Lentil and Sausage Stew

We tried a new recipe this week that we really loved: lentil and sausage stew, adapted from this recipe on Budget Bytes (one of my favorite blogs to read). It combines a lot of ingredients we like - Italian sausage, lentils and chard - and is so comforting on cold nights.

Ingredients:

I didn't make that many changes to the recipe, other than substituting a bag of fresh kaleidoscope chard (I said I loved that stuff and I meant it) for the frozen spinach. I ended up using sweet Italian pork sausage instead of turkey or chicken (my usual preference) since that was all they had at Trader Joe's that day, but I think any Italian sausage works just fine. I love Italian sausage.

- 1 lb sweet Italian sausage ($4.07)

- 1 medium onion ($0.50)

- 3 carrots ($0.57)

- 1/2 bunch of celery ($0.80)

- 3 cloves of garlic ($0.10)

- 1 lb brown lentils ($1)

- 2 tbsp chicken bouillon ($0.60)

- 6 cups water ($0)

- 1 tsp cayenne ($0.05)

- 1 tsp paprika ($0.05)

- 1 tsp cumin ($0.05)

- 1 tsp oregano ($0.05)

- 10 oz of kaleidoscope chard ($1.99)

This recipe cost close to $10 for me, even though almost everything was from Trader Joe's or Costco. Groceries are always more expensive in our part of the country. But I still consider this to be a really affordable recipe as it made at least 5 meals (for one).

Process:

Making the stew was really simple. It took some time for prep and also for the lentils to cook, but the basic steps are: brown the sausages, add the mirepoix and garlic, add the lentils + water + bouillon + spices, cook covered on low for 30 minutes once simmering, add chard and cook for 15 more minutes. 

I pretty much followed the recipe as written (substituting the chard for the spinach at the same point in the recipe) so for detailed step by step instructions, that would be the best place to go. I did add some extra water during the chard step, but I think that's covered in the recipe too.

Review:

We really enjoyed this stew. I think we liked it even better than the curried lentil and chard stew we made earlier this year. The key is really the Italian sausage. It infuses the stew with so much flavor. I also liked the brown lentils here, as they retain their shape more than red lentils do, which adds so much more texture to the stew. This is definitely going into the permanent rotation as we really loved it.

Corner Bakery Cafe

Ever since M and I moved from Chicago, I hadn't been to Corner Bakery Cafe. It seems like almost every day I was grabbing a sandwich and soup combo since it was right across the street from my first office. It's been over 8 years since I had a chance to eat there, and when I found out that they had opened a new branch near the office of my client in Rhode Island, I was extremely excited.

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup and Chicken Pomodori Panini 

When I went, my favorite meal was a soup and sandwich combo of their Roasted Tomato Basil Soup and their Chicken Pomodori Panini so obviously I had to get that again... twice. I had to go twice because I was so excited the first time I basically inhaled my food happily but way too quickly. The good thing is that it tasted just as good as I remembered it.

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

The roasted tomato basil soup comes topped with their homemade spicy croutons. They add a nice balance with the mild spiciness and also a bit of crunch to the soup. The soup itself is amazing, though. It has a more than subtle sweetness from the tomatoes themselves, and the basil adds an herbaceous flavor to the whole ensemble. They also added garlic which adds just a hint of flavor to the soup. What I like the most about this soup is that it's not salty. Corner Bakery really lets the sweetness dominate the overall flavor profile.

Chicken Pomodori Panini

I guess the official name for this is Chicken Pomodori on Sourdough. It is described as "all-natural chicken, fresh basil and spinach, oven-roasted tomatoes and provolone cheese with pesto mayo" on their website, and the flavors of the sandwich complement the soup extremely well. The cheese and pesto mayo add more saltiness to balance out the sweetness of the roasted tomatoes as well a little creaminess. The chicken is sliced thin to not dominate each bite, and the bread is crisped perfectly to offer a bite and crunch while staying nice and soft inside. The basil adds that same herbaceous flavor as it does with the soup, and the spinach adds more leafy texture as well as health benefits.

