Food Revolution: Chicken Korma to Chicken KorMex

This is part of a series of posts in which I cook something from Jamie's Food Revolution and then make it again with a twist. Find the other posts here.

I have definitely learned something from Jamie's Food Revolution: I really love Indian food, especially when it's homemade. This time I made Chicken Korma, and the rule definitely still holds true. This stuff is amazingly delicious. I technically tweaked Jamie's recipe a little, but that was just because some of his amounts were stupid:

• 2 chicken breasts (translated to human measures from "1 3/4 pounds chicken breasts")
• 2 medium onions
• optional: 1 fresh jalapeño (translated from optional: 1 fresh green chile)
• a thumb-sized piece of fresh root ginger
• a small bunch of fresh cilantro
• 1 x 15-oz can garbanzo beans
• peanut oil
• a pat of butter
• 1/2 cup Patak's mild curry paste
• 1 x 14-oz can lite coconut milk
• a small handful of sliced almonds
• 2 heaped tbsp unsweetened shredded coconut
• 2 cups lite natural yogurt
• 1 lemon

Cut the chicken into chunks. Halve and finely slice the onions (tip: be sure to slice, not crush, to avoid tears). Slice the jalapeño from the tip up to just before the seeds, cut the remainder in half lengthwise, cut off the end, and push out the seeds (this is the technique that I've finally figured out will work to get the seeds out cleanly, let me know if you have a better technique). Put a few of the prettier slices aside for plating Peel and finely chop the ginger. Pick some cilantro leaves to use in plating and finely chop the rest. Drain the beans.

Put a large pan on high or medium-high heat (Jamie says high, but everything gets golden before 10 minutes either way, and I had to turn it down to avoid burning) and add some oil (about enough to just cover the bottom of the pan). Add the onions, pepper, ginger, cilantro, and butter. Cook for about 10 minutes (until the onions are golden), stirring pretty close to constantly. Add the curry paste, beans, coconut milk, coconut, almonds (except a little for plating), garbanzo beans, and slicked chicken. Stir. Half-fill the empty coconut milk can with water, and add it. Stir again. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes with the lid on. Jamie says to check it regularly to make sure it's not drying out and add extra water if necessary, which makes me think Jamie usually cooks in a desert with a dehumidifier running; this stuff was soupy when it finished, there was no risk of it drying out. The chicken should be tender and cooked when you finish. He says to season with (sea) salt and pepper, but I didn't need to add anything to make it delicious. I cooked some rice during the last 15 minutes or so of the simmering, and served the korma over that with some yogurt, the pretty bits, and a lemon wedge.

Trying to come up with a way to remix this one was daunting. First off, it was so super delicious, I didn't want to mess with it. Second, Patak's is a super cheaty way of cooking, but I wanted something at least close to the same: a paste of spicy goodness. What to do?

I decided to pick a type of food, and just substitute each of the ingredients as best I could, and see what happened. I knew I'd have a lot of work to do, so I picked something I'm familiar with: Tex-Mex. Here's what I did to Tex-Mexify each ingredient:

• 2 chicken breasts to 2 chicken breasts (we have chickens in Texas)
• optional: 1 fresh jalapeño to not optional: 1 fresh jalapeño
• a small bunch of fresh cilantro to a large bunch of fresh cilantro
• 1 x 15-oz can garbanzo beans to 1 x 15-oz can whole-kernel sweet corn
• 1 x 14-oz can lite coconut milk to 14 oz 2% milk
• a small handful of sliced almonds to a small handful of crumbled pecans
• 2 heaped tbsp unsweetened shredded coconut unchanged, because I need to use this stuff up, but I think I'd use shredded jicama if I didn't already have coconut
• 2 cups lite natural yogurt to 2 cups lite sour cream
• 1 lemon to oh crap I forgot the lemon
• a thumb-sized piece of fresh root ginger to I can't think of anything ginger-like, and ginger is tasty, so we'll call it fusion; I probably could have switched this to a few cloves of garlic, though

That leaves the paste. Well, this is supposed to be Texan, so I used 1/4 cup Salt Lick Chipotle BBQ Sauce thickened to something more paste-like with 1/4 cup chili powder.

