Leftover Poke Breakfast

Note:  for those who do not know, poke, pronounced poh-kay, is cubed seafood, usually raw yellowfin tuna (ahi), salmon, or cooked octopus (tako) that is mixed with seasonings, sauces, and/or toppings like chopped onion or seaweed.  Poke in Hawaiian simply means "to slice or cut".

Recently Caroline's cousins Vi and Val were visiting the Big Island with their families, so we popped over for a couple of days.  After Val and her husband Rob picked us up from the airport, Rob offered to make us some quick breakfast with some leftover poke.  He had picked up this easy recipe when buying some poke (which he does every day when he visits the islands) and asked what to do with any leftovers.  He was told to cook in a frying pan for breakfast his leftover poke, leftover rice, and some eggs.  The combination was brilliant.

Shortly afterwards, we were in need of a quick dinner because I had an early hockey game, and so Caroline picked up some poke.  She intentionally got more than we needed, so the next morning we made the dish.  It took all of 5 minutes to cook in the pan, and all I did was toss in the poke and rice, then crack the eggs over the mixture.  While it was cooking, I was mixing the eggs in to make them scrambled.  Even though this is so simple, it is tasty as you mix the eggs and rice with the fish, and the spices and flavorings of the poke mean that you don't need to add anything more.

Close-up of final product.  The ahi did not get over cooked, helping the fantastic taste.

Vietnamese beef stew

A good thing about having Hawaiian health insurance is the Island Scene magazine that shows up every quarter, bringing a bit of paradise to this windswept corner of New England.  Each issue has two or three ostensibly healthy recipes; one issue from last winter had an intriguing Vietnamese beef stew recipe that we didn't get to try until today.  It turned out to be a fantastic comfort food, perfect no matter if your winter days are 58°F (Hawaii) or 28°F (here).

• The original recipe makes enough for 8, so we cut ours in half.  We still ended up using about a pound and a half of beef tri-tip, 3 star anise, and 2 stalks of lemongrass.
• We had half of a jalapeño in the fridge, so we used that instead of chili peppers.  Because I was the one slicing all of the ingredients, I only used about half of the seeds, but I'd probably just leave all the seeds in next time; it wasn't THAT spicy the way we did it today.
• Next time, I'd add less salt and cut down the amount of fish sauce: the sauce overpowered many of the other flavours.  I'd cut it back to maybe a tablespoon for the half recipe.  Or maybe I should get a better-quality fish sauce that doesn't taste like mostly salt.
• I thought the inclusion of tomato paste was kind of odd, and then when I actually added it in I was convinced it was a poor idea because my pot now resembled something Italian as opposed to something Vietnamese.  But after cooking for an hour, the pot no longer looked like a thin pasta sauce and since the final dish was so tasty, I figured the tomato paste was a worthwhile addition.  Possibly something to reduce a bit for the next time we make the stew so that it doesn't overpower other flavours.
• I have a bunch of candied ginger from some recent baking projects, so instead of buying fresh, I just sliced up some of the candied stuff and reduced the added sugar called for in the recipe. For what it's worth though, it was the kind of candied ginger that is not coated in sugar crystals.
• Homemade bread goes VERY WELL with this.

We had to buy star anise and lemongrass for this, but it was a great excuse to finally try some new spices.

The stew has some great flavour: so much so that I declared that I didn't need anything for dessert this evening, which is something incredibly rare for me to say (usually I'm all "Ice cream?  Macarons?  Pie?  Fruit?  Dried fruit?  Cereal?  Chocolate chips?  All of the above?").  We both agreed that this stew was definitely something to make again, especially since we'll probably have to put up with a couple more New England winters before we can move out to Honolulu. :)

Seriously: so tasty.

Hawaiian shrimp curry

Shortly before we left Ann Arbor, we discovered Indian food (it just took us a little while), thanks to the wonderful Cardamom Restaurant that opened in April near our old apartment.  Emboldened by this 'new' discovery, Dom immediately declared that we had to try making a curry.  It took us a couple of months and a change of residence to make that happen, but we finally tried a shrimp curry recipe.  It's from a cookbook written by a mother and daughter originally from Hawaii, but who had started a Hawaiian cafe in Ann Arbor a number of years ago.  As far as I can tell the cafe is no longer in business, since I would have found it by now if it were.

