In the last couple of weeks, I’ve had several conversations about mashed potatoes. How to make them, what to put in them, how to avoid lumps, blah, blah, blah. It’s a strange thing to be discussing. I mean, it’s just mashed potatoes, right? I guess it’s the simple things that make people afraid of cooking. Mashed potatoes are very easy and I wasn’t planning on writing a recipe for them. I really just wanted to write about what to do with the leftovers, except it just keeps coming up. So, I’ll tell you how I make mashed potatoes and then I’ll tell you what I do when we don’t finish them.

I prefer Yukon gold potatoes for their flavor and consistency. You can keep the peel on your potatoes, but I don’t like them like that — if I wanted the peel, I’d make roasted potatoes, baked potatoes, steamed potatoes, something other than mashed potatoes. I also like to use skim milk and only a little butter, because I’d rather put more butter, cream or whatever in the sauce that is going into the main course, which is where you’ll get the most flavor. I do sometimes use more butter or (gasp) half and half or cream in my mashed potatoes if I’m making them for a special occasion, but honestly, they don’t need it.

Despite my aversion to single purpose kitchen utensils, I’m a convert to the potato ricer. The one that I have looks like a giant garlic press, like this one. I pulled it out recently when my friends Mercedes and Brendan were over for dinner and they looked at it like it was some sort of voodoo magic wand or something. It does feel like magic, because once the potatoes were cooked, it doesn’t take much effort to get them smooth and creamy. You don’t need a ricer to make good mashed potatoes, but it will make it easier.

I must admit that when I make mashed potatoes, I have to make a lot of them for there to be leftovers. If there are any leftover, I’m very happy. I’ve used them to make shepherd’s pie, mashed potato soup and colcannon. These are all great options. Recently, when I have mashed potatoes, I turn them into little cakes. They are really versatile; you can chop up any other leftovers and put them in too. Served with a green salad and some tomato, this makes a nice meal suitable for ovo-lacto vegetarians.

Mashed potatoes for four people or for two with leftovers

• 4 large Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into uniform size pieces
• 2 T butter
• 1/2 cup milk or half and half, hot (heat in a microwave or on top of stove)
• Salt
• Optional: black pepper, herbs, garlic

Place potatoes in a pot and cover them with water. Add a large pinch of salt. Put lid on pot and turn heat to high. When the water comes to a boil, turn in down to low. Simmer potatoes for about 15 minutes until they are tender when pierced with the tip of a knife. Drain potatoes and pass them through a ricer back into the pot, or put them back into the pot and mash them with a potato masher. Add butter and milk, if you’ve used a ricer just stir it together, if a masher, mash some more until the potatoes are smooth. Add optional ingredients and some salt to taste.

Mashed potato cakes

• 2 cups leftover mashed potatoes
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 grated cheese (cheddar, Swiss, parmesan, etc)
• 1 egg
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Optional: scallions, parsley (or another green herb), leftover vegetables or meat, chopped
• 2 T vegetable oil (any kind: olive oil, peanut oil, canola oil, etc.)

Mix all ingredients except oil in a bowl and form into 8 cakes. Place on a plate and cover with plastic wrap. Place in refrigerator for 20 to 30 minutes. Heat oil over medium high in a large skillet and place potato cakes in skillet and let brown on one side for about 3 minutes before carefully turning to brown on the other side. Serve immediately with a green salad and sliced tomato drizzled with vinaigrette.

My friend Heather went to school in Baton Rouge for a PhD in History. While there, she was converted to the celebratory ways of Louisiana. She had a party last weekend for Mardi gras or Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent begins. She made red beans and rice, and gumbo with okra and shrimp, and served plenty of drinks. Erik brought beads that he had bought from a Mardi gras supply store (you don’t need a license). She asked me to make a king cake. I knew from our explanations of the French galette des rois that the cake in Louisiana is not the same thing, except that it is. The cake is not the same kind of cake, but the idea is the same. In France it’s made for epiphany and served at King’s cake parties during the month of January. The Louisiana version is served anytime between Epiphany and Mardi Gras. So, I looked up recipes and saw that most people buy this cake rather than make it themselves (just like the French). The cake comes with something cooked inside of it (though it’s usually a plastic baby Jesus and not a porcelain figurine like is often the case in France). It seems the people who bake these cakes are afraid of getting sued, so nowadays the plastic baby Jesus comes with the purchase of the cake, but a person has to shove it into the cake on his or her own before serving it. I can’t wait until the French get that politically correct with their galette des rois - can you imagine?

