Floods and comfort food

So lately, we’ve had a little bit of rain in Nairobi:

 A parking lot turned river

This one literally had a serious current and wave action.

This one had me worried some but I saw some of those smaller cars making it through so I forged ahead.

It's a good thing there is such a strong drainage system or we would have some serious flooding. (yes, sarcasm)

My street was a literal river  - the entire thing was filled with about 1.5 ft of water - the whole way. Those people walking were getting housed by all the water both on the street and splashes from the cars.

It's a damn good thing that I drive a monster truck. A few smaller cars got stuck ahead on this road..a.k.a the road to my apartments!

And next time you are losing your patience while you are sitting your car in mega traffic due to bad weather..Think about all these guys that get transported from their work site crammed in the back of this giant truck with a piece of plastic to keep you from getting fully soaked…thinking of that will help you relax. It works for me.

And now I have a treat for you -

I will now share my delicious, simple, and healthy chicken enchiladas (I used turkey breast) with you – because I love you and you deserve something so tasty.

I make these things like at least once a month and it will feed you all week. For big families, you might as well make 2 pans at once.

Ingredients

Chicken or turkey breast – for just one pan of enchiladas you could use like 3 split chicken breasts – that’s if you like a lot of chicken in yours – otherwise use 2.

Green and red peppers (I don’t know..maybe 1 of each)

Onions (1)

Corn tortillas (you can use flour too..go ahead get nuts on this one)

Cheese

Salsa

Sour cream

Taco seasoning

Store bought enchilada sauce (red or green, whatever you like)

Method

Prepare your chicken or turkey breast by coating them with taco seasoning

Chop up your veggies and sauté them with a tiny bit of olive oil and taco seasoning

Cook your chicken – I used to have a foreman grill before I sold it and that worked great for cooking up the chicken. Now I use the broiler. Cook it till it’s just done. Then chop it up!

Then get out a baking pan, or use the same one from the chicky like me,  and begin making your enchiladas. In each tortilla put some chicken, veggies, salsa, tiny bit of cheese and if you want, a tiny bit of sour cream. Roll it up and place it tightly in the pan, then continue with the rest of them.

Lastly, pour store bought enchilada sauce – any kind you like – all over the enchiladas.  Sprinkle the top with a bit of cheese – just a little if you want this low fat. Then pop it in the oven till it all gets hot and everything cooks together a bit. Maybe like 10-15 min. Then ENJOY! Mmmmmm.

Hmm..this looks good but it just seems to be missing something....

Ah there we go! All better now - How to make home cooking taste more like crappy fast food - cover it in mild sauce! so delish.

Side note: I have decided that Old El Paso Red enchilada sauce is the same thing as taco bell mild sauce. Amazing. And for some crazy reason they stock it in Nairobi! Also Amazing.

Not uno, not dos, but TRES LECHES!

Big night last night  people...very big night. It was our weekly mall food court and frozen yogurt night with my friends. Well, only two of us made it. Sergio laughs at me when I tell him about it. It's such a Golden Girls weekly event. But things are different out here.  I mean back in the US, the last time I had a mall food court night with my friends I was 14. The fact is, if you want frozen yogurt here, you have to go to the mall and the other fact is that the mall (Westgate) is one of the nicest places to go in general for anything. So, it just works. We eat our indian food and then we travel slowly down to the 2nd level to get our Planet Yogurt. And then we sit and talk about cabbage, fertilizer, and how loud children are these days. ;-)  Actually since my friend Carly had her baby, it's a time for us to get to see the little guy and just catch up in general. Then usually one of us has just returned from some weird country and we'll hear stories about that (re. Rose and the Libyans).  LOVE MALL FOOD COURT NIGHT.

Next topic - so last Sunday, an angel named Tara, invited me (and Scott and friends) over to her house for Mexican night. Anything called Mexican night is also a huge deal..right up there Mall Food Court (MFC from here on out).  You see, Tara works as a foreign service officer for USAID. So, this means she has all access to the US commissary here AND they can order anything they want, anytime online and have it delivered to the embassy. This is HUGE.  So, for example, Tara has access to Tostitos, black beans, cheese from home, specialty supplies like ancho chillies in adobo sauce or whatever, salsa, etc. She can get all sorts of stuff that I as a commoner contractor cannot get. The other thing about Tara is she is a fellow Texan so we can sign state songs together and talk about Davey Crockett and Sam Houston. AND she knows Tex-mex. She has this Tex Mex cooking bible - it literally glows when it sits on a shelf.
She made us an AMAZING dinner of two types of enchiladas, queso dip, two types of salsas,  black bean dip, mexican rice...ooooh it was goooood. So gooooood.  I wish I would have taken photos. I was too busy eating queso dip. Tara cooked it up right. (Yes, She also cooks upright).

