Asian Orange Chicken

 I've been craving Asian food something fierce lately. I can't just order Door Dash any longer living where we do. So, I put in a grocery order and I dug out my Asian ingredients and went to work. It was time to make my weekly grocery order anyhow.

I can't say as I was very pleased with the orange that Fred Meyer picked out for me. It was half green. It's a good thing that I only needed a teaspoon of zest or they would have heard from me.

I bought some rock sugar at an Asian market last week when we went to Vancouver. I've been anxious to try it out.

I also minced up a whole lot of garlic.

I bought a 2 pound pack of chicken tenders. I used half tonight and baked off the other half to use for tomorrow night. I'll be making Arroz Chaufa (Peruvian Fried Rice). 

Asian food requires scallions. I don't care what type it is. I don't care which country's cuisine it is. Green onions are required.

The sauce. It has soy sauce in it. There's also orange juice, orange zest, apple cider vinegar, rice wine vinegar and some hot sauce.

The chicken gets cut up into bite-sized pieces and coated in some cornstarch.

I fried the chicken up in batches.

After it was all browned and cooked through, I added all the chicken back into the pan, scooted it to the sides and added in the garlic and rock sugar. 

After the rock sugar melted down, I added the sauce. It thickens pretty fast. 

Add in the scallions and toss them in the sauce.

YUM! You'll never need to order Orange Chicken again! Serve over hot rice.

Asian Orange Chicken

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons avocado oil
4 green onions, thinly sliced

For the sauce:
1/2 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon orange zest
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2-1 teaspoon (or more) Sriracha sauce
1/3 cup chicken broth
1 ounce rock sugar (or just use 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
2-1/2 teaspoons cornstarch

Mix all the sauce ingredients except for the garlic and rock sugar. If using granulated sugar, mix it into the sauce, as well. Set aside.
Put 1/2 cup cornstarch into a plastic bag and shake the chicken pieces in it. Remove and shake off excess cornstarch.
Heat oil in a wok or skillet over high heat. Brown the chicken in the avocado oil, in batches, until lightly browned.
Once all the chicken is browned, add all the chicken back into the pan and scoot to the sides. Add the garlic and rock sugar to the pan and cook for about 30 seconds or so, until you can smell the garlic and the rock sugar melts down. Add the sauce in and stir until very thick. Toss to coat the chicken thoroughly. Add in green onions and toss once more. Serve immediately over hot rice.

Braised Potatoes & Chicken Thighs With Scallion Butter Sauce

 It appears that we got through that atmospheric river with minimal damage. I think we sustained a knocked over trellising pole that is cemented into a 5 gallon bucket and our arch blew over.

We will rebuild.

I did get potatoes planted and I planted out some of my old wooden raised beds with spring greens, radishes and turnips. I planted various types. I am going to stagger planting and I'll seed more stuff in 2 weeks from now...fill in the blanks, so to speak. I do love to practice the art of cramscaping!

In the meantime, I needed to figure out what to make for dinner tonight. I had originally thought about making Chicken Cacciatore but, over the years, I've had that so many times that I'm, quite frankly, rather bored with that recipe. I knew I wanted a braised dish but I didn't want to use canned tomatoes. I can only eat so much citrus because I have a sensitivity to citrus and I've been eating oranges like crazy.

This recipe evolved from there.

I even dug out my cast iron skillet so that I could properly braise in it. I have a small 8-inch skillet and it works perfectly for portion control for the 2 of us. With this recipe, you'll definitely need portion control. It's that friggin' delicious!

I prepped everything ahead of time. There's bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, diced red onion, sliced lemon, lemon juice, butter, garlic and scallion. You'll also need to peel up a large baking potato, as well. You're going to boil the potato until it's barely fork tender. 

The thighs get browned up in a cast iron skillet (use one that can go into the oven). Brown for 5 minutes on one side, turn them over and cook for 5 minutes on the other side. By this time, your potato should be cooked. Just drain it and set aside to cool just a bit.

Don't rush it. Let them brown. You'll thank me later when you taste them. 

Once the chicken is nicely browned, add in the other ingredients and pour in the chicken broth. Don't add the lemon juice or butter yet. Reserve those. 

I covered my skillet with foil and popped it into a preheated 400 degree oven. I set a timer for 35 minutes. The timing made perfectly cooked, tender, fall apart chicken.