Separately these two components are really tasty, but my favorite way of eating this is to dunk the sandwich into the soup and letting soften up a bit while absorbing some of the sweetness as well. I'm not saying you have to eat it that way, but if you grew up dipping grilled cheese into tomato soup, this might make sense for you.

Blast from the Past

Back when we lived in Chicago, we went to Trader Joe's every so often, mostly picking up bags of nasi goreng and biryani. There were many days that we just popped open one of those bags, threw the contents into a wok, added a can of chicken breast, and called it dinner. It was quick, easy, and full of tasty spices, and it had protein and vegetables to go with the rice.

We've had a bag of biryani residing in our freezer for years, and this weekend we finally got around to making it. I have no idea if they even sell this at Trader Joe's anymore. I know the nasi goreng is gone, which is disappointing as we liked that one even more. It's an inexpensive light dinner - maybe $3 for the bag of biryani and a couple of dollars for the Costco canned chicken - and really simple (empty the frozen contents straight into the wok and heat for a few minutes without even needing to defrost).

The biryani has onions, peas, red peppers, apples, raisins and spices mixed into the rice. Even though it had been awhile since we had it, it was still as tasty as we remembered. Making it brought back a lot of memories of the way we used to "cook" and all the dinners we had both in Chicago and here in NYC with our favorite nasi goreng and biryani combinations. I think I'll have to look on our next visit to Trader Joe's to see if it's still there!

Week 6 - Jamaican

The theme for week 6 of the challenge was Jamaican. I actually made our Jamaican dinner prior to doing week 5 of the challenge, but it has taken me awhile to finish this post. During planning, I wasn't sure what to do for Jamaican week. We recently wrapped up our Jamaican exploration for WorldEats (although we haven't blogged about any of it) and we had some really great Jamaican food. There was no way that, in my first foray into Jamaican cooking, I could match anything we had. The jerk chicken from Freda's even made it onto my top 10 list for 2013. I was torn. Should I attempt a jerk chicken recipe, knowing it probably wouldn't come close? Should I tackle something I had a better chance of succeeding with on the first try, like a stew or curry?

Not a very attractive plate, but that was the final product

In the end, I decided to go with the iconic Jamaican jerk chicken. I pulled up a bunch of different recipes online, but ultimately I chose to create my own by adapting two recipes - this recipe from Simply Recipes and this Nigella Lawson recipe from the Food Network. The chicken was a combination of the two recipes and the rice and peas was an adaptation of Nigella's. I just couldn't find one recipe that really clicked with me from beginning to end, so I did the best I could.

JERK CHICKEN

I had high hopes for the jerk chicken recipe. I hoped that I would have something new to add to my repertoire if it came out well, even if it didn't come close to Freda's. I would have settled for a tasty, spicy chicken dish.

Ingredients:

The ingredient list for the jerk chicken was rather long, but not full of difficult to find ingredients. We had a lot of the ingredients in the pantry, but just needed to pick up some dark rum, molasses and habanero peppers. None of those are usually on our shopping list (although I suppose we won't have to buy rum or molasses for some time now).

Ingredients for the jerk chicken marinade

- 1/2 cup white vinegar ($0.15)

- 2 tbsp dark rum ($1)

- 2 habanero peppers ($0.16)

- 1 red onion ($0.80)

- 4 green onion tops ($0.32)

- 1 tbsp dried thyme ($0.10)

- 2 tbsp olive oil ($0.10)

- 2 tsp salt ($0.05)

- 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)

- 4 tsp ground allspice ($0.25)

- 4 tsp ground cinnamon ($0.25)

- 4 tsp ground nutmeg ($0.25)

- 4 tsp ground ginger ($0.25)

- 2 tsp molasses ($0.40)

- 2 large chicken breast pieces ($2.50)

- juice of 1 lime ($0.29)

The recipe comes in under $7 for the chicken portion, which is lower than I expected. The bottles of rum and molasses weren't cheap, but the recipe didn't call for that much of either.

