Corn Som Tam with Rock Shrimp

Last June I saw this recipe on Serious Eats for Corn Som Tam and got all excited.  Then life got in the way and before I knew it corn season was over at the farmers' market so I never had the chance to make it.  It was very sad.  But as soon as I saw the fresh corn at the farmers' market this morning I knew we had to make this.  So I spent a little time on my iPhone figuring out exactly what ingredients we needed (the rock shrimp was an impulse buy yesterday afternoon) and we picked up cherry tomatoes, some beautiful haricots verts and corn.  Then I hit the grocery store for more limes and shredded carrots.  It has been a really long time since I have had the time to sit in the kitchen and take my time making a meal from scratch so this was something of a fun zen experience for me.  Most meals of late have been hurriedly thrown together (mostly by Alex, with some fly by assistance from yours truly) in brief breaks between doing work, but I had the whole afternoon to myself today to play in the kitchen.  I made a hell of a mess (and Brady helped by leaving green bean bits all over the floor), but I got to make lunch all by myself!  This might not sound exciting to most of you, but I really miss cooking when work becomes all-consuming.  Don't get me wrong, it's great when Alex cooks dinner because he is a pretty darn good cook, but I miss being able to cook and menu plan at my leisure.  

As far as som tams go, I might prefer the version with green papaya for the interplay of texture and sweetness, but this was a nice summery alternative.  I love Thai flavors, fresh corn salads and great summer produce so this recipe combined a number of things that I enjoy.  I think this would make a really nice component of a larger meal but it's pretty light to be the only dish.  If I had been cooking lunch or dinner for 4 (or more) people, I would have made a larb or maybe this Crying Tiger Grilled Steak to go with the som tam.

Recipe after the jump!

Arepas with Black Beans, Avocados and Cotija Cheese

Alex and I were left with a dinner dilemma on Sunday.  We had a lot of items in the fridge, but nothing really went together and I had no interest in going to the grocery store or cleaning up after an elaborate meal.  I really wanted something quick and easy.  Once we realized what we had in the fridge, the simplest solution seemed to be to make some form of arepas with the store-bought arepas.  I thought the arepas already had cheese in them, but it turned out that they were plain.  I threw together some black beans, with sauced jalapenos, onions, garlic, cilantro and cumin.  I'm not typically a huge fan of beans but these were actually very tasty.  I'm proud (and a little bit shocked) to say that we ate the entire pan of beans.  The only problem with the dish was was that it needed some sort of a sauce.  I originally considered taking one of the avocados and blending it with some lime juice and other ingredients to make more of a sauce, but we ran out of limes (and I got lazy).  Looking back on it, I wish we had made something like this Avocado-Lime Sauce to give the arepas some moisture.  They were a little dry.  Halfway through the meal I admitted that I really should have thrown half of the avocado in the blender and served the other half sliced because it would have been the best of both worlds.  Beans and arepas (particularly plain arepas) need something saucy and/or creamy to really make them come together.  I had hoped that the sliced avocado itself would be enough, but while it did provide some creaminess, it didn't quite get the job done.  Oh well.  I think it would have made for a really nice sauce for the arepas.  As a side note, that avocado-lime sauce gives me some interesting ideas for a shrimp tostada, but that is a dish (and a blog post) for another day.

Recipe after the jump!

Arepa with Chorizo and Creole Sauce (Arepa con Chorizo y Hogao) and Green Beans with Almonds, Smoked Paprika and Cumin

