Welcome to the Jungle [Curry]

I'm pretty sure I won Justin over on just our 2nd date when we ended up at Little Serow for dinner.  If you're not familiar, it's a tiny, hole-in-the-wall place, behind an unmarked door, that was named one of Bon Appetit's 50 best new restaurants last year.  If you're lucky enough to get a seat, you're in for 5-7 courses of delicious northern and northeastern Thai food.  This isn't your typical coconut curry and pad Thai that you get in most Thai restaurants.  Instead, the flavors are tangy, and progress in heat.  The ingredient I was most surprised to find was dill.

It was only a matter of time before we attempted to recreate this cuisine at home.  We decided to make a jungle curry, native to northeastern Thailand.  Coconuts don't grow in that region, so this curry ends up looking more like a broth.

We started by prepping our veggies; some magda squash, globe squash, baby bok choy, and snap peas, green onion, all fresh from the share, along with some white onion, dill and cilantro.

 Then we fried up some shallots that would be used as a garnish.  Just slice them then, and drop them into some hot oil.  You don't have to bread them or anything.  Keep your eye on them though.  They fry up quick.

We heated our wok with some vegetable oil and tossed in a couple cloves of chopped garlic, a healthy squeeze of sriracha, and a couple chopped dried chiles.  Once they became fragrant, we tossed in the bok choy, and started to build the broth.  I didn't have any curry paste on hand, but I did have some amok curry powder from a past trip to Cambodia, so we tossed that in instead.  We also added a bit of brown sugar, some oyster sauce, and a bit of fish sauce.  Now, the smell of fish sauce is not appealing at all, but it adds a nice salty and tangy flavor to a lot of southeast Asian dishes.

From here, we started adding in the squashes, onions, snap peas, and some chicken broth to round out the broth.  As everything continued to simmer together, we added in our cubed chicken.  Within minutes, the We plated up the curry, garnished with the cilantro, dill, and fried shallots.

It was really, really good, and very different from typical Thai food such as peanut satay.  The squashes were especially yummy as they soaked up all the complex flavor from the curry, while the heat didn't overwhelm their nutty taste.  I have to say...it was a pretty close rendition to a dish we enjoyed at Little Serow last summer, and much quicker than waiting in line for a table.

Easter Feast

We spent Easter weekend down in NC with Justin's parents, taking in some sun, catching a glimpse of the ocean, and just relaxing.  It was a nice little getaway.  But we didn't stay out of the kitchen for too long.  Since we had to drive back to DC on Sunday, we decided to do Easter dinner on Saturday night.  After an impromptu happy hour on the balcony, we got cookin'.

We tried to keep the menu pretty simple and with spring in mind.  We started the meal with a pea soup.  It's supposed to be a chilled soup, but we ate it at about room temperature, and it was perfect.  The sweetness of the peas was balanced out by the mint, which gave it a refreshing punch.  We couldn't find morel mushrooms, so we used chanterelles instead, and they were delicious!

For the main course, we went with lamb chops (of course!), with a curry cream.  Shout out to my aunt for the recipe!  The lamb gets marinated in some white wine and whole grain mustard.  The curry cream is really where it's at!  It's a simple mixture of whipping cream, paprika, tumeric, cayenne, fenugreek leaves, garlic and lemon juice.  Fenugreek can also be called kasuri methi, and is a common ingredient in Indian food.  Because the rest of our menu was more spring like, we did add a bit of mint to the sauce, to help tie everything together.

For side dishes, we went with asparagus wrapped in pancetta, and the kale/farro/sunchoke hash that we've made a couple times before.

The saltiness of the pancetta was balanced out by the citrus sauce that was drizzled over the top.  And although the kale-sunchoke hash was a bit of the hearty side, relatively, it really helped round out the meal.

We had good intentions to make a dessert of coconut macarons and ice cream, but we all fell into food comas following dinner.  Dessert will have to wait until next time.

Chicken & Kale Curry

It's always tough for me to get motivated to cook dinner on a Friday night.  I'm usually tired from the work week, and would rather just go out or order in.  But we're watching what we eat, and it can be difficult when you go out since you don't have complete control over what goes into your food.  Luckily we found a simple recipe for a chicken and kale curry.  I don't think it took us more than 30 min. to throw this bad boy together.

