Bang Thai Curry

I had this recipe in my file for a number of years but didn't make it.  We like (OK...love) curry dishes; however, there are only so many meals to make and so many times we want curry.  But, I'm not sure why I waited.  This one is going into the rotation of meals at this house since it comes together quickly and is tasty.

The restaurant, Bang Thai, was formerly in a 'burb to the north.  We don't eat out very often...but when the restaurant was around we were really into very few meals out of the house.  And even fewer meals to the north of our house since we tend to want to head more downtown than suburban when the urge to eat out hits us.  Anyway, we knew the owner from the Y, and we are always looking for good Thai food, so we did stop once or twice.

This recipe is a keeper.....glad I kept it this long and will make it more frequently now that it's in my mind.  I did not get a picture of this delightful dish, so next time I make it I hope to remember to do that.

1 T green curry paste
3 T vegetable oil
2 c chicken breast
2 t curry powder
2 c coconut milk (I used lite...and Trader Joe's brand)
1 c water
1 c cubed potatoes
1/2 c cubed white onion
1/2 c cubed tomato (I omitted)
3-4 t fish sauce (I used the brand from the Asian grocery store)
1 t sugar
1/4 c green onion
cilantro

Heat pan and then add curry paste and oil.  mix well stirring 1 min.  Add chicken and curry powder.  Stir well and add coconut milk. Add water, potato, and onion and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium and cook until potato is tender.  Add tomato (if using), fish sauce, and sugar.  Cook 5- 10 minutes.

Top with green onion and cilantro and serve.

Cranberry Lime Shrub Sparkler

 Cranberry Lime Shrub Sparkler
You have to admit that this sounds a bit intriguing!  I saw this on one of my favorite blogs which was Elizabeth's blog discovery, thebittenword .  These guys take cooking magazine recipes, try them out, and write their opinion of the recipe.  It's fun to see what they're making.

My plan was to make this drink for Thanksgiving.  That didn't happen..just 'cause a lot of things happened that prevented me from putting this together beforehand.  That's OK though since we have regrouped a bit and are now ready to try it. There were things that were  more important and this got triaged down a bit.

Eleanor was home sick the other day.  It was my usual day off, but I didn't really want to leave to run errands or do my usual workout, so I was looking for some home activities.  This had been a couple day run of the bug for her so the house was already clean (relatively speaking).  I had cookies to make for an upcoming swim meet and for an upcoming orchestra concert...that kept me busy.  But, I also had time to make the shrub.  It isn't that involved, but it's just on a normal day my choice is making dinner or making this frou-frou beverage, so I usually go with the dinner option.  This day, I could do both.

The shrub: Eleanor said it made her tummy hurt.  I kind of liked it even though it was a bit vinegary.  Paul had the vodka version and didn't like it.  Anyway, it was a fun experiment into colonial era beverages.


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Chicken Curry

How is this different than the chicken curry I posted on 10/10? Good question, since they are similar. That recipe comes together a bit quicker but I got this recipe from my friend Linda. I like them both but probably wouldn't make both in the same week. Curry recipes...always good to have a few in this house since we all like curry dishes.

The day before I made this I chopped about 1 lb chicken breasts into bite size pieces and marinated in plain yogurt (no picture since that is a bit ugly).

The spice list is a bit long, so I took a deep breath and combined them before making this so the recipe could come together quickly.

2 t cardamom

2 t cinnamon

1 t turmeric

2 t ground coriander

1 t ground cumin

1/2 t cayenne

2 large onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2" piece ginger, chopped

Saute onion, garlic and ginger in 2T oil until soft (about 10 minutes). Add spices listed above and cook 10 more minutes or so.

Add chicken/yogurt mixture and cook another 10 minutes or so. Add 1/4 c or so of water. Add 1 T shredded unsweetened coconut and stir. (The recipe from my friend had 1 chopped tomato added at this point, but I omitted it).

Add 1 T garam masala or curry powder and stir well(see below for more information.

Serve with:

Additional unsweetened coconut

raisins

cilantro

bananas

mango chutney

Also good: Peanuts and sliced apples.

