Instant Pot Red Curry Chicken

Like most of the rest of the country, I purchased an Instant Pot a while back and have been singing its praises ever since. It's such a quick and easy way to get a meal on the table with minimal fuss or hassle. One of my very favorite Instant Pot recipes is this red curry chicken, which tastes especially great when the weather is chilly. It packs just the right amount of heat to warm your insides, but not so much that you'll be sorry later. The recipe is very forgiving and flexible - don't like green beans? Use another vegetable! Sub sweet potato for russet. Or skip the potato altogether. The possibilities are endless!

I use a canned curry paste recommended by Jam Sanitchat, the owner of Thai Fresh, where I took a fabulous cooking class a couple of months ago. If it's good enough for Jam, it's good enough for me!

Instant Pot Red Curry Chicken

1.5 - 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1 4-oz can Maesri brand red curry paste (I am able to find this at most of my local Asian supermarkets for less than it costs on Amazon, but am linking it above so you can see what it looks like.)

1 can coconut milk

1 chicken bouillon cube

Garlic to taste (I am lazy and buy jarred minced garlic - I like a LOT of garlic and easily add 1/4 c of it to this recipe)

1 large russet potato, cubed

1 lb green beans

2 T cornstarch

Cube the chicken. Put it in the pot with the curry paste, coconut milk, bouillon cube, and garlic. Stir to mix ingredients, then set the Instant Pot to high pressure and cook for 12 minutes. Quick release.

Add potato and green beans. Cook on high pressure for 4 minutes. Quick release.

Mix 2 T cornstarch with 4 T cold tap water. Add to pot and stir to thicken sauce.

Serve over rice. I think it tastes best finished with just a light sprinkling of salt, but this is totally optional.

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Truffled Deviled Eggs, or How I Indulged My Truffly McTruffleface

I have a friend in the food business who rolls her eyes at truffle oil. She thinks the whole truffle oil trend is restaurants' cheap way of tricking uneducated diners into thinking dishes are better and fancier than they really are.

I am one of those diners. I LOVE truffle oil. I don't care how foolish it makes me; if you add truffle oil to my food, I will likely gobble it up, all the while making "yummy sounds" a la Young Frankenstein.

So when I needed a super-easy dish for a neighborhood party, I picked up a couple dozen already-boiled-and-peeled eggs at Costco (yes, this is the ultimate in laziness, but not having to pick the shells off two dozen eggs saved me a ton of time) and Googled a few recipes for truffled deviled eggs. I used this recipe by Anne Burrell as a base, sort of, but her mayo-to-egg ratio seemed awfully high, so I cut back on that significantly. Also, I didn't have any chives on hand, so I just sprinkled a little porcini salt on top, mostly for color. Basically, I used:

• 2 dozen hard boiled eggs
• 1 cup mayo (NOTE: this is the kind of recipe where you really should taste as you go. Depending on the size of your eggs, you may not need this much. Start with 1/2 cup, taste it, and add as needed to taste.)
• 1 T truffle oil
• Garnish of choice (chives, dill, paprika, interesting finishing salts, whatever you've got)

I didn't even bother to pipe them to make them pretty; like I said, I was short on time, so I just plopped the mixed yolks back into the whites, sprinkled the salt, and called it a day.

Making them pretty would have been a colossal waste of time, because they disappeared in minutes. One neighbor caught my eye as she was reaching over to the plate and sheepishly confided, "This is my third one. Is that un-neighborly of me?"

All's fair in love and potlucks, so of course I assured her that I had already eaten three, myself.

*     *     *

BONUS TRUFFLE TIP:

Last time I was at Trader Joe's, I discovered that they are selling truffled marcona almonds. If you are a shameless truffle lover like me, YOU MUST BUY SOME OF THESE.

They are unabashedly, perfectly, wonderfully truffly and rich, an indulgent low carb snack, and just the thing to put out in little bowls at your next party - except you'll need to buy about 100 bags of them if you do that, because they are addictive. 

At $6.50 for a 6 oz bag, they aren't cheap, but considering the price of marcona almonds, the price of truffle oil, and the fact that these are so insanely delicious, I'd say they're worth every penny.

What are your favorite truffly dishes or products?

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A Blog Birthday and a Smoothie for Allen

April 13th marked the four-year anniversary of this blog. Writing here has been a wonderful thing for me for so many reasons: it's a fun creative outlet; it's given me tons of photography practice; and it's been the conduit and inspiration for many, many, many wonderful meals. Best of all, though, it's helped me connect with a community of amazing, talented people who share a passion for food and a recognition that few things are as good at bringing people together.

