Chicken Adobo

I am so glad that I am not afraid of trying dishes from other cultures. If I were then I would have never come across this wonderful Filipino dish.

It is a very simple dish made with chicken or pork, slow cooked in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, bay leaf, and pepper.

The chicken came out moist and had a wonderful color to it. Matt took it to work the next day for lunch and came back telling me that it was even better the next day for having been able to soak in more of the sauce.

Spätzle

I make Spätzle at least once a week. I find that I can’t make Schnitzel without making them. There are certain dishes that Spätzle just belongs with with.

There are other reasons I like to make these noodles. I get to use my noodle press. The press has a lot of history. It is only one of two presses in our family that comes all the way from what was once East Germany. (My mother has the other one.) The press is large and if you aren’t used to it, a little unwieldy. It looks like it could be used as a torture device.

My noodle press aka the torture device

Spätzle is also one of the easiest German side dishes (or main course-Käse Spätzle for instance) I could possibly make.

Granted there does seem to be a period of trial and error regarding the dough and the cooking time. It’s taken me a year or two of constantly making them to get the consistency, firmness, and texture that I remember my mother’s Spätzle having.

This recipe is actually out of my mother’s first cookbook. It works wonderfully with a hand-held noodle press. (I am not sure how it would work with a press like the one found on a Kitchen Aide) And I know that it works reasonably well with a Schupfen Brett (a board and scrapper used to smooth, stretch and cut the noodles into the water) but I haven’t mastered that particular art yet.

Every time I make this dough it tends to turn out a little differently. It calls for either milk or water, I tend to use milk. I have been known to use heavy whipping cream which makes for a “fluffier” noodle. My Tante Bärbel (Tante=Aunt) makes hers with seltzer water.

The dough’s consistency varies every time I make it. Sometimes it is thin, and other times it is thick. This is perfectly alright. It entirely depends on what type of liquid you use. Water will make the dough thinner than milk.

The real key to making Spätzle is the cooking time. These noodles rise to the top when done, but I have found that if you wait 3 minutes or so after they’ve risen to the the top that the noodles will be completely done. (I tend to wait about 5 minutes.) And you have to shock them in cold water once you remove them.

You can make these in advance and either keep them warm in a covered heat safe dish in the oven (warm setting) until you need them or reheat them in the microwave when needed.

Kostas Cafe

Every two weeks Matt and I try to go out to dinner. I first noticed Kostas when we moved to Plano three years ago and thinking that we may have found something to replace the Greek House in Norman (The best Gyros EVER) I tried to get Matt to try it with me, but for some reason or another we never made it there.

This past week I finally convinced him that we should try Kostas. There are two locations in Plano. There is one at Preston and Park and another at Park and Alma. We chose to go to the one on Alma.

Kostas was nothing like I expected it to be. It was so much more.

Hackbraten mit Speck und Kartoffelkruste

Okay, this is a recipe I found in one of the German cookbooks. (The recipe translates to: Meatloaf with Bacon and a Potato crust) The moment I saw it I knew that I had to make it. I mean really what is not to love about it? It’s meatloaf wrapped in bacon and topped with mashed potatoes.

As is my usual MO we had friends over for dinner the night I made it.

For all the translation that I had to do in my head the recipe was in fact fairly simple. I made the potatoes in advance and reheated them in the microwave just prior to topping the meatloaf. This allowed me to get around having to time everything just right.

Normally I make meatloaf with a bread crumb mixture but this one called for milk soaked slices of a day old baguette. I had never used this method before, but I must say that it worked wonderfully and I was pleased with the cohesion of the meatloaf as well as the amount of moisture it retained. Because the meatloaf was topped with mashed potatoes and I really didn’t need a starchy side to go along with it, I made some French-cut green beans to go along with it. They were a nice compliment to the mustard foam/sauce that I made just before serving.

Pork Tenderloin with Herb Crumb Crust

I don’t make pork tenderloin very often. It’s too much like a roast for me and I have yet to perfect that particular dish either. The balance between a moist and dry roast is sometimes rather elusive. I came across this recipe in Concert in the Kitchen. I thought that it was an interesting take on the Pork Tenderloin as I had never seen one that was breaded before. Surely the tenderloin would retain its moisture with a crumb crust. So I tried it.

