★ food ★

april 24

making chicken broth is THE single easiest thing ever. and the outcome can be used for so many things! i don't know why i hadn't saved any chicken bones until now. all you need is a pot, enough water to fill the chicken bones, and aromatics like onions, cloves, bay leaves, ginger and cardamom (i'm going for an arab-style broth here). i find that chicken wing bones are the best and most gelatinous!

cook it all on low heat for about two hours or more, and add water to maintain the level whenever needed. make sure you skim off any of the stuff that floats to the top. you don't need that. once cooked, i added salt to taste. 

you can use the broth for sooo many things - cook rice, pasta, chicken pot pie, cut them into little gelatinous cubes and add them into soup dumplings - the world is your (soupy) oyster.

march 30, 2024

hey! i made stuffed grape leaves (aka dolma in iraqi households) today. it was my first time and BOY did it take a while to finish up. the filling - made up of rice, beef, tomato paste and spices, needed to be mixed in advance and drained completely of any water before it gets used. my family likes grape leaves, onions, eggplants, and a singular bell pepper to create our dolma.

i filmed a little timelapse of me rolling each leaf and adding it to our big pot! it was very fun to edit and post on tiktok. we actually froze the whole thing and cooked it up about 2 weeks later. i actually didn't do the cooking part -- i came home from an outing to an already-cooked dolma ready to eat (shoutout to my mother). the important thing about cooking dolma is that you have to have enough water in the pot. we noticed it was a bit undercooked and immediately sent the pot back to the stove for another 30 mins with extra water. it was delcicious - i'm very proud of myself!