So the Louisiana king cake is basically a brioche dough, a sweetened egg bread, that is filled and rolled, frosted with a simple icing and decorated with the traditional colors of Louisiana Mardi gras: Purple for justice, green for faith and yellow or gold for power. I fiddled a little with the recipe and made another one for my students today. I know, it’s Ash Wednesday, so it was a little blasphemous, but the recipe is better for me having tried it out twice.

King cake for Mardi Gras

• 1/4 cup butter
• 16 oz. sour cream
• 1 t salt
• 2 envelopes active dry yeast (.25 ounce)
• 1 T sugar
• 1/2 cup warm water (100 to 110 degrees)
• 2 eggs
• 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup pecans, chopped
• 2 T flour
• White frosting and tinted frostings (see below)

Melt 1/4 cup butter, sour cream, 1/3 cup sugar and salt in a saucepan over low heat, stirring often, until butter melts. Cool mixture to 100 degrees to 110 degrees.

Dissolve yeast and 1 T sugar in 1/2 cup warm water in the bowl of a stand mixture or in a large mixing bowl; let stand 5 minutes. Add butter mixture, 2 eggs, and 2 cups flour; beat at medium speed with the dough hook of a stand mixer or with an electric mixer 2 or 3 minutes or until smooth. Gradually stir in enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. If using a stand mixer, continue mixing for about 8-10 minutes until dough is slightly shiny and has crawled up the hook. If not using a stand mixture, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place in a well-buttered bowl, turning to make sure some of the butter is on top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (70-85 degrees) for 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.

Mix together 1/2 cup softened butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup pecans and 2 T flour. Set aside.

Punch dough down, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and divide it in half. Roll one half into a 24- x 12-inch rectangle. Spread half of butter, sugar and nut mixture onto the dough. Roll it up, jellyroll fashion, starting at long side. Place the roll seam side down on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bring ends together to form a ring. Moisten and pinch edges together to seal. Repeat with remaining dough and butter, sugar and nut mixture.

Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 30 minutes.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until golden. Let cool. Frost with the white frosting and drizzle with purple, green and yellow frosting.

Frosting

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 3 T butter, melted
• 3 T milk
• 1/4 t vanilla extract
• 2 drops green food coloring
• 1 drop blue food coloring
• 1 drop red food coloring

Stir together powdered sugar and melted butter. Add about 1/4 cup milk; stir in vanilla. Separate out 2 T of frosting in each of 3 separate small bowls or containers and tint 1 green, 1 yellow, and combine red and blue food coloring to tint purple frosting, to the tinted frostings add a little more milk so that they can be drizzled onto the frosted cake.

Makes 2 cakes.

This weekend marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year. I have always liked the idea of having the New Year begin when spring is on its way, rather than in the middle of the winter, it seems like there’s something to actually celebrate. The traditional Chinese calendar is lunisolar rather than just being solar and the New Year falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice. This New Year is February 18th in China, but because we’re talking about when the new moon arrives in China, here in the U.S. it’s late in the afternoon of February 17th. The celebrations last until the moon is full, 15 days later. Before the New Year, you are supposed to clean your house, symbolically ridding yourself of the old year. Be careful with cleaning just after the New Year, though, because you don’t want to symbolically clean out the New Year before it begins. Red is the traditional color for decorations, it symbolizes fire and happiness, it drives away that bad spirits and promises to bring joy in the year to come.

Because they started counting a lot earlier in Asia, this is the beginning of the year 4075. There are 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac: rat, cow, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, chicken, dog and pig. They are combined with the five elements in yin and yang combinations: metal, water, wood, fire and earth in order to make sixty year cycles. Last year was fire dog and this year is fire pig, next year will be earth rat and the one after that earth ox. This year is supposed to be particularly auspicious; red for fire is a lucky, happy color and pigs are supposedly lucky animals because they are round and plump and don’t have to do anything all day other than eat and sleep and they don’t have anything to worry about (except maybe ending up on my plate). We decided this would be a good year to celebrate the pig by cooking a variety of pork recipes, but don’t count on us doing anything with rats next year.

