Gang Keow Wan (Thai Green Curry) with Eggplant and Bamboo

When I was in Ottawa a couple weeks ago, Krystopf and Atlas got takeout one night from a local Thai place.  There was one dish we got, the gang keow wan, that was so good I was determined to see if I could recreate it.  So here’s my best approximation, and it turned out pretty close to the original, minus the disposable aluminum serving dishes.

Get everything ready first, obviously.  The idea behind this is that if everything is sliced super thin and ready to go, the actual cooking of the curry will take less than fifteen minutes from start to finish.  Fantastic for a quick meal, which our Sunday dinners always turn out to be.

Start with your chicken (you can use beef as well, or leave it out for a vegetarian option).

Take 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, slice them into thirds lengthwise, and then slice them up again into thin little pieces.  It’s easiest to do this if the chicken is slightly frozen.

Wrangle yourself a leek.  Just one will do.

Chop off all the dark green stuff, and hack it into thirds.  It goes without saying that you do this with separate implements than you did the chicken, unless you do all the vegetables first and then the chicken last, which is what I usually do.

Cut each of those thirds up into matchsticks.  Remember to rinse off the dirt before you eat them.  If you want to know the real scientific way to clean a whole leek properly (which I forgot about until it was too late) then take a lookie here.

Gather up a handful of hot peppers.  These ones are of the mildest sort, but you can go with whatever floats your boat and suits your fancy.  Cut the tops off, remove the seeds (don’t stick your fingers in your eye, OW OW OW OW OW), and make those into matchsticks as well.

Grab some eggplant.  If you have those tiny Asian ones handy, or baby eggplants, use about five of them.  These are the long thin Italian ones, and I used three.  Slice the tops off and cut them into thin discs.

Bust out some lime leaves (kaffir).

Grab a handful, and, if they’re frozen, let them thaw.  If they’re dried, give them a soak.  If they’re fresh, then you are a lucky person for living in a part of the world where you can get them fresh and you probably don’t need my instructions on how to make a green curry.  Go find something else to do.

When they’re ready, slice out the woody centre stem and chop them up finely.

If you have them handy, like, for instance, you are growing your own indoor herb farm (see tomorrow’s post!), then harvest some fresh cilantro and fresh basil. Chop those babies up as well.

As well, crack open a can of slivered bamboo shoots.

Put them aside with your other fresh stuff.

And you’re going to need an assortment of canned and jarred stuff as well.

In a large, shallow saucepan or deep frying pan, heat up about 3 tablespoons olive oil.  Add to that 3-5 tablespoons green curry paste and 4 teaspoons minced garlic and sauté that at medium heat until the kitchen starts to smell really good.

Add in as well 2 tablespoons each ground cumin and ground coriander and 1 tablespoon powdered stock (chicken, beef, or vegetable — this is optional).  You can add in some salt and pepper as well, if you like.

If you’ve got it, add some lemongrass in as well.  This stuff came in a tube!

Now add in 1 can coconut milk and, if you can get it, 1 can coconut cream (if not just go with two cans of the milk).  Make sure your cream isn’t sweetened before you dump it in.  I discovered that a little too late, so this curry was definitely on the sweet side, but still good.  Now you have this lovely rich greenish brownish soup.

Slide in your chicken slices and the chopped lime leaves and allow to simmer for just a few minutes until the chicken is no longer pink.

Raise the temperature and bring the liquid to a boil after adding all your vegetables.

Allow the vegetables to soften, and the eggplant to go a bit brown.  Then add in your chopped basil and cilantro.

Serve hot over rice, and eat it with a spoon in the traditional way.  I’m having some of the leftovers for lunch today.  I’m rather excited about it.

Related articles

• Phukett Green Chicken Curry (nuttykitchen.com)
• Chickpea and lentil curry (carolynchan.wordpress.com)
• Pork, Pineapple and Bamboo Shoot Curry (thenutritionguruandthechef.wordpress.com)

Tipsy Asiago Chicken Noodles

Before we begin, let me clarify something.  This recipe does not contain any alcohol.  Rather, it was I who contained alcohol when I made it.  When you have your first few days of spring here in St. John’s, where the temperature goes up to the double digits (even 10 is sufficient) and it’s sunny ALL DAY, then the whole city mysteriously sells out of beer.  And I’m not even joking.  So this recipe came after a beer and a half on a day where I had forgotten my lunch.  As a result, I didn’t measure a darned thing.  Not that I usually measure anything anyway.

First let’s work on our component parts.  Chop up about 2 broccoli florets.

