I think we’re done here.

Hi everyone, it’s been a couple years since my last blog post. In this time I’ve often meant to come back to The Domestic Man. There were 100+ completed and photographed recipes that never made it into the final version of my last cookbook (The Heritage Cookbook), and I always planned on trickling out both the rejected and 300+ published dishes here on the website eventually.

But things are different now. We moved back to Hawaii in late 2019, right after releasing The Heritage Cookbook. The process of creating that book took a lot out of me. I spent years working at a breakneck pace to deliver the manuscript to my publisher, only to find that they were no longer interested in publishing it in the manner we had agreed upon. After a year of revisions and rejections, I decided to self-publish instead, to maintain the vision that motivated me to write this very personal tome in the first place. I’m supremely proud of the final product, especially those few physical copies that made it to print, but I think a part of me always knew that it would be my last cookbook.

So when we returned to Hawaii, it was time for a clean break. I gifted away all of my photography equipment before moving, and logged off my social media accounts. Soon after, the pandemic hit, and like with most others I found myself with a lot of calendar space. If ever there was a time to fall back in love with food blogging, that would have been it. Instead, I published an old recipe or two, baked a lot of sourdough, recorded some music, and started on a novel (which is still in the works, but far from ready).

At some point I stopped being so productive with my time, and fell into a rut of catching up on movies and video games. As one does. From that period I emerged with a new passion, to play my favorite classic games but on modern equipment. And it turns out there weren’t a lot of good tutorials on the subject out there, so I took up the challenge. After all, writing tech guides is very similar to writing recipes. I started a new website, which eventually led to a YouTube channel, and here I am a couple years later doing this as my full-time job (I retired from the military earlier this year, what a wild ride that was). I’m enjoying the experience immensely.

Really, the point of this post here is to come to terms with the fact that I’m likely not coming back to The Domestic Man. I am very thankful for my experience with this website, and the friendships I made along the way. Ironically, I created The Domestic Man in 2010 as a distraction when my old gaming blog had ran its own course; it’s now time to admit that I’m fully back in my roots with this new project, and it leaves me with little room to also maintain this food blog.

I’ll keep the lights on here for the foreseeable future, so you’ll be able to access all your favorite recipes for years to come. And who knows, maybe I’ll get the itch again and post some dishes from time to time. In the meantime, feel free to drop a line and let me know how you are doing.

Take care,
Russ

Ful Medames (Egyptian Fava Beans)

Okay, let’s start by saying that I am not very good at making pretty hard-boiled eggs. I don’t really see the point in it – making a delicious, but maybe not pretty, hard-boiled egg is 4,235x easier than making a pretty hard-boiled egg. And they taste the same. So it’s just not something I’m going to devote a large part of my life to perfecting, and the eggs above are about the best you’ll ever get from me.

If you’re feeling sleuthy, you could consult the dozens of other pictures on this site with hard-boiled eggs, and you’ll find that none of them are winners. Those bloggers and photographers who have beautiful, perfectly-sliced hard-boiled eggs? They’re cleaning their knife after every slice, so that the yolks don’t stick to the knife. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Anyway, this is Ful Medames, an ancient dish made of mashed fava beans that is generally associated with Egypt. This dish likely predates Islam, meaning that it is thousands of years old. Fava beans, like chickpeas, peas, and lentils, are legumes from the Old World, originating in Southwest Asia about 8,000 years ago. All other beans we know today come from the Americas, and comparatively more recently in human history.

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Oil Down (Grenadan Fish and Chicken Stew)

Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing well. I’m still around, just haven’t been posting. I visited this site the other day and noticed that the most recent recipe was for a ButcherBox promotion back around Thanksgiving, and and it kind of bothered me. So I thought I would post a new recipe to at least push that one down a bit in the stream.

I developed this recipe when writing The Heritage Cookbook, but I ended up with too many recipes from the Caribbean, and so it didn’t make the final cut. But it’s still a simple, delicious recipe, with some subtle tropical notes that bring sunshine to your plate. There’s a lot of flexibility here; if you cannot find breadfruit or callaloo locally, I’ve included some more conventional substitutes.

