Grilled to deliciousness

We joined the lovely Anna and her family for dinner yesterday, and it was a day that was made for grilling. And we did.

In fact, we grilled everything, starting with the appetizer. Asparagus wrapped with pancetta and grilled to deliciousness.

This is one of those dishes that makes me lie. If I tell the kids they won’t like something, they keep pestering me until its either gone or I give in. So I lie. I have learned that if I tell them something has alcohol in it, they don’t bug me as much since they know they can’t have alcohol.

However, my kids are not stupid, and I knew that if I used that excuse with the asparagus, it wouldn’t take them anytime at all to see through it.

So I just didn’t tell them when it was ready, and saved it all for the adults.

And if this makes me a bad parent, well, I’m in good company.

‘Cause Anna didn’t tell her kids about it either.

Gno Joking

While sitting in restaurants looking over menus, Paul and I converse about the many different options. We point out dishes to each other that we think they would enjoy and we discuss items that neither of us has ever tried. And then the server comes to take our order. And the same thing happens practically every time. I do one of two things:

1. If I haven’t tried a variety of items on the menu, I test the waters and order something new.
2. If I’ve already tried many of the items on the menu, I order whatever sounds best at that moment in time.

And Paul also does one of two things:

1. He orders the exact same meal every time, no variation.
2. He can’t choose between two dishes (usually having tried both before), so he tells the server to choose for him.

I like to explore things I haven’t tried (within reason…after all, there are somethings that I truly think are really not meant to be eaten). I rarely end up highly disappointed. I know what I like and order within those parameters.

Paul, however, wants to be absolutely certain that he likes what he orders. So he orders the same thing every time and is also rarely disappointed.

But how boring!

This past weekend we had a similar experience, but not at a restaurant. It was at my sister’s. Anna and I try to get our families together monthly, enjoying each other’s company and making some good food. Anna is my co-conspirator in the kitchen. She likes to cook (not quite as much as I do, I fear), and she likes to try new things.

So once we found a mutually acceptable day, Anna and I needed to choose the menu. Neither of us wanted to get too wacky with things this month, but we definitely wanted something new. Something that would expand our repertoire and our palettes. After throwing around a couple of ideas, we finally both realized that neither of us had ever made, or even eaten, gnocchi.

Thus a dinner was born.

Paul was disappointed. He’d been hoping for something more familiar. Something safer.

But safe isn’t fun.

And we wanted fun.

So, not knowing what was ahead of us, Anna and I dived into the world of gnocchi.

We used this recipe from Recipezaar. The dough was pretty easy to make, and in case you’re wondering, if you forget to add the clarified butter when the recipe says to, you can easily go back and mix it in at the end. We meant to do it that way, to make sure that YOU have the best information possible. Really…did it all for you.

Once the dough was made, Anna and I disagreed on how to shape the gnocchi. On T.V. I’ve seen people use forks to make pretty little ridges in the pasta. Anna though they should be more like shells. So we each did our own. Mine are on the left, Anna’s are on the right.

They both worked about the same in the long run, though we should have made them smaller. They were too doughy. The delicious sauce we made was also from Recipezaar. I may never make gnocchi again, but I will absolutely make this flavorful, creamy, spicy sauce again. We added spicy Italian sausage to it, but really, it wasn’t necessary. It was amazing and will be wonderful with fettuccini or penne. Or just sopped up with a couple pieces of bread. Or eaten with a spoon.

There’s a First Time for Everything

…Even sushi!

Once again, we found ourselves at Anna & Sean’s. Kids playing guitar hero downstairs, adults cooking and chatting upstairs. I puttered around, panfrying potstickers and sauteeing shrimp for Anna while she made the sushi.

I do question whether this really was my first sushi experience. I have a vague memory of maybe, possibly having the Japanese mother of one of the girls in my 6th grade home ec class come in and show us some of her native cuisine. And I’m pretty sure seaweed came into the discussion.

Keep in mind, we were in a small village in the middle of the Canadian prairie…most of us had never had any fish other than in stick form and sushi was so completely off our radar as to be completely alien to us. I clearly remember her frying wonton skins and making a soy sauce dipping sauce for them. I liked those! But I can’t remember anything more than knowing I was expected to eat seaweed in some form. And I have to assume it was sushi. Quite possibly I wimped out. I was a real weenie about some things back them. (But not now…I’m not a weenie now…usually.)

So, back to the present. Anna was making shrimp and smoked salmon sushi and had assured me that the only raw things would be vegetable. She always takes such good care of us when we’re over there, so I wasn’t worried. Maybe just the teeniest-tiniest bit nervous about the seaweed wrap. But worried? Nah!

Well, we loved it. Paul especially. Anna did such a great job making the rolls. They looked just like they were supposed to, were perfectly flavored and oh, so pretty.

For my part, I marinated a couple small flank steaks in soy sauce, ginger, scallions and garlic then threw them on the grill (in the pouring drizzle). The flank steak was good, but the sushi far outshone everything.

So, thanks to Anna and her mad sushi skills, I am no longer afraid of sushi.

As long as I know what’s in it.

