Curry in a hurry.

Hello kids! It's been awhile since I blogged. The Mr. and I have been working some late hours the last few weeks and after dinners and clean up and such, we just wanna sleep and pass out. I haven't been in the mood to blog and I never really have anything interesting to say. But, I do like reading food/recipe blogs and I enjoy sharing my tried recipes with friends. I figured, if I at least take pictures of food, it should make the blog a tad bit more interesting, right? I have no idea who reads my blog... but my blog has got to be the blah-est blog ever. I need some drama in my life. No wait, I see enough drama at work already. Scratch that.

Anyways, did I ever tell you I lub curry. Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai. Give me some good curry sauce and I can probably eat a pot of rice. Have I mentioned I'm a huge fan of rice? Meat and veggies aren't necessary. Give me some good sauce and rice and I'll clean them up for you! I've been really enjoying Thai curry lately (I love Thai food!), so I eventually picked up this simple Thai curry recipe. I lost the oiriginal recipe, which I've only used when I first tried it. So below is the recipe from recollection (after cooking this a few times, you don't really need the recipe anyways, and you can always change up the recipe to your liking, which I do!). But if you insist looking for an actual Thai curry recipe, do not panic - there are alot of good ones out there! Google is your friend, yo.

This recipe is awesome because it has very good curry flavor, and so easy to make - dinner in less than 30 mins!!!

Thai Red Curry in a Hurry (I made this name up, how original!)

Ingredients

• 4-5 boneless & skinless chicken breasts, sliced -or- a pound of peeled prawns (can be frozen)
• 1-2 cups of frozen peas / vegetables (depends on your liking)
  
• fish sauce
• thai red curry paste
• 1 can of coconut milk
• few cloves of chopped garlic
  
• half a chopped onion
  
• marinating: salt and pepper, sesame oil, rice wine, soy sauce, cornstarch
  

Directions

• Marinate chicken breasts or prawns with salt and pepper, few drops of sesame oil, a splash of chinese rice wine, splashes of soy sauce, and a few sprinkles of cornstarch. Let marinate overnight (or even 15-30 mins before you start to cook!)
• Drizzle oil in a heated pan/wok over medium high heat, cook garlic and onion until clear.
• Cook and stirfry chicken/prawns until browned, for 6-8 mins. Add frozen peas/vegetables (I also added fresh sliced mushrooms this time, because I happen to have them and I'm trying to clean up the fridge). Cook for another 3-5 mins.

• Stir in a can of coconut milk and turn down to medium heat. Stir. Cover and let simmer for a few minutes until coconut milk bubbles.

• Add a spoonful or two of the red thai curry paste. Stir and mix well. Cover and let simmer for another 3 mins or so. (Time depends on your stove... I have a gas range so it tends to cook fast for me). For the paste that I have, I find that a big spoonful and a half is enough. If unsure, you may want to add the paste abit at at time to get to the flavour you want.
  

• Add a splash or two of fish sauce. Stir and let the sauce become bubbly. Taste test at this point. It may need abit of salt or soy sauce (your preference).
  

• Serve over steamed rice!

Note:

• If you get the red thai curry paste from Save On, you're likely to use double the amount I used in this recipe, and some soy sauce at the end to "diu may". I find that brand of paste is not as flavorful.
• I purchased my jar of red thai curry paste at T&T. It's the best I've had so far. Very strong and bold flavor and with this brand, you don't need to add alot of paste to the coconut milk. It says it's made in Thailand, it has Thai characters on the label, so I assume it's the good stuff. And it is good!
• Aroy-D coconut milk: cheapest I found was at that loonie store on Alexandra/Hazelbridge (Adjacent to McD's on Alderbridge Way).... I've seen it for as low as $0.59 a can! Do not worry, they never expire (ok I lied, but they often expire after 10 years or something).
  

omg I suck at the photography. Sorry for the shaky hands :(

super fast weeknight dinner.

Got home late, and had to be out again right after dinner, so it's another easy quick fix meal tonight.

I made my own version of Mac N' Cheese, and a quick cucumber salad to go with the cheesy goodness. I didn't really follow a recipe as I made my own. And when I cook I hardly measure to the exact cup/tablespoons unless I'm 1) baking, 2) learning a new recipe that is complex and 3) when I know the exactness of the ingredients I use will affect the recipe alot. So here it is, at least to what I remember!

