Tag: rice

Chicken Breast Stuffed With Feta & Asparagus on Coconut Rice

The other day there was a fantastic special at the grocery store on marinated chicken breasts stuffed with feta and asparagus. It was a dish fresh from the butcher section and I thought it would make a lovely treat for the family. As a bonus, although this type of meal has a reasonably long cooking time, it’s not cooking that has to be supervised all that much, so it’s good for busy school nights.

I served the chicken on a bed of coconut rice made in the Instant Pot, using the ridiculously easy technique of substituting the water required 1:1 for light coconut milk. This kind of rice is currently the favourite of Thing 1, and it’s a regular request that I find I can easily acquiesce. The whole meal was ready in about 45 minutes, start to finish. I think it’s one that I’d like to make again, even if I do have to take the time to marinade and stuff the chicken breasts myself. I’m thinking that it might be nice to prepare them in bulk and then freeze them for easy meal prep on busier days. I don’t know if the texture of the veggies would suffer, though, so I think I’d have to give it a test run first.

Tandoori Chicken & Rice

The other day my kids had what I thought was a gastro bug, but in retrospect may have been a mild case of food poisoning, mostly because I haven’t caught anything. Generally, if the kids catch something, so do I, since I’m the one who will have to nurse them back to health. If it was food poisoning, it can’t be because of anything I had cooked, because I ate all of the same foods as them that day and was perfectly fine. However, we did grab some cheap takeout that night for dinner, and I had a different dish than the one they shared. That was probably the culprit.

So food was a low priority for a couple of days. Instead of writing about that experience in any kind of detail (because nobody really wants that), I’ll tell you about a meal that I made a few days previous.

I went through my fridge and realized that I still had a half a jar of Pataks Tandoori Curry Paste, so I just had to make up some tandoori chicken. It’s one of my husband’s favourite dishes; in fact, he’s the one who introduced me to it. Apparently Pataks brand is very popular in the Netherlands, where he did a work placement for half a year during university. He was very happy to discover that a few places here in Ottawa carried it when he returned, although a dozen years on it’s become much more common.

This particular recipe calls for marinating in a sauce of yoghurt mixed with the tandoori paste. I’ve really appreciated that a number of brands of yoghurt have started to make a lactose-free variety so that I can enjoy dishes like this! Other than the chicken, which was simply baked in the oven after being marinaded overnight, I just had to cook up some rice and dinner was done. I probably should have included a veggie or two, but somehow I forgot until right as dinner was to be served. Ah, well. So long as we’re all getting enough fruits and vegetables overall, it doesn’t matter too much that we’ve missed it at one meal.

Instant Pot Greek Pork Loin Roast

I picked up a PC World of Flavours Greek Seasoned Pork Loin Roast on spec for half price at the grocery store a while back, and I chucked it in the freezer until such time as I could use it. This week I was searching for something different to try for dinner, and it kind of popped out at me. The rest of the family hadn’t been too keen when I brought it home, but I figured it was at least worth a try!

I thawed it out and then cooked it in the Instant Pot instead of the more traditional oven, just to see how it would turn out. First I preheated the pot on Sauté with a bit of olive oil, then browned the sides of the roast to add a little flavour. Then I added a half a cup of beef broth and, using this chart as a reference for cooking time, pressure-cooked it on normal for 35 minutes. This means that it took about the same amount of time as cooking it in the oven.

I have to say that the final product was much more moist than any pork loin I’ve ever cooked in the oven, but I’m not entirely sure how much of that was due to the marinade and how much was due to the cooking method. The flavour was really nice, though.

I served the roast with sliced cucumbers and leftover rice reheated on the stove with a bit of chicken broth and salt. I find that this is a great way to use up refrigerated rice because it re-hydrates the grains and gives them a nice flavour. It’s also a great way to cover up that I’ve often got a bunch of different kinds of rice I’m mixing together (the tail-ends of a few meals). I really hate wasting food and I find that rice is one of the most common leftovers in our house. I also often make leftover stir-fry, which helps use up other bits and bobs in the fridge as well.

Vegetable Flowers

Last night’s dinner was pretty simple: bulgogi beef (using Sempio Bulgogi Sauce as a marinade) on basmati rice (made in the Instant Pot), with sides of carrots and zucchini. It was simple and satisfying and didn’t require a whole lot of tending, although I did actually have to remember to chop up the beef and put it in the marinade the night before.

However, I took Thing 1’s suggestion the other day and turned the carrots and zucchini into flowers using the “carrot sharpener”, and the kids loved it. I have to say that it was quite pretty, but their enthusiasm level was quite a bit higher than I had predicted. And they ate all of their veggies without complaint. I’m going to have to use this technique again in the future.

