Courtesy of Everyday Food Magazine. The chicken salad I modeled my recipe after!

This one is dedicated to my cousin Rudy. She ordered the roasted chicken salad at Founding Farmers recently, and I was absolutely inspired by its sweet, tangy and peppery flavors.

I decided to recreate it on a whim after stumbling across a similar recipe in Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food magazine. Instead of using dried blueberries and golden beets, I replaced the sweetness with dried apricots. But there’s also a nice, nutty crunch from the toasted almonds and a verdant aroma from the fresh basil.

Like the Founding Farmers’ dish, I assembled the plate just the same: I laid out a bunch of leaves (spinach in my case, but you can use spicy arugula or buttery lettuce), topped it with a giant heaping portion of chicken salad and gently rested a crispy wedge of French bread against it. It was a beautiful sight to behold, and I didn’t want to break into it — but it was too good to resist.

Recipe:

1 heaping spoon of mayonnaise
1/2 c greek yogurt
1 tbs vinegar
1 clove garlic, minced
salt
pepper
3 chicken thighs, seared, roasted and then shredded
1 stalk of celery, minced
1/2 small red onion, minced
1/3 c slivered almonds, toasted (you don’t have to do this if you don’t want)
about 10 dried apricots, minced
8 basil leaves, minced
2 green onions, minced

Mix the first four ingredients together and season with salt and pepper. Add the rest of the stuff in and season again to taste. It should be tangy, sweet and tart!

Photo courtesy of MarthaStewart.com

Duck is a bit over my budget, as are dried cherries (every bit counts!) and the amount of extra virgin olive oil I’ll need for the confit-ing. SO, I will be trying this recipe with shredded roasted lamb or chicken and golden raisins.

But even if I’ll be scrimping on the ingredients, I can’t deny that this dish is truly decadent. It reminds me of a meal that a little mouse in a hat must have served at Cair Paravel from the Chronicles of Narnia: fit for a king!

Here’s the recipe below:
http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/persian-rice-with-duck-confit-and-dried-cherries

Let me know how it goes if you give it a try.

Claire made this super sweet promo photo with all of our friends' faces. There's me at the top left corner. Eep!

My boyfriend is a big fan of the TV show Lost. He’s extremely knowledgeable in all things Lost, and even goes so far as to blog about it with his friend after every show. I’m pretty sure he knows the name of every character, every obscure reference and probably the title of every episode.

So, what would have been more appropriate for his surprise birthday bash than a Lost theme?

Yes, dear readers (do I even have dear readers?), I know that this is an ethnic food blog, but alas, what is more ethnic than jungle cuisine?

Don’t even think for a second that — in the midst of the leaf decorations, dry-ice smoke and bloody costumes — I didn’t pay attention to the menu.

We had shrimp salad tacos with corn tortillas, fresh fruit, beer (that we brewed ourselves) with Dharma Initiative labels and tropical cupcakes (made especially by Kalee and Mason).

Becky as Kate. Sweat stains and blood, too!

We required everyone to dress up like the Lost character that they resembled most, asked everyone to kindly sully their faces with dirt, apply fake blood and create strategically-located sweat stains to illustrate the strife and hardship of island living.

Andrew in his Jack costume.

Oversize banana leaves hung gently from the ceilings, as did garlands and garlands of paper leaves. There was a fisherman’s net and a blue tarp covering the furniture, as if we were trying to create some kind of shanty. One of our friends dressed as the smoke monster, and another came as the Island itself. We had a pregnant Claire, an Other and a Jack, of course. Three of us wore backpacks throughout the evening.

We had Lost trivia up on the walls, rolling ocean waves throughout the perimeter of the house and yet — somehow, inexplicably — the evening culminated with our entire group of friends singing Les Miserables’ “I Dreamed a Dream” to the birthday boy.

Ocean waves and leaf garlands

Kalee and Mason's pineapple-coconut island cupcakes

Photo courtesy of omnomnivores.com (thanks dudes!)

If you love Taylor Deli as much as I do when it comes to sandwiches, then you’ll understand my frustration when I say, “PUT YOUR NEW NUMBER ON YOUR EFFING WEB SITE ALREADY!”

HERE IT IS: (202) 289-8001

Now you can make your deliveries from the 5th and K location without having to call the H St. location for the number.

Remember that they only take orders over $18 (so ask a friend to get a sandwich with you).

At my desk. Note the baby dino.

Our office has this problem of leaving dirty dishes and mugs in the sink, and so as an incentive to put a stop to it, our company said they’d make us omelets if we could leave the sink dish-free for the remainder of 2009.

Needless to say, we won the prize (although, today I found that there were dishes in the sink again, so I guess no omelets this year) and last Friday, we were awarded the most glorious brunch.

