Of all the reasons to create Foodalisa, the breaking point was texting two of my friends this recipe two days before turkey day in 2015. Do you know how hard it is to TEXT all your gems about Thanksgiving? Y’all can catch this link now!

I’ve tried a lot of turkeys – we did the oven bag, the dusted in flour (IDK either), no brine, wet brine, soaked in orange juice, dipped in apple cider. If there was a thanksgiving trend, Foodalisa and Mama Mona tried it. It changed every year until I found this perfect combo of dry brine + spatchcock and NWTS. Five years and 8 turkeys later (shout-out friendsgiving), I’ve found #theone.

And now, for my only claim to hip hip histoire – Big Pimpin’s controversial sample of Khosara Khosara, an Egyptian song composed in 1957 by Baligh Hamdi and made very, very famous by the iconic Abdel Halim Hafiz. Imagine you’re 13 and discovering big girl radio (shoutout 106KMEL) and you and Mama Mona hear the first couple seconds of.. a Hafiz song? I actually distinctly remember my mom saying ‘wooooow I love this song I haven’t heard it in-‘ before Jay-Z cut her off.

The controversy came when my brother-in-law Jay and Timbaland paid EMI Arabia $100,000 for the sample and still got sued by everybody and they auntie to cut a little slice of that Big Pimpin’ check! In court, Jay even claimed he ‘didn’t know it was a sample’ but don’t y’all worry I had called him and told him about it so we’re all good now.

Anyway, let’s make some shrimps. This takes literally 20 minutes to come together so by the time this Hafiz song is over you’ll be done!

Alright y’all, time to prove I eat vegetables.
A person can only eat so much kale mk, even if you came around to it like I did after years of side-eye to kale fanatics(thanks Bey!). These carrots are great because there’s very little prep work and few ingredients, they look really nice and colorful, and carrots are freaking awesome. You just braise them in water, a little butter, and a little miso if you please and they come out sweet, simple and delicious.

That being said, they do take TIME: at least 30 mins. I usually start these first and then make the rest of my meal so by the time I’m done with everything the water has simmered off on it’s own and the carrots are tender.

This is great with a grilled steak and a pile of sweet mashed potatoes to round it out!

Recipe

1. Peel and trim your carrots.
2. In a big wide saute pan large enough to hold all your carrots in one layer, melt the butter and miso together on medium to dissolve the miso. I once did this thyme instead of the miso and it was also excellent. The point is this is where you can add a little twist.
3. Add the carrots and let them roll around for a couple minutes in the butter, but you don’t want them to brown AT ALL.
4. Add enough water to cover the carrots. I let it come to a boil while I make a parchment cover.
5. This is the arts and crafts part: take a piece of parchment paper and cut it in a circle that will fit in your pan. Fold the circle in half to cut out a circle of the middle so that there’s a hole. In the end it looks like a misshapen donut. Do you HAVE to do this? I dunno I haven’t tried it without it yet. If your carrots are floating on the water, definitely do it. It not, just half-covering with a lid may work.
6. Turn the pan to medium-low or throw the whole thing in the oven and cook until the carrots are extremely tender and you can stick a fork into it with absolutely no resistance. This is not a FAST process! Leave them along for 30 mins at least! If at this point there is still a lot of water in the pan, turn the heat up and boil off the rest of the water.
7. Once the water has boiled off, you should be left with a shiny glaze. Roll your carrots around in the glaze and enjoy!

First of all if you wanted chicken ‘fingers’ or something boneless, click the red X.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way to fry chicken because you ideally brine your chicken pieces the night before, and that means planning and other annoyances BUT IT’S SOOO WORTH IT. Michael Ruhlman really breaks it down on his website, and every time I stray from this method I regret it. The brine is awesome! Any number of hours in the brine really makes a massive difference in the flavor of the chicken and the tenderness. It’s also not an exact science, just throw it together and call it a day mk. Try it once and you’ll never go back!