Melt the butter in the hot skillet once it comes out of the oven and drizzle with lemon juice. Enjoy!

Braised Potatoes & Chicken Thighs With Scallion Butter Sauce

Serves 2

4 chicken thighs
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large russet baking size potato, peeled and cut into 8 pieces
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 small red onion, diced
French grey salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup chicken broth
Juice of half of a lemon and the other half sliced thinly
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 thinly sliced scallions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Boil potato until barely fork tender. Drain and set aside.
Heat olive oil in a cast iron skillet that can also go into the oven. Season chicken on both sides, to taste, with freshly cracked black pepper and French grey salt. Brown chicken, skin side down,  in skillet, for 5 minutes, or until golden brown. Turn over and brown the other side.
Once chicken is golden brown, nestle the potato pieces in with the chicken, sprinkle the onions, garlic and lemon slices over the top. Add 1/4 cup chicken broth. Bring to a simmer, cover skillet and put in preheated oven for 35 minutes or until chicken is 165 degrees on a food thermometer.
Remove skillet from oven. Remove foil cover. Gently lift a piece of chicken up and add the butter and very gently move butter around until it is melted. Drizzle lemon juice over the top and sprinkle with scallions.
Serve.

Cod Mappas & A Bonus Tikka Curry Paste Recipe

 We're getting yet another atmospheric river. We ran into the laundromat to get that weekly chore done and out of the way and I stopped by the store on the way home. It was sunny when we walked in and raining when we walked out. We weren't in there very long, either. Anyhow, it's supposed to be rainy and windy for the next few days, at least. I figured it would be a good day for a lighter fish dinner. I had a nice filet of cod and this recipe just fit the bill nicely.

This dish gets served over Basmati rice. You could do this with halibut, too. It would be delicious!

First, before you do anything, make the Tikka Curry Paste. This is super simple and it blitzes up in a few seconds in a food processor.

Tikka Curry Paste

2 cloves garlic
1 red chili pepper with seeds removed
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 teaspoons garam masala
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon avocado oil
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons roughly chopped cilantro
Pinch of sea salt

Process all in food processor until everything is smooth and no big pieces remain.

You'll want to set this aside until the recipe calls for it.

You'll want to baby the onions along until they get some really great golden color on them. This part, you can't rush it. It takes time.

It really starts to turn into something special once you add in the Tikka Masala Paste.

Then it gets hit with coconut milk. I let it simmer for a bit. 

Once it simmers for a few minutes, I added in the cod chunks. These simmer for about 5 minutes or so, until they are cooked through.

This is what it looks like before you garnish with some chopped fresh cilantro. 

Cod Mappas
Serves 2

1 tablespoon avocado oil
2 small red onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 pound (2 large) roma tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoon Tikka Masala Sauce (see recipe above)
1 (15 ounce) can coconut milk
1 pound cod, cut into bite-sized chunks
Chopped cilantro

In a skillet, over low heat, cook onions in avocado oil, until very soft and golden brown. This will take quite a while. Add garlic and tomatoes. Cook about 5 minutes. Add Tikka Curry Paste and cook for 4-5 more minutes. Add coconut milk, bring to a boil.
Add fish and gently simmer for 5-8 minutes or until  fish is  cooked through. Sprinkle with cilantro. Serve over Basmati rice.

Hawaiian Shoyu Chicken

 Bob has an upcoming medical procedure that I won't go into on a cooking blog. Anyhow, tonight is the last night he can eat a regular diet. After this, for a few days, he goes on a low fiber diet and then a straight liquid diet. Anyhow, he shoveled a yard and a half of soil for me today and filled several raised beds. He deserves a tasty dinner on his last night of normal food for a while.

I ordered the shoyu sauce from Amazon. Here is what I ordered. It's not the cheapest stuff on the planet, but I don't think you could really make Shoyu Chicken without it.

 

This recipe is made using skin-on, bone-in chicken pieces. You'll want roughly 2 pounds. What pieces you use is entirely up to you. I chose thighs. I'd make this recipe using wings, too.
You want to brown them in a tablespoon of oil. I use canola as it is a heart healthy neutral flavored oil. Again, in your kitchen, use what you want. I probably wouldn't use olive oil, though. Thoroughly brown the chicken on both sides.