I hadn't made this in YEARS but Paul and Eleanor both liked it (and so did I).

Curry powder and garam masala are both blends of spices, so they are different within each kind depending on what brand you buy. Either one contains some of the spices that I mixed together the previous day. I have read that curry powder and garam masala shouldn't be used interchangeably. I respect that opinion and would not interchange them if I was making an authentic dish. That being said, at our house, when dinner needs to get on the table quickly, I do use them interchangeably...GASP! It seems like garam masala has cinnamon and cloves while curry has turmeric. From my research for this post it sounds like garam masala is used at the end of cooking and curry earlier in the recipe preparation, in general.

The blend of curry powder I used is from an Amish store in Princeton, Wisconsin. When my co-worker Sue goes there to visit friends she likes to stop in the store and typically offers to pick up herbs and spices for anyone interested. It seems like I'm nearly always interested since plastic containers of both are inexpensive and fresh. I will give her a list, receive a plastic grocery bag from her with my requests, and owe her $5.00 or so. The curry blend is tasty too.

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Pumpkin Shrimp Curry

I was thumbing through the November Bon Appetit when I came across this recipe. It was in the new section (which I really like) where different chefs are asked to come up with recipes for a certain ingredient...with November being pumpkin. I like this section since the recipes selected for publication are usually different from each other...so I get a few ideas with just one ingredient as the starting point. My friend, Erin (http://organizednowplease.wordpress.com/) has some friends who do a food blog featuring one ingredient and they make/blog about different things with that item. Fun idea! Here's the address for their blog if you wish to check it out:
http://www.revivingcookery.com/
I do try to stop at their blog too, so I hope you enjoy it there also!

The chef on this recipe caught my eye since he works at L'etoile in Madison...just a short jaunt down the road from Milwaukee and the home of my alma mater. But, back to the food! In fact, Tory Miller was on one of our favorite TV shows last week, Wisconsin Foodie. It's strange how you start noticing someone/something and then the same person/thing seems to be popping up everywhere!

So many things to say..yet my fingers only type so fast! OK. Wisconsin Foodie is one of our favorite shows. We started watching it for the segment of Athletic Foodie with one of our favorite Olympians (OK...we do have a lot of favorite Olympians, so I won't start that), Garrett Weber Gale, Garrett Weber Gale or gwg or Weber Grill is a Milwaukee native who was in the last Olympics and was on the relay team that won the gold medal. You remember...the relay where Jason Lezak swam anchor and pulled out the win after the trash talking French athlete was sure the French would take it?! Garrett has the website athletic foodie...and Eleanor even got to interview him for a YMCA promo (the link should take you to the video, if you have any desire to see it). I'm a pretty proud mom about the video. And there's even a shot of me being Debbie Phelps in the background while she's swimming. Well, maybe I'm a bit less enthusiastic than Michael Phelps' mom is. Elizabeth made gwg's granola and blogged about it...it has become a staple in this house.

So that's how we started watching Wisconsin Foodie. We enjoy the show even when Garrett isn't on. It features some cool food things happening locally.

Anyway, last week the show featured a dinner with fresh items cooked/served in a tent in the field somewhere near Madison. We had a good dinner before we watched, but Eleanor and I both were drooling over the food. She is not a tomato fan, but she thought even the tomatoes looked good at this dinner.

To get back to the recipe, here was Tory Miller again..creating a delicious fall sounding recipe. I omitted the tomato since Eleanor has that aversion. Other than that, I followed the recipe (hard to believe...but it's true this time) minus the fried shallots. I used the entire can of coconut milk since I didn't have a plan for the rest of it. All three of us highly recommend this...yum!

I had noticed that my recent blog posts were getting shorter and shorter, so this one changes that trend!

This recipe came together quickly and was a good fall dinner on a cool night. It must be good for us with all the vitamin A!

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Chicken Peanut Curry

OK. If you haven't figured this out yet, we're huge curry fans at this house. Sometimes people have told me that they avoid curry because they don't like spicy food. Since curry is a blend of spices it isn't always spicy; and just tends to taste like fall to me. We do like our curry temperature warm though.

