Curry with Sweet Potatoes and Tofu

I love to buy pineapples, but with just two of us here I sometimes get tired of it before it's gone. That's where curry comes into the picture. I got this recipe years ago from my sister and I make it sooner or later whenever I buy a pineapple. If you're needing a plant for the kitchen, save the top of the pineapple to root in a jar of water.

We usually have curry with chicken, but last night's version had tofu instead. I also use whatever vegetables I have on hand, cauliflower, red bell pepper, zucchini, green beans, spinach, etc. Last night we had sweet potatoes, broccoli and some dried tomatoes.

Here are the basics:

Cut a block of tofu in half and wrap the half you plan to use in a dish towel to press out excess water. I put a small cutting board over the tofu and put a heavy pan on top of that.

Cook 1 small, diced onion and 2 cloves of garlic in a large  frying pan.

Add 2 T of oil, 3 T of flour,  and 3 T of curry powder. Cook the mixture for a few minutes.

Add about 2 cups of heated chicken or vegetable stock in 1/3 cup increments. Cook and stir until thickened. If the mixture gets lumpy at any point, remove it from the heat and continue stirring until the lumps disappear. Add the liquid just a little bit at a time, stirring in completely after each addition.

Here are the sweet potatoes cooking away.

Stir in whatever vegetables you want to use. Last night we had diced sweet potatoes that I cooked for about 15 minutes before adding 4 broccoli stalks cut into pieces, some dried tomatoes I had on hand, and 1/2 a carton of tofu cut into pieces.

Serve the curry over rice and add condiments. The condiments are actually one of the things I like best about this recipe! We usually have raisins, peanuts, 1 sliced banana, and pineapple chunks. Spoon a dollop of plain yogurt and some chopped cilantro over the top.

Spinach Salad -- with a Poached Egg and Roasted Sweet Potatoes



My daughter Kate asked her FB friends about the absolute best way to poach eggs so you don't get those ugly, wispy bits of white to mar the picture.


Kate, in her younger days.


If you were cooking for the Queen you could just snip off those bits with a pair of kitchen shears, but we want perfection for the entire cooking process, right?

Of course Kate broke the egg into a cup first, not directly into the water. And yes, she did put a bit of vinegar in the water itself. Yep, she swirled the water as well. Here are some of the FB replies she got that she hadn't tried:

--Let a bit of water go into the cup first and let the egg begin to turn white before finishing sliding the egg into the water.

--Use a bit less water to begin with.

--Poke a tiny hole in the egg and boil it for 10 seconds. Reduce the heat to a slow simmer, and add the vinegar. Scoop the egg out just before you think they are done (Julia says 2 minutes, but others say that is too long) and put them in cold water to rinse off the vinegar.

--Forget about the water and poach the egg in a couple inches or so of salsa with indentations made for the eggs. Cook for 10 minutes.

I must confess though, when it came time for me to poach the eggs for tonight's spinach salad, the only tip I remembered was holding the egg in the cup part way into the water. Maybe I wasn't patient enough, but the egg wasn't turning white at all. Maybe the water wasn't hot enough? Maybe the cup wasn't big enough, or too big? Anyway, my egg ended up with those wispy white bits.  I will give these methods another try next time I need an egg to go on top of something (Kate had hers over polenta).

That said, our spinach salad with sauteed mushrooms, roasted sweet potatoes, feta cheese and a poached egg was really a great dinner (of course it wasn't my own invention -- I saw Antonia put an egg over a spinach salad one season on Top Chef).  If there had been any bacon around the house, I would have added that too (fat chance in my house!).

I made this because 1) I had a carton of spinach that needed to be used, and 2) we really love to order the spinach salad at the TreeHouse Cafe. Their salad has feta, walnuts,  bacon and a warm maple vinaigrette dressing. Don gets a whole salad and I get a 1/2 portion -- it's huge. You really need to try it if you ever visit Bainbridge Island.

TreeHouse Cafe



Pizza and Salad -- Again!

 
We eat a lot of pizza and salads. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Who wouldn't want pizza and salad for dinner every night, I ask you?

