When I offered to host vegan friends for our weekly TV night this seemed like an exciting challenge! I combined the recipe for Mark Bittman’s Faux Pho with a couple recipes I found online to create the amazing broth. I made a double-batch for our dinner party, and served it up with all the fixins, many picked up at my local H-Mart Asian Grocer:

• Mung bean sprouts
• Thai Basil
• Cilantro
• Sliced Jalapeño
• Five-Spice Tofu, cubed
• Napa Cabbage
• Pea Pods
• Fresh Lime Wedges
• Hoisin Sauce
• Sriracha Sauce
• Thinly sliced steak for the carnivores

The recipe for the wonderfully rich vegan broth follows behind the cut. This made 8 dinner servings for my dinner party but could easily be cut in half. It was an enormous hit and I’ll definitely be making it for another dinner party in the future!

Vegan Pho Broth

• 2 tbsp peanut oil
• 8 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3 tbsp ginger (I minced some fresh and the rest I used from a jar)
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
  
• 3 star anise pods
• 3 cinnamon sticks
• 4 bay leaves
• 12 cups water

In the bottom of a stock pot heat up your peanut oil. Sauté the garlic and ginger until just softened. Add the soy sauce, coriander and nutmeg and stir to combine. Let cook for 1–2 minutes and add the water, star anise, cinnamon sticks and bay leaves.

Bring to a rolling boil and let cook for 10 minutes. Remove the star anise and cinnamon sticks or the flavor runs the risk of becoming too strong. I let my broth sit for 3–4 hours (made it at lunchtime, served it at dinner time) so the flavor of the broth could really develop.

Serve the broth over Vietnamese rice noodles (prepare to package directions) and garnish with fresh veggies and condiments as listed above.

]]> http://www.shortcutchef.com/archives/529/feed 0 http://www.shortcutchef.com/archives/397 http://www.shortcutchef.com/archives/397#comments Sun, 11 Apr 2010 03:29:33 +0000 Tiara Lynn http://www.shortcutchef.com/?p=397

Curses! I hate when I forget to take a photograph of the completed meal, and this chicken makhani (Indian Butter Chicken) was absolutely freaking phenomenal. It was, without question, one of the most amazing meals I’ve made at home. And yet, no photos. But I have pics of the biryani, which was also fantastic.

CONFESSION: You don’t want to know how long I’ve had this biryani paste. Seriously. I’ve been terrified of it for awhile. Patak’s branding has changed, possibly twice, since this label design. I’m taking the term “non-perishable food item” to new heights. This paste was actually a part of someone’s freecycle pantry cleanout when they were moving, and I got a bunch of new curry pastes to try. They’ve all been good, but I’ve been a little afraid of the biryani. Still kind of am, to be honest, but I nailed it this time because I cut the amount of biryani paste in half of what’s recommended.

I used the recipe on the jar… sort of. This is what I did.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups basmati rice, rinsed 2 or 3 times
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup frozen corn
• 1/4 cup frozen sweet peas
• 2 cans (14oz) cherry tomatoes with juice (you can use diced tomatoes; I just got a bunch of cans of cherry tomatoes on sale for like 35¢ apiece at our Italian grocer)
• 4 cups warm water
• 2 tablespoons biryani paste (the recipe recommends this for a single batch; I used it for a double batch for a lighter flavor)

Preheat oven to 425ºF.

Sauté your vegetables in a saucepan with a little olive oil or butter until the onion is clear. Add the biryani paste and combine.

In a casserole dish, add the drained rice, water, vegetables with curry paste, and your tomatoes and combine until well-mixed. Cover with foil and place the casserole dish in the oven. Bake for 50 minutes to an hour, checking to see if the rice is cooked. You may want to stir halfway through.

I served this with chicken makhani made with Kitchens of India’s Curry Paste for Butter Chicken, which, with the addition of a little half & half to add some creaminess, is perfect when prepared according to package directions. Just sensational, and definitely restaurant quality Indian for when we’re trying to save our pennies.

Spaghetti Squash casserole is one of my signature dishes and definitely one of my favorite to make, especially when cooking for the week, when I spend a full day cooking and spread the leftovers over the course of the week. The flavor of this gets even richer when made the day before!

