Milk Street Recipes

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Forrest - We published a list of common Milk Street ingredients (including za'atar) and some recommended substitutions in our July-August 2019 issue under the Kitchen Counts feature. You can find that list here. We suggest the following as a substitute for 1 tablespoon of za'atar - 1½ dried thyme + ¾ t sesame seeds + 1 t finely grated lemon zest + ⅛ t salt. I highly recommend our Za'atar-Roasted Chicken - it's one of my favorites because it packs a ton of flavor in its simplicity. Enjoy! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Michael - First, I will pass along your suggestions regarding comments on recipes to our tech team. Thank you! Next, let's talk about piadina. Piadina is an Italian flatbread that I would describe as more similar in texture to a flour tortilla or sandwich wrap than a pizza or naan dough. The flavor of the dough itself should be well-seasoned yet subtle, so as not to overpower or take away from the more flavorful fillings. Since it is never made with yeast and allowed to ferment like pizza or naan, the flavor will also not be as complex. However, the highlight of the piadina dough is the speed with which you can have a homemade bread on your table. The dough should not feel greasy after it has rested. Is it possible your lard was too warm? In the summer sometimes "room temperature" is actually a little too warm. Room temperature butter/shortening/lard should be around 65 degrees, which is probably a bit colder than most people keep their home. As for why your bread did not bubble, I can't be 100% sure. A number of things could be the cause including inactive baking powder, overdocking the dough, or not getting the pan hot enough. Naan is a very different bread than piadina, owing to the addition of yeast and rising time. I definitely think you could experiment with the piadina dough by adding yeast, milk, and sugar and turn it into something more similar to naan. Good luck! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Micah - Karaage or, Japanese Fried Chicken, is traditionally done with boneless, skinless pieces of chicken thigh to make it easier to eat with chopsticks and make flavorful fried chicken really fast. To fry bone-in pieces would be making fried chicken as opposed to Japanese fried chicken. So my first recommendation would be to debone and skin the chicken yourself and use the boneless pieces. You can reserve the bones and use them to make a really flavorful stock. If that option doesn't work for you, you can fry the whole pieces as you would typical, American-style fried chicken. However, frying bone-in pieces vs. boneless strips is really two different animals. First, I would remove the skin to ensure that the coating will still stick. Since this recipe was developed with skinless pieces of chicken, I can't guarantee the coating on skin-on pieces will behave the same. When marinating the whole pieces I would err on the longer side of marinating time (1 hour) since these are larger pieces. Next, frying whole thighs and drumsticks is going to take significantly longer than the strips called for in the recipe. I would say anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes total. Thighs and drumsticks should register 175 on an instant read thermometer and that's what I would use to determine doneness rather than a time. When you drop in the bone-in pieces into the oil the temperature of the oil will drop. You want to maintain the oil temperature between 300 - 325 so the chicken won't brown too much before it's cooked through. Depending on how much chicken you have (you will need probably an extra pound of bone-in pieces to yield 4 servings), you might have to fry in two batches to avoid overcrowding the pan. In my opinion, the added time and effort of deboning the chicken yourself will probably end up being less effort all in than the added time of frying whole pieces. Plus, you end up with a more accurate version of karaage! Hope this helps! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Tom - We appreciate your support of Milk Street and our radio show! We understand that it's helpful to know the nutritional information for recipes. However, we are not a health food magazine and, therefore, do not have a nutritionist on staff to accurately calculate the nutritional details for all of our recipes. I would suggest using a smartphone apps or website (there are TONS out there) into which you can enter ingredients and get some nutritional information. These aren't 100% accurate, but they should give you a general picture of the nutritional details of a dish. Thanks for your question! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Nichola - Thanks for writing to us all the way from Australia! Our recipe for Swedish Spiced Wine recommends keeping the syrup separate from the wine so you can tailor the sweetness to each person's preference. The syrup can be kept in an airtight container for up to a month. The brandied raisins can be kept for up to a week as is or, if you continue adding brandy, weeks longer. There are definitely sources out there that say you can leave the Glogg - rebottled in clean wine or liquor bottles - to age for months or even years (!). We haven't tested this and I would be concerned that the flavor of the wine, once opened, exposed to the air, and rebottled, would be compromised. I probably wouldn't recommend freezing the syrup. Although the brandy won't freeze, the lemon juice and water and any remaining particles of zest, fig, ginger, and raisin that snuck through the strainer will. This creates a slushy texture to the syrup. Once this thaws, the ice crystals will melt and dilute the syrup's flavor and texture. Hope that helps! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Rhonda - The easiest way to add some heat to this dish is to replace the sweet paprika in the spice mixture with hot paprika or simply add some red pepper flakes or cayenne to the spice mix. But, why not experiment with some more interesting flavors too? Aleppo pepper would be great here. Fruity and moderately spicy, Aleppo pepper is used throughout the Middle East. The one we sell in our store, Villa Jerada Aleppo Pepper, is impeccably sourced. You could also experiment with ground, dried chilies. Dried chilies can impart heat but also a ton of complex flavor. They do require a bit of preparation before use. First they should be toasted (to heighten their flavor) in a dry skillet until just beginning to darken, about 1 minute per side. Once cool enough to handle, tear the stem off and shake out the seeds. At this point, the chilies can be ground to powder in a spice grinder. Turkish Urfa pepper is one of our favorite dried chile flakes. - it packs a punch with deep, earthy flavor and moderate heat. The moist texture of the coarse-ground flakes make it better suited to garnishing a dish than using in a spice rub. Sprinkle a little on the chicken and cauliflower after cooking. Hope this helps! Thanks for writing to us, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi - Thanks for writing to us! Our recipe for Cuban-Style Pork Shoulder with Mojo Sauce calls for a 4 to 5 pound pork shoulder with a total roasting time of about 3 1/2 hours. That translates to about 40 minutes per pound for a 5-pound pork shoulder. For a 7-pound roast that would mean between 4 to 5 hours of roasting time. Given the larger size of the meat, I would also definitely recommend allowing the salt mixture to sit on the meat for the full 24 hour period. And don't forget to double the herb-garlic paste ingredients! Good luck! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Lily - We love using preserved lemons here at Milk Street. They add a briney, yet tart, depth to a whole host of dishes. In fact, Milk Streeters love them so much our favorite, Casablanca Market Preserved Lemons, are currently sold out of the Milk Street Store. Because conventional lemons are easier to find, we did not test our Lemon-Saffron Chicken (Tangia) recipe with preserved lemons. So my recommendation is to experiment! I would start with one or two small preserved lemons, chopped fine. Add them at the end, off the heat, as you would the zest and juice called for in the recipe. From there, you might want to experiment with adding some preserved lemon with the spices and the remainder off the heat to add different layers of flavor. Since preserved lemons are not quite as tart or sour as fresh lemons, you may want to add a little bit of fresh lemon juice at the end as well to brighten up the flavors. I hope this helps and happy cooking! Best, Lynn C.