Process:

The jerk chicken preparation started the night before, so we had to plan ahead. The recipes do say that you can marinate for less time, but I opted for overnight for maximum flavor. 

All of the steps in the photo above (#1-6 listed below) happen during the marinating process the night before.

1. Prepare vegetables - chop green onion tops, red onion and habanero peppers. [The green onions and red onions shouldn't take that long to chop, since they're just going to get blended anyway and don't have to be chopped to any specific size. But there were issues with our red onions, more specifically a brown interior, that I hadn't planned on. The habanero pepper took awhile since I was extra-cautious about the heat and preventing any burning side effects.]

2. Put all ingredients (other than chicken and lime juice) into a blender.

3. Blend until mostly smooth. [It just looked like brown paste.]

4. Cut chicken breast into pieces of desired size [I didn't want to use two whole pieces and opted for smaller pieces] and place in marinating dish. Coat chicken with lime juice.

5. Pour marinade from blender jar into marinating dish.

6. Make sure all chicken is coated with marinade. [In our case, the chicken was submerged in the marinade-lime juice combination.]

When ready to cook dinner...

7. Line rimmed baking sheet with foil. Place chicken pieces onto the baking sheet.

8. Place any remaining marinade in a saucepan. Bring to boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer for at least ten minutes. [I let it simmer for awhile. It reduced down a lot and the concentrated paste/sauce really had a nice spice.]

9. Bake chicken at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes (or until chicken is done). [The recipes had the chicken going for much longer, but I think since my pieces were so small, they were done much faster than I had planned.] Top with the extra sauce if desired.

The jerk chicken was pretty moist when I first pulled it out, but after I let it warm in the oven while the rice cooked, it dried out quite a bit. That was disappointing, especially since I had tried it when I first pulled it from the oven, and it was so much better then. Time your jerk chicken better than I did!

It was an interesting recipe. It was a little more tart and full of citrus-like flavor than we thought it would be and more than other jerk chicken dishes we've had before. We aren't sure what ingredients they use in "real" jerk chicken (other than using scotch bonnets instead of habaneros, which I couldn't find), but this tasted different from what we remembered. There might be something missing to balance the flavors here. In the end, it wasn't bad (other than the texture from ending up a little overdone), but it wasn't as good as we hoped it would be. It's no replacement for a place like Freda's and their jerk chicken.

RICE AND PEAS

To go with the jerk chicken, I decided to make the standard rice and peas side. I had tried this (a different recipe though) once before but that recipe didn't taste like any rice and peas we'd ever had before. We hoped this one would taste more like what we were expecting.

Ingredients:

- 1 can blackeye peas ($0.70)

- 1 tbsp coconut oil ($0.10)

- 1 yellow onion ($0.50)

- 1 small red chile pepper ($0.16)

- 3 cloves of garlic ($0.05)

- 1 cup basmati rice (free - won the rice at a health fair)

- 14 oz can of coconut milk ($0.99)

- 1.5 cups chicken broth ($0.15)

- 1 tsp dried thyme ($0.05)

- 1 tsp salt ($0.05)

The total for the rice was about $3 since we didn't buy the rice. If we had it would have cost a little more, but not that much more.

Process:

Unfortunately I forgot to take photos for most of the rice cooking process, but here are the steps:

1. Heat coconut oil in saucepan. Fry onion for about 5 minutes, until softened and slightly browned.

2. Add chopped chile and garlic.

3. Stir in rice and make sure it is "slicked with oil."

4. Pour in coconut milk, chicken broth and the drained blackeye peas.

5. Bring to boil, cover, turn the heat to low, and cook for 15 minutes.

6. When all liquid is absorbed into the rice, the dish is done. Sprinkle with dried thyme and salt (if desired).

We really liked the rice. It was full of coconut flavor, a little sweeter than we were expecting, but quite good. We would definitely make this again.