I made everything just like in the original, except I added the milk last at the add-everything-else step, and didn't quite bring it to a boil after adding the milk. I had no idea how this stuff would taste.

It came out pretty tasty, but my crazy concoction just couldn't top the concentrated deliciousness that is Patak's. Curries are just so good. I'll probably make it again, but probably not before I run out of curry pastes.

If you have any ideas for things I could have picked that were more properly Tex-Mex, or if you try a remix using a different theme, let us know in the comments.

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Posted in: almonds,chicken,chilis,cilantro,coconut,coconut milk,corn,curry,food revolution,garbanzo beans,ginger,milk,onions,pecans,sour cream,yogurt

Food Revolution: Vindaloo to Incaloo

I finally got back to Jamie's Food Revolution this week. These recipes were more involved than the ones I'd made so far, but I think they both came out really good... once I fixed my remix. More on that in a bit.

Strangely, I can't find Jamie's vindaloo recipe online. Here it is:

• 2 medium onions
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 fresh chilis (I use serranos)
• thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger root
• "small bunch" of fresh cilantro (I take that to mean about a quarter of what HEB thinks a bunch is supposed to be)
• 4 ripe tomatoes
• peanut oil
• pat of butter
• 1 3/4 pounds diced pork shoulder (but he said chicken's also fine, so I used chicken)
• 1/2 cup Patak's vindaloo paste (check your international aisle)
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 cup natural yogurt
• 1 lemon
• about 2 cups rice (I cooked mine in chicken broth, see below)

My remix was about a year in the making. Last August, the chefs on Top Chef Masters were challenged with making gluten-free, soy-free, vegan food for Zooey Deschanel (one of the few human beings capable of convincing people that such restrictions are more endearing than persnickety). The winning dish was quinoa spaghetti. After (or, more likely, during) the episode, I had to look into this "quinoa" stuff to see what the heck it was.

From the Wikipedia article and a few other sources online that I can no longer remember, I learned that quinoa is a grain that, at least according to its advocates, is easier to grow, more nutritious, and otherwise simply better than corn, but which the Europeans didn't understand and associated with non-Christian Incan religious ceremonies, and thus suppressed. It's higher in protein than other grains, and is thus very useful especially for vegetarian diets. It isn't every day that you get a chance to try a whole new grain, so I had to try it.

But, apparently, this need wasn't very strong. I put off trying quinoa until about a month ago, when it appeared  at the Central Market Cafe here in Austin in a salad of some sort. I don't remember anything else about the salad, but the quinoa passed that first test, and reminded me that I wanted to try this. I decided to mix it with other ingredients available to the Inca civilization that gave us quinoa, because, why not?

I replaced the ginger with turmeric, the lemon with a key lime, the curry paste with Peruvian yellow pepper paste (aka "aji amarillo" paste, since it's made from yellow aji peppers), and the meat with about 1.75 pounds new (small/baby) purple potatoes and a couple ocas (because I'd read that the people of the Andes ate ocas, and my grocery store happened to have them). I also added a tablespoon of cumin, but I forgot to do so until after my first serving. Do not forget the cumin! It is absolutely vital. I also replaced the rice with quinoa, which I again cooked in chicken broth. While that's technically cheating (since Incas didn't have chickens), using cuy broth seemed like it'd probably be going too far (and boiling a pan of just water indicates a lack of creativity).

Peel and slice the onions, turmeric, and garlic. Slice the serranos. Pick off a handful of cilantro leaves, then chop up the rest of the small bunch. It's probably a good idea to peel your ocas (if you used them) at this point, but keep those aside; they aren't part of this first batch of veggies.

