Chiles Rellenos en Nogada Recipe (Stuffed Chilis in Creamy Walnut Sauce) (video)

This week we did a really interesting dish from Mexico. There are a few things about this recipe that make it a little unusual: Firstly, it is typically served at room temperature. Everything's cooked well (except for the sauce), and then served once cooled. You can heat it up or serve it hot, but it does change the character of the dish somewhat. Secondly, it comes together quite quickly, but there is a lot of prep work involved to get there, first! Lots of things to chop, then cook together and reduce, plus peeling the walnuts. It's a bit of advance work before you start assembling. The stuffing is wonderfully aromatic and flavourful with the rich pork, the crunchy almonds, and the flavours of the tomato, pear, and raisins adding a great deal of complexity, sweetness, and acidity.

There are a few optional things that you can change in and out. We made a sous vide pork for this recipe, and added both the pork (pulled) and the juice that rendered into the bag while it was sous vide cooking. That's something you're going to want to do in advance, of course. We cooked the pork for 24 hours. Peeling the walnuts is also optional, and the only reason you're doing it is to keep the sauce as white as possible (the colours of the pepper, the sauce, and the pomegranate are supposed to represent the colours of the Mexican flag). You also don't need to peel the poblanos, but it just helps the sauce glaze them when you serve. If you have access to a gas range or open flame, it makes it much easier to char and peel the peppers.

Rich and Delicious (and Slightly Boozy!) Black Forest Brownies Recipe (video)

Another dessert recipe this week! We made these really excellent Black Forest brownies. This is a bit like a slightly deconstructed black forest cake, and honestly you can use whatever your favourite brownie recipe is for the base. We intentionally wanted to make this recipe not completely sickly sweet all over the place, so we found ourselves some sour cherries instead of using, for instance, cherry pie filling. If you can't find canned sour cherries, you can add lemon juice to cherry pie filling for a little bit of a tart zing.

We also use some ingredients in the sauce that we didn't go into a whole lot of detail about. We add dietary fibre (in the form of acacia gum and inulin) to lower the glycemic index of this quite sugary dessert. This is entirely optional, and if you don't wish to use the dietary fibre, you can replace it with a bit more of the cornstarch that we used to thicken the cherry sauce. Both of those ingredients are completely unnoticeable in the final product, and do not affect the taste.

Additionally, we soaked the cherries in cognac, but you can use whatever booze you prefer, or no booze at all! We covered the cherries while they were soaking to prevent too much of the alcohol from evaporating, but if you're planning on serving these to kids, you may wish to let them soak uncovered or heat them a little longer to evaporate more of the alcohol.

The Devastating Impact of 'Fear of Crime' Politics - SOME MORE NEWS

Totally Non-traditional Shakshuka Recipe (video)

What makes it non-traditional? Mostly it's the grilled cheese sandwiches we serve it on! Shakshuka is believed to originate somewhere in northern Africa (most commonly believed to be Morocco after the Columbian exchange) as a sort of worker's dish. There would be a big pan of hot tomato sauce with aromatic herbs and spices and some eggs poaching, and workers would come and grab some with a pita or other flatbread. It spread quickly through the Middle East and the Levant, and you can also find versions of it in Spanish (huevos a la flamenca), Italian (uova in purgatorio), and Israeli cuisine.

At its base, it is a very simple dish. Get some tomato sauce hot in a pan and let the eggs cook in it. It's another one of those dishes where there are a million variations and no one does it quite the same. The tomato sauce can be spiced with Moroccan spices, harissa, coriander, caraway, paprika, cumin, cayenne pepper, or spicy sausages like merguez, chorizo, or lamb mince. Dairy, such as yogurt or feta cheese, make great additions as well, adding richness. We decided to serve it over grilled cheese sandwiches with some delicious melty and aromatic cheeses, and it goes extremely well with the lovely reduced tomato sauce and eggs!

Fried Cauliflower Nuggets with Curry Mayo Recipe (video)

For this recipe, we used the gravy from the butter chicken we made last week. We doubled down on the spices, because we wanted to mix the gravy with mayo to make a creamy curry dip for the fried cauliflower nuggets, and it came out really bright and flavourful. Curry and cauliflower mix extremely well, and the combination is really delicious. One great way to serve cauliflower is to sprinkle it liberally with curry powder and roast it whole, then put a little butter when it comes out of the oven! Delicious.

For this recipe we used coconut flour on the outside of the cauliflower for the coating, and it didn't have quite the effect we were hoping for. It didn't impart much coconut flavour to the dish, and it made the coating very tender and quite fragile. It was a delicate texture, but not the crispiness you would expect from just using flour or even cornstarch. We recommend sticking with AP flour for the coating, the coconut flour really did not add as much to the recipe as we'd hoped, though it smelled amazing while it was frying!