OVERALL REVIEW

I'm glad I took the leap and tried to make jerk chicken. It was challenging - my first time playing with habaneros, my attempt to make the recipes taste similar to what we've had before, trying to find affordable molasses - and it wasn't as good as what you can get in the restaurants. But I'm satisfied that I tried. At least now I know what I can make with the recipes I found and we can make an educated decision on whether we'd rather spend our dollars on groceries to make jerk chicken or at an authentic Jamaican restaurant.

Jerk chicken isn't one of those ridiculously expensive dishes. Usually, for $15 or less at a restaurant, you can get a giant plate of chicken with sides of rice and peas or other sides of your choosing. Of course, the price of our dinner here (about $10) made dinner for two, but it just didn't taste the same and it didn't taste as good. Since I did a significant amount of recipe research, I'm not really sure what else I can do to make it taste as wonderful as the ones we loved in the past. I won't rule out trying another recipe, but for now, I think we'll leave Jamaican food (jerk chicken, at the very least) to the experts. It's worth it for us.

Peasant Beets

I've really become a big fan of Trader Joe's washed and cut kaleidoscope chard. When I made the curried lentil and chard stew, I picked up two bags to use but only ended up using one. As a result I had a bag of chard to use up and I wanted to do something more than a simple saute or steaming. A variation of this recipe on Food 52 for French peasant beets seemed like the perfect answer. 

Everything from Trader Joe's or Costco except the wine

I made a bunch of modifications to that recipe to account for what we had at home since I had no plans to go to the grocery store to pick up goat cheese or raw beets with greens. Using the beets package we already had also made this more convenient as it eliminated a bunch of steps and waiting time. The whole thing only cost about $5:

- 2.5 tbsp butter ($0.23)
- 1 shallot ($0.25)
- 8 oz of beets ($2)
- one 10 oz bag of kaleidoscope chard ($1.99)
- 2 tbsp white wine ($0.30)
- 2 tbsp water ($0)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 1/2 cup feta cheese ($0.40)

This was such a simple dish to make. First, melt butter.

Add shallots and saute.

Next add the beets (but I forgot to take a picture of them alone). Then after a few minutes, the chard.

Once everything has sauteed for about 5 minutes, add the wine and water, cover it and let it cook.

Once the greens have soaked up most of the moisture and wilted, it's all ready to go!

I tried the beets and chard both with and without feta and couldn't decide which I liked better, so I ended up sprinkling feta on half of the dish so we could compare. I think in the end the side with feta was a little bit better.

But both sides had such vibrant flavors from the beets and the chard. A nice natural sweet, salty and bitter combination that worked so well together. And the chard was so tender.

This was a really healthy side dish to go along with our baked chicken (and helped counteract our unhealthy custard and cupcake from that day). We would definitely make this again. So simple, healthy and tasty.

Scarpetta

Last year we went down to Scarpetta to celebrate A's birthday. We were excited to try the pasta there, but did face one challenge with choosing dishes. We gave up red meat for Lent so we had more factors to consider than we usually do!

The meal started with the famous bread basket, which had 4 types of bread - Italian loaf, stromboli, focaccia and regular rolls.

Our favorite was the stromboli, which was bread with some meat, cheese and vegetables baked into it. We got another bread basket just to get more stromboli. Not sure what type of meat was in the stromboli, and M didn't even notice it while eating it. A thought it might have been pork salami or pancetta, so we just assumed this didn't mess up our Lenten fast.

The bread basket was accompanied by three sides - mascarpone butter, tomato and eggplant spread, and citrus olive oil. Our favorite was definitely the tomato and eggplant spread. We could eat jars of that. The citrus olive oil was a good break from the usual olive oil that comes with bread.

We decided to get two appetizers to share. One was the famous creamy polenta appetizer, which came topped with a fricassee of truffled mushrooms. This was creamy and delicious, but still felt light. The mushrooms added a great earthy flavor.