Heat a large pan on medium-high heat, and add the pat of butter (optional and honestly probably unnecessary, and also kind of cheating since the Incas didn't eat dairy) and a "couple of lugs" of peanut oil (Jamie always puts it that way; it seems to mean about what it seems like it would mean when you start pouring the oil in and get that "glug glug" effect). Add the chopped veggies, and cook for 10 minutes.

While that's cooking, cut your potatoes in half, chop your ocas (I chopped them up like I would carrots), and quarter your tomatoes. Add the potatoes and ocas to the veggies once the veg is softened and golden, along with the pepper paste. Stir everything to coat, and add a little salt and pepper. Much more importantly, add the cumin. Add the tomatoes, vinegar, honey, and about 2 cups water (enough to just barely cover everything; it wouldn't be a terrible idea to use broth here, rather than water). Stir again, then bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for 45 minutes covered, stirring occasionally.

When you have about 20 minutes left, boil the broth, and then add about 2 cups of quinoa (check your packaging; you may, like me, have to rinse and soak the quinoa the night before). Reduce the heat and cover, and simmer for about 15 minutes. It didn't seem to be super picky, so basically simmer it until everything else is ready.

I served it with yogurt in the photo, but I should have left that out to fit my self-imposed rules. I left it out when I had leftovers just now, and I don't think the recipe suffered for it. I don't show the key lime here, which I sliced in half and squeezed over the top (like you might a lemon).

The crazy thing to me about this is what a huge difference the cumin made. I was thinking last night that I'd have to break the rules and use some chicken or pork (or maybe cuy, llama jerky, or penguin, since those were among the Incan meats I could find) if I made this again. The cumin made all the difference. This definitely stands on its own without meat now. You could probably add some if you like, but I don't think it's needed.

Don't be fooled by the similar appearances of the dishes in my photos here. Despite some commonalities, the difference between the curry paste and the pepper paste + cumin was enormous. I definitely recommend trying both, though.

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Posted in: chicken,chilis,cilantro,curry,food revolution,garlic,Inca,oca,onions,potatoes

Food Revolution: Chicken Chow Mein to Basil Fennel Chicken Pasta

I remixed another recipe from Jamie's Food Revolution last night and tonight, and I think I won again. To be fair, the thing I made using Jamie's Chicken Chow Mein recipe hardly looked like the thing in the book. His looks soupier (I assume the "if necessary" step seemed necessary to him), and I don't think that would have been a good thing. Then again, maybe I had a lot of yumminess stuck to my pan that he released. If I make it again, I'll probably try the wet version, and I'll use sliced water chestnuts instead of whole. Otherwise, this was pretty darned tasty. It was good, but I don't think it was as good as the alternate version I made last night. Note: If you make it, make sure you get actual chow mein noodles, not the dry things La Choy or whoever calls chow mein; those aren't the same thing (as is probably obvious from the photo).

For my remix, I substituted the following:

• Bay leaves for cilantro
• Fennel for bok choy (roughly as much fennel as a baby bok choy)
• Thin spaghetti for chow mein noodles
• Olive oil for peanut oil
• 6-oz can black olives for 8-oz can water chestnuts
• A large handful of largish cherry tomatoes (larger than cherry tomatoes, smaller than normal tomatoes, I can't think of what they called them) for the hell of it; I think I meant for them to replace the bok choy, but then I saw the fennel and the gears turned

Prepare everything using Jamie's recipe, but with the substitutions above (adding the quartered tomatoes to the veggie stir fry mix, but reserving a couple quarters for the pretty). Also, rather than simply cutting it in half like the bok choy, chop the fennel up. You want it to have lots of surface area in the water, so it can get tamed a bit.

This very much may be one of those things that other people can't stand, but I thought this was super, super tasty. I think it's the tastiest thing I've ever cooked. It was the first time I'd used fennel, and I was really worried once I tasted it raw (raw fennel tastes like black licorice). Boiling it for a few minutes calmed the flavor down considerably, though. I was also considering leaving out the ginger in my version, since ginger isn't used much in Italian cooking, while the rest of the ingredients felt fairly Italian. Luckily I saw an article online discussing a new trend of "Indian-Italian fusion," and I thought that sounded like such a wonderful idea I had to leave the ginger in. I doubted myself again when I decided to go with the fennel (licorice and ginger? won't that be too much?), but I'm so glad I left it in.

