Roti Chicken and Pancakes

I was surfing the web when I came across a recipe for Roti Chicken in which the author declared she was making a lot of friends “very, very” happy for posting this particular secret recipe. That selling point is promising, yet what intrigued me was this is allegedly a Surinamese dish from a woman who is Dutch. What really sold me was its liberal use of curry. We in my house are people who love our curry.

Unfortunately, the dish is pretty ugly. Go see the original post because it does a much better job making the food pretty.

Kay, the author, does a beautiful job of meticulously documenting every step of the recipe with sharp, meaningful photos, directions, and commentary. She does a nearly perfect job streamlining the steps and providing all the information I need such that I didn’t have to scroll back to the top of the post to review the recipe itself.

The only change I made was I used one habanero chili in place of her recommended red chili or Madam Jeanette chili. Much to my surprise – HEB didn’t have fresh red chilis! I did commit and purchased a bottle of Sunflower oil and the flavor it lent to the dish was entirely worth adding to bottle to my pantry. (Well, half a bottle. The recipe used half of what I purchased! It loves its sunflower oil.)

Foremost, despite the use of an entire habanero between the curry dish and the pancakes, this recipe isn’t at all hot. It was completely mild in terms of heat. The habanero did lend a nice, chili flavor to everything, yet no heat that I could discern. (So little heat, in fact, that I handed over a pancake to Little Hands and he happily ate it. Stuck his tongue out a lot while smiling, but he’s been pretty fascinated by his tongue all evening.)

The chicken and potatoes dish itself is good. It’s tasty. It doesn’t make our curry-loving tongues sing, but it didn’t make them sad either. I think the green beans went in much too soon and became over cooked. That is the only fault in an otherwise perfectly written recipe. (And maybe it had something to do with my green beans.)

The Roti pancakes? We love them. Love love love. I’ll probably just start making these “just because” to go with other curry dishes. They’re tender and have just the right amount of garlic, onion, potato, and chili to flavor them. Absolutely fantastic.

Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

A few weeks ago DH remarked that he had a delicious chimichurri sauce at work and that we ought to make some sometime. I took this to mean, “Go to the internet, find a recipe, and pin it for future reference.” We recently acquired a grill, and I am now having fun experimenting cooking with it. Thus, when the Pinterest Challenge arose, I already had the ingredients on my grocery shopping list.

I did have to make the sauce twice because I was halving the recipe and the first time I forgot to half the salt - yuck! The second time was much more successful even with suplementing the lemon juice with the bottled variety.

I’m quite proud of this meal being it was the first steak I’ve ever grilled on a proper grill in my life. The only negative was that the chimichurri sauce was a bit too bitter – but that is because the parsley it was based on was very bitter. Lesson learned: taste the parsley before committing to it when a ~fourth of the recipe is comprised of parsley. In the future we do want to try to brighten the flavor by adding in fresh lime juice and lemon zest.

I’d say this would be a great sauce for a St Patrick’s Day meal, but Saint Patrick’s day is the day I use as an excuse to make ham, potatoes, and cabbage.

February Dinners

It’s a large enough task for me to try to get dinner on the table in a timely and competent fashion that I don’t care to spend the time taking pictures while I prep, and I’m so hungry by the time I’m done I forget to take a picture before I dig in! Still, here are the list of entrees I recommend which I made in February.

Successful Internet Recipes

• Butter Chicken - I always forget this one needs to marinate overnight. We really prefer tikka masala, but this recipe is easier to prep.
• Chicken Peanut Chow Mein - This dish is very Americanized, but still tasty. Don't buy noodles from the Asian section of the grocery; save a few dollars and buy 4 packs of Ramen Noodles and toss out the flavor packet.
• Italian Meatball Sandwiches - This was a repeat from January because the recipe made plenty to freeze :)
• Caesar Chicken Burgers - Great! I bookmarked this recipe as a bit of a wildcard to mix up our normal routines, and it was delicious. It's legitimately a "burger" by my defintion because it uses ground chicken.
• Creamy Rosemary Penne - This recipe is one of our go-to dishes. Usually my chicken turns out dry, so this time I took a different approach by precooking the chicken in a crock pot with Italian dressing. Unfortunately, somehow the texture of the crock pot chicken made the dish very reminiscent of Tuna Noodle Casserole.
• Alfredo Chicken Bake - LOVE! I used HEB frozen Mediterranean Mix of vegetables, and I made my own alfredo saucefrom scratch. This dish was awesome: fast, minimal prep, and tasty. I baked the dish in the same pan I made the sauce in. The only change is that I should omit the garlic from the alfredo sauce in the future because the breadsticks contributed plenty of garlic on their own.
• Grilled Sandwiches - The HEB medium cheddar we used overwhelmed the sandwich, yet it was still tasty. We served this with soup.
• Homemade Pizza - Ya know, homemade pizza is nice, but Papa Murphy's is actually more cost effective and a lot less demanding.

