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Author: marga (Page 27 of 116)

HelloFresh Coconut Curry Chicken Recipe

November 5, 2022 / / 0 Comments

So fast and easy, with stuff you are likely to have around

I’m often amazed at how HelloFresh comes up with very easy, very simple recipes that are, however, super tasty – specially now, when they’ve made their recipes quicker and simpler, both to save customer’s time and their own profits. This recipe is a prime example. It’s a complete cheat curry and one I think I should be able to recreate. What makes it particularly fast is that it’s made with pre-cut chicken, but buying tenders and cutting them into pieces shouldn’t take that long. I’m planning to make it for my vegan daughter, though I will have to figure out what to use instead of peppers, as she doesn’t like them.

The recipe below is for two portions, double for four.

Thai Coconut Curry Chicken

Ingredients

  • cooking oil
  • 1 red/orange/yellow bell pepper, cored and seeded and cut into 1/2″ pieces
  • salt to taste
  • 10 oz chicken tenders, cut into 1″ strips
  • 1 Tbsp curry powder
  • 2/3 cup coconut milk
  • 2 Tbsp Thai sweet chili sauce
  • 1 tsp chicken stock concentrate
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • juice from 1/2 a lime
  • 1 Tbsp chopped cilantro

Instructions

Heat a generous drizzle of oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the bell pepper and salt to taste. Sauté, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Add the chicken and a pinch of salt and continue sautéing, stirring occasionally, for 3-4 minutes, or until the chicken browns. Add the curry powder and cook for 1 minute. Stir in the coconut milk, the chili sauce, stock concentrate, sugar and lime juice. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to medium low and cook until the sauce thickens, about 5 minutes. Taste and adjust salt and lime juice. Sprinkle chopped cilantro and serve over rice.

Cilantro Lime Rice

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup Jazmine rice
  • 3/4 cup water
  • salt to taste
  • zest from 1 lime
  • 1 Tbsp chopped cilantro

Instructions

Place rice, water and salt in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover, reduce heat to low and cook for 15 minutes. Stir in lime zest and chopped cilantro.

Filippo Berio Tomato & Ricotta Pesto – Review

October 3, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I came across this product soon after having some complimentary bread with a creamy tomato sauce at some restaurant, probably Buon Appetito in Hayward. My daughter and I really liked it, so when I saw it, I figured I’d give it a try.

I hadn’t tried it until now but it tastes exactly as you would expect from the title/description. It basically taste like pesto, which has been mixed with some ricotta cheese and tomato sauce. The strongest flavor in the mix is the Grana Padano cheese, a cheap cousin to Parmesan, followed by the basil, which stands in the background. The tomato adds quite a bit of intense acidity to the mixture, while the Ricotta somewhat softens it, but can mostly be felt in the soft yet slightly chalky texture.

All in all, I enjoyed it quite a bit on French bread, but the acidity is such that you can’t eat too much of it. Still, it works well as a dip, and you could make interesting canapes with it. The producers also suggest as recommended uses: “Roasting or Basting Proteins and Vegetables, Baked into Bread, Layered with Pasta as Lasagna, Base for Creamy Soup”. I’d note that due to its intense flavor, less is likely to be more on any dinner dish.

Filippo Berio is a brand named after the namesake of the olive oil company he started. In addition to olive oils, they produce and sell balsamic vinegars, pestos and glazes. They seem to be base din Lucca, Italy and the pesto is made in Italy. It sells at my local Safeway supermarket for $6.60 (I bought it on sale 2 months ago for $2.50 and it’s currently on sale for $4).

Braised Short Ribs with Pomegranate Molasses

October 3, 2022 / / 2 Comments

I have been cooking for over 30 years, but I pretty much never cook without a recipe. I’m not a particularly creative person – and I’m anxious enough to believe that if I can’t anchor myself to a recipe, I’ll screw it up. So I was pretty nervous making this. I did look at several recipes out there, but none of them were exactly what I wanted. So I combined them, skipped what I didn’t want to use (carrots and celery) and tried to think of what flavors would work well together. And, of course, I used what I already had at home (thus the ginger garlic paste and pomegranate molasses).

The results were great. A little greasy (I used more bacon than what I’m recommending in the recipe below), but delicious. Maybe still not the ultimate short rib recipe, but getting close.