This might be it for a while. I need to use up some leftovers this week, and then I'm out of town for two weeks. I'll have my copy of the book with me, though, so maybe I'll do a remix while I'm up in Michigan.

If you have any ideas for what I should call this thing (because I'll certainly be making it again), let me know in the comments.

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Posted in: basil,black olives,bok choy,chicken,cilantro,food,food revolution,ginger,tomatoes,water chestnuts

Food Revolution: Salmon Fish Cakes Accidentally Remixed

Last weekend I had my first accidental remix. According to the recipe I was reading, I was making Salmon Fish Cakes from Jamie's Food Revolution, but that's not how they ended up.

The main thing I'm using Jamie's book for is to learn new techniques. The whole point of it is to get people to cook, so surely he'll be really teaching people, right? I'm starting to think, well, not so much. His goal is noble, but I've had a couple experiences now where he seemed to assume I knew a little more than I knew. This time the results were nearly disastrous.

Specifically, I was steaming the salmon for the fish cakes in a colander above the boiling potatoes. This seemed like a really cool idea to me, but I was doing this at a rental beach house, and I hadn't brought quite exactly the right equipment. That led to water boiling up into the colander with the salmon, making it a bit soggy. The result, after the rest of the process, was too soggy to form into fish cakes.

However, it wasn't a total loss. A little later than I should have, I decided to stop trying to cook the excess moisture out, and just made it a hash for sandwiches. I added a bit of the salad we were making for the side, squeezed on the lemon, and came up with something that was still pretty darned tasty. I think it would've been far better if I'd given up on the cakes earlier, but it was still pretty good.

Jamie has the recipe for the fish cakes on his site, but on his site it's in metric. Use 1.25 lbs potatoes (about 2 largish potatoes) and a pound of salmon. I also used far less parsley than he advises; I think Jamie must have very small hands, because a "handful" or "small bunch" is always way too much; if I'd used what he advised, my cakes would have been green and tasted purely like parsley.

Despite my annoyance at this recipe (and the very mediocre Sizzling Beef with Scallions and Black Bean Sauce, which I didn't bother remixing and didn't think was very good), I'm going to continue working through as many of Jamie's recipes as I can. Stay tuned for his Chicken Chow Mein (and my remix thereof), as soon as I've had a chance to cook them.

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Posted in: food,food revolution,parsley,potatoes,salmon

Food Revolution: Chicken and Leek Stroganoff to Vegan Mushroom Leek Heaven

On Tuesday, I made my second recipe from Jamie's Food Revolution: Chicken and Leek Stroganoff (sorry for the blurriness of the photo, I didn't notice that my lens was a bit dirty). The recipe is available on this blog. All I can say about this one is, well, they can't all be awesome. The parsley dominated the flavor way too much for my taste, and not in a pleasant way. I tasted a bit of it as I packed up the leftovers, and it was a little better after it sat for a bit... but last night I ate some of those leftovers, and it had gotten far worse. Anything with such a small window of deliciousness is a loser in my book. Sorry, Jamie, but I won't be making this one again! Oh, it also way failed the time test (over 40 minutes instead of the promised 19), but my version the next night took way less time, so I think at least part of it was me.

Something good did come of this recipe, though. I decided to remix it vegan (just to see how hard it would be to do so), and, in my opinion, my vegan remix is far tastier. It may be a bit sweet for some, but I liked it quite a bit (including in leftover form). To be clear, it really doesn't taste anything like the original, but the recipe is very close to identical and the process was exactly the same.

To produce the remix, I swapped portabella mushrooms for the chicken breasts in Jamie's recipe, cilantro for the parsley, coconut oil for the olive oil, and coconut cream for the heavy cream. I left out the pat of butter. I also mixed in a bit of a simple flour roux to thicken up the sauce, but I would do the same if I made Jamie's recipe again. Otherwise, I made everything exactly like Jamie's recipe. I will definitely make this again.

