Crockpot Coconut Beef Curry

Last Saturday I knew Jeffrey and I would be running errands and doing some out-of-town shopping, so right after breakfast I got the crockpot out and put together everything for my Crockpot Coconut Beef Curry.  It's pretty quick to assemble, although you do have to take the time to brown the spice-coated meat. 

This recipe calls for dried apricots, each one cut into three pieces.  The fastest and easiest way to do this is to simply snip them with kitchen shears.  It also calls for golden raisins.  Don't be tempted to substitute regular raisins- they become bitter during the long cooking time, and they just plain look unappetizing in the finished dish.

If you've never used coconut milk before, make sure that you shake the can really well before opening.  There are sometimes solids in the can, and it's easier to get everything out if it's been shaken up.  You may have to use the can opener on the bottom instead of the top of the can, like in the picture below. I don't know why this is - just one of the mysteries of the universe, I guess. 

 I like the NON-lowfat version of Taste of Thai brand coconut milk, but if I double this recipe, I do use one can of regular coconut milk and one can of reduced fat coconut milk.  Make sure you're not using sweetened coconut milk, it's not an acceptable substitute.

Here's the full recipe:

Crockpot Coconut Beef Curry

1/2 cup              flour

2 teaspoons       sweet curry

1/2 teaspoon     ginger

1/2 teaspoon     ground coriander

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 pounds            extra-lean stew meat

1/4 cup              butter

3 ounces            dried apricots, cut into thirds (about 3/4 cup)

1/2 cup              golden raisins

1 14.5 ounce can petite-diced tomatoes

1 14 ounce can   coconut milk

6 servings          cooked Basmati rice

Combine flour, sweet curry, ginger, ground coriander and salt in a gallon-size resealable plastic food storage bag.  Add the stew meat and seal the bag, leaving a little bit of air inside.  Holding the bag at the seal (just in case!), shake the bag to coat the stew meat with the flour-spice mixture.

Melt butter in a big fry pan, then add the beef, being very careful not to hold the plastic bag so close that it melts in the pan (ask me how I know this).  If there is any extra flour mixture, leave in the bag for now.

Sauté the beef pieces, stirring to make sure all sides are cooked evenly.  Now you can pour any remaining flour mixture on top.  Spoon the beef mixture carefully into a large crockpot.  Stir in the dried apricot pieces, golden raisins and the cans of diced tomatoes and coconut milk.

Cook at least 6 hours on low heat.  I've cooked this up to 9 hours without a problem.  Just stir it all up before serving.

About 30 minutes before you want to serve dinner, make the Basmati rice according to package directions.  Serve over hot rice.  This is also great with Naan (or any crusty bread) to soak up the yummy gravy.

This recipe is easily doubled, and freezes well.

Spinach and Feta Pizza

Sometimes we fall back on simple, fast and dependable meals that don't require a lot in the way of cooking.  Last night was one of those nights.  After work we spent a couple hours buying everything we need for the weekend's cooking, so we got back home pretty late and were quite hungry by that time.  Thankfully I'd planned ahead and included among the night's purchases everything I'd need to throw together one of our favorite quick dinners:  a vegetarian pizza with a Greek spin.

Awhile back, I noted that I prefer to make things from scratch rather than relying on mixes, commercial sauces and the like.  Tonight's dinner is one of the exceptions to that general rule, relying as it does on refrigerated pizza dough and canned pizza sauce.  It does meet my criteria for acceptable short-cut cooking, though, as it is quite delicious and does not sacrifice flavor for speed. 

So, if you want a reliable, fast and tasty weeknight dinner some night, try this one out and let us know what you think.

Spinach and Feta Pizza

1     10-ounce tube of refrigerated pizza dough
1     tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2     teaspoons minced garlic
1     15 oz. can pizza sauce
2     cups fresh spinach, chopped
6     ounces fresh mushrooms, thinly sliced
1     2.25 oz. can sliced black olives
1     cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2  cup shredded Italian cheese blend
6     ounces feta cheese, chopped or crumbled
1/4  cup fresh basil, cut into thin strips
1     teaspoon Greek or Italian seasoning
1/2  teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Spray a large, rimmed cookie sheet with cooking spray.  Unroll the pizza dough and stretch it to fit the cookie sheet, pinching the edges against the dough against the sides of the pan to make a crust with a raised edge.  Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic.  Spread the pizza sauce evenly over the dough, then layer with spinach, mushrooms, black olives and the three cheeses.  Sprinkle with fresh basil, Greek or Italian seasoning and red pepper flakes.

Cook for 15-18 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.  Remove from the oven.  Let the pizza rest for a couple minutes, then slide it off the cookie sheet onto a cutting board before slicing.

Notes:
We don't prefer any of the refrigerated pizza doughs - they're more or less interchangeable as far as we're concerned, and any of them we've tried have worked fine in this recipe.   We do have a preference in regard to canned pizza sauce, though, and always go with Dei Fratelli (they make a lot of great tomato products).   We use Kraft's 5-cheese Italian blend along with the feta and mozzarella.  For this recipe, we prefer the Greek seasoning over Italian, and find Penzey's spices reliable in either case. 

Grandma's Ladle

Jeffrey was able to locate Grandma's ladle!  He'd brought it to serve Coconut Chicken Soup (Tom Kha Gai) at a work potluck, and then later the ladle disappeared.  I was a bit sad about that, but today the lost was found!  It turned out that someone at Jeffrey's office had helpfully washed it-  and then buried it away in a drawer under a bunch of other stuff.