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs short ribs
  • kosher salt & pepper to taste
  • olive oil
  • 4 strips bacon, cut into 1″ squares
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp ginger garlic paste
  • 3 Tbsp balsamic vinegar, divided
  • 1 cup red wine
  • 1/2 cup port wine
  • 2 Tbsp pomegranate molasses or concentrate
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 6-8 fresh sage leaves
  • 1 Tbsp corn or potato starch

Directions

Preheat oven to 300F

Season short ribs with kosher salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

Pour a very thin layer of oil in a wide oven safe lidded sauté pan or dutch oven, if needed. Heat over medium-high heat and add the bacon. Cook until the fat renders. Remove the bacon bits (feel free to eat them, you won’t use them).

Working in two batches, add the short ribs to the grease and brown on all sides. Remove and set aside. Pour any excessive grease out.

Add the chopped onions, turn heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are soft. Add the ginger garlic paste and cook for 30 seconds. Add 1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until dry.

Add the red wine and deglaze the pan. Add the port, pomegranate molasses and beef broth. Mix well and bring to a boil. Return short ribs to the pan. Add the sage leaves. Add enough water to submerge the short ribs. Cover, put in the oven, and cook for 3 hours.

Remove from the oven. Gently remove the short ribs to a plate and set aside. Place the pan on the stove and turn heat to medium-high. In a small bowl, mix corn starch with about 1/4 cup of the liquid from the pan. Whisk into the sauce in the pan. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Cook for a few minutes until it starts to thicken, then return short ribs to the pan and warm for a few minutes before serving.

Black Irish Irish Cream: Taste Just Like Baileys

September 30, 2022 / / 0 Comments

We are not huge alcohol drinkers, but I do like cream liqueurs from time to time, and Baileys Irish Cream is our “default.” Irish Cream consists of Irish whiskey, cream, cacao and sometimes other flavorings. It was invented by an ad agency back in 1973, but the Irish seem to have adopted it as their own.

We usually buy Baileys when it’s on sale, or Kirkland Irish Cream, the Costco brand, if we shop at Costco. But I saw that Safeway also carried O’Connery’s Irish Cream Liqueur for just $8-9, and I figured it was worth a try. It gets fairly good reviews and is made by a well known distillery. I do most of my purchasing online, however, and despite the fact that I always ask for no substitutions, Safeway invariably substitutes unavailable products for ones that much more expensive. So unsurprisingly Safeway sent me this Black Irish Irish Cream instead of the O’Connery. At $25, it was over 3 times the price I expected to pay, but fortunately Safeway gave me a refund. I kept the bottle, however, and today I gave it a try. It tastes just like Baileys.

I don’t really know how to describe Irish cream, and there might be some minute differences that a connoisseur could tell, but to me they taste pretty much the same. The same can be said about Kirkland Irish Cream, btw. Unfortunately, both Black Irish and Baileys cost approximately the same – at least when not on sale.


Doing some digging online, I found out that the Black Irish brand is owned by singer Mariah Carey, who realized you can make far more money selling alcohol than singing. Given the very commercial origins of Irish cream, I don’t think anyone can be upset. Still, no reason to buy it or not buy it instead of Baileys – if I had to choose between the two, I’d go for whichever one is on sale.

Garlic Braised Short Ribs With Red Wine

September 29, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I made this recipe last night, as Safeway had a great sale (great as in, the same price that short ribs were at just a handful of years ago – yes, I’m not an old lady that decries how expensive everything has gotten) on short ribs last week. The NYT has a similar sounding recipe, but it’s behind a paywall, so I looked for something that approximated it.

It was good, but nothing to write home about. Just a standard short rib recipe. On the plus side, it was an easy recipe to make and my non-vegetarian daughter liked it. She thought it looked horrible and had no hopes for it, but she was hungry enough to try it, and was pleasantly surprised. I skipped the parsley and lemon zest at the end, simply because I forgot about it. They might have given the recipe the ummph need it to elevate it. I’ll see if I remember to add them to the leftovers.

Ingredients

  • 5 lbs bone-in short ribs
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • olive oil
  • 2 whole garlic, sliced in half crosswise
  • 2 white onions, chopped
  • 4 stalks celery, chopped
  • 2 carrots, chopped
  • 3 Tbsp tomato paste
  • 2 cups red wine
  • 2 cups beef stock
  • 4 sprigs thyme
  • 1 cup parsley, roughly chopped (optional)
  • 1 Tbsp lemon zest (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 275°F

Season short ribs with salt and pepper to taste.

Heat a thin layer of oil in a large, lidded, oven-safe sauté pan over high heat. Working in batches, add the short ribs and brown on all sides. Remove and set aside.

Turn heat down to medium and add the garlic, cut side down. Push to a side of the pan.