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi Jason - I actually make our Chiang Mai chicken on the grill all the time. It's a great alternative to standard American BBQ chicken on a hot summer day. I grill it using indirect heat - the same basic method as the Lemon-Lime Lacquered Chicken - but because the Chiang Mai chicken calls for leg quarters and breasts, rather than chicken parts, the cooking time will be a bit longer. Just make sure to temp the chicken (160 degrees for the breasts and 175 for the leg quarters) and you should be good to go. I do usually grill it over the hot side of the grill at the end to get the skin crispy, but I am comfortable with a little bit of char on the skin. This only takes a couple of minutes since all of the fat has rendered during the slow, indirect cooking process. You do need to keep a close eye on it, though, because it definitely can burn due to the glaze. For recipes with fish sauce, as long as you are doubling all of the ingredients it should be fine to double the fish sauce since everything should still be in proportion and balanced. However, you can always add some and taste as you add more until you feel happy with the flavor. I highly recommend Red Boat brand fish sauce and we carry their aged version, which has really complex flavor that has mellowed during the aging process, in the Milk Street Store. You can read about it and purchase it here: https://store.177milkstreet.com/products/blis-barrel-aged-fish-sauce. Thanks for writing us!

Answered by Lynn Clark

Hi William – Thanks for contacting us! I assume you are referring to our recipe for Lemon Lime Lacquered Grilled Chicken (Inihaw Na Manok)? Recipe here: https://www.177milkstreet.com/recipes/lemon-lime-barbeque-grilled-chicken-inihaw-na-manok-filipino If we were simply intending to use the marinade as a sauce with the same texture then, yes, we would have to cook it to kill any residual bacteria that may have been present from the raw chicken. However, at Milk Street, we are all about layering flavor and doing it as easily and possible. So, the reason we cook the marinade in our recipe is because we want to use those same ingredients (vinegar, ketchup, soy, garlic, bay, and lemon-lime soda) to flavor the chicken in another way. Rather than make an entirely new sauce to baste and serve with the chicken, we simply reduce the marinade to get a thick basting liquid and sauce. Doing so also creates a slightly different flavor profile than our marinade. Overall, the flavors are more concentrated - the sauce is sweeter, tangier, and saltier than as a marinade alone - so we are creating layers of flavor with the same ingredients. Because we are using this thick, sweet sauce to baste the chicken as it cooks, we cook the chicken over the cool side of the grill, using the ambient grill heat to cook the chicken through. Then we give it a quick blast over the hot side to brown it. This ensures the sauce won’t burn before the chicken cooks through. Indirect grilling is our go-to method for grilling chicken (or really any protein) where the surface would burn before the meat was cooked to the proper temperature.