"Oishī Nihon no karē" or The Tasty Japanese Curry

Ok, so you guys probably have figured it out by now that I love curry. Yes it's true. I love all kinds of Asian foods, but curries are some of my favourites. They are easy to make, flavourful and the mix of spices just smells so good; especially the Indian and Thai ones. Japanese curry though is a little different. I found that it's a little sweeter than Indian curry and either very mild or not even spicy at all. It's a little closer to Thai curry, but kind of in between with the Indian one. The flavour is pretty unique and I think it's a lot more accessible to people who are a bit fussy about foods that are too spicy or too aromatic. And its texture and consistency resembles a lot that of an ordinary beef stew.

I've never done Japanese curry before so this week I decided to make some for myself. I bought some potatoes, carrots and onions. I also thawed out some chicken breasts I had in the freezer. And I visited the Korean Japanese grocery store in NDG and bought myself a box of Japanese curry broth cubes. That, with a side of white rice and I was all set. Lemme show you how I did it and how it turned out.

Ingredients:

• 1 box of Japanese curry cubes
• 1 large regular onion (or half a sweet onion in my case)
• 2 big white potatoes
• 2-3 large carrots (or half a small bag of baby carrots)
• 2 chicken breasts
• white rice (just regular rice, not necessarily the converted one - I just had that one on hand)
• couple of tablespoons of grapeseed or vegetable oil (one that doesn't have a strong flavour)

Directions:

First off, clean up your potatoes and cut 'em up into small cubes a little less than an inch in size.

Follow up with the carrots if you have the large carrots and do the same. I just cut my baby carrots since they're already clean.

Then cut up the onion into big pieces. Don't mince it, we need to keep the pieces big so we can pick them up with the rest of the vegetables in the curry.

Finally, cut up your chicken breasts into 1 inch cubes.

Now, it's cooking time. First off, add a couple of tablespoons of oil in a big pot, enough to cover the bottom, and turn the heat on medium. When it's getting hot, start frying the onions until they are caramelized and slightly brown.

When that's done, put 'em aside somewhere. Then add some more oil and start cooking the chicken cubes. Just cook them enough so that you get two sides browned. You don't need to cook them thoroughly because we'll boil them in broth later on.

When the chicken is browned, add all the vegetables. Potatoes, carrots and caramelized onions. Then mix it all up real good.

Then look at the curry sauce package and check how much water you're supposed to add. In my case, their recipe calls for 5 cups of water for the whole package. So add that and bring to a boil.

When it starts to boil, lower the heat and bring to a simmer and cover, leaving a gap to let some steam out.

At that point, add the entire package of curry sauce cubes into the mix. The whole thing. Not just one half of the box, like my stupid self did.

Mix it well until broken down and fully diluted, then cover again and let simmer for another 10-20 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.

Yeah, see here? There should be two pieces like this in there.

The consistency of the sauce should be thick, like a stew. So, in case it's too watery, leave it on the heat to simmer, uncovered, and stir once in a while. The water should evaporate and the sauce should thicken to look like this.

When that's over, serve with a side of white rice and you've got yourself a nice, warm Japanese curry!

Marmite Burgers

I've been eating my vegetarian couscous salad all week last week. I wasn't eating much to be honest. But this week, my body told me it needed something. I was craving some junk food. Badly. So I went to this place called La Friterie while I was in my home neighbourhood of Pointe-Aux-Trembles. It's a greasy spoon that sells burgers, hot dogs, fries and of course, poutine. They have been open for as long as I can remember. I went all out and got myself this.

Looks disgusting doesn't it? But, man oh man was it ever satisfying! Two hamburgers (with a slice of ham!), a small poutine and a root beer.

The next day, the craving wasn't gone. My body wanted more. MOAR! So I went and got some ground beef an some buns and made my own burgers. Except, mine are a little different and I added a little bit more stuff to the patties to make them more delicious like the left over green onions I bought last week for my salad. But, my secret ingredient, which should be in any burger meat, is Marmite. Or, you can use Vegemite as well if you're from the land down under. Here's how I did my burgers.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs or 1 kg of extra lean ground beef
• 1 egg
• a couple of stalks of green onions
• 1/2 a cup of bread crumbs
• 2 tsp of Marmite or Vegemite
• 1 tbs Montreal Steak spices

Directions:

First things first, rinse and finely chop the green onions.