While the chicken is browning, mix up the sauce (see recipe below) and prep the ginger and the garlic. 

Definitely make sure the chicken is browned. It will make a difference later on. Be patient. Don't rush it.

After the chicken is uniformly golden color, add the sauce, ginger and garlic. Bring to a boil, lower the heat to low, cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Turn each piece over, cover, simmer another 10 minutes. 

After 20 minutes, the chicken will be a dark brown color. This is when you remove the lid and turn up the heat a bit and start cooking down the sauce. 

As the sauce reduces, it coats the chicken pieces and turns them mahogany. Keep boiling until you have a sauce that is the consistency of syrup.

This is just damn delicious, no matter how you want to look at it.

I served this with some coconut rice and some Hawaiian Mac Salad.

Aloha!

Hawaiian Shoyu Chicken

2 pounds chicken pieces
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/2 cup shoyu soy sauce
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoon rice vinegar
4 cloves garlic, smashed
2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

Brown chicken in a skillet, over medium heat, in a tablespoon of oil. In the meantime, in a medium bowl, whisk together shoyu sauce, water and sugar. Set aside.
When chicken is golden brown, add the sauce mixture along with the garlic and ginger. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Turn chicken over and repeat.
When chicken has simmered for 20 minutes, remove lid and turn heat to medium-high and reduce sauce until it is the consistency of syrup, continually basting and turning the chicken pieces to coat.
Serve with rice.

Pork Brauhaus Goulash

For dinner, last night, we needed some good ol' fashioned comfort food. I'm not really into the stuff that quite a few Americans think of as being comfort food. To me, comfort embodies European peasant food. It's filling. It's hearty. It utilizes few ingredients while maximizing on flavor. This goulash recipe checks off all of the boxes.

I used a pork tenderloin to make this dish. It was tender. It was succulent. Bob was, easily, able to eat it.

I cut the pork tenderloin into bite sized pieces. It gets browned in a few tablespoons of butter. While that is going on, you'll want to...

grate up a large carrot (or 2 small ones), dice up an onion and mince a clove or two of garlic. Just put it onto a plate and set it aside for a few minutes until you need it. 

Do you see that liquid in the bottom of the pan? You want to cook the pork until that all disappears. 

It will look like this once that happens. This is when you add the vegetables and garlic, mustard, tomato paste,  along with the salt, pepper and smoked paprika. 

Cook that all for around 3-4 minutes. Then add...

a cup of German beer. I used a nice German stout. If you don't have a German beer available to you, try a Black Butte Porter or a Guinness would work really well, too.  Don't use a domestic American beer. That would not taste good at all. It actually wouldn't taste.
Cook until the beer evaporates.

It will go from this to...

this. What you are doing is concentrating the beer flavor. That's why I do not recommend using an domestic American beer. They do not taste good and they wouldn't have enough flavor to hold up to this recipe. You really need to use a stout.

After the beer cooks down, you add in vegetable broth and bring it all to a boil. Cover, put on low heat and simmer for an hour.
Five minutes before it's done, add...

the sour cream. Combine thoroughly. If you need to thicken it up, use a cornstarch slurry. That's simple to make. Mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with a few tablespoons of cold water. Pour it in, stir until it's as thick as you'd like it to be. 

Serve over mashed potatoes and enjoy!

Pork Brauhaus Goulash

1 pork tenderloin, between 1.25-1.5 pounds, cut into bite sized cubes
2 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 large carrot, grated
1 cup stout beer
3 cups vegetable broth
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
Salt & pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon sour cream

Brown pork in butter, in large skillet, over medium heat. Cook until all the liquid that is released from the pork has evaporated. Add onion, garlic, carrots, mustard, tomato paste, salt, pepper and paprika. Cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring constantly. Add beer. Cook until beer has evaporated from pan. Add broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 1 hour. At the 55 minute mark, stir in the sour cream until combined. At that time, if you feel it's necessary, thicken with a cornstarch slurry (1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed with 2 tablespoons water). Serve over mashed potatoes.

Blueberry Sour Cream Pie

 Our temperatures here have been fluctuating. We had beautiful sunny days, up in the 60's. We had some very cold nights. Now, we're under yet another atmospheric river and we're getting dumped on with rain. Last night, there were some wicked wind gusts. I'm glad I didn't insist that my 12-foot long portable (probably flimsy) plastic greenhouse be set up. It wouldn't have made it through. 

