Date Night-- Indian Food

So we finally got a date night, but were too broke to go out, so I decided to make the experience at home. And without kids, we could have spicy without complaint, so I made Indian food. Some of this is from scratch, and some I cheated a little. Also, I am a big believer in reducing and reusing, even extending that to food. You will notice I am using leftover garbanzo beans from when I made falafal.



Tandoori Chicken

1/2 cup tandoori paste (I like LAXMI brand)
1 cup greek yogurt
4 bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed
1 small onion
1 small lemon

In a mixing bowl, mix together yogurt and tandoori paste. Spread on chicken on both sides, and marinate in the refrigerator for five hours. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Next, put in a fairly shallow baking dish, with all of the paste mixture.

Slice the onions and lemon and arrange around the chicken. Cook for about 35 minutes or until juices inside the chicken run completely clear.










Lentils & Rice
2 cups jasmine rice
1 cup lentils
2 tsp. parsley
1 tsp. tumeric
1 tsp. mint
1 tbsp. sesame oil
salt

In a pot, bring 4 cups of water and 2 cups of rice to a boil. Add sesame oil and salt, reduce heat. Simmer, covered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Towards the end of cooking the rice, add the tumeric, mint, and parsley. Meanwhile, in a separate pot, bring 2 cups of water and 1 cup of lentils to a boil. Reduce heat, simmer 40 minutes or until lentils are soft. Drain lentils, if necessary, and mix with rice.



Chana Masala
1 cup of cooked garbanzo beans
3 cups frozen spinach
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 tsp. tumeric
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. ground coriander
1/2 tsp. garam masala
1/2 tsp. parsley
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. olive oil

Sautee the chopped onion in the olive oil, until almost clear, and add garlic to the mixture. Add all spices and stir well. Once all is blended, add chickpeas, and stir to coat with spice mixture. Add frozen spinach and stir occasionally until cooked through. Sprinkle lemon juice to taste.



Serve the rice & lentils, chana masala, and tandoori chicken with pita bread, naan or tortilla. Garnish with lemon slices for squeezing over the chicken.



For dessert:

This is a simple idea I read in this month's Marie Claire.

Peel, dice, and de-seed oranges (I used tangerines). Sprinkle with honey and cinnamon and serve. It's nice and light and refreshing!



Notes about this meal: This was delish, but killed our stomachs. Not for the faint or heart and/or tummy. I buy my Indian spices at an Indian grocery, but Amazon also carries a lot of them.

Venison Tomato Pasta

So I had a pound of ground venison that a wonderful friend was kind enough to give me. And my daughter has decided she is only eating animals she doesn't like, which means in order to avoid a showdown, I need to disguise things. I decided to make a spaghetti-like pasta dish, which worked out really well except it disappeared so quickly I didn't get any pictures....


Ingredients:
1 lb. ground venison
2 cloves garlic
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp. oregano
1 pinch sea salt
1 pinch crushed bay leaves
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. rosemary
1 tsp. parsley
2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
1 can tomatoes
1 jar of marinara or bag of homemade marinara sauce
1 bag of whole wheat egg noodles


Cook ground venison with onions and garlic until venison is starting to lose the pink. Add all other ingredients except for noodles and cook on low heat for 30 minutes or so, long enough for the flavors to meld. While sauce is cooking, cook bag of pasta according to package directions. Serve with sauce on top of pasta and salad and garlic bread.

The good things about this-- the balsamic vinegar was just enough to add an unusual sweet twang to the sauce. The venison was strong enough to stand up to the other flavors so that you could get the flavor of the meet. And my daughter? She ate seconds before asking for Halloween candy for dessert (a moment in history!)




A good thing about having my blog I discovered on the next night? I couldn't find my falafel recipe after moving, and realized I could look it up here. In case anyone else should go back and make it, a couple of pointers: Falafel needs to be fried in a farely dry, well heated pan. Also, tzaziki sauce is better when made with american style vs. greek-style yogurt. (Some things you have to learn the hard way. C'est la vie..)

Comfort In the Midst of Downpour

So it's been raining in GA for ah, like weeks. Flooding in some places even, so far we have been spared. When it's cold and wet like this, I tend to want soups, stews, and the like, that warm you from the inside out.

I also like to curl up under a blanket and be lazy, so I am crock-pottin' it again today, making Smoked Turkey & Lima Bean Soup!


Smoked Turkey & Lima Bean Soup
1 bag dried lima beans
2 green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic
6 cups chicken stock (approx.)
2-3 smoked turkey drums
1/2 celery stalk, chopped finely
1 can of tomatoes
3 heads of chopped baby bok choy
3 sprigs of thyme

Rinse the beans and pick out any icky ones, then soak overnight. In the morning, add all ingredients. I used my leftover chicken stock from mole night, but you can substitute in whatever you may have on hand. Cook on low all day long.

Before serving, you may want to shred the turkey. In my house, if I skip the turkey shredding, everyone fights over the chunks. You also may want to add additional seasoning, sage and/or cayenne would work well here.

This would be excellent with cornbread were I not out of cornmeal!


And, by the way, my six year old, who wanted to eat dinner with Nana and Papa because she didn't want lima beans, ate a 2nd dinner once she had a taste-- she ate 1 1/2 bowls!

