Been making a lot of indian curries recently. It's been a couole of years since I last made chicken korma and I remember back then the recipe I used was very basic and simple.

This time I spent a lot of time researching the recipe, looking at different variations, regional differences, the history of the dish and while also trying to justify why certain things are done in a scientific way.

Then I tabulated my findings and created one recipe out of all of them. I can't really claim credit for my recipe nor do I know if my recipe is even authentic. All I know if that is was delicious and the chicken came out insanely tender.

I'll comment the recipe below.

I've nailed these 4 or 5 times in a row now, so after about 50 years of trying, I think I've found my mojo.

Pork and garlic fried rice with a textured scrambled egg and some sriracha over the top. Almost omu rice, but I don't like ketchup and I'd rather texture my egg scramble a bit than make it flat to wrap around the rice the way they do in Japanese cafes.

Not in this picture: the extra scrambled egg that goes on my plate to appease the blurry begging machine pictured in the background

Fresh baked bread, some leftover curry and a sauce made from tomato paste, stock olive oil, sugar, salt, basil, oregano and olive oil.

Cost per person $1.22

This was my prototype batch. I wouldn't change much, some minor tweaks to my process but otherwise it turned out great and was well received.

You could make this at home easily.

Ingredients are salt, brown sugar, garlic powder, sage powder, sodium erythorbate and cure #1.

Since I made bread late last night, I needed something to eat it with. Delicious.

The cilantro lime crema is the kind with this consistency:

Making it is super easy. You just need a blender. Goes great with burritos, tacos, fries, veggies, etc😁

INGREDIENTS
Yields ~24 oz of sauce:

1 ¼ cups sour cream

3 jalapeños, roasted

3 small limes, juiced

1 cup cilantro

1 tsp onion powder 

1 tsp garlic powder, or 2 cloves of garlic

1 tsp cumin

Pinch of salt to taste

Chicken leg quarters on sale for $1.09.

Cost per person $2.01

Marilyn’s Caramelized Coconut Chicken

Ingredients

• Chicken breast, cut into bite-size pieces
• Red bell pepper, sliced into strips
• Coconut milk — about ¼ cup
• Fresh garlic, minced
• Fresh ginger, minced
• Basil
• A little oil for sautéing
• Salt and pepper as desired

The Marilyn Method

Sauté the chicken, ginger, and garlic together in a pan until the chicken is nearly cooked through.

Pour in about ¼ cup coconut milk and lower the heat. Let everything gently simmer as the coconut milk reduces, coating the chicken instead of remaining a loose sauce.

When it’s reduced to almost the consistency you want, add the red bell pepper and basil.

This is where the timing matters.

Give the peppers just enough time to cook and absorb the flavor while keeping their crunch.

Then—

Stop stirring.

Let the pan gently simmer undisturbed.

Wait until you can just smell the coconut milk beginning to toast and caramelize against the bottom of the pan. You’re looking for that first roasted, almost-burnt coconut aroma—not an actually scorched pan.

Now, instead of stirring, turn the chicken and peppers over a few times, picking up those concentrated caramelized coconut bits and spreading that toasted flavor through the dish.

Then immediately remove it from the heat.

That’s it.

Chicken. Pepper. Coconut. Garlic. Ginger. Basil.

The coconut milk reduces until it’s essentially clinging to the chicken and peppers, with little toasted spots throughout.

The sauce isn’t really a sauce anymore—it’s become the seasoning.

Spent a little too long between flips while in the cast iron but the sandos of steak+provolone on sourdough turned out great.

Pork steak, lumpy mashed potatoes, corn. I don't normally do lumpy but it was a request for her birthday meal.

Pork steak is highly underrated. Better than pork chops.

Cost per person: $3.33

Finally got around to reducing my Meishan pork broth and had to sample it so I threw together a pork ramen for staff lunch at work yesterday.

The soup is just pork broth with a splash of light soy sauce and sesame oil.

The sausage is where I added the aromatics:

• ground pork (I like half ground once and half twice)
• 1.5% salt
• 0.5% Sichuan peppercorn, ground
• 0.3% brown sugar (optional)
• 1.5% minced garlic
• 0.7% minced ginger

If you can't stuff a sausage, frying the loose mix is a perfectly acceptable topping too.

Planning to make a spicy chicken version next time.

This was my first time making and also eating chicken madras. I made it a day before eating it since I like letting the meat rest in the curry and I think it makes it taste even better.

My SO who doesn't normally like indian curry taste tested it and said it was good and ended up.eating a bowl of it.

I do plan on ordering it at a restaurant soon-ish so I can tell how close I was.

I loosely followed the recipe here: https://youtu.be/3rrDLtUC0Kg

Had an old block of tofu that needed to be used. Crumbling up tofu by hand is so much more satisfying than breaking up ground beef in a pan. I tossed it in double fermented soy sauce and squid brand fish sauce and baked it at 350F until it browned. The beans were kidney, black, garbanzo, and some tiny guys called "rice beans"

Sausage, fried egg, mixed veggies(cabbage, carrots, corn, jalapeno, onion, squash, tomatoes and zucchini) with whatever seasonings you got that you think would taste good, rice, and a couple lime wedges. It's not much to look at but it is pretty damn good.