Recipe

For the brine:

1. Put a little oil down in a pot. Saute the onions and garlic to soften them.
2. Add the salt, and stir for a minute, and then the same with the rosemary. You can definitely just throw the whole branches in there.
3. Add the water, cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice in. Then drop the whole lemon halves in. I like to leave it on the stove to let everything get acquainted. Take it off, let it cool and then add the chicken so it is submerged or transfer to a ziplock bag or large bowl.
4. Stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight.  If you know you’re not going to eat it the next day, you can also brine the chicken for a night and then dump the brine and refrigerate the chicken for another night to dry the skin out.

For the chicken:

1. Turn the oven on to 250 degrees. Stick a baking sheet with a rack on it inside. THE RACK IS CRITICAL. This is so that when the chicken is fried, it can finish, continue to crisp all over, and stay warm while you finish the rest and it can stay in there until you’re ready to eat.
2. Set up your dredge station. Put all the flour in one bowl to season it – the amount will depend on how much chicken, use your brain. SEASON AGGRESSIVELY. Salt, pepper, paprika, CAYENNE all goes in the flour. I use a lot more black pepper than you think you should. The flour should be bright red and speckled with pepper. Split the flour between two bowls.
3. In the third bowl, add buttermilk and mix it with hot sauce. This gives a delicious vinegar-y bite that I love, but you can leave it out.
4. Line up your bowls flour-buttermilk-flour and on the end, a rack. One piece at a time now. Take a piece with one hand, add it to one flour bowl and shake off excess. Put it on the rack. Dip the second piece in the flour. Continue until all your chicken pieces have the first coat of flour. Letting the pieces sit between coats helps build a beautifully crunchy crust.
5. Starting with the first piece you added to the flour, add it to the buttermilk to coat. Add to the flour. Put it back on the rack. Repeat until you have a crust on all your chicken pieces.
6. Add a lot of oil to a big pot and heat it to 375 degrees if you have a thermometer. If not.. I just find something and throw it in and see if it sizzles and floats. Last time, it was a kale leaf. Chunk of bread works too.  
7. Add the chicken, don’t crowd the pan, and fry until golden and delicious. Put the pieces in the oven while you fry the rest.

A word on undercooking chicken, don’t:

Let’s address a cook’s biggest fear: undercooking fried chicken. Here’s how we’re gonna make sure that doesn’t happen to you:

• When you put the chicken down in the oil, leave it the hell alone and stop poking at it.
• Y’all a meat thermometer is not a bad thing. 165 degrees internally is the goal.
• We’re putting pieces in the oven to finish, right? Take one out at the very last minute and check it, either w/ a thermometer or just cut into it cause you wanna try it anyway. 

Alright y’all, it’s time to channel your inner Auntie and make some Kunafah, with an -ah instead of an -eh because I’m Egyptian and THAT’S HOW I TALK.

For those of you who don’t know what Kunafah is, I describe it as baklava’s creamy, gets into VIP, bad and boujee lil cousin. The cousin that achieves all your dreams and the family fawns over, but they don’t even come to the functions that often. They moved. So what’s left in the little cake stand at your favorite ‘Mediterranean’ joint is… baklava. 

Instead of layers of flaky phyllo, kunafah has shredded phyllo that crisp up even more beautifully and instead of a crunchy pistachio center, here we have a cream center. Sounds better already right?

If you DO know what it is and grew up with it, you might be like me and find it hard to trust a recipe on the internet. Instead, you call mama/baba/tunt/titta 7 times for vague measurements that don’t mean anything with ingredients you never used because they’re only at the Arab store. Or maybe you went abroad, and you’re fancy now and you can’t find it anywhere! You can’t wait to go back! What are you gonna do, fam? I got you.

SN: they’re not only at the Arab store anymore! In the ingredients list, I’ve linked Amazon pages for the items that might be harder to find so at least you’ll know what it looks like. The farina is a finely milled wheat, which is used as a breakfast cream of wheat situation in some cultures too, so you can use a different/cheaper brand if you find it.

