Thai-Inspired Chicken Curry

Tonight was a no nonsense, no, I'm not going to bother finding the kafir lime leaves, galangal, etc to make authentic-curry, but instead go for the prepared curry paste, and enjoy a veggie packed, slightly spicy chicken curry. Taken from epicurious, here, it's a good starting point, but I found some additions were very beneficial. Namely, fish sauce, sambal (chili paste) cauliflower, chicken broth, rather than the water it suggested, and a bit of brown sugar and lemon to give it that sweet/sour thing those of us who have never actually been to Thailand associate with Thai food. Would have been better with lime, but I missed that on my list. Even Boo (who has been known to walk away from coconut flavors of all sorts given an unfortunate incident a few years back with a coconut cake), had multiple servings, even of the veggies! Don't tell her it was loaded with coconut milk! I was hoping Zuzu would go for the rather psychedelic orange cauliflower, but she stuck to mostly rice. Oh, and whole sprigs of basil. Girl loves her herbs! The adults downed it with some Singha, and it was all quite tasty. I'd do it again.

Wednesday menu: Thai chicken curry and rice.

 

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Birthday.

So I cooked nothing today. Felt kind of weird, all truth be told, not to cook. It was my birthday, and J handled it all. Even the cake was supplied by a good friend who just might become a regular baker. :). It's for the best, because it was a working mama's birthday, to be sure. Zuzu had an ear infection, so I needed to cater to her all day. Which upset Boo more that she would care to admit, the whole thing was kind of a fuster cluck, if you know what I mean. I did get to escape for some retail therapy, though. Very appreciated. I will have to save the pedicure for tomorrow. Sigh.

There were some highlights of the weeks menu, though. I made a meatball recipe served as meatball subs, taken from the January Living, here. Super delicious. I was going for the unctuous sammies one can get at Salumi, the local sandwich shop owned and run by Mario Batali's folks, (get there early, because all the good stuff is gone by noon!). It wasn't quite there, but still delicious. Could have puréed the tomatoes for a nicer consistency, but it worked ok. Not light, though. At all.

Thursday Menu: meatball casserole with rolls, BIG green salad.

Friday Menu: our bi-weekly pizza--Yaya makes the dough, I chip in with topping ideas. We try to keep one simple for the girls, and the other, shake it up a little. Our "adult" pizza was roasted eggplant and mushroom with provolone. Earthy and delicious! A great winter combo I will make again! I just got two new magazine subscriptions for my birthday--both somewhat food related--Living and Bon Appetit, so stay tuned for further inspired hits! I love food blogs and such, don't get me wrong, but for me, getting to flip through a beautifully styled, glossy magazine once a month for new ideas is a sensual pleasure that involves more senses than the digital screen ever will, iPad, or no iPad. But then, I'm old school.

 

 

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More hits from Smitten Kitchen!

Another couple hits from Deb at Smitten Kitchen!  Just can't seem to go wrong with her recipes!

Thursday Menu:  Alex's Chicken and Mushroom Masala, basmati rice, roasted cauliflower, green salad.

We had an ancient bottle of masala.  No matter.  I did it with chicken thighs, as per Deb's suggestion. Super easy, weeknight dinner, came together pretty well.  The mushrooms were scrumptious.  Button mushrooms were great in this dish.Made great work leftovers, as well.

Saturday Menu:  One-Pan Farro with tomatoes, sausages, green salad.
The One-pot Farro, a riff of Martha Stewart's One-pot pasta dish, was a revelation.  Tasted a lot like a risotto in texture, but a lot less required babysitting of the pot!  I used the small delicious tomatoes we get at Costco, plus a whole onion, a little garlic, and found I wanted a little extra tomatoey flavor, and ended up adding a couple canned tomatoes toward the end.  It was tricky to get seasoned just right.  But the dish really came together in the last few minutes simmering on the stove.  Yummy!  And no need to saute the onions in advance, or anything.  Super easy!  I am a new farro convert!  Thank goodness I can find it easily in bulk at Big John's PFI.  We had a couple folks over to join us for dinner, and it was definitely company-worthy food.  Hearty, big flavors, and I made a double batch, so there was plenty.

In other kitchen news this week, in light of Zuzu's flu bug, I wanted to make some killer chicken stock, and tried Deb's slow cooker stock using only wings.  Again, she nails it.  The flavor was so perfect-- simple, but deep.  Chickeny, but only in the very best way.  So perfect to do it in the slow cooker.  It just cooked all day, and by the time the kids were in bed, we had this fabulous golden broth.  No eyes on the stove.  Just done.   Definitely provided great flavor for the Chicken Marsala, and now I'm ready to try beef stock.  I bet my favorite short rib recipes would be knock your socks off.