Add the chopped onions, celery and carrots and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft – about 8 minutes. Add the tomato paste and stir to coat the vegetables.

Add the wine, deglace the pan, and let boil for 2 minutes. Add the beef stock and the thyme and bring to a boil. Gently return the short ribs to the pan. Add enough water to cover the ribs. Bring to a boil, cover, turn off the heat and carefully place the pan in the oven.

Cook for 3 to 4 hours, until the ribs are cooked through and tender. Add the parsley and lemon zest and serve.

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Here are some other short ribs recipes I’ve cooked in the past, if you are looking for inspiration. All of these were good as well, just not the ultimate recipe:

Morning Star Vegan Meats: Are they Diabolic?

September 20, 2022 / / 0 Comments

My vegan-cum-vegetarian daughter is very fond of Morning Star products, particularly the buffalo cik’n. But did you know that “Morning Star” is another term for “Lucifer“, aka “the Devil”?

I’d never had realized that if I hadn’t started watching both “The Sandman” and “Devil in Ohio“*. Of course, I had to go to Wikipedia, where I found a not-very clearly written article on Lucifer. For what I can make up from it, it would appear that the planet Venus is known as the “morning star.” Venus is the closest planet to the earth and therefore the brightest “star” in the sky – but it’s particularly visible when it’s low in the horizon. As both the Earth and Venus orbit the sun, their relatively position changes, and approximately every 18 months Venus goes from appearing brightest right before dawn to appearing brightest right after sunset. It was thus known in ancient times both as the “morning star” and the “evening star.” I’m not clear if the ancients realized it was the same star.

In any case, the Latin name for Venus as the morning star was “Luciferus,” or “bringer of light”, from where we get the name “Lucifer”. As many astral bodies, Luciferus became personalized and given a family and vague mythology.

Meanwhile, there is a passage in Isaiah, in the Old Testament, where they refer to the King of Babylon by a Hebrew term that translates as “the shining one”, also understood to be Venus, aka “the morning star”. In the Vulgata and King James versions, they translated that word as “Lucifer,” while modern English versions use the term “morning star” or even “day star“. The passage describes the King of Babylon’s fall from grace – which you can compare to Venus, as the morning star, being seen low in the horizon before dawn. I guess the fall from grace motif caused “Lucifer” to become a name for the devil.

So, is eating Morning Star products a form of devil-worshipping? I mentioned it to my daughter and she laughed. More seriously, though, Morning Star is a product line that belongs to Kellogg’s, a company that has a history of exploiting/mistreating employees, false advertisement/lying to consumers, andincluding toxic ingredients in its cereals. That seems like quite evil/devilish behavior. So perhaps, by giving money to Kellogg’s and increasing its promising, we are rewarding evil and worshiping the devil in the only real way to do so.

* My daughter tells me that this is a also a well known fact to people who watch the show “Lucifer“, as the main character, the Devil, is called “Lucifer MorningStar,” but I never watched it.

Primal Kitchen Beef & Mushroom Bowl – Review

September 17, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I found these frozen bowls at Grocery Outlet, I think for $4. I was impressed by the simple ingredients and “grass fed” beef so I figured I’d give them a try. It was fine, about the quality you expect from frozen food. The beef consists of “patty crumbles”, the mushrooms are limp and the sauce is basic a tomato sauce, a little bit spicy and a little bit undersalted. The dish is in need of a starch, some bread, rice or cornbread would probably compliment it nicely. Of course, they are sold to cater to the “paleo” market, thus their lack of carbs.

I did like that it came in what seems to be a compostable bowl and is covered with wax paper – but I have curve side composting. And the portion was large enough for a light lunch. I just wasn’t sold on the flavor.

Primal Kitchen, which started as a small company but was later acquired by Kraft, sells 3 frozen bowls – the other two are panang curry and chicken pesto. It’s not clear to me if the bowls are in the process of being discontinued, however. The only place I can find that sells them, other than Grocery Outlet, is Thrive Market, where they retail for $9. They used to be $8 at Safeway, but they’re no longer available.

San Leandro Bites:  Tapsilog Express

August 27, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Bay Area Restaurant Reviews

I’m a big fan of Filipino food, a very successful fusion of Asian and Spanish/Latin American cuisine, but we seldom get it because Filipino restaurants don’t really cater to vegetarians or vegans, and one of my daughters is one. So when we were kidless a few nights ago, it was a great opportunity to try one of the local Filipino restaurants. It was a wonderful night, so we figured we’d get take out and eat it in the patio, and Tapsilog Express seemed best suited for an easy take out experience. It was.

