Vegan Black Metal Chef

I didn't cook anything this week because I was too busy. Instead, I present to you the Vegan Black Metal Chef. Of course this blog is all about easy to make recipes so here is his Easy Meal Ideas of the Ages!

This is absolutely epic. Check out his channel for his other episodes!

The Family Indian Curry Recipe

Before I was even born, my parents were living in an apartment somewhere in Anjou. They were friends with an Indian couple that lived nearby. One day they were invited over for dinner and the Indian couple made a curry. It was the most delicious dish they've ever tasted. Of course back then my folks weren't really used to Indian cuisine and having an authentic home made curry was one of the best gastronomic experience they ever had. Thankfully the couple was nice enough to provide them with the recipe.

When my mother makes that curry, it's absolutely fantastic. I haven't had it in a couple of years and I have been craving it really badly. So last night I asked for the recipe and made it myself for my lunches and boy did it hit the spot. It is really a great curry recipe and now I will share it with you. You won't find this one online anywhere on any cooking website, so consider yourself lucky!

Not shown here, the sugar.

I forgot to buy the tomatoes so I had to quickly run out and get some.

Ingredients:

• 3 onions (2 for the curry, one for the rice)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 tsp tumeric
• 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp sugar
• 3 cloves
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 3/4 lbs of meat, it can be beef cubes, pork or chicken. For best result, use the pork.
• Cauliflower & Broccoli (I used a whole bag of frozen ones and it was plenty.)
• 2 potatoes
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup of basmati rice
• a couple handful of cashews

Instructions:

Holy shit! Did you feel that quake? An earthquake occurred as I was writing this post. At first it felt like a really big truck was passing in front of the building and all of a sudden it felt like a huge impact. I thought the truck might have crashed in a building nearby or something. Pretty intense!

Anyway, here's how to make the curry. Oh and a word of caution: wear an apron and some old clothes because the spices will stain if you drop any on you. The cloth I used to wipe the stove and the counter is still yellow even after washing it with detergent. So be careful.

The first thing to do is to wash up your potatoes and chop up your vegetables. Scrub your potatoes under tap water with a brush. Then peel the potatoes and cut them into very small cubes.

I got help from Mr Supdsie.

Then finely chop the three onions. If you have a food chopper, use it. Or you'll end up like me and cry your eyes out. I'm still crying just thinking about it.

Do the same with the garlic.

Finally, cut the four tomatoes into small cubes.

In a large pot, pour enough olive oil or grape seed oil to cover the bottom of the pot. Over medium heat, cook 2/3 of the chopped onions and all the garlic in the pot until the onions become translucent.

When they're cooked, add the tomatoes and the spices.

Mix well until the mixture turns into a paste.

Add the beef, pork or chicken cubes. If they are not entirely covered by the mixture, add a bit of water until the meat is covered and mix well. Let cook until the meat is tender and has absorbed the juices.

When the meat is cooked and tender, add the vegetables. Pour in the potato cubes, broccoli and cauliflower and mix them well so they get covered with the mixture. I let the frozen vegetables thaw a little bit before adding them, but it's not really necessary. Just make sure any frost or ice is gone before lowering the heat. Bring the heat to medium-low and cover. Let it simmer until the vegetables (especially the potatoes) become soft and tender. 

In the meantime you can cook the rice. In a small pot put enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot. Bring it to a medium heat and put the rest of the chopped onions and cook them until they become translucent.

When they are cooked, add 4 cups of water and bring the heat to medium-high. When the water starts to boil, add one cup of rice and let it cook. Mix occasionally so it doesn't stick to the bottom. Add a couple of handfuls of cashews when the rice is almost done. When the water gets all absorbed, remove from heat and let the rice cool.

I forgot to add the cashews :(

Check back on the curry and make sure the potatoes are nice and soft. The broccoli and cauliflower should be all cooked as well.

When serving, put some rice on a plate and cover with the curry mixture.

Dinner is served! Well, in this case it was lunch.
Whatever. You get what I mean. Time to eat!

The dish has a wonderful curry and turmeric flavour with a warm heat from the cayenne pepper. It's sure to heat up your belly on a cool autumn evening.

Enjoy!

Joe le Sloppé!

