Thai red coconut curry stir-fry

I made this Tuesday night (leftovers were gone by lunch Wednesday) and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.  It's been a very lazy week at home since I joined the sisterhood of hospital staff who worked on Christmas Day.

A couple of months ago, I made my first Thai coconut curry, based on a recipe I found online, and was disappointed enough with the result that I didn't bother to write about it.  I just ate the leftovers very sulkily at work over the next couple of days.  Later, I got a little curious about this "red coconut curry" that I'd heard about, looked for a recipe that seemed reliable, went out and got some Thai Kitchen red curry paste and some fresh veggies and got down to bidniss.

This recipe was my starting point, and the author helpfully suggests alternatives based on meat-eating status and availability of seasonal produce.  I replaced the chicken and chicken broth with tofu and veggie broth (and skipped the fish sauce), and my veggie selection was different as well.  I picked up a red bell pepper, some baby carrots and a head of broccoli and sliced up the last few mushrooms I had in a package from something else I'd made a few days prior (don't even remember anymore) and pretty much followed their instructions.  Oh, I also used lime juice instead of lemon and didn't worry about the basil.  When the stir-fry was ready (I took a picture of it in the pan because it was just so pretty!), I served it over a bed of rice noodles.  Delicious! 

Of course, if you're not a vegetarian, you could make it exactly as shown in the original recipe, but the nice thing about this and so many other recipes is that it lends itself to substitution.  Maybe try it with shrimp instead of chicken?  I dunno.  The only thing I'd say is that if you actually want to have leftovers, use slightly larger quantities of veggies and meat/tofu/whatever, because it cooks down a good bit and there was only one leftover portion for the next day's lunch.  (Guess who ate it?)  And if you use broccoli like I did, be sure to stir it in near the end, since it takes very little time to cook and you don't want it to be mushy by the time the dish is ready to serve.  I added the broccoli at about the same time as the cornstarch mixture, and it came out just right.

Well, this is probably it for 2011.  If you're in the Columbia area, I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow morning at the Cold Winter's Day 5K or tomorrow night on Main Street, where George Clinton will be kicking off 2012 P-Funk style!

Stay warm and be safe, everyone!

Fun with radishes

Here are my radishes - the first veggies I ever grew from seeds!

I was pretty anxious to use them once they were out of the ground and washed, because I've noticed in the past that radishes can dry out after just a few days in the fridge.  So, I replayed the radish sambhar recipe here but left out the bell pepper (didn't have any), used more radish than the recipe called for (all the ones pictured above) and used extra yellow split peas in place of the toor dal that I was fresh out of.  I also had a bunch of cilantro that all went in at the end.  Word to the wise: when making any recipe using yellow split peas plus veggies, start cooking the yellow split peas about 15 minutes before the rest since they take a while to soften completely (about 45 minutes).  Here's how it turned out, served over brown rice:

I also figured I'd be cheating myself if I didn't come up with a use for the greens as well.  I have a recipe on file for a pureed radish green and potato soup, but another use came to mind that also allowed me to dispense of half a block of tofu, a package of mushrooms, a zucchini and about four carrots that I had no other plans for: the hot pots that I first made back in January for Steve's birthday.  The broth was pretty much the same as before.  The rest included sliced mushrooms, zucchini and carrots cut into matchsticks, cubed tofu, the last of my rice stick noodles and radish greens sliced into ribbons.  I sauteed the carrots to soften them up a little before assembling the dish. 

Yummy as always, with or without sriracha!

This week's looking like it will be too hot for soup, so be on the lookout for some sort of salad recipe that will use at least one ingredient from the garden.  Stay cool everybody!

Steve's Birthday and Week in Review

Hmm...blogging more than once per week is turning out to be easier said than done.  I suppose that if this blog covered more than cooking, like my workouts and restaurant experiences, I'd have more to blog about.  As it turns out, last week's sambhar plus some other leftovers carried me into the middle of the week, so I quit cooking for a while so I could dispense with the leftovers.  By Thursday, I was getting too busy to cook again, so I actually ate frozen dinners, like, three nights in a row.  By Friday I decided that I was sick of frozen and I wanted to cook, so I skipped yoga in order to stay home and replay the sweet potato spinach praram.  Excellent fuel for the 10-mile run I did on Saturday morning!

For Saturday's lunch, I borrowed this recipe for garlic greens and white beans (pictured above) to finish off a big bag of kale but substituted black-eyed peas for the white beans because that's what I had in the cupboard.  And Romano cheese instead of the Parmesan, not that there's much difference between the two.


I didn't cook again over the weekend because we had ample lunch leftovers and we dined out on Saturday, Sunday and Monday for our birthday weekend - my birthday was yesterday, and Steve's is today.  So...I cooked for Steve and presented a couple of options for which I had already grocery shopped.  Steve's preference was the Chinese hot pots, so that's what I made.  The only deviations from this recipe were that I made it vegetarian (skipped the chicken pieces and used Better than Bouillon vegetable base instead of chicken broth) and made about a third of this recipe, since I didn't know how well any leftover rice stick noodles would keep.  I also added broccoli and cilantro as recommended in this spicy Thai soup recipe.  It turned out well, and for having over a dozen ingredients, it came together pretty fast.  Which was good, since we were both hungry early this evening.

Soon to come...more seasonal veggie goodness!

Sweet potato and spinach praram

This post is short and sweet because it concerns a recipe I actually made without tweaks.  Said recipe was previously posted by my new favorite food blogger, the BrokeAss Gourmet.  I just happened to have a couple of sweet potatoes that didn't get used over Thanksgiving, and between this, the steady supply of fresh spinach in our house and the availability of at least half the other ingredients, I only had to go out and buy 6 or 7 things in order to make it. 

Not exactly what I'd call "brokeass" - in leaner, hungrier times, when my weekly grocery budget was $25, I wouldn't have spent $13 on groceries for 2-3 meals worth of food.  And I don't know where BrokeAss shops, but I paid $3 for several items that were priced at $2, and I don't think I've ever seen a 6 oz. can of coconut milk.  That would be my preference, too, since every can I get is 13-14 ounces and any recipe I use typically only needs 6-8 ounces.  Oh, well.  At least there were enough basic ingredients left over tonight that I'll be able to make this again within a week.  That's the brokeass life as I know it.