Print Recipes

• Chicken, Rice, and Vegetable Casserole
• Sloppy Joes
• Hamburgers
• Steak with Califlower Gratin
• 12 Boy Curry
• Tacos
• Stir Fry featuring leftover veggies

Successful Yet Won't Be Repeated Internet Recipes

• Slower Cooker Beef Ragout - This dish just didn't speak to me. The recipe made a ton, yet I've been reluctant to pull the leftovers out of the freezer. I love cinnamon and allspice, but I want this to be a comforting, home-like dish and - to my tongue - they just don't taste that way in an entree. This is probably because I don't have a drop of Greek in me. The recipe was successful.
• Cranberry Glazed Turkey Meatballs - Another successful recipe that just wasn't to my palate. The dish was lovely, citrusy and it had a surprising, pleasant, floral note. It was pretty. It was a nice change from the usual, yet we found ourselves reluctantly divvying up the leftovers. We plan to try the cranberry sauce on a pork chop later.

January Dinners

Here are some dinner ideas from around the web. I made each of these in the past 3 weeks. This selection is the recipes I can link to which were successful. Successful being defined as worth making again in the future or worth trying again in the future with modifications. Other dinners without internet presence included: spaghetti, ginger chicken with coconut, creamy ranch chicken, sweet & sour meatballs, steak stir fry with vegetables, honey lime enchiladas, and hummus baked chicken.

• Korean Beef and Rice Bowl - I like this dish because of all its veggies, and it comes together quickly if you purchase the carrots already matchsticked.
• Cuban Tacos - This was a new dish I tried. I liked it, but they were very dry. I don't know if that was a cooking mistake or just the nature of the dish. I feel like they need some sort of southwest-inspired ranch sauce.
• Chicken Pot Pie - Little Hands is particularly fond of this dish; the boy loves a good cream sauce. Making one pie alone is too high an effort for a single meal, so I double the recipe and freeze the second pie. I also stick with store-bought crusts on this one to reduce the workload. To this recipe I add more salt and nutmeg to taste, a clove of garlic per pie, and I substitute the black pepper with white pepper.
• Drunken Noodles - This dish struck my fancy, and my downfall was the rice noodles required 30 minutes of soak time before cooking. I liked the dish, but didn't love it. As with all rice noodles dishes, I found myself hunger again an hour later.
• Meatball Sandwich - Another dish where I was able to freeze half the yield. I drastically cut down the onion, and I felt that was a good decision. Next time I'd take the red pepper down a bit as well. I love a good, hot dish, but the heat in this one overwhelmed the spiciness of the meatballs.
• Fajitas - Yum. I like this recipe better than the pack o seasoning I used to use. I omit the fancy sizzling step, and I just warm up the tortillas in the microwave.
• Beef Stroganoff with Dill This is a recipe that I cut in half. I also use a cheap cut of beef, slice it thin, and then cook it slowly for-ev-er.
• Disneyland Monte Cristo Sandwich My downfall on these was I don't have a thermometer to gauge oil temperature, and my oil was too cold. The other downfall is that each sandwich half takes up 4-6 minutes to cook. This is not a fast dish.
• Chicken CarbonaraIn place of the pancetta I used bacon. I also halved the recipe and doubled the bacon. Delicious despite the fact it clogs arteries.

Pumpkin Pie: Fairytale vs Pie Pumpkin vs Libby vs Costco

The first Thanksgiving DH and I shared after we were married we observed as just the two of us. I made two pumpkin pies. DH questioned my sanity, "We're only two people. We don't need two pies." I informed him, "One pie for me and one for you." Despite his disbelief, I did eat that entire pie myself (and some of his) within about 24 hours. A serving of pumpkin pie for me is a quarter of the pie, for pumpkin pie is my favorite non-chocolate dessert. :)

Of course, I had to make pumpkin pie from my roasted pumpkin I was curious if the homemade pumpkin purees would yield a superior pie.

I began by thawing 2 cups of each of my pumpkin purees: "pie pumpkin" and fairytale. Then I removed 2 tablespoons from each to bring the total volume down to 15-oz. I mixed the extra tablespoons with a little powdered ginger and a little formula to make a tasty lunch for Little Hands.

