The Penalty Box

The best Portuguese chicken I’ve ever had is made in a restaurant in Macau. I had it during my trip to China and Hong Kong last year. The fact that it was stuffy as all hell and the air quality on a good day is worse than a Toronto summer did not detract from the food. It really was that good. I recently missed that, and while I in no way achieved anything close, what I made reasonably satisfied my need to eat some good Portuguese chicken. So below was my experimentation; enjoy.

Ingredients:

• 5 chicken thighs bone in, chopped into smaller pieces (you can use whatever chicken meat you want, I like dark meat)
• 1 big onion
• 5 nugget potatoes
• 1 can of cream of chicken
• half a can of coconut milk
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• olive/vegetable oil
• cornstarch, soy sauce, sugar, salt, pepper

Cooking directions:

1. Chop your chicken into pieces. Put it into a bowl with some cornstarch, soy sauce and sugar (probably a tablespoon or so of each, or enough to coat). Put in a teaspoon of salt and a couple teaspoons of ground pepper. Mix with your hands until coated. Let sit and marinade for 20-30 minutes.
2. Chop your onion into small-ish pieces. Small enough to fit in your mouth but big enough to stab with a fork.
3. Chop your potatoes into similar sized pieces.
4. Heat some oil in a pan and toss in your onions and potatoes. Saute until the onions become translucent.
5. Add your chicken to the pan with the chicken broth. Cook until your chicken is basically cooked through (juices run clear). This should take about 10 minutes.
6. Pour this mixture into an oven safe dish.
7. Put about a tablespoon of oil back into the pan and put in your curry powder. When it becomes fragrant, add your cream of chicken and coconut milk. Stir thoroughly and bring to a boil. Add pepper to taste here.
8. Add your chicken/onion/potato mix back in. Bring to boil again.
9. Transfer back into your oven safe dish and stash in your oven. Turn your oven to broil and leave your dish in there until it bubbles on top.
10. Serve on top of rice or bread.

You can optionally chop up some parsley and sprinkle on top when serving for a little colour. This turned out to be one of my more successful experiments. Hope you enjoy. Happy eatings!

As a final note, you may want to light a candle because curry is quite pungent and will linger. Of course, if you like the smell, no worries, but the candle helps the smell dissipate a bit faster.

This is a Shanghai dish I’ve often enjoyed whenever I have visited a restaurant with food of that region of China. It’s essentially a meatball dish with some vegetables, often cooked in clay pots. I don’t have a clay pot (although they are useful for making some really awesome rice dishes) so I used a casserole dish instead. The meatballs represent the lion head while the vegetables surrounding them represent the mane of the lion. It’s a good dish to serve with rice and is pretty quick to make.

Ingredients:

• Half a pound of bok choy leaves, spinach or siu choy (you can ball park with a couple of handfuls)
• 1 pound of ground pork
• 2 green onions, minced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons of ginger, minced
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon white granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce (1 for meatballs, 2 for sauce)
• Black or white pepper, to taste
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch or flour
• 1 can of chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Process:

1. Wash and drain your vegetables
2. In a large bowl, mix your ground pork with green onions, ginger, salt, sugar, pepper, cornstarch and 1 tablespoon of soy sauce. Beat the egg in a separate bowl and add. Dive in with your hands.
3. Form the pork into 4-6 meatballs.
4. In a pan, heat the 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Brown the top and bottom of the meatballs, five minutes per side. You want a nice crust on them first.
5. Put the chicken broth and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce in a casserole dish (the kind that can go in the oven). Bring to boil.
6. Add meatballs to casserole dish. Cover and reduce heat to simmer for 10 minutes.
7. Add bok choy around and on top of meatballs. Cover and continue simmering for 15 minutes or until the meatballs are fully cooked through.

Here’s a picture of the final product with my customary attention to plating detail. Happy eatings, folks.

This is a recipe I found off the interwebs and thought it looked interesting. I kinda forgot about pictures until I was almost done, so all you’re getting is the final product and plating. Marsala is a type of wine from an Italian city of Marsala. Aptly named. That wasn’t available in the local liquor store (or I didn’t look hard enough, which is entirely possible), so I just picked up a local non-Chardonnay white wine. Not that I’m a wine expert or anything…I just filed it under “wild ass guess.” Here are the ingredients you’ll need:

