More of a thick soup than a name, really.

After breakfast (at the yuppier version on Lincoln), a brief foray to a nearby Whole Paycheck, followed by the first game of HockeyFest 2008 (Blackhawks won, 4-1), Friend and I went back to his place and made the chicken tagine I mentioned (it's a Cooks Illustrated recipe, and I'll send along the pdf if anyone wants it). It's got garlic, paprika, cumin, ginger, coriander, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, lemon zest, and honey, among other things. I also added some crystallized ginger (because I have it and why not). We used venison instead of chicken (about 2.5 pounds of venison, cut into 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch cubes). If I made it with chicken, I would not use the whole, cut-up, skin-on chicken for which the recipe calls, not least because you would end up having to skim fat in the middle. Friend cut up and browned the venison in a little olive oil, then removed the meat but left all of the juices in the pan. We cooked the onions in that (and we added a shallot, because there was one in the fridge from the rabbit recipe a couple of weeks ago), then added the spices and the meat and so on, without having to skim anything. We added an extra cup of chicken broth, and about a cup and a half of farro, and simmered it for about 20 minutes--maybe 30 minutes total, after we put the meat back in.

And? It really did rock the house. We will totally make it again. I don't think we had quite enough carrots, so I'd put more of those in, and you could add barley instead of farro, I'd say, or some wine or more lemon juice or even some tomatos to acidify it a little and break the meat down more, but it was wonderful just the way we made it. Working together--he trimmed and cut up the meat, and then browned it; I had brought the spices with me, premeasured, in a baggie, because I wasn't sure if he had it all; and while he did the meat, I did the lemon and honey and garlic and chopped the onion and carrots and figs and such--it probably took barely an hour, start to finish, and that counts about 20 minutes of simmering time while the farro cooked when we didn't have to do anything. I'd say you could even make the farro (or barley, or rice, or even pasta or polenta) separately and pour it over, but putting the grain in made it even more simple. Did I mention how good it was?

Tomorrow I'm going to make the muffins, seeing as how I got the wheat bran and apricots yesterday, and I'm going to replace the buttermilk with milk plus lemon juice, not least because i want to put some lemon peel in the muffins and that's a way to use the juice. I have the peel macerating in the fridge as I write.

Can you tell that I'm enjoying doing stuff in the kitchen again?