Chicken Tikka Masala

This recipe for chicken tikka masala is slightly adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe. It is spicy, flavorful, totally delicious... and a great way to use up plain yogurt ;)

For this India-inspired British dish, begin by marinating chicken in yogurt and pungent spices for one hour. Start some rice. Then, while pan-frying the chicken, cook up a creamy, spicy, tomato-based sauce which pairs beautifully with the chicken, and serve it up over rice. I almost can't eat it without some naan on the side, too!

Chicken Tikka Masala
(serves 3-4)

Chicken Marinade ingredients:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 cup plain yogurt
1 Tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp paprika
2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt

1. Slice raw chicken into strips or bite-sized chunks.
2. Combine yogurt, lemon juice, spices, and salt in a large bowl. Add cut-up chicken, stirring to coat well. Refrigerate for an hour (or up to 8 hours).
3. Heat frying pan and cook chicken over medium heat until done.

MEANWHILE....

Masala ingredients:

1 Tbsp butter
1/2 to 1 tsp garlic powder (or 1 clove garlic, minced)
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp salt
8 ounces tomato sauce (one small can. I use the no salt added variety)
1 cup milk/cream (or Mexican crema worked really well)

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan. 
2. Add spices and heat until aromatic. 
3. Stir in tomato sauce and milk or cream. Milk is likely to curdle, but this is fine. 
4. Cook over low heat until sauce is hot and thick. Pour over chicken in its entirety, or serve separately if preferred. 

Serve hot over rice and ideally with naan -- yummy!

Turkey Tetrazzini/Casserole

As a continuation of my quest to find good recipes for leftover turkey, I made this.

Honestly, this was my first experience whatsoever with a "Tetrazzini" -- I just looked up the term, and even though I based this on a recipe called Turkey Tetrazzini, I don't think the name really applies here.

At any rate, this was a winner in our house! I had my doubts at first, but seriously, with pasta and cream of chicken soup, how bad could it really be?! Food snobs, please don't answer that.

Turkey "Tetrazzini" -- or we can just call it a Casserole

8 oz dry pasta of choice -- I used tri-colored rotini & I would do it again!
1 cup broccoli, steamed/boiled until tender but several minutes from mushy (or frozen broccoli, thawed)
1 cup cubed cooked turkey
1, 10.75 oz can cream of chicken soup
1 cup water
1/2 tsp chicken bouillon
1/3 cup chopped celery
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/3 cup shredded cheese of choice (I used a "fiesta mix" with cheddar, jack, ...? anyway, it worked.)
1/4 cup seasoned bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Cook pasta per package instructions. Drain and place into 9x9 glass baking dish.
3. Arrange broccoli on top of pasta in baking dish. Add turkey on top of broccoli.
4. In a medium saucepan, combine cream of chicken soup, water, bouillon (alternately, use chicken broth in place of water & bouillon), celery, and garlic powder. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and pour as evenly as possible over pasta/broccoli/turkey.
5. Sprinkle cheese evenly on top. Lastly, sprinkle bread crumbs over the cheese.
6. Bake for 25 minutes at 350°F. Serve hot with a glass of cold milk!

Turkey Soup

We cooked a turkey over the weekend, mainly to get it out of our freezer, but also because we had family in town and figured it would be best to cook it with a few extra eaters on hand. Even though it was "only" a 13-pounder, we have lots of leftovers.

I thrive on variety, so I've been attempting to find some good recipes for leftover turkey. I just can't handle the same thing more than about 2 days in a row! Also, thanks to a suggestion from the man of the house, I've started trying new recipes in manageable portions (due to some disappointing flops on a large scale...). This has been very helpful to me. I hate throwing food out, and I really hate throwing food out because I can't stomach it even though the recipe seemed promising!

Anyway, a friend gave me some homemade bread & recommended having it with soup, so I took her up on it! I found a recipe that suggested adding beef broth to turkey soup, so I tried that out, too.

I'm not a huge soup person, but I thought this was AMAZING!

I used some OLD cannery soup mix, mainly to try using it up, but you could alternately use rice or pasta (just decrease the cooking time by a lot!). In fact, with pasta, I would probably omit the first hour of simmering (below) and add noodles a few minutes after everything else.

Turkey Soup

1/2 cup LDS cannery soup mix (contains alphabet macaroni, rice, split peas, lentils, dehydrated onions) (Do they even sell this anymore? I can't find any information online.)
5 cups water
2 tsp chicken bouillon
1 tsp beef soup base
**Alternately, use chicken stock and beef stock and decrease water proportionately**
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 cup cubed cooked turkey
1/2 tsp dried dill
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp dehydrated onions
salt and pepper to taste

1. Combine soup mix, water, chicken bouillon and beef soup base in a large saucepan over medium-high heat until boiling.
2. Cover and reduce heat to maintain a simmer for about one hour.
3. Add celery, carrots, turkey, and spices. Cover and continue to simmer for 30 minutes, or until vegetables are tender. Add additional water as needed if too much is boiling off, or if flavor of broth is too strong.
4. Remove bay leaf and serve with heavily buttered, warm homemade bread.

