Today I cooked up a batch of brown rice (1 cup dry rice) in the rice cooker, chopped up some leftover Italian sausage (2 sausages), and fried up some chopped onions, red pepper, and jalapeños together in the sausage dripping. Yum.
It made 3 hearty servings.
I’m not on a low fat diet.
Definitely quick and easy. Authentic? Not remotely. I’m not Thai, don’t blame me for liking this. Spicy? Somewhere between spicy and really, really hot. So if you like Thai food, you’ll probably like this. If you haven’t had Thai food and aren’t into spicy-hot, it’s probably not for you.
1 can Thai curry paste, any flavor (check the label for wheat)
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1 can coconut milk
Dump the ingredients into the blender and process until smooth. Heat and serve over rice, steamed vegetables, meat or poultry, or whatever.
Thai curry paste comes in a lot of different flavors. After you’ve sampled a few, you will start to be able to tell some differences.
Boiled nuts help protect against illness
A research study has shown that boiled peanuts are much better for you than roasted or raw ones. Their “phytochemicals have antioxidant qualities that protect cells against the risk of degenerative diseases, including cancers, diabetes and heart disease.” For some reason boiling them makes more of these chemicals available to the body.
Back when I used to drive down to Florida every year, I would stop at roadside stands and buy containers of freshly boiled peanuts. Most Northerners have never tried them. You can’t even buy raw peanuts in the shell up here, as you can down South.
But don’t put them into the “Ew!” category. Shelled raw peanuts are readily available, and they make a great addition to soups and veggie stews. Also, if you blend them with some water until smooth, they make a creamy thickener that can take the place of dairy and flour, for a filling vegan “cream” soup.
The only drawback is, yes, the allergy thing. But if you’re not allergic, go ahead and try them out. I’ll come up with a recipe or two soon.
I’ve always had a fondness for canned cream of mushroom soup that bordered on a perversion. Even though I only occasionally purchased it, just having it in the house was such a temptation that I often ended up eating it undiluted, thick and yummy.
Of course I haven’t been eating much cream of mushroom soup since I went gluten-free, which is more than two years ago, and certainly no canned Campbell’s as in my diet’s previous incarnation. People have been posting about wanting cream of mushroom soups to eat and concentrate to put in casseroles, such as that famed green bean casserole with the Funyons instead of the crunchy fried onion bits (I can’t comment on that, as I haven’t tried it). I also read that Progresso makes a gluten-free cream of mushroom soup, but I haven’t looked for it. It must have something to do with that icon of Americana, the red and white soup can.
Then last week I had an idea. I had been making sausage gravy with water instead of the milk I can no longer consume. Though you can get the right texture and a brown gravy-like appearance, the flavor is nonexistent. This time I blended some blanched almonds with water – about 2 ounces of almonds to 1 cup of water – until smooth, added it to the pan drippings, and slowly cooked until it had simmered for a while. It was much better than not bad. The almond particles made the texture, if anything, a bit floury, which when you’ve gone without flour for this long, is not unattractive. Almonds don’t have those starch particles that explode and cook smooth like wheat flour does. Also, it was very rich, much more than I would have predicted from the calories in the almonds that went into it.
I found that leftovers were as good as fresh, and I added a spoonful of this to several things I ate last week – pasta, frozen spinach, polenta, eggs mollet… The recipe made a sauce that was too thick, so I need to tinker with the exact proportions of almonds to liquid before I decide to make any sauce recommendations.
Now for the big deal: cream of mushroom soup. I figured it might be a little thin to use 1 ounce of almonds per cup of liquid, but I had to start somewhere, so I made the commitment to that proportion. I put the almonds in the blender jar with a tablespoon of sherry and added water to just below the level of the almonds. I whirled, scraping down chunks off the cannister walls and adding liquid a little bit at a time until it was perfectly smooth and about as thick as a pancake batter. I diced 8 ounces of portobello mushrooms and sauteed them in a tablespoon of butter (substitute olive oil if you can’t tolerate butter). Then I just added the thick almond milk to the pot with the mushrooms in it and heated it, stirring, until it had simmered for a few minutes.
Salt and pepper to taste. Yum. To make this into a condensed-style cream of mushroom soup, just use about half the water.