Tonight's was a pretty basic version -- tomato sauce, goat cheese, mushrooms, basil and a bit of Parmesan on top. Click here, and here for other pizzas I've posted about.

Lately I've been using the pizza stone I've owned for about 20 years. I used it once or twice way back when, but the pizza stuck, so I stopped using it. Now, I just put the pizza on a cookie sheet directly on the stone so sticking is not a problem. It really does help crisp up the crust.

Every once in awhile I like salad with just lettuce. Period. Then I toss it first with olive oil, the vinegar, then salt and pepper.

But most of the time, I like to load up salad with lots of other healthy treats. Tonight's salad had: watercress, red leaf lettuce, left-over radish sprouts, left-over green beans, left-over basil leaves, and half a left-over half avocado --  aha, a pattern emerges!
 

We had really great peaches for dessert. The first of the season for us. Sprinkled with lime juice and sugar and left to macerate for just a bit while we ate dinner. So good -- they didn't need yogurt (which I sometimes thicken and put on top of fruit) or ice cream or anything.

 

I buy this frozen pizza dough at Central Market.

 

The dough starts out in a fairly small circle.



I try for a vaguely rectangular shape to fit my cookie sheet. Also, I use whole-wheat flour when I roll it out, so by the end of the process, I figure that the crust is half white and half whole-wheat.

Voila!

 

Dinner on a Warm Day: Pesto over Salmon & Green Salad with Strawberries

I wanted to try the Orangette Shortcut Basil Aioli recipe, but at the last minute made a healthy substitution and exchanged half the mayonnaise with half no-fat sour cream. Also, I couldn't resist adding more basil than the recipe called for, so my sauce was more sturdy and less creamy than it might have been. Nonetheless, it was full of basil, so was, by definition, delicious.

We piled the pesto with abandon over the salmon and the green beans (as well as over some brown rice and French bread for the next day's lunch).

I poached the salmon in the microwave, as I always do with any fish when I want it poached. I try to do that ahead of time so it can come to room temp or cool off for an hour or so  in the fridge. That way the pesto or cucumber sauce won't get all melty.

This sounds heretical, but I actually prefer cucumber sauce on salmon instead of pesto. Same ingredients -- sour cream, mayonnaise salt, pepper, and minced garlic -- and then a substitution of a generous amount of finely chopped cucumbers (salted, drained, rinsed, and squeezed dry) instead of basil. Stirred, not blended.

We had just a few strawberries still lingering in a carton, so those went into a salad, along with slivers of red onion and a handful of sunflower seeds, which it turns out, pack a lot of nutrition into their very small seeds -- is that why baseball players eat them constantly? (No, I don't think so either.)

Nothing Fancy -- Barbecued Chicken Sandwiches and Onion Rings

Dont' get me wrong. I love fancy food as much as the next person. But ever since we got a new bakery in our neighborhood, Pane d'Amore, we've been having lots of sandwiches for dinner on fresh panini rolls.

We also eat a fair amount of chicken breasts, and barbecued chicken sandwiches livens them up a bit. Last night we had the chicken sandwiches, red cabbage coleslaw with Granny Smith apples and Newman's Own Sesame-Ginger dressing, and oven-baked onion rings. Simple, but tasty -- perfect to eat while watching baseball on TV (Mariners won!).

Barbecue Sauce:

I like making my own barbecue sauce because it's so easy and I don't need an extra bottle taking space in the fridge. My sauce consists of ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and chili powder. If I leave out the Worcestershire and put in lemon juice, it becomes cocktail sauce. Last night I also added a bit of chipolte Tabasco sauce.

Oven-Baked Onion Rings: So fun to buy a giant onion!

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

 

Slice the onion rings about 1/4 inch thick.

Prepare 1) a plate with flour, 2) a bowl with a beaten egg or egg white (add cayenne pepper if you want), and 3) a plate with Panko bread crumbs.

 

Dip the onion rings first in flour, then in the eggs, then in the breadcrumbs, pressing the crumbs onto the onion rings.

 

Place the onion rings on a greased baking sheet.

Spray lightly with oil and bake for 10 minutes. Turn and bake for another 5 or 6 minutes or until golden-brown.