Bonsoir! And bienvenue to another post of le fine gourmet solo! I have been wondering what I could make myself for my lunches this week and I was tired of chicken. One meat I haven't had in a while is le beef haché! The very ingredient that is used in the world's finest, most exquisite dishes such as le hambourgeois, le paté chinois, le pain de viande and the best one that I will prepare especially for you tonight: Joe le Sloppé!

La mademoiselle knows what she's talking about!

I can't remember the last time I had this delicious dish, but I know that it was at a time when I was still living with my maman et papa. So it has been years. I love that dish because of it's simplicity and because it is a culinary classique! Accompanied with a side of le cornichon and les croustilles you have a wonderful meal fit for the king Louis Quatorze himself!

To make this wonderful recipe you need only but a few ingrédients! Cooking them takes but a few minutes and it is easy to quickly assemble into a great meal. Here's how to do it like a real chef culinaire!

Ingrédients (serves 4):

• 1 lbs ground beef
• 1/2 cup of green bell peppers finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of onions finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp of garlic powder
• 1 tsp of prepared mustard
• 3/4 cup of ketchup
• 3 tsp of brown sugar
• salt and pepper to taste
• 4 Kaiser buns
  
  Optional:
• 1 tsp of Marmite (I had Vegemite, it's Australian cousin, but it's practically the same thing.)
  or1tbs of Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tbs of Sriracha hot sauce or Tabasco or Frank's Red Hot for a little extra zing.

Préparation:

Chop up your vegetables finely. In a large pan, heat up about a tablespoon of olive oil at medium heat. Throw in your vegetables and cook until the onions become transparent and the green peppers become tender.

While that's cooking, mix up the condiments and spices together in a bowl to make the sauce and whisk together until it is all well mixed.

When the vegetables are ready, add the ground beef and break it down into tiny little pieces and mix well with the vegetables.

Cook the meat until it is browned and then add the sauce and mix well until the sauce covers everything.

Add salt and pepper to taste then lower the heat and let simmer until the sauce has been well absorbed by the mixture. Then it is ready to be served, cut the Kaiser buns in half and slap some saucy sloppy meat on there and serve with either a side of salade de choux, cémeuse of course (Saint-Hubert makes the best one in my opinion), or croustilles and a cornichon and voilà!

The Sea Hag Cookies

So I caught a cold at work this week. Everyone in the office got it, it seems, except for me. I thought I had a superhuman immune system, but after a couple of days of overtime work and lack of sleep it finally got to me. Today, I took a sick day and stayed at home to rest. I was feeling cold and I lonely and I wished someone was there to take care of me and make me a nice bowl of home made chicken noodle soup. In fact, I knew a girl who made the best chicken noodle soup ever. Actually. she is a hell of a cook in general. She could make a complete thanksgiving turkey dinner all by herself and it was the best turkey I ever had. She also spent a lot of time making canned goods. She made pickled green beans and pickled cherries and canned peaches, canned spiced apples, but the best was her jams. I miss her and I miss her food a lot too!

So I feel like shit and I feel depressed. I need a little pick me up. Well as it turns out, this lady friend of mine also had a blog where she wrote all sorts of random stuff, but talked mostly about candy. She was a very good writer and had a great sense of humour. Her pen name was Sea Hag. I've been peeking at it from time to time. Her blog is actually what inspired me to start my own. A while back I remember one of her posts talking about a recipe for some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies she once made for her colleagues at work. I've been meaning to try it to see if they were good. Tonight could be the night. I was too high on cold medicine anyway to get any sleep (that decongesting cough syrup is like Red Bull on steroids) and I thought some good warm cookies with a glass of milk would cheer me right up anyway. So I made the cookies. And now I'm totally going to rip off Sea Hag's blog and post her recipe on here and claim it as my own, mwahahahaha!

Seriously though. Here's the link to her recipe. I think she deserves credit for the awesome cookies.

Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

This will make a batch of two dozen cookies. You can roll up any excess dough in wax paper and keep it in the freezer for later like Pilsbury cookie dough and cut up a few slices when you want some cookies.

• 1 cup softened butter (two sticks)
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 cups of plain oatmeal (The quick cooking one minute kind)
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 3 handfulls of crushed walnuts (yeah, handfulls, whatever)

Instructions:

The first thing to do is to fire up your oven and set it to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. If your butter was in the freezer, nuke it in the microwave for about 12-15 seconds to soften it up. (Start with 12 and put it back in whatever time you need, as long as you don't melt it.) Then, in a large bowl put the butter, brown sugar and white sugar and mix it together with a mixer until you get a smooth even texture. No clumps.