Recipies to Rival – My First Challenge

Way back in one of my previous lifetimes I worked in a grocery store deli that included a Chinese food take-out area. For several months I was assigned to Chinese take-out duty, meaning that I stood over the deli cases full of Chinese food for eight hours a day. Which did two things. First, it introduced me to some dishes that I might not have tried otherwise, like Kung Pao Chicken and Pot Stickers; and second, it made my hair smell like chow mein. (As a date once told me…boy, did he know how to sweep a girl off her feet!)

I never developed much of a taste for the Kung Pao Chicken, however, I love pot stickers with their soft, chewy dough and wonderful savory meat filling. Mmmmm…

Now, I’m comfortable enough in the kitchen that I don’t shy away from much. Yeast breads of any type? Been making them for years. Totally from-scratch homemade pizza? Almost weekly. Expensive Rib Roast? Every Christmas. But pot stickers? I never even thought about even trying to make them at home!

Pot stickers are one of those things that you just get out , along with Fried Onion “Flowers” and Fajitas. Why pot stickers? Well, first of all, they look so labor intensive. And secondly, they look REALLY labor intensive! C’mon, all those teeny tiny little pleats – really? Who has the time. And how much better could homemade really be? I had no interest in finding out for myself. They could remain a mystery to me.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that is. That’s when I joined a blog group known as Recipes 2 Rival. The R2R group each month takes on a recipe and collectively posts their experiences making it. When I saw that my first challenge recipe was pot stickers, I had mixed feelings of interest and dread. C’mon, all those teeny tiny little pleats! And then, reading further, I saw the real challenge…the dough must be made from scratch! Pleats and rolling a dough I’ve never worked with paper thin? This was going to be interesting.

But it was what it was. And I determined to face the challenge head-on. Pleats, dough and all. Figuring I would make a party out of it, I called my sister Anna (you might remember her from our Curry adventure) and we found a mutually acceptable date for a Chinese Dinner feast.

Armed with the R2R pot sticker recipe and a bag full of ingredients, we headed over to Anna’s. The menu was fabulous. Hot & Sour Soup, Peanut Noodles, Chinese BBQ Pork and of course, Pot Stickers.

The dough came together perfect. I used the Kitchen Aid to mix it up, and after letting it sit for about an hour, it was easy-peasy to work with. The filling was also quick and easy to mix together, though after thinking that it seemed wetter than I expected, I looked closer at my recipe and realized I had added some of the ingredients for the dipping sauce into the filling. Not much to do about it at that point, I’d just have to go with it & hope it was good.

So I rolled and Anna pleated and Sean steamed and fried. And it was good.

If I had read all the comments from my fellow R2R-ers, I would have realized that we shouldn’t have steamed the dumplings before putting them in the frying pan. It made for pot stickers that, well, stuck to the pot and fell apart. But they were delicious! Everyone agreed, even all five kids!

Which may be a first for that group!

For the recipes, go here, and to see what everyone else did, go here.

A Curry Worth Staying Home For

My sister and her husband finally convinced us to go try Indian food with them a couple of months ago. I’d only ever had curry once before, and it was in a restaurant that had a different menu page for 9 different Asian cuisines. Their pho was good. Their curry was not.

So when Anna & Sean wanted to take us to an Indian place shortly after we moved here, we resisted and talked them into going to a Japanese hibachi place instead.

But, finally, they persevered and we set a date. Farmer Paul was definitely nervous before we went, asking what he was getting himself into. I asked a friend at work who gushed about this dish and that, and so armed with the word “tandoori” we headed off to dinner.

And LOVED it! I have no idea what I had. It was chicken. And creamy. And good. Paul & Sean’s dishes were the best of the four. And we went home satisfied.

Fastforward to two weeks ago. Paul surprised my by saying that he would like to have curry again. Since we’re watching our budget, the only solution I have is to make it myself. So Anna & Sean were invited and I started searching for recipes and pieced together the meal: Indian Spiced Chicken with Spinach, Indian Spiced Veggie Patty and Naan.

The Naan was good, not great. I cooked it on a super-heated pizza stone which one website said was the closest to a tandoori oven I could get at home. It cooked perfectly, I think I just need to work on the recipe some because it wasn’t as light and fluffy as I remember. But that could be due to the fact that I used wheat flour, trying to move towards the healthier side of things.

The Veggie Patties never happened. When Paul saw me come in from the garden with a handful of green beans, he suggested I make Chinese-style, garlicy stir-fried green beans. It sounded good, so I went for it.

But the Chicken. Aaahhh, the chicken. It was warm, mildly spicy, and full for rich flavor. Sean’s not a big fan of spicy, so I toned it down for him assuming that the rest of us could add spice if we wanted, but I don’t think anyone did. THIS is going on the meal rotation.

Oh, and why did noone tell me that basmati rice was SO GOOD?!?

I substitued curry powder for some of the individual spices rather than buy whole bottles of things I might never use again. It worked well, but if you want the actual list of spices, click the link to the original recipe. I also added more cream than it originally called for, because it looked too dry. And the original called for frozen spinach, but I subbed about 5 ounces of fresh and it was the perfect amount. All of the amounts listed in the recipe below are the amounts I used.

Indian Spiced Chicken and Spinach
adapted from the Food & Wine Website