Recipe

For the kunafah:

1. Preheat your oven to 345. Why so specific? Why not 350? Do you mean 375? IDK I asked my mom THREE times and she insisted it was 345 and that’s the truth.
2. In a medium sized pot on medium heat, plop in a spoonful of clarified butter. Add farina to the butter and stir constantly, without raising the heat, for several minutes. You should start to smell a nutty fragrance and see the grains get a little toasty.
3. Add the can of puck, and incorporate it into your toasted farina. This takes a second and it is going to look too thick. Add ¼ of heavy cream, a little at a time, and feel free to add more until you have a loose custard-like mixture. Add vanilla off-heat and set aside.
4. I used a round cake pan for a thick layer of custard, and I’ve also used a 9 x 11 pan for a thinner kunafah. I suggest just adjusting to whatever baking pan you have instead of going out and buying one. Here’s the fun part – rip a couple handfuls of phyllo dough from the package and put them in the bottom of the pan. Drizzle with clarified or melted butter, and start ripping it up into shreds, incorporating the butter. It should end up looking like a shiny, pillow mass of strings. Form it into an even layer into the bottom of a pan. In a separate bowl, repeat the process.
5. Add the custard in an even layer. On top of the custard, add your second batch of buttered shredded phyllo. Pop into the oven at for 30-40 minutes. It’s done when the top is golden and crispy.

For the syrup:

1. Everything into the pot on medium low for 20 minutes, stirring every now and again. It should turn into a syrup slightly thicker than simple syrup.
2. Once out of the oven, while the kunafah is still warm, try to evenly distribute the syrup all over. It feels like a lot of sugar, but remember you haven’t added sugar to the kunafah at all yet! Let it soak up all the sugary goodness for as long as you can let it sit (15 minutes is good) and enjoy while it’s still a little warm!

A word on clarified butter:

Maybe the most village thing I do, at the beginning of each move, is… go to costco, buy four pounds of butter, clarify the whole batch and section it into jars which I then keep in the freezer.

The perks of clarified butter is that the water has been boiled out so it burns way less easily. A little bit goes a long way for frying pancakes, sauteing veggies, and browning meat (especially chicken hooooohmygod). People tend to use the same amount of clarified butter as they would regular butter when it’s really a more concentrated version, so be mindful.

If you’re interested in making it, simply take as much butter (salted or unsalted, doesn’t technically matter, I use unsalted) as you want to clarify and put in a pot over very low heat. For a pound, I would leave it alone for about an hour, checking periodically. The butter will melt, and then foam, and then the solids will drop to the bottom which is how you know it is done. Pour the butter into a jar, leaving the solids on the bottom. The mixture will solidify into an almost coconut oil consistency. That’s all there is to it!

The title is simple here because I’m not messing around with this. I KNOW IT SOUNDS WEIRD but you’re gonna do it anyway because this sauce is sooo good, and sooo low maintenance, and only takes a couple ingredients. This is one of the ‘Genius Recipes‘ on Food52, but with extra seasoning because I’m.. seasoned. Add some kale and rice on the side for a dinner that comforting and elevated at the same time!

Scroll to the bottom to scale up (yum) or down (but why would you want to do this?)

Pro Tip: Stop buying things like cinnamon sticks, ground allspice, etc from the regular grocery store. 3 cinnamon sticks for 4 dollars? That’s a SCAM. 6.99 for a tiny thing of allspice? Do yourself a favor and find any grocery store that isn’t American – Indian market, Mexican market, an Arab market, whatever, and go buy yourself a big box of cinnamon sticks and a big bag of your faves, like allspice (or garam masala which can be used here), paprika, chili powder, cumin, peppercorns. Or even try Costco. It is WORTH IT to plan ahead.