I love starting with a small spaghetti squash — a little squash goes a long way, so keep that in mind. My favorite squash are about 7″ long, which  makes enough for about 4 big servings. This is so heavily vegetable-based, this is great for big, light servings.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 spaghetti squash
• 1 baby eggplant, diced (I use half a small japanese eggplant and used the rest for a stir fry)
• 1 sweet red pepper, diced
• 2 small carrots, diced
• 6 mushrooms, diced
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 1/2 lb mozzarella cheese, shredded
• One small–medium onion (depending how much you like onion), chopped
• 2 large cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 can fire-roasted tomatoes (I like Muir Glen Diced Fire Roasted Tomatoes)
• 1 lb lean ground beef

Using a very sharp chef’s knife, cut your squash in half. Scoop out the guts and seeds and throw them away. Take the halves of the squash and place them on a microwave safe dish, cut side down with a little bit of water for 6 minutes. If you can’t fit both on the plate, do one at a time. Let them cool while you’re prepping the veggies for roasting.

Toss the diced vegetables in some olive oil, a little salt and pepper and Italian herbs. Spread in a baking pan and roast for 15–20 minutes. While they’re roasting, brown and drain the ground beef.

Scoop the spaghetti strands out of the squash with a fork and place them in a mixing bowl. Combine all the roasted veggies, the meat, the can of tomatoes with juice, and half the shredded mozzarella in the bowl and mix well. Flavor with Italian Herbs (basil, oregano, etc). Place everything in a casserole dish and top with the remaining mozzarella.

Put the casserole dish in the oven and bake for 45 minutes, uncovered. The flavor is great right away, but it intensifies overnight! It’s also easy to make for groups, and taking the meat out makes it fantastic for vegetarians, or substituting chicken can make it even lighter.  Definitely one of my favorite recipes!

Italian restaurants and I have a tricky relationship. It’s because I make REALLY good Italian food. I’m better at some cuisines than others, but Italian is easily the one I understand the most completely. Because of this I find a lot of Americanized Italian food bland, often salty, and usually end up saying “My lasagna/ravioli/pesto is better.”

However, there’s one dish that they make at Basilico in Norridge, Illinois, that I crave regularly called “Pollo Bella Vista.” It’s “Breast of chicken topped with prosciutto, eggplant, mozzarella, tomato, and artichoke hearts; baked in a light marinara and wine sauce” and it is absolutely divine. I decided to try to create the flavor at home and while I didn’t get it exact (lacking the eggplant and didn’t use wine), what I created is definitely going to be a new favorite in this house. So, in honor of Basilico’s delicious recipe, I call this one “Baked Pasta Bella Vista.”

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 chicken breasts, diced or sliced
• 4 slices prosciutto, chopped
• 2 large cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 4-6 sundried tomatoes, softened and chopped
• 1 can artichoke hearts, drained but left in can; set aside
• 1 jar good spaghetti sauce (Classico Spinach Florentine is my absolute favorite)
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella
• 1/2 lb penne pasta, cooked al-dente and rinsed

Preheat your broiler to HIGH. In a large sauté pan or flat-bottomed wok, sauté chicken, prosciutto, onion and garlic in a little olive oil until cooked through. While this is going, take each artichoke heart and squeeze the juice into the pan. It’s a little labor-intensive but it’s worth it for the flavor. Then, chop all the artichoke hearts. By now your chicken should be cooked through, so you can add the artichokes.

Cook down until the sauce this creates reduces a bit. Now add your jar of sauce and toss it all until combined.

Put the cooked pasta into a casserole dish and cover with 1/2 of the cheese. Spoon the sauce over this and stir it all until combined. Top with the remaining mozzarella. On a shelf in the middle of the oven, broil uncovered until cheese is browned and bubbly (about 10-15 minutes). You can skip the broiling step if you don’t have a broiler, but the burnt cheese on the top just adds to the flavor.

This Sunday dinner was my first attempt at cooking a leg of lamb. With the helpful advice of my friend Tracy I made a delicious herb marinade. I started with the leftover mint from the chilaquiles and chopped it finely. To this I added dried basil and rosemary and 6 chopped cloves of garlic, salt and freshly ground pepper, olive oil and lemon juice. After spreading the marinade over the lamb I marinated for nearly 8 hours. This is a good starter recipe for quantities and I used it for reference, but, as I am prone, I totally winged the quantities on the herbs.

To make the potatoes I tossed them with the leftover marinade, some olive oil and Penzey’s Fleur de Sel, the best salt in the world.

Absolutely incredible. This had our entire Sunday Night Farscape group making yummy noises but otherwise eating in silence. I must admit, that’s my favorite part, knowing all this was worth it.

CONFESSION: I make the best lasagna. It’s true. Whether it’s my vegetarian lasagna or my combo, I do it best. I can’t order lasagna in Italian restaurants because all I can think is “mine’s better.”