Unfortunately, one member of the Austin food community, Allen Stern of Let's Talk Fitness, passed away earlier this month. I regret that I never met Allen personally, but he was a frequent participant in the private Facebook group for the Austin Food Blogger Alliance, and by all accounts he was energetic, generous, and kind. Allen, who had lost over 125 pounds thanks to improved diet and exercise, was a big proponent of drinking green smoothies for weight loss. As a tribute to Allen, some of his family and friends suggested that folks make a smoothie in his honor and post about it online. So it seemed fitting that to celebrate my blog's birthday, I should toast a green smoothie to a fellow food blogger who left us too soon. Allen, this one is for you.

I learned about this smoothie recipe from my awesome sister-in-law, who posted about it on her blog last month. The original recipe is here. Mine was slightly modified from both, so I'll post my ingredient list here - but the beauty of smoothies is that the recipe is really just to provide inspiration. You can fiddle with it however you like until you've got the perfect blender concoction.

Green Smoothie for Allen
1 frozen banana
1 T peanut butter (I used The Bee's Knees peanut butter, which has some honey added to it - a gift from Peanut Butter & Co. If you don't have any Bee's Knees, you could use regular peanut butter and add honey separately, to taste.)
1/2 c Greek yogurt (I used Fage)
1/4 c milk
Enough spinach to fill the blender to the top (most green smoothie recipes call for baby spinach; I used heirloom spinach from our Tecolote Farm CSA, and it worked great)

Blend and enjoy!

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You Put Your Sriracha In My...

I feel like I'm getting better at bumbling around in the kitchen, making stuff up.

I kept seeing blog posts about popcorn with sriracha on it (like this one) or with honey on it (like this one), and suddenly today I thought - why not both?

So I whacked off a hunk of butter, dipped a spoon of honey, squirted a generous stream of sriracha, and put them all in a pan together until they melted into a swirl of titillating aroma. Poured the stuff onto some air-popped popcorn. Salted liberally. And congratulated myself.

Sriracha Honey Butter Popcorn. Eat it and weep.

Salty. Spicy. Sweet. So freaking delicious that I kept having to tell myself to slow the hell down or I was going to choke myself.

In the spirit of my friend Christian over at Austin Food Journal, who steadfastly refuses to share recipe quantities (even when asked nicely), I'm leaving the measuring up to your tastebuds. Want it sweeter? Add more honey. More zing? More sriracha. With just three ingredients, I know you can handle it.

Pacing yourself while you're eating it...now that's another matter altogether.

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Ina Garten's Couscous with Toasted Pine Nuts

I don't know why, but I always thought couscous was tricky to make. I think it had somehow been categorized with quinoa in my head (which isn't really tricky, but takes a long time...and, unfortunately, isn't something Chris likes). But it seemed like the perfect accompaniment to go with my slow cooker lamb shanks, so I opened up my new copy of Ina Garten's How Easy Is That? (which, by the way, I really like) and checked out her recipe for couscous with toasted pine nuts.

The recipe I used is basically this one, but uses yellow onion rather than shallots (2 cups - roughly two small onions, and the proportions don't need to be perfect, of course); leaves out the currants; and uses quite a bit more parsley (1/2 cup).

Ina, in her oh-so-encouraging-way, tells her readers, "If you can boil a pot of water, you can make couscous." Having botched many "easy" recipes over the years, I was skeptical - but now that I've made this one, I have to admit - it really is easy. And fast. And delicious. I've made it twice already this year, and have a third on the schedule for this week. Thanks, Ina!

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Slow Cooker Rosemary Lamb Shanks

Having some time off over the holidays meant that I had rare time and energy to do some cooking that involved more than me scrambling around the kitchen madly throwing stuff in pans, hoping fervently that I would finish before I either (a) passed out from hunger; or (b) had to be somewhere with dish in hand.  It was chilly outside, we were having a friend over for dinner, and had a rare day with nowhere to be, so I was inspired to try my hand at slow cooking some lamb shanks.

I used this recipe as a base, but it wasn't made for a slow cooker, so I sort of winged it. Happily, I was very pleased with the results.