Quicky Mac N' Cheese

3 cups of penne pasta (or macaroni) - I think I cooked too much, but yay to leftovers for lunch!
1 lb. of lean ground beef (or whatever meat you want to throw in)
1 - 1.5 cups grated cheddar (depends on your cheesyness)
1 - 1.5 cups grated mozzarella
1 can Campbell's condensed cheese soup (you're not trying to be a gourmet chef here... Campbell's saves you time and actually makes good, weeknight dinners!)
1 cup milk (I use 1%)
Minced garlic
1/2 of chopped onion
Salt, ground black pepper
Worchestire sauce
Pepper sauce (I use tabasco!)

1. Cook pasta, drain. Set aside.
2. Drizzle olive oil in pan over medium heat. Brown minced garlic and chopped onion until clear. Brown ground beef. Season with generous amount of salt and pepper. Add splashes of worchestire sauce and hot pepper sauce.
3. Add cheese soup and milk into pan. Stir and bring to a boil. Heat off. (you may want to taste test... I actually find that I had to add abit more salt to the pasta to bring out the flavor)
4. Toss pasta, cheddar and mozza cheese together. Pour into a baking dish.
5. Bake in a 400F oven for 15-20 mins until cheese melts. You may want to toss/stir the pasta around half way at the 15 min mark so the pasta at the very top doesn't become dry.

Alot of Campbell's soup makes good, quick meals. Every working household's pantry should have at least a can of two of Campbell's soup (Cream of Mushroom, especially!) for those fast weeknight dinner emergencies! I like this recipe because the sauce is not too thick, just enough that it coats the pasta evenly!

Quick Chinese fix.

I had been craving Cha Siu (叉燒) for the last while. Coincidentally, I bought some 叉燒肉 on sale at Langley Farm (my favorite place to shop) over the weekend so guess what I made for dinner?

Home-made BBQ pork, stir-fry veggies in black bean sauce, and I felt like eggs again, so it's 午餐肉 (Chinese spam) in scrambled eggs. (poe - I did in fact have chinese spam in my pantry, buried behind my stash of assorted canned goods. omg, now I want it in my ramen.)

I made the Cha Siu a la lazy style (with Lay Gum Gay BBQ marinade). Depending on how my work day went, sometimes I just want to fix a quick meal after work and don't want to do anything crazy in the kitchen. The hubs usually get home around 1 to 1.5 hours later than I do (what a hard working dude), so I at least have time to wash/chop stuffs, or clear out the stuff on the dish rack from the night before, and cook. Otherwise, I might want to just cook instant noodles or sandwiches everyday. I love instant noodles. Anyways, I usually need a few minutes to clear my dish rack before I wash/chop/prep for dinner. Yeah, the dish rack has nothing to do with the actual cooking, but I think I have some sort of kitchen-OCD. You see, if I don't clear out everything in my dish rack, I can't prepare food. And I have to make sure the sinks have no dirty dishes before I begin cooking. So you can probably now guess that we hardly ever leave dirty dishes (from dinner) overnight. I'm a very strange person! Although I think Col is trying to brainwash me, as he often tells me life still goes on even if there are a few dirty dishes in the sink. And oh, I'm gradually trying not to wash dirty dishes as I prep for dinner (a knife here, a cutting board there....). I do that with baking too. poe would understand. Hey, what's up with that?

Woah, that was some non-sense ramblings.

So onto the topic of coffee. The other day during worship team practice, we had a discussion about Starbucks. I don't even like it as much as Blenz (mmm belgian dark hot chocolate hello thar!!). My usual drink is a decaf americano misto. Sometimes it's with soy (that's the hub's usual order, but non-decaf). Sure, they charge you extra for the steamed milk. Yes, soy is more expensive so we get charged more for that. But almost $1.00 just for soy (it's like, $0.50 misto with milk + $0.45 for soy)?! And why is it only that snobby location in Terra Nova ding you twice, whereas every other location we've been to only ding you once for a milk OR soy misto?

Discuss.