My contribution was dessert - and it needed to be some type of spanish sounding thing. I attempted churros, but since I didn't have a pastry bag or tip, they looked like uh cinnamon poopoo. So, I decided to make TRES LECHES cakes, which I like too much.
I sort of combined two recipes - the Alton Brown Recipe from Food Network and one from Allrecipes.com. It turned out GREAT! I was worried since I couldn't try it until it was time to serve and there was a good 10 or so people there. Here's the process:

Borrow a mixer from your neighbor Scott. Then mix the wet ingredients first.  This is half a cup butter, 1 c. sugar, 5 eggs, half tsp vanilla.

mix the dry ingredients - about 1.5 cups of flour, 1 tsp baking powder, half tsp salt.  Then slowly add the dry stuff into the wet stuff and mix well.

borrow a cake pan from your neighbor Scott. Get said pan ready. Dump batter into pan.

Said pan was too big for my mini Make-it-and-bake-it oven so it went in at an angle. True to Lenna form, improvise! I kept turning the plan every like 4 minutes to try to get it to come out somewhat flat. But it cooked up quick and held a  good 20 degree slant.  I could care less.  Took about 20 minutes.

Mix together  evaporated milk, normal milk, and condensed milk and dump all over cake once it's cooled.

The milks will fully absorb and look like this. Then put it in the fridge over night.

The next day, take whipping cream, 1tsp vanilla and sugar and mix it for a loooong time till it gets thick. This was the first time I've ever done this. I thought it would never firm up - but it eventually did. (that's what she said). The whip cream was awesome - tasted like the real deal from the spray can from home.

Then, spread on cake. And serve just like this. This is not one of those cakes you take out of the pan - which worked great for me since I can never get a cake out of a pan without tearing it up.  Gotta keep this thing cold till it's time to serve though. 

Okay, that's it for me. This post took forever.

Back to our normal programming....

Okay, I'm done asking for money now ;-) You can come back...it's safe! I swear. haha.

So, I went running on Saturday - a quick 4 miles, which hurt like hell.  It's been hot and muggy here lately - As the guards tell me, "Yes madam, we are upon the season of the short rain". 
When I go running here I take some additional things with me..I seriously almost need a purse to go running. But Sergio got me a trendy runners belt..it's basically a glorified stretchable fanny pack.

Emergency phone, pepper spray, keys, IPOD.

All of that has to fit in HERE:

Anyways, somehow, and I knew it would happen because the road is soooo torn up where I ran, I ended up rolling my ankle on a huge rock and it was bad. I mean full force weight right on my sideways bent ankle. It was early in my run so I sort of made the stupid decision to just keep running since I was in a state of numbness and my dad taught me from a young age that Neat's eat nails..so yeah..just kept going.  I had to jump in the shower and run off to my Indian cooking class after I got back in ...which was 3.5 hours on my feet. Needless to say, my ankle slowly blew up this this big painful mess by the time I got home Saturday night after being on my feet the entire day. The pain was bad - I mean, pain like I thought it was gangrene and broken and with frost bite all together..okay maybe that's exaggerating but I still couldn't move it or the pain was just nuts. Somehow it miraculously 90%  healed overnight..to go from that much pain to not much pain made me feel like a new woman when i woke up. Although I went to work today and my ankle and foot is ginormous today..not much pain but it's HUGE and my shoe began to get increasingly tight. I showed my co-worker - she asked me if I was born with a cankle (just one). I told her it's a temporary cankle and that my ankles are the one area of my body that is thin and I don't appreciate her saying things about my one perfect part(s).  
So I came home a bit early today and did this:

Frozen strawberry ice-pack. Really bad photo. I just realized it looks like I have one of those Guinness book of world record long curly toe  nails..but that is not my toe nail haha, that is long horn Horn sitting on a table.

