Archive for the 'preserves' Category
It was nice enough to start snowing late this afternoon, just as the last of the second group arrived for the final weekend package of Christmas in November. We walked around the lake and skipped rocks across the partially frozen parts, creating an eerie sort of space bird sound, had hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate shavings and then had hot baths and watched Wall-E while writing Christmas cards in our robes before Buffet #2, at which point the evening quickly deteriorated into a frenzy of chasing HellBoy as he ran through the crowd and attempted to disassemble Christmas trees, placating him with lamb chops and trying to maintain our composure as he screamed and spread-eagled himself on the ground in the middle of the high-traffic main doorway and refused to move.So when M took (or rather dragged) W back to the cabin (to answer the query - he has spent many nights in our room ordering room service, partly because he has a bum knee and W won’t stop, partly because three year olds don’t make ideal gala dinner guests, and partly to keep himself away from the free-flowing wine and martinis at the main lodge) I managed to sit and eat some dinner. I have a guest photographer tonight - while we ate Michael Olsen offered to photograph his plate, as well as the two tenderloins on the carving board at the head of our table. (My plate had a few token greens on it - his is far more accurate.)
The plum chutney played such a minor role in this buffet; it was there to accompany short, squat bison sausages wrapped in the merest belt of puff pastry, but it interested me most - it could have so many other applications. I asked Chef Turcot for the recipe and he obliged. (He didn’t have much else to do this week.) I love this formula… this is what restaurant kitchen recipes look like - they assume you know what the hell you’re doing if you’re there and using the recipe - and generally the amounts are in liters or pounds instead of cups and teaspoons. (There are some sausages with plum chutney in the last buffet photo - Monday’s dinner.)
Plum Chutney
1 liter plums, diced (that’s 4 cups)
7 garlic (I’ll assume that’s cloves, and I’d crush them)
336 g brown sugar (about 1 2/3 packed cups)
300 mL cider vinegar (a cup is 250 mL; you do the math)
3 cinnamon stick
1 tsp. cloves (let’s say ground)
1 tsp. nutmeg
In pan place ingredients, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and reduce by half. Cool and serve.
The Maple Pouding Chomeur though. There were a lot of desserts, but this was The One. It’s a sort of sticky maple goo covered with golden, crunchy-topped cake. A French Canadian pudding cake. I was a little disappointed to see the quantity of cream, butter and sugar, but it did make sense considering how good the finished product is. And it does serve 24. Michael says its original name is “Poverty Pudding” - I should be so impoverished.
Maple Pouding “Chomeur”
Cake:
½ cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 1/3 cups milk
Maple Creamy Sauce:
1 ½ cups maple syrup
1 ½ cups brown sugar
1 ½ cups heavy cream
1/3 cup butter
Cake: In a large bowl, with an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light. Add eggs and vanilla and mix. In another bowl, mix flour and baking powder. Add dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the milk, and mix well. Pour the batter into a greased 13 x 9 inch oven glass dish. Sauce: In a large saucepan, bring to boil the syrup, brown sugar, heavy cream and butter while stirring. Reduce the heat and let simmer for 2 minutes or until the sauce has slightly reduced. Slowly pour the boiling sauce onto the batter.
Cook in a preheated oven of 325°F for about 35 minutes or until the top of the pudding is golden and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Serve warm or at room temperature. Serves 24.
Hey - Free Stuff Fridays!
I was hoping to scare up something Jasper-y for you, but didn’t manage to come up with anything. However. I did call the Crock-Pot people and tell them how well our last giveaway went over, and they sent me two more big, oval, digital Crock-Pots to give away! Which I thought you’d like.
It’s reminding me how much I miss making dinner. Not that I’m complaining; it’s nice to be cooked for, but I think on Monday morning I’ll haul out my Crock-Pot and make something warm and saucy to eat curled up on the couch. (Come to think of it, I’ll have an empty fridge, so the Crock-Pot will make perfect use of some form of meat from the freezer.)
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November 14 2008 | cake and dessert and preserves | 80 Comments »
(In Edmonton.) Bison meatloaf burgers and pizza with a bottle of Picconero (Italian Red) with K curled up on the couch by the fireplace in my room, which was the bigger of the two, having a living room, two flat screet TVs and a balcony the size of my living room and dining room at home. I think I may need to travel to Edmonton more often. And have someone else pay for it.