Steam them for a few minutes until they’re bright green.

Slice up 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts.

Sauté them with a bit of garlic and olive oil until they’re cooked through.

Boil up some egg noodles until tender.

If you have them (I didn’t), I would also recommend chopping up and cooking some mushrooms, as well, to complement the cheese and to add flavour to the chicken.

And the sauce is easy peasy.  Start with grating up some asiago, or whatever cheese you like.  In hindsight, the Pie and I think we would temper the asiago with something a little more mild, like a white cheddar.

Finely chop 1 onion.

Plop that in a small saucepan with a dollop of butter and another dollop of garlic.

Sauté the onions until they are translucent.

Add in about 2 tablespoons flour and stir that around to get all the onions coated in flour.

Pour in some milk, and stir to thicken.  Add in a bit more milk, then add the cheese and stir it in until it’s all melted.

Toss your broccoli (mushrooms) and chicken in the pot with the cooked, drained egg noodles and toss that around.

Add the sauce and toss to coat.  Serve immediately.  Serves six.

Chicken Fried Rice … for Danger K

I got a tweet on Friday from Danger K over at Project: Priceless, looking for a good fried rice recipe.  We happen to have one.  Actually, the Pie has one, which he modified himself from one of our many stir-fry books.  We make this one with chicken, but you can leave that out for a vegetarian option.  If you want to go vegan, you can leave out the egg as well.

So this is what you need:

Half an onion, diced.

A boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed.  Add a splash of soy sauce to that.

An egg, beaten.

Two carrots, peeled and diced.

About one cup peas.  These are defrosted frozen ones.

A pinch or two of sliced green onion.

About two cups cooked rice, cold.  Preferably a day or two old.  The rice needs to be dry and no longer sticky.

In a large frying pan or wok, heat a tablespoon oil with a tablespoon minced garlic on medium heat.  Chuck in the onions and cook until they’re translucent.

Toss in the chicken and stir until the chicken is cooked through.

Make a well in the middle and pour in the beaten egg in a thin layer. Allow it to cook through and then break it up with your spatula and mix it in.

Add in all the vegetables and heat through, then add the rice and stir to mix.  Splash in some more soy sauce to taste.  When everything is heated up to your satisfaction, you can serve it.  And it’s as simple as that!

Roasted Chicken and Rice Soup

So I made a roasted chicken to go with our poutine from earlier, and the Pie and I ended up, in the events of that week, forgetting about the leftovers completely.

So let’s make some soup for those busy periods in our lives (which, this term, is pretty much every day).

Pop your carcass and any other bits of chicken you have, skin, bones, everything, in a large pot.  Cover it with 1 litre chicken stock and the rest with water.  Bring that to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer.  Let that bubble away for about an hour.

Remove the pot from the heat.  Set a large colander in a larger bowl and pour the contents of the pot into the colander.  This makes getting the wee bits of non-meat out of the broth easy.

Pour the strained broth back into the pot.  Strip the chicken of bits that you want in your soup, and chuck those bits in with the broth.

Chop 1 carrot and 1 onion and add those in.

Add 1 cup rice.

I was going to add a can of tomatoes to this, but it turned out I didn’t have any (which was kind of a shocker, considering that I normally have about four on hand).  Instead, I had a little over 1 cup pumpkin purée, left from the Pie’s first attempt at pumpkin pie, so I added that in.

Sprinkle on some herbs (I used oregano) and add salt and pepper.  I also added a pinch or two of chipotle seasoning.

Put your pot back on the heat and simmer it for about half an hour, until the rice is cooked and the carrots are tender and everything is hot and yummy.  Taste, and adjust your seasonings if necessary.

Serve hot or freeze for later on.  It’s that simple!

O Canada: Poutine

This dish comes to you from the Ottawa-Gatineau region, where most street corners in the downtown area are dotted with “chip trucks”, mobile vendors of French fries and hot dogs.  And poutine.  A melty mix of hot fries, squeaky cheese curds, and oozing thick gravy.

Like most foods we hold dear to the Canadian heart (though if you hold this one too close you are apt to have a heart attack), the origins are contested.  The version I like best I heard on CBC a few years back.  This particular chip truck also sold cheese curds, a Québec specialty.  A customer wanted the vendor to simply chuck his order of cheese curds on top of his fries.  The vendor protested, saying “ça va faire une maudite poutine” (it’ll make a damned mess), but the customer insisted.

A new delicacy was created out of “a damned mess”, though the gravy drizzled over the fries and curds to keep them warm came a little later.