Above is a picture of each of the purees I used. I used a can of Libby's as my tried-and-true control lest the other two be awful!

A point of clarification. This is Libby's canned pumpkin. It is not Libby's canned pumpkin pie mix.

I baked the pies with identical spicing and HEB crusts. As you can see, I had difficulties gauging when the two homemade pies were baked. The Libby's starts to freckle just a bit when it's perfect, yet neither they fairytale nor the pie pumpkin freckled. I pulled both pies when the fairytale lost it's gleam. The fairytale ended up slightly over-baked and the pie pumpkin embarrassingly over-baked. They still taste fine. The real sin of over-baking is the ugly, cracked surfaces.

One of our Thanksgiving guests surprised us by bringing a Costco pumpkin pie. There was no shortage of pie at our feast! The fairytale is the prettiest: a beautiful pumpkin orange. The pie pumpkin started out an ugly yellow, but baked up to be fairly identical in color the Libby's pumpkin. The Costco color was prettier than the Libby's, but not as stunning as the Fairytale.

I considered making a pie chart of pie consumption, but I'll spare you that geekiness :)

The fairytale slices are slightly sweeter than the rest. The other three pies were fairly indistinguishable in quality of taste; however, DH did note the Costco has a touch more salt in its recipe. I feel the guests tended toward the home roasted pumpkin pies because they were politely honoring the fact they were more work to make. (This was not a blind taste test.)

Overall, my opinions:

• Fairytale yielded the tastiest and prettiest pie. However, those advantages were so slight that I would not recommend that route! I will probably roast my own fairytale pumpkin again next year, but only because that's my brand of crazy. I do not frown upon any pie from other sources.
• Pie Pumpkin was identical to Libby's save for being slightly more yellow. It's not worth the effort at all.
• Libby's is just as good as home roasted pumpkin. It's a darker color prior to baking; I'd guess that to be a result of the high temperatures required in canning.
• Costco is just as good as Libby's, and it's a bigger pie. A Costco pie is completely the way to go if you're pressed for time, have a huge crowd, or don't enjoy baking pies.

Pumpkin and Marscapone Roulade

This cake is homemade on an entirely new level of effort. A pumpkin jelly roll cake made from home-roasted fairytale pumpkin with a filling of homemade mascarpone and homemade candied ginger. This cake is decadent, sweet, creamy, and luscious.

I didn't set out to make a cake from scratch short of grinding the wheat, milking the cow, and obtaining the appropriate chemicals and processes to create baking soda. It kind of happened.

About a month ago I needed candied ginger for a berry cake. I was at a grocery store which doesn't sell candied ginger. Going to a second store with Little Hands wasn't an option, so I purchased half a pound of fresh ginger. Then I followed David Lebovitz's recipe on how to candy the ginger. The whole house smelled lovely. (That is, if you like the smell of ginger.) I frequently dipped a spoon into the syrup for a lick, and I wished there had been enough syrup to attempt to make a homemade ginger ale. The candied ginger itself? A lifetime supply considering I don't like it as a candy.

Then I happened to roast my own fairytale pumpkin.. It yielded so much pumpkin that I set out to do something with the pumpkin. It just so happened that the Blue-Eyed Bakers posted a recipe called, Buche d'Halloween (aka Pumpkin Roulade with Ginger Buttercream).

I happened to have pinned recipe for homemade marascapone and an appropriate amount of cream in the refridgerator. I made the cheese from scratch because it sounded interesting. (It was. I'll do it again in the future.)

The result was rich and creamy. It was a wonderful fall desert deviating from my tendencies toward pies and peppermint.

Pureed Fairytale Pumpkin

I wanted to roast and puree a pumpkin for Little Hands. At Central Market I asked a produce stocker for tips on how to select a pie pumpkin. The staff at Central Market are fabulous - when you can find one; they really know their products. He gave me great advice on how to select a pumpkin, and then he suggested that what I really ought to try was the fairytale pumpkins. He said that they are sweeter than the little "pie pumpkins" we were looking at.

Did you know fairytale pumpkins are edible? I had thought that they were decorative pumpkins. I had expected them to be unappetizing like the pumpkins more commonly used for jack o' lanterns.

Fairytale pumpkins were $8 compared to the $2.50 for a pie pumpkin. I was relucant to pay that much for a pumpkin; Mama-hona kindly purchased me this beauty. This pumpkin is larger than I wanted because the pricing scheme was flat regardless of pumpkin size. I couldn't reach the smaller ones in the back of the stack, and the larger ones seemed enormous.