Escargots... at Walmart??

A couple of months ago we happened upon a clearance rack at Walmart. To our surprise, there was a package of escargots on the shelf. We glanced at it, then at each other, and decided to give it a go!

The package was a plastic tube with a small can of escargots at the bottom, and shells filling the tube to the top. The instructions were right on the can. It was easy and fun; it was also my first time trying escargots. I was pleasantly surprised.

1. Start by boiling the shells in water.
2. Whip up a garlic-butter sauce. Use melted butter, garlic or garlic powder, and perhaps some herbes de Provence. 
3. Place one shell in each cup in a muffin tin. Pour a little garlic-butter sauce into each shell.
4. Place one canned snail into each shell. Pour remaining garlic-butter sauce into each shell on top of snail.
5. Bake. I think it was probably around 10-15 minutes at 375°F or so. The snails are already cooked, but you want them heated through and for the butter to bubble.
6. Bon Appetit! It would help to have escargots forks to remove the little fellows from the shells, but we don't have any and made do without.

The texture of escargots is slightly chewy - it was very similar to the pasta we were also eating that night, with homemade pesto sauce.

Lentil & Beef Sloppy Joes (& Cheesy Hamburger Buns)

The sloppy Joe: I hadn't had one in years, but one day browsing recipes I saw one for a lentil sloppy Joe. I was intrigued, and it kind of sounded good. I bookmarked it and came back to it a few weeks later. The original recipe I saw did not suit me, so I looked around a bit more and found this one which was a better match for what I had on hand.

You may notice that the recipe I followed calls for 1/2 cup ketchup. In an odd turn of events, we had used more of our ketchup than I had realized (although, honestly, I hate ketchup and didn't check before I started the recipe. When you dislike ketchup like I do you never dream you'll run out... I only use it in recipes, and the only other thing I've used it in that I can think of is meatloaf, maybe twice. We occasionally have hot dogs or other dishes that Thomas likes ketchup as a condiment on, but I really didn't think we'd have less than 1/2 cup!). Pondering possible substitutions, I came up with barbecue sauce or tomato sauce. I asked Thomas' opinion and we decided to try the barbecue sauce. It was a success! It added a really nice flavor and sweetness that I don't think it would have had otherwise. In the future I think I will always do half ketchup and half barbecue sauce.

Lentil & Beef Sloppy Joes

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1/2 cup diced onion

1 small carrot, diced
1/2 bell pepper, diced

1/4 cup ketchup

1/4 cup barbecue sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup dried brown lentils

~1 cup water
1/4 tsp. oregano
8 ounces ground beef
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1. Sauté onion, carrot, bell pepper, and ketchup in vegetable oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat until vegetables are tender. Add garlic and continue to cook for about a minute.
2. Add lentils, oregano, and water. Boil about 5 minutes, then reduce heat and cover, simmering about 35 minutes. Check occasionally to ensure there is enough water. Add more water in 1/4 cup increments if necessary.
3. In the meantime, brown ground beef in a skillet. Drain off fat.
4. To ground beef, add Worcestershire sauce and barbecue sauce, stirring until combined.
5. Add fully cooked ground beef mixture to lentil mixture. Continue cooking until lentils are done.
6. Serve hot, on hamburger buns.

I don't keep hamburger buns around, so I made my own to go with my sloppy Joes. I used this recipe. They turned out pretty good, but I did goof up a little: where the recipe said to make 6 buns, I split my dough 6 ways and ended up with 6 buns, but they were such a funny shape I couldn't justify slicing them. The result was basically 6 bun halves. Which was fine, but they were kind of big and it would have been better to have 6 actual buns. So, if you want 6 buns, divide your dough 12 ways...

Cheesy Hamburger Buns

2 3/4 cups flour

1/2 cup finely grated cheddar cheese

3/4 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. sugar

2 1/2 tsp. instant yeast

4 Tbsp. softened butter

1 large egg

2/3-3/4 cup lukewarm water

1. Mix all ingredients until well combined, sticky, and gooey. Cover and let rise about an hour.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F.
3. Divide dough (taking into account my advice above). Your dough will still be sticky. You can add a little bit of flour to make this process less messy. Place on baking sheet lined with wax paper or parchment paper. Shape into small rounds. The original recipe uses a hamburger bun pan. I used a baking sheet, which resulted in misshapen buns, but it's what I had :o)
4. Let rise another 30-60 minutes, or longer if you have time.
5. Bake about 20 minutes.

