When it comes to gourmet cuisine, it doesn't get much easier to fake than to take a fish, stuff it with deliciousness, wrap it in foil and stick it in the oven. Thus:
The recipe asked for sea bass, which with a little research proved to be European sea bass - not that Chilean impostor - which in turn proved to be branzino, which we know from our extensive watching of Iron Chef. But who can find branzino in Seattle at this time of year! So after some debate we settled on rainbow trout, and would ask you not to tell Gordon.
In with the all important seasoning, and then the greenstuff. We must have our vitamins, after all. Slices of fennel, the omnipresent caper, and some lemon. Scatter some dill on top and we're done. Cooking is easy!
A splash of white wine inside the foil parcel to keep things moist and fragrant, and then into the oven. Surprisingly nothing much changes except Mr Fishy's eye becomes creepily opaque.
Luckily the flesh also becomes opaque and we don't die of food poisoning. Just as unexpected, it becomes delicious! Obviously it's a bit of a chore to eat - rainbow trout's reputation for boniness is well deserved - but such an enjoyable chore.
I just know you're thinking, "Oh goody, more lamb!" As if the prospect of slow-roasted, tender, spicy lamb shanks isn't exciting enough, we turned this recipe into our first ever two-day project! I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious.
We decided to take Gordon's advice and marinate the lamb shanks overnight to let all the herbs and spices develop into yummy flavors. Cumin, oregano, paprika, cinnamon, garlic and chillies make for a nice spice rub, don't you think?
As you can see, we did not skimp on the chillies - it is supposed to be "fiery" lamb, after all. And now into the fridge they go!
[Time passes]
Many, many hours later, it came time to brown those suckers.
Of course you have to add in the aromatics - onion, carrots, bay leaves - and a bottle of wine to deglaze the pan; it's all about the deglazing. I guess there was some broth in there too, but who can remember such details?
325 degrees and 3 hours later, the meat was just about falling off the bone and looking and smelling insanely delicious.
The lamb shanks did end up very tender and had pretty good flavor overall, but they weren't as fiery as we'd anticipated. I blame Gordon for being annoyingly unspecific about what kind of chillies to use. Next time we'll just have to go crazy with the spice!
Once you start eschewing meat at restaurants, whole new sections of the menu open up to you, displaying charms and attractions that previously you'd scarcely have glanced at, in your hurry to find the steak or the shrimp. So it was for me with kofta, which apparently are traditionally your basic meatball, but in our local Indian restaurants tend to be made of various vegetables or, as in this case, garbanzo beans.
Did we really buy a bag of chickpea flour just for two tablespoons? Yes, yes we did. Getting cake flour to make a cake, on the other hand, is just crazy talk. As you can see, there's a lot going on in these koftas - and with all that spinach, they just might be good for you.
Really just an absurd amount of spinach.
Back to the grindstone! Freshly toasted cumin seeds become freshly ground cumin powder. And freshly ground cumin powder becomes inextricably lost in the nooks and crannies of the molcajete.
What cumin I could rescue from the mortar goes into the blender with all those chickpeas, along with paprika and our old friend turmeric. A quick blitz and voila:
Chickpea paste. Yay?
In with the spinach - wait, where'd all the spinach go? - and the all important chickpea flour - can't get enough of that chickpea flavour! - and we mix to make our... dough? Mixture seems redundant. Let's go with dough.
A quick bit of skilful dough rolling, and soon we've got a whole trayful of koftas. Kofti? Kofte?
They get to sit in the fridge for an hour or so to firm up, so that they'll hold together in the frying pan later. (Remember how I said this was healthy? I may have misled.)
In the meantime, we get to make a dressing to go with them. Simple, refreshing, yoghurt based with a touch of tahini, you can find this on the side of just about every dish you've ever ordered from a Middle-Eastern restaurant.
Back to the main attraction: frying! Batches o' kofte take their turn in a quick bath of hot oil, as we try valiantly and vainly to keep them in one piece.
So there we have it! A hot and crispy appetizer, that on reflection probably wasn't worth the trouble. Gordon says it himself in the intro, that chickpeas can be very bland, and they're also moisture vacuums. Tasteless and dry, and even the dressing couldn't save them. One day I'll get to write about a winner. Just by the law of averages. Right?
What's shawarma, you ask? You know those giant meatsicles you always see cooking away on the spit inside Middle Eastern restaurants? That's shawarma. And they make gyros with it. Obviously this recipe is a bit of a variation on the traditional dish since, needless to say, we don't have a spit. Give us time...I'm pretty sure year three is the meat anniversary.
We're always excited when we get to use our fancy new kitchen equipment. While the insanely heavy piece of lava rock that is our mortar and pestle isn't technically fancy, it is fun.
Just mash up some cilantro with garlic, lemon and spices, add olive oil...
...and you've got yourself a delicious, aromatic marinade for your chicken.
We had our usual problem with cooking the meat again - the grill is hot enough that we're getting a nice sear, but the meat is just too thick to cook all the way through without it burning or drying out. Since raw chicken isn't something you want to mess with with, we decided to risk overdoing it.
Now, heating up tortillas on the griddle we can handle.
Check out this awesome hot sauce variety pack that Kelsey brought us back from New Orleans: Garlic, jalapeno, hot, super hot! We had fun sampling them all to figure out which was the tastiest.
Throw the chicken on the tortillas with shredded cabbage and green onions, artistically drizzle on some hot sauce and mayo, and serve it up.
I love me a good gyro. I'd had them before at restaurants with lamb and falafel but this was my first chicken - and homemade - gyro. As tummy-grumble-inducing as these pictures might be, I think I'll leave it to the professionals in the future. It's not that these were bad; they just weren't that good.