Still trying to figure out just the right format for this blog.  Do I report every meal?  Only hit the highlights?  And when (if ever) to go public?  make announcements that this thing actually exists?  We'll get there.  As with everything, we'll get there.

Comfort in a bowl, or two!

Oh, my.  Getting behind already.  I'm really trying to stay current with this thing, otherwise, what is the point, really??

Menu:  Sage & Brown-butter Gnocchi with ham.

So tonite after a visit to Nonnie and Papa's, and a late bed for the girls, I dug in the cupboard for dinner for J and I.  Thanks to the aforementioned Big John's PFI, and some brown butter sage, we ended up having a yummy gnocchi with sage brown butter, a little ham and assaggio.  mmm, quite lovely.  Could have used a salad, but you take what you can get this time of night!  And kind of nice to have a dinner with just the 2 of us, even if it was at 10PM.

Other dinners this week, before we put this one to bed:

Thursday Menu: Oven Roasted Salmon, sauteed shitaakes, baby bok choy, and a salad.

The salmon was chinook, from this year's crop, and yummy.  I like the rarer end, J likes the more cooked end, so it all works out.  Nice to have the side of the mushrooms--they added much flavor and richness to the meal.  And I got to take the salmon to work for my favorite salad.  Delish!

Saturday Menu:  Ina Garten's Weeknight Bolognese (another favorite!)

Used the canned tomatoes Yaya and I did this summer, a cheaper red, and some yummy big pappardelle noodles.  Even the girls ate every lick.

January Food.

One of my favorite food bloggers is (of course), Deb from Smitten Kitchen. How she gets those amazing shots of her food, and sounds so witty in the process! I assumed food that looked good in real life, automatically looked good in pictures, and I've found that is just not the case at all. You can have piles of delicious grub, but somehow on camera, it just looks greasy and unappetizing. I hope to have pics eventually, if I'm going to call this a food blog, but so far, it's better to imagine it in your minds, trust me on this.

This all said, Deb has a phrase called ' January food,' describing the food on the covers of the magazines this month, the spa cuisine that's supposed to help you lose 10 lbs, the food that just seems needed after a month (or two!) of excess. DInner tonite could be put in that category, and it really is one of my favorite dinners in our regular rotation, and never the same twice. It's not really a recipe, more like a composition. And that composition should be attributed to one Curtis Stone. You remember him, right? The Take-home Chef? The Aussie cutie. He would help out distressed home cooks, trying to make a meal for their partners, and help them put together ravishing meals. Anyway, so he was part of this piece in O Magazine, with chefs sharing their go-to recipes for certain situations. His situation was Short-order Cook. Not that our families ever make us feel like that!! Of course not!!

His solution is brilliant, simple, delicious. You can find the link here. It was a bit chaotic in the kitchen tonight, because I had just made some applesauce spice muffins with the girls for Zuzu's class tomorrow, so our turquoise countertops were already very messy, but once I got the veggies roasting and defrosted some chicken breasts, (it works with all kinds of proteins), we were in business.

All you do is cook some quinoa, cook some protein, the recipe recommends pork tenderloin, which is also great, but tonite I used chicken breasts with some old spice rub that I just uncovered when cleaning out the cupboards. (Bonus!) You mix together a little apple cider vinegrette to bring all the flavors together, and roast some veggies. I chose butternut squash and brussel sprouts, but have also done it with sweet potato, sautéed greens, anything goes. Preferably one orange, one green, although I bet cauliflower would also be good. You mix the hot quinoa with the vinagrette and some arugula or other power greens, (POWER GREE NS!) and compose a big platter with the chicken, roasted veggies, and everyone just builds on their own bowl on the quinoa and arugula. For Booboo that means one sprout, one piece of chicken, and barely any quinoa and greens, but Zuzu gets into it, as do the rest of us. You can also add some feta or chèvre to finish it off. And nuts or seeds, but you don't really need them. Definitely January food, but January food I could eat every week!

Menu: Curtis Stone's Quinoa Bowl with Pork (or chicken) and Butternut Squash and some leftover muffins.

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Chicken n' Dumplings!