• Chicken Breasts or thighs
• Butter or margarine - couple of table spoons or enough to grease your pan
• Flour - 1 cup
• Salt - 1 teaspoon
• Pepper - 2-3 teaspoons
• Garlic - 6-8 fresh, sliced cloves
• Mushrooms - 1 cup sliced
• 1 small onion, sliced
• Dry Marsala - 3/4 cup (here I used a substitute white wine)
• Chicken Broth - 1 can (400mL)

Directions:

1. Slice your chicken breasts or thighs in half. This is important because they’ll cook more thoroughly. I didn’t and ended up having to microwave them to finish cooking.
2. Heat a little olive oil in a large sauce pan.
3. Saute onions until semi-translucent.
4. Melt butter/margarine in your pan.
5. Mix your flour, salt and pepper in a bowl.
6. Coat your chicken in the flour mixture.
7. Cook your chicken in the pan, each side for 7 minutes or so. Don’t put your burner too high because you don’t want to burn the chicken before it’s cooked through.
8. Set cooked chicken aside on a plate for later. Save the flour.
9. Deglaze your pan with the wine. Scrape up the good bits on the bottom with a wooden spoon so you don’t wreck it.
10. Simmer on high for 3-5 minutes.
11. Add garlic to the pan.
12. Reduce for a few more minutes, then add chicken broth.
13. Bring to a boil.
14. Take half a cup of the flour you saved, mix with a half cup of water. Best part? It’s already seasoned!
15. Pour slowly into your reduced sauce until you reach a desired consistency. I used most of it.
16. Add mushrooms, onions and chicken back into the sauce. Stir for a bit.
17. Let simmer on low for 10-15 minutes.

While that’s happening, you should be cooking rice or some pasta to put your chicken marsala on. I made some shells. When done, it should look sorta like this. And plated. The upshot is that you’ll have some good wine to have with your meal. Happy eatings!

This was a recipe I saw while watching the Food Network, so I thought I’d give it a try. On TV they put the end product in a deep fryer, but since I don’t have one of those or a dutch oven to do stovetop frying, I decided to put them in the oven and bake them. So here’s the stuff you’ll need:

• 2 cups of rice
• 1 tbsp of minced garlic
• 3 cups of chicken stock
• 1/4 cup of grated parmesan or romano cheese
• handful of parsley, finely minced (or about 4 tbsp of the dried stuff)
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups of breadcrumbs (panko would be nice, but plain old breadcrumbs does the trick)
• 1 and a half farmer sausages (or 3 of the smaller brats, whatever you can get)
• As much mozzarella or Monterey Jack cheese as you like (at least 1/4 cup)

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 375F.
2. Cook the rice like you would a risotto. As in, rinse the rice, drain, cook the garlic with some vegetable/olive oil until fragrant (add shallots if you want), add the rice, stir, slowly add chicken stock until all absorbed. This should take about 15-20 minutes. You want the rice in a firm consistency for easier handling. If that’s not how you cook a risotto, then just do what I wrote.
3. Mix in the grated cheese and parsley. Transfer to a bowl and stash in your fridge for 15 minutes (or freezer for 10) to cool it down.
4. Beat the eggs in a bowl and set aside. Put the breadcrumbs in another bowl.
5. Meanwhile, take the sausage out of its casing. You can use ground meat here if you wish, just season it to your liking. Sausage is already seasoned, so that’s why I used it. Cook it in the same pan you cooked the rice in. Might as well wash less dishes.
6. When the meat is done, take the rice out. Wet your hands with some water so the rice is easier to handle. Spoon some rice into one hand and make a bowl-like shape (cup your hand to form the shape). Put some meat and cheese in the bowl area. Wrap the rice around the meat and cheese, adding rice as necessary to cover completely. Use your hands to form the ball. The ball should be about the size of a small orange.
7. Dip the ball into the beaten egg bowl and roll it around. Then roll it around in the breadcrumbs.
8. Put on an oven sheet that’s been sprayed with non-stick or covered with aluminum foil.
9. Repeat until you’ve used up both rice and meat.
10. Put the rice balls into your oven for 25-30 minutes (or until the cheese starts bubbling out).
11. This should give you about 8-9 rice balls.

The first time I ate these I didn’t have any sauce with them, which meant they were a little on the dry side. I think this is where the deep frying part keeps the moisture in. Two options to solve this problem: more cheese or use sauce. I took some marinara sauce I made earlier this month and poured that over the rice balls. A little more parmesan cheese on top and they turned out better. These are pretty filling, so you won’t need more than one and a side unless you have a big appetite. One and a half filled me up pretty good. Happy eatings!