I have so many curry recipes but tried this one just so I could blog about it. I made this early in the day and transferred it to the crockpot where it got steamy hot and stayed that way until served over rice.

I made this the same week I made black bean and squash chili (I will get that posted soon), so I was able to split the bunch of cilantro down the middle and throw half a bunch in each recipe. I do try to do that so it doesn't go to waste. And since the flavors of vegetarian chili and chicken curry are so different, it doesn't feel like we have been working on eating the cilantro all week!

I'm a bit scared to put peanut butter in any recipe around here since THE SOUP fiasco. See last January's post from the 13th if you want to read/relive that. This is good though. I served this recipe over rice. We all liked it but didn't love it since it seemed a bit bland to us. Maybe if you're not sure if curry is for you, this would be a good recipe to try!
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Curried Chicken Pot Pie

Another recipe of unknown origin; however, I suspect it may be a combination of a couple recipes...like pot pie and mulligatawny soup? Anyway, it's good and warms you all the way through which is just what is needed this time of year.

1 T vegetable oil

1 lb chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces

1 medium onion, chopped

1 c sliced carrots

1 c chicken broth

1/4 c flour

2 t curry powder

1 med apple, cut into 1/2' pieces

1/2 c peas

1/2 c cream or coconut milk

Heat oil and saute the ingredients through the carrots. Whisk together broth, flour and curry powder and add to the sauteed vegetables and bring to a boil. Stir in the apple. Decrease heat and cook 2 minutes stirring constantly. Remove from heat when thickening and add peas and cream. Pour into a pie plate and top with:

1 sheet puff pastry

Bake 20-25 minutes in a preheated 425 degree oven.

I chopped all the ingredients and whisked together the broth mixture before leaving for swim practice and threw everything together very quickly upon returning home. That worked to make this a weeknight meal for our family.

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Chicken Curry

This recipe isn't too different from the one posted on 3/15...but it is a bit of a variation on that one. Hey, I may run out of recipe ideas, so I'm going to put this one on the blog too.

1 T butter

1 T canola oil

Add 1 lb chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces

Saute then remove from pan.

Add:

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

Stir these until soft and then add:

3 T curry powder (that's right, 3 T) and stir

Deglaze the pan with one small can chicken broth

Add one chopped apple and 1/4 c golden raisins.

Heat for 10 minutes or so until the sauce starts to thicken.

This is good and it does come together in just a few minutes.

Serve over rice with mango chutney, if desired. The apples and raisins make it sweet enough for me without the chutney.

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Cauliflower Koottu

We're not huge cauliflower fans at this house. We don't dislike it either....we all like it...just not huge fans. So, when it comes in the CSA box I need to think about how to use it in a way that most of us will be happy. I have found that a cookbook by some local women, Healthy South Indian Cooking, is a good resource when I have an abundance of some type of produce yet want something a bit different. These women are really local...they live on my friend's street in our little suburb.

In the past I have gone to an Indian grocery store to get the ingredients for some of the recipes in this book, but now, being a bit more pressed for time, I just omit anything I don't have. It seems that if you aren't too stingy on the salt and the oil these all turn out just fine.

Many of the recipes in this book end up tasting a bit of the same which is probably because I'm not purchasing all the ingredients. But, it's a good way to get out of a cooking rut...trying some of these dishes.

The original recipe calls for toor dal(I used lentils), asafoetida powder, curry leaves, and urad dal. I left out all of those ingredients except the substitution noted. This may be a case where I like mine only because I have never had the original, but I think that's OK. I'm happy with what I made and we got the cauliflower in our bodies.

Bring 4 c water to a boil. Add 1/2 c lentil and 1/4 t turmeric. Reduce heat and cook about 30 minutes or so..until it becomes creamy.
Heat:
2 T oil in saucepan. Add 1 t mustard seeds. cover and cook until they burst. Add 1/4 c chopped onions, 1 T minced ginger, 1/4 t turmeric and 1 t chopped chile pepper(from our garden...yay).
Add cauliflower cut into 1" chunks. Blend well.
Add lentil mixture, 1/2 t cumin powder, and 1/2 t salt.
Cover and cook over low heat until cauliflower is tender.
Add 1 T unsweetened coconut.
I had some grilled potatoes leftover from another meal, so I chopped those and threw them into the mixture. There's something about potatoes and curry that I really like when they're together.

