Day 3- Roman Style Pizza with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

 Among other things. Wow, you guys are in for a treat! It's been a busy cooking day in our house. Sunday is Mohamed's day off and he thought he'd get in on the new recipe action. He's a great cook and of course I love to sit back and let him do his magic.

Today for lunch he made a ground fish tajine. Now that may not seem very appealing to some of you, but it's pretty common over here to grind fish just like you would beef or turkey. He brought 2 pounds of fresh sardines home from the market and ground them in our blender! A tajine is both a meal and the pot you cook it in. The pot is a thick bottomed clay dish with a cone shaped lid. It's pretty much the same as a dutch oven except you serve and eat out of it too!

Most tajines start with a base of onion, oil, garlic and spices, then you can do pretty much anything on top. Mohamed added a layer of carrots (my fave in tajine) and potato, then added the ground fish. On top of the fish he added red and green peppers, more carrots and garlic, tomatoes and sliced lemon. Sprinkle some fresh parsley and cilantro on top and let it cook! After about an hour, we ate it with bread. Yumm!

It was rainy today as well, so while Mohamed napped in the afternoon I thought I'd tackle Vanilla Bean Buttermilk Cupcakes with Nutella Buttercream from Krissy's Creations. I've been looking forward to making these since I found them a few weeks ago.

Getting the batter together was pretty standard. I usually use oil when I bake, but the recipe called for butter (a lot of it) instead and I thought I'd give it a go. While I love the moistness the oil gives, the butter ended up giving a slight crunch around the edges that I liked. The buttermilk gave a lovely thickness to the batter- yum!

While the cupcakes baked, I tackled the Nutella Buttercream. This was a bit more time consuming because the hand mixer that I purchased (for $10, you get what you pay for!) had a hard time blending such thick ingredients. I kept having to stop, empty out the mixers and go again. The effort was worth it, this buttercream is delicious!

After the cupcakes cooled, Mohamed added the buttercream and I topped them with a sprinkling of grated dark chocolate.

The verdict- Nutella really does make this buttercream to-die-for. I was almost sick with all of my tasting. The cupcakes themselves were very good, but not knock your socks off delicious. I think next time I'd add more vanilla for a stronger flavor (or search for the vanilla bean paste that she recommends). I might also substitute some of the butter for oil to get the moistness that I like.

Whew! Now on to the main event. I neglected to read the recipe for the Roman Style Pizza until 8pm. This wouldn't be a problem except the dough needs to rise for 90 minutes. Oops! It's gonna be a late dinner. I kneaded the dough and set it aside before moving on to the tomatoes. Simple enough, you just put them on a baking sheet; add oil, salt and pepper; and pop them in the oven! 12 minutes later you have roasted cherry tomatoes.

Once the dough rose to double its size, I stretched half of it onto my baking sheet. Unfortunately I have no pizza stone, so ours isn't quite as authentic as I hoped. Oh well. Then the dough had to sit another 15 minutes before I added the toppings. *Note- this is the first place I went wrong! The recipe calls for you to put the pizza in the oven on top of a heated pizza stone. I don't have one, so I should have put the dough in the oven to cook for a few minutes pre-toppings. Live and learn...

(The crust was super yummy, but ended up soggy in the middle due to the lack of pizza stone)

Ready for toppings!

Adding the toppings was where my second mistake occurred. Maybe it was late, maybe I was tired from the cupcakes. Whatever it was, I wasn't thinking very critically. These tomatoes were too big and full of juice. When I do this again (and I will) I'll halve the tomatoes and dump the juice and seeds. These tomatoes with the soft center dough did not get us the crispy crust that we desired.

The end result- Sure looks good right? The crust around the edges was delicious. I also loved the parmesan/mozzarella combination. It was just those darn juicy tomatoes...

The verdict- Loved the crust, cheese and basil. Tomatoes were just too juicy, but I don't think that's the recipe's fault. Also, I should have realized that without the hot pizza stone the crust wasn't going to bake properly. Ugh. Mohamed agreed and ended up removing all of his tomatoes. I will make this again and next time I'll do it right! I may add a little caramelized onion too...

Find the complete recipe here: Roman Style Pizza with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes.

For day four we move to Saveur for a Tunisian dish- T'fina Pkaila (Beef rib and Meatball stew) Should be fun! EEEK! No spinach, so I'll be doing Fettuccine with Sausage, Sage and Crispy Garlic instead. Look for T'fina Pkaila on day five!

Photo by Todd Coleman for Saveur

Day 2- Roasted Cod on Large Garlic Croutons

Today started with a trip to the market. I was on the hunt for a few things in today's recipe- white fish, plum tomatoes and basil. Insanely enough, I managed to find everything pretty darn quickly. Love it when that happens.


Of course now that I'm home and getting ready to cook, I'm doubting my fish choice. I actually have no idea what kind of fish I ended up buying, I just got something that looked like the photo on this recipe.