Seder and Passover Feast

Although we are not Jewish, we enjoy learning about the traditions and symbolism found in Judaism (and other religions, for that matter). Because it is Passover week, we decided to have a small get-together with our friends to learn about and try the Seder plate fare and some interesting Passover-friendly recipes from a book we found at a garage sale last summer (The Passover Table by Susan R. Friedland). We and our friends tried our hand at the recipes shared below. Thank you Shari & Lisa for cooking and bringing the cake and cutlets!

We did run into some hiccups while getting this all together. For instance, because we live in an area with an overwhelmingly high population of Latter-day Saints, we had a difficult time finding matzos and matzo meal. We found some matzo meal at Macey's, but realized after purchasing it that it was "not for Passover use" because it had not been processed appropriately for Passover. We ended up making our own matzo bread to use with our Seder and in the Matzo Chicken Pie recipe because we did not find any at the stores we went to. In the end, our matzo-stuff was not Passover-kosher according to the Jewish traditions, but we figured it was the best we could do, all things considered.

We started our meal with a Seder plate, discussing the symbolism of each item as we ate.

Seder plate

•  "Karpas" symbolizes new growth of spring = parsley (this is dipped into salt water/vinegar, which represents the tears shed by the enslaved Israelites)
• "Maror" symbolizes intense bitterness of slavery = horseradish (we dipped our matzo in horseradish sauce)
• "Charoset" represents the mortar the slaves prepared for the building of the pharoahs’ cities and pyramids = 1 lb apples, diced ; 1 1/4 c walnut halves, chopped ; 3/4 Tbsp ground cinnamon ; 3-5 Tbsp light grape juice
• "Zeroah" represents the Paschal lamb sacrificed at the temple, which represents the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ = roasted lamb (we put ours in the oven with parsley, onions, and lemon juice at 400°F for 15 minutes and then turned it down to about 350°F for about 35 minutes)
• "Baytzah" symbolizes mourning for the temple; also a symbol of a festival offering brought to the temple on Pesach = roasted egg

lamb, prior to roasting

Matzo bread
3 units flour to 1 unit water (3 cups flour to 1 cup water yields about 4 medium matzos)

1. Combine flour and water. Mix and knead into a dense dough. 
2. Roll out to 1/8" thickness or so. Thicker will be more bready, thinner yields more cracker-like matzo. 
3. Poke lots of holes with a fork and bake in a hot oven (450°F or more, as hot as your oven gets without broiling) for a few minutes - until cooked through and possibly browning.

The dough is a little difficult to roll out

Lots of holes!

 Matzo Balls
4 eggs
1/2 c water
1/4 c oil
1 tsp salt
pepper
1 c matzo meal

1. Beat eggs. Add water, oil, salt, and pepper, and mix well. Add matzo meal and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.
2. In a large pot, bring some water to a boil. With moist hands, form small (1") balls from mixture and drop them into boiling water.
3. Simmer all matzo balls, covered, for about 30 minutes until done. Remove with a slotted spoon into a large bowl.
4. Serve in chicken soup. We served ours in chicken broth made from bouillon.

We got this recipe on the back of the Streit's Matzo Meal box - it was pretty similar to other recipes we'd seen.

matzo meal added to egg mixture

all mixed together

These expand a lot when cooking - these were just taken out of the boiling water

served in chicken broth

Mina de Pesah - Matzo Chicken Pie
vegetable oil for frying
2 c chopped onions
2 Tbsp minced garlic
1 1/2 c mushrooms
3 c cooked chicken (about 14 oz)
salt
pepper
1 c chopped parsley
5 eggs, lightly beaten
5 to 6 matzos
1 c chicken stock

1. Heat oil in large skillet. Sauté onions and garlic until soft and translucent. Add mushrooms and continue to cook until they are soft too. 
2. Let cool. Add chicken, salt, pepper, parsley, eggs.
3. Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray baking dish with cooking spray.
4. Soak matzos in chicken stock until moist. I neglected to complete this step because I could not think of a way to soak them. I instead began layering them and poured some stock over each matzo, but this did not work that well. If I make this again I will place them on a cookie sheet and soak them therein.
5. Layer matzos and chicken-vegetable mixture like a lasagna: matzos, mixture, matzos, mixture, matzos. 
6. I also did not do this: pour 2 tsp oil over the top and bake for 15 minutes. Sprinkle with another bit of oil and bake for another 15 minutes. (The top matzo on mine was very, very dry... doing this might have remedied that problem).
7. Let cool 10 minutes, then serve.

