skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Started with olive oil and chili pepper flakes in a hot pan. Then I added some garlic. As soon as the garlic was stirred in I added a few skinned tomatoes that I had frozen from the summer. I mashed those in and let that sauce simmer while my pasta and haddock cooked. I then finished everything off (chard, basil, and slightly undercooked pasta) in the empty pasta pot over some heat.
The key to chicken fried rice is cooking the rice plenty early and letting it cool off completely so each grain stays separate during the frying. I'm sure we've all been served some sort of fried rice at home or someone else's home that was not fried at all. Plain rice (or Gold help us, Minute Rice) combined with onion, mushrooms, and green peppers mixed in with a gallon of VH soy sauce. K, back to it. Cooling the rice allows the rice to fry at high heat without falling apart or mooshing together. The rice gets to settle and reabsorb any outside liquid and firm up some, much like meat does after letting it rest after cooking. Something I like to do is infused oil with flavours and then use that oil to fry the rice. I slice up some fresh ginger, garlic, chili pepper, and throw some star anise in a pot with oil and let simmer with the lid on as soon as I start my rice. I remove the lid to let any moisture escape near the end when I'm ready to start cooking. Then, meat and then quickly veggies go into a pan or wok at high heat. I then add the eggs, rice, toasted sesame seeds, and then finish with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, and fish sauce. I top it off with green onion (I didn't have any today but I did have chives) and some toasted sesame seeds.
I don't have a picture. Chili pretty much isn't the best looking dish but it is packed with so many flavours. I first browned local sirloin beef and local ground beef in a stew pot with some olive oil. I did this browning in several stages to make sure all the meat had a secure spot to some hot metal.
I chopped up carrot, celery, and onion along with several cloves of garlic from Trisha's grandfather's garden (this garlic is in the ground now for us next year in our back yard).
I made a fresh chili seasoning with paprika, ancho chili powder, cumin, coriander, dried hot chilis, dried mustard seed, oregano, pepper, and salt. Several of those were whole and toasted and then everything was ground up in a mortar and pestle.
The veggies were sweated out after the beef. They were removed and I de-glazed the pot with what was leftover in a hot chipotle salsa jar we got at the City Market last week and some water to clear the jar. The smell coming from the pot was amazing at this point with the salsa, vegetable, and browned beef aromas. Everything was added back in. Then, about 6 large tomatoes I had frozen from a local farm were blanched to remove the skins and added in. They dissolved and mixed in with everything else.
Simmered this with a couple bay leaves for quite awhile and then added dark chocolate, cocoa powder, and sugar. Trisha made some bread.
A great dish for a windy rainy Sunday.
This beef stew started yesterday evening. Actually, it started a few days ago when I made chicken stock that was used in the broth for this dish. I'll leave the chicken stock alone and just say later when I added it.
Beef, mostly shank with the bone and some various other stew-type cuts locally-raised. Browned, deeply after a salt & pepper seasoning. Then, your typical stock/broth/soup fixings were added in such as onion, celery, and carrot. Garlic, bay leaves, whole black peppercorns, rosemary, annato seeds, one dried thai-style chili pepper, the chicken stock, and a bit of salt all simmered with the beef for several hours. I then put that away for the night.
Then, this evening I heated this mixture back up, removed the carrots and beef. I then let the rest drain through a cheesecloth while pushing out as much liquid as possible. The carrots were mashed finely and then I started putting everything back together. Beef, the mashed carrots, fresh carrots (from the garden), turnip (from the garden), and waxy potatoes (from the garden), the broth, and then topped off with a bit of red wine and water. I let the new veggies cook halfway with the lid on and halfway with the lid off. The mashed carrots and having the lid off helped thicken the broth of this stew. Some fresh kosher salt and ground pepper were added a few minutes before serving. Trisha made some bread today as you can see.
Very, very satisfying meal.
Visit [here] to see an article I just started contributing to this week. Every two weeks I'll be doing restaurant reviews with brufrog. Should be fun.
Chicken quarters, my favourite part of a chicken, were browned deeply in olive oil and its own fats. After flipping once I added a few crushed garlic cloves, sage, and thyme with a decent amount of butter. I then basted the chicken with the seasoned butter and left the garlic, sage, and thyme land where it did on the chicken. I then transferred the chicken to my oven at 300 degrees.
We made some risotto with bacon, wine, and chicken stock I made the day before.
The carrots were steamed and from my garden. They were finished in a bit of butter, salt and pepper, and some fresh basil from the garden.
I drained off some of the fat from the cast iron pan the chicken was cooked in. Removed the herbs but squeezed the soft garlic out of skin and crushed that with some chicken stock and let reduce for a sauce.
Curry soup from Infusion.
Panko chicken wing and pot sticker from Boilerworks.
What the sign says from Acadian Sturgeon and Caviar Inc..
Chicken pesto pizza with goat cheese from pomodori.
"Fish & Chips". Parsnip frites, pan fried haddock, and tartar sauce foam from Saint John Ale House.
