is perfectly arranged with the mad Zen-like precision of an Ikebana master.

But no system is fool-proof. You can't always tell if a man is gay by his house, because some of us are missing that gene. There's not many, to be sure, but we're here. And I know who you are ... hell, I've dated most of you .... but don't worry, I won't out you. I'm one of you - I have all the design skills of a 23-year old straight boy.

Those days might be over. I'm getting help with a makeover, and we'll do it [almost] Live and Online.

Here's the story: I meet Gary over a week ago. Come Sunday, I agreed to help him in his mother's yard in the morning, and he agreed to come over and help me arrange some plants in the afternoon. I had already adopted a lot of rare and beautiful bromeliads from David and Roger when they moved further out into suburbia. Then, just that Saturday, I inherited lots of hina hina, staghorn fern, orchids, and other various plants from Tom, who's moving to Arizona. I needed to get them set before they weekend.

So Sunday morning I dug holes for his mom. Easy. Simple. Ooo-rah work. I could handle. Then we went to my place ... and Gary revealed his skills. He went to the junk corner of my garden, all weeds and catshit and mud. I told him there was nothing there of interest. He announced that, in that case, he was going to make it the focal point.

I went inside and poured some drink. What else was there to do? I got out the shears to help him, but he stopped me and made me put them back. He wasn't going to allow any cutting.

Now. My favorite gardening tool is my machete. I sharpen it and oil it and go to war with the jungle that is my yard. I don't know how to garden without cutting. I mean, chopping things down is half the fun. But today we weren't going to chop, and I entered some new territory. I helped for awhile, and then just went inside and cooked dinner.

A few hours later he had taken my junk and turned it into this:

There's a complete set of pictures on my Photobucket Site (or just follow the photos link below my pic). I've got the work Gary did, although I'm missing details on the orchids, rocks, and bromeliads. I also posted some before pictures of the rest of the yard ... because Gary is on a roll. I mean, he was starting to feng shui and bedazzle my study.

I'm down with that. The only problem is, he's back across the ocean now. Which, as I've noted before, ptooey.

So we'll do it online. Here's the plan: I'll post pics, he'll offer the design, I'll get to work ... and we'll do it all here and in the public eye.

It'll be fun - so stay tuned! I'll get some interior shots posted tomorrow.

First Friday

It was another messy Friday. For one shining moment it was fabulous, and I thought of all the friends I wished were here to share it. Then the ex got drunk and life got a little uglier. I came home. I had to take the long route as some stranger was stalking me in his car. Lucky I have strong legs & can bike fast.

The ex and my work out partner are still downtown, battling it out over a bartender who treats them both like shit. The ex and my gym buddy were best buddies two hours and six martinis and an unknown number of screwdrivers ago. Now they're not talking.

This will end with the ex going on another chemical fueled binge with the bartender, and ultimately losing his job. I'd like to be wrong, but I'm going to bed with a heavy heart ... I've seen all this before, and the story will play out the same way it's played out every time before.

Still, I enjoyed most of the night. Met some cool new people, and it was nice getting to know Robert. We've never really talked outside the gym.

New Pics - and a New Plan

I'm finally caught up with my pics! I just posted all the pics from Beth and Ron's wedding. Some are good & I'm really happy with them. Some are god awful, and I'm quite happy with those too.

Somehow I ended up with lots of pics of people I don't know, yet only one of my brother Jim and Uncle Bob, and only two or three of my Dad. I'm not sure how that happened. I think they were hiding from the camera.

I posted some more pics in 2006 Random also - mostly shots from Atlanta and DC.

And I've got a new plan for the Blog - Gary is going to help me do a home makeover, and we'll be doing it on-line. I've got zero interior design skills, so he's going to be my queer eye. This weekend I'll post some pics of the amazing job he did in my garden. Then I'll start posting pics of my studio, and he'll direct me on what I need to do to make it work. It'll be an adventure, so turn off the HGTV and stay tuned!

There goes the neighborhood

I've been monitoring our Neighborhood Board, waiting for an opening so that I can jump in and start the take-over. Jeff Merz is doing a good job in Waikīkī, and has been working on getting more progressive folks in.

My neighborhood has a long way too go. I just found the construction plans online for Safeway Center, which is going to occupy the last major vacant lot on Kapahulu. And the plans suck ass. Kapahulu is partially pedestrian friendly - there are blocks of low-rise local businesses and restaurants that front the sidewalk [excellent!] and blocks of gas stations and fast-food joints [mediocre]. Luckily we haven't had any mega-stores hiding behind parking lots.

Until now ... until this little piece of suburban blight that they just broke ground on ...

It violates every modern planning precept - and yet this is what the people wanted. This is the plan the Neighborhood Board approved. All their concerns were on parking and traffic flow - there's not a word in the meeting notes on whether the project would be pedestrain friendly, or on the impact it would have on the aesthetics and culture of our neighborhood.

Nah. It was all: will there be parking? [oh yes! plenty!] and will it slow down traffic? [not if we add another lane it won't!].

There is not a single sign that any of the planners involved are familiar with New Urbanism, or of any development in urban planning since the end of World War II. It's insane. We know how to create liveable cities. We know the price of sprawl and car-dependent development. And yet the idiots in City government are sticking to the same tired policies that have done so much damage already to these islands.

Our mayor even suggested that we might have to scale back our light rail plans ... that it might reach Waikiki or the University. Which will make it absolutely useless for all except suburban commuters.

I'm also a bit irked at myself - I skipped the neighborhood planning meetings. I went to some for the bike route planning & they were all a waste of time. One was dominated by angry sovereignty activists arguing that the bike path was a threat to traditional Hawaiian culture. Other were less dramatic. In the end we were promised lots of bike paths, but the plans were put on the shelf and apparently ignored. Or maybe they were used as toilet paper. All I know is, we never got our new paths, and the new construction in Kaka`ako and Waikīkī actually removed bike routes.

This is how bad it is: I'm voting Republican in this election. If the Church still sold indulgences I would buy a thousand, and even then I'm not sure this will be forgiveable. I'm still hoping that the Democrats take control nationally, but locally I want these entrenched buggers kicked to the curb en masse.

Not that the Republicans here are much better. They're more progressive than those on the mainland, but I still don't like them - they seem to be selling Hawai`i off to the highest bidder, and then congratulating themselves on their economic miracle.

The good news this week? It's raining a lot, so my garden is happy. Jah Dread is at least watching over the plants.