Baingan Bharta (Eggplant Curry)

Eggplant. Never liked it, never though I would. Last year, Kevin's family came to visit and we had a big dinner with the whole extended family. We had a kids table and an adults table. They brought out this super stinky casserole dish to the adults table and if we could see stink lines, they'd be green. I will always remember this story of eggplants.

I disliked eggplants so much that it was the first thing i put on my "don't cook" list when I was living with Rachelle. We had a list of all the foods we didn't like or were allergic to on the fridge. So we knew not to make anything with it or to not share if made.

But then, a few weeks ago, Kevin and I invited Kev's little cousin, Benjamin, over to play video games. Because we promised him this when he watched our fish when we went on vacation. His mother invited us to stay over for dinner when we dropped him off. Her friend was over at their house and made this indian feast and my favorite dish was this veggie curry mash. I was very surprised when she told me it was eggplant. That's when I decided to look for a recipe and try my hand at making this classic Indian dish. I altered it by adding ground pork for my carnivore fiancé.

1 large eggplant
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste or minced ginger/minced garlic
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 tomato, diced
1/2 cup plain yogurt (optional)
1 fresh jalapeno chile pepper, finely chopped (subbed with a few dashes of cayenne)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 bunch cilantro, finely chopped

Ground pork

1 1/2 Tbsp corn starch

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. Place eggplant on a medium baking sheet. Bake 20 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until tender. Remove from heat, cool, peel, and chop.
3. Meat option: Mix corn starch into the ground pork and mix in pepper and salt for taste.
4. Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Cook pork. Mix in cumin seeds and onion. Cook and stir until onion is tender.
5. Mix ginger garlic paste, curry powder, and tomato into the saucepan, and cook about 1 minute. Stir in yogurt. Mix in eggplant and jalapeno pepper, and season with salt.
6. Cover, and cook 10 minutes over high heat.
7. Remove cover, reduce heat to low, and continue cooking about 5 minutes. Garnish with cilantro to serve.

I'm not sure how it would taste like with the yogurt, but the way i made it with the substitutes, it was yummy. I'd make this again. I think the yogurt would give it a more bland taste, which wouldn't be a bad thing. Without it, it had a much stronger curry flavor.

Cinnamon Walnut Pastries

You know, cooking doesn't require that much effort. I don't make it a secret when I shortcut some of my recipes. Real cooks would be ashamed of my kitchen practices. I use frosen vegetables, minute rice... If you look at the pictures i take, they look complicated to make, but in reality, i always pick recipes that are easy. I like cooking, but I get tired from work like everybody else. "Anyone can cook" (quote from Ratatouille)

At my old employment, I had a little baking group thing with a few co-workers. Once a month, we'd bring in baked goods to share with each other. Bakin is something I like doing, but it's even more time consuming than cooking a meal I find. I have great respect for pastry chefs. That weekend, I didn't have time to make something from scratch for our baking meet. So I bought prepared puff pastry.

1 package of frozen butter puff pastry

Cinnamon

White sugar

Walnuts

1 egg white

1. Defrost puff pastry as indicated on the package.
2. Preheat oven to 400F. Unfold pastry and brush egg whites all over one side.
3. Sprinkle white sugar and cinnamon. The more the better!
4. Sprinkle walnuts.
5. Start rolling the pastry from one end to the other and brush egg white at the end so it doesn't unroll.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until browned.

For the bake meet, instead of rolling them I put the second sheet on top of the first one after step 4. Then cut them into little strands and twisted them. So when they baked, they look like twirl sticks.

These look great after they're baked. My dad, who doesn't really eat desserts, liked these a lot.

Curried Honey Dijon Wings

This is a recycled recipe. So i'm cheating on having this "new" blog post. I made curried honey dijon chicken drumsticks back in december 2008. I remember enjoying this recipe quite a bit and have wanted to use the same recipe on chicken wings. I finally got around to doing it. And I figured that a marinade this good deserves a double post.

1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon curry powder
2 tablespoons soy sauce
cayenne pepper to taste (or some other form of heat)
pepper to taste
Chicken wings


1. Mix everything but the chicken in a bowl.
2. Add the chicken, cover and marinate in the fridge for at least an hour. (I did it for nearly 6 hours)
3. Place the chicken in a baking dish (reserving the marinade)
4. Bake uncovered in a 375F oven for 20 minutes.
5. Brush on some of the marinade.
6. Bake uncovered until the juices run clear, about 20-30 minutes, brushing with the marinade periodically.

(This would also be great cooked on the grill, but watch it carefully as the honey will make it burn much faster.)

Chicken Piccata

I love chicken, but I always found chicken breasts to be difficult to work with because it get dry. While surfing several food blogs for chicken recipes, i found a couple of them had featured Chicken Piccata. I've never heard of this dish before. Chicken Piccata is a classic Italian dish that is supposed to be nearly foolproof. The chicken breast are sliced (butterflied) and flattened for faster cooking. This prevents from under cooking, as well as over cooking, because once the chicken is browned, it's done. My problem, this time, wasn't with the chicken, but with the sauce. I found it to be too sour. I started adding some sugar to the sauce, but a huge clumps fell out and i had to scoop the sugar out of the sauce. It was a bit of a disaster, but in the end, Kevin said he liked the sauce and I wasn't too impressed with it.