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. I used to not care about doing this because I was a child, but it really speeds things up. If at any point during prep you forget just turn the oven on. 
2. Your chicken should be at room temp! Season GENEROUSLY, on ALL sides AND ON THE INSIDE of the cavity of the chicken with salt, pepper, and allspice. The allspice is optional but to me, it made a big difference with the flavor profile because it warmed up to the sage and cinnamon beautifully.
3. Add olive oil or butter – you’re about to brown an entire chicken. Some recipes call for an entire stick – I used half. If you’re using butter, wait for the foam to subside before you throw in your ENTIRE CHICKEN!!
4. You want to brown all four sides and end with the chicken breast side up. Tongs are really crucial for this! I shouldn’t have to specify that but please use tongs to turn your hot browning chicken, thank you.
5. While the chicken is browning, smash and peel your garlic, take out your sage, and peel your lemons with a vegetable peeler so you have long strips of zest. Try not to get too much bitter pith. 
6. Drain your butter the best way you know how! Once the chicken is brown, you can take the whole thing out and slowly pour out the excess butter/oil, or you can do what my lazy behind did and snuggle a big spoon up against the chicken to hold it in the pot while you slowly drain out the butter.
7. Once the excess is drained, put your chicken back in, and throw in a bunch of whole garlic, a bunch of fresh sage, a handful of cinnamon sticks, your zest, the juice of one of the lemons and two cups (at least) of milk. For one chicken, I dump a little less than half of a gallon but I love the sauce so sometimes I add extra.
8. Leave it partially covered and stick into the oven for an hour and a half at LEAST. I left mine mostly uncovered as the recipe states, but I didn’t get enough sauce. As you all know, I like having…….. too much sauce. Baste when you remember.
9. You’ll know it’s done when you stick a fork into it and it falls right apart.

Serve this with rice or mashed potato and something green, because we eat veggies around here and also because that’s more things to put sauce on. I had it with my kale and it was delicious.

OKAY. You’re having a party! Time to scale up, say for two chickens:

• You can use a mega big roasting pan if you have one OR really cheaply (and for no clean up) buy disposable aluminum roasting pans from the grocery store.
• Brown the chickens as instructed, and then take them out and put them in the aluminum pan. It’s easier if you leave the aluminum pan on the rack and pull the rack out when you want to add each chicken. Then, add double the rest of your ingredients and cover tightly for aluminum foil. You’re gonna roast these for at LEAST two and a half hours to get that really tender texture you want.

Okay, you not trying to eat a whole chicken… never experienced that emotion.. time to scale down:

• Brown bone in, skin on chicken pieces skin side down until brown and beautiful, and then lay in a flat layer in a casserole dish and add half the ingredients. Cover tightly, bake for an hour and a half. Take the foil off in the last 15 minutes if you want to brown the top a little.

First of all, I have absolutely no idea why this is called Russian Honey Cake. What I do know is that even though it’s a weird spongy texture, this cake is a fan favorite, a breeze to whip up, and hard to mess up.
This cake is pulled from a Food52 recipe and the glaze is from another cake recipe and they just work SO well together y’all. Their rendition has nuts in it but I don’t like crunch in the way of my dessert. If you’d like, add walnuts at the end mk.

SN: I know the picture has a bundt cake shape, which looks nice but honestly glazing it was a pain and I will go back to a round cake pan next time. This what I get for trying to be pretty for y’all.

Recipe

For the cake:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F and spray your cake pan, bundt pan, or springform pan with Pam. I like the one with flour already in it, which is especially for baking and way less messy than buttering and flouring.
2. To separate the eggs, crack the shells into two pieces and roll the yolk back and forth. If you’re struggling, just crack an egg into your clean clean hand and roll the yolk around, letting the whites fall through your fingers. Put the yolks in another bowl.
3. Stick the bowl with the egg whites in the fridge until further notice.
4. Into the bowl with the yolks, add 1 cup of sugar and use your hand mixer to beat until it turns a pale yellow color.
5. Add some honey, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1 cup sour cream (or ricotta or cream cheese or half of one and the other – any combination to get to 1 cup). This is a great way to use odds and ends of other random dairy pints you have sitting in the fridge. Beat it up.
6. Slowly, with the hand mixer on, add flour about ¼ cup at a time.
7. Take the bowl with the egg white out, and SWITCH THE BEATERS ON THE MIXER to the whisk, or whisk by hand and prepare to be there for a while. Beat the egg whites until you get stiff peaks. That means if you put the whisk in the egg whites, which are now white and thick by the way, and lift it straight up you’ll get a little mountain and the egg whites don’t just flop back down. Here’s a helpful link of what that means.
8. When you have achieved stiff peaks, fold the egg whites into the batter very carefully so as to not deflate them. After minimal handling, pour batter into the cake pan. Don’t fill it to the top unless you want a mess in the oven! Leave room!
9. Put it in the oven 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean.

