and things went downhill from there

Today on Cooking with plonq:

I have been wanting something curried for lunch or dinner for the past week or so, but it didn't fit with any of our meal plans for dinner, and I've been eating mostly leftovers for lunch.

When I was poking around for some lunch ideas today, I started mulling on ideas for a lentil curry when I remembered that we had a couple of chicken thighs in the freezer downstairs. I brought them upstairs, tossed them into a bowl of warm water to thaw a bit, and then started prepping other things.

I rough-chopped half an onion and tossed it into a pot with a tablespoon or so of cooking oil. While that cooked, I fetched a knob of ginger from the fridge and coarsely minced it up, followed by two cloves of garlic. When they were all roughly chopped, I gathered both of them together into a pile and continued chopping them until the onions were cooked enough to be ready for them.

I stirred them in with the onion and then cubed up the still-mostly-frozen chicken thighs. While I waited for those to finish thawing and cook through, I mixed up a cup of warm water with some chicken bullion and a couple tablespoons of powdered coconut milk. Next, I started a second pot on the stove with a cup of water, half a cup of rice, a pinch of salt, and a bit more of the coconut milk powder.

While the rice and chicken cooked, I added a splash of fish sauce to the coconut milk mixture and then started hunting for the red Thai curry paste. Which we don't have. That gave me a moment's pause before I shifted gears and grabbed the Madras curry powder instead. I dumped a good tablespoon of that in with the (now cooked) chicken and stirred it a bit to cook the edge off the curry, then I dropped in two frozen balls of spinach. After a moment or two of waffling, I ended up following the spinach with a good shake of red chilli flakes.

When the spinach was mostly thawed, I stirred in the coconut mixture and let it come to a gentle boil before reducing it to a simmer. I gave it a taste and then tweaked it a bit with about a teaspoon of sugar and two crushed cardamom pods. I was going to toss in some raisins when I spotted the dried cranberries. To my mind, they would accomplish the same function and add a nice bit of colour to the dish.

I added about a tablespoon of cornstarch to the curry to thicken it up, and then let it simmer on low heat until the rice was done. As soon as the rice was ready, I folded some black sesame seeds and a splash of orange blossom water into it.

I scooped the rice into a bowl, hollowed out the centre, and scooped in about half of the curry (the rest went into the fridge). I garnished it with another shake of chilli flakes, and some fresh parsley from the basement.

Prognosis: this was really good. Mild, and packed with flavour. The cranberries turned out to be a great addition.



On a side note: I will continue cross-posting all of my entries to both Livejournal and Dreamwidth, but given the current situation with Livejournal's owners, I can't guarantee the continued availability that site.

As always, anything you see on LJ is also available on Dreamwidth under the user-name "Plonq"

Today on "Cooking With Plonq":

In this special "using up stuff in the fridge" edition, I present sauerkraut soup. This was inspired by a cooking video we watched yesterday where the host made a cabbage-based soup, and he mentioned that there was a traditional Polish version made with sauerkraut.

We had a couple inches of kielbasa in the fridge left from a dish we made last week, and I had about ½ a jar of vintage sauerkraut that I keep forgetting about at the back of the fridge. I moved the jar to the front of the fridge before I went to bed last night as a reminder, and this morning I ran over a mental check-list of what might go well in a soup.

I started off by coarsely chopping a stalk of celery and a handful of baby carrots. I peeled and cut up the sausage into bite-sized pieces, then tossed the three ingredients into a pot with a bit of olive oil. I sautéed it until the sausage was starting to brown and then dumped in a couple tablespoons of dried red onion flakes.

I shook in about a half-teaspoon of caraway seeds and cooked it a bit longer to give them a hint of toastiness before adding about ½ tsp each of white pepper and sweet paprika and ¼ tsp of dill weed. I followed those with the half-jar of sauerkraut, liquid and all (this stuff did not have a lot of liquid, so I felt pretty safe adding it).

When that was all combined, I stirred in about a teaspoon of chicken bullion paste and then dumped in the remaining ~700ml of water left in the tea kettle after breakfast (I turned on the heat under it when I started on the soup). I followed that up with a bay leaf. Then, once the soup came up to a boil, I turned it down and let it simmer for another fifteen minutes.

I served it with a grind of fresh pepper on the top. It was really good. I know that atara won't eat this, but I'm keeping this one in mind for future reference. When I finished this, I filled a container for the fridge so that I can have it again for lunch tomorrow or Wednesday. While I had the fridge open, I spotted the sour cream, and it occurred to me that it would probably go well with this soup.

There was about half a bowl of soup left after I had packaged up my lunch, so I gave myself another serving and added a good dollop of sour cream. Good call. That pushed it to next-level good. Not as photogenic as the first bowl, but it made up for that in flavour. Two thumbs up.

For lunch today I decided to clear out a couple of items that have been in the freezer since last year.

I reheated the last serving of the vegetarian (almost vegan) chilli I made last year and served it over pasta that I rolled out from some dough I froze last year.

