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

Curry (Rotisserie) Chicken Soup

This chicken recipe brought to you, courtesy of Olympia Local Foods who generously supplied me with a kosher, pastured, organic rotisserie chicken from Tachira Farms, in Olympia, Washington.  If you live in the South Puget Sound area, please support our local farms by shopping at Olympia Local Foods store.

My most recent recipe was for two side dishes to complement the rotisserie chicken.  I was also excited to run my first ever contest for a free rotisserie chicken and a $10 gift card to their store.  You can still enter this contest, by following the directions from that last blog post, up until October 23, 2012.  Local entries only.

Today I'm going to show you how I used up the left over chicken to concoct a spicy, hot, healthy and flavorful  curry soup from scratch. And when I say 'From Scratch' here, I mean FROM SCRATCH.  We're even going to make our own broth... no bouillon required.

A Note About Spices and Seasonings

I wanted to take this opportunity to mention that knowing the proper balance in seasoning your dishes is the difference between simply following a recipe versus cooking with a gut instinct (ha ha!) for a true "off the cuff" cooking experience.  Some recipes you should probably not mess around with too much (for instance, due to the scientific nature of baking, cookies, pastries and breads are left best unaltered.)  But with herbs, spices and seasonings, there is an acquired learning curve that will eventually take a novice chef up to a more instinctual level.  So I'm going to give a few points here to ponder if you are just learning to cook.   It took me a while to master some of these myself, so don't be discouraged if you have to approach these suggestions with some trepidation.