Category: recipe

Tonight I made a really yummy green curry chicken. One of my favorite Thai restaurants does an *amazing* green curry chicken that I always order and I wanted to see if I could get it to be similar cooking it at home.

Ingredients:
3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into small strips
Just a little olive oil for cooking the chicken
2 green onions, chopped
2 tbsp. green curry paste (Epicurious suggests 2 tsp, but Av and I like it *really* spicy – so it can go anywhere between these two amounts)
2/3 c. chicken broth
1 c. coconut milk
1 c. cooked basmati rice (although if I had this recipe to do over, I think I would have made it 1-1/2 c. rice. All the other quantities would remain the same, even with the increased rice.)

Directions:
Cook basmati rice – get this started early, because this kind of rice takes 45 – 60 minutes to be ready.

Heat the olive oil in a wok, and add the chicken. Cook until just almost done (because it’s going to finish cooking at the end).

Put the chicken on a plate for later.

To the wok, add the curry paste and green onions. let that cook/stir together for a couple of minutes at medium-high heat:

Add chicken broth and coconut milk to the wok, and let this get up to temperature before going any further:

Add the cooked basmati rice, and let that cook at medium-high for three or four minutes so that the rice absorbs the flavors:

Now add the chicken, and let the whole thing cook for another 4-5 minutes so that the chicken gets nice and hot and completely cooked:

Serve:

This turned out *really* nice – we both enjoyed it a lot. Yay!

I made cheese straws this week – they turned out *so* unbelievably yummy.

This recipe makes about 80 mini cheese straws, so there’s plenty to give out to friends, too.

Ingredients:
8 oz sharp cheddar cheese, grated (I just grated the cheese in my Cuisinart)
1-1/2 c. flour (all-purpose, I like White Lily)
8 tbsp butter, softened
2 egg yolks, beaten
salt
hot sauce (use as much or as little as you like…I like them a little hot)

Directions:Preheat the oven to 400*. Take two baking sheets, and cover each with parchment paper.

Grate cheese in Cuisinart:

Add flour, then butter. Once that’s mixed in well, add the egg yolks, hot sauce, and salt. Keep mixing for another minute, just until it’s incorporated.

At this point, either put the mixture into a pastry bag with a star or other pretty tip, or use a ziploc bag and cut a small/medium-size hole out of one of the bottom corners:

Squeeze the mixture out onto your prepared baking sheet. You can make long cheese straws – I like these little mini ones:

Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes:

Plate them and serve immediately – they’re *so good* when they’re hot:

Oh yum!

Probably the best thing about Winter here is that as far South as we live, it doesn’t very often get just uncomfortably cold…it’s nice weather to be outside most of the time. The part I enjoy the least is that there aren’t very many festivals going on.

Every so often, I go through the different state tourism websites, and I keep a little calendar on my computer of things that sound like they’d be fun to go to. For instance, next month starts the ‘festival season’ around here. There’s the George Lindsey Film Festival at UNA, Spring Pilgrimage in Selma and Natchez and Vicksburg, the Outsider Do-Nanny in Pittsview, the Art Car Parade in Baton Rouge – and all kinds of other things I can’t wait to go to!

One thing that’s going on this week is the annual Literary and Cinema Celebration in Natchez, and this year it’s themed, “Biscuits, Gumbo, Sweet Tea, and Bourbon Balls.” I can’t be there, but it does sound like it would be interesting…they’re giving talks about the ‘Mississippi Hot Tamale Trail’, there’s a program with the ladies that wrote ‘Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral’ which I have and is wonderful and hilarious, they’re showing ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ and a documentary on barbecue, and watching a Tennessee Williams play. And a million other things. I think it sounds wonderful.

So, I got thinking about it the program in Natchez and what it’s called this year – and Av is accustomed to me making him biscuits, gumbo, and sweet tea, but I’ve never made bourbon balls for him – so that’s exactly what I made tonight for a little treat.

This recipe makes oh, probably thirty or forty bourbon balls, so they’re perfect for a party. With this particular recipe, they can be frozen for a while too, so you can make a batch and then a week or two later take them back out and enjoy them then.

The more traditional recipe for bourbon balls calls for vanilla wafers and cocoa, but this recipe is a little different, mostly because the wafers aren’t used, and the bourbon balls are actually dipped in chocolate. Av likes just about anything chocolate, so I figured this recipe would suit him best:

Bourbon Balls

Ingredients:
2 cups powdered sugar
1 stick butter, softened
1-1/2 cup pecans, chopped as fine as you like
4 tbsp bourbon (I used Maker’s Mark for these)
8 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, thinned with a couple tbsp. butter and a splash of sweet milk (this is one of those things that you just have to play with the consistency, getting it not too thick and not too thin. Melt this chocolate/butter/milk mixture using the double boiler method – in a bowl over a simmering pot of water.)Directions:Cream together the softened butter and powdered sugar. Once the butter and sugar is mixed together well, add the chopped pecans. I like the pecans in these to be pretty fine, but it’s entirely up to your preference.

Place the mixture into a bowl, and set this in the freezer for an hour or so:

Even though the mixture will be cold, it will still be pliable enough to work into a round shape. I make these round and put them back in the freezer for a few minutes more (on parchment paper, on a baking sheet is easiest) just to make certain they hold their shape when they’re dipped in the chocolate:

Next, I melt the chocolate mixture using the double boiler method. I use a toothpick and pick up the frozen rounds, dip them in the melted chocolate, and put them on a seperate baking sheet with parchment paper. Once these are all done, I pop them in the freezer until they’re all set up (just a few minutes) and they’re ready to enjoy.

Yum!

Av *loves* peanut brittle (I like peanuts but not peanut brittle), so when I was flipping through the December issue of the Martha Stewart Everyday Food magazine, I noticed they had what looked like a super-simple recipe for it.

I asked Av to stay out of the kitchen for thirty minutes so I could make him a little surprise – enough for him munch on and to share at the office (as it turns out, his dad likes it so he got half!).

Here’s the recipe for peanut brittle:

1-1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. light Karo syrup
3/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. butter
1-1/2 c. peanuts (or the recipe says you could use mixed nuts if you like)
splash of vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. baking soda

I took a sheet of parchment paper, put it on a baking sheet, then rubbed butter all over the parchment paper so that the peanut brittle would be sure not to stick. The recipe in the magazine says to use non-stick cooking spray on a plain baking sheet, but I think I like my method a little better (I don’t like those sprays).

In a bowl, stir together the sugar, salt, and Karo until it’s mixed really well, then microwave on high for four minutes. At that point, add in the butter and nuts and stir really well again – then microwave another 4-5 minutes (mine was perfect at 4-1/2 minutes) – it will look a little brown on the top, then as you stir the mixture it will turn a really pretty shade. Take it out of the microwave (carefully – it’s super-hot) and add the vanilla and baking soda, mixing really well. Pour it as soon as it’s all mixed together into your baking sheet. I didn’t need to use a spoon or spatula or anything to spread it out, it was so hot that it sort-of did that all on its own. The brittle takes about 20-30 minutes to harden, then it’s ready to be broken up into pieces and to be eaten. Av *loved* it!