My wife wanted to host a “tea” at an SCA event this past weekend, and so I needed to whip up some finger sandwiches (since that’s what you have at tea).  I went with the standard egg salad and cucumber and cream cheese, and for something different I tried making a chicken salad for some of the sandwiches.  It turned out to be a really big hit, and since it was so easy I wanted to pass it along.

I used canned white meat chicken (whatever brand they have at Costco, I didn’t notice), added some manyonaise (I use Nasoya brand tofu mayonaise) some salt, a healthy dose of Penzey’s sweet curry powder, and some raisins.  That’s it.  Beat everything together and spead on bread.  I was kind of surprised that it was so popular.  In a perfect world I’d have added some chopped celery, and some roasted cashews, but I didn’t have those things.

I got two great new cookbooks from my Mom at Christmas, and I’ve been cooking out of one of them pretty much non-stop all weekend.  Mangoes & Curry Leaves, by Jeff Alford and Naomi Duguid is my new favorite Indian cookbook. I cooked a bunch of stuff out of it over the weekend, including their pork vindaloo, and scrambled eggs with curry leaves.  Great stuff.  I love all their other books, so I’m not surprised that this one’s a winner too. 

I have yet to try the other one, the Cafe Flora Cookbook.   It’s one of my favorite restaurants ever, so I’m really looking forward to trying some of the recipes for my favorites.  I’ll report back when I do.

I had some leftover green beans from Thanksgiving, so last night I decided to try my hand at something that I always loved as a kid:  greenbeans and spaetzle.  Of course, the ones I loved as a kid were the frozen Birds-Eye variety, so I figured I could do better than that.  If you’ve never had spaetzle, they are little tiny noodles/dumplings made by dropping little bits of batter into boiling water.  Mine came out a little larger than pea-sized, and tasting basically like egg noodles.

I also had some leftover ham, so I decided to work that in too.  I cubed some of the ham and sauteed in in some butter in a heavy pan.  Meanwhile, I blanched the greenbeans for 3 minutes in boiling water, then took them out and ran cold water over them.  The recipe for the spaetzle came from Jeff Smith’s “Our Immigrant Ancestors” which is a great cookbook with a smattering of dishes from all over the world. 

The spaetzle started with 2 eggs, 2 T. of olive oil, and 1/2 cup each of water and milk.  Blend that up (I used a hand blender with a whisk attachment on it) and then add 2 – 2 1/2 cups of white flour, 1/2 t. of salt, and 1/4 t. of baking powder.  You end up with something like thick pancake batter.  Now comes the tricky part if you don’t have the right equipment.  I have a groovy little spaetzle maker I got from Lehman’s that makes it super easy.   If you don’t have one of those, I’ve also used a metal colander (messy) or a big potato ricer (hard to get them even).  If you don’t have a special tool, the colander is probaby your best bet.  Put a couple big scoops of the batter in the bottom of a colander while holding it over a pot of boiling, salted water.  Then rub the spoon around the inside of the colander (use the back of the spoon) to get the little balls to drop through.  When the spaetzle float, they’re done.

I added the spaetzle and greenbeans to the ham, and brought everything up to temperature.  Salt and pepper to taste.  It was quite the hit.  My daughter even ate the greenbeans, despite their green-ness.

For the first time in years I got a chance to cook Thanksgiving dinner at my house, and it was a blast.  I tried something I don’t think I’ve ever done before, and made an entire menu out of a magazine article.  I made pretty much the whole Thanksgiving menu from the latest issue of Chow magazine, which is rapidly becoming my favorite foody rag. 

I did the “turkey two ways”, which involves removing the legs, brining the carcass, and cooking the legs separately in a confit, i.e. covered in oil in a casserole and baked.  The legs especially were a big hit, as it’s something out of the ordinary.  I’ve never tried a confit of duck before, but I think now I may give it a try some time.  I’ll also never cook a turkey without brining it again.  It came out moist and juicy, with a fabulously crispy skin. 

The stuffing was also a bit hit.  It included some Italian sausage, fresh sage, and chestnuts.  Very flavorful, and easy.

I think the biggest hit with the crowd was the corn dish, which involves heavy cream, roasted red peppers, and chevre.  Very much more interesting than the standard corn with butter, or creamed corn.  (We won’t even talk about corn souflee/hot dish.)  I also made the green beans with bacon (can’t go wrong there) and the acorn squash with red onions and currents, which I liked but didn’t go over with the crowd.  Winter squash can be a hard sell, which I don’t get, as I love it. 

In addition to the magazine recipes, I also made some sweet potatoes, which I chopped into bite-sized pieces and then tossed with some sliced banana and a few prunes in some heavy cream with a little honey, rosewater and cinnamon and then baked until tender.

We rounded out the meal with my Mom’s wonderful pumpkin cheesecake, and her (justly) famous cranberry chutney (which, sadly, is almost gone already).

The menu worked out so well I’m really thinking about trying their Cuban Christmas menu next month.

This worked out really well…

I started with some baby shiitake mushrooms I happened to have (little ones about the size of button mushrooms) and some leftover corn on the cob, so I worked from there.

I got a red bell pepper, chopped it, and sauteed in olive oil until they softened up a bit, then tossed in the mushrooms, and the corn (cut from the cobs).  When that had heated up a bit, I added a box of Imagine Foods new Creamy Sweet Potato Soup, and maybe another 1/2 box of water. 

Seasoned with salt, white pepper, a little thyme, and some ground mace, which worked really nicely with the sweet potato.  I had intened to sprinkle the tops with some green onions, which would have completed the color balance, but I totally spaced it.  Next time.

