Red Curry Barramundi

Barramundi! Barramundi!! That's fun to say. (I feel like Will Ferrell in "Elf" when he keeps repeating "Frrrrancisssco!! That's fun to say!" Speaking of which, Christmas is less than 5 months away. Wow. And I have not posted a recipe since March. My sincere apologies, but I doubt if any of you feel bereft.)

Anyway. Barramundi! I had never heard of this relative of the Sea Bass (which reminds me of the "Kick his @, SeaBass" line from "Dumb and Dumber" ... okay, I'll stop with the movie quotes.)

So sea bass... Barramundi. I do have a point. I had never heard of this fish before, but saw frozen fillets at CostCo recently and thought I'd take a crack at incorporating it into my seafood rotations.  It's a mild, flaky, white fish, and it's considered a sustainable seafood variety. The fillets defrost quite fast in a bowl of cold water, and cook easily since they're evenly thick.

I've tried a few different twists on using it in Fish Tacos (I'll blog that some other night) and then last night I was jonesing for Red Curry, so I thought rather than chicken or pork, I'd put fish in it.  I had a few garden-fresh veggies from my yard, and incorporated some green onions, yellow zucchini, sugar snap peas, and then a few other things from my refrigerator. 

This is the link to the company that markets Barramundi: The Better Fish

Sockeye Salmon with basil-yogurt dressing

Sometimes I actually say something out loud before deciding if it sounds like a good meal idea.  Today I said "basil-yogurt dressing" and a light bulb came on! 

Orange Ginger Ahi steaks with Bok Choy

A few weeks ago I tried a recipe for a similar chicken dish with orange, ginger & bok choy, but I wanted to try Ahi steaks, because I just had some delicious seared ahi last night at a restaurant, which usually means I crave it for another 24 hours afterwards.  So I merged the two together here. (This recipe is a little bit of a hybrid between a couple of other recipes on my blog: Mandarin Ginger Glazed Mahi Mahi and Grilled Teriyaki Ahi Tuna –  I just love citrus-savory recipes!)

Pork & Bok Choy Gyozas

Hi all ten of you loyal readers.  It’s been a while.  Did you miss me? I’m sure you’ve been staying up at night wondering when I’d have a new recipe to share.  Oh, don’t you worry.  This one is SURE to disappoint, as I didn’t even take photos… I was up to my wrists in raw meat, and my husband was exercising and couldn’t help hold the camera.  And it was late, dangit.  We were hungry, so I just cooked, and did not pause to consider the repercussions of a photo-free blog.  But take heart – there are OTHER blogs that show you how to assemble gyozas, and they have expertly taken photos, so if you like my recipe, you can just imagine what the photos would have looked like.  And the best part is that this recipe is approximately $5 worth of ingredients and you’ll have about 40 gyozas when you’re done, and you can freeze uncooked ones for later use.

Are ya ready? Okay!

Chicken, Bell Pepper & Mushroom soup with rice

I have been blogging three mushroom-based recipes that I made the last few days with a CostCo container of Baby Bellas. I like buying in bulk and finding fun things to do with the ingredients during the course of a week, without feeling like I’m eating the same thing over and over.


This soup is completely ‘off the cuff’, and I will do my best to replicate the ingredients as I was just kind of throwing them in to my pot.

Mole Pulled Pork Tacos & Spanish rice

Happy New Year, readers.  Did you miss me? All four of you?

I haven’t blogged for a while, because as much baking & cooking as I did during Christmas it was all Christmas food, with Swedish recipes, and I don’t know how many of you really want a recipe for pickled-herring and beet salad?

Plus I just didn’t cook a lot of new stuff in the busyness of the Christmas season.  Most of the food I made had already been entered on the blog.  But it’s a new year, and I’m hoping to have a few more recipes up my cuffs.

I made this meal yesterday, and mostly made it to deliver to a family from our church that was recovering from a rather major car accident, and in my haste to make the food, I didn’t even think of blogging it, let alone photographing my progress.  So this will be mostly from memory, and you’ll just have to use your imagination.  And you know what pulled pork looks like.

[PS. This was edited a year later after the original posting to adjust the ingredients, because I made it again today and it was even better than the first version.  So here it is -- updated.  Please note that this is still by no means a fully authentic recipe.  At least it's a good pseudo recipe for the harried (or hairy) housewife.]

Almond-Fig Brown Rice Risotto

I think risotto is something that I always enjoy at restaurants, and even though it’s a fairly easy concept, I’ve generally avoided making it.  Why? I don’t know.  But I recently read a good risotto recipe over at Butter And Onions: Pea and Bacon Risotto, plus I had these figs, and sometimes I just say something out loud to see if it sounds good.  So I said “Fig risotto. Hmm… why not?”  I scoured around the internet to find comparable recipes, and found a few, but for most of them, I lacked other critical ingredients, so I basically just gleaned the basic cooking technique from reading several recipes, and came up with this.  My technique may not have been totally authentic, but the end result was savory and really good.

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup whole raw almonds, chopped up
2-4 tbsp butter

5 fresh figs, stems cut off, washed, and diced up
1/2 yellow onion, diced

1 1/2 cups brown rice (or traditional arborio rice)
3-4 cups water
1 tbsp “Better than Bouillon” chicken stock
1/2 cup cream
1 oz white wine
Dash of nutmeg
1/4 cup grated Peccorino or Parmigiano

DIRECTIONS:
Since I used brown rice in this recipe, which takes a lot longer to cook, I was afraid of it being very under-cooked if I simply followed a traditional risotto technique.  Therefore, I decided to precook it about half way in a rice cooker.  

I started up my chicken bouillon with the rice & water in the rice cooker. 

While that was going on, I sautéed my almonds in about 2 tbsp butter in a cast-iron skillet, until they were nice and golden and aromatic. 

  

I added my diced onion in, and continued sautéing until the onion was almost translucent, and at the tail end, dumped in my diced figs, and the white wine.  When the figs were cooked just a tiny bit, I turned off the heat, and set aside this mixture in a separate bowl.
Once the rice approached a nearly cooked state, I added a little more butter to my skillet, and scooped in the parboiled rice filling up the bottom of the skillet.  I cooked this on medium heat until it started to stick to the skillet, and then poured in the remaining bouillon water from my rice cooker about 1/2 cup at a time until it was absorbed.  Since that didn’t seem to be enough liquid, I added about another 3/4 cup water into the skillet, and kept letting it absorb as the rice was cooking.  Towards the end, I stirred in 1/2 cup cream, the fig-mixture, and about 1/4 cup grated cheese, and a dash of nutmeg.

 

 

 

 

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