Well citizens of the Internet I realize it has been well over a year since I last brushed the cobwebs off this ol blog and put something up for your enjoyment. A major part of that was that I moved. Not around the corner but to a whole new continent. While life h been interesting and I certainly have continued cooking and experimenting my limited kitchen made my creations more feats of innovation with limited resources rather than actually nifty new recipes. If you are interested I can give you the (stinky) scoop on how to make kimchi, introduce you to the deliciousness that are lotus root chips and give you a lesson or two in how to make anything from roast chicken to carrot cake in a toaster oven… But that is not why I am posting today.
In a few short weeks my companion and I are going to be reunited and begin a rather epic journey. I have decided to use this lovely, and previously creation focused blog to make note and commentary in our trip.
Posts and places to look forward to:
Jeju do- an island in the south of Korea
Kathmandu, Nepal (and surrounding cities and villages)
Bangladesh and the Sunderbans mangrove forest
Thailand in all of it’s many parts
Laos- Vientiane, jungles and waterfalls
Cambodia – cities, villages and the thrills of land travel
Vietnam – history, culture and nature
Malaysia – Kuala Lumpur, villages and where ever else we care to go.
Japan – Tokyo, Osaka and the bullet train between
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Tags: Travel, update
So this last month was madness and so I often found myself looking into the fridge and thinking how can I get the most nutritional value (and balanced meal) out of the weird and wonderful assortment of thing that end up in my fridge. These recipes were cued off by the discovery of ground turkey meat and celery. I though well stuffing is delicious, and that is mostly just bread, celery, onions and spices. I can totally make a loaf out of that! The vegetarian option came from my non-meat eating roommate coming into the kitchen at exactly that moment looking quiet crestfallen that I was, get again making a delicious meaty meal that he wouldn’t be able to partake in. Anyways here they are!
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Tags: dinner, easy meal, food
Cram! Chicken Rolls
I know I have been very bad about updating over the past month so here you go friends, but that is changing now. Now some of these posts are for things that I made and wrote down but didn’t have the presence of mind to photograph them. While I am sure that I will make these recipes again and (hopefully) think to take pictures of the making and finished products I figured why make you wait for pictures. So here you go! And we will start with these tasty curry inspired chicken rolls,
Half a flat of ground chicken
1 thinly sliced leak
2 ground carrots
1 small shredded bok choy
1/3 cup plain yogurt
2 tbs curry powder
1 tbs salt
1 tbs garlic powder
1 tbs tumeric
1 tbs paprika
1/8 cup veg stock
2 tbs vegetable oil
Egg Roll Wraps
Heat the vegetable oil in a fry pan over medium heat. Mix in chicken and vegetable stock and spices into the pan, break up the chicken and cook. after 4 minutes or so add in the leaks and carrots.
After 8 minutes or so add the bok choy. Stir it in and let it cook.
Once it is all cooked take it off heat and set aside to cool.
Mix 2 tbs corn starch into some warm water.
Brush this along the edges of the wrap. Spoon some of the filling into the center. Fold two opposing corners in towards the center then roll it up!
Fry, bake or microwave to reheat!
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Tags: Chicken, dinner, food
Chocolate peanut butter cookies!
So, it is November. A dark and dreary time of year in students life, and so to combat the feeling of absolute hopelessness I made some cookies. But not just any cookies. These are the mother load and so to not keep you from these delicious things a moment longer I give to you the recipe!
You Will Need
1 1/2 cups flour
6 Tbs coca powder
1 Tbs baking soda
A dash of salt
3/4 cup butter at room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter (I used all natural pb)
1 tbs vanilla
1 large egg
Mix the flour, salt, coca, and baking soda together in one bowl and set aside.
In another bowl cream the butter, peanut putter, sugars and vanilla together and light and fluffy. Add in the egg.
Then add in the dry ingredients gradually. Mix in the chocolate peanut butter cups, or chocolate chips, or nuts, really whatever you like.
Roll into 1.5-2 inch balls then flatten Ito cookie shape and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake in the oven at 359 degrees C for 12-14 minutes. Let cool for about 5 and then enjoy!
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Pho!
So, one major down side of small town living is the limited range of food to chose from. Now this morning I woke up with those tell tale feelings that you are getting a cold. Now my natural response to feeling a cold coming on is to run to the closest Vietnamese food place and get a giant bowl of pho. Of course, being where I am there is no local Vietnamese place, or any vague proximity.
Therefore, I made pho! And this is how I did it.
