Kids Dish

I saw a recipe on a blog for a spaghetti pie of sorts. Maybe it was called a strata. Maybe it was called a torte. I don’t remember. I do remember thinking it looked like a good idea.

Yesterday I made a simple dinner with spaghetti and garbanzo beans. Since the box was more than enough for the three of us I left a portion of the spaghetti aside, planning to use it in a pie today. It seemed simple. Just spaghetti, maybe some sauteed onion and garlic, parmesan and eggs cooked in a pan.

I was feeling cocky and didn’t bother looking up a recipe. I sauteed the onion and threw in some cooked, chopped kale. I added the spaghetti, let it warm up a bit, then added the garlic. After I smelled the garlic I poured three beaten eggs into the skillet along with some thyme, oregano, parmesan, salt and pepper. I could tell by looking that things were not going to go as planned. But rather than wing it and start throwing more eggs or liquid into the skillet I decided to stay the course. I turned the heat to low hoping the eggs wouldn’t stick too badly and kept my fingers crossed. After a few minutes I could tell that the eggs had set. I tried to flip the egg/spaghetti pancake over all at once but I failed miserably. I flipped it as best I could and waited for it to finish cooking through.

It wasn’t pretty. It definitely didn’t make the pancake/strata/torte I’d envisioned, but it was good. I’d recommend it as a fine way to use up your pasta leftovers. Only I’d recommend looking up a recipe.

Want to know the real reason I’m so crock pot happy these days? I accidentally poured bacon grease in the oven and the cleaning cycle sets off the smoke detector so haven’t cleaned it yet. I preheated the oven to reheat some pizza the other night and it started to smoke so I turned off the oven and reheated the pizza a slice at a time in the toaster oven. I’m going to have to get on the cleaning before Thanksgiving, but until then the crock pot is working out quite nicely.

Today’s crock pot meal was Red Thai Curry with chicken. It was incredibly easy to assemble. It took about 15 minutes of prep before I just threw a bunch of ingredients into the crock pot and let it cook on low for 6 hours.

Red Thai Curry with Chicken
1 can coconut milk
1 teaspoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons red chili paste
1 tablespoon brown sugar
4-6 bone in chicken thighs (I used 2 whole chicken legs and 2 wings)
1 onion, chopped medium
2 sweet potatoes, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 jalapeno peppers, chopped small (seeded if you don’t like too much heat)

1 head of broccoli cut into florets

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
1/2 cup basil, chopped
2 tablespoons lime juice

Put the coconut milk, chili paste, fish sauce and sugar in the crock pot and stir it around. Add the next five ingredients and cook on low for 5 hours. Remove the chicken and let cool. Turn crock pot to high, add the broccoli and cook uncovered for 20 minutes. In the meantime, remove the chicken from the bone once you can handle it. Add the chicken back into the pot and cook ten minutes more. Add basil, cilantro and lime juice. Serve over rice.

I bought a flat iron steak on a whim from my meat buying club because it was relatively inexpensive and I somehow confused it with flank steak. When I saw it I realized that it was pretty small, not the type of steak I could split with Bob and serve with potatoes so it’s been in the freezer for a few months. Today I decided that even though it’s supposed to be grilled, and it’s not traditionally the right cut of meat for a stir, it was destined for a stir fry anyway.

I mixed up a quick Asian marinade and let it sit in the fridge for an hour or two. Then I threw it in a big, wok-like pan with some bok choy, broccoli and garlic while I cooked some brown minute rice. It took less than half an hour to get it on the table. Everybody liked it, including my mother who claims to hate vegetables and the unpredictable two-year-old.

1 flat iron steak cut into half-inch strips
2 heads of bok choy
1 head of broccoli
2 cloves garlic
1 inch ginger, grated
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar

For the marinade mix together:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Let the meat marinate, covered in the refrigerator for at least an hour and up to 24. Cut the broccoli into florets of similar size. If your broccoli has them, reserve the leaves. Separate the leaves from the stems of the bok choy. Cut the stems lengthwise, then cut into one inch pieces. Stack the leaves and cut into ribbons (with the broccoli leaves if you have them). Stir the sugar into the soy sauce until dissolved.

Heat two tablespoons of vegetable oil in a 12 inch skillet with high sides. Drain the meat and add when the oil is almost smoking. Cook until brown on one side, then flip. When the meat is almost cooked through add the boy choy stems and the broccoli florets. Cook for about three minutes, until the broccoli is bright green. Add the soy sauce mixture and leaves to the wok and stir. When the greens are wilted add the garlic and ginger and cook for about 30 seconds more. Serve over rice.

Since I started feeling sort of human again I’ve been in the mood for some Thai Red Curry. There’s something comforting about the sweet/hot combination and the Thai spices seem to clear the sinuses right up.

I wanted to make it on Saturday night but found we only had crème of coconut in the cupboard instead of plain coconut milk. This depressed me on more than one front. First of all, I wanted me some curry. Secondly, I was reminded of all of the pina coladas I can’t drink because I’m pregnant. Sadly, I resigned myself to a dinner of matzo ball soup.

Yesterday we picked up a few cans of coconut milk at the market so we were ready to go. But alas, last night we went to my in-laws’ house for a meal I thankfully didn’t have to cook. Instead of curry I ate a large meal of salty foods and gravy. It was comforting in its own way, but it wasn’t the Thai curry I wanted.