Last weekend was the first weekend in some time that we visited the farmers' market behind the Museum of Natural History.  Every time we go to the farmers' market Brady drags us to his favorite vender, Roaming Acres, for a free snack (homemade ostrich dog treats) and a smoked ostrich tendon dog chew.  They look bizarre but he loves them and I would rather he eat ostrich tendon than cow penis (aka pizzles) or cow snout (aka moozles).  As luck would have it, they happened to be sold out of his smoked ostrich tendon but we decided to try some of their fresh sausages for us.  The farmer recommended their Colombian chorizo so we bought a package.  The only problem was that neither of us had ever tried Colombian chorizo (and the farmer had warned us that it had a very different flavor than Mexican or Spanish chorizo) so we had no idea what it tasted like or whether it would be crumbly and loose like Mexican chorizo or firm like Spanish chorizo.  We basically had no idea whatsoever what to do with our sausage after we got home.  So it hung out in the refrigerator for a few days until I was inspired enough to spend a few minutes poking around for recipes.  This one won because it sounded different and interesting, but was still pretty easy to throw together.  Then I had to decide what kind of side to serve with our arepas.  We haven't made green beans in awhile so I picked some up at the store with the idea that we would make a play on green bean almondine.  I decided that we would season our green beans simply with cumin, smoked paprika, garlic and lemon juice, all of which I thought would work with the flavor of the arepas.  And just like that, dinner was in the bag.

One thing I will say about these arepas - they were really easy to put together.  They required a number of pots, pans and trays (one each to cook the sausages, the hogao and the arepas themselves), but irrespective of the number of pans and dirty dishes, they came together with very little effort.  And they were satisfying.  I'm not saying they were the most delicious thing we have ever made, but I enjoyed them.  For those of you who are curious, Colombian chorizo is firm like Spanish chorizo but it lacks that paprika-flavor and is not smoked, cured or otherwise cooked.  Except that both products are raw/uncooked and I didn't think that it was similar to Mexican chorizo, which is much spicier and crumbly.  I liked our variation on the green beans too.  They had nice flavor and weren't hard to throw together.  And I think their crunch and bright flavor were a nice match for the heavier arepas.  The flavor of the green beans was just similar enough (thanks to the ground cumin) to work, while still providing a really interesting and bright pop of flavor.  The green beans added texture and were just substantial enough (I think salad would have felt too light).

Recipes after the jump!

Thanksgiving 2012 - Soy-Sauce and Honey-Glazed Turkey, Mark Bittman's Green Beans with Crisp Shallots, Cranberry-Reisling Compote and Sweet Potato Gratin with Chile Spiced Pecans

I came up with the menu for Thanksgiving back in mid-November after spending a little while pouring through the Food & Wine website.  I quickly realized that they had a slideshow for various ethnic and regional Thanksgiving feats, including an "Asian-American Thanksgiving."  I was instantly hooked.  Alex's favorite thing about Thanksgiving with my parents has always been the Sichuan cucumbers that my mother makes and the Soy-Sauce and Honey-Glazed Turkey sounded like the perfect centerpiece to a meal featuring my American father, my Chinese mother, a number of her Chinese siblings and a batch of Sichuan cucumbers.  We only ended up making one dish from the slideshow, but since it was the turkey I think that deserves a shout out. 

I thought the turkey had really good flavor and was very moist, although I wish that the flavors of the honey and soy-sauce mixture really seeped down into the meat a little more.  With that said, I think it was the best turkey we have made for Thanksgiving to date, although I think we have made better gravies.  Unfortunately the picture looks a little ridiculous - nothing that I did made the turkey lay flat on its back.  It just kept keeling over left and right until I admitted defeat.  The sweet potatoes were perhaps my second favorite dish from Thanksgiving.  They were really good.  I was a little worried about the dish for a number of reasons, including the fact that I bought white sweet potatoes and didn't realize that the flesh inside would be this weird light yellow color (which looked kind of sickly against the roasted marshmallows), but the flavor was really good.  They almost looked like applesauce mixed into mashed potatoes.  The color was really weird and slightly off-putting.  I actually considered leaving the sweet potatoes at home rather than bringing them with me because they were such an odd color. I wish I had taken a picture (even thought the picture would have been horrible), but I didn't have time.  I was also worried that they would be too sweet, but in the end I think they were just right.  Mark Bittman's green beans were nice, although the shallots and almonds tended to fall straight to the bottom and without any shallots or almonds to liven them up, they were a little blah.  The cranberry compote marked our third attempt at cranberry sauce, none of which has been a smashing success.  I'm not sure if the heirloom cranberries we are buying at the farmers' market are more bitter than your average grocery store cranberry or if I am extremely sensitive to bitterness, but the past few batches have been too bitter to eat without the addition of a large amount of additional honey or sugar.  I would say that these cranberries ended up being our most successful to date by far, but I added about 1/4 cup of honey to them after they cooled to get them to that point.