So I’ll offer up a recipe for zucchini marmalade which I had on toast this morning between it all. I’ve seen recipes for zucchini marmalade for years - many of which call for orange varieties of Jell-O (including peach), but have never been inspired enough to make some, and couldn’t bring myself to grate zucchini into oversugared Jell-O and spread it on my toast. I did, however, come up with a simple and quite spectacular zucchini marmalade that was unbelievably easy, does not require pectin nor is a hassle to set. The zucchini doesn’t add an odd texture or flavour, but rather only appealing flecks of green throughout; use yellow zucchini if you’d rather it blend in.
Zucchini Marmalade
Try to buy thick-skinned fruit; thinner skinned citrus fruits don’t have much to contribute to marmalade!
2 lemons
1 large orange
2 cups water
1 medium-small zucchini, coarsely grated (about 1 1/2 cups)
4 cups sugar
Wash the lemons and orange well and grate the zest off using the coarse side of a box grater. Put it into a large saucepan with the water. Peel the white pith off the fruit and add to the pot (a few large chunks is fine, something that will be easy to remove) and bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for about half an hour. Meanwhile, finely chop the flesh of the lemons and orange, or pulse them in a food processor.
Remove the pith from the saucepan and add the lemon, orange and zucchini to the pot. Bring back to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes, then add the sugar and bring to a full boil. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. To test for the jelly stage, put a small bit in a small dish and put it in the freezer; you should be able to tell when it’s cold if it has turned to marmalade. If you want to use a candy thermometer, the temperature should reach 210F.
Pour into hot, clean jars, seal and cool. Makes 4 cups, or 4 250 mL jars.
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October 07 2008 | eating out and preserves | 6 Comments »
Sick today. Full body mutiny. An angel in jeans and cool red boots showed up around noon bearing a cornucopia of grapes - tiny, delicate green interlaken and heavy clusters of dusty indigo concorde grapes fresh from the Okanagan valley via Greyhound. (Angels are actually quite fashionable, you know. Far hipper than me, even on their way to IKEA.)
Until then the idea of food did not appeal, but the juicy, sweet-tart winey grapes were like the food of the gods.
M made W chicken tortellini (from Safeway, tossed with pesto from a jar) for dinner, and I moved tentatively on to a piece of toast to accompany my grapes, which by then I had eaten far too many of.
Ben and Emily were here for the afternoon though, and I had promised we’d make jelly. The apples on my tree are starting to blush at the arrival of fall, and something needed to be done with them quick, before they dropped to the lawn and turned to applesauce. So there are currently pots and pots of apples in varying stages of readiness in the kitchen, and sticky spills all over, but at least she got her teacher gifts done well in advance of Christmas. I think I understand now why Turtles are so popular.
(The floaties in the jelly are cinnamon sticks, which we put into the jars before ladling the hot jelly over. Please note the peanut butter finger smears and dog nose marks on the glass behind; I do take special care when foodstyling.)
Just Plain Apple / Apple-Black Currant / Apple-Plum / Apple-Cranberry / Apple-Mint, -Basil, Rosemary or -Lemon Balm Jelly
As many apples as you have picked off your tree, or bought at the market
A cup or more of currants, pitted and quartered plums, or cranberries (optional)
A handful or two of torn fresh mint, basil or lemon balm
Sugar
Wash, stem and coarsely chop or just quarter the apples and put them in a large pot. (Don’t bother to peel or core them.) Add a few handfuls of black currants or cranberries or a few pitted and quartered plums, if you like. Add enough water to just cover them and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes, until the apples are very soft. Mash the whole lot with a big spoon or potato masher and cook for another few minutes.
Spoon the mixture into a colander lined with cheesecloth (or use a jelly bag if you have one) set over a large bowl or pot, and let the juice drain out. Stir the pulp around a bit if you want to hurry it up.
Measure the resulting juice into a pot (this is easy if you drain it into a pot with measurements marked on the side) and add 3/4 cup sugar for every cup of juice. Bring to a boil over high heat and boil rapidly, stirring often, until the mixture reaches 210°F on a candy thermometer, or until a small amount placed on a cold plate and put into the freezer turns to gel. This should take about 20 minutes.
While it’s still hot, pour the jelly into hot jars, skim off any foam that rises to the top with a spoon, and seal with lids. Set aside to cool. The lids should pop inward as they cool. If any don’t, store them in the fridge.
To make Spiced Apple Jelly, add a couple of cinnamon sticks, about a tablespoon of whole cloves and a tablespoon of whole allspice along with 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar to the apples during the initial cooking (these measurements work for roughly 3 lbs. of apples – use more or less as you see fit).