Tonight was the night. I had cooked chicken ready to go, green beans that needed to be used, fish sauce and brown sugar aplenty, coconut milk in stock, bottled lime juice, a mango, canned pineapple and fresh Thai basil. I opened the fridge to take out the last necessary ingredient, the red curry paste and sadly found a jar of green curry paste in its place.

I like green curries too, but it just wasn’t what I wanted. There’s no knowing if either of the supermarkets within a mile of my house carry red curry paste for sure so rather than run out and risk further frustration and disappointment I decided to go for it and make the green curry instead. It was good. Not what I was hoping for, but it was good. Tomorrow the leftovers will still be good and I’ll be glad that I made it. But the can of coconut milk remaining in the cupboard is ear marked for red curry. No substitutions.

Red Thai Curry

2 cans coconut milk (unsweetened, not coconut creme!)
2 tablespoons prepared red curry paste
2 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 cup of fresh cilantro or basil
juice of 1 lime
1/2 cup unsalted roasted peanuts (optional)

1 cup or more of vegetables of your choice (green beans, snow peas, bell peppers, peas, broccoli, and mushrooms all work well)
Chicken/meat/tofu/fish

Add 1 cup of coconut milk to a large dutch oven and whisk together with the curry paste until most of the liquid evaporates, about 5 minutes. Whisk in the rest of the coconut milk with the fish sauce and brown sugar and cook about 5 minutes more. Add whatever veggies, fruits, and meats you’d like and cook through. Remove the pot from the heat and mix in the lime juice and herbs. Serve over rice and top with peanuts.

Sam and I are both suffering through a virus right now. Our symptoms include runny noses, hurty coughs, and low (but high enough make us feel like crap fevers. The other day, after not eating much of anything for more than 24 hours I decided to suck it up and make some chicken soup.

I used to save every last bit of vegetable I didn’t feel like eating. That half of an onion I’d forgotten in the fridge, the sprouting garlic cloves, the wrinkled carrots long past their prime, the broccoli stalks Bob turns his nose up at, and the tips of green beans all made their way into freezer bags which I’d save to make stock with. Depending on the other contents of the freezer- if I’d been saving chicken parts as well- I’d use the bags to make either veggie stock or chicken stock.

Since I started composting over the summer the contents of my freezer have reduced accordingly. There are far fewer veggies making their way into the freezer, which sadly results in less flavorful stock. To make up the difference, I decided to give the bouquet garni a bit of an Asian twist. I threw in a hunk of ginger, a hot pepper, some whole cloves, allspice and mustard seed.
I used the general recipe I posted a while ago, only instead of a whole chicken I used chicken carcasses, backs, necks and wings I’ve been saving the past few months and threw in a whole chicken breast in the last forty minutes of cooking. I thought about adding rice noodles, but thinking of my sick little boy I threw in some regular noodles that he’s more used to instead. Honestly, I couldn’t taste a thing. But Sam loved it and Bob seemed to enjoy it too.

If you don’t already and you like to reduce, reuse and recycle, give the stock bag a try. You’ll use vegetables and/or chicken parts that would otherwise go to waste, and you’ll always have something on hand to make a big pot of soup with when you just don’t feel like eating anything else.

Getting back to a few things from last week, the bread recipe was a disaster. It did not rise. Maybe my yeast was dead? Maybe my kitchen was too cold? Perhaps I just screwed up the very simple recipe somehow? I will try again because I’m a glutton for punishment. I’ll let you know if round two is any better.

As for the Arroz Con Pollo, it was great. I ended up throwing in a ham steak from my freezer instead of the chorizo sausage and it worked out really well. Honestly, I don’t particularly care for ham. I don’t mind most pork products, but ham just tastes kind of gross to me. In this recipe I didn’t mind it, and Sam who’s still not much of a meat eater ate it too.

Arroz Con Pollo

*Check the instructions on the rice package for the proportions of liquid to rice. They can range from 1:1 to 2:1. If your rice calls for 2 cups of water for every cup of rice, then for this recipe, use 4 cups of stock for 2 cups of rice.

Remove from heat and let stand, covered, 5 minutes.

I’ve been tired and lazy and haven’t much felt like cooking. When I was pregnant with Sam I had a second trimester energy burst that led to me cooking and baking like crazy. Right now I’m in a second trimester slump that’s led to two nights in a row of pasta with jarred sauce and a night of pizza and french fries. I’m lacking energy and inspiration and Sam’s return to middle of the night wakeups isn’t helping matters much. But I took a large frozen whole chicken breast from my organic, pastured meats stash out to defrost and have no choice but to cook it since I can’t bear the idea of letting it go to waste. Looking for a one-pot meal I can cook before I head off to water aerobics tonight I decided on arroz con pollo.

Arroz Con Pollo, Rice with Chicken, is a Latin American favorite. When I taught high school in a predominantly Puerto Rican part of the city (90-some percent of my students were Puerto Rican and the rest were Dominican) many of our PTO-sponsored events served homemade, Latin American dishes. Arroz con Pollo was a staple. It was always deliciously seasoned, yet the cut up chicken parts were always flabby and greasy. I never tried to make the dish at home because as a rule, I generally try to avoid cooking anything that I know will be flabby and greasy.

But a recipe on one of my favorite cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen, turned up a recipe that looks and sounds neither flabby or greasy and stresses the importance of it being a one-pot dish. It unfortunately requires a number of ingredients I don’t have in the house and don’t feel like going out to get. (I’m too pregnant and tired to go out to the store again.)So I found another recipe, this one from Simply Recipes, that only requires things I have in the house. Combining the two is my best bet. I’ll post the adjusted recipe tomorrow.