Tag Archives: ginger

Chicken Vindaloo

I’ve been following and reading Prerna’s blog “Indian Simmer” for a while. She cooks traditional Indian dishes and takes the most beautiful and artistic pictures of food. After reading about her kitchen and seeing her gorgeous photography for months, I finally got around to making one of her recipes. And oh man, is it good.

Perfectly spiced . . . perfect consistency and texture . . . perfect tenderness of the chicken . . . ‘perfect’ is the operating word here, in case you hadn’t noticed.

And once ‘perfect’ has been thrown out there, well . . . I don’t really have anything left to say.

Ingredients

(Serves 5)

4 red chilies
6 cloves garlic
1 TBS grated fresh ginger
¼ cup white wine vinegar
1 ½ lbs chicken thighs
1 tsp cloves
1 TBS cumin
½ tsp cardamom seeds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp turmeric
½ TBS whole peppercorns
4 TBS vegetable oil
1 ½ tsp mustard seeds
1 large onion
2 tsp salt
Cilantro, to garnish

De-seed and mince the red chilies.

I was wary of the heat, so I only used 2. BUT! I totally should have used 4. The heat (for me) was barely noticeable with 2.

Mince the garlic . . .

. . . and grate the ginger. After shouldering tons of guilt for letting my ginger shrivel in the fridge due to un-prompt usage, I finally followed someone’s advice and froze it. I keep frozen lumps of ginger, and when I’m ready to use them, I grate them with my microplane zester.

Works like a charm! Seriously. You’d think that grating frozen ginger would be tough–but it practically grates itself as I watch in wonder.

Soak the chilies, ginger, and garlic in the vinegar for half an hour.

Grind them or process them to make a paste.

My mortar and pestle experience wasn’t exactly ideal, since the liquidiness and the bashing together made for a very splashy time. So I recommend using a little food processor. However, the dish didn’t seem to suffer because the garlic and chili were in chunks.

At this point, I happily poured the mixture on the chicken thighs for the hour of marination to begin.

Then I remembered that I was supposed to chop up the chicken.

Whoops.

No harm done, ultimately. Unless you consider the additional pictures of raw chicken harmful.

My thumb. It looks gross. The chicken renders it totally unphotogenic, man.

Anyway, marinate the chicken in the chili paste for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

Grind the cloves, cumin, cardamom seeds, cinnamon, turmeric, and peppercorns in a spice or coffee grinder.

The smells are heavenly, people. This alone is a reason to make Indian food: to experience a world of scented spices.

Once everything is nicely ground up, mix in the salt.

Dice up the onion. I love dicing onions.

I hope you do too, because I certainly do a lot of that on this here blog.

Heat the oil over medium high heat in a large pot or Dutch oven. Add the mustard seeds . . .

. . . and when they start to pop, add the diced onion.

Note: the smell of mustard seeds heating is simply wonderful. And totally not what you’re thinking it might be if you’ve never smelled it before.

Cook the onion for 6-8 minutes, until the onion is softened and starting to brown. Add the marinated chicken with any accumulated juices to the pot, and stir fry for 4-5 minutes.

Add the dry spice mix . . .

. . . and stir it around until the chicken is evenly coated.

Cover the pot, turn the heat down to low, and cook for 30 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot about every 7 minutes to avoid burning the sauce.

You may be thinking to yourself: but wait! There’s practically no sauce involved! Where is this ‘curry sauce’ that’s supposed to happen?

Well, the liquid released from the chicken and onion and such will somehow magically make things work. Just believe me. And believe Prerna. She’s an expert.

See?

During this half an hour, the chicken will cook through and the curry sauce will thicken. Use this time to wash and chop up the cilantro:

Once the timer dings, make sure the chicken is cooked, and stir in a nice handful of chopped cilantro.

Serve over rice!

It’s so good. I never would have guessed that such a great sauce could happen with vinegar and some spices.

It’s so good that I kept uncontrollably snapping almost identical pictures.

It may be slightly swamp colored, but once you eat it, you will understand that true beauty lies within.

