Thai Green Curry

J: This is one of our staples that we just never got around to posting before now.  Curries are great because they are typically one-pot meals (two, if you make rice), and you can make a huge amount of food very easily, especially if you’re cooking for one person.  We tend to tweak this a little every time we make it — sometimes we use storebought curry paste, sometimes homemade; sometimes we use fish sauce, sometimes (…almost always) we don’t; sometimes we make it vegetarian, sometimes we use chicken; and depending on our mood we make it a red curry or a green curry.  Regardless of the choices we make, it is always delicious.

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.

Fennel Soup

J: This soup was entirely Erik’s idea.  In fact, when he suggested we make it, I was honestly pretty skeptical — I’d heard fennel tastes kind of like licorice, which I never liked as a child and haven’t really had the opportunity or desire to try since.  So, I wasn’t too thrilled about fennel soup, but Erik usually has good food judgment (except with spicy things, in which case don’t trust the man unless you want your tastebuds seared off), so I went with it and didn’t mention my reservations.

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!

 

Muamba de Galinha + Funge (Angola)

J: Yay, more countries!  So, the title of this post translates to “Chicken Muamba” — don’t ask me what muamba means, but it’s probably the only truthful part of that name, because we once again decided that we would go for an approximation of authenticity instead of the real thing.  Our substitution this time?  Potatoes for the chicken, which is a fairly classic vegetarian work-around when you are not interested in consuming meat.  It was pretty effective in this dish, which is a staple in Angola (or so Wikipedia tells me).  Overall, I don’t think this will go into our regular rotation the way some of these other United Noshes dishes will, but it definitely had a pleasant, warming, stick-to-your-ribs-ness that was quite enjoyable!

Spinach + Raisins + Pine Nuts; Rice + Mushrooms (Andorra)

J: Okay guys so the title of this post is pretty much the main ingredients for the two dishes we made for Andorra, because the dishes are literally called “Spinach with Raisins and Pine Nuts” and “Rice with Mushrooms.”  Apparently Andorra is not creative with their side dish titles, and I am feeling uncreative in terms of trying to come up with new titles for them, so we’re going with it.

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!

Chakhchoukha (Algeria) + Pita

J: Continuing (slowly) along our culinary voyage around the world, we next hit Algeria.  As has been the case with many of these countries, I really had very little idea of what Algerian food looked like, or what a “classic” Algerian dish might consist of.  This stew-type meal turned out to be quite delicious and comfort-food-y — I suspect it would make a great warming meal on a cold winter night.  The original recipe included chicken, but as we are trying to be a little more vegetarian (accepting that we won’t be able to get around meat in many of these international dishes), we substituted potatoes for the chicken, and it still turned out really well.

Tortellini Pizza

J: So, we have been terribly negligent all summer.  You’d think that summer would be a good time for regular posting — but we’ve moved, done some much-needed traveling/”vacationing” (but not really), and otherwise been pretty occupied with grad school and work, so unfortunately the blog has kind of fallen by the wayside.  While we struggle to get a real post up (our next country will be up soon!), this post is just some shameless laziness on our part to remind everyone, including ourselves, that we still exist.  Take one of our favorite things (pizza), add another one of our favorite things (pasta), and voila, you have a post with two images.  Need some more instruction on how to make pizza (because no, you are not getting off the hook with storebought dough)?  Try one of our other pizza posts (here, here, here!).

Roasted Red Pepper Pesto Pasta

J: So, after a month-long hiatus in which EVERYTHING in the world was happening, thereby preventing us from being responsible bloggers, we come back to you with the assurance that no, we have not abandoned the blog — and here is an extremely alliterative recipe to make up for our absence!

I think I made this for the first time one or two years ago and since then it’s been something of a staple for us.  Recently we were trying to find the recipe and realized that we had never posted it here — so, obviously, that had to happen.  This is really easy and if you are anywhere close to as much of a pasta-holic as I am, you’ll love it.

Sweet Potato and Asparagus with Lemon

J: A couple of weeks ago over my spring “break,” I had a conference to attend out of town, so Erik went home to visit his parents.  While I was enjoying sunny Puerto Rico, he got the tail end of winter and was able to cook some new delicious recipes, which he told me all about and promised that we would make together soon.  This is the first one we made, and even for 70+ degree weather, it was delightful.  Honestly it is sort of what I had been hoping for when we made this a few months ago (but that dish ended up being a bit on the too-spicy end for me), and I have a sneaking suspicion that because it is easy, fast, healthy, and crazy delicious, it will become a staple around here.  Seriously, with a recipe this unassuming — potatoes and asparagus! who knew?! — you will be amazed at how flavorful and filling this is, especially with a light sprinkling of cheese.

E: Don’t mind the salmon in the photo. This post is all about the sweet potato concoction on the left.