This was a great first effort, though of course there is room for improvement.  Our notes:

• We did not take the time to make shrimp shell broth as the recipe called for.  Not only did we not have any shrimp shells, having opted for the convenience of the peeled and deveined shrimp, but we used the suggested substitute of chicken broth.  No doubt the dish would have been even better with the shrimp broth, or even chicken stock we'd made ourselves.
• Our curry did not thicken much.  At first I thought it may have been a mistake with the amount of fat originally in the pan; we had started with probably a tablespoon of olive oil, when the recipe called for 2 tablespoons of butter.  (I hastily added about a tablespoon of butter upon realizing that I was making a sauce.)  Thanks to a chat with my mom I now realize that there may not have been enough flour in the recipe for the amount of liquid.  2 tablespoons of flour for 2 cups of chicken broth + half a can of coconut milk....or, maybe I'm just not good at making a white sauce.
• Slightly put off by negative press regarding the health of coconut-derived foods that aren't coconut water, I had opted for the 'lite' coconut milk, but I probably more than made up for that with the addition of some half and half into the curry.
• The addition of a bit of salt at the end (not called for in the recipe) did measures for the flavour.
• The Simply Organic curry powder was fine for beginners like us: pretty mild and very slightly spicy.  Next time we buy a jar of curry powder, we should try to get something a little more adventurous.
• Sort of a cookbook pet peeve of mine: when ingredients are not listed in the order they are used in the recipe.  This wreaks havoc with my organisation of ingredients prior to cooking.

The final result was extremely tasty, and we will definitely see what other kinds of curries we can make.

Shirley Tong Parola and Lisa Parola Gaynier, Remembering Diamond Head, Remembering Hawaii (1999), p. 209
Writeup background music: Jack Johnson, From Here to Now to You (2013)

Unrelated to food, but related to the writeup background music.  We saw Jack Johnson (not that Jack Johnson) at the Life Is Good Festival on the 22nd.  He played "Sweet Caroline" probably because the festival was held outside Boston, but it was like an early birthday present for me!

Creamy Chicken and Dumplings

On day recently as I was cleaning out the mixing bowl from making pizza dough, I mixed some water with the excess flour and decided to try the raw dough that formed.  I enjoyed it so much that I decided to make a dumpling dish without looking at a recipe.  Chicken was the easiest thing to add, and it quickly became a creamy chicken and dumpling thing.  I started by cooking the chicken with some chicken broth.  Then, I added some dumplings made from the following dough  (inspired by pizza dough):

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• olive oil (I didn't measure)
• ~ 1/3 cup of water - I just added water until I had the dough consistency I wanted

Once the dumplings started cooking, Caroline added some cream and sour cream we had in the fridge to complete the dish.

Result:  a pretty tasty dish, though the dumplings were quite dense.  Next time, I might think about making them with milk, or possibly smaller.  I don't know - I still have to think about how to make them less dense.  This is something I'll probably try again, but I won't subject Caroline to my experiments without trying them first myself.

Dumplings just added.

Cooking along with cream added.

Bowl o' food!

Irish Stew

This is a hearty stew for the coldest of winter days on the Emerald Isle (or in the Mitten).  This is another recipe from our favorite Joy of Cooking (pp. 496).  This is a lamb stew, and we were able to pick up some lamb chops at our local Kroger to throw in.  The result was very tasty.

Notes:

• Quantity - the recipe called for 3 pounds of stew lamb.  As Kroger did not have stew lamb, we picked up a couple of packages (~ 2 lbs total) of some bone-in lamb chops, which seemed to work quite well.  We didn't really scale back the amount of vegetables, but that can't hurt, right?
• Liquid - the recipe said to use either chicken stock, dark stout, or water.  We opted for about half-and-half chicken stock and stout (Murphy's Stout - 'twas a bit less expensive than Guinness but still tasty - just not if you ask Caroline ;-) ).  This seemed to work out well, and helped it taste close to the Irish Stew at Conor O'Neill's (on Main St. in AA).
• Thickening potatoes - we sliced up some potatoes that were supposed to disintegrate and thicken the stew, but this didn't work.  In discussing why it didn't work, we came up with the theory.  The time we've had potatoes thicken a stew we cooked it on the stove - this recipe had us cook the stew for an hour and a half in a Dutch oven in the oven.  Perhaps the stew needs to cook harder for this to work, or else you have to slice the potatoes really thin.

Pictures!

Before going in the oven.

Ready for consumption (the carrots are added after an hour in the oven).

Verdict - a very tasty dish that makes good left overs and should be made to warm body and soul!

Braised chicken with nuts and dates

Whenever Caroline reads a book about some type of food, she usually wants to make something with it. So recently, she read this book about dates, and thus wanted to buy some at the store. A couple of days later, we weren't sure of what to make, and then remembered that we had chicken and we had dates, so we had a recipe to try.

Notes:

• The recipe called for ground walnuts, but we didn't use any. Still seemed to taste just fine.
• The recipe also called for crushed coriander seeds. As we didn't have any of these, we just threw a bit of cilantro in. This tasted just fine to us, so no need to use a plant's seeds when you have it's leaves! (Not actually going to claim this as a general rule...)
• This was a pretty easy recipe - didn't take long to make and didn't require much prep work.

Verdict: Would definitely make again. This is a very tasty dish that is also easy. Bonus!