(By the way, if your complain that their medicine is disgusting, and it’s Junior Strength Tylenol Cold plus Cough medicine, grape chewable tabs, they aren’t making it up.)
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September 19 2008 | preserves | 7 Comments »
Something really needed to be done about all this rhubarb. (By the way, I figured out what was wrong with my spindly, pencil-thin rhubarb when I busted W and Lou peeing on it in tandem. I don’t think plants like that.)
But my sister had to cut her monster down in order to paint her house, and brought the bulk of it over. I also robbed my neighbors of some of theirs, and I think there’s still some in the freezer from last year. So I skimmed my cookbooks and magazines and made rhubarb orange jelly, bluebarb jam (blueberry-rhubarb, but I really used Saskatoons from the bush down the street - Saskbarb doesn’t have the same ring to it though) and rhubarb chutney to put away for Thanksgiving.
Bluebarb Jam
(adapted from Put a Lid on It!)
3 1/2 cups fresh or frozen rhubarb
1/2 cup water
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries or saskatoon berries
1 Tbsp. lemon or lime juice
1 box pectin crystals or pouch liquid pectin
5 cups sugar
Put the rhubarb, water and blueberries in a large pot and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring often, then add the lemon juice and pectin and return to a boil. Add the sugar and bring to a full rolling boil; boil hard for 1 full minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and skim any foam off the surface with a slotted spoon.
Ladle into jars and seal. Makes about 5 cups.
Rhubarb Orange Jelly
I didn’t use a box of pectin in mine - since I was going to strain it anyway, I threw in a handful of small apples off the tree, cut into quarters, to add some extra pectin.
(From Canadian Living’s special summer issue.)
1 orange
10 cups chopped rhubarb
1 1/2 cups water
1 pkg. light fruit pectin crystals (optional - or an apple with the seeds)
3 1/4 cups sugar
Cut the orange in half and squeeze the juice into a large pot. Cut the rest into chunks and add it to the pot along with the rhubarb and water; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the rhubarb is very tender. Mash it a bit with a potato masher.
If you have a jelly bag, pour the mixture into it and suspend it over a pot. Otherwise, strain it through a fine mesh seive (it will still be cloudy - who cares?) or do as I did - pour it into a cheesecloth, gather it up and rig it up to the cabinet with a rope in order to suspend it over the pot. Let it stay that way for a few hours or overnight.
In a large pot, add the pectin to the juice (or not), add the sugar and bring to a full rolling boil. Boil hard for a full minute. If you’re not using packaged pectin, you could test it - put a bit on a cold plate or somehow cool it down and see if your finger leaves a trail in it - or if you have a candy thermometer, cook it to 210 degrees. Turn off the heat and skim any foam off the surface.
Ladle into hot jars (I just wash them or run them through the dishwasher - after all, when boiling jam is ladled into them they heat up pretty quick!) and seal. Makes about 6 250 mL jars.
As I also mentioned, I am cleaning out my basement. I thought this might also be a good time to clean out my cupboards (as my many shelves of dishes and kitchen things in the basement gets rearranged) and my spice rack, which never was properly organized in the first place. As a result, my kitchen has become a massive staging area for dishes, boxes of jars and other things I’m sorting, cleaning and reorganizing. Every millimetre of surface area is covered. And I had to make a birthday cake for W’s third birthday tomorrow, too. So when the subject of dinner came up, it was quickly decided that we’d reheat some chili from the freezer - part of my Stampede surplus. It was on the spicy side, so W had a poached egg on toast. Then we ate the last of the pumpkin cookies I made the other day during my pumpkin spree (we pawned a few off on neighbors), some spread with soft cream cheese on the bottom and sandwiched with another cookie. Usually I’m not a huge fan of cakelike cookies - I prefer more the dense, chewy, crispy-edged chocolate chip kind - but these are dense and heady with ginger and cinnamon and remind me of the best part of a muffin - the top. Top o’ the muffin to you!
Pumpkin Hermits
2 cups all-purpose flour or half all-purpose, half whole wheat
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground allspice
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter or non-hydrogenated margarine, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup canned pure pumpkin
1 large egg
1/4 cup dark molasses
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup dried fruit: raisins, dried cranberries and/or chopped dried apricots, or a combination
½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
Preheat oven to 350°F.
In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.
In a large bowl, beat butter, brown sugar, pumpkin, egg, molasses and vanilla until smooth. Add flour mixture and stir by hand until almost combined; add raisins or other dried fruit and stir just until blended.