I recommend eating this dish with your hands. It’s worth it.

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Nyama Choma (Simple Kenyan Grilled Meat) with Kachumbari Salad

Today I’m sharing a simple grilled meat recipe, something that really hits the spot on a summer evening. Its preparation is deceptively simple: just rub it all over with lemon juice, give it a fair bit of salt, and grill it until cooked through. Nyama Choma’s charm comes from its down-to-basics approach, letting you complement the pure meat flavor with a spicy and tangy Kachumbari Salad (also pictured: Sukuma Wiki.

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Chicken Tagine

Hi everyone. It’s been a bit since I posted a recipe. Someone wrote me the other day and asked whether I had a Chicken Tagine recipe. I did (and do), and it reminded me that I have many tasty recipes that didn’t make the final cut into The Heritage Cookbook. So instead of letting them waste away in some random Google Doc, I’ll try my best to post a recipe here and there.

Things are fine. Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. I thought that all this telework and social distancing would give me an opportunity to return to my more prolific days here on the blog, but I’ve found that since I’m sitting in front of a computer so much doing work-related tasks, I haven’t been interested in returning to my computer in the evenings. So perhaps once things eventually normalize I will get back to my old blogging routine, but for now, let’s just enjoy some Chicken Tagine and figure all that other stuff out later.

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Tandoori Chicken

Memorial Day is right around the corner. It’s often considered the first grilling weekend of the season across the United States, although it might feel a bit different this year without friends coming over. Either way, this recipe is tasty enough that it will hopefully compensate for the lack of Memorial Day parties we’ll all be attending in 2020.

While Tandoori Chicken recipes are found in my first two books, this beloved dish is making its blog debut today. It gets its name from the traditional clay oven found in South Asia, known as a tandoor in Hindi/Urdu. This dish as we know it today was likely developed in the 19th century, but evidence of similar grilled poultry dishes can be traced back to the Harappan Civilization, which existed in the Indus River Valley over 5,000 years ago. Given that most of these spices are native to the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, it’s no stretch to believe that these flavors have existed for thousands of years.

For this recipe, we’re going to go as economical as possible – we’ll break down a whole chicken and grill its individual parts. If that doesn’t seem to be up your alley, no worries, you can use any combination of chicken parts on their own (more details below the recipe). Bear in mind that bone-in chicken imparts the most flavor, and you’ll want to remove the skin so that you can get as much flavor into the meat as possible.

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Community Sourdough Bread

Like many others, I’ve found myself with a lot of time on my hands for the past month or so. Initially, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to catch up (and get ahead) on the many blog/social media items I’ve had on pause for the past few years, a remnant of when I was finishing up The Heritage Cookbook. That didn’t turn out to be the case.

Social distancing, or as I have grown to call it, physical distancing, has been relatively drama-free for our household, but our daily habits have evolved. We are taking the concept seriously, because I am on immunosuppressant medication, as well as the fact that we live with my in-laws, who are of a high-risk age (or kupuna, as they say here in Hawaii). My wife makes a weekly grocery trip to replenish our pantry and fridge, and we dedicate two dinners each week to ordering takeout to boost the local economy. I have adjusted to a work-from-home environment, and the military has relaxed its grooming standards; I’m getting used to long hair. I developed a homeschooling curriculum for our fifth-grade son, to supplement the schoolwork his teachers are giving him, and we’re teaching our youngest to read.

Admittedly, even with six people in the house, it’s easy to feel a sense of isolation from time to time. I never thought I’d be so happy to take a call from work, just to speak to someone new and satisfy my inherent human desire for a sense of belonging. My mother-in-law has been hardest hit from this isolation, as she has built a very strong circle of friends in our local area, whom she now cannot visit.