My mother grew up in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, so I trusted her judgment as a child when she told me that poutine was absolutely the most disgusting thing in the entire world.  Then, when I was a teenager, and we moved to Ottawa, I discovered that my mother had never in fact eaten poutine in her life.   I promptly went out and discovered what I had been missing.

My mother did, at the age of 60, eventually eat her first poutine.  The dish has a new fan.  If you’re in the Ottawa area, the best place in the city for poutine is JP’s Crispy Chips, a high-end chip truck on the corner of Merivale and Baseline Roads.  Trust me, you won’t regret it.

That’s not to say you can’t get good poutine at other places in the city.  The chip truck near my high school had a decent recipe.  If you wanted to get fancy you could head down to the Elgin Street Diner and try their Philly Cheese Steak Poutine, among other variations.

But poutine outside of the Ottawa-Gatineau area tends to fall a little short of my expectations.  The Pie and I once ordered a poutine in Parry Sound, Ontario.  What arrived was a plate of Tex-Mex seasoned frozen fries, grated marble cheddar, and a gravy that obviously came from a powder packet.  Most disappointing.  The only decent poutine I’ve had outside of Ottawa-Gatineau has actually been here in St. John’s.  Newfoundlanders are good at eating potatoes, so they picked up on poutine right away.  Venice Pizzeria has a version served with “dressing,” what I call stuffing — the kind that goes in a bird.  And Aqua has a ridiculously rich version with chorizo and LOBSTER.

We’re going to do it the simple way here.  I don’t think my arteries could take it any other way.

A note before we begin, however.  You can buy your fries pre-cut and frozen from the store.  You can use powdered or canned gravy rather than make it from scratch.  You can use chicken gravy, turkey gravy, beef gravy, moose gravy, or mushroom gravy.  Whatever gravy you want.

But you absolutely MUST use cheese curds.  Must.  Otherwise it’s just fries with cheese on them.  And if you can get the cheese curds from St-Albert, Québec, by all means do so.  You can definitely taste the difference.  We used these ones from Montréal, Québec, and although they were good, they just weren’t the same.

Because we were serving the poutine as a sort of pseudo-Thanksgiving dinner, we decided to roast a chicken to serve on the side (because everything takes a backseat to poutine).  This also gave us a base from which to make our gravy.

First I fried up some onions with butter and herbes de provence, then I stuffed them into the chicken, which I roasted at 400°F until the thickest part of the thigh registered at 180° and the juices ran clear.

I used the juices that came out as the foundation for my gravy. I have more info on making gravy here.

I poured the juices into a saucepan and added a ton of organic chicken broth.  Here’s your gravy base, if you’re going for chicken gravy from scratch.

Make a slurry of flour and water and add that as well.  Bring the gravy to a boil and then reduce the heat and let it simmer to thicken.

The Pie was also engaged in making a pumpkin pie while this was going on. Gren got to lick the pumpkin spoon. Cooking dogs are so very helpful.

While that is going on, chop up 6 medium potatoes into shapes resembling French fries.

Rinse off the starch and let the potatoes soak for half an hour.

Drain them and dry them with a paper towel when you are ready to cook.

In a large saucepan, bring about 4 cups vegetable oil to a temperature of 350°F. Use a candy or deep-fry thermometer to be accurate.

Ease about half your potatoes into the hot oil.  A wire spoon is handy in this situation.  A fry basket would be even better.

Leave them in there, sputtering away, for about 2-3 minutes, depending on the thickness of your fries. The sputtering will calm down after a while.

Pull them out and let them sit on a paper towel for about 5 minutes, while you cook the rest of the fries.

After you have cooked each batch once, allow the heat of the oil to rise to 365°F.  Now you put the first batch back into the pot and cook for a further 2-3 minutes, until light brown.

Drain on paper towels again, season with sea salt, and get ready to serve immediately.

Pour half the fries into the bottom of a large serving bowl.  Sprinkle half a package of cheese curds on top.  Add a bit of gravy to get everything melty.

Repeat with the remaining fries, curds, and some more gravy.  Serve immediately.

We had ours with our roasted chicken, stuffing onions, and some carrots.  And all that extra gravy, of course.

The Chicken Salad Sandwich to Convert the Non-Believers

When the Pie and I first started dating, we both had a lot more money than we do now (read: we have NO money now, and then we HAD money).  So we used to go on these elaborate dates, which were so much fun.

On this one in particular, it was my turn to plan.  We started out picking raspberries from a local farm (where I got bitten by a dog and I still have the scar, seven years later, but that’s another story), followed by a picnic lunch in a village park, a game of mini-golf (where I soundly beat the pants off the Pie), a nap, and then a late dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown.  A good time was had by all.

