Pad Thai

This meal is inspired by this recipe for Pad Thai.

• 1 package rice stick noodles
• water
• 1/4 cup tamarind concentrate
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup onion, diced
• 1-1/2 tsp garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup dried shrimp, minced
• 1/4 cup salted preserved radish, diced
• 1 package firm tofu, cut into 1/2″ cubes
• 1 medium zucchini, julienned
• 6 eggs
• 1/4 cup chopped garlic chives
• 2 Tbsp hulled hemp seeds
• crushed red pepper
• garlic chives, 1-1/2″ from stem end

Put noodles in a large bowl and cover with cold water. Soak for at least 10 minutes.

In a small saucepan mix tamarind and sugar. Stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Stir in fish sauce and set aside.

Heat 1-2Tbsp oil in large skillet or wok. Add onions and garlic, cook for about 30 seconds. Add dried shrimp, salted radish, and tofu. Cook, stirring frequently, until tofu starts changing color.

Add drained noodles and sauce to skillet. Fry until noodles are nearly eating texture, adding water if pan contents get dry. Add zucchini to skillet and cook until soft. Taste it now and adjust with sauce ingredients.

Push noodles to one side of pan. Pour in a little oil. Crack an egg into hot oil, scramble and when just barely set, stir into noodles. Repeat with other 5 eggs.

Stir in chopped garlic chives, and remove pan from heat.

Serve with garlic chive stem ends, crushed red pepper, and hemp seeds as garnish.

Notes: I like palm sugar better in this recipe, but it takes a lot longer to prepare.

Shallots are better than the onion & garlic mix, but I didn’t have any on hand.

The bean sprouts I bought for this died before I had a chance to cook this week, but my sister-in-law’s zucchini patch has been prolific.

Instead of shrimp, I used extra eggs for more protein.

I thought I had peanuts, but I was wrong, so I used hemp seeds leftover from a smoothie recipes.

Chicken Piccata-esque and Asparagus & Mushrooms with Pecans

Our local grocery store has started having some nice-looking asparagus, so I bought some intending to serve it with pecan-encrusted chicken. But when I blitzed the pecans, they were a little too pasty to use as a breading, so I got creative. My wife liked the result so much she asked for it again. I decided to try for a dairy-free version of chicken piccata without actually looking up a recipe for the dish.

Asparagus and Mushrooms

• 2 lbs cremini mushrooms
• 1 bunch asparagus
• 1/2-1 cup pecan halves
• dash of soy sauce and/or salt & pepper
• margarine*

Start a pot of water to boil for the asparagus.

Clean & slice the mushrooms and sauté in margarine over medium heat.

Clean & cut asparagus into bite-sized chunks and boil until barely tender (about 3 minutes for the young stalks I had last night). Drain the asparagus and shock with cold water to stop it from cooking. Set aside for later.

Blitz the pecan halves in a small food processor until the consistency of coarse-ground cornmeal.

When the liquid from the mushrooms has reabsorbed or evaporated, stir the pecans into the pan with the mushrooms. When the two are thoroughly mixed, add the cooked asparagus to the pan and continue cooking until asparagus is warm. Season to taste with soy sauce and/or salt and pepper.

Chicken Piccata-esque

• chicken tenders
• salt
• pepper
• gluten-free flour (Namaste perfect flour blend)
• 4 Tbsp margarine, divided**
• 1 Tbsp caper berries
• 3 Tbsp lemon juice
• water

Season the chicken tenders with salt and pepper, then dredge in flour.  Cook the chicken in 1 Tbsp of margarine until cooked half-way to center and outside is golden. Turn chicken over and add another Tbsp of margarine and cook until chicken is done in the center and golden on both side.  Remove chicken from pan.

Add capers, remaining margarine, and a little more flour to the pan, and cook, stirring constantly, until the flour is no longer raw. Remove pan from heat and stir in lemon juice. Transfer mix to small food processor or stick blender cup. Blitz the mixture until it forms an emulsion. Adjust flavor and thickness with water.