You will need
2 cup water
6 cups stock
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
1 tsp keffir lime powder (though if you can use 1 fresh keffir lime leaf)
1/3 cup rock sugar (I just uses raw sugar)
5 cardamom pods
1 stalk lemongrass
Sriracha sauce or chili flakes
Your choice of meat (I used two cubed chicken breast)
1/2 cup fish sauce
a few slices of fresh ginger root
3 cloves of mashed garlic
Vermicelli rice noodles
Blanched, soaked bean sprouts
Green onion
Toss in everything other than the chicken, noodles, bean sprouts and green onions. Let it simmer for 30 minutes on medium to low heat. Strain out the larger chunks and add the chicken. Let it continue to simmer until the chicken is cooked.
Prepare the noodles as instructed on their packaging.
Put it all in a bowl and enjoy!!
Filed under: Culinary Exploration, Good Ideas | 2 Comments
Tags: Chicken, cure, soup, Veitnamese
Experiementations
So, this weekend I came to the realization that my school schedule has so affected my eating habits that even though I had a bunch of fresh produce that I (quite excitedly) bought last weekend, had miraculously not been cooked. There for the task of using as many ingredients as possible fell heavily to my shoulders.
One creation that I came up with was grated sweet potatoes, finely chopped spanish onions, garlic, eggs, flour, smoked paprika, and brown sugar. I fried it and it was delicious, although it fell apart, I deep fired it and it was delicious, but fell apart and I have baked it into cups. This is the form that I will probably end up serving because this flavor combo is just too good, but I don’t really know what to do with it. Anyways Thoughts?
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Spiced Chickpea Snack
These are some simple and delicious snacks, great for studying on an autumn day. You will have to watch it closely because it can easily go from perfectly roasted to burned and hard pretty quickly. Continue reading ‘Spiced Chickpea Snack’
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Delicious Raspberry shake!
Hey guys, I just whipped this baby up and it was delicious so I thought I would share. Sorry I have been more absent lately. I am rather busy right now but I am expecting that some day soon I will have an explosion of pent-up culinary energy. So watch out. haha
What you will need
1/3 cup of raspberries
1/3 cup of vanilla yogurt
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup simple syrup. (or water with 1 tsp sugar/to taste)
BLEND!
Enjoy folks!
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Tags: Drink, raspberry, vanilla
Curried Lentil Soup!
Continuing on my quick, easy, cheep and filling theme I found what looked like a delicious soup on tastespotting the other day and decided to give it a go. With winter fast approaching I see this becoming a staple with my carrot ginger soup and stone soup. I was also so eager to give this soup a try I forgot to get a final product photo, but you ca n take me at my word when I say this is definetly worth a try.
I got this recipe from http://www.simplebites.net/eat-well-spend-less-five-ways-with-lentils-curried-lentil-soup/
You Will Need
2 TbS coconut oil
1 tbs curry powder (of your choice)
2 tbs minced garlic
1 large sweet onion, chopped
5 cups of stock/water
1 1/2 cups lentils
1/2 cups coconut milk
1 tsp salt
Garnish with Plain Yogurt
In a large pot over low heat put the coconut oil, curry powder, garlic and onion and allow to simmer for 6-10 minutes
Once the onions start looking opaque then add in the stock (and or water mix) and the lentils. Let them simmer over low heat for around an hour ( although the recipe I used said it could be done in 20-50 I found that my lentils took a long time to cook and I didn’t mind having extra tender lentils)
Then remove the pot from heat, add the coconut milk and sea salt then blend it all together!
I used some plain yogurt as my garnish, which worked as a great new flavor to the soup. The tang of the yogurt mixed with the lentil flavor was superb! Let me know what you think of it!
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Tags: comfort food, Curry, dinner, lentil, soup, vegitarian
Flame On Indian Campfire Dinner!
I have been trying to get the most out of the end of the summer these last few weeks. This has led my friends and I to go out to one of the local beaches on a very regular basis. The other day we hatched a plan to make dinner together every Sunday night, and since we had the idea on the beach we also though it would be a good idea to cook out on the beach as well.
We decided on an indian theme. I was assigned making the curry/tandoori chicken, we also had people bring naan and biryani rice. We set up a camp fire out on a point in a small bay, by using the rocks on the beach we made a ring around the pit which we used to cook on.
For the chicken I made two different dishes. I got chicken legs which I put in a tandoori marinade and some cubed chicken breast which I placed in a butter chicken marinade. The breasts were placed on skewers and grilled over the fire, we put the legs in a grill cage ($9 at Can-tire, great investment). The meat was tender and delicious!
I got both of these recipes from the Epicurious application for my iPhone. You should also be able to find them on the Epicurious website (www.epicurious.com) Continue reading ‘Flame On Indian Campfire Dinner!’
Filed under: Culinary Exploration, Good Ideas | 3 Comments
Tags: Campfire, camping, Curry, dinner, Fire, Indian, poi, tandoori
Oh! The Things You Will Make 