For our second appetizer, we went with the crispy fritto misto, a mix of lightly fried seafood, vegetables (eggplant, artichokes, zucchini), herbs and lemon. Even though it was all fried food, it wasn't heavy and the herbs gave it so much flavor.

We each ordered a pasta, which was where the avoidance of meat was most noticeable in winnowing down our options. A went with the roasted beet casonsei, which came with smoked ricotta, pistachios and poppy seeds (and was reminiscent of the casonzei we had at Babbo a few years ago).  The subtle sweetness and earthiness of the beets paired nicely with the more pungent smoked ricotta. Much like at Babbo, the pairing tasted faintly of bacon due to the smokiness. It was heavier than the other dishes we had because of the creamy sauce, but it was quite tasty.

M got the black farfalle with lobster and basil bread crumbs. This was our favorite of the two pastas and probably our favorite dish of the night. The farfalle itself was perfectly cooked and so good. There was also a generous amount of lobster mixed in, which made it worth the price. (We didn't get the $24 spaghetti with tomato and basil, even though people rave about it, since it just seemed too pricey for what it was.)

We also split an entree, which we probably didn't need to get, but we didn't know we would be so full after the pasta dishes. We got the fennel dusted black cod, with concentrated tomatoes, mantecato and black olive oil. This was pretty good, a soft piece of fish along with root vegetables, but the pasta was definitely better.

We decided, since we were so full, that we would just split one dessert. But when the dessert course came out, there was a plate of petit fours (not sure if everyone got this or if it was a special birthday treat) for A's birthday. There was chocolate cake with dried cherry, marshmallow, date fudge, chocolate covered orange, and raspberry jelly.

The dessert we ordered was the meyer lemon catalana, which came with a creamy cake, red beet confit, angel food cake, grapefruit, candied fennel, lemon creme, and some foam. We really enjoyed this, especially the beets. Taking a small piece of each element of the dessert together made for a wonderful bite.

We really enjoyed our meal at Scarpetta. It's no surprise why it's been successful over the years and expanded into a mini-empire. We hadn't tried it in other cities before because we figured we could just try it at home. We would definitely return for more pasta!

Habanero Express

Yet another post from last summer that I wrote but never finalized... This time, from mid-August!

After a late summer night at the hospital, I went for a family dinner at the Upper East Side branch of Bareburger. It wasn't my first visit to Bareburger, but it's their first appearance on this blog. We are fans of Bareburger, a local chain which has many branches throughout the boroughs of NYC (and is expanding rapidly throughout the country). The burgers aren't cheap, but the quality is high and the ingredients are good.

This time I decided to go with the Habanero Express turkey burger on a multigrain bun (it's mix and match between combinations and type of protein). I was in the mood for spicy and bold flavors, so something with the name "Habanero Express" should work, right?

The Habanero Express burger came with pepper jack cheese, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, poblano pepper relish, raw red onions, spicy pickle chips and habanero chipotle mayo. Sounded like there should be spice to me!

Although the burger tasted really good, I thought it was pretty mild. It could be that my tolerance level was high at the time or my allergies had dulled my senses or maybe it really just wasn't that spicy. The poblano relish did have a really great flavor, all the other ingredients were fresh, the turkey burger itself was well-seasoned and juicy, and overall I liked it. Just not as spicy as I expected it would be.

I would get this burger again. I like Bareburger because the ingredients - organic and locally-sourced - are just better than your average burger joint. You can make your own burger or go with their many delicious sounding combinations. So many options and all really tasty!

Spinach Tortellini

Way back in the summer, I said I was going to start putting up individual posts reviewing different Trader Joe's products (instead of one giant post like the one I'd been building all summer)... but since then I never posted about those products! It's long overdue that I finish that project. (Can you tell I am going through the draft archives right now?) First up, the spinach tortellini ($1.99).