Serve chicken drizzled with sauce.

* Butter or a neutral-flavored oil may be used instead of margarine with the asparagus.
** Butter or any cooking oil may be used instead of margarine with the chicken, but quantities may need to be adjusted to get the right taste and texture.

Pasta with meatballs and onions

Lately we’ve been trying to clear out the freezer and recently defrosted some chicken meatballs. This meal was surprisingly tasty, especially for something so…beige.

• 1 lb gluten free fusilli
• 12 oz Aidell’s Spicy Mango & Jalapeno meatballs
• 1 medium onion, cut into ~1/2″ pieces
• margarine or butter or oil
• salt and pepper

Follow directions on package for cooking pasta.

Chop onion. Sauté onions in butter or margarine or oil. Cut meatballs in half, cut the halves in quarters (8 pieces per meatball). When onions are starting to get soft, add meatballs to pan. Add more margarine or butter or oil if needed.

Drain pasta. Put sauteed meatballs and onions into pasta pot. Return pasta to pasta pot. Stir. Add more margarine or butter or oil, if needed. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Sausage, Kale, and Sweet Potato Soup

 

• 32 oz chicken broth
• 1 large onion, cut to 1/2″ cubes
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 links smoked  Polish sausage
• 1 pinch celery seed
• 1/2 tsp Garam masala
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 large sweet potato, cut to 1/2″ cubes
• 1 bunch dino kale, cut to 1/2″ slices
• salt

In a 3-quart saucepan, begin heating the chicken broth over medium heat. Add the sausage links, onions, garlic, celery seed, and bay leaves.  When broth begins to boil, add sweet potatoes, garam masala, and cumin. When the broth returns to a boil, turn  it down to a simmer. When the sausages are cooked through, remove them from the pot. When the sweet potatoes have begun to soften, add the name to the pot . salt to taste.  Cut the sausage into 1/4″ slices, and return them to the pot. Serve when both kale and sweet potatoes are tender.

Baked rice with chicken and mushrooms

This weekend I tried this Baked Rice with Chicken and Mushroom recipe from New York Times Cooking.

This tastes amazing, but instead of being nice and fluffy, it’s rather gloopy.

Since the recipe calls for 4.5 cups of liquid for 2 cups of rice and most recipes I’m finding use a 1:1.5 or 1:1.75 ratio of rice to liquid for Basmati rice, I think this is the most likely cause of gloopiness.

I made two minor changes to the ingredients. Instead of the handful of king oyster mushrooms in the rice, I used sliced crimini mushrooms, which I added while sauteing the onions. And to brown the king oyster mushrooms I used a lactose-free butter.

My Recipe: Roasted potatoes with mustard greens and bacon

~1lb of sliced bacon (use more if the bacon is thick-sliced), cut into 1/2″ slices

5 lbs red potatoes, clean, remove eyes, and cut into 1″ pieces
2 yellow onions, quartered and cut to 1/4″ slices
1 bunch of mustard greens, cleaned and cut to 2″x1/2″ pieces
1/4 cup cider vinegar
salt
pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 425F.

Fry the bacon in batches, set bacon aside to drain and reserve the fat after each batch.

Pour some of the bacon grease on the potatoes to barely coat, season with salt if the bacon is more smoky than salty, and roast the potatoes in a single layer until soft in the center and lightly browned on the edges, about 20 minutes. 5 pounds fits on 2 half-sheet pans (I did this in batches, and I recommend doing 2 pans at once).

Fry the onions in more of the bacon grease until soft and starting to brown. Set the onions aside.

Cook the mustard greens in bacon grease until tender. Test them when they look wilted, if they still aren’t actually tender, add a little water to help them soften, season with salt if necessary.

Put everything in a big mixing bowl, add a bunch of black pepper, a 1/4 cup of cider vinegar, and stir until mixed.