But this story is about the picnic.  As I said, we had only been dating a few months, and I wasn’t yet fully versed on the Pie’s various food likes and dislikes (he insists he’s not a picky eater, but the rest of us look at each other and shake our heads).

To impress my new man, I had prepared a sumptuous picnic feast, featuring as a main course my signature chicken salad sandwiches with moist, tender chicken, crisp celery, and just a hint of spice.

It turns out that the Pie didn’t like chicken salad.  Note that I said “didn’t.”  He gallantly took a bite of the sandwich, to be polite (after all, I had made him two sandwiches in anticipation of his appetite).  Instantly, he was converted.  Now he gets chicken salad all the time when he buys sandwiches.

So here is that recipe for you.  Go forth and proselytize!

We had 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts that we’d poached the day before.  The trick with chicken salad is to mince your chicken.  Most chicken salads have these huge chunks of chicken in them, which, while tasty, tend to fall out of your sandwich all over the place.

So MINCE those suckers.

Also mince up a few stalks of celery.

I like the bottom of celery bits.  It’s like a green flower.

Mix the celery into the chicken.

Now add about a teaspoon of paprika, and 2 teaspoons chili powder.  You can add more if you like the taste.

Glop on about 2/3 cup mayonnaise (don’t skimp here, people, and use real mayo).

Mix that stuff up.  Garnish with a festive sprig of basil and you have yourself some salad.

Which you can then put into sammiches.  Which you can then eat.

Have you ever converted anyone to a food?

Pesto Pasta with Veg

HAPPY CANADA DAY!  Be safe and well today!

This recipe is a good and quick one if you are heading out to your local festivities today.  Of course, if you’re in Ottawa today, the third-largest party in the world (supposedly, the first-largest is New Year’s Eve in Kuala Lumpur, second is NYE in Times Square, NYC, and the third is Canada Day in our nation’s capital) is going to be extra big with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in attendance.  You’re going to want to make sure you eat enough to have energy for the party.

The Pie wants me to let you know that normally, we use pesto that we’ve made ourselves from scratch, but that this year is a bad one for our basil, so we went with store-bought instead.  But he wants you to know that normally we don’t stoop to such levels.

Set a pot of water a-boiling and fry up a couple (or a few) boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  If you have leftover chicken lying around, this will do as well. 

Once the chicken is cooked through, cube it up.

Leftover bacon?  I know, it’s like a mythical creature.  But we had some.  So I shredded that.

We had some asparagus and cauliflower lying around, so I cut those up into bite-sized pieces as well.  Whatever vegetables you have on hand will do, of course.  Red peppers, perhaps, or onion.

Chuck enough pasta in your boiling pot to feed four and cook it according to the package instructions, usually for 10-12 minutes.  We used whole wheat spaghetti here, but penne and rigatoni would work equally well.

For the last two minutes of your pasta cooking, chuck in your vegetables, just to get them a wee bit soft.  If your vegetables are already cooked, I would skip this part, otherwise they might get soggy.

Drain the pasta and toss in your meats, as well as about a cup of pesto (the store-bought stuff, at least.  If we’d made it from scratch we probably would have used less).

Toss well to coat the pasta and circulate the vegetables and meat, then serve, topped with grated parmesan cheese.

Utterly fantastic the next day as well.  You can serve it hot or cold!

Peanut Butter Spaghetti

This recipe is actually called something like “Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Snow Peas and Carrots”, but the Pie and I have made it so many times that our version is better.  It came out of an Every Day Food from eons ago, and it’s kind of like a lazy man’s pad thai.

We made it for Kª one night when Kº was off gallivanting in Russia, leaving her alone with Il Principe and the Incredibly Little Hulk.  Served with our crispy won ton crackers, it was a great and easy meal.  Even Il Principe approved.

Start some water a-boilin’.  Like enough to cook about 8-10oz of whole wheat spaghetti (to serve 4).  Then you can, you know, cook that there spaghetti for about ten minutes, or according to your package instructions.

While you are waiting for the water to boil and for your pasta to cook, prepare the following mis en place:

3 medium carrots, shaved with peeler

8oz snow peas, tough strings removed

1 (300g) package of firm tofu, cut into small cubes (if you’re not a fan of tofu it’s conceivable that you could replace this with thin strips of cooked chicken or steak)

Prepare as well this wee bowl of sauce:

5 tablespoons organic peanut butter (smooth or crunchy, it’s your choice)

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 teaspoons rice vinegar

2 teaspoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons sweet chili sauce

Stir that all together.  If you can’t get the peanut butter to go, don’t worry, the heat from the pasta will melt it.