Drop large, rounded spoonfuls of dough 2” apart on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake for 12–14 minutes, until just set — springy to the touch around the edges, but you still leave a slight dent if you touch them in the middle. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Makes 2 dozen cookies.
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August 03 2008 | cookies & squares and preserves and snacks | 4 Comments »
I have a confession to make, and further evidence of my dull existence. This long weekend, I was almost ecstatic at the prospect of puttering, cleaning out my basement and making jam. Throw in a book and a few magazines in the back yard, maybe some movies and surfing food blogs on my laptop on the couch, and that to me seemed the height of luxury. (That or a trip overseas, but I think curtain #1 is the only option here.) In the summer, I adore making jam. The problem is I generally go overboard, and then get tired of it somewhere around a half dozen batches, halfway through the process. People who know me know this, and pawn jars off on me all the time, hoping that a few will be returned to them full. (If you are one of those people, please identify yourself; I remember getting lots of jars over the past year, but can’t remember who they came from.)
But of all the jams in the world, I think black currant is my favourite. We went out to Kayben Farms this morning, hoping to pick strawberries and black currants; about 24 cars got up earlier and beat us there, cleaning out the strawberries, and the black currants are still about a week away from being ready. So I picked up a 1.5L tub of black currant puree - jam mix, really - all you do is add an equal amount of sugar and cook it until it turns into jam - or if you have a candy thermometer, to 210 degrees. I added about a tablespoon of lemon juice at the end. (The fruit-sugar ratio wouldn’t be as high with fresh berries, but the puree is much denser, so is equal to almost twice as much whole berries. You could definitely get away with using less sugar, but the berries are fairly tart.)
When I make jam, I generally do it without packaged pectin. (This is easier to get away with than it might sound.) Black currants are naturally high in pectin, so they are easy to turn into jam. With strawberries, keep the white parts, which is where the pectin is - don’t cut those spots out when you trim off the stems. Apples are also high in pectin - particularly the seeds - so if I’m making jelly or a jam that needs to be strained, I throw a few quartered apples from my tree into the pot; it generally helps the jam set without altering the flavour. I just read about a method of making homemade pectin out of apples that only involves boiling them, which seems like a great use of the massive quantities of crabapples and small apple tree apples I have during the summer that are too small to bother peeling and coring. More on that later; I still have plenty of batches of jam in me.
I did feed W a slightly more proper dinner of leftover pasta and meatballs, and Mike finished the last bit of Vij’s curry from the freezer. But I nibbled on toast and jam with iced coffee all afternoon - you can’t make jam without having leftovers in the bottom of the pot to taste - and in the end that was my dinner. And a mighty tasty one it was.
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August 02 2008 | preserves | 5 Comments »
I spent most of today testing pumpkin recipes. Not a bad job, really, but one of the of the oddities of being a food writer is lead time - I’m often trying to find mincemeat in July for a Christmas article (not complaining) or trying to get into the Halloween groove on the August long weekend. Today’s pumpkin article had me making pumpkin gingerbread with blueberries (OK, really Saskatoons plucked from the bush down the street), pumpkin hermits and pumpkin butter. Yes, like apple butter, but far easier to make (you start with a can of pumpkin puree, instead of cooking an entire tree’s worth of apples down to a cup or so) and nutritionally superior on account of all that beta carotene. I had heard of the stuff, and when I went looking I wasn’t surprised to find some on one of my favourite blogs.
OK, here it is. (Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from AllRecipes.)
Pumpkin Butter
Heard of apple butter? It can be made out of pumpkin – and canned pumpkin puree makes it easy. If you prefer, start with a fresh pumpkin, dice it, simmer it in the apple juice until tender and mash it well, then add the remaining ingredients and cook it down until it’s thick and jamlike. You can jar this as you might other jams, but it freezes exceptionally well too. It’s great on toast and works in any recipe that calls for apple butter.
1 – 28 oz. (798 mL) can pumpkin puree
1 ¼ cups packed brown sugar
3/4 cup unsweetened apple juice (or a juice box)
1 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
1 Tbsp. finely grated fresh ginger
1 Tbsp. dark molasses
¼ tsp. ground allspice or cloves
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
Put everything except the lemon juice into a medium pot and set it over medium heat. Stir until it is well blended and bring to a boil; as soon as the thick mixture bubbles turn the heat down to low and cook, stirring occasionally, for about an hour, until very thick and smooth.
Makes about 4 cups.
