Jade Chicken. Or, Why Fried Mint is Awesome

The first Asian cookbook I bought was Martin Yan's Quick and Easy.  Stir fry was one of the first cooking methods I attempted because it's quick and doesn't involve tons of prep work.  Initially, I failed to heat the oil hot enough, which resulted in below average stir fry.  Then, I read Yan's introduction in Quick and Easy and learned how to properly heat the oil to a high enough temperature.  Since I got a round bottomed wok, my stir fries are infinitely better.  If you have a gas stove, round bottomed woks are awesome. 

This recipe for Jade Chicken is one of the first stir fry dishes I ever made.  I still make it pretty often.  It's simple and the mixture of crispy fried mint and mint that was stirred into the sauce is unexpected and different.  The crispy fried mint is my favorite, and I usually make extra to put on top of the chicken.  The broccoli side dish is broccoli stir fried with ginger and Chinese cooking wine.  I love it because it takes 5 minutes to make.  Really.  5 minutes.  I make rice in my rice cooker, it's idiot proof and definitely one of my MVP kitchen appliances.  I'm not a huge fan of plain white rice, so I put a little rice vinegar in mine after I dish it out.

Before and After: Chicken Paprika

One of the very first cookbooks I bought was The Wine Lover's Cookbook, which is divided up by type of wine that pairs well with each dish.  Some of the dishes were extremely ambitious for someone learning how to cook.  When you don't really know what you're doing, an ingredient list with more than a dozen things can be pretty daunting.  But, I figured out that a lot of the ingredients for this Chicken Paprika with Almond Relish were spices and small things that got chopped up and tossed into a bowl, so I decided to give it a try.  It was also paired with viognier, which is one of my favorite types of white wine.  One of my favorite viogniers is Yalumba's Y Series Viognier.  It's fruity, but not too sweet like some Rieslings can be.  Also, the price is right at $15 or less. 

The picture below is from two nights ago.   After the jump is my version from 2007, guest starring Dave's lap.  When I was first learning how to cook, making more than one thing at a time was a little too complicated, so the result was a chicken breast plopped on a plate and covered some sauce and a ton of relish.  If you squint, you can see that there is, in fact, some chicken under the mountain of relish.  :)  The book suggests serving this with egg noodles or spaetzle and I always have egg noodles around, so now I put the chicken on top of egg noodles with caraway seeds mixed in. 

As the book says, having both hot and sweet paprika really makes this dish tasty.  Back in 2007, I omitted the mushrooms because Dave hated them.  Since then, he's decided he likes mushrooms so long as they're thinly sliced and not used as a meat substitute.  The mushrooms add a depth to the sauce that was lacking without them.  I don't really like peaches, and I've always got dried apricots around.  They're a good source of potassium and they keep forever.  So, my relish is always with apricots.  The caraway seed in the relish stops it from being too sweet and ties it into the sauce, which also has caraway seeds. 

"Black" Sesame Otsu

This picture is a little grainy because I had to use my phone.  In a moment of genius, I left my camera open all night and the battery died. 

Dave and I both love soba noodles, so I'm always looking for new recipes that use them.  Tofu is a bonus, so this recipe for Black Sesame Otsu looked interesting.  I had no idea what an otsu was, but from what the internet tells me, it's a soba noodle salad with vegetables. 

Comparing my picture to the one on 101 cookbooks, it's clear that my tofu didn't brown properly.  This is something I need to work on.  Usually when I attempt to brown tofu, it inevitably sticks to the pan like hair gel to a Jersey Shore cast member.  I think it's because I turn my heat up too high and don't add enough oil to the pan.  Regardless, I've read up on it and hopefully it will work properly next time. 

I have black sesame seeds, but not enough for the 1/4 cup I needed to make the sesame paste.  I used regular sesame seeds mixed with some black ones for color.  All black seeds would have looked better.  I used more cayenne than the original recipe called for.  Unfortunately, I omitted the pine nuts from the paste.  I bought some, and then accidentally used all of them in another meal. 

