This version of it will be green, and vegetarian, and using homemade curry paste, and also including fish sauce for I think the first time ever.  If you are making a red curry, just replace everything that says “green” with “red”!

Thai Green Curry
(tweaked from original recipe found here)

1 tbsp canola, peanut or sesame oil
2 tbsp green curry paste
1 tsp cumin
1-2 tbsp fish sauce (optional – leave out if you want this to be vegan)
1 large onion, diced
2-3 large potatoes, cut into bite-sized chunks (you can peel them or not, whatever your preference is)
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 14-oz can of coconut milk
1 green bell pepper, cut into large chunks
1/4 tsp ground ginger or 1-2 tsp finely diced fresh ginger
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1/4 cup sliced scallions
Salt and pepper to taste

If you are interested in making homemade curry paste, you can use the recipe from this post, or you can use our modifications to make it simpler: basically replace the seeds and fresh herbs like lemongrass with ground or dried spices and herbs, and adjust the amounts somewhat to take that into account.  You can pretty much wing it in terms of amounts of most of this stuff, and it will probably turn out fine.

So, start off by adding some oil to a large pot.  Heat that up a bit and then add the curry paste, cumin, and fish sauce if you’re using it.  Cook for a couple minutes.

Add the potatoes, onion, and garlic, and stir around so the spices coat the vegetables pretty well.

Sauté this for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally so that nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot too badly.  Then add the coconut milk, and cook for another 5 minutes or so.

Add the pepper and ginger, and bring the pot to a simmer.  Cover and let it cook for about 40 minutes (you’ll need longer if you’re doing this with meat), stirring occasionally and checking the potatoes for doneness.  If you want to serve this with rice, now might be a good time to get that going, depending on how much rice you are planning to make.

When the potatoes seem like they are almost ready (about 5 minutes away, if we want to be precise), stir in the cilantro and scallions.  Let it finish cooking, and serve over your rice, if you went that route.

Best.  Decision.  Ever.  This soup was amazing.  Erik made it while I was at yoga one night, and I came home to the apartment smelling divine.  It is a really easy soup to make, and pretty cost-effective, and even if you have never touched fennel in your life you should go buy some right now and see what you have been missing.  I don’t know if the soup tasted like licorice, but if it did, then I am annoyed at my child-self for disliking it and causing me to pass up years of deliciousness.

Fennel Soup
(slightly modified from original recipe here)

1 large yellow onion, chopped roughly
4 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
2 large (or 3 medium) fennel bulbs, trimmed (fronds reserved)
4-6 c vegetable stock
1/4 c rice
Salt and pepper to taste

You will want to start by cleaning the fennel.  This can be a somewhat obnoxious process, only because the fronds are kind of huge.  If you like, you can cut off the fronds and wash them separately — that may help everything fit in your sink.  Anyway, once everything is washed, set the fronds aside; you can use them to make fennel pesto while the soup is cooking.  We’ll get to that in a bit.

Chop up onion and garlic, and then deal with the fennel in pretty much whatever way seems to make most sense to you.  This is a blended soup, so everything is going to get puréed regardless and it doesn’t really matter how pretty your chopping is here.

In a large pot, heat up some olive oil and add the onion, garlic, and fennel.  Sweat these ingredients over medium heat for about 10-15 minutes (you can add a pinch of salt here to help the process along if you want).  You want to try and make sure that nothing starts browning or caramelizing in this time, so keep an eye on the ingredients, especially the onions.  If they caramelize they will develop a slightly different flavor profile that will affect the overall flavor of the soup, and may overpower the fennel a bit.

Season with salt and pepper, and add enough vegetable stock to just about cover the contents of the pot.  Add the rice here as well — according to the original post, it acts as a thickening agent in the soup.  Interesting!

Incidentally, you will notice that our soup is something of a reddish color.  That is because of the stock we use — it’s much redder than most stocks, so if you use a different stock your soup will probably be much paler, sort of white/yellow/greenish.  Don’t let the color difference throw you!

Bring the soup to a boil, and then reduce it to a simmer.  Taste the broth and see how you’re doing on seasoning — adjust salt and pepper to taste if necessary.  Let the soup cook for about 20 minutes, checking and stirring intermittently.

