Chicken Pumpkin Paprikash

"Waiter, there is too much pepper on my paprikash." -- Harry Burns

Well, if you're a fan of late-eighties chick flicks starring [pre-collagen] Meg Ryan, wearing ill-fitting, floppy sweaters, chunky shoes and otherwise being her adorable self, then you've probably seen the classic "When Harry  Met Sally," and you might remember that scene at the museum where they are talking all funny about Paprikash.


I had not had much insight into this dish in the past.  So sometime last year, I decided to look it up, and was not disappointed.  It's one of the most yummy and reasonably healthy comfort-foods, especially delicious on a cold, foggy autumn evening such as tonight.  Not only that, but it's quick.  I can whip up a skillet full in about 25 minutes, which hits the spot every time. 

Stir Fried pork with eggplant, peppers and shiitake and noodles

I made this twice in a month, because it was quite good. So I figured I'd share it with my faithful 15 readers, because that's what I do-- I'm so nice, right?  And there is a decidedly Asian slant to so many of my recipes when I go through them, but what can I say? Living on the West Coast has a pretty predominant Asian-cuisine influence on a person.  I assure you, though, I also had Swedish meatballs with red potatoes and lingon-berries, just a few days later.  It was just like a trip to the cafeteria at IKEA, only homemade.

So since I didn't blog this immediately, and only took photos the second time, I had to scribble down notes from memory, and it turned out roughly the same both times.  I guess that's the thing about most recipes-- they don't always turn out identical, but you're going for a basic effect and that's usually good enough.  It's "Off The Cuff Cooking" after all.

INGREDIENTS:

Main ingredients:

1/2 package of Stir Fry style Rice Noodles -- soak in hot water according to package directions
1/2 cup dried shiitake mushrooms -- soak in the same water as the rice noodles, at the same time
3/4 - 1 pound thinly sliced pork (I had 4 pork cutlets that I cut into strips)
1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 onion, (red or white) thinly sliced
2 small eggplant (or one medium sized one) unpeeled, and cut into 1/4" thick "half moons"

Marinade for meat:

2 tbsp sesame oil
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 whole lime (half of it for the marinade and half of it cut into wedges for garnish)
2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
1 tbsp Sriracha Sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 clove minced garlic

DIRECTIONS: 

First, cut up the eggplant about half an hour ahead of time, and soak it in a bowl of salty water. 

Secondly, whisk together the marinade in a small bowl.

Cut the pork into strips.  Let the meat marinade at room temperature in the sauce while you prepare other ingredients.  Reserve a small amount of marinade to drizzle over the finished dish. 

Then, start soaking your rice noodles and shiitake in a pot, according to package directions.  Some instructions vary, so definitely follow those, and take the timing into account.

Prepare your other vegetables, and when the eggplant has soaked in salt water for a while, preheat a wok or skillet at medium heat, and put in 1 tbsp each of the coconut and sesame oil, and reserve the rest for frying the meat.   

Place the eggplant half-moons evenly in your skillet and fry them on each side until they're tender, and somewhat browned.  Don't crowd them, and set the finished ones aside in a bowl or on a plate, to add to the finished stir fry later on.  Cook the eggplant in batches until all done.

Use the same skillet and turn up the heat to medium high now, and add the rest of the oil.  Stir fry the meat in small batches until browned and cooked through, about 2-3 minutes.  Set aside the cooked meat in the same bowl as the eggplant. 

Now stir fry the onion, and bell pepper in the skillet few minutes until they're tender and browned.  Add in the rice noodles, and shiitake, along with a few table spoons of water to deglaze the skillet.  This adds a nice savory flavor to the noodles. 

 Add in all the meat, and eggplant, and pour over any marinade that's still left over, and stir rapidly to prevent sticking.  When everything is reheated through, remove the skillet from the burner, and serve up a piping hot and tasty noodle dish.

Add more lime juice and sriracha if desired.

Apple-Butternut Squash soup with lemon zest

TWO recipes in less than THREE days.  That's just craziness.  Can you guys take it? And this one is also gluten-free, since it's pretty much just made with vegetables and a little bit of dairy.

It's been kind of foggy and cold here the last few days so a soup sounded good.

