Change is definitely in the air. A new year (happy 2009, everyone!), a new President (hurray!), and … in about a week, a new apartment for me and Nathan!
While moving grows into a bigger and bigger pain the older you get, I like to focus on the fact that it motivates me to purge my belongings – an early spring cleaning, if you will. Coincidentally, our move this time happens to coincide with Chinese New Year, so the purging will be doubly appropriate. Goodbye, novelty T-shirts from college! Goodbye, baggy sweaters! Goodbye, three out of six very-similar-looking pairs of khaki pants!
In the spirit of cleaning, I’m also trying to make sure we don’t have too many perishables in the fridge to move across town. And with the return of rainy weather, a stew seems to be the perfect solution.
After peeking around the fridge a bit, I spied two black radishes hiding out in a corner. (Aside: I stumbled upon that article and then realized it’s written by Andy from Mariquita, from whom I got these black radishes in the first place!) A bit of Internet searching dug up an Uzbek(!!) recipe called Khoplama and my mind was set. Because you know, I can never resist recipes from exotic places!
I mostly followed this recipe but used chicken broth instead of beef broth, pumped up the spices, and modified the steps a bit. The beauty of stews is that the quantities of the vegetables and meat don’t matter all that much, so just throw in whatever you feel like!
