Rajma - Northern Indian Kidney Bean Masala Stew

I am feeling blah. For whatever reason January is never a great month for me. I don't know why, but I have horrible luck with appliances breaking and things going generally not in the right direction during this month. People also seem to be less than pleasant right now also. Today at the grocery store I was in the frozen food aisle. I was looking at some vegetables and the aisle was very narrow thanks to a display the store had set-up. When I was walking away I noticed there was a woman behind me that I hadn't noticed. Honestly, after two kids when I'm at the grocery store without them I tend to get in my 'me' zone. It is literally the only couple of hours during the week that I have to myself. I immediately apologized to the women and asked if I was in her way. Her response took me a little off guard. This woman was well into later life and used a profanity at me followed by the line 'of course you were.' Okay. I can understand if I was in her way. However, she could have said excuse me or brought it to my attention since I in no way say her since the door was open to the frozen food case. Second, why pull out the s word. Not necessary at all. I hope that my kids will grow up knowing that politeness is always the best response. Overall, I think so far I am already ready for the month of January to be over and it has just started. So I am feeling a little blah. Given my current winter mood I have been making a lot of soups and bean dishes. Last night I made a new recipe for Rajma (Northern Indian Kidney Bean Masala Stew) from a recent issue of Saveur magazine.

This recipe has 17 ingredients. It takes an hour and a half of total time, 45 minutes of which is active and makes 4 servings. I did make a number of modifications. First I doubled the recipe. Four servings is not enough for my family, which includes two growing boys. Second I try to follow a recipe as much as I can but sometimes I am unable to find a particular ingredient. So with this recipe I left one out. I have used chiles de arbol when I lived in a much larger city. Finding them in my city just isn't a possibility, so I chose to not use them. Finally, since I was making this for my kids I seeded and diced my serranos. It would have been too spicy for my kids to eat otherwise. I also chose to cook my beans on the stove. I have a pressure cooker which I use for canning, but I find it a pain to take down and use for everyday cooking. I let my beans cook for two hours in order to be fully softened. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

By leaving out the chiles de arbol and seeding the serranos this dish had a slight kick, without being too spicy for my kids. I let my beans cook down slightly so they were thicker than a traditional stew, but still worked well served over brown rice. My husband really loved this dish and was happy that it tasted different than the normal Indian curries that I make frequently.

For the recipe go to Rajma.

Grilled Chicken Shawarma

Growing up my father was a huge red meat eater. He absolutely loved steak, burgers and stews. I on the other hand would chose fish and chicken if given the choice. To this day I still love grilled chicken over steak and sausage. However, my husband and two boys love red meat. When I say love, I mean really love red meat. In particular bacon is a favorite of theirs. If they could eat bacon at every meal they would do so happily and see nothing wrong with doing so. While I do love bacon, I have been encouraging my family to eat more chicken and fish. Luckily my two boys have discovered they love any type of grilled chicken. They get very excited when I take out the indoor grill and start grilling chicken. Last month I tried a new recipe for Chicken Shawarma from the August issue of Family Circle magazine, which with 35 grams of protein looked perfect for my active family.

This recipe has 13 ingredients. It takes 20 minutes of prep and 10 minutes of broiling time and makes 6 servings. I had no problems finding any of the ingredients at my local grocery store and made no ingredient modifications. I chose to use naan instead of lavash bread. I love naan and use it frequently. Instead of broiling my chicken I used an indoor grill. The broiler on my oven has been broken for months, so obviously I am unable to use it. Using the grill was perfect for this recipe and I think it would work better than the broiler in the first place. It took approximately 10 minutes for the chicken thighs to cook on the indoor grill. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

The chicken in this recipe turned out delicious. I think modifying the recipe to use the grill instead of the broiler was perfect. I would use this method again if I made this recipe a second time. My two kids really liked these sandwiches. The fact that they can be held was something that my kids really liked and the flavor of the chicken was delicious. Now that I'm not eating gluten if I was to make this recipe again I would eat it as a salad. The chicken would be great as a salad and would only need a very light vinegar dressing. Overall, a very easy and child friendly recipe.