Always make more chili than you need so you can enjoy it after a bit of marinating in itself.

Cost per person, $2.30

I had a request for a beet dessert, so here one is. Recipe was very much assembled by eye, but this is close:

——

Beet Bread Pudding
Yield: 6 servings

• 250ml half and half (the specific dairy is not important, milk or full fat cream would be fine)
• 3 eggs
• 100 g sugar
• 30ml ground ginger
• 300g sourdough, medium dice
• 2 beets, grated
• 50g butter, small dice

Whisk together dairy, eggs, sugar, and ginger.

Fold together dairy mixture, sourdough, beets, and butter. Rest in refrigeration at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

Scoop mixture into oven safe vessels and bake approximately 15 minutes, until the bread pudding has puffed up and springs back to the touch. I suspect internal temp will be around 95C/200F. If you use a very tall vessel it might take a bit longer.

——

Bread pudding is super, super easy to throw together by eye, it’s just a matter of whipping together eggs and liquid, then folding in bread. After resting an hour or so, it should barely hold together as a sticky mess. Stale bread is not actually necessary, though it is a good use of stale bread. You can add any other ingredient you like to flavor it as long as you keep the water content of the flavoring in mind.

The end result on this one is extremely good. Beets have great sweetness and color but mostly they brought a rich, savory weight, depth sweet bread pudding really enjoys. I topped it with a mascarpone sour cream cinnamon thing; 2 parts cheese:1 part sour cream, blend in food processor with sugar and cinnamon to taste.

I'm the one who posted a week or two ago about learning how to cook. I know this is technically baking but I'm sharing because like look how pretty for the second attempt ever! Don't worry, the 3rd attempt was just as ugly as the first 🤣 this was made for a friend who had a loss in the family.

Since my last post we've made lasagna 9/10, smothered beef burritos 8/10, a Mexican pizza 5/10, enchiladas 8/10, and probably a few other things that are escaping my brain. I didn't take pictures of most of them though lol.

We've made notes on what we like and don't like. The dough on the Mexican pizza was meh (which is how we got to baking lol) and it needed sauce. I think the recipe thought the veggies would be enough but as someone with ARFID (avoidant restrictive food intake disorder) texture is big for me. Far too many dries, not enough wets as I told my partner lol.

We are basically remaking everything I listed again this week except maybe the pizza because we got a killer deal on ground beef and totally forgot to separate and freeze it. And we're out of freezer space anyways. When I'm back to work, a normal sized fridge/freezer is on our list instead of this tiny one that came with the house lol.

Overall we're learning quite a bit! I have a few books saved for later but the overwhelming recommendation of The Food Lab made us buy it. We also have a Betty Crocker Cook book that's pretty decent and we bought The Big Book of Bread because we discovered we're both sluts for a good bread lol.

I appreciate everyone who commented, shared recipes, and gave advice in my last post!

Hello, apologies that I'm not much for taking pics, but I wanted to share a recipe I just made. It's very homey and satisfying, I feel this recipe could take additional spices well, to taste.

It's based on this link, https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/232097/turkey-tetrazzini-a-la-stouffers/ , but with some changes, here's what I made. It turned out very tasty, although I'd prefer to accompany this with a salad, so the meal is more balanced.

Yield, 12 servings

1 tbsp canola oil

6 tbsp butter, divided

1 small onion, diced

1 cup celery, diced

1 (8 ounce) package fresh mushrooms, diced

½ cup all-purpose flour

3 cups chicken broth

1 cup half and half

¼ cup tart cherry juice

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon white pepper

(14.5 ounce, 411 gram) package protein spaghetti pasta

3 cups cooked turkey chunks

½ cup panko bread crumbs

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease a casserole dish with 1 tbap of canola oil.

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook spaghetti in boiling water, occasionally stirring until cooked through but firm to the bite, 7 to 8 minutes. Drain.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large pot over medium heat; cook and stir onion and celery until it begins to soften, 2 minutes. Stir mushrooms into celery; cook and stir until mushrooms are softened, 3 minutes more.

Remove vegetables from skillet; melt remaining 4 tablespoons butter and whisk flour into hot butter to make a paste. Slowly whisk chicken broth and bring to a simmer; reduce heat to low and cook, constantly whisking, until sauce is thickened. Mix in half and half, cherry juice, salt, and white pepper.

Fold turkey, onion, celery, and mushrooms into sauce; mix in spaghetti pasta. Transfer mixture to the prepared casserole dish and sprinkle panko crumbs on top.

Bake in the preheated oven until sauce is bubbling and crumb topping has browned, about 30 minutes.

The original called for heavy whipping cream but I had half and half, then it called for sherry and I had tart cherry juice. It's cooking not baking, close enough :)

Not my pic, but looks like mine