Erik the husband probably likes pork more than any other food. He’s one of those people who could never really be vegetarian because of the bacon factor. It’s funny, because we don’t even eat bacon very often (except for that time two weeks ago when our friend Heather was starving and I cooked up a whole pound of bacon as a first course for the three of us, but that was not a normal circumstance, honest). We do eat pork, though, on a pretty regular basis. Pork chops, pork roast, pork tenderloin, pork butt, pork ribs, pulled pork, sausages, prosciutto, and of course jam?n Serrano when we can get it. So, when we found out that it was the year of the pig, we decided that it would be fun to cook up one of our favorite pork dishes once a month during the whole year.

This recipe uses some Chinese ingredients, including some of my favorites like hoisin sauce and five spice powder. It’s one of the things we make quite often during the winter months. The inspiration is from a recipe in Bon App?tit in 2003 for a hoisin pork shoulder, but for this dish, I really like pork tenderloin, it’s lower in fat, I like its flavor with the hoisin sauce and it’s a lot quicker to cook. We’ve also made this by putting the tenderloins on the grill and they were good, but I like them roasted better. The whole thing serves about 8 people as a main course and is great as leftovers.

Chinese New Year pork tenderloins

• Two 1 lb. pork tenderloins
• 3/4 hoisin sauce
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced fine
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 bunch scallions (green onions), sliced

Place pork tenderloins and all other ingredients except the scallions in a plastic bag or Tupperware container. Mix ingredients well and place in refrigerator at least 1 hour or overnight. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Put pork tenderloins on a baking sheet, tuck the smaller end under and roast about 25 minutes, until meat registers 140 degrees on an instant read thermometer. Remove pork from oven and let sit for 10 minutes before slicing. While pork is roasting, take the plastic bag with marinade and add 1/2 cup water to the bag. Pour this mixture into a small pan and bring to a boil over high heat until the sauce is reduced to about 3/4 cup. Transfer pork to a serving platter and shower it with the scallions. Serve with sweet potato pur?e, Brussels sprouts and sauce.

Sweet potato pur?e

• 4-5 large sweet potatoes (about 3 lbs.)
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 T butter
• 2 T grated fresh ginger
• 1/2 t Chinese five spice powder
• Salt to taste

Peel potatoes and cut into pieces. Place in a pot that has a lid and cover with water. Add a pinch of salt. Place pot over medium high heat with lid on and bring water to a boil. Lower heat. Cook potatoes until they are soft when pierced with a sharp knife. Drain and cool slightly. Use a potato ricer to pur?e the potatoes and return them to the pan along with the rest of the ingredients and turn heat to low (If you don’t have a ricer, you can put everything into a food processor and then put it all into the pan). Stir and warm the pur?e for about two minutes.

Brussels sprouts

• 1 lb. Brussels sprouts
• 1 T vegetable oil
• 1 T butter
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 T soy sauce

Remove outer layers and stem end of Brussels sprouts and wash thoroughly. Heat a skillet over high heat and add oil. Put Brussels sprouts in pan and turn heat to medium. Cook sprouts for about 10 minutes, rolling them around from time to time. Make sure that they get some good caramelization in several areas. Add water, place lid on skillet and braise the sprouts for about ten minutes. Remove lid and allow water to evaporate almost completely. Add soy sauce and reduce all the liquid to almost nothing. Turn heat off and stir in butter just before serving.

I have no need for Valentine’s Day, nope, not this girl. I’m not hoping for jewelry, flowers or chocolates. My husband and I agreed a long time ago not to buy each other cards or gifts for this holiday. I don’t believe in those forced romantic gestures or in the commodification of love. Besides, Erik brings me breakfast in bed almost every single day. That’s right. EVERY DAY. A skim latte, some toast or yogurt. Maybe some fruit or some juice. Sometimes we’ll make banana bread or bran muffins or something like that on Sunday to have for the week. It’s made me a little lazy. These days, I don’t even always hear the alarm. I wake up when I hear the spoon in the glass as he mixes the sugar into the coffee. I know, I’m very lucky. And grateful. I’m going to make him a nice dinner tonight. We’re having a friend over.

Everyone knows that yogurt is good for you. Like many foods that have been
around for hundreds of years, we don’t know how it was invented, but people say
that it’s one of those things that was probably invented accidentally when
someone left some milk sitting around for too long and was hungry enough to
try and eat it. Some people claim that it can help you lose weight, live longer,
avoid cancer and even have better breath. I don’t eat foods just because they’re
good for me, I try to eat a variety of foods that taste good and that are
processed as little as possible. Yogurt is one of them. I like to eat yogurt
for breakfast, I like to make things using yogurt. Sean Connery apparently
likes yogurt.
Some cats
even like yogurt (but some don’t).
If you don’t like yogurt, you might as well just stop reading this post right
now and go read about
no-knead bread
instead, because everyone needs to make some.