2-4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (1 1/2 pound total)
2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup flour
Salt and pepper
4 Tbsp olive oil
4 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup chicken stock or dry white wine
3 Tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup brined capers
1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley

1. Cut the chicken breast halves horizontally, butterflying them open. If the breast pieces you are working with are large, you may want to cut them each into two pieces. If the pieces are still thick after butterflying, put them between two pieces of plastic wrap and pound them with a meat hammer to 1/4-inch thickness.
2. Mix together the flour, salt, pepper, and grated Parmesan. Rinse the chicken pieces in water. Dredge them thoroughly in the flour mixture, until well coated.
3. Heat olive oil and 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet on medium high heat. Add half of the chicken pieces, do not crowd the pan. Brown well on each side, about 3 minutes per side. Remove the chicken from the pan and reserve to a plate. Cook the other breasts in the same manner, remove from pan. Cover with aluminum foil and keep warm in the oven while you prepare the sauce.
4. Add the chicken stock (or white wine), lemon juice, and capers to the pan. Use a spatula to scrape up the browned bits. Reduce the sauce by half. Whisk in the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter. Plate the chicken and serve with the sauce poured over the chicken. Sprinkle with parsley.
   

Sweet and Spicy Thai Shrimp with Coconut Rice

Over the winter time, Kevin and I went to visit his family in Ottawa. We often try to visit his family once every 2 or so months. That time, his dad made him honey water...which is basically honey mixed with boiled water. I was never a big fan of honey...especially the natural smell of it...I remember when my uncle suggested I sweeten my coffee with honey. He told me that it was the trend in Vancouver...i'm not too sure it was, but I did it anyway. I ended up chucking my coffee in the nearest trash.

What I didn't know was that I love cooking with honey. So when Kevin's parents gave us a bag of shrimps, I looked up for a recipe and found this. I added coriander to the recipe, just because I thought it sounded like it needed it. I also had leftover coconut milk in my fridge, so I made coconut rice to go with it, and loosely called my dish Thai.

Sweet and Spicy Shrimp

1 pound of shrimp, deveined and deshelled
1 1/2 tsp red chili flakes
1 tsp garlic, minced
2 tsp ginger
1 cup coriander, chopped
2-3 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp oil
pepper and salt to taste
dash of lime juice

1. Heat the olive oil and red pepper flakes in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic, ginger and honey; cook and stir until fragrant. Add the shrimp, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring as needed, until shrimp are pink and opaque. Serve immediately over coconut rice.

Coconut Rice (2 servings)

2 cups Minute Rice, long grain (I know...my ancestors are turning in their grave)

1/2 cup coconut milk

1 cup chicken broth

1/2 water

crushed peanuts

chopped coriander

1. Mix rice and all liquids in a pot and cook/ simmer for 15-20 minutes until liquid is almost gone.
2. Once done, mix crushed peanuts and chopped coriander into the rice. Serve hot.

I was a big fan of this. I loved that the sweetness of the coconut milk made the underside burn just a little bit and gave the rice a nice aroma. Kevin called my coconut rice weird, and didn't like it. He's also not a huge fan of coriander and picked them out. Other than that, he ate quietly and finished his plate. Good boy!

Easy Baked Haddock

Fish is something I learned to love. My Chinese mother only makes fish the Asian way; steamed with ginger and green onions. Although a classic recipe that I still like, I think trying out different fish recipes from the internet has helped me discover my love for cooked fish.

I went through this crazy salmon phase. It was the only fresh fish i'd buy since moving out. Sometimes i'd mistakenly take salmon trout, but that was it. I started looking at easy fish recipes to make during weekdays and found a baked haddock recipe. It required very little ingredients and it was quick to have on the table. My store didn't have fresh haddock, so I had to subtitute with the frozen kind.

3/4 cup of milk

2tsp salt

3/4 cup breadcrumbs

1/4 cup of parmesan cheese

1/4 tsp dried thyme

4 haddock fillets

1/4 cup butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 500F.
2. In a small bowl, combine milk and salt. In a seperate bowl, mix breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese and thyme. Dip haddock in the milk and then press into crumbs to coat. Place haddock in a glass baking dish, and drizzle with melted butter.
3. Bake on top rack for about 15min, or until it flakes with a fork.

This was a good fish recipe. I love everything in the recipe. The buttery taste and the parm cheese...I'd make this again. Online reviews complained about the soggy bottoms and some suggested putting the fish on wire rack. I decided against it because I wanted the fish to absorb the sauce. It gives the fish more flavor. The bottom was a tad soggy, but the top was perfectly crispy.

Jessica's Grilled Pineapple

I know I haven't been updating my blog in a long time, but I do have good reasons...well first I went on vacation and got engaged there. Got back home and got sick with a cold. But it wasn't swine flu...sorry, I mean H1N1. Then I got laid off at work. Got sick again. Found another job. I just finished my second week at the new job and I am usually too tired to blog...either that or i'm just busy playing video games.

Since summer is coming, i'll post about grilled pineapple. My friend Jessica made this for us a while ago. At the time, we couldn't use the bbq yet. So we just made it on the stovetop.


1 whole pineapple, peeled and sliced.
1 cup maple syrup or corn syrup
1 tsp of cinnamon

whole walnuts

1. Marinate pineapple slices in syrup and cinnamon for 1 hour to 24 hours.
2. mix walnuts and some corn syrup on the stove until well glazed. Set aside to cool.
3. On stovetop: Medium heat and cook until golden brown.
4. Serve with vanilla ice cream and garnish with glazed walnuts.

Simple and yummy!