Instant Pot Duck à l’Orange

A few weeks ago I purchased some duck at the grocery store, since it was actually cheaper than chicken for a change. (That doesn’t happen very often around here.) I hadn’t cooked duck before, and I’d only eaten it a few times before, mostly in a very thick, sweet orange sauce at a Chinese buffet. I had been warned that it was both gamy and greasy, though, so I though it would be a good idea to cook it in some kind of sauce instead of doing a basic oven roast. I settled on the Easy Duck à l’Orange from the Instant Pot Holiday Cookbook.

The whole process was made more difficult right away because I had a whole bird, not just four duck thigh quarters. I’ve only taken a bird apart a few times before, so it was very awkward and slow going, even after looking up tutorials online. I think it’s just something for which practice makes perfect. But one way or another the duck had to be broken down into smaller pieces, since otherwise it wouldn’t fit in the Instant Pot.

As for the final result, I was quite satisfied with the recipe, which cooked the duck thoroughly and with a lovely sauce. However, I think that when it comes to personal preference, I’m just not a duck gal. It was just too greasy for me. I think I might like it better on a rotisserie or in a dish that calls for no skin, though, since that would make the final dish less fatty.

As a bonus, I roasted the bones in the oven and made bone broth in the slow cooker, which I cooled and skimmed the fat off of before I froze it. I look forward to some duck broth soup in the future.

Tuna Steak

A while back I picked up a four-pack of frozen tuna steaks at Food Basics for about $10.00, which is a really reasonable price around here. Now, I know that frozen fish can be hit or miss, but around here a lot of the stuff you find at the fish counter is previously frozen anyway (it’s usually noted only in the tiniest of print), so I figured I’d give it a shot. I followed Jamie Oliver’s tutorial for How to Cook Tuna Steak, which I’ve had great success with before. I figured it would be a good idea to keep the methodology the same if I wanted to test a different product, only changing the one variable and all that. See, teachers, I did learn something in science class!

I am happy to report that it turned out really well! I’d say it was easily as good as the tuna steaks I’ve previously bought from the fish counter. Now, the stuff from the counter probably doesn’t compare favorably to fresh, but unless I want to spend an exorbitant sum to get stuff flown in from the ocean, it’s probably the best I’m going to get. After all, we are landlocked here — the closest ocean (the Atlantic) is almost 500km away! (And that’s if you go to Maine — it’s more than double that to stay in Canada.)

The rub on the tuna is salt, pepper, coriander seeds, and fennel seeds, all ground together with a mortar and pestle. I served the fish over sticky rice, along with garlic shrimp, steamed asparagus, and steamed edamame. Overall it was a lovely, fresh-tasting dinner, and I look forward to having it again.

Salmon Cheese Tamagoyaki & Rice

This past Saturday I had what seemed like a houseful of people over for dinner. Okay, there were seven people in comparison to our normal four, not exactly a party, but still more than usual. I didn’t have anything taken out of the freezer, I decided to make everyone tamagoyaki on rice. Ever since I got my Japanese omelet pan for Christmas, they’ve become a go-to meal when I want something relatively simple and healthy.

This time I had smoked salmon in the fridge, so I added ingredients between each layer of egg: nori, cheese, and smoked salmon. The kind of salmon that I had automatically comes sliced in very thin, flexible sheets, so it’s perfect for this kind of thing. I really liked this addition and I think I will do it again in the future! I served the omelets with slices of naruto fish cake and cucumbers on the side, and a squirt of Japanese mayonnaise on top (if the diners wanted these additions).

Should I do this again, though, I’ll have to plan at least a little bit better. I didn’t make enough rice the first time so I had to make a second batch, and I realized that I was short of eggs about halfway through and had to send my brother-in-law out to get some. And if I’m planning on making this many tamagoyaki in a row again, I’m definitely going to have to pick up a second pan!

St. James Restaurante Juan Bravo

I am very happy to be able to say that I just spent ten days in Madrid, Spain! I prefer to write about trips after the fact because it’s generally not a good idea to announce to the world that your house is empty while you’re out of town. But I returned last night, jet-lagged as all get out, and now it’s time to write all about it.

Due to the jet lag I think I’m going to keep this one fairly short and sweet, and I’ll tell you a bit about the fancy group dinner that we had at Saint James Restaurante Juan Bravo. I believe that our hosts wanted us to get a chance to try some good, traditional Spanish food, which is the specialty of this restaurant. Most of us had paella, which is a slow-cooked, savoury rice dish with many variations. Above is Valencian paella, which includes chicken, rabbit, vegetables and snails.

