Recipes

First I have to say that I started this post weeks ago and intended to post regular post with 1 or 2 recipes I tried and my experience with them.... well life gets in the way and here I am weeks later with a fairly massive post.

So I really do not consider myself a cook in the least... my mother loves to cook. So when I help her in the kitchen I'd rather do the menial stuff.... frying, chopping, etc.. than the real cooking. But since at some point I do need to figure out how to provide proper meals for my own family I've been trying my hand at cooking... trying to find stuff that I think is more fun to cook.

So one day a week (usually saturday) I've been trying to cook a full proper meal or a try new recipe... I like to call it "lets subject my family to my cooking night".. it can be western food it could be southeast asian but I thought I'd share some of the recipes I've tried.. what worked and what didn't work:

• Cilantro chicken lime soup - Since my husband doesn't like soup I made this more of a stew we put half the broth and served it with Tostitos. Be careful the recipe is not completely clear in that it requires 2 Adobo chipotles NOT 2 cans of adobo chipotles. I suspect my mother threw in some extra chipotle's on this one cause it was over the top spicy. (but others like that kind of spice so they had no issue with it.) We also added Goya Recaito instead of all the cilantro. We all agreed this could have easily passed as chicken curry and served over rice. Oh and also a key point... we did this in the slow cooker. I did everything in the slow cooker (~6hrs on low) up to the part where you add avocados and tortilla chips, that was added at the end after it was done.


• Beef stroganoff in the slow cookerThis is one of those classic dishes I can remember my mom cooking for us growing up. This recipe was super easy and great. I used baby bella mushrooms instead of cremini (any mushrooms probably would have done). One thing added was garlic (at my mothers infinitely wise recommendation). We served this up over egg noodles (yum... such childhood memories)


• Sri Lankan Pork Curry This is the first recipe I am trying off this site... I like that she has videos to go with the recipes and her recipes are more accurate that several of the ones on Malini's kitchen where you are left guessing at the quantities. At my mom's recommendation I made the recipe with pork shoulder... shoprite cuts it into chunks for you, which was more useful than buying the full shoulder (with bone in). It still requires quite of bit of trimming but well worth it!! We simmered it for more than the specified 15 minutes and the pork was sooo soft... it was great (next time I may try this one in the slow cooker). One thing is that recipe as stated on the website doesn't have that much heat (maybe also the chilli powder I was using wasn't that spicy) it definitely needed a few chillis (we use habeneros instead of the small chilis you get at the indian store, they are much hotter). The thing I liked about this recipe was that it didn't use coconut milk... which was a nice change.  
• Chicken Caccitore- I adapted the recipe from the Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook (By Beth Henspeger and Julie Kaufmann. p276. 2005) I like this book more b/c it actually teaches a lot of the basics of slowcooker cooking. I actually would recommend borrowing this book from the library before you buy a slow cooker b/c it talks about the fundamentals. Anyway ... the recipe turned out good

Chicken Cacciatore
Adapted from Not Your Mothers Slow Cooker Cookbook
6 leg quarters with the skin taken off
2 medium onions chopped
6 garlic cloves
1 small package of dried cremini mushrooms.. slow cooker did all the rehydrating... loved that
1/2 cup white wine (its supposed to be dry... I guessed at what may be the driest wine I have)
16 oz can of diced tomatoes (I like tomato chunks)
16 oz can of tomato sauce

Put everything in slow cooker except flour and cook on low for 6-7hrs. After mine was done I left the lid off for a bit to let it reduce a bit.

In hindsite the cut of leg quarters that I had was not right for the slow cooker.. it had a ton of little bones... so lesson learned skinless boneless thighs would have been infinitely better in this recipe.


SIDES

• Garlic and Parsley Vinaigrette I am totally on a mushroom kick and I love this recipe... I sauteed the mushrooms first with a little oil then put the vinaigrette over it. I use portabellas and freeze dried shiitake mushrooms I bought from the chinese food store that I rehydrated then sauteed with a little oil


• White Bean salad with Shiitake Mushrooms simple and great recipe.