The problem is, there’s no recipe for me to share. It’s different every time. But while I don’t have a recipe to share, I do have techniques. My favorite technique is for my trademark Lazy Lasagna, always a favorite at dinner parties. This is great for a large group or for a good week’s worth of cooking. Freeze extra portions in vacuum-sealed bags for quick lunches later!

Why is it lazy? Well, because lasagna is layers of noodles and cheese, right? What about cutting out the extra work and getting the cheese and noodles all together? I use cooked ravioli—the Jumbo Vegetable Ravioli from Mr. Luigi’s Ravioli Co. is by far my favorite— to cut the cooking time by more than half. It’s a shame there doesn’t seem to be a way to order these online, because they’re extraordinary.

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 bags Mr. Luigi’s Jumbo Vegetable Ravioli; boiled with a little oil to prevent sticking, cooled and set aside.
• 2 jars of your favorite spaghetti sauce
• 1 lb ground beef or sausage
• Fresh produce of choice; zucchini, bell peppers, eggplant, spinach, squash, whatever
• One large onion
• 6-8 cloves of garlic, chopped or pressed
• Plenty of shredded Italian cheese
• olive oil
• Deep lasagna pan… I just ordered my Mario Batali Lasagna Pan, so I’m looking forward to using it and reporting.

1. Make the Ravioli (boil according to package directions with a little bit of oil to prevent sticking. Rinse with cold water.

2. Make the sauces. For the meat sauce I first cook, drain and season the beef or sausage, then toss in a jar of sauce with plenty of herbs and some parmesan and let it simmer. For the vegetable sauce I chop up all sorts of veggies and fry them up with herbs and olive oil before mixing in with a can of Clasico Florentine sauce.

3. Preheat the oven to 350º and start layering. Spray your pan with some olive oil cooking spray or actual olive oil and lay down a layer of ravioli. Use half of sauce one and a generous amount of shredded cheese. And just keep going. Layer of ravioli, layer of sauce. For the top layer,add the remaining sauce and top with the remaining cheese. Top it all off with Penzey’s Brady Street Cheese Mix

4. Bake for 45 minutes!

Slice and serve… delicious! This served a very hungry dinner party of 8 with two servings of leftovers.

There was something about the Chilaquiles Verdes (think Mexican lasagna) recipe I saw on Daisy Cooks that inspired me to try it from scratch before I attempt to design some shortcuts around it. And believe me, from the fresh salsa verde to frying my own tortillas, this was a labor and time-intensive dish. There are opportunities for shortcutting that I’ll definitely do in the future.

That said, this was absolutely unbelievable and better the next day. While I’ll probably skip making my own tortilla chips next time and just use premade (too much work for something that ends up mushy), I might just keep making my own salsa verde. I’ve never been a fan of salsa verde but the sharp garlic flavor just made this magical.

I didn’t have a copy of Daisy’s recipe, so I eyeballed it based on what I learned from her recipe on the show. My own Daisy-inspired recipe and instructions follow behind the cut.

SALSA VERDE:

• 12 tomatillos, quartered
• 1 large spanish onion
• 1 head garlic, peeled…yes, the whole head of garlic. I like garlic.
• 1/2 bunch cilantro
• Mint leaves (from about 5 stalks of leaves)
• 1 jalapeño pepper, seeds removed
• 1 teaspoon Adobo seasoning

Combine all these ingredients in a blender until puréed. The flavor will be very sharp and bitter because of the garlic and tomatillos, but the cooking will make it milder and almost sweet. Seriously, it’s like magic. Pour purée into a saucepan and heat over low heat, stirring occasionally, for at least one hour, until some of the moisture is cooked away and the color turns to a pretty olive green.

CHILAQUILES:

• 1 whole chicken, or four chicken quarters (I used legs & thighs, 29¢ a pound!)
• 12 white corn tortillas, fried, or 12 unsalted tostadas
• 2 cups shredded cheese (I used a mix of chihuahua, pepperjack and sharp cheddar)
• 1.5 cup and .5 cup salsa verde, keep separate

1. Put chicken in crock pot with seasonings. I used the remains of a jar of mustgo salsa, and some Penzeys Sunny Spain pepper seasoning. Cook for 3-4 hours on high.

2. To fry tortillas, I cut them into strips and used a mixture of corn and peanut oil. Take them out before you think they look done; by the time they look done they’ve already gotten a bit too dark and bitter. Incidentally, these are by far the best chips i’ve ever had and they require no salt to be delicious. Unbelievable. But I digress.