Onions, garlic, mushrooms

Plus eggs, parsley, chicken

Layered using homemade matzos

Vegetable cutlets (side)
1 1/2 to 2 c minced red or yellow peppers or a mixture of both
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 c grated carrots (about 4 carrots)
1/2 lb raw spinach, cleaned, trimmed, chopped (2 tightly packed cups)
1 lb (3 medium) potatoes, boiled and mashed (2 c)
6 Tbsp grated raw onion (1 large)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 tsp salt
pepper
1 c matzo meal
vegetable oil

1. sauté the peppers in the olive oil until soft
2. add all of the remaining ingredients except vegetable oil and let mixture stand for 30 minutes or overnight, refrigerated. Bring to room temperature before continuing
3. either fry or bake: 
1. fry by heating 1/4 inch of vegetable oil in large skillet. Form each patty with about 1/4 c of the mixture. Flatten slightly and fry in batches for about 6 minutes on one side, 3-4 minutes on the other side. Drain on paper towels.
2. bake by putting patties on lightly greased baking sheet and place in preheated 350°F oven for about 10 minutes; turn over and bake another 7 to 10 minutes
4. serve warm

These are yummy - not sure how to describe them, though.

Walnut cake (dessert)
9 eggs at room temperature, separated
1 c sugar
2 c walnuts, ground to a powder
2 Tbsp matzo cake meal (we used matzo meal and it worked fine)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt

1. preheat oven to 350°F. Dust two 9x3-inch loaf pans with a little extra cake meal and set aside
2. with an electric mixer, beat egg yolks until pale in color. Beat in sugar 2 Tbsp at a time, beating well after each addition
3. combine nuts with matzo cake meal. Stir into yolks along with vanilla.
4. beat egg whites with salt until they are stiff but not dry. Fold them gently and carefully into the batter
5. turn the batter into the prepared pans and smooth the top. Bake 30-40 minutes, or until cake shrinks away from side of pans and cake tester comes out clean. Let cool on rack.

This cake was surprisingly light and sweet - do not be afraid if/when the cake caves in.

 oxox

Chop Suey

Almost two years ago, when I met Thomas' sister Elizabeth and her family for the first time, she and her husband, Saki, prepared a meal of chop suey for us to enjoy. It was delicious! We tried the recipe they shared recently, and although I didn't make it as well as they did, it is worth sharing!

Chop Suey
garlic
ginger
oil
meat (optional)
various vegetables, sliced/shredded: shredded carrots, bok choy, mushrooms, peppers, celery, or broccoli slaw, for example. We also used zucchini.
soy sauce
rice, ramen noodles, or rice noodles (hard to find... but inexpensive at WinCo)

1. Sautée some garlic and ginger in some oil. Add meat if using meat, and a bit of soy sauce.
2. Add in vegetables and more soy sauce, oil, garlic, and ginger to taste.
3. Cook until veggies are heated but still crunch.
4. Serve with/over prepared rice, ramen noodles (sans seasoning), or rice noodles. The rice noodles we used were very thin and stringy; Elizabeth and Saki had some fatter-looking noodles that I liked better when we had them... Use what suits you!

Simple Mexican crowd-pleasers

 Several months ago we had the privilege of having dinner at Thomas' cousin Ryan's home. His lovely wife Amanda prepared a Mexican food feast that was muy bueno. Earlier this week, we tried out the main dish from this party, "New Mexico Style Carnitas," at our own dinner party with some friends - our dinner contest winners, in fact. It was pretty simple to put together and tasted fantastic.

Carnitas
2.5 lbs carnitas (pork shoulder) cut into bite-sized pieces
5 roasted/peeled anaheim chiles, or 1 can green chiles in a pinch
2-3 cloves of fresh garlic, minced
salt to taste
1 c water
2 tbsp cooking oil
**I altered this a little and added about 1/3 a medium-sized yellow onion. The package of meat we got was a little larger than this recipe called for, so I added more garlic (close to a full "head" of garlic).

1. Heat oil in a large sauté pan. Add garlic (and onions if you choose to do so) and salt; then add pork and sauté until pork is cooked (about 7 min). 
2. Transfer to a crock pot and add chile and water. Stir together and cook on high for 3 hours or low for 6-8 hours. 
3. Transfer to oven safe dish and finish at 400°F in the oven, uncovered, for 20 minutes.

We served our carnitas on warm corn tortillas with guacamole (also homemade - mash up an avocado or two, add sour cream, salt, pepper, and some chili powder) and salsa. We had this Mexican rice as a side.

Mexican rice
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup (or more) chopped onion
a few cloves minced garlic OR garlic powder to taste
salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 cup uncooked long-grain rice
1/2 cup tomato sauce
2 cups chicken broth

1. Heat oil in saucepan large enough to cook rice. Add onion, garlic, salt, and cumin; sauté until transparent. Add uncooked rice and coat with oil.
2. After a few minutes, stir in remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil.
3. Turn down heat, cover, and let simmer for 20-25 minutes.

Let us know what you think!
oxox