Buttah. One hundred percent pure phat!

Mix in the eggs one at a time. Basically make sure the first egg is mixed in well before adding the second. And then mix in the vanilla extract.

Then add the flour, baking soda and salt and mix it some more with the mixer until it is all well blended.

Then add the oats, chocolate chips and walnuts and mix one last time. You may want to start with a spatula and then follow with the mixer to blend it well and break down the oats and nuts a little.

Yeah, about three handfulls of crushed wallnuts.

That's about one cup.

You should end up with a pretty smooth mixture, considering the fact that we have clumps of nuts and chocolate chips in there.

Put a sheet of aluminum paper over a baking sheet and grease it up with either butter, margarine or baking spray. Then with a table spoon, scoop up the dough and shape it into a flat ball and place it on the cookie sheet. Put about an inch of space between the clumps so they don't bake all stuck together.

That's about a spoonfull for each ball.

Finally, pop it in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes. (I know her recipe says 12 minutes, but I needed twice the time before mine were ready.) When they are done, take out the cookie sheet and let them cool for about two minute before transferring them to a wire rack to let them cool down completely.

After a few minutes you may enjoy them with a nice glass of milk. I warn you though, they are delicious but they are quite filling! So, don't eat too many! This recipe will make about two dozen cookies.

Aaaahh! That cheered me right up!

Now, who else wants some of my cookies? I still have a lot left!

Mom's Chinese Macaroni

When I was a kid, my mom sometimes had to cook dinner in a pinch. She had a recipe for a "Chinese" macaroni. It's not really a Chinese recipe per se, but has many ingredients and sauces you find in that cuisine. It's fairly easy to prepare. You just chop up vegetables and cut chicken breasts into cubes, cook it all, make some pasta, mix it all together with Hoisin sauce, soy sauce and some pepper and you got yourself a meal. It's such an easy recipe even my dad used to make it for the family when my mom worked late. Then again, he would screw it up sometimes, but whatever. I don't know anyone who can cook any kind of meat on the barbecue better than my dad. So the steaks, hamburgers and BBQ roasted chicken made up for it. And I can't complain about that. He was also the king when it came to baking home made brownies and cake before my sister grew up and became the best baker the family has ever known. Yep, I'm mama's boy, cooking breakfasts, lunches and dinners while she's daddy's little girl with the cakes, cupcakes, brownies and cookies.

This week I was tired and needed a good meal for my lunches. I felt like making this recipe because I was sort of craving the taste of Hoisin sauce for some reason. So I went to the groceries after work on Monday, got the ingredients and made it. It's good, easy to make, but it takes a while to prepare because you just have to chop everything. Anyway here's how to make it:

Ingredients:

• 2 chicken breasts cut in half inch cubes
• 2 stalks of celeri chopped finely
• 1 stalk of green onions chopped finely
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 small onion, minced
• 1 red pepper chopped finely (Or you can use zucchini as an alternative.)
• sliced mushrooms
• 1 tbsp minced ginger (I bought a small jar of it for practicality)
• 2 cups of elbow macaroni
• olive or grape seed oil
• soy sauce
• Hoisin sauce
• sesame oil
• chinese 5 spices

Steps:

First of all, boil some water and cook 2 cups of elbow macaroni. While it's cookin', get choppin'! Start with the vegetables and chop everything up as fine as you can. Except for the red pepper, you want to have small cubes. And only slice the mushrooms, they will shrink when you cook them. When the pasta is cooked, drain and rinse under cold water to stop it from cooking any further and put aside.

Then cut your chicken into small cubes. Put some oil in a very large skillet or deep pan and heat it up on medium heat. Then add your cubes of chicken and cook until the meat is white all the way through.

Once the chicken is cooked, drain and put aside. Use the same pan and put some oil again and fry your vegetables. Start by adding the onion and garlic, the celery and the pepper. Cook these vegetables until they change colour. The onions should become a little darker and the pepper and celery should become tender. At this point, add the mushrooms and green onions and cook until mushrooms have shrunk and changed colours.

When the mushrooms are cooked, add the chicken and the pasta and mix well.