When the soup is done simmering, it’s time to blend.  If you have an immersion blender, that’s the way to go here.  Transfer the pot to the sink if you want to be safe and have relatively easy cleanup, and blend until smooth.  Otherwise, transfer the soup in batches to a stand blender or food processer and again blend until smooth.

Now, I said earlier that you should reserve the fronds for fennel pesto.  If you’re so inclined, it’s a good idea to make this pesto while the soup is still simmering!  It’s very easy, I promise, and it adds another layer of flavor to the soup.

Fennel Pesto
1 c (ish) fennel fronds, chopped roughly
2 tsp (ish) basil (we used dried, you can use dried or fresh, but adjust amounts accordingly), chopped or torn roughly
1/4 c (ish) parsley (we used fresh — again, you can use dried or fresh, but you’ll need to adjust amounts. Also, you should probably use at least one of these herbs fresh, otherwise your pesto might be a little on the strong side), chopped or torn roughly
1/4 c Parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 c pine nuts
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Basically… toss everything except the olive oil, salt, and pepper into a food processor.  Start blending, and add some olive oil a little bit at a time, blending in between (or during, if your food pro can handle that without splashing pesto everywhere) until you get to the desired consistency.  You’ll want it to be smooth, but you can decide how watery or paste-y you want it to be beyond that.  Taste and add salt and pepper as you desire.

Garnish the soup with a bit of the pesto, and grate some cheese on top if you like.  Obviously, this soup can very easily be vegan if you omit the cheese and pesto (or make cheese-less pesto? never tried, but I imagine it’s doable!).  Enjoy!

I have long been aware of a tendency in American consumers (and probably some other cultures, though I’ve had most occasion to observe Americans) to be extremely picky about the food we buy and use.  I myself am guilty of this, and I often spend a few minutes pawing through the produce bins looking for the prettiest and least-bruised pepper, tomato, etc.  However, I recently stumbled on a show called “The Big Waste” on the Food Network, and it astonished me how many tons of food are wasted every year in this country.  Bakeries, restaurants, butchers, farms, and supermarkets literally just throw away foods that they know they will not be able to sell: bruised tomatoes, corn from stalks that have been broken, chickens with bones that were broken in processing, flour that can only be used in certain pastries… the list goes on.  This food is not diseased, expired, or otherwise inedible; in many cases, it is simply not aesthetically pleasing.  The trend here is stunning.

This show mentioned a group of people called “freegans,” whom I hadn’t heard of before.  They essentially go dumpster-diving for food, and while that may sound disgusting to many people, it is nigh unbelievable how much perfectly edible and tasty food they can find.  Although I am not quite willing to do that for my food, I propose a more minor lifestyle change.  Next time you are at a grocery store, consciously choose some produce that is not perfect — maybe a slightly bruised apple, or snow peas with some discoloration.  Recognize that if you go to a good-quality grocery store, they probably err on the side of extreme safety, and will throw out food that is even remotely unsafe.  Those marks are not going to hurt you, and once your produce is cut up and cooked, you will not even be able to taste a difference.  And if you are really uncomfortable with cooking produce with blemishes, you can use a small paring knife or vegetable peeler to do some localized surgery and remove the blemishes yourself — most of them are only skin deep.  This wastes so much less food than discarding an entire item because of a few marks.

It will probably not make a difference in the long run, but even if it only results in less food being thrown out from your particular supermarket at the end of the day, that’s something, and we could all use a little less wastefulness, especially at this time of year.

These are actually pretty similar to our standard pancakes, at least in composition.  We ended up roughly doubling the recipe we found, and the texture and thickness were pretty similar.  However, these were a bit chewier, so I might add a bit more milk next time we make them just to see if a thinner batter produces a more delicate pancake.  All in all, though, quite delicious.  We had them with butter and a sprinkling of sugar, but they would also be great with maple syrup.

Pumpkin Pancakes
(modified from recipe found here)

2 c flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1 1/4 c milk or buttermilk
1 c pumpkin purée
3 eggs

Quite a simple procedure, really.  Combine your dry ingredients in a medium-ish bowl. (This picture is before we realized we needed to double the recipe — we discovered we had more pumpkin than we had thought. So you will find that you have about twice the amount of dry ingredients as is pictured below!) Stir or whisk them together so the spices are evenly distributed.