When I say that the chilli is almost vegan, it's because I added an ingredient at the last moment that was not vegan. I had not set out to make a vegan chilli, but it was only when I added the final ingredient that it occurred to me that it had been vegan up to at point. I don't even remember what that ingredient was now (white sugar, anchovy paste - probably the first, since I vaguely recall kicking myself for not just using agave syrup).

In any event, neither the noodles or the cheese in this dish are vegan - nor am I - so it makes little difference.

The base for this chilli is Beyond Meat which I padded out with texturized vegetable protein when I decided that there was not enough of the former for the size of batch I was making. Other than that, I used vegetable stock instead of beef stock for the liquid, and the rest was fairly standard chilli ingredients. The key thing is that it turned out really good.



I didn't know how the pasta dough would hold up from being frozen, but I let it thaw in the fridge overnight and then rolled it out this morning. It was bouncy and stretchy and all of those things that you want in a pasta dough. Once I had it rolled into a thin enough rectangle on the counter, I dusted it with flower, rolled it up, and cut it into fettuccine-width strips.

The pasta was fine with being frozen, and the resulting noodles held their own with the chilli. I would definitely do this again.

One might reasonably ask if it is worth the effort to make your own pasta, and I would answer that it is. Making pasta turned out to be far less work than I'd have imagined it to be, and the flavour and mouth feel of fresh home-made pasta blows the dried noodles out of the water. The boxed noodles are much more convenient, and I'm not going to stop using them any time soon, but IMO it is worth treating oneself now and then to some good noodles crafted in one's own kitchen.

Since I seem to be getting back into a semi-regular routine of posting here, I decided to buck up and buy a paid account. I've been happy with the service Dreamwidth is providing, so I don't mind tossing a few $ to support them. You can probably expect to see a few new user icons from me going forward.

I did a lunch experiment today to see how quickly I could turn out a fast, cheap, reasonably healthy meal with a minimum of ingredients. The idea came to me when I walked down to buy coffee this morning, and I noted that I would be walking right past the butcher shop on my way home. I stopped in there and grabbed a pound of their ground pork because it's remarkably inexpensive.

It was past 12:30 by the time I got home, so I wanted to make something as fast possible so as not to eat late enough to spoil dinner.

I grabbed the wok and peanut oil and set to work. I started by cutting a medium yellow onion into eight pieces, then I minced a couple cloves of garlic, and halved a half-dozen stalks of frozen asparagus. Prep work done, I tossed about half of the pork into the wok and broke it up, tossing it until most of the pink was gone. I threw in the onion and when it looked to be about half-done, I threw in the minced garlic. When the garlic was suitable fragrant, I added equal parts of tamari and mirin (I could have used soy sauce, but we are almost out of it, and I wanted something with a bit less salt). Finally, once the onions looked like they were about done, I threw in the asparagus and tossed it in the wok until the asparagus was heated through.

The result was very good, and very fast. From the time I got in the door until I was finished eating was about 20 minutes. This probably could have served two if I'd served it with rice or rice noodles, but I didn't want to spend the extra time, nor add the extra carbohydrates.

If I was going to change this, the only things I might do is add a bit more mirin, or maybe add a dash of five-spice.

There is a restaurant within reasonable walking distance from my office, which had a sign board out front when we first moved out here that proclaimed that they served, "The best hamburger in Winnipeg."

I had my doubts, but I was willing to give the place a chance since I found the food in our office's cafeteria to be rather uninspiring. I walked up there near the start of summer to put their claim to the test, and I found the burger to be good, but far from the best around town. Still, they had a decent rating on Urban Spoon, and in my experience those ratings tend to be fairly accurate (weird, individual outlier ratings aside... "My fork had a slightly bent tine. This restaurant is the worst thing since Satan and Hitler had offspring!")

I noticed that the cafeteria was serving the regrettable fish & chips again today, so I decided to give Peaks another try. I steered away from the burgers this time and gave their Reuben sandwich with a Chipotle beef & bean soup a try. When the soup arrived, I nearly called the waitress back to cancel the sandwich order and just bring another soup. The sandwich was quite good as well - much better than the burger or fries I'd had on my previous visit - but the soup was amazing. My only complaint was that a couple of mosquitoes that had found their way into the restaurant who seemed to think it was their lunch time as well.

For what it is worth, the cafeteria food has improved dramatically since the office first opened, but their "frozen fish and frozen fries" special leaves much to be desired.

atara has learned that I like unconventional foods, but she will often put her foot down when I try to accommodate some of my more outlandish tastes when we are out shopping together. You only want to buy that because you know it grosses me out! For some reason though, that changes completely when she is out shopping by herself. Far from shunning the unusual, she will make a beeline to the most outlandish, disgusting-sounding food products she can find on display and grab one thinking, I'll bet plonq would like this in his lunch.

To be honest, I think that she is just testing my limits; she has this morbid fascination with finding the threshold of my gag factor.

Look what I bought for you dear, it's curried goat cheese with pineapple, capers and anchovies and a crushed anise crust!

I am sure that she will be disappointed to learn that the tub of baby octopuses in an oil & vinegar base isn't half bad. There is a bit much in the package for one sitting (I ate about half and put the rest in the refrigerator here), but I've had much worse nosh in my lifetime. I only wish that I'd thought to bring a camera.