Category: Dinner

Cooking for the Venezuelan refugees again today — tried a new recipe for pulled pork — delicious.

This is a pretty frugal option for feeding a meat-loving crowd — 4 pounds of bone-in pork for $15. I only did a double recipe of this (instead of quadrupling to feed 40), because I was also planning on a chicken dish.

https://www.seriouseats.com/venezuelan-style-arepas-with…

In theory, I’ll be making arepas to accompany them; we’ll see how it goes.

Just clearing out my phone photos a bit — this is from a few weeks ago, making lunch for my SLF and Serendib teams. We do most of our work online, but I think it really helps getting together in person once in a while.

Salmon green curry, gado-gado (Indonesian spicy peanut sauce with a mix of raw and cooked vegetables), my rose ice cream with pomegranate molasses. I have a little bit of rose ice cream left — I think I might try making elderberry ice cream next…

Kavi’s had a bit of a stomach bug the last two days and hasn’t been eating much and it’s made me a little anxious because if I love you and you’re not eating well and I can’t feed you, I can’t think straight…

(but I try to keep all that to myself so my anxieties doesn’t spill over onto her and make her anxious)

…so when she finally looked up from the TV and asked if we had avocados (yes) and if I could make her avocado toast, I may have gone a little overboard.

(I asked her which one she liked best: tomato, bell pepper, parsley, flake salt — she liked them all equally, which is not helpful. Oh well.)

As part of my birthday week celebrations, and since we were up near the area anyway (taking the kids to Foster Beach), I finally stopped by the new Sri Lankan-owned restaurant, Cafe Nova. Their regular menu is a mix of Indian and Sri Lankan dishes, so you can get samosas, if you like (and they even have nasi goreng, so a little Indonesian too).

I went for the Sri Lankan, of course, and I’m delighted to report that it was very tasty. Kottu paratha, chicken mustard curry, lentil curry, all delicious.

There’s apparently a Sri Lankan buffet on Sunday afternoons, so I really need to get over there sometime soon. It’s a bit of a hike from Oak Park — 45-75 minutes, depending on traffic, but maybe Sundays wouldn’t be so bad.

Chicago folks in the area, PLEASE try them out if this appeals to you at all. I’ve lived in the Midwest for two decades, with the closest Sri Lankan restaurant eight hours away in Minnesota. I’d really like this place to survive and thrive — they have plans to open more of them, but first, this one has to succeed. Check them out!

Their FB page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092715760941

6431 N. Sheridan Road., on the Loyola campus, near Evanston.

Kevin did most of the cooking for the Venezuelan refugee lunch on Friday, while I was at the beach with the kids. He made rice and beans, but the main entree was carne mechada, a Venezuelan shredded beef dish.

Typically it’s made with skirt or flank steak, but since we were quadrupling the recipe (to feed about 40), I picked up a cheaper cut of meat, brisket, instead. About $50 ($5.98 / lb at Wild Fork), so a good option for feeding a (non-veg) crowd.

Brisket takes an hour or so longer to cook, so you do have to allow for that, and the end result is a little drier, Kevin says? But I thought it was still quite tasty.

We also did a big fruit salad; I put in avocado, which they may not do in Venezuela? But we do in Sri Lanka, and it’s delicious — I usually do a lime-honey dressing to go with it. Hope they liked it! I’m guessing they don’t have a lot of access to fresh fruit right now.

Recipe for Carne Mechada: https://mommyshomecooking.com/venezuelan-shredded-beef/

I admit, I haven’t been really paying much attention to the Venezuelan refugee situation. I don’t always follow the news, and especially in the summer, when I’m not teaching, I’m not generally listening to NPR on a commute, etc.

I’d seen a few comments on local community groups, but it was only when I saw that someone had set up a meal train for a group of about 42 migrants currently being housed at a police station just a few blocks away (locals: on Madison, just over the border at Austin, PS 15), that I noticed that there was a crisis happening nearby. So, without knowing much except that there were refugees that needed food, and I had time to cook, I signed up for a slot in the meal train.

***

I wasn’t sure what I would make at first — the organizers give some guidance, but there’s a lot of leeway in there. (You can even order pizza to be delivered, if you’re not up to cooking, but want to help.) At first I was thinking Sri Lankan would be easiest, and a nice sort of bridge between my culture and theirs — but then I thought, no.

They’re refugees. They’re tired and scared and trying to entertain small children on the little stretch of concrete in front of the parking pad. They can’t go far for work because when a refugee org. manages to find housing for them, the buses come to pick people up, and if they’re not there when the buses come, at irregular and unpredictable times, they’re out of luck.

They have to be exhausted and frustrated and there isn’t much I can do about any of that, but I know if I were in that situation, one thing I would want is home food. Not necessarily every meal, but at least once in a while? Something familiar, something delicious, something that tastes like what I used to eat when I had my own kitchen, access to my pots and pans and spices. Something comforting.