Now, back to Indian cooking class. I had been looking for an Indian cooking class for a while - Finally found a woman that gives classes in her house so I set it up. I had a really good turnout - 8 people signed up and the instructor was this cute older Indian woman that is like Iron Chef India.  Her style of cooking reminded me a lot of my mom and my aunt amal - very estimated and by taste. Her only measurement units were a "small bowl", "small spoon", or "big spoon".  For larger measurements she uses "large old tennis shoe" and "garden shovel"..kidding.   Anyways somehow we made 7 Indian dishes in like 3 hours. Pretty amazing. The food was um, okay. For some reason I thought it was great when I was there, but we packaged it all up and brought it home and I really didn't like any of it back at my house. It didn't quite taste like the restaurants around here but we certainly didn't do any slow cooking so I think that would have make a difference. There just wasn't a lot of time to make a lot of dishes that usually cook for a longer time. It was still fun and interesting to learn the methods and ingredients that go into some of these dishes..and the naan was really good!
Two  interesting tid-bits from cooking class:

• she actually cooks ANTI-FLATULENCE powder INTO the lentils. Awesome right? haha. Love that.  Two different ingredients will do the deed -Thyme seeds or something called Hing.

• And, instead of baking soda, as a rising agent for the naan, she uses like alcaseltzer powder. It's called something different here but same stuff. Good to know in general.

Oh lastly, she claims that food allergies are bullshit and she can cure your food allergy in 15 days through healing foods. Let me know if you want her contacts ;-)))

Love the colors in this. From the top dark spice: mustard seed, salt, tumeric,coriander, spanish paprika or chili powder, cumin seeds, and in the middle is coriander and cumin mixed.

Making the naan was surprisingly easy

Palak Paneer - my favorite. Just didn't turn out as thick and delish as Anghiti's here.

I think I'll still just go to restaurants for all my indian fixes since it's inexpensive here. But once I move home, I may have to learn to perfect the palak paneer and chicken tikka masala. Two of my faves.\

A couple of the ladies mentioned that maybe I should do a Lebanese cooking class...I'm thinking about putting one together as a fund raiser for something but first I have to learn how to cook without making a complete disaster out of the kitchen and how to do it all in 3 hours. It's harder than it looks.

The end.

Get to know Sumac

If you don’t know sumac, you should.  It’s this amazing spice used a lot in the middle eastern foods that has a lemony vinegary flavor. Yes, it is related to poison Sumac, which you are probably familiar with if you had a brother like I did that was continuously coated in a layer of pink calamine lotion growing up because he liked to play in bushes for some reason. But, the edible spice is of another genus and completely safe.  If you are a hummus fan, maybe you’ve had it in your hummus, or maybe you’ve had zaatar with sumac in it..or possibly in your shawarma if you frequent the middle eastern food trucks in DC.


Well, it’s time you start eating sumac because it’s actually good for you and adds incredible flavor.  Apparently it used to be used in the medieval times to treat a ton of illnesses.   There is some data that shows it has antimicrobial properties and can be used to treat hypoglycemia.  You can buy sumac at any middle eastern food store or online or maybe even your grocery store….but definitely not mine here in Kenya. I brought my sumac from home ;-)
So, let me introduce you to the simplest most delicious easy to make chicken dish EVER :
Sumac Chicken with Onions and Arabic bread recipe.  Its real name is - Mussakhan.  I got the recipe from here.  It’s a website called Taste of Beirut where this lady that grew up in Lebanon shows you how to cook some awesome stuff.  I tweaked her recipe a bit to fit with what I had and to be extra healthy and a lot easier than the one she made.
Ingredients
1 yellow onion cut into thin rings
2-3 chicken breasts cut into small chunks. The real recipe asked for boneless wings..eh.
1 cup Chicken stock
Pita bread  - if you have Arabic paper bread (markook or lavash) use that. I could not get pita even, I had to use Naan (Indian flat bread)
1 tbsp sumac
olive oil
salt pepper cinnamon, all spice
Red Wine – to drink!
Pre-heat oven.
First, sprinkle the sumac all over your sliced onions and set aside

Once you chop up your chicken breasts, sprinkle them with salt, pepper, cinnamon and all spice

Then brown your chicken in a pan with some olive oil.  You don’t need to cook it all the way through – Just get it a bit golden on the outside.

Oh, this is where I began drinking my wine ;-)

Okay, then remove the chicken from the pan, add a bit of olive oil and start cooking up them onions! You want them to get sort of clear..not brown.