Combine your wet ingredients – pumpkin, milk, and eggs, in that order – in a large bowl.  If you are going with canned pumpkin, it may be worth it to mush the pumpkin with the back of a spoon to smooth it out a bit before you add anything else.  It won’t totally eliminate lumps but it helps somewhat.  Then you can add the milk, try to get rid of more lumps, and when your milk/pumpkin mixture is relatively smooth, beat the eggs in last.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, pausing to incorporate as you go — I usually add the dry ingredients 1/2 to 1/3 at a time.

Side note: You may notice that our wet bowl is smaller than our dry bowl; the original recipe suggested adding the wet to the dry instead of the other way around, and in the spirit of adventure I gave it a shot.  But I have to say I prefer my way, so unless you are a die-hard wet-to-dry person (and if you are… please explain the benefits? I truly want to know), then I would go with adding dry-to-wet, as I described above.

Heat up a skillet, and cook pancakes as usual.  We use a very large nonstick skillet, and because it’s nonstick we don’t use oil or butter.  But if you don’t have a nonstick pan, you may want to add a bit of oil/butter to help the pancakes come off more easily.

We usually use medium-high heat for our pancakes.  The first side will usually take 1-2 minutes, then flip (you can tell it’s about time to flip when there are bubbles rising to the uncooked surface of the pancake), and cook the second side for about the same amount of time.

I think this recipe made about 12-14 good-sized pancakes.  Enjoy!

Overall, these were pretty simple to put together, and thoroughly delicious.  You could also definitely make either of these alone, as side dishes – and as an added bonus, the mango/avocado salad is vegan!

We’ll start with the chicken, because it takes longer — the salad is pretty much chop-and-mix!

Sandy Island Chicken
(original recipe found here)

Olive oil
1-2 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped
1/2 red onion, sliced
1 bell pepper, sliced into strips
1/2 bunch parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp dried rosemary
1 habanero pepper, minced
1 lb chicken (we used our standard boneless, skinless breast), cut into bite-sized pieces
Handful of fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 mango, peeled and cubed
1/4ish c water

A note about the heat level in this recipe: If you are not a fan of spiciness in your food, you can certainly tone it down a bit by using a less-intense pepper, but personally I think some of its charm comes from the contrasting heat and coolness in the two recipes playing off of each other.  The original actually suggested 6 (SIX!!) Scotch Bonnet peppers.  A single Scotch Bonnet pepper ranks at 100,000-350,000 on the Scoville scale — in comparison, a single jalapeño ranks around 2,500-8,000.  Using six in this recipe probably would have killed me, so we ended up toning it down to a single habanero, which neither of us had actually used before (ranks around the same as one Scotch Bonnet, actually, but easier to find).

We started with prepping and sautéeing the chicken, since some of the veggies are a bit delicate.  Heat up some olive oil and get the chicken mostly-to-entirely cooked, and then set it aside.

While the chicken is cooking, prepare your veggies.  You can lump together most of them — keep the mango and the mint separate, but everything else can just go into a bowl.

Heat up the olive oil and add that whole bowl of veggies and herbs (remember, this does not include the mango or mint!).  Cook these veggies for about 5-7 minutes, until the pepper and onion have softened a bit.

Add the chicken, mango, and mint, and cook for another few minutes, to warm everything up and let the mango and mint flavors get distributed through the other veggies.  Don’t overdo it here, since mint can get kind of unpleasantly wilted if it’s cooked for too long, and the mango will get too mushy.

Keep this warm while you work on the salad!

Spicy Mango and Avocado Salad
(original recipe found here)

1 mango, peeled and cubed
1 avocado, cubed
1 lime, juiced
1/4ish c thinly sliced red onion
1/2 jalepeño pepper, minced
Salt and pepper, to taste

Again, this is very straightforward.  Prepare all your veggies, and then mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.  Season to taste.

Serve some of the chicken with the salad on the side — the flavors really play off each other beautifully, and the mangoes in both recipes kind of tie them together for a lovely tropical experience!

Unfortunately, the funge part of the dish was a little less successful; we both thought it was pretty tasteless (shouldn’t be surprised, really, given the ingredients) and the consistency was a little weird.  However, this may be partially our fault.  Since we substituted potatoes for the chicken, our dish actually had two starches: the funge and the potato.  This was really a bit much, but I think that if you went with the chicken version of the dish, the funge would be a lot more palatable.  Anyone out there enjoy funge?  Let us know if we missed any tricks; we were trying to be as true to the recipe as possible!