Overall, this was a quick, easy vegetarian meal that was more filling than it looked.  The sesame paste was more flavorful than I expected, I normally consider sesame to be very overpowering, but I could taste the vinegar and cayenne pepper.  

Grilled Chicken Tikka with Mint-Cilantro Yogurt Sauce

This is one of my Indian staples.  It doesn't take long to cook, but it needs to marinate for 2 hours before cooking, so I usually only make it on weekends.  The sauce is easy because it's of the Throw Everything in the Blender variety and is not cooked.  I like uncooked yogurt sauces because I can use nonfat yogurt and not worry about the separation that happens during cooking.  Plus, it makes this dish pretty healthy.  In my opinion, the step involving the melted butter can be omitted, I've done it before and it doesn't impact the taste significantly. 

The marinade for this dish is a little spicy.  Nothing that will kill you, but it has a nice kick to it.  Sometimes I add extra cayenne if I want it to be spicier than normal.  I used a grill pan instead of a real grill and it turned out fine.  The sauce is mild and cooling even though it has a jalapeno in it. I made a full recipe of sauce even though I made a half recipe of meat.  I like the sauce so much that I dump it on my leftover rice after I finish the chicken.  The original recipe recommends serving with naan, but I have yet to try the premade naan they sell at Wegmans.  Rice works fine, and using a rice cooker reduces the amount of active time for making this meal.  I love my rice cooker so, so much. 

Fresh Pasta with Lentils and Caramelized Onions

This is an easy to make vegetarian dish that has very few ingredients!  It can be made with fresh or dried pasta.  I bought some fresh, but the original recipe specifically called for dried.  Part of the theory for using dried pasta is that it cooks in the same pot as the lentils, which should add more lentil flavor.  So, my fresh pasta version is probably less earthy than what the recipe intended.  The first time I made it a few weeks ago, I thought it was a little bland, but that was very easily rectified with a few dashes of Aleppo pepper.  Regular crushed red pepper would work too.  The most important thing for the flavor of this dish is to really let the onions caramelize. 

As Close to Pi as I'm Going to Get

Yesterday was Pi Day, 3/14.  I should probably turn in my nerd card since I didn't bake a pie.  I think I've baked approximately 3 pies in my entire life (4 if you count the Meringue Debacle of 2003).  While they were good, they can't hold a candle to my mom's pies.  Last night I got home from work and had a choice.  I could attempt to cobble together some sort of pie-shaped thing with ingredients already in my pantry.  Or, I could just cook dinner and then play computer games.  I decided to make a dish that most closely approximated pi(e).  Behold, kofte kebab over crispy pita with tomato sauce and spiced yogurt!  I am the first to admit that this dish isn't the prettiest plate in the world, but it tastes awesome.  And although it requires a decent bit of chopping, the cooking time is relatively short, about 10 minutes for the lamb and tomato sauce.  The yogurt doesn't require cooking and is spooned on cold. Since it's not cooked, nonfat yogurt works just fine.  I adapted the yogurt sauce a little to make it more flavorful. 

Green Enchiladas

Aside from ground beef tacos, these green enchiladas were the first Mexican dish I tried to make.  I've been making them since 2006.  My first ones tasted great, but it's always been hard to get them on the plate looking nice.  Usually, they look like they were thrown onto the plate at an extreme velocity.  These were carefully plated by Dave; he's a master with a spatula.  The green salsa is made in the blender from canned salsa verde, cilantro, onion, and garlic.  Instead of using full-fat cream cheese, the recipe called for 1/3 less fat Neufchâtel cheese. These are (relatively) healthy and quite tasty!  Since the sauce doesn't require cooking, it's faster than the other enchiladas I make.  If you have leftover cooked chicken, or a rotisserie chicken sitting around, these would be even faster.