P.S.  Sorry for the delay on this post but there was a whole camera/hard drive debacle.  If you want to read more about it, you can look at my Thanksgiving 2012 Desserts post.  I'm not going to repeat the whole story here, but suffice it to say that I am a wee bit forgetful sometimes. 

Recipes (and more pictures) after the jump!

Szechuan Beans

I am going to start this post off by giving a brief shout out to Alex.  Last weekend we went to Cincinnati to visit his family.  We were supposed to make these green beans Wednesday night, but we had tickets to a show and too much going on to make them before the show, so it didn't happen.  Then we were going to make them Thursday night, but we had laundry to do and we just totally forgot.  Friday morning I looked in the fridge and realized that we had forgotten to make the green beans, but I had to run off to work.  So poor Alex got to hang out at home and make them that morning.  And they were way more labor intensive than I had realized.  Oops.  Thanks (and sorry) hon!  Actually, I end up doing that to him a lot - giving him a recipe and having him prep and start dinner for us while I rush home, only to realize that I never really read the recipe in the first place and it is way too labor intensive for a random Wednesday night when I don't get home until 9:00 pm.  So thanks for being such a good sport!

Now, back to the green beans.  I really wanted to like these green beans because the recipe sounded so promising, but they were a little too harsh for me.  The vinegar flavor was just really strong, although the flavor that really lingered on your palate after the quick burn of the vinegar was the sesame oil.  Alex says he wishes they had a little less sesame and a little more heat.  The write-up on Serious Eats was just so complimentary that I really expected to love the beans, but they left me feeling a little lackluster when eaten on their own.  We have another jar in the fridge that I think I will use as a garnish for soup or noodles.  We had a noodle dish while ago at Mission Chinese Food (see our post here) that combined soba noodles with radish, pear and cilantro that I thought was mighty tasty.  Perhaps we could make our own riff on it and use the remaining green beans?  Maybe it was a little silly on our part to expect them to stand entirely on their own...

Recipe after the jump!

Chilaquiles with Pepitas, Charred Corn and Black Beans

There are a few things in just the title of this recipe that caught my eye - charred corn and chilaquiles.  I love chilaquiles and you just don't see them enough here in NYC.  I guess it's not sexy enough for all of the upscale Mexican restaurants in the city and there really aren't many decent hole in the wall Mexican places either.  And of the Mexican restaurants that I know of, none of them except for Cascabel serve chilaquiles (although I am sure that there are others out there that do).  Earlier this year The Village Voice had a blog post about how chilaquiles are finally making their way to NYC.  I am going to have to try out some of their recommendations.  Actually, looking at Toloache's brunch menu I totally have to go there.  They have all sorts of yummy things on there - including chilaquiles.  I think these chilaquiles would have benefited from the addition of a little crema for additional creaminess and a nice tangy flavor.  The toppings were all a little on the dry side (think corn, beans, onions and pepitas) so it would be been nice to have a little something else to lend some moisture.  Otherwise, I thought it was a good dish.  I know I am being a little picky here, but the dish required a decent amount of time and effort so I had hoped for it to have slightly more wow factor, but I think that the crema would totally have made the difference.  Oh well. I have another chilaquiles recipe from Rick Bayless to try out and next time I will make sure to have crema on hand so we don't run into that problem again.

Recipe after the jump!