We were really excited to try this. I love tortellini - plain, with sauces, in salads, etc - so I was hoping this would be good since it was so affordable. Unfortunately, this was mostly a miss for us. It wasn't terrible but it just had very little flavor of its own. It was like eating a bowl of garden marinara sauce with some chewy (in a good way) pasta pieces. Tortellini stuffed with spinach, ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan should have had more flavor than they did. Even without any sauce, the texture of the tortellini was fine, but there was really no flavor - spinach or cheese - present.

Buy Again? No. It's really cheap (I think it's the cheapest tortellini there) but it wasn't what we were hoping for. The only reason we would get it again would be to use in a recipe where the flavor of the tortellini itself doesn't matter that much and it's just there as a "vehicle."

Macadamia Mojo

Sometime last fall I went on a bar-buying spree. It was a combination of coupons, store sales, and wanting to branch out from my usual chocolate-coconut Luna bars and Greek yogurt bars that I keep on hand. I found a bunch of bars that were well-priced after sales and stocked up. One of the bars I picked up for the first time was the Clif Mojo - a "sweet and salty trail mix bar" - in the white chocolate macadamia flavor. 

When I broke open the package, my first thought was that this bar looked a lot like a Rice Krispie treat in texture. Lots of little pieces held together by sticky stuff (that looked white like marshmallows even though that wasn't an ingredient). I wasn't that far off considering the first two ingredients are brown rice syrup and soy rice crisps. The bar also had white chocolate, pretzels, macadamia nuts, cashews, macadamia nut butter, and roasted soybeans (plus some other ingredients I wouldn't be able to identify). It sounded like there would be a good balance of salty (pretzels and nuts), sweet (chocolate, rice crisps and syrups) and nutty/earthy (from all the various nuts). Although I'm not usually a fan of trail mix (because of all the nuts), I thought I might like this combination. 

Not so much. Although it sounded like it would be a good cross between salty and sweet, the bar was just really heavy on the salty side. I barely got any sweet from it at all. I could only get through half of it before tiring of it, so I left the rest for A to try, as he is a bigger fan of trail mix than I am. But he didn't like it any more than I did, also finding it to be not very balanced and more salty than sweet. He also didn't know what flavor it was outside of "trail mix" and didn't taste any white chocolate or macadamia. Normally macadamias have a nice, rich flavor, but he got none of that, and he had no sweetness at all from any white chocolate. Perhaps some other flavors of Clif Mojo bars are better, but I don't think we'll get this one again.

March Custard Calendar

I can't believe it's already March. Where did February go?! It went by in a flash and we only ended up getting custard once despite our best intentions. There are some interesting new flavors this month that we're looking forward to trying. Here's the March line-up:

Monday - mint chocolate chip (8/10)
Tuesday - Boston cream pie (7/10)
Wednesday - black sesame citrus (we are really intrigued by this one)
Thursday - pineapple brown sugar (6/10)
Friday - salty chocolate peanut butter (8/10)
Saturday - golden sponge crème cake (the other new one we are really interested in)
Sunday - buttery caramel cocoa nib (8/10)

This month is a pretty good line-up overall. Hopefully we can get out to try golden sponge crème cake tomorrow!

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

Homemade cookies from scratch are so delicious, but sometimes you just need the convenience of pre-made ready-to-bake cookies. Unlike a lot of regular cookies you can get at the store, they still get the soft middles of freshly baked cookies, but without all the time and effort.

We spotted these chocolate peppermint cookies made by Immaculate in the after-Christmas sale at Target. For $1.75, they were a great deal! Much cheaper than what you would usually pay for ready-to-bake cookies, and they were all natural ingredients (according to the packaging). Like most other cookies of their type, they were really easy to make. Just break apart the refrigerated cookie squares, pop them in the oven, and 15 minutes later you have warm, soft, chewy cookies.