Tapsilog Express has some indoor seating, in a pleasant though not particularly alluring room, but it’s mostly a take out place. They have a simplified menu of meat mains served with rice and a fried egg, as well as some appetizers, drinks and a couple of desserts. We got two orders of lumpia, the tosilog and the chorizosilog . I also got the pineapple cooler and flan for dessert. The food came out very quickly, about 10 minutes after ordering.

The lumpia ($7.50 per order) were small, 1 1/2″ pieces, but there was a good amount of them per order (the picture shows two). They were tasty by themselves, which is a good thing as the sweet and sour sauce they came with was overwhelmingly sour and not very tasty. I’d only get these again if I had sauce at home.

Tosilog ($11) is described as Filipino bacon, but it’s more like pork strips marinated in a sweet sauce. It lacks the crispiness of bacon. It was pretty good, though I felt it lacked “umph”. Still, I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed mixing the egg yolk with the rice.

My husband similarly enjoyed his chorizo ($11). It was slightly sweet and very tasty. He’d get it again.

The flan itself was pretty standard, but the caramel sauce was tastier than usual – probably because it was cooked to perfection. I’m a big flan fan and I’d have it again.
I seldom get juices/fountain drinks at restaurants (other than soda), but their pineapple cooler ($3) had good reviews so I decided to give it a try. It was actually very good, a great proportion of pineapple juice to water, so that it had a nice pineapple taste but it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet or heavy. I’d have it again.
Tapsilog Express
14843 Washington Ave.
San Leandro, California
(510) 878-1232
M-Su 11:30 am – 07:30 pm

Buon Appetito in Hayward is a solid choice for Italian

August 26, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Bay Area Restaurant Reviews

After spending most of the summer with non-COVID related health problems, I’ve been suffering from cabin fever, so I decided that we should treat ourselves to a dinner out. I was hankering for Italian, and Buon Appetito showed up as having outdoor dining. Coincidentally, as my daughter reminded us, this was the last restaurant where we ate indoors, before the pandemic. She remembered my telling her that it would probably be out last visit to a restaurant for a while. I was right.

Since then, Buon Appetito has built a small deck on their parking lot. It’s a pretty simple affair, and it could be much enhanced with some plants, particular if positioned to block the view and noises from the adjacent street. But it was pleasant enough for a casual dinner.

Buon Appetito serves classic-modern Italian-American cuisine, by which I mean the sort of dishes you expect to find at Italian restaurants in America in the 21st century. Nothing too exotic, nothing too authentic, nothing too marvelous but stuff that is competently cooked and generally satisfies. It’s the sort of restaurant you expect to find in middle class suburbs.

We started by splitting an appetizer of Mozzarella alla Caprese ($10), which was underwhelming. This was a thick slice of tomato topped with a thick slice of fresh mozarella and large basil leaves – so traditional caprese. It was fine, but I prefer it with slightly riper tomatoes and soft mozarella balls.

As my main dish, I had the gnocchi which was on special that night, which came with a rich, creamy tomato (and I think sausage) sauce. The gnocchi had the right consistency and the dish tasted exactly like I expected it to taste. It was very good without being extraordinary. I enjoyed the leftovers the next day.

My husband had the Costolette di Maiale all’ Arancia ($21), a grilled pork chop in an orange/marsala sauce, which came with mashed potatoes and veggies. He was quite happy with it.

My daughter had the Ravioli con Pomodoro e Limonee ($18). the large ravioli are filled with “spinach, swiss chard, pine nuts & ricotta cheese” and you get your choice of a tomato and artichoke or a lemon cream sauce. She went for the lemon cream, and while both the ravioli and the sauce were very good, the combination of the two really didn’t work. Next time, she’ll try the tomato sauce.

Service was competent, and in all we had a very pleasant dinner. 

Buon Appetito
917 A Street
HAYWARD, CA 
510-247-0120
M-Su 11:30am - 9:00pm

Denali’s Toast – Recipe

August 7, 2022 / / 0 Comments

My oldest daughter came up with this loaded toast and liked it so much that she made it again. Denali, the cat, was not very amused, maybe because she knew my daughter wasn’t planning to share. Here is the recipe for anyone in search of inspiration.

Denali’s Toast

Layer in order

  • Sliced bread, toasted
  • Hummus
  • Avocado
  • Sliced or smashed fresh tomatoes
  • Fried egg
  • Season with dill, onion powder, paprika, turmeric and black pepper
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