Soy-Glazed Pork Chops with Sauteed Spicy Green Beans and Tomatoes

In theory, pork chops and green beans sounds like an all-American meal.  But the pork chops had more of an Asian flair to them - a soy, ginger, garlic and honey marinade for the pork chops and the green beans had slightly Middle Eastern leanings - cumin, coriander, cinnamon and cayenne.  Given the different flavor profiles the meal went together surprisingly well.  The pork chops were tender, and juicy with a slightly sweet, slightly spicy flavor.   I generally prefer using bone-in pork chops because boneless pork chops have a tendency to dry out on you, but these were not dry at all.  As for the green beans, they had a really nice blend of savory and sweet (thanks to the caramelized shallots and the cinnamon) flavors to them as well.  We didn't toast the almonds as much as we should have (there was too much going on so we took them out earlier than we usually do).  I really thought this was a very pleasant (although not very all-American) meal.  I would definitely use components of it again in the future.

Recipes after the jump!

Green Beans (and Wax Beans) with Garlic Bread Crumbs and Tomatoes

This green bean dish is one that has been stuck in my head for months.  I'm not exactly sure why it is that every once in a great while I will read a totally random recipe that doesn't even involve any of my favorite ingredients and it will just get stuck in my head.  I like green beans, I like tomatoes and I like the sound of garlic bread crumbs, but I honestly have no idea why this particular recipe spoke to me.  Andrea Reusing serves the green beans with her fried chicken, but we went ahead and served it with a variation on our Spicy "Fried" Chicken Cutlets.  I say it was a variation because we used that same buttermilk and Tabasco marinade, but we marinated it for 8 hours instead of 1-2 hours (which I highly recommend if you have the time), crusted it with a mixture of cornmeal and panko without any cheese, mustard or herbs, and then pan-sauteed it rather than baking it in the oven.  I enjoyed this green bean salad - it was summery, tasty and fresh, perfect picnic fare.  Alex thought it required a few too many steps (particularly making the garlic bread crumbs), but said that if you had the bread crumbs already made that it would be worth making the dish again.  I think even without the pre-made bread crumbs it would be worth making again.  You would just need to find a use for the rest of the bread crumbs - which shouldn't be hard to do.  I would recommend using some of the remaining toasted bread to make the Italian-Style Bread Crumbs posted with this recipe, which keep for quite awhile and are totally delicious.  I think that would make it worthwhile.  Alternatively, if you already have some of those Italian-Style Bread Crumbs or other homemade bread crumbs at home, go ahead and use them.

Recipe after the jump!

Pistachio-Crusted Halibut with Spicy Yogurt and Green Beans with Lemon and Parsley

For the first time in a LONG time, I left work at 5:00 pm, which meant I had time to hit the grocery store on the way home, buy nice seafood, take the dog to the park, and then cook a nice meal.  In case you haven't noticed, we have been making mostly vegetarian meals lately, which is partially due to the fact that we have all of this wonderful produce from the farmers' market, but is mostly due to the fact that I can't commit to buying nice seafood or any other proteins when I don't have any idea if I will ever make it home for dinner.  I refuse to buy seafood or meat (both of which are expensive in NYC) and end up throwing it out because of work.  I hate throwing produce out, but that I can stomach because it's generally much cheaper.  Every time I go through weeks/months like this with work we eat a lot more tofu and pasta than usual because they require less planning and far less commitment on our part.  But because of the Fourth of July, this week was blessedly quiet and we actually had the opportunity to make a really nice meal for dinner!

And not only did we have the time to make a really nice midweek dinner, this recipe goes down as my favorite recipe we have made thus far in the month of July.  Actually, why don't we go ahead and include June too (seeing as we barely cooked in the month of June it's not much of an addition, but whatever).  Dinner was delicious.  The halibut was perfectly cooked and the pistachio-crust kept it moist, while adding some lightly crunchy texture.  The spicy yogurt sauce had a great blend of flavors.  It was tart, spicy, fresh and vibrant.  I loved it.  When you ate a bite of halibut dipped in the yogurt sauce it worked together brilliantly.  The green beans were a simple side dish that worked really nicely with the halibut.  They were fresh and green and lemony, and the simple flavors complimented/mirrored the spicy yogurt.  Actually, at the end of the meal Alex was dipping his green beans into the leftover spicy yogurt.  I guess they went with the yogurt even better than I thought...