What I don’t like is how difficult it is to find plain non-fat or low-fat yogurt that doesn’t have preservatives or gelatin added to it. I also don’t like how expensive yogurt can be. The Greek-style thick yogurt that I love to cook with costs more than two dollars for seven ounces. For that price, you’d think they could at least give you a whole cup. I like the yogurt with the fruit on the bottom. My husband stirs it all up together, but I think he’s missing the point. The idea with fruit on the bottom is to stir only a little bit of the fruit goo in and to save some of it to eat by itself. Otherwise, you can just buy yogurt that already has all of the fruity stuff mixed in with it, right? What is that fruity goo stuff anyway? Most likely it’s fruit mixed with gelatin — I just checked, it does have gelatin and also high fructose corn syrup and some other things I don’t know if I want to be eating. Some fresh fruit or homemade jam, some honey and walnuts are much better, especially when (not all the way) mixed into some homemade yogurt.

The first time I ever made yogurt it was following the directions of my ex, who is from the Balkans. He told me to boil some milk, add in some yogurt, put the yogurt in jars, wrap them in a blanket and put the whole thing by the radiator overnight. This actually works, most of the time. The fact that sometimes the stuff didn’t turn into yogurt was fine with me (he would drink it, yuck), but I was always afraid it was going to make us sick. So one day, this person who told me how to make yogurt rather than make it himself ate the last one. The one I was saving to make the next batch with. I went on strike and stopped making yogurt for a long time.

Last year, I decided it was high time for the great yogurt making strike to be over. I was still afraid of making myself sick, so I started looking around for options. I do not like those yogurt making contraptions. I refuse to buy kitchen gadgets that can only be used for one thing (my ice cream maker also makes sorbet, does yours?). Besides, the yogurt makers on the market only produce six to eight little containers of yogurt. I’m sorry, if we want yogurt for breakfast for a whole week, I need at least 14 containers of yogurt, preferably more, because if there’s yogurt in the fridge, my husband will eat it and not just for breakfast. So, the decision not to buy one of those yogurt machines was an easy one, and I decided to poke around on the internet for information on homemade methods of yogurt making that do not involve buying any specialized equipment, that would produce reliable results and calm my fear of poisoning myself, my husband or my friends.

I found one website that explained it all, that gave me the science of yogurt that even Harold McGee doesn’t talk about (and that also inspired last year’s ricotta adventure). Professor David B. Fankhauser of Claremont College created Yogurt Making Illustrated using fresh goat’s milk, I am jealous. Erik is now planning to buy me a goat. My Aunt Millie once asked my Uncle Dick to buy her a garbage disposal. On Christmas morning, he told her to look under the sink and she was delighted to run into the kitchen and open the cupboard to find her shiny new…baby goat? That’s right, if Erik buys me a goat, it wouldn’t be the first time in my family that a husband shows his love for his wife by purchasing a cute little kid. The only thing is, we don’t have twenty acres like my aunt and uncle had. Maybe we could just find a source for fresh goat milk? In the meantime, cow’s milk works fine.

Ingredients for this should be fresh. I make yogurt with hormone-free milk from a local dairy that I use the same day I buy it. The website Where Can I Find Real Milk is a great place to look for a dairy near you. I use some yogurt from a leftover batch if I have some, or I use yogurt from the store, usually Dannon plain or Greek style yogurt. You can use any brand of plain yogurt that lists only milk with active yogurt cultures as its ingredient. For incubating the yogurt, I use a large cooler outfitted with a heating pad on the bottom (cord snaked out the side and plugged in), a trivet on top of the heating pad and a tray on top of the trivet. These last two items ensure that the yogurt is not sitting directly on the heat source. Finally, I use a probe thermometer to make sure that the temperature inside the cooler is above 98 degrees and below 130 degrees at all times. Using this method, the yogurt incubates in about 10 hours. If you don’t have this equipment, there are several other ways of incubating the yogurt. Some professors at the University of Missouri describe some of them here. Some yogurt recipes also include 1/3 or 1/2 cup dry milk powder as an ingredient to make the yogurt thicker. I have so far wanted to make yogurt using just milk and yogurt. If I want my yogurt thicker, I drain out some of the liquid.