Gluten-sensitive Crab Cakes

When the grocery store has Phillips lump crab meat on sale, I buy some and make these:

• Crab meat
• Mayonnaise
• celery
• garlic
• corn meal
• black pepper
• vegetable oil

Dice the celery and mince the garlic. Saute together until both are soft. Mix crabmeat, mayonnaise, celery, garlic, and black pepper gently. Form patties. Roll patties in corn meal. Pan-fry in vegetable oil.

Japanese-inspired-inspired breakfast

My little brother the chef went to Japan, and he made a Japanese-inspired breakfast with his new rice cooker when he came home. I was inspired to make something similar with my old rice cooker.

Brown rice, ginger-sesame salmon, crabstick and cucumber salad, and green onions.

The rice was from the pantry, cooked in the rice cooker.

The salmon was from Whole Foods fish case, seasoned and ready to cook. I seared it in a little avocado oil on all the long sides until crispy. Little brother did his with a miso-teriyaki glaze, but I was feeling lazy. I doubt the store-bought fish was gluten-free, but if I make my own sauce, I can use a GF temari.

The seafood salad is crabstick and English cucumbers cut into smaller pieces and drizzled with a mix of Hellman’s mayo and sriracha. Little bro used some teriyaki sauce in his, but I didn’t make teriyaki, so I had no sauce to add. I did not use gluten-free crabstick because none of the shops near my house stock it. But I did pick some up at the shop near my office so I can make this for my dining partner. Then I cut some spring onions from my garden as fine as I had patience for and sprinkled them on top.

Very yummy.

Winter Squash Risotto

Pumpkin risotto this weekend. Well, actually red kuri squash risotto, served in squash bowls.

Here’s the recipe I used as inspiration: http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/ricegrains/r/Pumpkin-Risotto.htm

Since my dining partner can’t eat cow dairy, I used goat butter, Romano, and Roquefort for the butter, Parmesan, and Gorgonzola.

Scraping the contents of this squash out to make bowls was difficult and I now have a blister and bruise. So I only scraped 2 of them. The third I removed the seeds, peeled, and cubed. I cooked the 2 different shapes in 2 different batches.

I accidentally over-salted the first batch of squash, so the ended up super-salty.

So I added the properly-seasoned cubed squash, which wasn’t enough bland to fix it. So the next day I made a batch of risotto with onions, olive oil, wine, and rice. No salt or broth. Then mixed the leftover risotto into the new rice. This fixed the salt, but left it tasting a little flat. So I added some fresh sage leaves (the original recipe had some, too), which made it perfect.

I will definitely be doing something like this again.

We ate it with bacon/cider sausage from Seward Co-op,  my favorite place for sausage, that I pan-fried until cooked through and nicely browned on the outside. For the second day, I made swiss chard with mushrooms and leeks and a splash of cider vinegar.

The dining partner has decided that this is even better at quelling a mac-and-cheese craving than gluten-free sheep/goat mac-and-cheese.

Gluten-sensitive Lactose-sensitive Macaroni and Cheese

Starting with this recipe for stove-top mac and cheese, but using goat milk, goat cheese, and gluten-free pasta.

1 lb gluten-free pasta

1 quart goat milk

1 cup water (if needed)

9 oz cheese (I used a mix of goat cheedar and goat gouda)

8 oz mushrooms

1-2 Tbsp goat butter

2 heads broccoli

Salt & pepper

Cut the broccoli into florets and blanch in boiling water for 2 minutes. Run cold water over them in the colander and set aside.

Clean the mushrooms, remove bottoms of stems, and slice. Sauté in goat butter until they start to brown. Set aside.

Put the pasta in the pan, add 4 cups of goat milk, heat until it bubbles, reduce heat to keep it barely simmering. Stir frequently. Add more liquid a cup at a time.

Meanwhile grate the cheese.

When the pasta is al dente (took about 30 minutes for this batch), turn off the heat and stir in the cheese. When the cheese is all melted stir in the broccoli and mushrooms.