Nowadays you most often see the term “hash browns” used for those prefried/refried chopped potato patties that you get at the drive-thru of your favorite fast food emporium. Less often you will find slower food restaurants that still make the old-fashioned shredded-style hashbrowns, either on the grill or fried in a pan. Those are rare around these parts. I live outside of the land of Waffle House – not that I think Waffle House does a particularly good job with them, at least not with any great consistency. Just as I described in the previous breakfast potato posting on home fries – hash browns also often tend to be soggy and unseasoned, but since they start with raw potatoes, sometimes they are even not quite cooked through.
It is really not hard to make them well, but there’s a trick or two to it. So get out your shredder. That’s what we’re making today.
Just kidding, Folks. But if you’re going to be making these, you’ll need a good coarse shredder. The food processer blade will puree the heck out of those potatoes, not a pretty sight. Actually I prefer the coarse shredding disk that came with my now-ancient Cuisinart food processor. You can however use whatever coarse shredder you have available to you.
I start with about a pound of potatoes, which will serve two generously or four as a side. Scrub them well. I like to leave the skins if they are tender, but I peel the potatoes if the skins are tough-looking. I then put them in a bowl with a teaspoon of salt, toss them well, and let it sit for about half an hour to draw off excess liquid. At the end of this time they are limp and starting to brown a bit. I put them in a sieve, run fresh water over them, which removes the brown color, and press them really well to get rid of that extra liquid, even wringing with my hands.
Now they go back in the bowl. I add a tablespoon of potato starch – which I purchase in an Asian store – and some white pepper, and toss it all well to mix it.
Now the fastest way to cook these is in individual pans you have going on the stove at the same time. If you’ve got a regular stove, you’re making four individual portions from the recipe, and you’re making a fancy, complicated breakfast, this will be monopolizing your stove for a while, so you should probably plan to cook these first and when done, pop them into the oven to stay warm while you finish up whatever else you are cooking.
You’ve got some choices, too. I personally think the crispy thin parts are the best, which means cooking in two 12″ non-stick frying pans or four 10″ ones at the same time. But you could also cook the entire recipe in the 12″ pan and cut it into wedges to serve. Decisions, decisions, decisions…
I grease the pan I am going to use or pour a tablespoon of butter, fat, or olive oil in it and drop in the potato mixture, tossing it with a fork to distribute it evenly, then pressing down. I then set the heat to medium and cook until the underside is golden brown, adding more oil if it is all absorbed and the pan gets dry. When it is golden brown, it is manageably firm, so I slip it onto a plate or a pan lid without an inner lip, invert the pan over the plate, and flip the two together so that it can brown on the other side. A little more oil will be necessary for this side to brown properly.
Now I fold it and plate it up to serve with eggs and maybe meat. A warm plate is best.
You can fry up some bacon or ham, peppers and onions to top it for a Waffle House-like treat. Also, melted cheese is yummy if you can handle it. We used to love having these smothered in bacon, onions, red peppers, and three cheeses back when I was speedskating and able to handle both casein and calorie overload.
OK, homefries are supposed to be gluten-free. They’re just supposed to be potatoes fried in a pan, golden brown and crispy on the outside, moist on the inside, and seasoned with salt and probably pepper and maybe a little cayenne. You would think that would be a simple thing to do, but between badly-made traditional homefries which seem to be little more than lukewarm unseasoned leftover potatoes and those that are deep-fried and breaded or batter-coated, let’s just say the bar doesn’t seem to be particularly high nowadays.
It’s a shame, because making excellent homefries is so easy to do. I’ll let you in on my “secret” method, which is so much easier than any I have seen before, and it’s much more reliable, too. But first, a little homefry talk.
Years ago I read a discussion in an old cookbook that said that the difference between homefries and hash browns was that the homefries were made from raw potatoes, while hash browns were made from precooked ones. Linguistically this makes a lot of sense, as the word “hash” is generally used for things that are precooked and then panfried, like corned beef hash. Meanings have drifted, so now “hash browns” are generally raw shredded potatoes pressed into a patty or a pancake and fried until set, while “homefries” are recooked precooked potatoes. (We are going to ignore the abomination which is breaded or batter-fried potatoes masquerading as “homefries” from this point. If you like them, you can buy them from Sysco, just like the restaurants do.)