Muamba de Galinha (Angola)
(recipe slightly modified from here)

We chose to do these dishes instead of a “main dish” for Andorra because their entrées seemed to primarily involve things like boar, kid (as in the baby goat), pig spine, hambone, lamb, veal, and black pudding (not a dessert. look it up.).  Sometimes all at once.  It was a little bit terrifying and we are kind of poor and also not into consuming eighteen different kinds of meat at the same time, so we decided that we would do something a little unconventional and make two vegetarian side dishes instead.  Turns out this was a pretty great idea!

Both of these dishes are pretty delicious, pretty easy to throw together, and not terrible for you.  Win-win-win!  I’m going to go through them one at a time, but obviously you can do them simultaneously.

Spinach with Raisins and Pine Nuts
(original recipe here)

Olive oil
Handful or two of pine nuts – adjust according to how much you like pine nuts
Handful or two of raisins – again, adjust accordingly
4oz fresh spinach
Salt & pepper, to taste

Okay, um, how to make this sound more impressive than it is…

Add a little (very little, less than a tbsp) of oil to a pan, and roast the pine nuts for a few minutes, until they’re starting to turn slightly golden.  Add the raisins and spinach, season with salt and pepper, and cook the spinach down until it gets to your preferred level of wiltedness.

This hardly even counts as a recipe, guys, really.  Step 1: Put stuff in a pan.  Step 2: Cook it. Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit!!

Rice with Mushrooms
(original recipe here)

Olive oil
1 onion, sliced into half-moons
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1 sprig parsley
10ish large mushrooms, quartered or halved (we just used white & crimini, but feel free to be more adventurous!)
Splash of white wine (optional, but why not?)
2 c rice
5ish c water or stock (we used stock – more flavor!)
Salt & pepper, to taste

This is a bit more involved than the above recipe, but still really easy.  It’s pretty similar to a risotto in principle, just lower-maintenance.

Start off by prepping all your ingredients:

Add a tablespoon or two of oil to a large pot, heat up over medium/medium-high, and add the onions.  Let them cook for a few minutes.

At the same time, put the stock/water in another pot, and get it heating up.  You want it essentially boiling by the time you add it to everything else.

Toss in your garlic, parsley, and bay leaf, and keep cooking until the onions are transparent.  Then add the mushrooms.  Cook for another 5-ish minutes.

At this point, add a splash of wine or vermouth, and then add your rice.  Stir to get the rice evenly distributed, and shortly after (less than a minute, I would say), add the stock or water.  Yes, all at once.

Cook at a simmer until the rice has absorbed pretty much all the stock.  This is where it diverges from risotto — you would normally add the stock bit by bit, but here you just go for it.  Keep an eye on it and stir from time to time, but otherwise it’ll pretty much do its thing, and you don’t have a lot of work to do.

When it has fully absorbed the stock, and the rice tastes done, you’re good!  Season with salt and pepper, serve with the spinach, and enjoy.

This follows a pretty standard burger recipe.  We also used our usual brioche buns, which are delicious, and split them into 12 buns instead of 8.

Muenster Sliders

1lb ground beef
1 onion, diced fairly small
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2-1 tsp parsley, oregano, basil, or whatever other herbs you enjoy
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 egg
Cucumber, tomato, lettuce, or whatever other toppings you want for your burger
Muenster cheese
8 buns

Again, pretty straightforward.  Do all your prep work first, cutting up veggies, herbs, etc.

Mix the onion, garlic, herbs, and beef together.  Add the egg to help the burgers cohere.

Split the beef into 8 burger patties.  We only cooked 4 at a time, placing the other 4 in the fridge overnight.  If you are going more than a day or two before using up all the meat, put them in the freezer instead just to be safe (food sanitation, folks!).  Heat up some oil in a large skillet, and cook 2-4 burgers at a time, depending on how many you can fit.

Cook for 5-7 minutes on one side, flip, and cook for about the same, maybe a little less on the other side.  Be sure that you have cooked them all the way through — cut into the center of the thickest one to see if it is still pink (you want it to be pretty much brown, maybe only very slightly pink in the center).

Serve on buns with your vegetable sides/toppings of choice.  About 2 per person worked for us — but if you would like to make them smaller, you could probably get 12 tiny burgers out of 1 lb of beef, and go with 3ish per person.  Enjoy!