These Norway lobsters (which are much smaller and more delicate than the American lobsters I’m familiar with from our East Coast) and prawns came on the side of a paella that also included chicken, vegetables, mussels and squid.

The crowning glory, at least for me, was the paella with Galician lobster, which is what my husband and I had. This serving was for at least four people (all of the paellas had to be ordered in portion sizes for two people or more), but I could have eaten all of that delicious lobster all by myself. The rice was also amazing, but it paled in comparison to the seafood. It was obvious to me that all of the dishes were prepared with care and pride, and the depth of flavour is where this showed the most.

This was the one and only time I tried paella in Spain, but it was absolutely delicious, so I hope that it was a good representation of the dish. It definitely makes me want to learn how to make it myself, especially since Spanish restaurants are few and far between around here. I think I’d have to keep the ingredients for homemade versions a little more simple, though; eating like kings while on vacation is definitely different than what we can afford to have every day at home. Maybe I should just keep an eye out for a sale on lobster…

Quick & Easy

I needed a quick and easy dinner recently, something that didn’t take a lot of prep because it was a busy weeknight and I was already running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  So I threw some sticky rice in the instant pot, steamed some spinach in the microwave, and fried up a couple of eggs per person.

I topped the steamed spinach with a sprinkle of furikake (which is one of my favourite easy ways to liven up some dull vegetables, by the way), and it was done!  It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was healthy, fast, and cheap.  I’d estimate that it was less than $2.00 per serving — and it could have been much cheaper if I’d gone with the less pricey basmati rice instead of sticky rice.  Sticky rice is probably the most expensive kind of rice available at the grocery stores around here, although I’m sure there are other, more expensive kinds available in specialty stores.

Green Tea Salmon with Coconut Rice & Miso Greens

When I bought the salmon for yesterday’s dinner, I had the option of buying just enough for one meal at a rather high price, or picking up a club pack that would make two meals for only a dollar or two more. Bulk discounts are a really big thing here and, if you can work with it, can save you an awful lot of money. Owning a deep freeze is a great way to buy in bulk without having to eat the same thing for a week. However, most ocean fish that gets to us here is frozen, since we’re about 1,100km away from the Atlantic coast in our country, and 500km away if we drive south to the States. I didn’t want to re-freeze the extra salmon, so we ended up eating it two days in a row. I’d been itching to try out some of the recipes from my new-to-me copy of Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals (Jamie Oliver, 2012), and the green tea salmon with coconut rice & miso greens on page 138 looked like it was packed with flavour.

I like how this book gives very specific directions for how to prepare these dishes in the least amount of time. That being said, this dish definitely took more than 15 minutes, mostly because of the rice. The instructions call for basmati rice to cook in light coconut milk for only 10 minutes — but I have never managed to make decent basmati on the stove in less than 25, and I cook it a lot. I tried to shave off a little time by cooking it in the Instant Pot (which didn’t exist when this book was written), but with the preheating, a 12-minute automatic cook time, and 10 minutes of releasing pressure naturally, it was still closer to a 25-minute cooking time. So I had to time my other preparation around the rice so that all of the elements finished at the same time. That actually made things much easier for me, since I’m definitely slower at my knife-work than Jamie.

My other issue with this recipe, and it’s become a big of a pet peeveas I’ve written before, is that the ingredients aren’t measured by something objective like volume or weight. Rather, they were given such measurements as “bunches” or “thumb-sized”. It’s fine to be able to throw in a pinch of this and a dash of that once I know a recipe well, but when I’m trying it for the first time I want it to be as much like the original as possible. Also, a “bunch” can change size from store to store and season to season — and I’m pretty sure that we use slightly different varieties of veggies than over in the UK, so their sizes can vary considerably. This can throw off proportions and potentially ruin a recipe. In this recipe, I threw in a whole bunch of cilantro instead of half a bunch, because the bunches where I was shopping seemed really small. Also, I had to use broccoli instead of broccolini, since my local grocery store didn’t carry the latter at all; luckily that particular bunch also had an approximate weight measurement as well.

Despite my pickiness about the recipe, I was very happy with the final dishes. The salmon with its green tea coating was surprisingly delicious, the coconut rice was lovely (and so easy!), and the veggies were crisp and fresh-tasting. I think the dressing would have been better with a little olive oil added to thin it out, since it had such a strong flavour that you really didn’t need much. The oil probably would have made my poor old blender deal with the whole thing better too, since it didn’t like working with such small quantities or low levels of liquid (my blender is older than I am). I think that making this sauce into a salad dressing for fresh greens would be absolutely lovely — unless I’m making it for someone who finds that cilantro tastes like soap. Luckily, I’m not one of them!