Holy Mole Chicken

Yum, Yum, YUM!!!!
So yesterday I was in the mood for Mexican, and I started looking around and realized I didn't have the ingredients to whip up something simple. Enter my inspiration for mole chicken...


I of course read about 20 recipes before attempting to create my own. This is a recipe I would make some substitutions for seasonally, i.e. earlier in the year I would have used FRESH tomatoes.

But here are the ingredients for the SAUCE:

1 can tomatoes
2 cloves minced garlic
2tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds
3 dried chilis
1 star anise
1 tsp mint
1 tsp coriander
1 red onion, chopped
1 tsp. crushed bay leaf
3 tbsp. chicken bouillion and 1 cup of water or 2 cups chicken broth
1/2 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 block unsweetened baker's chocolate



For the chicken:
4-5 chicken thighs, bone in
6 cups of water
2-3 slices of onion
1 clove garlic


Place chicken, water, onion, and garlic in a stock pot on the stove and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes or until chicken is completely cooked through.

While the chicken is cooking, work on the sauce. Toast the dried chili peppers in a skillet, just until they start to look like peppers again. Run the fan while doing so, toasting chili peppers smell. Add cinnamon and a bit of water and the star anise to the pan. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer and simmer for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, pour the can of tomatoes on aluminum foil with garlic and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes. (You don't have to line the pan in aluminum foil... it's totally on you how much of a mess you want to clean up.)

Put the onions in the blender and add a little water. Pulse until the onions are mostly mush. Add the tomato & garlic mixture and blend some more. Finally, add the other spices and the sesame seeds. Blend again.

Back to the pan on the stove. Using tongs, remove the chili peppers from the skillet. Then, using a fork and knife, or glove, or other method of protection, slit each one open and remove the seeds. Unless you like blazing hot stuff, in which case, skip this step and throw 'em in the blender. Either way, add them in and blend. Make sure you can't see any chunks of chili pepper floating around. Add the block of chocolate to the water/cinnamon/star anise on the stove. Cook until the chocolate is just melted. I also used the tongs to pull out any stray chili seeds as I was cooking for kids and didn't feel like dealing with "too spicy" complaints. Add the chocolatey goodness to the blender, and blend a final time.

Back to your chicken. Remove the pieces one by one and shred with a couple of forks. Return any skin, gobs of fat, and bone to the chicken pan. Continue to simmer.. you can turn this into chicken stock later and freeze to use again. Put the shredded chicken in a pan with about 1/3 of the sauce and simmer lightly until you are ready to eat. I also simmered a little on the side to top the other food with.

Serving suggestions:
I made homemade tortillas, similarly spiced vegetables, and rice. We smothered the rice in mole sauce too. My DH and I loved it, M liked everything BUT the mole. And R was too little to eat the mole, so next time, I'll just leave all the seeds in and have yummy spicy mole for us adults.

I did take pics, so they'll be up by tomorrow. :-)

Autumn Breakfast-- can be quick and easy

This morning I had promised to do breakfast duty in exchange for my husband doing dinner last night. I made one of my go-to crowd pleasers, sure to make everyone happy on the way to church. I have made them totally from scratch in the past, but this morning was not THAT morning.

Chocolate Pumpkin Pancakes
1 box of devil's food or other chocolate cake mix
1 can of pumpkin


Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees, spray muffin pan with non-stick cooking spray. Mix the two ingredients together until there are no dry bits of cake mix left. It will be quite thick and goopy. Portion into muffin tins, makes 6-12 muffins. Cook for about 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.


I was going to put pictures up, but they dissapeared too quickly.


Why are these the bomb? Pumpkin is excellent for you (look it up, really) and they are easy and you get to be a superhero mom for serving chocolate for breakfast. The family won't even know they contain pumpkin unless you tell them....

Yard sale treasure

I've been dying for a new grill since we moved and some bamboo blinds... stopped by a yard sale today and got both for $10. Pictures to come.

I am mentioning this because yard sales are a great way to go green if you're interested. Also to stock up on good quality heavy-duty cookware. Just a thought.

Laziness, Moving, and Catching Up...

For the past couple of months I have been completely slack about updating my blog. I started a new job, moved, and went through another few ups and downs that contributed to it. But now that we are somewhat settled in our new digs, I have been reinspired to work on my blog by reading on this one: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/ which is totally awesome.

I still desire a traditional diet for my family, but for several reasons we have backed off on some of it. So I will just share my cooking I am doing.

Tonight, inspired by the crockpot blog, I created a recipe, I'll have to let you know how it goes. I used:

1 LARGE carrot, diced
2 wilted pieces of celery
1/4 sliced red onion
1 large head of broccoli
4 minced garlic cloves
1/2 package grape tomatoes, washed
4 frozen chicken thighs, bone in
1 tsp. rosemary
1 tsp. dried mustard
2 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. sage

I layered the veggies on the bottom, chicken on the top, and set to cook on low and plan to let it cook all day. The chicken started looking rather plain towards afternoon, so I sprinkled some dry mustard and chili powder on it.

It turned out awesome!


While I am mentioning that other blog, I made her crockpot lemon chicken last night and it was great!