Published by mel on April 21, 2008 in entree, recipe and sides & bites.
In honor of Earth Day, I made green rice and beans. Green lima beans, green chives, green spinach, green basil and green lime for lots of color. All natural and organic products for environmental friendliness. I decided not to go the more traditional Latin or Mexican route because I had no cilantro and because it just felt wrong to not use pinto, kidney or black beans. So, I opted for a more Thai-inspired dish with coconut milk, red curry paste, basil and lime.
The dish is fragrant and spicy and wholesome. And it was done in 15 minutes. The perfect lunch.
In other “green” news. Serious Eats has a nice piece on how to decode PLU stickers on produce. Seems like you should stick to 5-digit numbers that start with a 9 and beware of numbers starting with 8!
Conventional produce gets a four-digit number.
Organic produce gets a five-digit number that starts with 9.
Genetically modified items also get a five-digit code, but that code starts with 8.
Examples
4139: Conventional Granny Smith apple
94139: Organic Granny Smith
84139: GMO Granny Smith
Continue reading ‘green rice & beans’
Published by mel on February 25, 2008 in entree and recipe.
Last week, Heidi posted a delicious-looking chickpea and bulgur recipe that reminded me of a forgotten tub of bulgur that’s been sitting in my pantry. I had every intention of making her recipe, but I found a big bag of beautiful French lentils (how’s that for alliteration?) cozying up to the bulgur and grabbed those instead.
I should use bulgur more often. It has a low glycemic index, which helps keep energy levels from spiking and crashing and it cooks quickly — always useful. I also had a can of coconut milk, which pairs beautifully with curry. I wanted the spice of Thai food and the warming aroma of Indian food, so I used both Thai red curry paste and Maharajah-style curry powder to flavor the broth. Everything was brightened with fresh lime juice, cilantro and mint. I love how flavorful and nutritious this meal turned out, and I’m sure my husband loved that he only had to wash one pot.
Continue reading ‘double curry lentils’
Published by mel on January 24, 2008 in entree and recipe.
I’m calling this a stir fry, but that’s really not accurate. I just don’t know what else to call it. I could take some inspiration from Chipotle and call it a Bol, or is it more of a rice, um, thing? Not sure. What it really is is a bunch of delicious things sauteed in one big frypan.
I used a combination of tofu and sausage for the protein for contrast of textures. To fulfill the vegetable quota, I added yellow onion and Swiss chard. I also finished it up with some whole grain brown rice, which I buy fully cooked and frozen at Whole Foods. Finally, I tossed it with a spicy curry sauce that I received as a gift, and of which I’ve replicated the flavors in the recipe below.
Continue reading ‘curry stir-fry’
Published by mel on September 18, 2007 in entree and recipe.
My favorite aunt-in-law spied a photo of curry noodles on my Flickr account a couple of weeks ago, and has since been persuading me to post the recipe. She likes curry. A lot. Since I don’t want to cause irreparable damage to our relationship, I figured it’d be best to get this recipe up post haste.
I adapted these curry noodles from (you guessed it!) Super Natural Cooking. It calls for slightly more red curry paste than I can handle, and I substituted regular curry powder for Tumeric because it’s what was in the pantry, and beef stock for vegetable stock because what can I say? I love the beef. I also cannot find wide Asian-style noodles that are whole wheat or whole grain, so I went with Soba noodles because at least they’re made from buckwheat. I didn’t substitute anything for the tofu because I love the way it soaks up the curry broth here, but this dish would work equally well with chicken, shellfish or beef. Lastly, I added sliced orange bell pepper for color and opted for adding a little more stock so that I could cook the noodles right in the curry broth for more flavor.
So, without further ado, curry noodle recipe after the jump!
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Published by mel on March 28, 2007 in entree and recipe.
My bridal shower was this past Saturday, and one of the (many) delicious things my mom made was shrimp cocktail. Even though there were only 23 guests, she bought about 100 lbs. of shrimp. Needless to say, there were leftovers. Leftovers which turned into delicious Thai curry noodles with shrimp!
Recipe after jump…
Continue reading ’spice’
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