Start by mixing together your spices; curry powder, tumeric, coriander, ginger, salt & pepper.  I didn't have any dried ground ginger on hand, but I did have a jar of wet ground ginger in the fridge, so we used that instead.  And instead of black pepper, we used white pepper, which is often found in Asian cooking.  Then just toss in your hunks of chicken and evenly coat them with your spice blend.  You can let it sit and marinate while you prep your veggies.

Speaking of veggies...you'll need to dice up an onion and some tomatoes, and de-rib your kale.  To make it even easier, you could just use grape or cherry tomatoes and toss them in whole.  But we had the tomatoes from our share, so they just got diced up.

Once that's done, heat your pan with a bit of coconut oil.  If you don't have any, you can use whatever oil you have on hand.  But the coconut oil helps impart a subtle coconut flavor on the dish.  Toss in your onions and let them cook for a few minutes, until soft.  Then throw in the chicken and let it brown up.

Once the chicken is browned, add in the kale and let it wilt down.  It should only take a few minutes.  Then you can add in your tomatoes.  Once the tomatoes have had a chance to cook down a bit, you can add your coconut milk.  This will thicken as it simmers, and becomes your sauce.

At this point, we tasted everything and decided to add a dash of cayenne for some heat, and a little more salt.  Once the sauce has thickened to your liking, you're ready to serve!  We topped it all with a little green onion and called it a night.

Using the coconut milk, as opposed to coconut cream, let the spices be the star of the show.  The coconut was very subtle, while still adding nice flavor to the dish overall.  It's a great, quick, Paleo-friendly meal that we'll be adding to our rotation.

Voyage to India

That's right...2 posts in 1 day!  So grab your passport and join us as we chow down on some Indian grub!  Now, don't be intimidated by the thought of cooking Indian food.  The techniques aren't anything new, but there are probably a few spices that aren't currently in your pantry.  For the lamb biryani and the chana masala we needed quite a variety of spices, but we actually had most of them on hand already.

We found recipes online for both the lamb biryani and the chana masala, and kept pretty close to the recipes.  So let's start with the lamb.

Start with some plain yogurt, garlic, cayenne, cumin, salt & pepper.  Once mixed together, drop in your lamb and make sure they're nice and coated in the yogurt mixture.  While the lamb is getting all cozy with the yogurt and spices, you can saute some sliced onions in butter with cardamom, turmeric, cloves, and cinnamon.

This recipe wanted you to cook the rice in the sauce with the lamb, but we opted to cook the rice separately.  That way we'd have plain rice to mix with the various sauces.


Once everything was mixed, we added the lamb and yogurt to the pan, along with some water and the golden raisins.  The recipe calls for regular raisins, but I prefer golden raisins, so we used those.  If you're not cooking the rice in the pan with the lamb, you can add less water than the recipe calls for.  You just want enough to make a sauce.

This was an oversight on our part, so we had to use a bit of cornstarch to thicken the sauce, and added more spices to bring back the flavor.  It was an easy save.  When you're ready to serve, toss in your toasted cashews.  You don't want to add them too early, otherwise they'll lose a bit of their crunch.

Now, onto the chana masala.  This was another easy dish to pull together.  You start with some onion, garlic, ginger, and a hot green chili.  All I could at the store was a jalepeno, but it worked out just fine.  Once those cook down, add in your spices: coriander, cumin, cayenne, turmeric, paprika, garam masala (I had to use some curry since the grocery store was out of garam masala), and the juice from half of a lemon.

Once everything has been cooking for a few minutes, add your tomatoes and their juices.  This is when you can deglaze the pan and scrape up all the tasty bits at the bottom.  Once you've scraped up all the bits, you can add the chickpeas, water, and the juice from the rest of the lemon, and just let it simmer so all the flavors can come together, and the tomatoes can cook down.

We also had a third dish, some dal makhani, which is a dish of lentils and kidney beans.  We kind of cheated on this one, just heating it through and adding it to the plate.  But overall, it was a quick, and easy meal to put together.  We may have had to buy some additional spices, but that just adds to our arsenal.  Don't be intimidated by cooking ethnic food at home.  When you break it down, it's really just using different spices an flavor combinations, using techniques you're already familiar with.