• a couple pinches sea salt (I use iodized sea salt so I don't get a goiter)
• 3/4 cup long-grain rice
• 1 large leek
• a big handful of crimini mushrooms
• 3 portabella mushroom caps
• coconut oil
• a glass of white wine*
• a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
• a bunch of fresh cilantro
• 1 1/4 cups coconut cream
• 1 lemon

Paraphrased from Jamie's recipe, with my substitutions and notes added in: Heat water to boiling in a kettle or large, covered pan. Transfer the water to the large pan (if necessary), and add a pinch of salt. Add your rice and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium, and cook for 15 minutes. Do the prep while the water is boiling, and you should, with luck, finish everything else about the time the rice is ready.

Cut both ends off the leek, quarter lengthways, and slice it into ~1/4-inch slices. Rinse well under running water in a colander. Slice the crimini mushrooms, and cut the portabella mushroom caps into "little-finger-size" pieces (to quote Jamie's description of what to do to the chicken).

Heat a large frying pan on high heat, and add a dollop of coconut oil. This is the point where hopefully your rice water will be boiling, and you can add the rice to it, maybe just a bit before here. Add the leek, white wine, and about a half a wine glass of water to the melted coconut oil, along with a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper. Cover it loosely with aluminum foil (honestly, I think a lid would be fine, just placed on loosely). Let it cook for 5 minutes. Chop the cilantro (stalks and all) while it bubbles. Remove the foil (or lid), and add everything but the lemon (and a little cilantro to add at the end to make things pretty): mushrooms and mushrooms, cilantro (except for a tiny bit of it), and coconut cream. Stir and bring back to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium, and simmer for 10 minutes. I removed as much of the solids as I could at this point and removed the heat, stirred in some flour-in-water, then heated back to boiling while stirring (to make it more gravy-like). I also squeeze half the lemon into the mixture at this point (after tasting it and deciding, yes, the lemon would be quite tasty in this sauce).

Drain the rice, and put it on each plate. Add some of the sauce, then the veggies, then finally the last bits of cilantro. Place a quarter of the lemon on each plate (which you can then squeeze on if desired). Jamie says season to taste, but does that really need to be included in the recipe? I say put salt and pepper on the table like a normal person, and people can use them if they want to use them.

Let me know if you try mine, particularly if you can think of a way to make it prettier. The sauce came out an ugly gray-brown, so I'd like to figure out a way to make it prettier... but other than that this may be my favorite "Hey, I came up with this!" recipe yet.

* I heard once that you should never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink, so I bought a reasonably priced bottle of wine that HEB's label told me would pair nicely with chicken (since it was originally paired with chicken). Drinking it as I made the recipe, it definitely passed the "I'd drink this" test. Unfortunately, I can't remember what it was, and the bottle already went out in recycling.

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Posted in: chicken,cilantro,food revolution,leeks,mushrooms,parsley,white wine

Food Revolution: Salmon Tikka to Chipotle Chicken

Last week, my sister, Libby, invited me over for amazingly yummy Chicken Tikka Masala. She purchased Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Food Revolution, and wanted to try out one of the curries while her less-adventurous-foodwise hubby is out of town. It's hard to say for certain, but I think that chicken might be among the five best things I've ever eaten. I'm sure it was at least in part my sister's touch, but that recipe was amazing, so I bought my own copy of the book.

Part of the goal of the book is to get the people reading it to get their friends and family to cook, thus the "Revolution" part of the title. I'm stealing Libby's idea of using my blog to serve as part of that part of the process, but putting a bit of my own spin on it. Each time I make a recipe from the book, I'm going to try to also make my own dish inspired by that recipe. Hopefully by the end of this post that'll make more sense.