Recipes after the jump!

Black Beans and Rice with Chicken and Apple Salsa

Even though I am typically not a fan of black beans I was really drawn to this recipe.  It just sounded so interesting - so different from the things we typically make.  And if we had made the recipe as intended (using a store-bought rotisserie chicken instead of roasting our own chicken breasts), it would have been a fairly quick and easy meal to throw together, so that was another draw.  As it turns out, I actually like black beans.  Or at the very least, I really liked these particular black beans.  My main problem with black beans is that they are often starchy and muddy tasting, with a really mushy texture.  These were really flavorful and we left them pretty much intact so they still had a little texture.  We added some serrano chilis to the black beans and the salsa to give it all some kick and I think that touch was key.  A little spice can work wonders for me.  The beans went really nicely with the chicken, the apple salsa and the brown rice.  I thought it all just worked really nicely together.  Alex and I were both surprised by how flavorful the dish was.  He actually liked it so much that he brought in the leftover beans, rice and apple salsa to work - even though he thought it made him look like a hobo since that entire portion probably cost less than $0.50.

Recipe after the jump!

Quick Khmer Pork with Green Beans

Cambodian food left the least impression on me out of all of the countries I visited in Asia.  The Angkor Wat ruins in Cambodia left a huge impression on me, but that is a different matter entirely.  All I remember about food in Cambodia was that their curries were pretty good (less spicy and different from a Thai curry, with lots of coconut milk) and in Phnom Penh most of the restaurants serve what they call "happy pizza" (which is pizza with marijuana on it).  Other than that, I don't remember many specifics.  Cambodian food wasn't as fresh and bright as Vietnamese food, or as spicy as Thai food, but there were many similarities to those cuisines.  The Cambodian food I ate during the week that I traveled around Phnom Penh and Siem Reap was... simple (for lack of a better word), with mild flavors and little complexity.  That isn't to imply that the food wasn't very good.  It was good.  It just lacked the flash and liveliness of other Southeast Asian cuisines to really distinguish it.

 

This Cambodian dish is mild and simple, but flavorful - it just screams home cooking to me.  It's the type of dish I can easily imagine my mother or grandmother throwing together in the kitchen at home (of course this is all presupposing that my mother actually served pork at home, which she never really did and also that she has some familiarity with Cambodian cuisine, which she doesn't).  But that is beside the point.  The point is that this dish is simple, comforting and easy to make.  It's not the best dish we have ever made, but after a long day at work, it was a really nice homey thing to throw together for casual dinner.

Recipe after the jump!

Sauteed Greens with Cannellini Beans

Have you ever eaten a dish that was so healthy that it left you feeling like you needed to eat a candy bar to balance it out?  This dish felt that way to me.  It was good, but just eating a gigantic plate of sauteed greens and beans left me with a serious jones for something fattening and unhealthy.  I bought a gigantic bunch of kale at the farmers' market today and decided that for lunch I would either make a soup with it or simply saute it up with some canned beans (either cannelini or garbonzo since that is all we typically have in the house).  I ended up going the saute route since it was  simpler and quicker.  I briefly considered making some quinoa and serving the sauteed veggies on top of a bed of quinoa, but I got lazy.  I wish I had because then I think the dish would have been a little more satisfying.  The flavors were good and I enjoyed the dish, it just left me wanting more - more meat, more fat, more carb, more something.  I think that adding some red onions and some quinoa would have satisfied my need for more something by adding more flavors, textures and some healthy grains.

Recipe after the jump!