As I gathered the ingredients I felt that the amount of bread crumbs was a bit much, but then again I chose a smaller tenderloin as it was just for two people so the amount could have been correct for an average sized tenderloin. And I used dried rosemary (1/2 tsp) instead of fresh rosemary. The entire process was quick and relatively easy to do. It was completely done within 20 minutes of putting it in the oven. I served it with mashed turnips and potatoes.

Teufelssuppe

Teufelssupe translates from the German to Devil’s Soup. The reason they call it the Devil’s Soup does not only come from its red coloring, but the kick in heat that it has from Sambal Oelek. Sambal Oelek is a fresh red chilie paste that you can find in most supermarkets in the “asian/indian” isle. It can be used on just about anything that you want to give a kick of heat to. Just use it sparingly as a little goes a really long way. I used 1 tsp to start then after tasting it added another. That second tsp increased the heat of the soup by quite a bit.

Sambal Oelek--hot hot hot!

The soup is also made with Gulasch meat (a mixture of pork and beef stew meats) which when I think about it isn’t all that surprising since it is very much like a German Gulasch just with some vegetables and a kick.

The preparation is super simple and the whole thing cooks for about an hour depending on how tender you want the beef to be. It thickens up over time but doesn’t quite get as thick as a stew would.

Glass Noodles with Chicken and Young Thailand Hot Sauce

So tonight we decided to make some Thai food. I don’t use the wok often so this was going to be a bit of an adventure for me.

Unfortunately when I went shopping for the ingredients this weekend I picked up rice noodles instead of glass noodles. It was a simple mistake on my part as I didn’t recall that glass noodles are actually made of bean threads and not rice. Even with the incorrect noodles I figured I should still give the recipe a go.

I made the Young Thailand Hot Sauce this morning to give it some time to rest. All I have to say is that if you aren’t used to heat, use this sparingly.

Overall I think the recipe was very easy to follow, even for a novice with the wok such as me. The key to it was definitely timing and being able to control the heat properly. Even with the change in noodles I think that the dish worked really well. I didn’t bother with the black fungus as I didn’t have the time to go to the local Asian market. I forgot to garnish with the red pepper at the end so it looked a little bland even with the green onion. It still tasted wonderful, and the the Young Thailand Hot Sauce gave it just enough kick.

Irish Stew

I pulled out Maine Coastal Cooking, a cookbook that my mother purchased 2 years before I was born, and decided to make something out of it. The cook book has recipes dating all the way back to 1664 and contains a small book at the end titled The Accomplished Cook: The Art and Mystery of Cookery.

I decided to make an Irish Stew. There were two variants of this recipe and I chose to go with the beef and vegetable version. Yet again I decided to make a recipe that required the use of a vegetable that I hadn’t worked with before, the turnip. I used a regular turnip instead of a yellow turnip because when I bought turnips I didn’t know that yellow turnips were actually ruddebegga. The things I learn about when I decide to look in my cookbooks…

I used half the amount of beef and smaller potatoes. The next time I think I will increase the amount of carrots. I let the meat and onions simmer for about 2 hours before adding the remaining vegetables and simmering for another half hour. The meat was tender and the vegetables had just enough firmness to them.

Irish Stew

Skillet Tostadas

I scored some Kitchen Goddess points with Skillet Tostadas yesterday. I was told that “This is the best Mexican dish you’ve made so far.” by my darling husband.

Sometimes it’s the simple things that taste the best I guess. Looking at the recipe there really isn’t much to it. And it took all of 10 minutes to get everything ready. So this would make a great quick meal for people that think there isn’t enough time to cook.

I made one minor change when I made this dish. Instead of using jarred salsa (I didn’t have any) I made my own using a can of diced tomatoes and some Simply Salsa Seasoning Mix from Tastefully Simple that was given to me by my mother. (Every once in a while she gives me things like that.) Other than that everything else was the same. I will be interested to see what the difference will be when I use normal jarred salsa the next time…because, lets face it, I’ll be making this one again.