Unfortunately, we didn't love them. There wasn't much chocolate flavor, at least not the chocolately fudgy taste that we were expecting. In his first bites, A didn't taste either chocolate or mint, just some not great flavor that is really hard to describe. The more we ate of the cookies, the more we tasted the mint (but not the chocolate). The mint got a little too intense for M and it was kind of a turn-off from the cookies. It tasted like there was just too much mint extract poured in to the mix. These cookies were a good deal but we wouldn't get these again.

Turkey Chili

We were at Panera recently for lunch and in addition to my usual Thai chicken salad (without wontons), I decided to try their new turkey chili as part of my pick two order. I love chili, especially in the winter.

Panera's turkey chili is made with antibiotic-free roasted turkey, garbanzos and kidney beans, slow cooked with tomatillos, corn, pasilla negro and ancho chili powders, cumin, edamame, diced onions, carrots, garlic and green chilies. (That's all in the product description. There's no way I'd be able to detect all that just from tasting it.)

The chili was really interesting, especially the inclusion of ingredients like edamame and garbanzos, which I haven't found in most chili recipes (at least not the ones I've seen). That gave the chili a really hearty and healthy feel, although it wasn't especially flavorful. I thought with all the different seasonings and chili powders that it would have a strong spicy flavor, but I didn't really get that until a few spoonfuls of spices accumulated on my tongue. It just didn't taste like it was packed with all those complex ingredients. I wouldn't call this my favorite chili and I've had better ones, but I would consider getting this again at Panera. It was pretty good and heartier than some of their other soups, and chili really is so perfect for these cold days.

John DeLucie's Chicken Pot Pie Soup

Hale and Hearty's last Chef's Series offering comes from John DeLucie of The Crown and The Lion fame. His soup is Chicken Pot Pie, and he tries to capture the rich, heartiness of a pot pie filling. Hale and Hearty describes the soup as "Acclaimed Chef John DeLucie brings us this terrific soup version of an American classic, straight from his innovative restaurant The Crown. A comforting blend of white meat chicken simmered with fresh vegetables, herbs and heavy cream."

Just missing a big puff pastry

The soup is indeed extremely warm and comforting, and it's chock full of goodness with peas, carrots, potatoes, and pearl onions mixed in with the creamy broth and white meat chicken. The only thing I was missing while eating this was a giant puff-pastry top to break up into the rich soup. I'm extremely glad that I came in on the first day of its offering because I know I will be going back to get more. If you're a fan of chicken pot pie, you owe it to yourself to try this. The only drawback to the soup is that it isn't the healthiest, but come on, it's chicken pot pie. What exactly were you expecting? It's the perfect warmth for the coming cold NYC winter days.

Week 8 - TV Show Inspired

The theme for Week 8 of the 52 week challenge was TV show inspired. (I didn't skip weeks 6 and 7, just haven't finished writing those posts yet!) This was the first theme that really stumped me. You could either re-create a dish featured on a show or come up with something inspired by a show, but, even though I watch a ton of TV, I had a really hard time coming up with any ideas at all. All I could think of were chicken fingers (Community), something with pineapples or snack food (Psych), or chocolate pudding (Walking Dead - I was trying to figure this out on the night of Carl's 112 oz indulgence). I went through the list of every single show we watch and finally inspiration struck - Kamekona's!

Source

Hawaii Five-0 is one of the few shows where you actually see people eating, and they are always indulging in shrimp dishes from Kamekona's shrimp truck (including some questionable combinations). The truck is based on the shrimp trucks that are popular in Oahu and one of the dishes that they specialize in is garlic butter shrimp (garlic scampi). We haven't been to Oahu together to visit the shrimp trucks, so we don't have anything to compare our creation with, but I'd like to believe it comes close since it was so delicious. I decided to pair the Hawaiian garlic butter shrimp with traditional sides of rice and mac salad.

Garlic Butter Shrimp

For the garlic butter shrimp, there were a lot of recipes online that I looked at to figure out how to tackle it (see here, here and here). Our recipe adaptation doesn't exactly match any of those, but it worked for us. A and I made this together and somehow it took us two hours (both prep and active time). But it was completely worth the time and effort!

