weekend feast

So the weekend put me in a food coma - we had baklava (home made), lettuce wraps (veg & non-veg), veg biriyani, cake, mango ice-cream and offcourse the Gin Bucks!

how to make Baklava
1) clarify 2 sticks of butter
2) thaw out 2 packets of filo dough
3) in a pan - lay out a layer of filo brush it with butter, lay out each sheet from whole pan and brush each sheet with butter.

4) Make a walnut, nut mixture - nuts, sugar, cinamon
5) lay 1/4 in thick layer o the nut mixture on the filo layers

6) repeat with another pack of filo layers on top
7) cut diamonds
8) bake at 350 for 1/2 hr
9) Make sugar syrup 3 cups sugar, 3 cups water, few table spoons rose water - boil till thick
10) soon as baklava is baked pour sugar syrup on top.


Lettuce Wraps Chicken filling
1) 1 lb of ground chicken - put in pan and sautee - make sure you break it up as you sautee it
2) soon as it's browned, sautee 1/2 onion and 3 cloves garlic and mix into browned meat
3) sautee 3 sprigs of scallions, 1 jalepeno and mix into meat mixture
4) Pour into this a slurry containing: 5 tablespoons soy, 2 tablespoons oyster sauce, dash of sambal, dash rice vinegar - mix everything
5) Medium heat for another 5 min and you are done!
Make 2 different sauces to accompany.
Sauce 1: Sambal, mustard, tiny bit of ketchup, oil, soy sauce, red wine vinegar (wife made with input)
Sauce 2: wife made I don't know (sweeter side)

We decided why stop with standard lettuce wraps lets have some toppings like tacos
Toppings:
1) a blackbean topping - blackbeans sauteed in garlic, ginger, soy sauce, scallions
2) Crispy noodles - store bought.

New Restaurant, New Drink

Went to a new restaurant today - Peony in Chapel Hill, it's a standard Chinese nice decor restaurant with an adequate sushi menu.

Came home and started making baklava with Avani and Sara. I just made a new drink for the ladies - Gin Buck.
Recipe:
1 ounce gin
1/4 ounce lemon juice
4 1/2 ounces Ginger Ale

Very refreshing and smooth!

Dosa night

Dosa plans for last night didn't pan out and got pushed to today. Got some dosa batter from the indian store. Wife made dosa's along with some awesome potato bhaji, and sambar.
Don't the the recipe for either - but the whole meal was quite good.

Dosa's were the perfect balance of soft and crispy. There was just a bit of parmesan cheese sprinkled on the top dosa - a twist to the usual.

Secret to laying out the dosa: heat the pan, set to (6) medium heat. Sprinkle some water on pan then with a dowel put some of the batter on the pan and spread it around with the bottom of the dowel, sprinkle some oil on top and cover. Wait 30 sec and flip over.

Simple Salmon

Last week we decided to skip Kanki and eat some Salmon at home. Wanted to see if we could do without any of the standard spices - only pepper, salt and garlic.
Took a nice piece of salmon with the skin taken off, prepped it with salt and pepper. Heated up some olive oil and butter and sauteed the salmon 6 min on one side and 3 min on the other - medium-low heat (4). The inside was slightly pink and the outside just cooked...

Along with the salmon was some potato-au-gratin cooked in a muffin pan (get individual portions). And the vege was some roasted asparagus.

Will definitely make this dish again - simple, quick and very tasty.

8/16 No cooking weekend

Friday night was a Red Lotus night - it's very rare when I can eat eggplant and like it. Am not a fan of that vegetable, the texture, the flavor... Red Lotus as a special had 'Sesame Eggplant' - what would that be? Well if you know what 'Sesame Chicken' is at a Chinese restaurant then substitute eggplant for chicken! How cow it was good - the texture was so melt in your mouth - there was a hint of eggplant taste coming through which was masked by the sweet sauce. Most times you would say ick - sweete goopy sauce covering and totally destroying the taste of the food you are eating why would you want that? Well for someone who doesn't like eggplant it was great! The eggplant was sitting on top of amongst a great tasting bed of spinach - blanched and seasoned with salt & pepper - very plain and very tasty.
I had a non-memorable chicken dish called 'Ginger Soy'.. blah. Re cooked it with blackbepper, lots of scallions, green pepper and paneer the next day for lunch.