So by dinnertime I had picked at warm baking and licked my fingers so many times I didn’t feel like eating but felt the need for a proper dinner that included plenty of vegetables. I had a green and yellow zucchini going quickly south and a beautiful bunch of purple onions from the market - I wanted to grill them and the zucchini and some shrimp, and thought maybe I’d toss them warm with pasta and feta, but since I really wanted to add red peppers to the mix and all I had were diced and frozen, I chopped everything up and broiled it on a baking sheet instead. Someone had given me a bottle of basil-infused olive oil, which I used to toss the veg with on the baking sheet before roasting - something I quickly regretted when it released a hefty waft of licorice. Blech.
So I roasted the veg - purple onion, green and yellow zucchini, whole cloves of garlic and red pepper - with some oil, salt and pepper until they were well-browned and crispy (all of these veg are relatively soft, so none needed any lead time) and then scraped the lot off the sheet into some freshly cooked pasta (radiatorre in this case, which is similar to rotini - the last of the box I wanted to get rid of, and what I was making for W to eat with his meatballs as it’s easy to stab with a fork) and crumbled in some feta. It could have been enough as is with the garlicky oil from the veg, but I glugged over some balsamic vinaigrette too, turning it into sort of a cross between a warm pasta salad and a warm pasta dish. Everything could have been cooled - the roasted veg cooled to room temp and the pasta run under cold water - to make a similar cold pasta salad with balsamic vinaigrette. Either would go with grilled chicken or shrimp.
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August 01 2008 | one dish and pasta and preserves and vegetarian | 4 Comments »
I fear I am far more excited than I should be about pickled beets. Particularly on the eve of the August long weekend, when in yesteryears I might be excited over, I don’t know, a houseboating weekend or trip or concert or something. I am excited over beets. I am such a dull person.
But I’ve been wanting to make pickles for decades, and never really got around to buying one of those massive bags of wee lumpy cucumbers. Then one day I admitted to myself that I wasn’t a huge pickle fan, and a friend introduced me to the Saucy Ladies’ spiced pickled beets, and I was instantly hooked. I bought a preserves book off the clearance table of the hotel gift shop in Edmonton (while W tore through all the Indy merchandise) because it had a simple spiced pickled beet recipe in it, and I swore I’d make them and not waste $5. And I did! And now I can go and make them whenever I feel like it, because I know it’s really no big deal. I made pickled beets. Or put them up, or whatever terminology is proper for this kind of earth-shattering achievement. Actually, I shouldn’t pat myself on the back until I taste them; I think they need at least a few days now to pickle.
Dinner was out - again - it seems my restaurant trips come in waves. But we had tickets to the opening night of the Cirque du Soleil production of Corteo, and figured since we already landed a babysitter and were going to bother cleaning ourselves up a bit (it’s rare these days to get me out of PJ pants and flip flops) we might as well take advantage and go out to a real restaurant together, like real live grown-ups. So we had samosas and the requisite butter chicken (not as earth-shattering as I’ve heard - the gaudy blue Taj on McLeod Trail is better) and Lamb Goa Curry and naan; I thought this time I’d spare you photos of food I don’t have the recipes for anyway.
It doesn’t matter anyway, because you’ll be busy pickling beets.
Simple Spiced Pickled Beets
(adapted from Put a Lid on It!)
I don’t use measurements here because really you can pickle as many beets as you like, and the brine is made from equal parts white vinegar and sugar. Whole spices are put in each jar, so those numbers will depend on the jars you use.
Small beets, as many as you want to pickle (the recipe suggests 10-12)
white vinegar (the recipe suggests 2 cups)
white sugar (the recipe suggests 2 cups)
coarse pickling salt
whole allspice berries
cinnamon sticks
whole cloves
Boil the whole beets in a large pot of water for half an hour or roast them wrapped in foil for a little longer, or until they are tender. Let them cool, then peel them.
Keep them whole or slice them or cut them into chunks into your clean, hot jars (I just run them through the dishwasher to disinfect them and get them good and hot). Put a cinnamon stick (or half one, if they are long), a couple allspice berries and a few cloves into each jar. Sprinkle each with 1/2 tsp. of pickling salt.
On the stovetop, heat equal parts white vinegar and sugar and bring to a simmer to dissolve the sugar completely and get it nice and hot. Pour over the beets, leaving about 1/2″ headspace between the beets and liquid and the top of the jar. Seal.