I also had a bit of a disaster as I tried to make a side dish. Thinking the dish might be a little bit light, I thought I'd also make Blazing Beet Soup to serve on the side. After boiling the beets and removing the skin I cut them up into the blender and added some water to puree. A minute or so in, beet puree started squirting out of the blender- Ahhhh! I stopped it and as soon as I lifted the cup off of the blender, beet puree dumped all over the blender, counter, floor and me. It was horrifying and I stood there looking at it for at least 3 minutes before taking any action. Argh. So, no side this evening. Perhaps I'll try the soup again another day.

After the soup disaster, ingredients are prepared for the main dish. Pretty simple ingredients- no?

The first step for tonights dish was make the bruschetta-esque sauce. I had the tomatoes, onion and garlic, but no anchovies. After a little searching, I found that soy sauce can be substituted- 1/2 teaspoon per anchovy.

As soon as I started handling the fish I realized that my market mission wasn't so successful after all. They had cut the fish into filets, but the center bone was still there and very much attached to one half of the filet. Eeek! A quick google search brought me to this website where I attempted to learn how to de-bone, but I'm just not talented enough (I also don't have the right knives...). I did skin the fish per the instructions, but knew that the dish would need to be altered. After some thought, I decided to bake the fish and then I would remove the cooked fish from the bone and make more of a "fish salad" a la chicken salad.

The oh-so-wrong fish

When I took the fish out of the oven and started attempting to remove the meat from the bones, the panic started. In fact, when Mohamed got home I told him "Ahhh, dinner is going to be gross!" The meat removal process was not pretty. In fact, that's why there are no pictures post-roasting until the final product, it just wasn't going as I'd imagined or how the recipe layed it out. I probably managed to salvage a mere half of the fish. Also with the tomato mixture cooking it smelled too much like soy sauce. Argh!


There was no plan be so we had to go for it. I bought mini-baguettes and toasted them in the oven before rubbing them with garlic. Even that didn't go very smoothly, the garlic didn't seem to want to transfer to the bread! Tossing the halved garlic, I topped it with fresh basil (YUMMM!), some tomato mixture, some of the "shredded" fish, then more tomato.

My food photography needs some work

I was almost afraid to serve it to Mohamed and his brother, but they are troopers. They folded their bread over and ate it as a sandwich while I sort of ate it tostada style. Shockingly, it was good!


The verdict- a very pleasant surprise despite having the wrong fish. It was flavorful, light and something different for a change. Mohamed removed some of his basil (not sure why), but also thought it was really good. Even brother Abdelmalik liked it.  I'll definitely make it again, assuming I can find a better fish. It would be really yummy with a true filet.  


If you'd like to try it out, here's the recipe from Epicurious: Roasted Cod on Large Garlic Croutons


Tomorrow is Sunday so that means Mohamed will be home to help out with our Roman Style Pizza with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes. Can't wait!

photo by Jeff Lipsky for Epicurious 

Day 1- Pumpkin-Turkey Ghoulash with Caraway Noodles

Day 1's recipe has been in my Epicurious recipe box for quite some time. It's gotten pretty cold, especially at night over the past month or so, and I absolutely love any kind of soups or stews. I also love pumpkin, so it seemed like the perfect combination.

Minus the caraway noodles. Cooking is all about modifications, right? I originally had no idea what caraway seeds were, but a good friend of mine found them at her local souk (market) and I took a whiff. I love licorice, but the thought of adding an anise type flavor to my noodles just didn't strike my fancy. So that's the first change. As the recipe is for eight servings, I'm also reducing it. Mohamed doesn't eat a lot of leftovers and I can only handle so much on my own.

The recipe calls for canned pumpkin- something I've never seen over here in Morocco. To solve this problem I used fresh pumpkin which I coated with butter, roasted, then put in the blender.

All of the ingredients ready to go

The first step is to coat the turkey in a spice mixture (mostly paprika- I used about half hot and half sweet) and cook for five minutes. After coating the onions and potatoes, you also add those to the pot and let fry for a few more minutes. I may have under estimated the size of the pot needed...

When the the turkey and veggies are preliminarily cooked, you add the chicken broth, garlic and additional spices. The stew simmers for an hour before you need to cook the noodles and serve. I haven't seen any egg noodles in Morocco, so I'm using some regular farfalle.

After the simmering, I thought the stew was a little thin, so I uncovered it and let it boil down a bit. Top the buttery noodles with the stew and bon appetit!

The verdict: Yummy! This was a great dish to have on a cold night. It's hearty, filling and flavorful. Using half hot/sweet paprika created quite a bit of heat. If you're not into that, I'd go a bit heavier on the sweet side. Also, when I make again I'd add more pumpkin as it got a little bit lost among the other ingredients. Mohamed liked it too, so that would be success on day one of the holiday recipe challenge. Yay!

Go here the complete recipe for Pumpkin-Turkey Ghoulash with caraway noodles. On deck for tomorrow is another Epicurious find- Roasted Cod on Large Garlic Croutons.

Photo by Con Poulos from Epicurious