While I was helping to prep the vegetables for the office-wide omelet fest, I learned a cool trick (thanks Todd):  add melted butter to your whisked eggs so the omelet doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Sigh. I wish I could have omelets like that every Friday. Mine had every veggie in the world, and I also had toast and butter and coffee and yumm it was so great.

(c) Claire O'Neill @ breakfasts.tumblr.com

My mom’s longtime boyfriend, Daniel, is from Mexico and just so happens to be a fabulous home cook. My mom is always raving about his culinary expertise (about his delicious tortas, refried beans, chilaquiles, mole, etc.), so finally, I told my mom — you know what? Just give me his e-mail address and let me get some recipes from him!

This recipe for chilaquiles — a breakfast dish with eggs, queso fresco and a tomatillo sauce over fried tortillas – was one of the first recipes he gave me (that’s right — there are more. And once I try them out, I’ll be sure to post them up here). I did everything the recipe told me to do, but of course, being that we’re in Washington, D.C., and the ingredient selection here sucks, there were a few major roadblocks.

Instead of tomatillos for the sauce, I used green chilies. I was sure they’d have the same flavor composition, but I was dead wrong. And of course, I didn’t have queso fresco so I used shredded Cheddar cheese (I know, I know…you can crucify me later!). We also forgot to put cilantro on top — eek!

Either way, the dish was beautiful. Everything had a subtle flavor and the texture of the fried tortillas underneath were a welcome surprise. Try it with a bit of sriracha on top, too. Daniel suggests to serve this alongside refried beans and a nice cold cerveza.

Good luck — hopefully your chilaquiles will be a bit more successful than mine. And for more delicious breakfasts, go to my roommate’s blog (she took this photo), http://breakfasts.tumblr.com.

Recipe:

8 tortillas, cut into 1-1 1/2 in squares, fried in oil. Set on napkins to remove grease
1 lb tomatillos
half an onion
2-3 jalapeno peppers
4 c water
salt
8 eggs, scrambled
queso fresco (a kind of crumbly Mexican cheese)
cilantro

Boil the tomatillos, onion, peppers and water together for about 25 minutes on high heat. Ladle into the blender and blend until smooth. Add salt to taste. Pour in a bowl and set aside. To assemble the dish, lay a few squares of fried tortilla down, pour some green sauce on it, a generous heaping of eggs, and sprinkle queso fresco on top. Garnish with cilantro. Serve with refried beans and beer.

Serves 4

I also drew this picture for you to show you what the garnishes on arroz caldo should look like. If you don't have calamansi, Philippine native lime, you can use lime or lemon.

On cold winter days, my Tito Maro — who used to pick my sister and me up after school — would surprise us with a big pot of arroz caldo waiting for us in the kitchen.

Min Min and I would eat about three bowls each and absolutely ruin our appetites for dinner, but we couldn’t stop.

Arroz caldo, a fragrant rice porridge with chicken, saffron and ginger, garnished with lime, fried garlic, scallions and fish sauce, just really hits the spot, no matter who you are or what culture you come from.

A little about the history of arroz caldo: it’s originally derived from the Chinese rice porridge dish, congee — and in Tagalog, it’s called lugau. But the Spanish settlers adapted it to their taste by adding saffron and renamed it something that they could understand — hence, arroz caldo — rice broth.

Recipe after the jump.

Recipe:

2 chicken thighs, cooked and shredded
1 qt chicken stock (hopefully, saved from the aforementioned chicken)
1 tsp saffron (a.k.a. “the good shit”)
2 tbs ginger, cut into large pieces (so people will see it while they’re eating it and take it out)
1 onion, sliced
2 cups of jasmine rice, cooked
fish sauce (to taste)
salt
pepper
olive oil (or chicken fat)
1 tsp peppercorns

Garnish:
6 cloves of garlic, minced and pan-fried until crisp
2 tbs chopped scallions
fish sauce
calamansi or lime

In a dutch oven (or a large pot, whatever), heat the oil (or chicken fat) and dump in the onions and garlic and peppercorns over medium heat and stir it around until the onions are soft and translucent. Season with salt and pepper.

Add in the rice, saffron, chicken and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer. Cover partially with the pot cover. Cook for an hour,  but every ten minutes, stir and add more liquid as necessary (at this point, if you’ve run out of chicken stock, add water).

The consistency should be like a creamy risotto — that’s why it’s key to KEEP STIRRING and adding liquid. Season to taste. Be liberal with the salt, pepper and fish sauce. The fish sauce shouldn’t be in-your-face, but it should give the dish a subtle depth.

To serve, put the garnishes on the table so everyone can put as much or as little as they’d like on top of their arroz caldo. Serve piping hot.