Seriously. Take a bite!

Guys. Oh guys. Make it.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Chicken Vindaloo

Easy Asian Beef & Noodle Soup

One more recipe before I unleash the first of the Regency ball pictures–and it’s a good one. Drawing from my usual resource, this recipe is a fantastic little find. Inspired by Vietnamese Pho, this brothy soup is chock full of tasty tidbits, and the little bit of sriracha stirred in at the end is absolutely essential in taking it from a basic broth flavor to something satisfyingly complex and interesting. Picking out the pieces of steak, bok choy and mushrooms with a pair of chopsticks is (dare I say) really fun, and I will definitely be coming back to this soup. Thanks Mary Helen for creating such a great recipe!

It makes 4 generous servings, but could be stretched to 5, especially with extra noodles.

Let’s get down with our inner Asian side.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

14 oz thin rice noodles

6 cups beef stock

3 TBS dark soy sauce

1 tsp grated ginger

3 TBS peanut oil

8 oz mushrooms, sliced

4 cloves garlic

1 large white onion, minced

3 baby bok choy, chopped

1 lb NY strip steak, sliced thinly

1 bunch scallions

1 TBS sesame oil

1/3 cup shredded basil

2-4 tsp sriracha, to taste

1 tsp chicken bouillon, to taste

1 pinch salt and pepper, to taste

Any thin noodle would work, but I used these. They had been hanging out in my fridge for a few months and it was time to put them to good use.

Cook the noodles according to the package directions. My fresh noodles just needed a couple minutes in hot water.

Drain them and set them aside.

Here are the rest of ingredients that will be appearing on scene today:

Give the ginger a rough grate–a microplane zester works wonders in a situation like this.

In a large pot, combine the beef stock, ginger, and soy sauce . . .

. . . and bring it to a simmer.

In the meantime, give the onion a nice mince.

Heat the peanut oil in a large skillet and brown half of the onion, the garlic, and the mushrooms. Give the mushrooms a nice go-’round with some salt and pepper.

Within a few minutes, they will become brown and beautiful.

Add them to the soup–but only after sneaking a taste!

While the mushrooms were sizzlin’, I gave the bok choy a rough chop.

Bok choy is such a beautiful vegetable–the slices look like flowers, don’t you think?

Brown the rest of the onion and the bok choy with a little more oil if necessary . . .

. . . and then add them to the soup as well.

Slice the steak thinly and on the diagonal.

I was a little concerned with the amount of fat in the steak, but it turned the pieces into melt-in-your-mouth morsels of glory.

Add the strips to the soup.

Thank you, New York Strip. Thank you, cow. Thank you, marbling.

The meat should cook within a couple minutes; stir in the sriracha to taste.

Don’t fear the sriracha! It will add a lovely depth, so please don’t skip it–you can adjust to your spiciness level, but the flavor it adds is not to be missed.

Plus, if you skip the sriracha I might start hyperventilating, and no one wants that.

Now this is very important: taste!!

Add the chicken bouillon if you need a little more flavor (I did), and sriracha if you want a little more oomph.

Give the scallions a quick chop.

And do a quick mince on the basil.

Stir in the scallions and sesame oil . . .

. . . add the basil, and salt and pepper to taste.

Lovely! Give it another taste just to double check the seasoning. If you underseason the soup it will be very ‘meh.’ If it’s tasting thin, that can easily be changed with more sriracha and/or chicken or beef bouillon. Yes, I know I’m beating a dead horse–but seasoning things correctly (correctly = to your taste) is a powerful thing. It has transformational magic.

Divide the noodles into bowls and pour the hot soup over them.

Serve with both chopsticks and a soup spoon.

Enjoy!

It may splatter some as you scoop the noodles out of the liquid, so diners beware!

Am I allowed to just fish for the pieces of New York strip and eat them? All? One by one?

No? Next time I might add 8 lbs of steak instead of just 1 lb. Everybody to the limit.

Click here for printer-friendly version: Easy Asian Beef & Noodle Soup