I have made another acorn squash soup in the past, and also a roasted eggplant soup which borrows some of the same principles of oven-roasting the main vegetables first before making the soup.  If you read the acorn squash soup recipe, you'll see that I stole the whole-squash roasting technique from The Pioneer Woman, Rhee Drummond, who instructed her readers that a squash or gourd does not need to be cut up or peeled prior to roasting and that it in fact is much easier to do it after the fact.  Not only that, but the result is caramelized and savory and sweet, and far more pleasantly textured than a steamy, water-logged squash might be.  Now where *she* got that method from, I have no idea, but at least it saves me from any future trips to the emergency room because I can't think of very many kitchen-related tasks that are more dangerous than trying to cut open a squash or water melon.

Gluten Free Kale and Pepper lasagna

Happy New Year.  I don't make resolutions in general, but I hope to get my recipes rolling again.  So it's more of a hope, and not a resolution!  I'm happy to say I have recently hit 12,000 page visits since I started this blog and they just keep a-rollin' in, despite my failure to generate new content on a regular basis.

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.

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! 

Black Bean Chili with Cilantro

I promised in the last entry that there will be a "Chili" theme on the blog. Quite overly ambitious as I tend to be, I may have even promised a "Chili Week" but then I realized that would involve cooking chili multiple times in *ONE* week, and that led to the sure knowledge that I'd probably quickly tire of both cooking and eating chili.  Thus, to be realistic, I will just make a reasonable attempt to blog all the chili recipes by the end of November.

Roasted Eggplant Soup

Okay, I know that it's July and most of the United States are in a heatwave.  However, here in the Pacific Northwest, it's been way cooler than even our normal summertime averages. So I felt like making something a bit savory, and I realized just now as I typed up the title that I cook with eggplant a lot.  I have other recipes up my sleeve, too, which I’m sure I’ll get around to eventually.  But anyway, I had meant to do my recipe for Cordoba Fried Eggplant (Berenjenas Con Miel) but as time did not allow today to haul out the deep fryer, I opted to do something a little easier.  I found this similar recipe online at Safeway.com, and made it with a few minor modifications.   It was a hearty, but light soup, full of rich, savory flavors, and it was delicious with some bread on the side.

Ratatouille

RATATOUILLE

Onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes, garlic, eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, potatoes... and some fresh herbs= one delicious and hearty soup. 

Time for The Off The Cuff Chef to butcher a traditional French recipe.   Ratatouille (ra-ta-TOO-ee) is a vegetable stew, although mine always ends up more like a soup, so that is what I'm showing you how to make below here.  For more information about more authentic versions, please consult this link.  Please don't report me to Julia Child's estate.  I know my recipe is not quite up to par, but it's a darn good version, in my humblest of opinions.  And isn't that basically what always happens? Alternate ingredients come into the picture, substitutions are made, etc.  So here's something similar to a traditional ratatouille, that I make every so often.  I regret that I did not have a nice crusty loaf of bread to go with this, but alas, you can't always have everything.

Beef & Mushroom pie

This is another amazingly simple and delicious dish my mother has been making for years, and who knows where she got the recipe originally.  But given her stack of vintage cooking magazines from the early 1970s and on, there is probably a source somewhere.   However, I don’t know the source, and she probably barely remembers where it came from herself, since she has been making it for decades.
I was in a hurry when I made this, having painted all day at my in-laws’ house, so I used a store-bought crust to expedite it all.  Otherwise, feel free to use the pie crust recipe of your choice.  It’s a pretty standard butter, flour, cold water type of crust.

Acorn Squash Soup

The weather here has been downright stormy, blustery and rainy this week.  It is definitely soup weather, and all I could think of today was a big pot of squash soup.  I had a big acorn squash (a rather large one—easily the size of a small melon) and recently I learned, thanks to The Pioneer Woman's spaghetti squash recipe, that a squash does NOT have to be steamed or even cut up to be perfectly roasted.  In fact, it’s so amazingly caramelized and delicious when leaving the whole squash intact while roasting it.  Another bonus of this method is that you don’t have to risk life and limb hacking into a round, rolling, rock-hard squash with a kitchen knife.
I have seen and tried and perused a variety of squash soups, (this one for instance looks really good, too:  Butternut Squash Soup with Sage) and thought I would experiment with some other spice-combinations.  I kept it very simple with the ingredients so that I just let the savory squash do it’s own talking.
So here goes!