Saturday night was Crazy Fire Mongolian Grill - yum! Sorry I didn't take any pictures - but all my concoctions were great! The secret lots of garlic oil, whatever flavour sauce, and a touch of sweet-sour sauce. For $10.95 you can have unlimited bowls of crazy concoctions of your own creation - it's like getting a huge indgredient bar and letting your imagination go nutz! If you don't know how to cook they have some recipe's on the wall - but I don't see how you can enjoy if you don't like to cook.

Sunday lunch was frozen barbecue chicken pizza and tonight was Subway - yuck! Never having the oven roasted chicken sub EVER again - it was like eating re-constituted sponge...

So overall a very blah weekend in regards to food. Did lookup recipe for Chicken Chittenad and Kolhapuri chicken - next weekend will definitely have to cook one of these dishes to make up for this weekend's food flavor famine (cept for crazy fire). Next weekend is already looking up - there's a planned baby shower for a friend with some good food in the works and hopefully the plan for Chicken Chittenad makes it.

Spring Rolls

Wife is making some Spring Rolls and Salmon - there's the pics of the yummy spring rolls.
She sauteed shredded cabbage, greenpeppers, carrots in some garlic and ginger and stuffed the veges into an eggroll wrapper. It goes great with my Caribbean chicken curry and the dipping sauce the wife has made.

Mmmm - waiting for the Salmon next.

Food tihs weekend

Friday: Left work early (@4:30pm) picked up the wife and went to Cafe Driad. A strange little coffee cafe in the woods on Franklin St. - a very Chapel Hill place. After Cafe Driad got in the car and it drove us towards Durham 9th St... since discovering a new route to get to Magnolia Grill it's become very easy to drive the car to Durham - before this new route going to Durham was a dread. Getting lost in Durham you can quickly end up on the wrong side of the tracks.
No we didn't go to Magnolia Grill again - yes it would be nice but can't afford it. We ended instead accross the street from Magnolia at a Mongolian Barbecue called Bali Hai. It's ok for a Mongolian barbecue - unlike other Mogonlian Barbecues where you are responsible for the whole thing this place has 3 premade sauces you can choose from and you only get 1 bowl instead of unlimited bowls :(... not a bad thing for your health. The food was Yummy! After Bali hai we decided to walk off the mean and sauntered down 9th St... an interesting place of odd eateries. One of my favourite burger joints - Dains. No we didn't eat here. Instead we drove over to Brightleaf Square which is a few blocks down on the other side of the Duke Campus. There we danced to a live band, walked around did some people watching and called it a night!

Saturday was a lazy day didn't do much in regards to food or entertainment. Went had good egg curry at a friends place, not much else.

Sunday went to Merlion for lunch - a good standby. Can always go in with the expectation of excellent food. I had Beef Horfun and the wife had MeeGoreng.

Came home and decided to spend the afternoon by cooking up a new chicken curry posted below.
For the night we've bought some really nice Salmon from Fresh market - looking forward to a good wine and some excellent Salmon cooked by the wife.

West Indian Coconut Chicken Curry

Yum!

Per prior post I decided to do Emril's West Indian Coconut Chicken Curry - holy heat! I used Emri's recipe with my own method and proportion modifications....
My modifications to Emril's recipe: 1) I scaled down the proportions for almost all spices by half - cept the cloves. Also instead of using two scotch bonnets I used 2 jalepenos (1 de-seeded). 2) I didn't simmer the whole thing for 1 1/2 hr - why? I was using cubed chicken breast - am thinking I'd have gotten rubber chicken in 1 1/2 hr... 3) Instead of cooking the chicken first and then tossing in the onions, I did the standard Indian thing - let the onions sweat added the ginger, garlic, and spice powder.. let it smell up the whole house then tossed in the chicken and browned it. After the chicken was browned I added the rest of the spice powder, coconut milk, brown sugar and 1/4 cup of chicken stock (istead of 1).