Next, in a large bowl, mix everything together as thoroughly as possible.

Take one handful at a time, make it into a ball about the size of a tennis ball, and flatten into patties and place on a grill. I don't have a barbecue so I used a grill I had that goes over a baking sheet.

Preheat the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and cook the burgers for approximately 20 to 25 minutes. They should come out nice and juicy.

Finally, just go ahead and slap that meat between two buns, add whatever you want and you got yourself a nice juicy tasty burger. And it's guaranteed to be healthier than the junk I ate at La Friterie. In fact, I used whole grain hamburger buns, lettuce, tomato, processed cheese, ketchup, mustard, relish and a little bit of Sriracha for an extra POW! Mmmmmm! Delicious.

The Cool CousCous Salad.

So, I just lost my job last week. (Boo!) Now, whenever I spend money on something, however important and necessary, I feel guilty for doing so. But, I still gotta feed myself. Thankfully, like the ant in the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, I had enough food stacked in my pantry to survive a nuclear winter. Especially beans. I have mung beans, fava beans, romano beans, lima beans, all dehydrated. I also have tons of rice, couscous, orzo, pasta, all sorts of dry goods, really. I also have frozen meats like bacon, pork chops, chicken breasts, and even one of my grandma's meat pie. I thought now is a good time as ever to put 'em to good use.

With the summer heat setting in (along with the humidity) I thought it'd be good to do something light and that you can eat cold. Meat was out of the question then. So, I settled on a bean and couscous salad using the romano beans. I had to plan ahead because those damn dehydrated beans take a whole 24h to re-hydrate! However, in the end I would have a nice filling meal with protein and vegetables and basically all that I need to survive! Here's how you can do it:

Ingredients:

• 2 tbs lemon juice
• 1 1/4 cup of chicken broth
• 1 cup of couscous, uncooked
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 1 tsp of red cooking wine
• about 2 green onions
• 1/4 cup of chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 finely chopped red bell pepepr
• 1 cup of frozen corn
• 1/2 tsp cumin powder
• 1 cup of dehydrated romano beans
• salt and pepper if you like

Directions:

First of all, make sure you prepare a day ahead  if you are using dehydrated beans like me, because you have to soak the beans in water for a solid 24 hour for them to become soft and ready to cook. So start with that. Put the beans in a large bowl and cover with lots of water and leave it overnight and the day after. Really let them soak.

When you're ready to make your couscous, drain the beans, fill up a pot with water and bring it to a boil. Add the beans and cook until soft. Not mushy, just soft like beans right out of the can. My advice is to start this very early because it takes a heck of a long time to cook beans. While these cook, just do the rest of this recipe. Drain them in a colander when they're done and rinse in cold water.

Another thing is to set aside one cup of frozen corn kernels and let them thaw out. Unless they're from a can and ready to eat, then, whatevs.

In a pot, bring 1 1/4 cup of water to a boil and add the chicken broth powder as indicated on the container.  Or bring 1 1/4 cup of actual chicken broth to a boil.

When it starts to boil, slowly add the couscous while stirring. Then immediately cover and take off the heat. Let the hot broth cook the couscous for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, uncover and fluff with a fork and transfer to a cool container, like an aluminum bowl.

While all this stuff is boiling you can start on the vegetables. First wash everything under cold running water. Then start chopping! I went by order of how much stuff sticks to the cutting board. First the pepper.

Then the green onions.

Then the cilantro. Make sure you chop that really fine so it mixes well with the couscous.

Set all of this aside and look at the awesome colours.

Now for the vinaigrette. In a large bowl, mix the oil, lemon juice and cumin and whisk it up.

Add the vegetables to the vinaigrette and mix it up real good so it covers everything. Then add the couscous and the beans when they're done cooking. Mix this all up together until it's even.

You can serve it right away or cool it in the fridge for a long time to serve later. It's a great cool refreshing little salad with everything you need. Vegetables, cereals, proteins, etc. And it makes a really big batch so you can have some for a long time! Perfect for a dude like me who just lost his job and needs to eat something light in the hot summer heat. I hope you enjoy!

The healthy fruity vegetarian sandwich.