I followed the directions on how to roast a fairytale pumpkin this blog. Essentially: whack it up, clean it out, stick it in the oven at 400* for 2 and a half hours, puree it, drain it, et voila!

My notes to add.

• The majority of my pumpkin was going into baking applications, so I wanted to get rid of as much water as possible. Unlike smaller squash, don't add water to the roasting pan. The liquids will be added back in at baking time; it is better to add liquid than have a soupy batter!
• Cover the roasting pan in tin foil. Pumpkin is thick, so it needs all the help it can get!
• Cut the pumpkin into smaller, even pieces. I unnecessarily followed the natural lines of the pumpkin and the larger pieces took 45 minutes longer to cook than the thinner pieces.

I squeezed the puree in a tea towel; the liquid was carrot-orange bright. Then I left puree in the fridge overnight to drain. The puree itself is a likewise happy, bright color.

Once I was happy with the consistancy, I divided it into 1 cup increments for freezing. One can of pumpkin is 2 cups minus 2 Tablespoons. Lucky Little Hands will get to eat the extra tablespoons :)

My ~24-lb pumpkin yielded a half gallon of pumpkin puree. In more useful statistics, a little over 4, 15-oz cans of pumpkin. That means for outright cost I broke about even if canned pumpkin isn't on sale. That's not counting the cost of running the oven for hours nor the value of my time.

For comparison, I also roasted what was labeled as a "pie pumpkin." By the time I got around to roasting it, it weighed a mere 6.5 pounds. I'm convinced it lost a few pounds while it spent two weeks as a "toy" in our living room. (So weight does not necessarily equal volume.) The pie pumpkin yielded 3 cups of puree.

Fruit and Vegetable Purees III

I have been making baby food for Little Hands about every two weeks. It has just worked out that way. When Little Hands starts to run out, I make more. This past week we went on an excursion to buy more produce for him to eat. I came home with carrots, sweet potatoes (twice as much as before), a purple sweet potato (because it sounded neat), a peach, pears, an acorn squash, and green beans. Sadly, the peach molded on the counter in the two days it took me to go from shopping to food creation.

Little Hands inspects the quality of my work on foods I don't consider a choking hazard. (This carrot was cut in half before being put in the oven.)

The lower rack of my oven is filled with carrots, sweet potatoes, the purple sweet potato, and a couple of russets for dinner for DH and me.

The upper rack contains the pears and acorn squash. I started off the oven at 350* for the 45 min and then at 400* for another 25 minutes. The pears were done in about 15 minutes. The carrots in for 45 min. And everything else for the full 70 minutes.

Meanwhile, I cooked the green beans on the stove in about an inch of water. My last steaming basket rusted and I vowed to buy a silicone one, but I have yet to find a silicone steaming basket I like.

I thought roasted carrots would be a nice flavor variation for Little Hands who doesn't have many flavors available to him. The end product isn't to my liking. The roasted carrots were much drier than I had anticipated - they were quite dehydrated by the time they became fork-tender. Thus I had to add a lot of thinning water, and I still had very little produce from one pound of carrots vs steaming. (I don't have numbers on this claim. Just observation.) I also had to keep the oven at a much lower temperature for longer than I would have preferred. In the future, I'll stick to steaming carrots.

Ta-daaaa.

• The top left is the green beans. I didn't make many as some people complain frozen green bean puree becomes gritty. This is a test batch.
• The next down are the roasted carrots.
• The four black-ish blocks are the purple sweet potato. I chose the smallest potato available and didn't try to hard to squeeze every ounce out of the potato when I saw how intense the color is! My small taste of purple sweet potato seemed more floral than regular sweet potato. If Little Hands loves it, I'll probably make more. The intent of this was just for amusement's sake.
• The lower left is the acorn squash. Little Hands approves of acorn squash on most days. In this picture, a third of the bag had already been consumed.
• Top right corner are the baked pears. They are quite sweet and have a strong pear taste to them. Little Hands hasn't been much interested in eating them unless they're mixed in with his oatmeal.
• Bottom right are two bags of sweet potato. Little Hands has started to get bored with it, but he's still eating the supply steadily.

Curiously, Little Hands has started to favor the Butternut Squash. He was so disinterested before that I didn't bother to make any this time!

Fruit and Vegetable Purees II

Little hands speed through his first batch of sweet potato, so I set out to make him a second batch. This time I documented the process.

