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.

CSA Recap

Helloooo!  Apologies to our loyal followers...I know we've been a bit silent over the last couple weeks, and that was not intentional.  Justin and I were over in China for the last couple weeks, and had been planning to post a few things while we were gone, until I was reminded that China blocks Google and blogs.  Whomp!  Whomp!  We'll have a recap of some of the delicious things we ate while we were traveling, but I still need to get settled back in first.  So let's pick up where we left off...our CSA recap...

And here's how we used everything...

• Chicken Marsala & Roasted Turnips
• shitake mushrooms
• oyster mushrooms
• turnips
• green onions
• Steak Frites
• sweet potatoes
• Roasted Chicken (like this one)
• whole chicken
• Kale & Bacon Frittata (sorta like this one, but with squash on the bottom)
• kale
• squash
• green onion
• Pork Chops with Mango Salsa
• green onion
• romaine
• watercress

We ended up just eating the peanuts while watching some basketball, and the potatoes were used for some home fries for a weekend breakfast.  We'll get back on track with our regular posts...promise!

CSA Day AND Chicken Marsala

That's right...you're getting a two for one deal tonight!  So let's get things started.

Here's what we hauled in today...

We're really excited about this whole chicken.  The peanuts and potatoes will be a little trickier since they are both off limits with the Paleo diet, but since we allow ourselves one cheat day, we'll find a way to incorporate them into meals then.

Now...for tonight's dinner, we whipped up some chicken marsala and roasted turnips.

We started by making a "marinade" for the chicken.  I use that term loosely since it wasn't your typical saucy marinade, but that's how the recipe phrased it, so that's what I'm sticking with.  We started by slicing and dicing some green onion (since we didn't have shallots), white onion, garlic, thyme, rosemary (our little twist), and sage, and adding in a bit of grapeseed oil.  Then we layered in our chicken, making sure each piece was nicely covered in the aromatics.

The recipe says to cut your chicken into chunks, but we went more with cutlets.  So I stacked them up, making sure to get the onions and herbs in between each piece, and let them sit for about 10 minutes while we prepped the turnips.  We kept them simple and just roasted them up, similar to how we did the cauliflower here.  Once the chicken had a chance to marinate, we browned them in a pan, and then popped 'em into the oven just to stay warm (so turn your oven no higher than 200).

Using the same pan, we added the remaining onions and herbs to the pan to soften, and then added in the mushrooms.  We used both the oyster and shitake mushrooms that we picked up in our share.

Once the mushrooms have cooked down, add in your marsala wine to deglaze the pan.  Be sure to scrape up all the delicious brown bits that may be stuck on the bottom of your pan.  If you use a non-stick pan like we did, you won't have to worry about those stuck-on bits.

Once the alcohol has cooked off, add in your chicken stock.  Give everything a good stir, and be sure to season your sauce with salt and pepper.  Then you just let it simmer and reduce for about 10 minutes.  Up until this point, it was Paleo-friendly.  But we had to add a tiny bit of cornstarch to thicken the sauce.  The recipe called for arrowroot as the thickening agent, but we didn't have any on hand.  Considering there was only about 1/2 tsp of cornstarch, I'm going to say this was still Paleo-friendly.

Once your sauce has thickened to your desired viscosity, you can toss your chickens in so they can absorb some of the sauce.  Then you're ready to serve!