Okay, now, while your onions are cooking, pour some chicken stock into a bowl ( I just mixed a bouillon cube with some hot water. I’m sure you have fancier options than that). 
Get out a glass baking dish and spray it down with some cooking spray.  Open up your pita and lay it down in the dish.  You can use 2 pieces..just do what you want. You won’t mess it up. Then brush or coat the bread with a layer of chicken stock.
 
Once the onions are done, lay half of them down on top of your bread. Then add your chicken on top. Next put the rest of the onions on top of the chicken. Take another piece of opened up pita and try to sort of lay it on top and tuck it under the bottom piece to make a little cage for the chicken and onions. Paint the top piece of bread with plenty of chicken stock as you do this.
If you are using naan like I had to..it sort of looks like this:
   

If you are using lavash do it like this – put a couple of layers down first and then wrap it around your stuffing. This is the real deal if you have the right bread.

Then I wrapped mine all up in foil since I couldn’t really create a little bread pocket with my thick stiff naan.  I put it in the oven for about 30-35 minutes at like um, I don’t know..Hot. Maybe normal baking hot. Like 350. My oven has a dial with single digit numbers – I used 7 hot. ;-))

Well the finished product looks a lot like the pre-finished product – the photo doesn't’ really show how steamy and juicy this thing ended up.

It was soooooooo good. It was like lemony, tangy, oniony, juicy, the bread and chicken was delish. And it was so easy and needs like 4 ingredients.
Enjoy the sumac!

Making Healthy Tomato Basil Soup…For One.

How many times have you been talking to someone about cooking and you or they have said, “I just don’t like cooking big meals just for myself.  It’s much more fun and interesting cooking for others”.  While it’s true that cooking for others is a special joy –because I do like cooking for Sergio - cooking for your own DEAR and PRECIOUS self should be just as joyful. Don’t you still love that process of starting from nothing and ending up with a flavorful creation made from your own hands. Don’t you still enjoy sitting peacefully, even if alone, and enjoying the fruits of your labor and a quality homemade meal? Isn’t impressing yourself JUST as important? Or learning to make something new for your arsenal of go to recipes equally as satisfying?  YES, IT IS!
I cook for myself – even if I’m all alone now that Sergio is back in the States. Why should I eat boring, meaningless food just because another human being is not in the room?  I destroy my kitchen weekly even just for a party of 1.
On Monday, my newest creation was Homemade Roasted Tomato Basil Soup. LAWDY!- it was pleasurable and I have been eating it every day this week and it makes me happy – It tastes like restaurant quality soup and I am proud of this one. In fact it tastes almost exactly like Cosi Tomato Basil Soup, which I obsess over when I go home. It’s just a low-fat version since it doesn’t have cream.  If you are a tomato soup fan like me, you have to try it. It makes me want to say: Yay, soup's my favorite! (haha -if you read this post, that will make sense.) I got the recipe from the Food Network – It was one of Barefoot Contessa’s recipes. Here’s what you need:

Ingredients

• 3 pounds ripe plum tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise
  
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons good olive oil (I used some good stuff Sergio bought from his friend who has an olive farm in Croatia..man that stuff tastes pure olives..oil.)
  
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
  
• 2 cups chopped yellow onions (2 onions)
  
• 6 garlic cloves, minced
  
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter (but I did not use butter at all..just olive oil)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  
• 1 (28-ounce) canned plum tomatoes, with their juice
  
• 4 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
  
• 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
  
• 1 quart chicken stock or water

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Toss together the tomatoes, 1/4 cup olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread the tomatoes in 1 layer on a baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes.

before

After

Prep work - chopped onions, fresh thyme, garlic and basil

In an 8-quart stockpot over medium heat, saute the onions and garlic with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, the butter, and red pepper flakes for 10 minutes, until the onions start to brown.

Add the canned tomatoes, basil, thyme, and chicken stock.

Add the oven-roasted tomatoes, including the liquid on the baking sheet. Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered for 40 minutes.

 Then puree!  I used my immersion blender that my step mom bought me back in college – that thing has been the most useful thing ever – I don’t have large equipment since I tend to move a lot. It’s the perfect little portable device.  Looks like this:

 
VOILA! Then, just taste for seasonings and enjoy. If you want your soup a little creamy you can add a dollop of sour cream – so DELISH. And you made it yourself for yourself! or to share, which is nice too. ;-)