Spicy Long Beans with Sausage and Mushrooms

One of the thing I love most about Asian grocery stores is the rather random assortment of fun ingredients like long beans.  I always think about buying them, but I never do because I end up buying pea shoots, yu choy or gai lan.  About a month ago I finally pulled the trigger and bought some.  Then I got busy at work and forgot all about them.  They turned up in the bottom of the crisper about a week or two later, moldy and gross.  Fail.  But I decided this past weekend to try again so I picked up another bunch.  And we finally made long beans!  One of the things that immediately drew me to this recipe (aside form the long beans of course) was the fact that everything in the recipe is a staple that we keep in the pantry or refrigerator.  We didn't have to go out to buy anything.  Go us.  However, this recipe used up the rest of our sesame oil so before we can make it again we need to stock back up.  Here's hoping that I remember to pick up some more sesame oil on my next trip to the grocery...

I am pretty impressed with our first attempt at long beans.  They were really tasty and interesting.  Every time we make a dish with dried shiitake mushrooms I am reminded of just how much I like them as an ingredient.  We made Stir-Fried Rice with Pork and Shiitake Mushrooms back in February that was absolutely delicious, which I totally attribute to the earthy, funky flavor of the mushrooms.  The same held true here - I loved the flavor of the mushrooms.  The preserved vegetables added some funk of their own to the dish too, but in a slightly different way.  The mushrooms are more deeply umami whereas the preserved vegetables are pungently salty and garlicky.  I also thought that the ground pork and Chinese sausage together were a really nice combination.  The Chinese sausage is rich and porky, but sweet and has a nice crisp texture to it, while the ground pork is meaty and homey.  I thought this was the type of dish (with slightly different proportions to be heavier on the green beans and lighter on the meat) that I could totally have seen myself eating in a back alley restaurant in China with plastic stools and little tables set up outside on the sidewalk.  It was totally satisfying and not at all pretentious.  Two thumbs up.  I told Alex that this is my favorite recipe we have made from this particular cookbook yet.  The Five-Spice Chicken with Sugar Snaps was pretty good, but as far as I am concerned this dish was better.

Recipe after the jump!

Pasta e Fagioli

After New Hampshire I craved salad - big mounts of leafy greens topped with all sorts of delicious things.  Alex craved soup with a bunch of veggies.  Clearly we were on the same page with the veggie cravings but had very different ideas on how to fulfill those cravings.  So this was a soup I came up with in honor of his request.  I guess I can't say that there were a ton of veggies in here - there was kale, carrots and celery.  That should count for something, right?  And I have been wanting a soup with cannellini beans since it started getting cooler so I wanted those to be in the soup as well.  And since Alex is a huge fan of bacon, I threw that in too.  As a side note, I can't claim credit for this recipe entirely.  I stumbled across the base recipe online somewhere and then played with it a bit (but now I can't seem to find it online so I can't give a shout out to the source of the original base recipe).  Then we made ourselves some soup.  Really good soup.  Some might say it was the ideal soup for the winter - filling and satisfying, with lots of different (but complimentary) flavors and textures.  Or at least the ideal soup for those who don't particularly like most chili recipes.  It was nice to have bites composed of different ingredients that all worked together so well.  I liked the subtle bacon flavor (as well as the texture of the crunchy bacon in the soup) and the creamy, starchy quality of the beans contrasted with the toothsome quality of the al dente orecchiette pasta.  I also really liked the drizzle of evoo on top to give the soup an extra layer of fruity evoo flavor.  It sounds like a really strange thing to add, but if you use nice high-quality evoo it's a delicious addition.  We served the soup with some nice hearty pane pugliese from Sullivan Street Bakery.  I figured some nice crusty bread, toasted and drizzled with more of that evoo, would be the perfect accompaniment to this soup.  If you wanted to, this batch of soup could easily serve a family of four for dinner.  Throw in a small salad and some toasted bread and you have yourself a meal.  For just Alex and I a salad seemed like overkill so we just did the bread and it was more than enough.  We have enough soup left for lunch later in the weekend sitting in the fridge.  I love fall - such perfect soup weather!