For the glaze:

1. Add butter, salt, sugar and cream into a pot on medium heat. Bring to a full rolling boil while stirring the whole time. Boil for exactly one minute and then take it off the heat and chill for a couple minutes.
2. Add sugar, ¼ at a time and whisk pretty furiously until well incorporated. Keep adding the sugar and you’ll see it get thick enough to call itself a glaze! Let it cool some more if it isn’t thick enough, and if it’s too thick, add some cream.
3. Put it all together! Place the cake on a wire rack, or hell even a plate and very slowly pour glaze on top. If it’s really thin, and you got time, I put something to catch the drips under the cake and do a couple rounds of glaze to get a yummy sugary crust all over.

No big intro here, just Mama Mona’s soup. Perfect for cold days and it’ll keep in the fridge for yummy, filling lunches. I know y’all don’t think ahead like this BUT for those of you who are about it, you can also freeze portions flat in zip-lock bags and defrost when you want some soup.

Recipe

1. Wash your lentils in a colander and run water until it runs clear, or put them in a bowl and rinse, drain and repeat.
2. Into a pot – add everything. Lentils, veggie chunks, and water or stock. You want the level of liquid to be double the level of the lentils. Add cumin and salt. Let it come to a boil uncovered and then lower to a simmer and cover for about 20 minutes.
3. Stick an immersion blender in that thang, or transfer in batches to a blender.

• I usually will do the following: batch in the blender, blend, and pour into a separate bowl. I continue until it’s all been through the blender once, and then reverse the process and put batches into the blender from the bowl and empty back it into the pot.

4. Taste for salt. If it’s too thick, add water. If it’s too watery, cook it down. If the texture is strange, blend it more. It should be creamy and delicious. If you like it spicy, add cayenne to taste and see what happens.
5. Add olive oil, clarified butter, or regular degular butter in a separate pot. If you have vermicelli or orzo or another baby pasta, toast a handful of it CAREFULLY over LOW heat while standing over it and stirring FREQUENTLY until it’s golden and happy. Add ass many servings of soup as you’re about to eat and stir the noodles in. Raise the heat to medium and cook until the noodles are cooked through.

It has come to my attention that I gotta feed y’all some vegetables. It has also come to my attention that some of you eat raw kale (stop it) and the rest of you think kale is nasty. This shit doesn’t need to take more than ten minutes to make, but I’ll spend some time here taking it back to the start – the grocery store.

Honestly, I go to Whole Paycheck (aka Whole Foods) just to have a fun day. The grocery store isn’t scary! Just stop buying cut up veggie witcha lazy asses. First of all, that bag of pre-cut pre-washed kale is 60% stem. Secondly, I swear it goes bad faster. You try to tightly wrap it back what’s left of the plastic wrap it came in after you tore it up after you had your hands all in it. Now you throw it in a drawer cause you’re tired of looking at your failure and the rest goes bad and what you’re left with is a memory of oily kale stems. Or whatever. Oh, and it was way more expensive.

Just buy a whole bunch of kale. Rip the leaves off the tough stems, and put those torn up leaves in a colander or on a paper towel and wash out the grit. Make that entire bunch, and if you are a rabbit and don’t finish it all stick it in a tupperware and warm it up the next day. This goes for any vegetable! Make the whole batch! Stop playing yourself like two bites of kale is even enough.

This recipe is transferable to every green anything so EAT VEGETABLES.

Recipe

1. Buy one full bunch of kale. Rip the leaves off the tough stems, and put those torn up leaves in a colander or on a paper towel and wash out the grit. Make that entire bunch, and if you are a rabbit and don’t finish it all stick it in a tupperware and warm it up the next day.
2. In the pan, put down olive oil and turn the heat on shy of medium. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and saute for a couple minutes.

• PRO TIP: it looks like you’re about to make a lot of kale, and this makes it tempting to glug down hella olive oil. Resist. One turn around the pan is enough.
• If you’re making this as part of a meal, I put the olive oil, garlic, and crushed red all in the pan and then I wait until all of the other parts of my meal are done to turn on the heat. In my head this makes the oil more garlicky but do you.