But as I’ve been looking through our pantry to devise our weekly meals, I’ve been making a habit of cooking with all of those back-of-the-shelf ingredients that have stacked up over the years. We had quite a collection of flours from my recipe testing during The Heritage Cookbook: multiple variations of einkorn, rye, and whole wheat. Rather than let them endure further neglect, I decided to start experimenting with these flours to perfect the beginner’s sourdough recipe I wrote for the book. So like a lot of other folks, I eventually fell into a rhythm of daily breadmaking — making way more than we could ever conceivable eat. Once the results were shareable, we started giving them out to extended family and my in-laws’ friends around our neighborhood, via mailbox delivery. Now, our neighbors have a reason to call my mother-in-law to chat, and it’s been easing her stay-at-home experience.

And yeah, this recipe isn’t “Paleo”, or gluten-free for that matter. It’s not an ideal food staple, nor is it high in nutrients. But it is fermented, so maybe it’s better for you than yeast-leavened bread. I eat a slice every few days, mostly to test its flavor but also to just enjoy my work. Rather than focus on what it isn’t, I’d rather look at what this Community Sourdough Bread has become in our household: a tool to share a little love to those around us, at a time when we’re all re-writing the rules.

I hope you and your loved ones are doing well, and staying safe and healthy. More soon.

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Poronkäristys (Sautéed Reindeer)

You probably don’t have any reindeer sitting around at your house (unless you do – hello, Canadians and Scandinavians, thanks for visiting my site!). Luckily, this simple recipe can also be used with venison if you or a loved one had an eventful hunting trip this year, or even with bison or beef steaks if you didn’t have a good hunting trip.

This dish hails from Finland, but is enjoyed in Sweden, Norway and Russia as well. What I like about this recipe is that it makes no assumptions – the key to this delicious meal is slicing it thinly, seasoning it sparingly, and nudging it gently towards tenderness with a combination of light braising and some crisping at the end. The whole process takes about two hours from start to finish, but it’s totally worth it.

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Sukuma Wiki (Sautéed Seasoned Greens) – Meat free version

Nearly seven years ago, I developed my recipe for Sukuma Wiki, a Kenyan braised collard greens and ground beef recipe, and it’s been a favorite ever since. I put it in my first book, The Ancestral Table, and it’s often the dish I point to in the book when someone asks where they should start cooking. It takes about 30 minutes to prepare, and uses very affordable ingredients — and tastes great, too.

When writing The Heritage Cookbook, I knew that I wanted to include this dish to represent Eastern African cookery, but wanted to go back to the drawing board in terms of honoring the traditional preparation of this dish. What I came up with is a flavor provide very similar to my original recipe, but meat-free, and with nice meaty hunks of tomatoes to replicate those missing chunks of ground beef. Red onion also mellowed out the dish some compared to a white or yellow onion, which helped to balance everything just right.

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Potluck Jambalaya

Yesterday was my 40th birthday. I’ve spent many years thinking about this specific trip around the sun, and this milestone is important to me for several reasons. But perhaps most meaningfully, I clearly remember when my parents reached 40, and I felt that it was a significant time for each of them: a time to reflect on that transition from young-ish adult to middle age. It feels like by 40, most of your life’s decisions have lined up in a way that is relatively hard to break away from. And in that sense, I’m proud of the direction my life has taken, and those who have shared this journey with me.

So to celebrate, I’m sharing one of my most celebratory recipes. This is the recipe I usually take to potlucks, parties, and other gatherings. I shared a down-and-dirty version of this dish about five years ago (which you can find here, along with some history of the dish). I’ve made some fundamental changes over the years, and I’m positive that this is the definitive version. To give you some context: for Christmas this past year, I vaccuum-sealed, froze, and gifted this dish to my close friends and co-workers. If I was to ever open a restaurant, this dish would not only be on the menu, but it’d have an asterix by its title to indicate that it’s something special, something worth pausing and enjoying.

The dish requires a good amount of preparation up front: the day before you make it, you’ll want to make your stock, prep the meats, and chop the vegetables. That way, you can whip up the rest in the morning with minimal effort. Don’t let the planning intimidate you–it’s worth the effort.

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