Since I loved the Chicken Tikka Masala so much, I decided to try the Quick Salmon Tikka with Cucumber Yogurt (that recipe is very close to the same, but the one in this book uses cilantro rather than coriander leaves) first. But before I could try that, I had to find some curry paste. Jamie mentions a specific brand, Patak's, as particularly good curry paste, but really any would have been fine... if Libby hadn't told me that her grocery store had the specific one he recommended. I tried four grocery stores (including the awesome MT Supermarket, "Central Texas's Premier Asian Grocery") with no luck, and was about to drive out to Libby's grocery (about a 20-minute drive) when I decided to try one more grocery store... which I happened to be near when I started my quest, but had assumed wouldn't have it. For the record, HEB at Parmer and Mopac currently has a special on Patak's Curry Pastes, while the HEB at Parmer and I35, the Hancock HEB, and the Far West HEB didn't have it as of yesterday.

When I finally made it home with the Patak's and the other ingredients, I started a timer. The book said the  would take 17 minutes, and it did have "Quick" right there in the name, "Quick Salmon Tikka with Cucumber Yogurt." My attempt didn't go quite that fast. Still, 33 minutes didn't seem too bad, especially since a good part of that was spent scaling the salmon that I thought was scale-less but turned out not to be. I'm pretty sure I could get it down to 17 minutes if I made it a few more times, so strong work there, Jamie. I somehow managed to forget the lemon juice, but it was still fantastic. It wasn't quite as good as the Chicken Tikka Masala, but, given the reduced prep time, it definitely passes. And, holy crap, it even turned out pretty (except for that piece of I think skin falling off on the left, I'm not sure why I allowed that in the photo)!

I had half a cucumber, half a lemon, and a ton of cilantro leftover from that recipe, and I purposefully got a bit extra plain yogurt with the intention of making more things with it... so I decided to try something, which is where I get to the whole point of this series. Each time I try one of Jamie's recipes, I'm going to try to also make something similar but not quite the same. To add to the leftover ingredients, I grabbed a jalapeño, a red bell pepper, and some chicken. Importantly, I already had some Tabasco Brand Chipotle Pepper Sauce (because that stuff is awesome and I try to always have at least one bottle of it around). This is what came out when all of that turned together in my head. It serves a little more than one but probably not quite two (I have leftovers, but I don't think it's quite a full meal's worth of leftovers). Add a chicken breast and make more of the Tabasco/cumin mix to coat it if you want to fully serve two:

• 1 chicken breast
• ~2 tbsp Tabasco Brand Chipotle Pepper Sauce
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 cucumber seeded and chopped
• 1/2 cup nonfat plain yogurt
• ~2 tbsp finely chopped cilantro
• 1/2 jalapeno seeded and deribbed, finely chopped
• ~2 tbsp chopped red pepper
• 2 pieces flatbread

Heat the flatbread in your oven at 225 °F (just so it's warm when you put everything else on top of it). It can keep heating while you make everything else.

Combine everything but the chicken, Tabasco, and cumin in a bowl (although you should keep back a bit of each of the veggies to add to the top to make it pretty).

Heat a frying pan, and add just a little olive oil to the heated pan. As that heats, cut the chicken into strips. Combine the Tabasco and cumin in a bowl. Lightly coat the chicken in this mixture. Cook the chicken in the oil for about a minute and a half a side. I ended up cooking that covered on low for a while as I sorted out the other half, but, with the thin strips, it shouldn't take much longer than that to cook it completely. It stayed plenty moist for me, though, so it doesn't seem to hurt to throw a lid on the chicken, turn down the heat, and let it go for a bit as you sort everything else out..

Serve on the flatbreak (flatbread, yogurt mix, chicken, bits of veggies for pretty).

BTW, I had the flatbread from the Salmon (because I didn't feel like going on another hunt for naan, as much as it probably would have been worth it). If I didn't, I would definitely have used a tortilla of some sort to properly fully southwesternize this.

If you try it, please let me know... especially if you adapt the general idea into another variation.

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Posted in: chicken,cilantro,cucumber,food,food revolution,jamie oliver,salmon,yogurt