Last weekend I had two meaty dinners of epic deliciousness. First, my family celebrated mother's day on Saturday night with an amazing pulled pork dinner that my mother put together. And on Sunday, I went to Ottawa with one of my friends to attend the ComicCon that was happening there. For dinner, I decided to take him to Fatboys Southern Smokehouse. I discovered this place last year on Canada day with my family. And we stuffed ourselves with huge smoked ribs, more pulled pork and the most delicious fried chicken I have ever had in my life so far. After that, my digestive system decided to go into emergency digestion mode and I have been digesting all this meat for two days. Needless to say, when it was time to grab lunch on Monday, I opted for a light vegetarian meal.

A colleague of mine suggested that I try this place called Frais Café. It is located near my work on Beaver Hall just south of René Lévesque. It's a little sandwich, salad and soup shop; kind of like a fancy Cultures. They had a couple of vegetarian options and the one that got my attention was a pear and brie sandwich. I ordered that with a minestrone soup and it was delicious! Then I thought "hey! I can do that!" And so I did. That evening, I went grocery shopping and got my stuff together and made myself an amazing lunch. Let me show you what I did.

Ingredients:

• Raisins and nuts muesli bread from Moulin Rouge bakery
• Arugula lettuce
• Hummus (I got the roasted garlic one to add another dimension of flavour)
• Pears
• Brie cheese

Directions:

It's a sandwich. So, it's just a matter of putting all this stuff together between two slices of bread. You can do a PB&J sandwich? Then you can do this too.

First off, slice a pear into thin slices, making sure you remove the core.

Spread hummus on both slices of bread and add the pears.

Slice the Brie cheese lengthwise and add to the sandwich along with the Arugula lettuce and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Add some chips and some salted mixed nuts for a little extra protein and you got yourself a well balanced vegetarian sandwich meal.

This was absolutely delicious. Sweet and salty at the same time. I love it! And the key here is the bread. If you can't find this kind of bread, just get regular multi-grain bread. Don't use raisin bread like the Sun Maid one. This is too sweet and has cinnamon and stuff. If you can't have nuts, try something else for the protein like a bean salad or quinoa salad.

That's gonna be my lunch for the week!

Quick Chicken Tikka Masala

Remember when I made that vegetarian lentil curry? I made too much and ended up with some extra. I decided to freeze it for later. Well, I've been extra lazy these past couple of weeks, eating plain sandwiches for lunch and also a shit-ton of frozen leftover Chinese fried rice. So, I decided I was going to eat the curry now. Except, I realized I barely had enough to last me two days with a fresh batch of rice. So, in order to make at least 4 meals for the week, I decided I'd add some chicken. But, to accompany an Indian dish, I decided to spice it up in the same way. Which is why I made chicken tikka masala.

Tikka means chunks. Masala, I think, means spicy or is a name for a blend of spices. That's basically what this is. Chicken cut into chunks, marinated with a blend of spices. The recipe is basically like the chicken shish taouk that I made a while back. You combine yogurt, spices, garlic, ginger, tomato paste and lemon juice to make the marinade, marinate the chicken for an hour (it's best if you can leave it over night) and then put it on skewers and cook in the over for about 25-30 min. Here is the recipe in more details.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup plain yogurt. (I used 0% greek yogurt, but any kind of plain yogurt will work)
• 1/2 can of tomato paste
• 2 tbs ginger paste (I had ginger puree)
• 2 tbs garlic
• 1 tbs sage (I didn't have any coriander on hand, otherwise use 1 cup finely chopped coriander.)
• 3 tbs garam masala
• 1 tsp chili flakes
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• 4 chicken breasts

Directions:

First, mix all the ingredients above (except the chicken) into a bowl and mix.

I had slightly too much lemon juice in mine. I corrected it above in the ingredients.

Whisk all that up into a nice uniform mixture.

Cut your chicken breasts into cubes.

Dump the cubes into the marinade, cover with plastic cling wrap and refrigerate for an hour or a day, or whatever time you have available to do other stuff.

While the chicken was marinating, I made some extra basmati rice. Pretty much the same way I made it in my vegetarian lentil curry post. I added a few drops of rose water this time to make it a little perfumy. An hour later, I took out the chicken and skewered it, put it in a deep cooking dish and put it in the oven at 400 Fahrenheit, for about 30 mins, turning it over halfway at 15 minutes.