I have read over and over again that you have to boil potatoes before making them into homefries, not only to “save time” but because they won’t come out right otherwise. I can tell you with certainty that neither of these are true. It’s much faster to make them without an extra boiling step, and homefries are made more reliably with raw potatoes than with precooked ones. Another issue – one I would make a great effort to avoid – is that there are certain varieties of potatoes that set up and get hard when refrigerated. They do not soften up again when reheated, and no matter what you do with them subsequently, they taste like leftovers. Potatoes like these make terrible homefries when precooked, but make excellent homefries using my method.
The method:
Scrub potatoes and peel them if the skins are thick. Dice any size you like, from 1/4″ to 1″ cubes. Put in a pan with a little extra fat – olive oil, butter, bacon fat, chicken fat, and beef fat all work. Heat on medium high, stirring every five minutes or so until they are about 50% brown. Season with salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes or cayenne for heat, paprika for color. Cover and lower the heat to medium-low. Continue to stir every five minutes until potatoes are cooked through. Cooking should take maybe 20 minutes for large cubes, less for small ones. Any excess oil can be removed from the pan by blotting with a paper towel at the end.
That’s all there is to it. I used to make these almost every day when I was cooking breakfast for my family. It’s just a matter of stirring occasionally, so the cooking process takes very little time, and is easy to coordinate with eggs or meat or toast to make the breakfast I call a “blue plate special”.
A favorite variation is to fry up bacon and cut into pieces. Set these aside while frying up the potatoes. In a separate pan saute onions until they start to get translucent, then cover until cooked through. Add to the potatoes, top with the bacon, and serve as is or with cheese melted on top – a huge favorite from my cheese-eating days. We used to love that on a cold morning.
So sorry, it’s been too hot to bake. I’ve used up all my frozen cookies and brownies, but until we have a break in the heat, there’s no way I’m going to turn on the oven.
Of course we did have a couple of nice days this week, but those were the days when my hot water heater was dead and waiting to be replaced, so I didn’t want to make a mess in the kitchen until I was able to clean it up again.
But I did make some awesome garlic shrimp.
Now the problem with cooking shrimp in sauces or glazes is that raw shrimp give off a lot of water when cooked. You could saute them in a little fat at a very high temperature, high enough so that all moisture evaporates immediately. But cooking them at a high temperature will generally overcook them. The unfortunate tendency is for them to give off their water and then stew in their juices. This is made worse by adding a sauce for them to simmer in. You end up diluting the sauce with the shrimp juice, which upsets the balance of the sauce. Then the shrimp get overcooked if you try to boil down the sauce, and if you don’t, it’s just a soupy mess.
I find that the key to making tasty shrimp is to poach them first, then add the finished sauce or glaze, toss, and serve. This will make sure the sauce or seasoning you use clings to the surface of the shrimp.
Considerations in poaching shrimp:
If you can get fresh raw shrimp, and you can afford them, then go for it. Raw gulf shrimp are never available here. Frozen raw shrimp should be soaked in a lot of water to get rid of any fishy or stale taste and remove the slimy polyphospate they add.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. (Enough salt so it only tastes a little bit salty, of course!) Drop in the raw shrimp, peeled if you intend them to be eaten with a fork. When they start to curl up, fish them out or pour into a sieve or collander and add a little cold water to stop them from cooking. With most shrimp it takes less than a minute, so be ready. THE SHRIMP SHOULD NOT BE HARD AND WHITE. A raw shrimp is floppy and curved, a properly cooked shrimp is springy and shaped like the letter ‘c’, and an overcooked shrimp is hard and firm, curled up in a little circle.
To make garlic shrimp, crush raw garlic cloves, added freshly ground black pepper and red pepper flakes and sauteed this very gently over low heat in butter and olive oil. Add plenty of salt – it should taste too salty. This is a seasoning used in the dish, not the main dish itself. When the shrimp are cooked, drain completely, then add the shrimp to the garlic oil and toss thoroughly. Serve over rice or rice noodles. Pea pod with red peppers will go well with this.
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