Recipe after the jump!

Dry-Fried Green Beans (Gan Bian Si Ji Dou)

This dish is one that I love to order at Sichuan restaurants and one that I really rely on to judge the quality of a Sichuan restaurant along with Fish-Fragrant Eggplant aka Yu Xiang Qie Zi (which is way better than it sounds) and Ma Po Tofu.  If a restaurant can't prepare dry-fried green beans than it really has no hope of mastering some of the more complex Sichuan dishes.  This version of the dish is what I would call the home cook version.  It doesn't have the bells and whistles of the restaurant versions - no chilis or Sichuan peppercorns, no sugar, no ginger or garlic.  But it's deliciously homey and satisfying.  Alex and I shared a plate of the green beans and a bowl of rice for lunch and it was a perfect lunch.  If you're cooking dinner for a few people, I would totally recommend this as your side dish.  Next time I make the dish I might toss in a pinch of ground roasted Sichuan peppercorns or a little chili paste and sugar to give the dish some heat and a hint of sweetness.  I don't know.  But as I told Alex "I would super make this again."  And yes, I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Recipe after the jump!

"Thai-Style" Green Beans

We needed a simple Thai side to go with our Stir-Fried Eggs with Cellophane Noodles.  Alex originally suggested eating peanut butter crackers with our stir-fried eggs, but I told him that was totally  unacceptable.  So I decided to cook up some of the haricots verts we had in the refrigerator in a vaguely Thai style.  I took some ginger, garlic and a Thai chili from the refrigerator along with the green beans, and then grabbed a few ingredients from the pantry and went to town.  I thought it turned out pretty well.  You got a good hit of heat from the Thai chili, balanced against the savory/salty flavors from the fish sauce and soy sauce, and the snap of the crisp-tender haricots vert.  I briefly considered throwing in some cashews, but then I decided that sesame seeds would be easier and would probably be incorporated into the dish better.  All things considered, it was a quick and easy side dish that we threw together on a whim and came out quite nicely.

Recipe after the jump!

Goan-Style Chicken with Roasted Coconut and Gujerati-Style Green Beans

I have been waiting to make this recipe for Goan-Style Chicken with Roasted Coconut for a long time.  The biggest deterrent to our making the dish was that I was never organized enough to have 2 cups of grated fresh coconut.  And then we saw bags of frozen grated fresh coconut at the Thai grocery store so I picked one up with this recipe in mind.  But it stayed in the freezer until I remembered it earlier this week and unearthed it.  These green beans were another recipe that I have been meaning to try.  A long time ago when I lived down the block from Kalustyans, we picked up Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking on the recommendation of one of the ladies manning the registers.  Our first meal that we made from the cookbook was Green Beans with Ginger and Cilantro and Lemony Chicken with Cilantro.  The chicken was good, but those green beans were a revelation.  Green beans are not a vegetable that I typically associate with Indian cooking.  When I think Indian I think lentils, chickpeas, eggplant, cauliflower and spinach.

Once again, Madhur Jaffrey's green beans were a revelation.  They were really delicious and easy to make.  I loved how the green beans remained crisp-tender, and soaked up the flavors of the garlic and red chili.  They were just so good.  And they went really nicely with the chicken.  I actually slightly preferred the green beans to the chicken (and I went back for seconds on the beans rather than the chicken), but Alex said that he enjoyed them both equally.  We used a mix of boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs for the Goan-Style Chicken and while I preferred the flavor of the breasts (I know, that doesn't make any sense because thighs are more flavorful) they were a little dry.  Meanwhile the chicken thighs just seemed greasy.  I'm weird like that.  The chicken smelled amazing while it cooked and the flavors lived up to the aroma.  It was also a really interesting and delicious combination of flavors - coconut, ginger, chili, coriander, cloves, cumin, etc.  I think the other thing that threw me about the chicken is that you spend all this time toasting the coconut to get it crispy and golden brown.  And then you throw it in a pan with a cup of water to essentially braise/steam the chicken and the coconut gets all soggy.  I think in the future I would reserve a little of the toasted coconut and spice mixture to use as a garnish.  The other thing that threw me was that the fully cooked mixture is a study in beige.  You can see it in the picture and it doesn't exactly look all that appetizing.  But appearances can be deceiving, because it is quite tasty.