Started with a whole chicken. My chicken breaking down skills still need work, it was a butchering! Have to remember when they say 45 min, and you're starting with a whole chicken, it's never going to come off that easily! Also, that when your recipe calls for a three pound bird, and you use a 5 lb bird, adjustments must be made. Luckily, I realized it in time, and was planning to double or triple the veggies in the recipe anyway. I used mostly the Epicurious recipe here. But very important to use the dumplings found in the reviews by a cook in Seattle. They are described as follows:

Seattle's dumpling recipe: to make real flour dumplings here's a basic recipe: 2 cups sifted flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 3 teaspoons baking powder, 4 tablespoons shortening, 1 cup of buttermilk or soured milk. Mix together the dry ingredients. Cut in the shortening until crumbly, stir in the buttermilk taking care not to over mix. Allow to stand 5-10 minutes. Drop by rounded tablespoons into the simmering chicken. Bring back to a soft simmer, cook 10 minutes with the cover off, 10 minutes with the cover on. Remove the dumplings to a serving dish with the chicken. If you want to do herbs in the dumplings, stir any kind you like into the dry ingredients then continue.

Fantabulous! Thanks god the girls were watching a video, Barbie's Christmas, if you must ask, so they were fine when dinner didn't appear till 7:30! Wow, there was a time when we never ate before 9!! Ah, children.

I kept being worried that it wasn't building enough flavor, it was too fatty, yada, yada, but at the end of the day, it was just what I was wanting. Including the dumplings, which turned out just like the comforting clouds of deliciousness I remember from my childhood. Yay.

Menu: Epicurious' Chicken & Dumplings, with A Cook From Seattle's perfect flour dumplings. And that's all.

Note: In my research for the Perfect Recipe, I found there does seem to be a weird regional thing with dumplings. In the South, you make them like biscuit ribbons almost, that are rolled out and then added almost like pasta to the bubbling broth. I'm sure they're lovely and divine in their own way, but I was definitely going for the fluffy clouds of my youth in the Northwest. To me, the south has not the cornered the market on dumplings. I know them could be fightin' words, but I'm just sayin'.

 

 

 

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What Took Me So Long??

Finally took a quick look into Big John's PFI the other day. I've only parked in that back lot for a year and a half, and my friend's boyfriend, a really great cook, only swore by the place long ago, and I've been lamenting the fact that sometimes when I'm in Uwajimaja, as fabulous as it is, when I'm looking for more Mediterranean ingredients, it kind of stinks...now I have no idea what took me so damn long! That place is amazing, and fills a serious culinary gap in my regular shopping route! They have stuff in bulk, an elaborate cheese counter, chocolate of the gods, and reasonable prices, to boot. P.F.I. Stands for Pacific Food Imports, and the place looks like it's been around for awhile. Ok, just looked it up, and that is indeed the case--45 years, to be exact! It's a family business that started as an olive importer. (Didn't even touch the olive dept! Will have to remedy that soon!). It has a warehousey charm, short on the fancy pants, but long on the fabulous products. I was in part checking it out for my mother-in-law, sine she was lamenting the lack of great Italian staples ever since moving to the Northwest a few months ago. Well, I found her pancetta, and then some! I can't wait to bring her some goods from my next trip.

Menu: weeknight porchetta (thanks, bon appetit!), smashed sweet potatoes, romaine salad.

Unfortunately, the porchetta, for all it's fabulous bacon flavor (really a bacon wrapped pork tenderloin,) was undercooked--I would have put me out of Top Chef on the spot!) and the Hub, who is very wary of this kind of thing, would not stop giving me grief about it. It was much better today, after a little longer in the oven. Usually I grill my pork tenderloins, so I was not used to the way the oven behaved. Yes, I WILL blame it on the 50 year-old oven, thank you!

 

 

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Comfort Food, Jerusalem Style.

Something new for the tastebuds....I decided to try out a "comfort food" recipie from "Jerusalem," one of Ottolenghi's latest I found at the library. Mostly lentils and rice, with these amazing fried onions on top which made the dish. I told C it was "beans and rice" since that's one of her favorites. She said she didn't quite believe me. She was right to be skeptical! The flavor profile to this food is completely different of course, and may require some thoughtful planning, on the cook's part. It forces me to remember, as much as I would like to go gung-ho into this new cuisine, (new to me, that is,), one has to remember one's audience! So tomorrow may be chicken and dumplings, or a more familiar version of comfort food! I would serve it again, tho. Very yummy! It took awhile to fry all the onions, though. That was the most laborious part.
Menu: Ottolenghi's rice and lentils, sautéed kale, grated carrots with vinagrette.

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