Homemade Yogurt

• 1 gallon milk, you can use whole milk, 2%, 1% or skim
• 1/2 cup yogurt with live cultures and no additives
• Optional: sugar, jam or honey

Sterilize the jars and lids that you will use for the yogurt. I use 8 oz. jelly jars and fill them not quite full so we can put jam or honey on top. I generally use 16 jars and put the rest in a larger container to strain and thicken to use for tzatziki or lebneh. If you want to create your own fruit on the bottom style yogurt, put in a tablespoon or so of jam or honey in the jars now.

Place a heating pad in a large cooler and put a trivet or some empty cans on top of the heating pad and put a tray on top of that so that the jars of yogurt won’t sit directly on the heating pad (the bottom of the yogurt will be overcooked and not smooth otherwise). Put the probe of a cooking thermometer inside the cooler and put the rest of it on top of the cooler. Heat the inside of the cooler to at least 98 degrees and below 130 degrees. While making the yogurt, keep the inside of the cooler above 98 degrees and below 130 degrees. Under 98 degrees, the yogurt won’t thicken, above 130 degrees and you’ll kill the bacteria that cause the milk to turn into yogurt.

Fill your sink half full with cold water and a little ice. Pour the milk into a large pot with a thick bottom. If you want your yogurt sweet, add the sugar now. 1/4 cup is probably enough. Heat the milk to 190 degrees and hold it at about that temperature for ten minutes, but don’t let it boil. Place the pot of milk in the ice bath in the sink and cool it down to 125 degrees. This happens quite quickly; watch it to make sure it doesn’t get much colder than that. Mix one cup of the cooled milk with the yogurt in a small bowl and pour this mixture into the pot of cooled milk. Use a whisk to combine the yogurt mixture and the milk, making sure it is well blended. Ladle the inoculated milk into sterilized jars. Place the jars on the tray in the cooler and close the lid. After about 6 hours, check one of the jars to see if the yogurt has thickened, if not, check again every half hour until it is ready. Once the yogurt is thickened, put it right away into the refrigerator. Cooling it right away stops the yogurt from being too acidic.

I’ve never been to North Africa, but I’ve taught classes about francophone culture and literature. I’ve also taught a class about food and we read novels set in Morocco and Algeria that go on and on about olives, olive oil, couscous, eating goat and making yogurt. I love reading about food and I love North African food. My husband has already been to Morocco and is not itching to get back there, so I’m thinking that I’ll just keep making food like this and begging to go to North Africa until I wear him down. My friend Mercedes, transplanted from France to the U.S. against her will (it was her heart that did it), also loves food from North Africa. That’s why she gives me things like the world’s largest couscoussier, a lovely tajine dish and books on North African cuisine. If you don’t know what it is, I’ll write about the couscoussier some other time. Today it’s tajine, a traditional Moroccan dish that is prepared quite often in France.

Tajine is one of those funny words in French that has been borrowed from another language, in this case Arabic, and it means both the serving vessel and the food that is prepared in it. It’s funny because unlike most other words in French, this one seems to slip gender, masculine or feminine, depending on the speaker. If you follow the rules, it should be le tajine, because any word borrowed from another language is automatically tagged masculine, so you would say le hot dog, le ketchup and le whisky, for instance. However, some words just look and sound feminine or they are feminine in the original language, and so some speakers of French use the feminine articles la and une with these words, like Nutella or tajine. It’s really funny to bring up words like this with French people, because it will inevitably start a long discussion about grammar and they can be pretty passionate about their opinions, especially when it’s related to food. In the end, it’s really a tomato, tomahto or rose by any other name question. I just want to eat le or la tajine that’s been prepared in le or la tajine.

So, Tajines, by Ghislaine Benady, that Mercedes gave me is full of amazing recipes. I haven’t gotten around to making all of them, but I do make the classic one, chicken with preserved lemon and green olives. I’ve made it following the recipe in Tajines, from the one from Paula Wolfort’s book, Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, and also from websites, including the Moroccan Ministry of Communication, which has a lot of really good looking recipes for Moroccan food and some pretty funny translations to boot. Smelted butter anyone? I’ve finally settled on a method that combines several recipes.