When your pasta is cooked, scoop out about a cup of the pasta water.  You may or may not need it later.  I like to keep you guessing.

Drop all the vegetables and tofu into the pot with the pasta and let sit in the boiling water for 2 minutes before draining the whole thing.

Toss the pasta to make sure everything is mixed around.

Pour in your peanut butter sauce and toss to coat.  If the sauce is too thick and won’t coat properly, pour in some of the reserved pasta water to thin it out a bit.

Garnish with crushed peanuts and serve.  Fantastic cold the next day.

Related articles

• thai anyone? (realfoodjoy.wordpress.com)
• Healthy Recipe: Thai Edamame Pasta (fitsugar.com)
• Peanut Butter Attack (patspapers.com)
• Woman Sends Peanut Butter-Coated Letter To Ex’s Allergic Wife [In Brief] (jezebel.com)

Sweet Potato Quesadillas

Happy Birthday in advance to Kristopf — this one is for you!

The Pie and I had Rene over at I Love Leftovers in mind when we thought this up.  I’ve been fighting off some form of the plague for the past couple of weeks and we’ve been getting pretty lazy when it comes to our meals.  We were also trying to clear out our fridge in preparation for the influx of our houseguests, so we were combining a lot of our leftovers and running out of ideas.

On this particular night, the Pie was inspired, however.  We had some leftover poached, shredded chicken and tortillas from some wraps we’d made the day before.

We also had some roasted sweet potato left from the day before that.  Add those together, plus cheese, and you have quesadillas!

So first, the Pie grated up a whole whack of cheese.  Gren decided he needed to help.  He’s a very helpful puppy.  And if a little cheese falls on the floor, he’s right there to clean it up.  Very helpful indeed.

Plop the leftover chicken (probably about a cup and a half) in a bowl.  It has already been seasoned with a Tex-Mex dried spice mix, but we thought we would add some more flavour.

My parents went to Avery Island, Louisiana, to visit the Tabasco factory (let’s not even begin to talk about how weird that is).  So for Christmas last year we all got lots of Tabasco-related gifts.  We even have Tabasco ice cream mix, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.  Anyway, the Pie and I got these wee bottles of flavoured Tabasco in our stockings, and we thought we would try the chipotle one.  Ask the Pie to say “chipotle.”  He can’t do it.

To give you an idea of the scale of the bottle, we wanted to place it next to Gren.

Actually, we had to try several times to get the shot.

He kept knocking the bottle over with his nose.  On purpose.

Finally.  Though I’m sure you’ve already figured out how small the bottle is.

So we emptied that sucker all over the chicken.

Then we added the cheese (about a cup and a half).

Then the roasted sweet potato (probably about one sweet-potato’s worth).  Mix that up.

Lightly brush the bottom of a flour tortilla with olive oil (for browning) and plop it in a hot skillet.

Plop half the chicken mixture on top. 

Add another oiled tortilla on top of that and carefully flip the whole thing once the cheese is partially melted.

When the cheese is fully melted, remove from the heat and slice it up like a pizza.  Then do the same thing all over again.  Makes two.  Serve them with sour cream and/or guacamole.  Mmm, lazy dinners …

MishMash Curry

The Pie wanted a curry for dinner on Sunday night, so, because I like him and stuff, I made him one.  Didn’t have all the ingredients I wanted (like fresh herbs, for one), but it turned out all right.  It’s a good curry for cleaning out your fridge.  But most curries are, of course.

I chopped up a bunch of vegetables, all nice and thin so they would cook quickly: carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, and tiny potatoes.

Cube up as well some chicken breasts.  Remember that you can cut meat with more accuracy (like thinner slices or smaller cubes) if the meat is still slightly frozen at the time.  Not totally frozen (because that will ruin your knives), but still firm and icy.

Heat a tablespoon or so of oil in a pan on high and drop in the chicken to brown.

Add in some spices, to taste.  I added in here some garlic, ginger, and yellow curry, then added in extra cumin, corriander, and turmeric.  I would have added cardamom as well but I didn’t have any.

When the chicken has browned but not completely cooked through, reduce the heat and add a can of coconut milk. 

Bring the milk to a simmer and add in your vegetables, and cook until the veggies are as tender as you like them.

Serve over na’an with a dollop of plain yogurt or raita for cooling purposes.

Plenty left for me for lunch tomorrow!