Serve over rice with mango chutney.

I wouldn't say that we LOVED this recipe but it certainly was fine for one dinner. I admit that we went out for frozen yogurt that night with a recent groupon purchase. The place we went probably won't be repeated....and this recipe won't be repeated...but none of it was terrible either. Probably next time I will go back to cauliflower cheese soup when I get some in the CSA box...just thinking that all the vegetables in it will balance out the cheese a bit.

Follow the link if you're wondering what koottu means!


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Englishman's Curry Chicken and Spinach

When I worked at American Red Cross in St. Paul I worked with some of the best home cooks. Every day was a fun experience to take a break and eat lunch together and share cooking ideas and recipes. I can't imagine that I will ever work with so many good cooks again....and not just good cooks for special meals...but people cooking good food nearly every night of the week. Since it was a group of fellow nurses the focus was on relatively healthy recipes yet very fast since we often worked late hours. I have special memories of everyone heating their lunches and the room being filled with good smells and...the best part....sharing recipes. Since I was newly married at the time and no longer traveling with my job, I was anxious to start a recipe collection (which has grown over the years, as you can tell). This one is from Joyce....a great cook and a great mentor!

I think that is one of my favorite things about cooking (besides the good result). I love the memories of getting the recipe from a friend and thinking about that person on some random day while cooking their food. The blog has been a fun way to dig out some recipes I have put in the back of the recipe box for some unknown reason and re-try them. I hadn't made this in years, but I remembered liking it, so here it is. It's a bit like finding that sweater in the back of the closet and realizing that you still like it!

2 chicken breasts, cut bite size

2 t vegetable oil

1 large onion, chopped

1 t garlic

1 can (14 oz) diced tomatoes

1/4 c mango chutney

2 t curry powder
4 c spinach, cut into 1/2" strips

1/2 c sour cream

Heat oil and saute onion. Add chicken. When chicken is no longer pink decrease heat and add garlic, tomatoes, chutney, and curry powder. Stir. Sprinkle spinach ans steam for 5 minutes. Turn off heat and stir in sour cream.

Serve over rice.

For the spinach I used 4 cups of mixed baby greens since I had a huge container of baby greens for salads, and it worked just fine.

I'm not sure why it took me until recently to figure out that it's a good idea to chop the chicken breasts and THEN freeze them. It makes the prep go so much faster and less counter to be decontaminated on the day of using the chicken.

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Curry in a Hurry

Love quick dinner ideas for the weeknights.

Here's one that works quickly and is good and hearty food.

Chicken breasts, cut in bite size pieces coated in flour

1 medium onion, cut into strips

2 piece of ginger, grated or chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

15 oz can chicken broth

3 T curry paste

1/4 c golden raisins

2 T mango chutney

2 T sesame oil

Brown chicken in a bit of oil. Remove from pan and set aside. Add onion, ginger, and garlic and saute 2-3 minutes. Add broth to deglaze the pan. Add curry paste and raisins. Return chicken to pan. Heat to a boil and decrease heat. Stir in chutney and sesame oil and simmer 5-10 minutes.

Serve with chopped peanuts, additional chutney, pineapple, chopped banana, coconut, etc and serve over rice. In the picture there are chopped apples on it as well. I had planned to add a couple handfuls of frozen peas toward the end of cooking...but forgot about that.

I have added chopped apples directly into the recipe, so that is an option as well. I think I have seen cans of curry paste at the regular grocery store and at Trader Joe's; however, I did pick up a small can when I was at the Asian grocery store. I'll have to remember to grab a couple cans of that next time I'm shopping there...just to have in the pantry for quick meal ideas.