It came out really well.  Just the thing for a cold and blustery night.

We’ve passed it a bunch of times, but finally decided to try the (relatively) new noodle restaurant in Sisters (OR) called Soba this weekend.  I’m glad we did.  It was great. 

They have a pan-Asian menu, including rice bowls and noodle dishes spanning pretty much all of Asia.  The kids both reported the Teriyaki chicken rice bowl to be superlative, Vikki liked the Cha Siu Ramen, and I had great luck with the Singapore Street Noodles, which were rice noodles in a light curry sauce with cha siu and shrimp. 

I can’t wait to go again and find out what “Crouching Noodle, Hidden Soup” tastes like.

I’m a huge fan of meat pies, but in the past I’ve had limited success.  Last weekend I finally hit the jackpot though, with (IMHO) the best chicken pot-pie I’ve yet made.

I started by melting about 4 T. of butter in an oval casserole (love my LaCruset) on the stove, then added a chopped onion and let it brown a bit.  That was followed by some celery, chopped carrots, and mushrooms.  When most of the water had cooked out of the mushrooms I threw in about 4 T. of flour, cooked briefly, and added around 3 cups of chicken broth and maybe 1/2 cup of half-and-half, and a can of peas (fresh or frozen would have been better, but that’s what I had), and leftover chopped chicken, and brought it to a boil for a bit on the stove.  I seasoned with salt to taste, some black pepper, dried sage, and a little thyme.  It looked a little thin, so I added a little cornstarch and water until it thickened a bit.

The oven, meanwhile, was pre heating to 425°.

The I whipped up a quick batch of biscuits with about 2 cups of flour, 1 t. of salt, 3–4 T. of butter (lard would have been better) and cold milk until it came together.  I dropped the dough in biscuitty shaped on top of the chicken mixture and popped the casserole in the oven for about 30 minutes, until the biscuits were well browned.

It worked out really well.  Not too runny, but not gluey, nice crunchy biscuits on top, very flavorful.  Hopefully the leftovers will work out well too.

This weekend I got a couple of little cans (about the size of small cat food cans) of pre-prepared Thai curry paste.  The recipe on the can said use the whole can with two cups coconut milk, et. al. for a green curry.  Great, said I, I never have enough time to make my own, so lets give it a go.  I figured that such a thing would be scaled for howlies, rather than Thais, but how wrong I was.  I made up a batch last night with tofu, Thai eggplant (the little green ones), bamboo shoots and some canned straw mushrooms. 

The flavor was fantastic, but it was so hot that even I was a bit put off, and I consider myself to be a pretty dedicated chile-head.  Wow, it was hot.  My wife found it almost inedible, and the kids wouldn’t go anywhere near it. 

Ah, well.  Now I know.  I think these may have actually been a Thai brand (I didn’t look that closely).  Taste Of Thai makes some pre-made curry paste that’s a bit more moderate.

Scott turned me on to Slashfood this week.  What a great site.  They just finished a whole day of pumpkin recipes, and some of them sound like real winners.  Yay for food!

Having grown up on hippy vegetarian food, I just can’t resist the allure of trashy food.  Many of the American classics that I never got to eat as a kid, I can’t pass up as an adult.  Meat loaf, biscuits and gravy, CFS (Chicken Fried Steak to the uninitiated), etc.  I even have a soft spot (as I discovered eating in the college cafeteria) for chipped beef. 

This weekend I indulged in that most sublime of all sausage-based dishes, the chili cheese dog.  There’s nothing about those that isn’t good.  It’s important to use really cheap ingredients.  I went with Tillamook Cheddar instead of the classic American, since I just can’t bear to buy that stuff, but cheap trashy hot dogs and canned chili are a must.  I’ve tried using home-made chili and good sausages, and it just didn’t do it for me. 

I remember as a kid we’d go visit my Aunt in Anaheim, where they had Der Wienerschnitzel franchises.  Best chili cheese dogs EVER.  Guaranteed to be all over the inside of the bleached white paper bag by the time you’d gotten 10 feet from the drive-in. 

In the summer when I was a kid we’d stay with our grandparents in Sacramento, and one of my Grandpa’s favorite hangouts what a place called Vick’s.  Classic diner.  Homemade shakes, all things grilled, everything came with Lay’s potato chips.  We invariably ordered these hotdog sandwiches that consisted of Oscar Meyer weiners on Wonder bread with American cheese(food) and French's mustard.  With iceberg lettuce for good measure.  The whole thing went into the grilled-cheese sandwich machine.  Ahhhhhh.  Nothin’ like it in the world. 

Quite a change from the bean spread and green onion sandwiches at home. 

There’s nothing like a good, old-fashioned trashy Chinese take-out place.  Unfortunately, we can’t seem to keep one in Hillsboro. 

When Vikki and I first moved out here almost 12 years ago, just about the only restaurants at all in Hillsboro were two take-out Chinese places, just down the street from our house.  They are long gone, unfortunately.  There’s a pretty good Chinese buffet place down the way, but it’s just not quite the same.  Since they focus on the buffet, the takeout choices are pretty limited. 

After a long drought, we got a new place up by the airport, but discovered last night that it, too, has gone. 

Of course, we’re kind of ruined for good by frequently visiting my Mom in Seattle, who lives quite near one of the best Chinese restaurants EVER, Snappy Dragon.  If you are ever up that way, check it out.  You’ll never look at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant the same way.