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July 31 2008 | eating out and preserves | 2 Comments »
OK, what we really had for dinner was the last pickings of bison rotini, but I already told you about that. And W ate most of it, because we were still full from lunch; A came over and we sat out in folding chairs in the yard and drank cold pink fizzy wine and ate pad Thai, and that’s far more interesting.
I had promised to make it, and then when I went to soak my rice noodles I discovered I didn’t have any. I suppose my mission to deplete a seemingly bottomless stash of assorted pasta and noodles has been successful. We had fresh Asian noodles though, so I figured that was close enough.
Pad Thai is fast (if you get everything ready to go before you start), and a perfect way to use up leftover roasted chicken, tofu, or even pork, and if you keep a bag of shrimp in the freezer it’s easy to add a handful to dishes such as this. Tamarind concentrate and chili sauce can be found in the ethnic foods section of grocery stores or in Asian markets, and although not necessary are well worth seeking out - both will keep in the fridge for a long time, so don’t worry about buying a whole jar just to use a few spoonfuls.
Pad Thai
1/2 – 1 lb. (250-500 g) package rice noodles, thin or thick
Sesame, peanut or canola oil, for cooking
1/4 cup tomato sauce or ketchup
1/4 cup fish sauce (nam pla)
1/4 cup lime juice or 2 Tbsp. rice vinegar
2-4 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. chili sauce or sambal oelek (optional)
1 tsp. tamarind concentrate (optional)
1 cup chopped cooked chicken (optional)
1/2 lb. cooked or uncooked shrimp, shelled and deveined (optional)
1 pkg. firm tofu, drained and diced (optional)
1-3 small red chilies (optional)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cloves garlic, crushed (optional)
3 green onions, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 cups bean sprouts
1/4 cup chopped peanuts or cashews, salted or unsalted
Lime wedges (optional)
Soak the rice noodles according to the package directions. Rinse them with cold water and drain well. Drizzle the noodles with a little oil to keep them from sticking, and toss to coat.
In a small bowl, stir together the tomato sauce, fish sauce, lime juice, brown sugar, chili sauce, and tamarind concentrate (if using).
Heat a good drizzle of oil in a large nonstick skillet set over medium-high heat. Add the meat or shrimp if they’re uncooked (if your meat is cooked, set it aside for now), along with the tofu and the chilies if you’re using them. Cook for a few minutes, until the meat is cooked through or the tofu is golden. Push the mixture aside or remove it from the pan. If you are using shrimp, remove them from the pan so that they don’t overcook and become tough. Add the eggs and cook them as if you were making scrambled eggs, breaking them up with a spatula. Push them aside.
Add a little more oil if you need it and stir fry the garlic and green onions for about a minute. Add the noodles and cook, tossing them with tongs, for another minute. Return any reserved cooked meat to the pan, pour as much of the sauce as you want over it all, and cook for 2-3 minutes, tossing the mixture with tongs or a spatula to coat everything with sauce and heat it through. Add the bean sprouts at the very end as you toss everything together.
Serve immediately in large shallow bowls. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and serve with lime wedges to squeeze over top. Serves 4.
Yesterday we finished off Vij’s chicken curry and rice, but still had rice left over. When this happens and I’m not in the mood to make fried rice, I pour milk over it and bring it to a simmer with a bit of honey; the rice soaks up the milk and the starch thickens it and eventually I have a simple rice pudding. I was about to add some raw short grain rice to the pot, thinking that it could then be called risotto - so much fancier-sounding than rice pudding - and the thought reminded me of the barley risotto I made with mushrooms. Why not add some barley and make a rice and barley pudding? Which would sort of be a risotto? Hey wait, isn’t there a barley cereal with cream on the menu at Diner Deluxe? And isn’t it fabulous?
So I dumped, without measuring, some barley into the pot. Probably about half a cup, and then poured enough milk over to generously cover it. Rice puddings are easy to make this way - just cook until it soaks up the milk, add more, and so on. Sweeten with a little sugar, honey or maple syrup, and once it’s as thick as you want it to be, stir in a splash of vanilla.
The compote was my first jab at using up some of this rhubarb. A few stalks, chopped into a pot with a couple handfuls of strawberries, about a half cup of sugar (or to suit your taste) and a spoonful of orange juice concentrate straight from the freezer. Bring to a simmer and cook until it breaks down and resembles a sort of runny jam that isn’t as janny-sweet as jam, but stands in for it just as well on bagels and toast, making either reminiscent of strawberry-rhubarb pie.
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July 23 2008 | one dish and preserves and seafood and sweet stuff and vegetarian | No Comments »
