Many recipes I have used call for a can of broth or for bouillon cubes. To save money and avoid unhealthy additives, like MSG, preservatives, and excessive sodium, I prefer to make my own broth. It is a very easy process and isn’t a fussy thing to make as it can just simmer on the back of the stove while you are doing other tasks in the kitchen.

The main ingredient is chicken. Technically if you want true broth you’d only use chicken meat, it has a lighter flavor. For stock, you can use chicken bones, meat, trimmings, etc. and it has a heavier flavor. I use them interchangeably as my recipes aren’t that picky. I keep a gallon size ziplock freezer bag in the kitchen freezer. Anytime we have leftover chicken bones and fat, skin, or meat trimmings, I toss it in the freezer bag. I also intermix turkey leftovers in the bag, too. This is a good way to get another use out of leftover food that you may otherwise throw away after a meal. Because it’s in the freezer, you have no rush to make the broth after dinner. It can keep for a day you have time. Once the bag is about half full, I’m ready to make chicken stock.

Simmering before being strained

How I Make Chicken Broth or Stock:

Dump the contents of the frozen chicken bag into my 6 1/2 quart pot, adding enough water to easily cover all of the chicken.

Add half an onion, some carrots, celery, and green onion. The vegetables do not need to be well-chopped at all, 1-2″ pieces are fine. You really don’t even need to add vegetables. I do just to add extra flavor and nutrition. I also add a minced clove of garlic and a few whole cloves.

Bring to a boil on high heat, then cover, turn down to low and let it simmer for a few hours. Strain the broth to remove everything but liquid and let it cool. Skim the fat off the top of the cooled liquid.

I usually reuse the remaining chicken and veggies left after straining, right away to make a second batch. The two batches gives me about 1 gallon of broth.

Then I freeze it in labeled and dated 16oz size freezer containers or in smaller freezer bags. Next time I make chicken soup or have a recipe that calls for chicken broth, I just pull out of the freezer, defrost, and add it to the recipe!

Lemon Chicken Tagine

Tagine is the name of a traditional Moroccan pottery cooking dish.  The term may refer to the actual piece of pottery, to a tagine-specific recipe, and/or to this style of cooking.  I hope to blog more about this unique, healthy, natural, quick, and delicious way of cooking in the future.

This recipe is for Lemon Chicken made in a tagine pot.  If you don’t have a tagine, I’d think you you could use a stoneware cake pan, or even a cast iron skillet, but I haven’t tried it this way.  Some Moroccan women like to take a modern approach and use a pressure-cooker with great results.

If I am at home in the convenience of my kitchen, I place my tagine pot in the stove top burner on Med-Low heat.  Never exceed this temperature.  If we are camping in the Northern woods of Minnesota, as we were a weekend ago, we dig a small hole in the ground, fill it with hot coals, ring with stones, and place the tagine pot on top of the coals:

Our Moroccan Tagine in Northern Minnesota

Here’s our version of a basic, traditional recipe.  Have fun modifying it with your own spices, meats, and veggies!  Volumes, weights, and quantities are very loose, this is tagine, not science class!  FRESH herbs and ingredients make a HUGE difference in flavor!

Lemon Chicken Tagine

• Olive Oil
• 3 onions, chopped
• 3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2-4 split chicken breasts (We use free-range halal chicken raised on Amish farms), cut in chunks (you can use whole chicken pieces, legs, whatever you’d like.  We’ve placed a whole chicken on)
• 3-5 carrots, cut in various size pieces (or just break them with your hands, or leave whole!)
• 1/4 c parsley, chopped
• 1/4 c cilantro, chopped
• 1/4 c basil, chopped
• 2 t paprika
• 1 t fresh crushed ginger root
• 1 t coriander, ground
• 1 t cumin, ground
• a pinch of saffron (if desired, or cheat and use tumeric to make the yellow color
• 1/2 c – 1 c water or broth
• 10-20 olives, any Middle-Eastern or Medittranean variety, even better with the pits!
• 3-5 lemons, wedged or sliced

Place your tagine pot on med-low heat stovetop or over red-hot coal pit.  Pour in a few tablespoons of olive oil, the onions, garlic.  Saute.  Add clean, skinned chicken.  Place carrots on top.  You can leave the carrots in full length, uncut, or split lengthwise, and assemble them teepee style over the chicken.  Or just place carrot pieces on top of chicken.  Top with all of the herbs and spices, sprinkled evenly over.  Pour 1/2 c of the water or broth over the top.   Add olives and lemons.  Cover.

Just let it cook.  No need to stir, baby-sit, or lift the lid.  After about a 1/2 hour, check the liquid level.  If the bottom of the food is getting dry, add more water or broth.  Cover and continue to cook until chicken is completely done.  Cooking time can be 45 min to an hour.  Serve!