The taste - very pungent. It reminds me of a cross between Singapore Curry Noodles (the curry taste) and Malaysian Roti Paratha.... the curry is very strong. Istead of eating it with Roti I've made some coconut rice (recipe below)


Recipe for Rice:
2 wati rice - rinse thoroughly
1 wati thin home made coconut milk
1 tbsp butter
1/2 wati chicken stock
3/4th wati water
Salt, and fresh ground pepper.
Yum.

Coconut & Chicken what to make?

I need to finish the coconut milk I made last weekend along with the ground coconut. So what chicken dish to make? In searching through food network I encountered two interesting recipies
1) Tyler Florence - Spicy Chicken Coconut curry: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/spicy-chicken-coconut-curry-recipe/index.html
This seems too traditional indian and I am wanting to try a different flavor.
2) Emril's West Indian Curried Chicken: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/west-indian-curried-chicken-roti-recipe/index.html
hmm sounds very interesting - I'll try this. Instead of the roti I am going to try and make coconut rice like the one they serve with Hinanise Chicken rice at Merlion...
More to come after the cooking.

Lazy Saturday South Indian Chicken

On a lazy Saturday, I decided to try cooking something different from the usual chicken. I usually cook chicken using a few standard recipe's - Chinese (soy, oyster sauces), Thai (pre-canned paste), Indian (Tikka masala). A co-worker who is South Indian gave me some chicken to try last week - it was delicious! When I asked him for the recipe - he didn't quite have one. Completely understandable - I often concoct stuff and don't follow any recipe. Searched Google for 'South Indian Chicken' and found a recipe that looked decent on epicurous.com - I made some adjustments and gave it a try.

Left is a picture of the chicken while it was still being cooked. The spice mixture used in this dish was excellent with a flavour profile quite different from the usual north Indian Garam Masala flavour.

The final product turned out to be very flavourful BUT quite mild - a bit on the sweet side due to the onions. Note to self - add quite a bit more Cayenne pepper/chili powder and a few little chilli's next time. Below is the recipie I followed (adjusted from the epicurous.com recipe)

Spice Powder: (makes 3 tbsp)
Roast in a thick bottom pan the following - don't let burn. Soon as you smell stuff and the coriander seeds turn brown take it off the heat.
1tbsp Coriander seeds
1tbsp fennel seeds (very nice flavour)
1 teasp cumin seeds
6 cloves (should have added more as dish didn't have enough heat)
2 cardamon pods (forgot these completely - doesn't seem to have mattered)
1/2 teasp ground cinamon
1/2 teasp peppercorns (should have added more)
2 teasp turmeric (recipe called for 1/2 tbsp..)
1 teasp chili powder

Coconut milk
I decided that the canned one is wayyy too creamy so using the epicurious.com recipe I made the milk - turned out to be pretty good.
1 cup shredded frozen wet coconut - added to this 1 1/2 cup of boiling water. Let it sit for a while then put in a blender and let it sit for 1 hr and then strained it.

Curry
1 1/2 clove garlic
1 inch ginger
1 Jalapeno (shouldn't have deseeded)
take above three make a paste (or mix together in a chopper/food processor)
2 medium white onions finely chopped
3 cilantro stems with leaves finely chopped
1/2 breast chicken - cut into cubes
1 chicken thigh - cut into cubes
Marinate chicken in 1/2 tbsp of spice powder, oil, salt for 1 hr.
1 teasp black mustard seeds
2 tbsp above spice powder
1 cup coconut milk
1/2 teasp tamarind paste concentrate dissolved in 1 teasp water
Salt to taste

(all done on medium heat)
Hit a bit of oil (coat the pan) - once heated brown the onions well. Once onions are browned put them to the side of pan so they don't get heat. Heat some more oil and add black mustard seeds - once these start to pop add the spice powder - let oil change colour and let the aroma fill the air (mix into oil and stir for 15-20 sec). Add ginger/garlic/chili paste - saute for 15 sec. Add chicken and let cook. Add chopped cilantro. At this point I should have added some whole peppercorns... after the chicken was almost cooked I added the tamarind water. Let chicken cook some more (15 min total since adding chicken). I added coconut milk - covered pan and let cook for 5 more min.

Smells AMAZING! Taste good - need to adjust heat by adding more pepper, cloves and chili powder