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Mulligatawny Soup

One of our favorites. I lost the recipe I had copied from a friend's Joy of Cooking book years ago. I had a version of it on a recipe card...but if you follow the link that's about what I do BUT I cut the fat down to 1 T of butter. I do still like the flavor of the butter rather than changing this to olive oil, but a bit less than 1 T. seems to lose the fat but not the flavor. I have used cooked chicken if I have it. If not, it works to put the chopped chicken in the broth and cook it in the soup.

I use 1/2 c of coconut milk if I have it. If not, skim milk works just as well also. I added a handful of peas as well.

Eleanor took a bit of heat over the color of this soup at lunch the other day. Interesting comments about the color from kids who will eat colored candy and drink sports drinks. I told her to tell them about turmeric and all the healthy properties traced to it. Regardless of the truth of these health claims, the soup sure is good!

Also, check out the new blog link I added. Looks like there are some good recipes and ideas on this one. I'm excited to get a chance to go through some of her older posts.

Eggplant and Potato Masala

Indian food....I'll put that with beets as far as the love it or hate it category. We love it...although not too frequently. Years ago I went to some Indian cooking classes taught by a local woman who had just published a cookbook, Healthy South Indian Cooking. She lives in Whitefish Bay, so I did buy the book to support her cooking efforts and have found that I have used it frequently...not daily....but every couple months or so. It is a nice reference if you're looking to get out of a dinner rut. And, hey, mine is autographed!

The recipe I made is an adaptation of her Eggplant and Potato Masala.

2 T canola oil
2 med potatoes, cut into smallish chunks
1 small eggplant, cut into similar size chunks
small piece of cinnamon stick
1 t cumin seeds
1/2 c onion, chopped
1 t turmeric
1 t cayenne (or to taste)
1 t salt
1/4 t curry powder
14 oz can diced tomatoes, NOT drained
1 T unsweetened coconut (optional)
cilantro, optional

Heat oil in skillet. When it is hot, but not smoking, add cinnamon stick and cumin seeds. cover and fry for a couple minutes (until seeds are brown). Add onion and stir fry for a bit. Add potatoes and turmeric powder. Mix well and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes or so stirring nearly the entire time. Add eggplant, cayenne, salt, curry, and tomatoes. Stir in 1/4 c water so so. Cover and cook until the vegetables are tender (checking to make sure the mixture is moist. If not, add 1/4 c of water).

I happened to have shredded coconut in my freezer from some Asian recipe from long ago, so I did add it. BUT, I assure you, it is fine without this. I also added some cilantro since I had a bunch in the refrigerator that wasn't going to make it a few more days. Both of these are optional!

I threw in a diced jalapeno with the onions just because I had it from our garden.

Lentils with Garlic and Onion

One of my favorite things about my recipe collection is that I can look through the recipes and think about the person who gave it to me. This one is from a co-worker in a past life of mine and I think of her every time I make it. She would often eat this for lunch where I would covet it. Guess that meant it was time to get the recipe and make it myself.

My daughter has loved this dinner for her whole life. I always thought it was an odd flavor combination for a little American with blue eyes to like...but I'm glad that she enjoys it.

I am going to warn you...don't cut down on the oil or the salt in this recipe. It really needs to have both in full quantities to taste good. I did omit the salt when I used leftover chicken broth one time..but otherwise use a scant teaspoon..any less and it really loses flavor.

4T oil
3/4 t whole cumin seeds (I didn't have seeds this time so I used ground and it was fine)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 med onion, chopped
1 c washed lentils
3 c water
1 t. salt
1/4 t cayenne
1/2 t turmeric
1" cube peeled fresh ginger

Heat oil and add onion and stir until starting to get soft. Add garlic and cumin and stir until just starting to brown. When just starting to brown add turmeric, cayenne, and salt. Add lentil, ginger and water and simmer for about an hour.

I will usually make this a bit ahead and then put rice in the rice cooker before swim practice. We come home, and I heat the lentils and serve them over rice with mango chutney.

This recipe adapts well to additional vegetables or more water (or broth) to be served as a soup. It doubles well but I usually just make one recipe at a time so we don't get tired of it!