It may look a little monochromatic, but it was certainly tasty. -CPYP

Dates: A global history, p. 118 (Nawal Nasrallah; 2011; London: Reaktion Books)

Genoese Minestrone

Since it's been getting cooler, we figured it would be a great time to try making soup.  A quick survey of what ingredients we had versus ingredients called for in various recipes convinced us to try a minestrone recipe.  This turned out great and we had leftovers - enough to enjoy, but not so much that we didn't like the soup anymore.  Pernfect.

From World Kitchen - Italy

Notes:

• This does take some time to make - there is a lot of prep work involve in cutting up vegetables to go in the soup.  However, some effort was reduced by buying pre-cubed prosciutto (instead of pancetta) from Kroger.  Overall, this was an afternoon project.
• Instead of borlotti beans, we added some red kidney beans that were still around from making red beans and rice a little while back.  We also used some Italian cut green beans instead of runner beans (might actually be the same thing).
• Deletions: cabbage (we didn't want to buy one to just use 1/8-1/4), pesto, and Parmeasan cheese.  The pesto and cheese are meant to be added when served, and so were not viewed as necessary.
• The recipe said to just peel the potatoes and add them in whole, but we used cubed unpeeled redskin potatoes.  This seemed to work out just fine, and it goes along with our tendency to only peel potatoes when necessary (which is rare).
• We used some Barilla mini penne that we had instead of ditalini, but it seemed just fine.  The pasta will get softer and mushier for the leftovers, but it will still be very good!

Cooking the onions, prosciutto, sage, and parsley; already smelling great.

Then you cook the vegetables a bit before adding the chicken broth.

Delicious finished soup, ready to be consumed.

Verdict:  Would definitely make again.  The end result is definitely worth the prep work.

World Kitchen - Italy (2010), p. 24-25

Chicken paprikash

This experiment came about from three factors:

1. We had a container of sour cream in the fridge that I didn't know what to do with.
2. We always want to broaden our culinary horizons.
3. Captain Sisko cooked chicken paprikash on a recent episode of Deep Space Nine that we watched ("Family Business"--of course, Sisko was still a Commander at the time...).

Joy of Cooking gave us a relatively easy recipe to go on, and we even had a good supply of sweet paprika to use.  This turned out to be incredibly tasty and not too spicy.  We would definitely make this again, which is typically my criterion for deeming whether or not a recipe is a keeper.

Our notes:

• This was a straightforward recipe, but not one for a hot day; though we used only one skillet, that particular burner on the stove was on for the entire cooking time and I had to be standing there for most of that time.  Fortunately we managed to keep the smoke detector from going off (it's gone off from us boiling pasta in the past).
• We used chicken tenders rather than the "3 1/2 to 4 1/2 pounds of chicken parts" called for in the recipe.  This definitely cut down on the prep work and cooking time, and they didn't dry out in the cooking or anything.
• In the interest of using the sour cream as quickly as possible, I probably put in more than was called for; would definitely cut back next time.
• There was, not surprisingly, a large quantity of paprika in this: 1/4 cup for the full recipe, and 2 Tbsp. for a half.  It gave the dish just enough spice to prevent us from finishing our plates in a hurry--always a good thing.
• We served this over rice, but it would probably work just as well with spätzle, egg noodles, potatoes, or other dumplings.

Flavourful!

Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 431-432

Tagine

Inspired by a friend who lived in Morocco during her stint with the Peace Corps, I've wanted to try tagine ever since she mentioned it in her own blog.  I found at stovetop version at Allrecipes which looked easy enough and would only require us to buy a few things we wouldn't have bought normally.  I really don't know if this particular recipe is authentic in any way, but it afforded us the opportunity to try something new.

This was an interesting flavour combination and I was a little hesitant at first, but by the time the title sequence came up for the episode of Deep Space Nine* we were watching, I was a big fan.  I'd make it again so long as we purchase a vegetable peeler before trying to peel a butternut squash (see our notes).  Also, that will not be my job.

Our notes:

• Butternut squash is tough.  This was the first time I'd purchased one myself and probably will be the last that I try to peel with a knife.  I'm not a fan of risking severe injury in the name of food.
• Coriander is cilantro--didn't know that one.  We didn't miss it in the stew, but it would have been nice to know at the time.
• We added dried cherries for a bit of sweetness, and also because we didn't have any other dried fruit like apricots.  This added another layer to a dish already containing an amalgam of flavours.
• Store-brand vegetable broth works just fine, which is nice because the Kroger down the street doesn't have any other brand of vegetable broth for some reason.

Our stovetop, hard-anodized, Calphalon version of a tagine (pot).
Also known as the "3-quart covered saute pan".

Served over rice because that's the staple grain for us.

*We're halfway through Season 3, and I am so excited to watch the series all the way through with Dom since it's one of my all-time favourite television shows.