Recipe after the jump!

Nepali Green Bean-Sesame Salad

So this is my first ever attempt at making a Nepalese dish.  I actually Googled it (and found this Wikipedia entry) because I had no idea what Nepalese food was really like and I was curious.  The closest type of cuisine that Alex and I can recall trying in the past is Tibetan food.  Both cuisines feature meat dumplings called "momos," although that might be the extent of their similarity.  It seems that Nepalese cuisine is heavily influenced by Indian food, whereas Tibetan food is more heavily influenced by Chinese and Uyghur food, which makes sense given that Nepal is sandwiched between China (Tibet really) and India.  As I have never traveled to either region, I'm really not sure either way.  What I am sure of is that I thoroughly enjoyed this green bean salad.  I know that green bean salad sounds boring, but this was very refreshing.  I thought that the combination of the crisp-tender green beans, the tart lemon juice, the slightly spicy chilis, and the ground toasted sesame seeds was really nice and totally unlike any other green bean dish we have ever made before.  Alex preferred the green beans to the Luscious Chile-Oil Tofu dish we made alongside it, but I have to say that I am torn.  I thought both dishes were pretty tasty!

Recipe after the jump!

Shrimp Tostadas with Avocado-Black Bean Salsa

I'm not sure where I came up with the idea of making shrimp tostadas.  Originally I was planning on making some type of shrimp taco, but I decided that we make shrimp tacos far too often.  Then I decided since we had the corn tortillas, why not make tostadas?  I will be the first to admit that I have never made tostadas before and that this was a first for me.  But I thought it was a success!  While the tostadas were kind of difficult to eat (Alex sent a few crispy tortilla shards winging across the dining room table), they were fun to eat and quite tasty.  The black beans were kind of thrown in as an afterthought in order to jazz up the avocado "salsa" a bit.  I thought they would add a different texture and flavor to the dish that would work nicely with the other ingredients.  I'm still not a huge fan of beans of any sort because they're just so starchy and bland, but I thought they were a nice addition to this dish!

Recipe after the jump!

Cassoulet

So I have to preface this recipe with  an admission.  This isn't real cassoulet.  Or at least it isn't traditional French cassoulet (a thick bean stew/casserole containing pork sausages, other cuts of pork, duck and white beans).  Or at least this isn't that similar to the French cassoulet that my host family used to make for me when I lived in France.  This is my version of cassoulet, based on whatever we had in the fridge and/or the pantry, which in this case was 2 legs of duck confit, 4 pork sausages of some sort (we got a Grilling Spectacular package from Dickson's Farmstand a few months ago, which contained 3 different varieties of pork sausage, none of which were labeled), and one lb. of dried white coco beans (which it turns out are traditionally used in cassoulet).  We also threw in some onions, carrots, fresh herbs, red wine, San Marzano tomatoes, and then topped the whole mess with panko bread crumbs.  I really wanted to add some fresh parsley, but unfortunately we were all out.

So this recipe might not be your traditional cassoulet, but it was close enough.  And it was yummy.  This is the type of warm, filling, and comforting dish that would be perfect after a long day of skiing or any other cold weather activity.  Alex and I both gave it a solid B, even though it was more suitable for 40 degree weather than the current temps in the mid-60s.  I really wish that we had some fresh parsley to mix in with the breadcrumbs to lighten things up a touch, and I also wish that the breadcrumbs had formed a better crust on top.  Otherwise, I thought it was a fairly lovely and hearty dish.

Recipe after the jump!