I decided since I was heating up the oven I might as well make Little Hand's next food, apples, while I was at it. I chose Braeburn apples because they would handle the baking process well. Little Hands thinks they're too tart, so next time I may try Fujis.

Prepare the sweet potatoes: wash, pierce, and wrap in foil. Note I made the mistake of piercing through the foil. This left me digging out four bits of foil out of every potato. I've never noticed this in my own baked potatoes (oops), but it caught my Mama eye in the finishing steps.

Prepare the apples: core the apples, place in a pan with 1" of water. We don't own an apple corer, so DH used a metal teaspoon to core the apples for me.

Bake in a 400* F oven. The apples will be done in about 30 minutes: fragrant, fork-tender, and the skin is dark. Reserve the apple baking liquid for thinning. The sweet potatoes will be done when they're squishy; about 1 hour. (In this picture you may or may not notice that I tossed some potatoes in for DH and myself.)

I initially took my Kidco Food Mill to the apples, but that was a lot of work and it was just creating a standard applesauce texture.

So I had DH take the immersion blender to them instead. Same texture. Much faster. Add water from the baking pan as necessary to aid the blender. Use the same liquid to thin the applesauce to the desired viscosity.

Measure out the sauce for freezing. Most people seem to use an ice cube tray. I like the perfect, 1/2-oz squares this Wilton brownie bites silicone pan makes.

Remove the peel of the sweet potatoes. Then prepare in the same fashion as the apples, adding your choice liquid for thinning. I tend to thin my baby food as little as possible in favor of controlling the viscosity after thawing.

Vegetable Purees

Here's my first set of baby purees: steamed carrots, steamed peas, baked sweet potato, and baked butternut squash. Silly me thought I wanted to purchase spaghetti squash, I purchased what looked right without reading its sticker, and it turned out to be I wanted butternust squash and I purchased butternut squash. That's a case of two wrongs do make a right :) Little hands likes carrots and peas, loooooves sweet potato, and neither likes nor dislikes butternut squash.

The blog was fairly silent this week because my mother-in-law was in town and we worked on making something big together. I'll get it posted once it is finished!

Butterscotch Sauce

This rich, butterscotch sauce is sweet and buttery. Once you try this easy recipe you won't go back to purchasing butterscotch topping in a jar. Serve on brownies or with ice cream or with both. DH and I like to put the sauce directly on a brownie in a simple-syrup fashion.

Butterscotch Sauce Recipe by David Lebovitz

Makes: 1 cup sauce

Prep Time: negligible

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons (55 g) salted butter
• 1 cup (180 g) packed light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup (60 ml), plus 6 tablespoons (90 ml) heavy cream
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a wide saucepan or skillet over medium heat, melt the butter with the brown sugar and the 1/4 cup of heavy cream, stirring until smooth.
2. Increase the heat to medium-high. When the mixture starts bubbling, stop stirring. Let the mixture cook at a bubbling simmer for three minutes. Tweak the heat every now and then to keep the bubbling consistent.
3. Remove from heat and stir in the remaining 6 tablespoons of cream. Let cool, then stir in the vanilla extract.
4. Serve warm.
5. Store in sealed container in the fridge for up to two weeks. Reheat the sauce over low heat.

Like this recipe? Don't forget to pin it!

Caraway Pot Roast

This roast beef dish is savory, tangy, and - most importantly - easy to create. The apple is a surprising touch and its tartness compliments the roast. You can cook this immediately or you can prepared it in advance and freeze it until you need a day off from cooking. I took a knife to my roast and divided it into two meals.

Caraway Pot Roast

adapted from Once-a-Month-Cooking by Mary Beth Lagerborg and Mimi Wilson

serves 4

Prep Time: 10 to 15 minutes

Cook Time: 6 to 12 hours

To prepare and freeze:

• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 1 tsp crushed garlic
• 2 1/2 pound roast beef, fat trimmed
• 15-oz Libby's Bavarian Style Kraut, drained
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

To finish and serve:

• 1 cup of water
• 2 granny smith apples, grated
• 16-oz wide egg noodles

Directions

1. Place all ingredients except water, apples, and noodles in bag and seal well. Freeze.
2. Thaw and put into Crock-Pot. Add water, cover, and turn on low for 6 to 8 hours. (12 hours if not thawed.)
3. Shred the meat in the juice. Grate apples and put on top meat. Serve on cooked noodles.
Are you interested in this recipe? Don't forget to pin it!