The last step is the seasoning. Add 2 teaspoons of sesame oil, 6 tablespoons of Hoisin sauce, 6 teaspoons of soy sauce, 1/2 tsp of Chinese five spices and some pepper to taste. Then mix it all in until the pasta and chicken become brown. Taste it and add Hoisin sauce, soy sauce and pepper to taste. Just be careful with the soy sauce because it's very salty and if you put too much you can ruin the taste. When everything is mixed thoroughly, let it heat up for a while so it's nice and warm when you serve it in a place.

Tada!

The Chinese five spices weren't part of my mom's original recipe. But, I felt like it was a bit bland. Those spices are super strong, but not in a hot spicy sense though. They smell very strong and give this sweet pungent smell and amazing flavour to the dish. I added a few pinches to the whole thing, about half a teaspoon, and it was plenty! 

I'm so glad I made this because it reminds me of a more simpler time when I would come home after school and have my mom's macaroni and just chillax all evening afterwards doing my homework in front of the TV. A time where the only cares I had in the world was to get good grades in school and play with my friends. Also, it's only after I left home and learned how too cook for myself that I realized how much effort my parents put into feeding my sister and I. I am so grateful for having such loving and supporting parents. It's thanks to them and their support through all my hardships in life that I am where I am today. I wish everyone had parents like mine.

I love you mom and dad.

Deluxe Instant Ramen

During my last post I found a website with an article about hacking instant ramen into a real complete meal. Let's face it. Noodles and chicken flavoured broth may be fine for a teenager or a starving student, but it ain't enough to feed a real man. A real man needs protein. That brain muscle won't develop itself. So I had to take it up a notch.

I was checking out Youtube for other ideas on how to hack instant ramen and I came across a nice old dad who was demonstrating how to make one if his son's favourite meals: instant ramen egg drop soup. That gave me an idea. I know that in some ramen recipes they put vegetables like peas, beans, mushrooms or corn. Topping the soup with green onions and sesame seeds is also very common. So I put together an idea of a Japanese-style ramen egg-drop soup recipe in my head which will contain the protein and vegetables I need.

At home I had eggs and sesame seeds and of course packs of Sapporo Ichiban instant ramen (the best one in my honest opinion), but I needed other ingredients. Off to the supermarket I went and I bought some scallions, a pack of sliced mushrooms and a can of whole kernel corn for under 5$ and this will last me for many a ramen meal.

I ended up not using the powdered ginger after all.

But, I'm sure it would've tasted good.

Here are the proportions to make a single soup meal:

Ingredients:

• 1-2 tablespoons of whole kernel corn.
• 1 stick of scallions, chopped in little scallion rings.
• A handful of sliced mushrooms
• 2 eggs
• 1 pack of instant ramen with flavouring
• a dash of sesame seeds

Preparation:

The first thing you want to do is rinse and chop your scallions like so:

Tada!

Set them aside for later as a topping.

Fill a pot with 2 cups of water. 2 cups is the magic amount for cooking a pack of instant ramen. And set the heat to high.

While you wait for it to start boiling, break 2 eggs into a bowl (don't beat them, the ramen gods do not tolerate violence), open up your pack of ramen, your pack of sliced mushrooms and your can of corn. Drain the corn if there's a lot of water. You will need to add the ingredients quickly while the ramen is cooking.

When the water starts to boil, set the timer to 3 minutes. 3 minutes is the magic timer number. Add your ramen noodles and start the time. After a minute stir the noodles to break them apart and mix them up.

When the noodles are broken apart, add the flavoured powder and mix.

So far it's pretty easy, eh? Here's the fun part. Just EXACTLY when you have one minute left, just gently drop in the eggs into the soup. One yolk on one side of the pot and the second on the other.

Then add a couple of tablespoons of corn, a handful of mushrooms and mix really gently so as to mot pop the yolk as much as possible.

When the timer ends, turn off the heat. Take a big enough bowl and pour the soup in. Then sprinkle some sesame seeds and top with the scallions. Your delux ramen dinner is now ready! Enjoy!

Would you look at that?

Who would've thought it would look so god damn beautiful!

It doesn't even look like an instant soup!

I could've fooled myself!

Aaaaahhh! Man, that was delicious!

That was so good! And so filling! I don't think I'll ever make instant ramen the same way ever again! Next time, I think I'll do it with some pork chops just for the hell of it!

EDIT:
Just as a reference, I found this blog called The Ramen Rater. They apparently have been rating instant ramen for over ten years! They are also chock full of instant ramen recipes for adding vegetables and proteins to instant ramen and make them amazing. Check them out!