The shrimp dish only required a few ingredients. It came out to about $12.75, which isn't bad at all for a seafood dish. Almost all of the cost is for the shrimp.

- 1 lb shrimp ($10)

- 3 heads of garlic ($0.50)

- 5 tbsp of olive oil (divided) ($0.95)

- 3 tbsp of clarified butter (divided) ($0.63)

- 1 tbsp lemon juice ($0.10)

- 1/2 cup flour ($0.30)

- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.05)

- 1/2 tsp pepper ($0.05)

- 1/2 tsp plus 1 tbsp paprika ($0.10)

- 1/2 tsp cayenne ($0.05)

Here's how we made our version of garlic butter shrimp:

1. Mince 3 heads of garlic. [You could always go lighter on the garlic but it's garlic shrimp! And we love garlic so much.]

2. Peel and devein shrimp (if they aren't already).

3. Mix the flour with 1/2 tsp cayenne and 1/2 tsp paprika in a shallow bowl. Lightly dust each shrimp in the flour mixture.

4. Heat a skillet over medium low heat. Add 4 tbsp olive oil and 2 tbsp clarified butter, and swirl it around the pan. Add all of the minced raw garlic and saute until tender and brown.

5. Add 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, 1 tbsp paprika, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp clarified butter and the lemon juice. 

6. Stir everything together and let the sauce develop.

7. Add shrimp in a single layer and let them cook for a few minutes.

8. Flip shrimp over and cook for a few minutes.

9. Remove from heat and stir the shrimp around in the garlic sauce to coat with more sauce. (Add the leftover sauce on top of the rice.)

The garlic shrimp were so good. We were completely in love with the garlic butter sauce. Not remotely healthy, so we can't eat this all the time, but this scampi sauce was so delicious. Really strong garlic flavor and also rich and buttery. So good.

Mac Salad

Although the shrimp from the shrimp trucks is often served just with two scoops of sticky white rice, I decided to go one step further and pay homage to the Hawaiian plate lunch. We've had this a few times in Maui and really enjoyed it. A plate lunch consists of a main dish with sides of sticky rice and mac salad. Hawaiians love their mac salad (and we do too). I found this recipe and followed it almost exactly (I added some more vegetables).

The mac salad ingredients were:

1 lb elbow macaroni ($0.99)
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar ($0.15)
2 cups 2% milk (divided) ($0.65)
2 cups mayonnaise (divided) ($1.98)
1 tbsp brown sugar ($0.05)
5 green onions ($0.40)
2 carrots ($0.38)
2 ribs of celery ($0.20)
Salt and pepper to taste ($0.10)

For detailed instructions, check out the inspiration recipe here, but the short version of the process is: cook elbow macaroni until very soft, add vinegar, prepare dressing (all non-vegetable ingredients except 1 cup mayo and 1/2 cup milk) while noodles cool, add dressing, cool, add remaining milk and mayo, add vegetables (which I prepped while noodles were cooking and cooling), mix it all up.

It wasn't exactly the same as the mac salad we had in Maui, but that might be because we didn't use the same mayo that they do in Hawaii. But we still enjoyed it. I especially liked all the vegetables as it gave it a healthy feel even though it isn't healthy at all with its 2 cups of mayonnaise. And $4.90 made a ton of salad.

Sticky Rice

No plate lunch is complete without sticky rice. I picked up a bag of Calrose rice from Whole Foods since we didn't have any Japanese sushi rice at home. 1 cup of dry rice made enough for both of us (and that portion cost $0.87). It was wonderfully sticky and soft. Love that rice texture.

Our total meal cost for our Hawaiian feast was $18.52 (which includes lots of leftover mac salad). We're pretty happy with that for a Friday night dinner. Not much more than a night out at Chipotle, but this was for shrimp and we have many meals of mac salad left.

We really loved this garlic butter shrimp. The entire apartment smells like garlic as I'm writing this and it's heavenly. We would definitely make this meal again.