Vegetarian Chili with a Little Something Extra

The other night I made my usual chili (without the corn), but did my little two pot dance wherein I produce an omnivorous dish and its vegetarian counterpart, side by side, on the same stove, at the same time!  I feel like I should add "with two hands tied behind my back,"  but that would not be true.

I browned some ground chicken thigh meat in a skillet and started my chili in a Dutch oven.  Once I had added everything except the meat (and vinegar, which is almost a garnish, added at the very end), I pulled out a smaller pot and ladled about one-third of the chili into it.  I then put the chicken into the mix in the bigger pot and added a little already cooked and frozen quinoa into Maddy's vegetarian version.  The spirit had moved me earlier in Mom's to buy some frozen butternut squash, an item I have never before purchased, and I added that to the pots proportionally, as well.  I let them simmer a little more just to let the chicken incorporate and the butternut squash thaw and warm.  Too long and the squash would just puree.

I feel certain that this sounds much more complicated than it is!  If you too have a mixed family, give it a whirl.

I made this again with ground turkey and decided that the combination of turkey and butternut squash is a perfect fall nod to Thanksgiving.  This is also the recipe that won in the Greater DC Whole Foods Market cooking contest for best chili.  You can link to the full recipe here!

Gourmet, Unbound - February Edition

As I did in January, I am participating in the February roundup on the blog Gourmet, Unbound, a forum for bloggers and Gourmet devotees to honor the now defunct magazine by cooking a recipe from a February Gourmet from any year. This month I chose an Algerian tagine made with apricots, orange marmalade and spiced pine nuts from February, 2008. Though the dish itself is a little sweet, the spiced pine nuts balanced that pretty well so it wasn't cloying. Everyone seemed to enjoy the dish. Ideally, I'd serve this with whole wheat couscous.

This dish is not too far off from the basic parameters of healthierkitchen. To ramp up the health factor, I added some cut up carrots and butternut squash (which I purchased already cut up at Trader Joes). I also omitted the butter, but it's not such a big deal with this recipe as it calls for only 1 tablespoon for the whole dish.

The largest change I made, apart from adding the vegetables, was to use about 2 pounds of boneless, skinless thighs in lieu of the whole chicken. Because I didn't have the bones to make the broth richer, I added chicken stock instead of water later on. I added about two cups of stock instead of the the 1 cup of water, as I had added a mound of vegetables.

Here's the link to the recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/food/views/Chicken-Tagine-with-Apricots-and-Spiced-Pine-Nuts-241506