Slow Cooker Rosemary Lamb Shanks

Ingredients
4-6 lamb shanks (The ones at our market were HUGE - about 1.5 lbs each - so four was the most I could fit in our slow cooker)
2 T olive oil
2 yellow onions, chopped
15 cloves garlic, minced
1 10-oz package baby bella mushrooms, sliced
1 c red wine (I used cabernet sauvignon)
2 10.5-oz cans beef broth
4-5 stalks fresh rosemary
2 t chopped fresh thyme

Directions
1.  Spread onions, garlic and mushrooms over the bottom of your slow cooker.

2.  Add olive oil to heavy pan and heat. Working in batches, brown the lamb shanks on all sides. Transfer shanks to slow cooker.

3.  Pour red wine and beef broth over the top of the shanks. Add rosemary and thyme. It should look about like this:

4.  Cook on the High setting for 5.5 hours.

5.  The juices are delicious but very runny when you are done, so if you like, you can pour the liquid into a pan and reduce it to make more of a gravy consistency.  I'm not a huge gravy person, so I skipped this step.

The meat will be falling off the bone.  I served it with couscous I made using an Ina Garten recipe from a cookbook my awesome sister-in-law recommended (I'll blog about this separately). It turned out pretty delicious, if I do say so myself. And it was so easy. I'm usually scrambling around at the last second finishing things up when we have people over for dinner; this time, I was calm, the kitchen was clean, and all I had to do was dish up the goods.

Definitely a keeper recipe. I plan to carve out a day to make this at least one more time before it's 100 degrees here again.

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Pan-fried Squash Fritters

In my eternal quest to turn our healthy CSA bounty into something less healthy, I set out to make some squash fritters recently with some Magda squash and Benning's patty pan squash we got from our fabulous CSA farm, Tecolote.

I used this recipe as a base, but since I had no idea how large the original recipe author's squash were, I sort of winged it on the proportions. I just love a forgiving recipe, don't you?

I started with this much squash:

Shredded it up in my brand new food processor (yay!), along with a small spring onion, also from Tecolote:



Added in two eggs, a cup of shredded cheddar cheese, and a whole cup of flour. The recipe calls for only 1/4 c of flour and suggests that the batter will be "almost a dry mix" at this point. But even after a full cup of flour, it wasn't even close to being dry. So I did what most home cooks would do; I cheerfully ignored the recipe and started frying flattened spoonfuls in a skillet with a little peanut oil.

It worked.

If When I make these again, I'll probably try draining the squash or squeezing it out with paper towels before mixing in the other ingredients to see if I can dry out the batter a bit. I liked them as they were, though - ever so slightly crunchy on the outside, but soft and squash-y (that's "squash-y," not squishy) on the inside. My friend Jackie described them as being sort of like squash crepes, which I think is a good description.



You can top these with all manner of condiments depending on your tastes - a little sour cream or creme fraiche and a light sprinkle of sea salt is wonderful, or you can even eat them with a few drops of soy sauce and Asian hot oil to mimic a potsticker flavor. They make for a nice, light summer meal, or could be served as a side dish.

Mission un-healthify squash, complete.

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Fresh Coconut Paletas

As anyone who follows my Pinterest boards has probably guessed, I'm a little bit obsessed with homemade frozen treats right now. My friend/neighbor/food co-conspirator, Jackie, got a popsicle mold a while back, and has been sharing her delicious creations with us. After devouring a particularly memorable horchata pop, I broke down and bought my own mold.

The beauty about making paletas (or popsicles, whatever) is that you can completely fly by the seat of your pants while making them. Get as creative as you want. Throw a little of whatever sounds good in the blender, taste it, doctor it to your heart's content. In other words, my kind of food creating.

For my first batch of paletas, I cracked open a couple of fresh, young coconuts (I was intimidated by how this was going to work, but this post made it a cinch). I used almost all the juice of both coconuts and the meat of one of them (because I couldn't resist eating the other). I also tossed in maybe 3/4 c shredded coconut from a bag and about 2 tablespoons of honey. Again, the beauty of these is that you can really adjust the ingredients to taste, and recipes are difficult anyway, since popsicle molds come in so many different sizes. I knew my molds held a total of 25 oz of liquid and my blender has hatch marks for ounces on the side, so that helped me eyeball how much liquid I needed to end up with. I blended everything together, poured the concoction in my molds, and waited.

I was delighted with the way the finished product came out. Like eating a fresh coconut, only with a lovely crunchy, icy, refreshing texture.

I'll definitely be making these again.

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