***

So that simplified my decision — I’d make Venezuelan food for them. Not that I’ve ever cooked Venezuelan food before, but surely some dishes would be easy enough. At first, I thought I could try to make stuffed arepas, and then I thought, hm, let’s not set ourselves up with a hard task that might lead to failure. I’ve never made arepas before — maybe trying to make them for 42 for the first time isn’t the smartest plan.

I settled on Venezuelan chicken stew for my main dish, pollo guisado. Reasonably affordable (I used two packages of Costco chicken — and my groceries for the meal overall were about $100, which is not bad for feeding 42 people) and straightforward to cook. Much like any chicken stew I might make, though the addition of olives lent an interesting note.

The trickiest part was figuring out how to cook a giant batch with the pots and pans I had on hand. I was quadrupling the recipe — thankfully, it turned out that a double-batch fit in each of the bigger pots I had, so that was pretty manageable in the end.

I seared all the chicken (tossed in salt and pepper) first, then set it aside. Then in one pot, sautéed the onions & garlic, added canned tomatoes and spices and chopped olives, let that cook for a little bit.

Then I took my big ladle and spooned half of that mixture into the other pot. Which made room to add the chicken in, and the potatoes, and the carrots. Then it was just cooking it down, checking the salt (no need for more salt with those olives, it turned out!) and pepper. I thought the end result tasted pretty good — not as good as abuela makes, I’m sure, but not bad for a first try!

All very straightforward, maybe 90 minutes of cooking total? I put the finished dish into two foil half-trays. Kevin had already made a big batch of seasoned black beans, filling another foil half-tray, so I was pretty confident that we had a good amount of main dish protein on hand. But there was going to be more, of course. I couldn’t stop there… (see next post)

Pollo Guisado recipe: https://thecookwaregeek.com/venezuelan-pollo-guisado…/

An article explaining the Venezuelan refugee situation in Chicago: https://borderlessmag.org/…/more-than-25-of…/

Very occasionally, I have time and energy to cook like I used to. Which isn’t really about time, per se — more mental space? For the last (many) years, I feel like I’ve been running on a little mental treadmill, slightly panicked all the time. Small children, then cancer treatment, then pandemic. I need my world to slow down a little. Maybe a lot.

This Greek meal only took about 30 minutes of active cooking, I think — cutting up and prepping the lemony potatoes to bake (10 minutes), waiting 30 minutes, then cutting up the veggies and making the tzatziki (10 minutes), and then quickly pan-frying the lamb gyros (10 minutes).

But i had to think about it (and make sure there were enough components that the kids would eat), and spend a little time reminding myself online how to make tzatziki, and what typical sides would be for gyros, and the only reason I actually even thought of doing it at all was because I’d picked up some frozen pre-cooked gyros at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago.

Most of the last several years, I’ve either been cooking Sri Lankan basics (which I can do in my sleep), cooking Sri Lankan as research for the cookbooks (time-consuming, but it’s in a different category than daily cooking for me), or cooking easy American stuff that will feed the family (but mostly Kevin actually takes care of that).

This is more how I used to cook before we had kids. I’m hoping to do a little more of it this summer at least. Probably less once the semester starts, but I hope it doesn’t go away entirely, because there’s something I find grounding about it. I do better, when I have the time, when I *take* the time, to do more than simply functional cooking.

Tonight, Kevin’s seeing an old friend in the city for dinner (hi, Max!), so I’m just going to make a nice Sri Lankan chicken curry and a green bean / carrot for myself; Kavi will likely eat the chicken curry, but not the cooked veggies (she’ll have some raw veggies instead), and Anand will probably choose a frozen lasagne because he still can’t do spicy. And Thursday will probably be leftovers.

But maybe Friday I’ll try another of the kinds of meals I used to cook. We’ll see. Might just order pizza instead!

***

Greek potatoes recipe (was devoured by family): https://scrummylane.com/the-best-greek-potatoes/

Tzatziki recipe (also almost all gone, though Anand was too suspicious to try it):

https://www.loveandlemons.com/tzatziki-sauce/

Gyros: just pan-sear in a little hot olive oil on both sides for a few minutes until browned

Grilled brats for dinner tonight, and I was looking at what typical toppings are, and caramelized onions with some crushed red pepper is common, and you know what seeni sambol is? Basically spicy caramelized onions. I mean, with added flavor, but I thought it’d go great with brats, and y’know what? It does. I feel like I should get some kind of genius award for this one…

Had a late night craving for seeni sambol, so made some while Kevin and I were watching the first episode of The Witcher season 3 — and yes, I know it’s supposed to be a terrible season, but I figured it should still be okay background TV while I’m doing stuff, maybe?

Had it on buttered toast for a snack last night, and then the same + a scrambled egg for breakfast.

Happy mouth, happy bundi (tummy).

Recipe in comments.