Brown Stew Chicken

This recipe is interesting. The stew is rich and thick, and has a beautiful dark brown color.

Brown Stew Chicken

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Marinade Time: 1 hour

Cooking Time: 45 minutes

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients:

2 lbs chicken meat, cut into stew chunks

splash of lime juice

3 sprigs fresh thyme

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 onion, chopped

3 scallions, sliced

1 scotch bonnet pepper, minced

1 green bell pepper, chopped

3 cloves garlic

1/2 inch ginger, grated

3 tomatoes, chopped

3 tbsp flour

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp browning (Jamaican burnt sugar)

2 tbsp soy sauce

2 cups stock

Substitutions:

Scotch Bonnet Pepper - Habenero

Prepare a marinade:

Mix together the salt, pepper, thyme, onion, scotch bonnet pepper, green bell pepper, garlic, ginger, and tomato, and let marinade for one hour.

Mix the flour into 1/4 cold water carefully making sure there's no lumps, until you have a smooth mixture.

Cooking:

Scrape the marinade off the chicken and set aside. Brown the chicken in a frying pan until lightly browned.

Remove the chicken and set aside. Add the marinade and fry for three minutes.

Add the stock, soy sauce, and browning and simmer for five minutes.

Mix some of the liquid into the flour/water mixture slowly to bring it up to temperature and mix it without lumps. When it is diluted, add it to the stew, along with the chicken.

Simmer five minutes, stirring gently, until all ingredients are cooked through.

Serve with rice.

Algonquin Wild Nut Soup

This soup is relatively simple to make and requires little work, and just a little patience.

Algonquin Wild Nut Soup

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time: 1 1/2 hours

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

24 oz hazelnuts, crushed

6 scallions, with tops, sliced

3 tbsp parsley, chopped

6 cups stock

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

Cooking:

Place all ingredients in a large soup pot and simmer for 1 /2 hours.

Miso

Miso soup: if you've ever gone out for sushi you've probably had it. You might have thought it was good. Well think again: restaurant miso is a fraction as good as you can make it at home, with barely more work than it takes to heat up some Cambell's soup.

Miso

Prep Time: Negligible (20 minutes to make dashi, if you have to)

Cooking Time: 5 minutes

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

1/3 - 1/2 cup miso paste

4 cups dashi

a pinch of wakame strips

cubed tofu

Preparation:

Soak wakame in warm water.

Cooking:

Heat dashi. Once hot, remove from heat and add wakame, tofu, and miso.

Now hold on, there's a little more to this than it sounds. Firstly, you're probably wondering what wakame is. Well, it's another kind of seaweed found at your local japanese/asian market.

As for miso, that's a little more complex. Miso comes in hundreds of varieties. The most basic is with or without dashi. Since dashi takes virtually no work, I recommend going without. Beyond that, I'll direct you over to this article, which covers miso paste better than I could.

Calçotada and Romesco Sauce

Calçotada itself is very simple. It takes little more than a few bundles of green onions, and a grill. Once the coals are hot, grill the scallions until the outside is blackened. Then peel the outer layer, and you have a tasty treat.

The dipping sauce, Romesco, is not unlike Italy's pesto. The combination is marvellous, and it's a shame not better known.

Calçotada and Romesco Sauce

Several bunches scallions
3 tbsp blanched, slivered almonds
3 tbsp pine nuts
3 red bell peppers
2 cloves garlic
olive oil

Romesco Sauce:

Chop the bell peppers, and gently sauté the almonds, pine nuts, red bell peppers, and garlic in a pan. When garlic and bell peppers are soft, put the mixture into a food processor and blend until smooth.

Calçotada:

Grill the scallions over charcoals (or in a toaster oven), until black. Peel off the outer layers, and enjoy.

The Stir Fry Bok Choy of Li Shizhen

Somewhere in the back of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, tucked in between Century Death Eggs and Pork Dust (or Pork Fu, as the label calls it) we found Bok Choy, a version of cabbage that's leafy and more closely resembles spinach. Its delicate flavor and crunchy texture mix well with stir fry, and no doubt contains all of cabbage's health benefits and ability to scare small children. They contain glucosinolates, which prevent cancer in small doses and kill you in large, so never eat cabbage, or bok choy, raw. It also has tons of fiber, so you can poop!

We found a stir fry recipe and modified it a bit, but you probably can't go wrong by changing it a lot.

Stir Fry Bok Choy:
Serves: 4-5 with rice
Time: 15 minutes

Equipment:
large wok or large uncoated frying pan

Ingredients:
1 1/2 tbsp cooking oil
1 tsp minced ginger
1 small onion, finely chopped
4 bundles bok choy, chopped, separate leaf from white stem
2 scallions, sliced, separate leaf from white stem
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup water
sesame oil

Step 1:
Heat cooking oil on the wok until hot, and then add the ginger and onions. Cook until soft (less than a minute).

Step 2:
Add the white of the bok choy and scallions. Cook for a minute.

Step 3:
Add the greens of the bok choy and scallions. Cook until wilted (2 minutes).

Step 4:
Add the dark and light soy sauces, and the water. Cook for a couple of minutes, until dish is soft and aromatic.Drizzle with sesame oil.

The dish was tasty and light, but with the rice made a reasonable meal. We drank unsweetened green tea alongside it, which matched well.

Next time: Sean and Katrina explore drinks made form hand lotion, and candy made from mashed rice. Be there!