3. Add hella kale! IT COOKS DOWN A LOT. Add way more than you think you want!
4. In a separate DRY pan on LOW heat, add pine nuts and toast them. This is my favorite way to elevate this side dish.
5. Go away. If you keep stirring you’ll never get any crispy bits and it’ll take forever. Once it cooks down some, add your salt and smoked paprika and taste.
6. When it’s cooked to how you like it, squeeze some lemon juice over the top and let it cook down just a smidge. Bet you won’t have leftovers.

Tips

You can vary this a billion ways:

• Add miso paste to the garlic at the beginning and cook that through before you add your kale for a savory kick.
• Add shallot or thinly sliced red onion, or hell even yellow onion, and caramelize it first.
• Use dif nuts, sliced almonds or chunky walnuts are both so yummy here.
• Add zest from that lemon if you’re feelin zesty.

This is for those days when you don’t have all day.

The best and most important part about food is crispy skin. Period. Full stop. DASSIT.

As you can tell, I was feeling hella healthy this day. I had Popeye’s the day before, you see, and life is about balance. Quinoa that tastes not like sand, and kale that tastes not like bootleg collards – soon come.

A NOTE ON OILS:

• Grapeseed oil has a fairly high smoke point, meaning it will get hella hot before it smokes and burns your food. This is CRUCIAL for crispiness!! Here’s a handy chart if you can’t just take my word for it. Vegetable oil also has a high smoke point but grapeseed oil is healthier (I read that somewhere but I’m not a doctor yet so don’t @ me).
• If you’re just building a pantry, I recommend getting grapeseed oil for steaks stir fries, fishes and other crispy things that don’t require deep frying. You should also keep vegetable oil for when you are deep frying because it’s way cheaper and you’re already FRYING IT. Then, get a really good extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) for when you want it to taste good cooking veggies like best kale ever (soon come), and salads and etc. I really like the California brand that you can find at Safeway (West Coast stand up!) and Teeter (East Coast saddahn).

Recipe

1. Defrost your salmon if it’s frozen – ALL THE WAY TO ROOM TEMP. Make sure there aren’t scales – sometimes the frozen filets aren’t scaled which I will just never understand because why did I go buy these nicely sectioned freeze-dry packaged filets just to have to scale them!?

• If it’s not, hold the filet in one hand and lower your hand into the sink so you don’t have scales flying all over your kitchen. Take another sharp knife and drag it along the skin in the opposite direction of the scales. You’ll know you’re in the right place when they start to come off. Don’t forget the corners.
• PRO TIP: if you get salmon from behind the counter and freeze it yourself or just to cook in the next couple of days, ask them to descale. They will.

2. Dry the salmon off on all sides with a paper towel.
3. Then, do the ‘only trick to crispy skinned salmon’ as hidden in this three page rant – take a knife, drag it across the skin to collect moisture. Wipe the moisture off the knife. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
4. Season. Do you hear me? SALT. PEP. PAP. DASSIT All four sides! You can honestly conquer the world with these three things as a yung chef.

• AS USUAL, you can 100% switch this up – sometimes I add chili powder or cayenne if I’m feeling caliente that day. Once, I used one of those seafood seasonings and the basics in my life loved it but Foodalisa was unimpressed. Do you though.

5. Throw down your grapeseed oil in a nonstick or cast iron on medium. Put the salmon skin side down and leave it the hell alone. It’ll shrink up and the skin will start to come up off the pan because it has crisped up. You don’t want this to happen too fast so if you’re nervous, turn the heat down.

• If the skin sticks, use a spatula to gently lift the salmon and skin from the pan. Using the handle, tilt the pan towards you and away from you to move your oil around and let the salmon back down.

6. Once your skin is crispidy, turn your salmon over for 3 mins max and then roll to one side and then the other for even less time. You want color on the salmon, but at this point it is likely cooked through. It’s done when it flakes with a fork.

This whole process needn’t take more than 15 minutes. Once you get the hang of it, this is great to keep in your back pocket for busy nights when you want a healthy something.