The chicken came out great! Along with the rice and lentil curry as a side dish, I'm going to be able to feed myself for another week with minimum effort! Yay!

Chinese Fried Rice

This week I felt like having some Asian food. I was kind of craving chicken fried rice. So I made some! Indeed, having some cooking skills has its perks. You feel like having Chinese take-out? You want some sandwich from a fast food chain? You miss your mom's home cooking? Just make your own!

Chinese fried rice is so easy to make too. As long as you have the right ingredients, sauces and and spices you're gonna be fine. In fact, I sorta did mine like whatever. Just threw in what I thought would be right and it   turned out awesome! Even tastier than take-out! A word of warning though, I made a ton of it because I knew that this was all that I was going to eat for my lunches along with a couple of egg rolls. But if you want, you can reduce the recipe by half and serve it as a side dish to any meal you make. Here's how to do it.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb of chicken breasts
• 1 can 19 oz (540ml) of diced carrots and green peas
• 1/2 a pack of sliced mushrooms
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 small onion (I used half a large spanish onion)
• 3 stems of green onions
• 1 small red or green pepper (I had left over green peppers from last week's recipe)
• 2 eggs (heck, 3 would've been even better!)
• Some oil for cooking
• Sesame oil
• 1/2 cup Soy sauce
• 1 cup Hoisin sauce
• 2 cups of bean sprouts
• 1-2 tbs Chinese 5 spices to taste
• 2 cups Uncle Ben's converted rice
• 1 box of frozen egg rolls (you know, to accompany the rice)

Directions:

First off, just pop those egg rolls in the oven. Those things'll cook themselves. Put 'em on a baking sheet and stick 'em in there at 375 F. After the first 10 minutes, flip them over, then waint another 10 minutes. BAM! You got egg rolls.

And they even come with the plum sauce!

Also, you may want to cook the rice first since it needs to be cooked by itself before mixing it with anything else. So, go ahead and cook 2 cups of rice according to the instructions on the box. Usually it's about 2.5 cups of water for 1 cup of rice. First, get the water to a boil with some salt and a tablespoon of butter or margarine. Then add the rice and let it cook until it's just about done. Drain if you have to and set aside. 

I cooked one cup at a time because I don't have very big pots.

While those egg rolls are a cookin' and that rice is boilin', let's get a choppin'! While you're doing all this, keep an eye on your egg rolls and your rice. Stir that rice from time to time to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom. Let's get the onions out of the way first because onions are sons of bitches that make you cry... Stupid onions...

I'm not crying...

Then we move on to those... fruits... Fruits? Bitch, please. Do you bite in a Tomato like you do in an apple? Does it even taste sweet? I don't care if technically it grew from a pollinated flower and has seeds. I'd barely even call it a freakin' vegetable. I mean that thing is all weird inside and gelatinous. Like some kind of larvae vegetable hybrid that never quite evolved to full maturity. Anyway, dice those things up.

Same with the peppers. Chop them up finely.

And the green onions.

Finally, cut the chicken into small cubes.

Before we mix all those together in a big pot, lets cook those eggs first. In a bowl, crack open the eggs and add about 1 tsp of soy sauce and 1 tsp of sesame oil. Then whisk them up to mix them.

In a pan, put 1 tsp of regular oil (I use grapeseed oil), and heat up to medium-low. Cook the eggs so that they break up into small pieces. Chop them with your spatula. Then set aside.

Now bring on the big pot and put it on medium heat. Add 1 tbs of oil and brown the onions. Then add the green onions and the chicken and cook the chicken thoroughly.

When the chicken is cooked, incorporate the can of peas and carrots as well as the tomatoes. At this point add half of the Chinese 5 spices and Hoisin sauce and mix well.

Finally, add the bean sprouts and the mushrooms. Then add all the rice, the rest of the spices and Hoisin sauce, the soy sauce and the scrambled eggs. Mix it all up and let it cook until the mixture is hot. At this point, you can add more soy sauce, Hoisin sauce and a little more spices to taste.

Done! Now serve. I hope you enjoy!

Those chopsticks are just there for show by the way.