Don’t confuse this with shakshuka, which we have also posted on this blog.  That is Israeli, and consists primarily of eggs and tomato sauce.  It is also delicious, but very different from Algerian chakhchoukha, despite the similarity of the names (and the oddness of having two different dishes that share such a bizarre name).

I also made a naan/pita-type bread with this, since the recipe called for flatbread.  If you are so inclined, the recipe is here; I think we followed it pretty closely, though we substituted whole wheat flour for about half of the regular flour, as we tend to do in most bread recipes.  I’ll include some photos at the end of this post so you can see what the process looks like, but it’s not hard!

Now, the real recipe.

Chakhchoukha
(tweaked a bit from recipe found here)

Olive oil
3-4 large baking potatoes, cut into roughly bite-size pieces
1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp ras el hanout spice mix
4 medium carrots, cut into rounds
2 medium zucchinis, cut into half-rounds
1 parsnip, cut into roughly bite-sized pieces
1 large green chili, minced-ish (optional, but obviously we included it)
Salt & pepper, to taste
1 14oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 pinch dried mint (we did not use this but you should if you have mint on hand!)
1 14oz can diced tomatoes (recipe instructs to blend so it is a puree, but… we were lazy and did not)
6ish c water

Ras el Hanout

Ras el hanout is a spice mix, similar in concept to garam masala or Chinese five spice.  Also similarly to these other two, the exact ingredients can vary somewhat freely based on what you have in your spice rack, what your tastes are, etc.  Common spices include:

Cumin
Ginger
Salt
Pepper
Cinnamon
Coriander
Cayenne
Allspice
Cloves

Feel free to do a Google search, compare recipes you find out there, and make your own blend.

Okay, on to the chakhchoukha itself.  It’s really not that complicated once you have all your ingredients chopped up.

Heat up some olive oil in a large pot, and add the potatoes, onions, garlic, and ras el hanout.  Stir so that the spices get evenly distributed.

Let this go for about 7 minutes, stirring periodically, and then add the rest of the veggies (carrots, parsnip, zucchini, chili), as well as some salt and pepper to taste.  Add enough water to just cover the vegetables — we put 6 cups in the recipe, but this is a rough guideline.

Bring the water up to a simmer, and cook for 20ish minutes, stirring occasionally.  Then add the tomatoes, chickpeas, and mint, if you’re using it.  If you feel like the stew needs any more water, go for it; otherwise, let it cook for another 15 minutes or so.

Side note: The cooking times here are greatly reduced from the ones in the original recipe.  This is because they used meat, and we did not, so it didn’t take our potatoes anywhere near as long to get tender as it might take chicken or lamb to fully cook.  Be sure to adjust if you decide to use meat.

Test to be sure everything is cooked through (especially carrots and potatoes), and then spoon up the stew into large bowls, with some flatbread on the side.

Enjoy!

And, if you’re interested in making the pita bread to go with it, here are some photos to help you along (link to the recipe is near the top of the post).

Pita dough:

After it rises, split it into balls:

Then use a rolling pin or your hands to stretch out each ball of dough into a flatbread/pita/naan-ish shape.  I actually found that using my hands was quite sufficient, so if you’re patient enough, go for it.

We baked these on our pizza stone, and sprinkled some corn meal on its surface so they wouldn’t stick.  They turned out beautifully, but I’m sure that if you just use a baking sheet instead (flour it if it’s NOT non-stick to avoid unfortunate situations), you’ll also get great results!

So, this is pretty much the simplest thing ever, but it is also one of the most delicious things ever.

Tortellini Pizza
Dough for one normal-sized pizza
Your choice of a sauce — we used straight-up pesto, spread thinly
Some veggies, diced up, to make yourself feel a little better about eating ALL of the carbs.  We recommend red onion and bell peppers!
Tortellini.  We used a package of storebought (roughly 8oz, I think), because we are too lazy to actually make legit tortellini, at least when we intend to use it to top a pizza.
Cheese, again of your choice — I believe we used parmesan.  You don’t need a whole lot.

Preheat your oven to 500F.  Cook the tortellini according to the package directions (gosh, I didn’t think we’d ever say that phrase on this blog!).

Assemble your pizza — sauce, then veggies, then cooked tortellini, then sprinkle the cheese over top.  Slide into the oven and bake for 12-14 minutes, until the crust is cooked through and the cheese has browned a bit.  Serve up and enjoy!