We finished up watching 1883 on Paramount+ this morning. I won't post any spoilers but I will say that the show was one of the best shows I've ever seen. I can't wait for more! 

I need to get my tomato, pepper and eggplant seeds going here in the next week or so. We planted a small asparagus bed, with 6 crowns for now. I do have asparagus seeds, so I'll be adding to it. We also planted 10 red raspberry bushes, 2 gold raspberries and 2 blue blueberry bushes. I'm going to be taking cuttings from my Pink Lemonade blueberries and I'm trading those for quite a few things to expand my berry garden: mulberries, 3 colors of currants: red, white and black, purple raspberries, black raspberries, (just need white to have all the colors), 2 types of figs, gooseberries and Concord grapes. I didn't realize how much these pink blueberries are sought after! Who knew??!! So, I'll be using my greenhouse for berry/fruit cuttings to get established as well as other things.

I put up another 5 pound batch of sauerkraut and will post a blog about that in a few weeks after it gets sufficiently sour for us.

Today, however, I'd like to talk about a recipe that I created this morning after looking at a Lemon Sour Cream Pie recipe. I have lemons, for sure, but I also bought some really nice looking blueberries (speaking of which, in the next few years, I plan on NOT buying blueberries again from anywhere). I wasn't exactly sure what we were going to do with the blueberries, but a quart was only $3.50, so it was one of those deals that was just too good to pass up but it was an impulse purchase. I know that Bob was talking about wanting a slice of pie the other night, so this sounded like the ticket. Anyhow, looking at sour cream lemon pies turned to perusing single crust blueberry pie recipes and this recipe is a result of that.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

It starts out as you would think with a bit of flour, a pinch of salt, some sugar and an egg.

I also used a cup of sour cream. This recipe is very helpful when you have a container of sour cream that is nearing the expiration date and you can only eat just so many baked potatoes. 

I only use the best vanilla extract. By "the best" I mean vanilla extract that I made myself, using a fifth of locally made craft vodka with around 20 to 25 vanilla beans soaking in that sucker. There's no better vanilla extract on the planet, as far as I'm concerned.

Everything is whisked together until nice and smooth.

I like that this only uses a single crust. I had some pre-made crusts hanging out in the freezer and taking up space that could be used by more important things. I'll use the other crust to make a Buttermilk pie. When I do that, I'll post about it.

The blueberries get gently mixed into the sour cream mixture. Make sure to fully coat them all.

Then pour it all into a the pie shell. It's not going to look like it's enough filling. It's supposed to look that way. You'll understand later on. I promise. Spread the blueberries out evenly throughout the crust. Pop this in the oven and set a timer for 30 minutes. 

In the meantime, make the topping for the pie. This is the standard flour, sugar, butter streusel mixture that we're all familiar with. It's pretty straight forward. 

This is what you're pie will look like when you pull it out 30 minutes later. See? I told you that there was plenty of filling in there. 

Sprinkle the streusel mixture evenly over the top of the pie and put it back into the oven for 15 or so minutes. I have a little RV propane oven, so mine took an additional 25 minutes. Just check after 15 minutes to see how it's starting to brown up. 

I don't let my streusel topping brown up too much because Bob wouldn't be able to eat it. It makes a stunning looking pie. 

No matter how you look at it, it looks scrumptious!

Blueberry Sour Cream Pie

1 pie shell for a deep dish pie, either pre-made or make your own

Filling:
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup sour cream
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 quart fresh blueberries, rinsed and well drained

Streusel Topping:
3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1-1/2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix all the filling ingredients, except blueberries, in a large mixing bowl, with a whisk, until completely smooth and all ingredients are well incorporated. Gently fold in blueberries, coating them all, taking care to not smash any.

Bake in a preheated oven for 30 minutes.

In the meantime, make the streusel topping by cutting the cold butter into the flour and sugar until all the dry ingredients have been combined. I use a fork for this. Set aside.

After 30 minutes, remove pie from oven, sprinkle streusel mixture evenly over the top of the pie. Put back into the oven between 15-25 minutes or until the struesel has browned up to your liking.

Remove from oven. Let cool thoroughly before slicing. Refrigerate leftovers.

Enjoy!