Want to eat it Middle Eastern style?  Just set the tagine pot in the middle of the table or floor cloth.  Give your everyone in your family some pieces of naan or pita bread.  Everyone uses ripped pieces of the bread as a utensil to scoop into the pot and eat.  Use your right-hand only and no reaching across the pot dragging your sleeve through!

Here is the tagine we made while camping over the coals pictured above.  We added fresh sweet peas from the garden. Sadly, we forgot lemons for the trip, so we improvised with by pouring on a bit of fruit juice!

Chicken Tagine over hot coals with garden veggies

I hope to share another recipe for Lamb Tagine with Artichokes in the future.  Enjoy!  I’m sharing this recipe on the Tuesday Twister Blog Carnival:

Check out the GNOWFGLINS blog for healthy eating!

This is one of my favorite all-time dinners to order from a Thai restaurant.  I wanted to learn to make it at home, and after a few tries and suggestions from friends, I found a combination of ingredients that tops my list!  You can use meat instead of tofu, if you prefer. Start mild and adjust spicy-ness to your preference.  My kids eat this happily, but they are used to spicy food.  I’d say the way the recipe is written, it is about med. spicy.  I serve it with Indian Rice Pudding for dessert as it has a soothing, cooling effect. Use fresh, organic ingredients for a big difference in flavor and nutrition.  All these ingredients can be found at most organic food coops or Asian grocery stores.  I’d like to try substituting honey for the raw sugar sometime!

Tofu Pad Thai

6 oz dried rice noodles

1/2 c rice vinegar

1/2 c soy sauce

1/2 c raw sugar, sucanat, or brown sugar (reserve 1 t.)

1/3 c grapeseed oil

8 cloves garlic (use less if you’re not a fan)

1 T garlic, chopped

5 eggs

3 whole red chilis, dried

2 t chili powder

1 1/2 T sesame seeds

1 package firm tofu (12-14 oz)

1 1/2 c crisp bean sprouts

1 c peanuts, crushed

1 T paprika

1/2 c green onion, sliced into small rings

Juice of 1 lime

2 limes, sliced

Soak noodles in very hot water until soft.  While noodles soak, combine rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar in a pot on the stovetop just to a light simmer over med-low heat, mixing well.  In wok, cast iron pan, or a frying pan, roast the garlic in the grapeseed oil. You can use sunflower, vegetable, or olive oil if you prefer.  Grapeseed is just light and heats very quickly.

Roasting the garlic

Wisk the eggs and then add them to the garlic and scramble, adding in the chilis, chili powder, and the sesame seeds.   (The eggs will be crumbly because of the oil. It will be very spicy at this point so beware of tasting, it will mellow down with more ingredients to be added.  Use less chili powder if desired, you can add always more later.) Drain the tofu and slice it into 1/2″-1″ or so squares.  Crisp the tofu and the bean sprouts with a little oil and then add to the egg mixture.  Drain the rice noodles and add them to the mixture.  At this point, your vinegar/soy sauce mixture should be at a nice low simmer.

Grinding the peanuts

Add half the peanuts to the sauce

Add half of the ground peanuts to the vinegar/soy pot and stir for just a minute or still over heat, then remove and pour all over the noodle and egg mixture and toss lightly, adding in the paprika and green onion.  Top with the remaining ground peanuts, 1 t of remaining sugar, juice of 1 lime, and lime slices.  Makes enough for about 4-5. Serve and enjoy!

Almost ready to serve

Here are three recipes we tried this week from Allrecipes.com.  They all were delicious!

Seven Layer Taco Dip

Seven Layer Taco Dip

It was super fast and easy to make. Serve with toasted warm tortilla chips. We used lettuce and tomatoes fresh from our little garden. Usually I buy authentic crisp and thin tortilla chips from a little Mexican bakery down the street that they make right on site.  But for this we went for the ordinary thick grocery store tortilla chips because this is a thick and hearty dip!  I added a sliced jalepeno from the garden for a bit more kick.

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Indian Naan Bread

Child labor rolling the dough balls ; )

This recipe was recommended to me by a friend.  Her husband is Bengali and this recipe passes as authentically delicious at their house!  I made a big batch of this naan yesterday for iftar dinner served with Green Curry Chicken in Coconut Milk.  By morning, the entire batch was almost gone!   On my friend’s recommendation, I mixed the garlic into warmed ghee instead of kneading it into the dough.  I brushed each side of the naan with the garlic butter before flipping.  I also let the dough rise, covered, in the fridge overnight since I started it the day prior and ran out of time to get it done.  I put my boys on dough ball rolling duty.  Next time, I’ll make the dough balls larger the size than recommended.