Fettuccine Alfredo is generally considered a heavy dish, mostly because of the heavy cream most recipes call for. Recipes involving heavy cream generally don’t reheat very well, and since I cook to make leftovers, I skipped out on the heavy cream in favour of half & half. I also whipped up a nice meatball recipe that I found pretty awesome. Let’s begin, shall we?

You should prep the meatballs and stick them in the oven first, as they’ll take longer to cook than the pasta will. Gather the following ingredients for awesome meatballs:

• 500g of ground pork (or a pound-ish depending on how many meatballs you want)
• A handful of fresh parsley, chopped fine
• 1 whole egg
• 1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• 1 pack of pork Shake n Bake

Preheat your oven to 400 F. In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except the Shake n Bake. Using your hands, mix thoroughly until nothing falls out. Don’t do this too fast or you’ll fling bread crumbs everywhere (yes, it happened to me, and no, I did not take pictures. Shut up). If you’re not going to use this immediately, you can stick it in your fridge for up to 24 hours.

Pour about half the packet of Shake n Bake into a small bowl. You may not need all of it depending on the amount of meat you have. Use an ice cream scoop to portion the meat and your hands to shape the portions into rounds. Roll the rounds in the Shake n Bake and place on a baking sheet. If you don’t have Shake n Bake, use bread crumbs tossed with some salt, ground pepper and ground cumin. Stash in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden and cooked through.

Ingredients for the Fettucine Alfredo:

• 400g of fettucine
• 2 cups half & half
• 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper (or to taste)
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Boil a large pot of water. The larger, the better because it’ll take less time for the water to come back up to a boil after you stick in the pasta. Season with salt to taste, add some oil to the top to help prevent boil over. Cook to just before al dente; it’ll finish cooking with the sauce. In a large skillet or sauce pan, bring the half & half to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring constantly (so it doesn’t stick or burn) for 4 minutes. Remove from heat. Drain the pasta and add to the half & half. Over medium heat, toss well and add the rest of the ingredients. Keep tossing until heated through and the cheese gets to a melty goodness stage. The half & half should get a creamier consistency at this stage and not be so liquidy.
When serving, use tongs and give ‘er a twist as you stick it on the plate. That should give you a couple of spots to stick meatballs. Happy eatings!

I keep forgetting to keep an eye out for fish sales and I wanted to get some fish back in my diet. This one was an easy recipe to put together, and while it didn’t exactly use high quality fish, it was fish nonetheless. Plus it turned out pretty good. Good enough that I forgot to take pictures, so uh, use your imagination.

So here’s what you’ll need to make salmon burgers.

• 2 teaspoons of chopped parsley leaves (or a couple small bunches)
• Half a red onion, diced
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of panko bread crumbs
• Few cranks of black pepper (or about a teaspoon)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 lemon, zested
• 4 tablespoons Dill Mayo (recipe below)
• 2 cans of salmon (try to find skinless and boneless - you’ll have to judge whether the extra price is worth your time picking out bones of the regular cans)
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (you can use olive oil if you want)

The cooking part:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. In a bowl, combine parsley, onions, eggs, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, lemon zest and dill mayo together. Add the drained salmon and mix together. It’s best to use your hands here, and go slow so you don’t fling bread crumbs everywhere. Make 4 palm-sized patties (or however big you want them) and set aside on a plate.
3. Take frying pan or a skillet, put it on medium heat with the two tablespoons of oil. Brown both sides of the patties. If you don’t have a big enough pan, do it in batches. Then put them on a cookie sheet or oven safe pan/dish and stick them in the oven for 5-10 minutes. The salmon is already cooked, so you just want to make sure the eggs are cooked.
4. Serve on buns with dill mayo. Add dressings to your liking, but other than lettuce, I think these things go pretty good just with the dill mayo.

For the dill mayo:

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2 tablespoons fresh chopped dill (use dried if you need to, fresh tastes better)
• Pinch of paprika (use cayenne if you want more kick)
• Large pinch of salt
• Couple cranks of black pepper
• Optional: couple teaspoons of yellow mustard

Combine these ingredients together in a small bowl, stirring with a fork or a whisk. If it looks too liquidy, add more mayo. You want it to spread like mayo, not be a sauce.

This recipe should make 4 burgers and more dill mayo than you should need. But the dill mayo is good on other stuff too. Happy eatings!

This one’s an easy one and a stark contrast to the prep work needed for Chicken & 40 Cloves. Here you just need to do some chopping, bring water/stock to a boil, toss stuff in and let it cook for a few minutes before serving. This soup is reputably good for colds, as the pepper in it is good at clearing the sinuses. It’s also good to help you cool down because it makes you sweat a bit.