There are some important things to keep in mind when making this dish. Don’t believe other recipes that state that you can use fresh lemon peel in the place of preserved lemons. Either make some preserved lemons using the guidelines provided below, buy some preserved lemons in your local fancy food store or order some on-line. Amazon.com sells a 7.5 oz. jar of Mustapha’s Moroccan Preserved Lemons for $7.95 and Kalustyan’s sells one of about the same size for about that price and they also have a one pound jar for $10.99 and a two pound jar for $16.99. I’m thinking that the large size is a good deal, but you might not want it taking up room in your refrigerator. I say just make some preserved lemons with a few dollars worth of the fruit and good salt and wait a week before you make this dish. Some recipes for preserved lemons say to use olive oil. It’s really not necessary. Also, you should use good quality green olives, preferably the kind that aren’t really big and that are a little brownish, not bright green. Many of the recipes that I’ve read in French that use olives say that if your olives are bitter or really salty, you can boil them in water for just a minute or two and then proceed with the recipe, but I usually try to find olives that suit my taste. My recipe has a nod to French method, because I say to brown the chicken first and then to saut? the onions and garlic. In traditional North African cooking, you would just put all of the ingredients in with the liquid and let the liquid cook everything. While this produces a very fine and more authentic dish, I really love the flavor that you get from browning the meat in the pot before you cook the rest of the food. I’ve been obsessing about the Maillard reaction lately and trying to apply things I’ve learned from Harold McGee, but I’ll write more at length about it some other time. Finally, I lightened up the recipe by not using tons of olive oil, just enough to get the chicken browned. I also usually lighten it further by cooking it a day ahead and scraping the fat off of the top before reheating it.

Chicken Tagine With Lemon and Green Olives: Djej M’Chermel

• 1 chicken, 3- 4 lbs., cut into 8 pieces, plus liver and giblets or 8 chicken thighs
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1/2 teaspoon saffron, crushed
• 1 bunch cilantro, chopped
• 4 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 T extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups water
• Peel from 1/2 preserved lemon, pulp discarded, chopped
• 1 cup green olives, pitted and cut into slivers
• Juice of 1 or 2 lemons

Warm the olive oil in a Dutch oven over high heat and add the chicken pieces, skin side down and cook until skin is golden brown. Remove chicken pieces to a plate. Once they have cooled, you may peel off and discard the skin and other fat, if desired (I always do this). Reduce the heat to medium low and add onion, garlic, paprika, ginger, cumin, turmeric, saffron, half of the cilantro, parsley, salt and pepper. Cook until the onions are translucent, but not browned. Add the chicken back to the pot along with the chicken stock, water and liver and giblets (if using). Turn heat to high until the liquid just comes to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until chicken is tender, about 30-40 minutes. Add the preserved lemon peel, olives and lemon juice and continue to cook until the chicken is very tender, about 15 minutes longer. Remove chicken and (optional) liver and giblets from the pot and turn heat to high. Boil the sauce to thicken it somewhat. Chop the (optional) chicken liver and giblets finely or put them in a food processor and pulse until smooth. Stir this mixture into the pot and add the chicken and all of the liquid from the plate back in as well. Taste and adjust the seasonings, adding more lemon juice or salt if needed. Serve with quick couscous (see below) and sprinkle cilantro generously over everything. We ate this with some zucchini saut?ed in olive oil with garlic.

Quick couscous

• 2 cups couscous, also called semolina grains
• 1/4 cup golden raisins
• 4 cups chicken stock or water (or a combination)
• 1 t salt
• 1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted.

Boil water in a pot large enough to hold all of the ingredients. When water comes to a boil, turn the water off, add the couscous, raisins and salt and put the lid on the pot (you can use a plate if your pot has no lid). After 2 or 3 minutes, remove lid and use a fork to fluff and separate the grains of couscous and break up any lumps. Place the lid back on the top and wait about 10 minutes before serving. Serve with the toasted almonds sprinkled on top.

Preserved lemons

• 4 lemons, preferably organic, scrubbed
• 1/2 cup sea salt
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• Enough boiling water to fill your jar
• A sterilized jar, with a tight fitting lid, that is large enough to hold the fruit (to sterilize, boil in water or run it through the dishwasher right before using)

Take each lemon in your hand and make vertical slits from the blossom end to the tip without cutting all the way through the fruit. Place the lemons, salt and lemon juice in the jar. Add enough boiling water to fill the jar. Put the lid on the jar. Place the jar in the refrigerator for at least a week before using the lemons. When you want to use a lemon, use a clean utensil to fish one out, not your hands.