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Easy Vegetable Pot Pie

I was too tired to take a pic of this one, but the link shows a pretty example.  In a crunch last week, I was out of time for dinner and was exhausted, crabby, swollen feet, and feeling very pregnant.  I found this recipe and thought it was probably too good to be true because it was so simple and quick.  Thankfully, we had all the ingredients on hand.  I usually make my own pie crusts, but I even had a set of frozen pre-made crusts in the basement freezer. My nine year old put this together.  From now on, I’m keeping these ingredients on hand for those last-minute nights!

Make it in a blender!  Quick, easy, healthy, and delicious!  Hummus has been enjoyed since ancient days, and is an excellent source of iron, vitamin C and B6, folate, and fiber!   Serve with pita bread.  I love to make the Tandoori Roti Bread recipe from Manjulaskitchen.com; Manjula’s recipes are fun to make and so tasty!

This is a recipe for basic hummus.  If desired, you can use it as a starting point to enhance it with more garlic, roasted red peppers, whatever you wish!   Chickpeas are also called, garbanzo beans, just for FYI when digging in your pantry or making a shopping list.

Easy Blender Hummus

• 1 lb Chickpeas, soaked, cooked, drained (or just get a 15-16oz can of chickpeas, drained)
• 1/3 c tahini
• 3 T olive oil
• 1-2 t garlic, chopped
• 1/2 t sea salt
• Juice from 1 lemon

Dump it all in the blender and blend!   Serve with fresh pita bread or refrigerate.   Hummus is also really good topped with fresh parsley, pinenuts, and a drizzle of olive oil!

Making homemade pizza is easy and healthy.  This crust is sweet and delicious, with a rolled edge crust.  I make it special using Indian flour.  Durum atta flour is an ethnic wheat flour from India, whole wheat but with a light, golden, delicious flavor.  You can find it at any Indian grocery, or most any ethnic or Middle Eastern grocery store, too.  It is very affordable.  I store it in the freezer for optimum freshness and longevity.

You can make your pizzas your own way with your choices of toppings, a fun activity to do with the kids.  You can make two 12″ crusts from this recipe, or make smaller crusts for everyone to have their personal pizza to “decorate” with toppings.  (My youngest once decided to top his pizza with broccoli and cheerios!)

Mixing the dough

Pizza Mia Homemade Pizza

• 4-4.5 c durum atta flour
• 2 T bread machine yeast (it rises faster)
• 1 c milk
• 3/4 c water
• 1/2 c oil (I use sunflower oil)
• 4 T honey
• 1 t salt
• Pizza Sauce or buy a can or jar premade pizza sauce (amount to your choosing)
• Shredded mozzarella cheese (amount to your choosing)
• Toppings of your choice, if desired.

Preheat oven to 400* F.

Heat milk, water, oil, honey, salt in a saucepan on stovetop, at medium-low heat.  Meanwhile, mix together 2 c of the flour with the yeast in a large bowl (I use my KitchenAid).  Once the milk mixture is the temp of very warm bath water add it to the flour mixture.  Mix for 3 minutes with KitchenAid on “Stir”, or about 100 strokes by hand for each minute by electric mixer.  Add remaining flour and use the kneading hook for about 30 seconds or so, just until it is a blended dough (or knead by hand).  Place the bowl with the dough ball on the back of the preheating-stove, the bowl covered with a damp dish towel, for about 10 min.   Punch down dough on a floured surface and separate into two balls.   Roll each ball out to about a 14″ circle of about 1/2″ thickness.  Place each crust on a 12″ pizza pan, or use around or rectangular stoneware pizza stone.   Roll in the edges about 1″ to make crust edge.  Pierce the middle of the dough a few times with a fork.  Place the pans back on the stovetop to rise for about 20-30 minutes.

dough rising

adding the cheese

Spread pizza sauce on dough.  (I just drop a few spoonfulls onto the dough and then smear it around with the back of the spoon.)   You can also use pesto sauce or a white sauce, if you prefer rather than traditional red sauce.  Top with shredded cheese and your toppings.  Bake at 400* F for about 12 minutes, or until golden.  The crusts will puff very slightly.  I bake them one at a time.  You can sprinkle with a bit of oregano before serving.  Slice and enjoy!  Sorry there isn’t a photo of the finished pizza…it was eaten too fast! ; )

Sauce to go along with the PizzaMia Homemade Pizza recipe, or for your own pizza recipes!

• 1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce
• 1 can (6 oz) tomato paste
• 2 t oregano
• 1.5 t basil
• 1.5 t garlic, chopped or minced
• 1 t paprika
• 1/2 t onion powder
• 1/2 t sugar or honey

Dump into a blender and blend.  All done!  Freeze to save or use fresh on your homemade pizza.