Ingredients:

• 1 cake of tofu (if you don’t like tofu, you can skip this and use meat, like pork tenderloin)
• 1 can of bamboo shoots
• 4 or 5 Chinese mushrooms (you can use Shiitakes)
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp vinegar (increase amount of vinegar if you use any chicken stock)
• 1 Tbsp finely chopped ginger
• 1 to 2 stalks chopped green onion
• White pepper to taste, but don’t go over 1 Tbsp
• 1.5 Tbsp cornstarch mixed into 1/4 cup of water

Bring 6 cups of water to a boil. You can sub in cups of chicken stock to your liking.

Cut mushrooms into thin slices. Cut bamboo shoots into strips if they aren’t already. Cut tofu into cubes. When the water/stock is boiling, put everything in except for the cornstarch mixture. Be sure to add things gradually and mixing between items so the liquid comes back to a boil quickly.

In terms of the amount of pepper, 1 Tbsp gives a pretty good kick so if you’re particularly sensitive to pepper, you may want to look at 1/4 to 1/2 Tbsp. You can use black pepper in this case, but white pepper makes the soup look better.
Once everything is boiling for a couple of minutes, you can beat an egg and add it in. Not everyone enjoys the texture that comes with cooking an egg like this though. After the egg, pour the cornstarch mixture in and let the soup thicken up.

This should serve 4 as a side dish. Happy eatings!

Every so often, I come across an interesting recipe either online or on television that I want to try out. A jambalaya here, an orange beef stir fry there…all attempted with varying degrees of success. I figured I should blog the ones that turn out well to give myself some kind of material to write here aside from my usual tech and hockey blurbs. Plus I hear chicks dig guys that can cook.

Here’s what you’ll need for Chicken & 40 Cloves:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup and a couple tablespoons of olive oil
• 4 chicken thighs, 4 chicken drumsticks (or some combination of 8 pieces, I just like dark meat)
• Some sprigs of thyme (you can use rosemary, I like thyme more)
• Salt, pepper
• A couple sprigs of parsley
• 40 cloves of garlic (approx. 4 heads)
• Loaf of French bread, get the smaller diameter one

Hardware:

• Frying pan or oven-safe saucepan with lid
• Casserole dish
• Chef’s knife
• Tongs
• Measuring cup
• Fry splatter guard

First, warm your oven to 375F. Then peel your four heads of garlic. If you want to save time, you can be the pre-peeled stuff, but I prefer ‘em fresh. There’s also something nice about the scent of garlic as you’re cooking. Don’t pansy out and do 20 cloves or something. If you’re worried about breath, brush your teeth. Besides, garlic is good for you. It’s got some…uh…health benefits or something. Anyways, after you peel your garlic, you should get a pile like this:

Don’t de-bone your chicken or de-skin it. It helps to hold in moisture and your chicken won’t dry out. You can remove the skin when you serve if you feel it’s too fatty or something (hippie). Liberally season both sides of your chicken with salt and pepper, like so.

Then toss with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and brown both sides over high heat in your pan. Make sure you use a splatter guard, unless you think cleaning up oil all around your stove and kitchen is a fun thing to do. You’re not looking to cook your chicken at this point, you just want a searing and a nice crust. If you are using an oven safe pan at this point, just take it off of heat and don’t bother with the casserole dish. I don’t have an oven safe pan, so I transferred the chicken to a casserole dish. Cover chicken with garlic, thyme, and parsley, then cover with your 1/2 cup of olive oil. If you’re using breasts, put a slice of lemon on top to help it stay moist; breasts tend to dry more than legs/thighs. Put aluminum foil on top and then the lid to provide a good seal (this is not necessary for an oven safe pan) like so:

Stash in your oven at 375F for 1 to 1.5 hours. This varies depending on your oven; you just want your chicken fully cooked. I did about 1:20 on my oven and everything turned out fine. This is essentially like the concept behind good barbeque: low and slow makes for the best meat. Final product should look something like this:

At this point you may be wondering, what’s the bread for? Slice your French bread into however many slices you feel like eating. Then take a barbeque sauce brush and brush on some of that oil goodness from your dish. Give the slices a quick toast. Here’s the awesome part: once the bread is toasted, take one or two of the garlic cloves and spread them on your toast like buttah. Best garlic bread you’ll ever have, guaran-damn-teed. Fork up some chicken onto your plate with said garlic bread and enjoy.

This should serve 4 to 6 depending on appetite and if you serve anything else with it. Good dish to serve before you go vampire hunting. Happy eatings!