For the recipe go to Chicken Shawarma.

Kofta Kebabs

My two boys are growing up fast. Not just in the figurative sense, they are growing like weeds. In one day they can eat enough for two adults. I don't know where they put all the food, they are both very thin and eat constantly throughout the day. I really wish that we could swap metabolisms. While my metabolism is still great, it isn't what it was in my teens. In order to make everyone satisfied at dinner time, I have been buying a lot of marked down meat at the grocery store. I love when meat gets marked down. It saves a ton of money and lets me buy meats such as lamb which are normally out of my grocery budget. Last month I was able to find 8 packages of lamb for only 2 dollars a pound, so I stocked my freezer. Then I had the task of figuring out what recipes would work for 8 pounds of lamb. One recipe that I found for Kofta Kebabs from Allrecipes.com looked very easy and full of flavor.

This recipe has 13 ingredients (including skewers). It takes 1 hour and twenty minutes of total time and makes 28 servings. I made a few modifications to this recipe. First of all I forgot to buy parsley at the grocery store, so I omitted it from the recipe. Secondly, I ran out of time before dinner and didn't have the time to let the skewers sit in the fridge before grilling. So I skipped this step. Additionally I chose to grill four meatballs on each skewer. The one meatball on each skewer idea seemed like a waste of skewers and time for me. Plus my kids with multiple skewers would have spelled disaster. Since I use an indoor grill my total grilling time was longer than the recipe. My kebabs took approximately 10-15 minutes to cook. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

These kebabs were very good. I do think that they would benefit greatly from a yogurt sauce. I served my kebabs with a simple yogurt sauce made from yogurt, cucumber and mint. Tahini would also work well. My two boys loved that this dinner was served on skewers (with lots of supervision). I would suggest with younger kids to take the kebabs off the skewers when serving. I served the kebabs with a couscous salad with olives, cucumbers, and red onion. They were delicious together. Overall a simple and delicious lamb recipe.

For the recipe go to Kofta Kebabs.

Family Circle Chipotle Chicken Chili

We are big chili fans in our house. Growing up my mom never really made chili and I didn't really eat it frequently until I started scoring cookbooks and cooking any recipe I could get my hands on. In my teens I became a vegetarian for over eight years and invented a delicious vegetarian chili recipe. I stopped being a vegetarian, but I continued to make the vegetarian chili. When I moved to West Virginia and met my husband I was surprised by the level of competition that people possessed over their homemade chili recipes. Everyone has their own way of making both hot dog chili and regular chili. I never knew that there were so many ways to prepare chili until I went to my first chili fest. Now that I have lived in West Virginia over 9 years and had two kids (my husband still says I'm not a true West Virginian, I'm still working on it :); I have tried a large number of chili recipes. One of my favorite ways to make chili when I am short on time is to utilize my crockpot. The February issue of Family Circle Magazine had a recipe for Chipotle Chicken Chili which promised 17 grams of protein and lots of flavor from the chipotles.

This recipe has 12 ingredients. It takes 15 minutes of prep and 8 hours of cooking time and makes 8 servings. I had no problems finding any of the ingredients at my local grocery store and made no ingredient modifications. Make sure to cut off any excess chicken fat or the chili will become too fatty. I always cook my recipes on low in the crockpot, I prefer the flavor, so as usual I cooked this recipe on low for eight hours. I made my own chicken stock the night before, the flavor is significantly better and since I don't add salt to my stock it allows me to control the amount of sodium in my family's food. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

With only five grams of fat and 17 grams of protein, this chili is low in fat and high in nutrients The taste of the chipotles really shines through and gives the chili a great flavor. The beans and corn add a nice texture and give great color to the chili. This recipe makes a large amount of servings and would be great to take to a potluck or party. Overall, a very easy crockpot meal which is full of protein and great for a busy weeknight.


For the recipe go to Chipotle Chicken Chili. (registration required).