3. Preheat oven to 350º. Shred the chicken when it’s done, keeping it in a separate mixing bowl. Add the 1.5 cups of salsa and mix it up good.

4. Put a layer of chips on the bottom of your lasagna pan. Spoon a layer of half the chicken/salsa mix. Layer with cheese and repeat. For the top layer, just use chips, the reserved salsa, and the rest of the cheese. It will look like this.

5. Bake for 45 minutes until it’s bubbly and browned on top. Serve with sour cream or all by its lonesome. So flavorful, so amazing.

Tonight’s weekly Farscape night went the direction of many Farscape nights lately, filled mostly with eating and visiting until it was too late to get a proper episode in. But at least dinner was good! I love hosting dinner for friends, so when it’s our turn to host for Farscape it’s always a treat figuring out what to make. Since I had the leftover Zantho Zweigelt 2002 wine, and we picked up some great chicken breasts on super sale, I decided to make Chicken Cacciatore.

This recipe is deceptively easy, and the key is in the simmering time.  It made plenty for our group of five (including one who had seconds) and yielded four meals of leftovers! I bet the leftover sauce would freeze very well, too. Like many of my recipes, it’s sort of slapped together, but here’s what I do, in a nutshell:

INGREDIENTS (makes 6–9 servings):

• Chicken Breasts (about 3lb), cut into chunks
• 1/4 cup of flour, with some Italian herbs and pepper mixed in
• 1 very large or two small onions, chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1 cup chopped baby carrots
• 6 sundried tomato halves, chopped
• 1 tbsp sundried tomato paste (regular would work too)
• 1 can/jar spaghetti sauce (I used Hunts Garlic & Herb, but remember not to add ANY salt if you use a canned sauce)
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 3/4 cup dry red wine
• Italian Herbs to taste
• 1-2 bay leaves

Heat about 3 tbsp of olive oil in a large sauté pan. Dredge chicken breast chunks in flour/herb mixture and place in the pan to brown on all sides (about 10 minutes). Add onions, pepper, sundried tomatoes and carrots and cook until the onion is translucent.

Next add the sauce, tomatoes, wine, herbs and bay leaves. Let this simmer, loosely coverd and stirring occasionally, for about 45 minutes. Serve over spaghetti or, as I did, angel hair pasta.

When we invited some friends to dinner on Sunday, I had no idea what to do for dinner. They were kind enough to bring a delicious appetizer of crackers, brie and apricot jam, but by the time they arrived I still wasn’t entirely sure what I was making, even though I had the water boiling for the pasta that I knew was going to be involved and was sautéing the tomatoes, onions and garlic. With the addition of some pre-cooked all-beef Italian sausage I bought from the discount meat bin for 99¢ for a package of four (STEAL!), some leftover provolone cheese and a jar of sauce we had a delicious and simple baked pasta.

The whole meal, which fed six and left plenty of leftovers, used about $6 in ingredients.

QUICK TIPS:
* Cook the pasta to a chewy al-dente before putting in the oven
* Make with a warm sauce to reduce baking time
* Put under the broiler for about 10 minutes

More detailed instructions follow

Making a simple baked pasta really happens in a couple easy steps. Here I’ve broken it down.

PASTA STEPS:
Cook a 1 lb box of shapes pasta (I used the trumpet-looking shells from Aldi) in salted water until not-quite-al dente. There should be a very slight crunch to it. I’ve found that cooking a pasta that usually takes 8 minutes for 6 minutes (for example) works pretty well. Drain, don’t rinse.

SAUCE STEPS:
Sauté 2 fresh tomatoes (I used orange tomatoes, but roma tomatoes would be good too), 3 cloves of garlic (chopped), and half an onion (chopped) in olive oil. I also added some fresh basil, dried oregano, a bit of freshly grated nutmeg and some fresh ground pepper. Let some of the water cook out of the tomatoes, then add one full jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce to the mixture and combine it. Slice up 4 cooked Italian sausages (or brown, spice and drain some ground beef or chicken) and mix up with the sauce.

COMBINING STEP:
Preheat the oven to 425º. I like using the broiler setting on my oven, but you can do a regular bake too.

In a large casserole dish, combine pasta, sauce, sausages and some grated italian cheese of your choice. I probably used about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of provolone. Mix it all up until well-coated, then top with a bit more cheese. I grated a little more nutmeg and pepper on the top.

Bake about 10-15 minutes and serve!