Sorry about the shadows!



I have such fond memories of Grandma's cooking, and this ladle in particular. Grandma sometimes used it to serve up chicken and noodles (among other things), which was a family favorite. 


Actually, pretty much any kind of noodle was a specialty of hers, but the chicken noodles were the absolute best.  My mom, sister and I all tried making them while Grandma was still alive, with non-spectacular results- it's a family joke that Mom's first attempt was more like boiled rubber bands than noodles.


Here is the recipe:

Grandma's Noodles

2                     eggs

1 tablespoon   water

1 1/2 cups       flour plus 1 teaspoon salt

2 quarts          broth

drop or two    yellow food coloring

Beat eggs and water and stir in flour and salt and roll out on a floured board.    Knead in more flour as needed to get a rollable dough. 

Put flour on board and roll out thin.  Then fold or roll up and cut thin.  Noodles can be dried or frozen at this point if you don't want to cook them right away.

Heat broth in a Dutch oven.  Have broth boiling hot and add a drop or two of yellow food coloring.  Stir well, then drop the noodles in, stirring constantly.  Turn heat to low.  Put  a lid on the pot for the first 15 minutes of cooking.  Cook for about an hour total. 

When Grandma had to go to hospice care, she told mom one of her secrets- she never exactly measured the water, just filled one of the broken egg-shells.  I'm not sure that's the difference between Noodle Nirvana and Boiled Rubber Bands, but I thought I'd pass along the info just in case.

Anyway, have you taken a look at what passes for a ladle these days?  Pathetic!  I don't trust meltable plastic with boiling hot liquids, and this one has an off-kilter angle to the bowl of the ladle that I don't care for.

Here's the sad spoon we were using until the Plastic Ladle was brought home:  it has a very shallow bowl, and again, an awkward angle.

Ah, the glory of the old-fashioned ladle!

In case you're interested, I've identified this as the Ekco Forge Stainless Steel Ladle.  I'm guessing it was made in the 50's or 60's.  Do you have a favorite kitchen tool?  Leave us a comment below!

Peace Tree Brewing

I'm not sure if word's spread very far yet, but thoughout Iowa, a local brewing company has become quite popular in a very short period of time.

The company in question is Peace Tree Brewing Co., located in Knoxville, Iowa.  They produce a variety of original ales, including a corn ale and a rye porter, as well as really good root beer.  In the recent past, their products have been showing up in grocery stores and pubs around Iowa.  Peace Tree handles its own distribution. As they say on their website, "Since we are a native brewery in Iowa, we have taken advantage of the ability to stay close to our customers by distributing our products ourselves."

We recently dropped by The Peace Tree Tap Room in Knoxville to pick up some samples.  The place itself is quite nice, and we found the proprietors quite friendly and willing to offer samples of their wares, which are available on tap and bottled.

Pictured here are bottles of their Red Rambler ale (which Juli likes quite a bit) and their Root Beer (which I enjoy). 



Two of Peace Tree Brewing's products

We aren't big drinkers (I don't drink alcohol at all, in fact), but we are always glad to see small businesses succeed, and we like to do our part to support and promote local businesses.  As such, we wish the folk at Peace Tree continued success, and we encourage our readers to give their brews a try should they have the opportunity.

You can find out more about Peace Tree at their website, http://www.peacetreebrewing.com/ .  The site includes a listing of their current product line, as well as a listing of the various places one can purchase their products.

Batting .500

On Monday night, I decided to make two recipes I'd never tried before.  One, which sounded great and was quite straight-forward, came from an earlier edition of the Good Housekeeping Step by Step Cookbook, pictured below.  The other came from America's Test Kitchen Special Collector's Edition Best-Ever Recipes, which I've mentioned several times previously (and which you may well be tired of hearing about... but trust me, it really is that good). 



The easier recipe was Pork Chops with Apples and Cream - a very basic recipe, but with some nice extra features.  This is the dish I had in mind when purchasing the apple brandy a few days earlier.  The other was Potatoes Anna, a recipe that is pretty straight-forward in concept, but which I've read is notoriously tricky in the details.  This dish, which involves carefully layering thin potato slices in a hot skillet and letting them fry for a time before finishing them in the oven, has a high rate of failure on the last step, which is turning over the skillet to release the dish, such that what was the bottom of the arrangement of potato slices becomes the top of the dish when served.  When properly done, the presentation is quite nice, but oftentimes the potatoes stick in the pan, resulting in what might range from merely a somewhat-less-than-perfect presentation to a loose mess of fried potatoes.

The chops and apples cooked up wonderfully.  The nice, thick chops were moist and flavorful, the cream sauce was savory and the apples... well, they were the highlight of the dish.  They were tender and juicy, and had soaked up a lot of the brandy flavor.  The Potatoes Anna... well, not quite so successful.

The recipe called for the potatoes to be arranged in the skillet with the heat set at medium-low and allowed to fry for a total of 30 minutes from the time one starts to arrange the potatoes, then put in a very hot oven for another 25 minutes or so.  Our stove has settings ranging from 1 (Low) to 9 (High).  I figured 2 1/2 was a good, safe medium-low setting.  Turns out I was wrong. 

I figured I might have a problem when I could smell the potatoes starting to burn about 20 minutes into the frying.  I considered turning down the heat a bit at that point, but thought perhaps what I was smelling was just the potatoes getting a bit crispy on the bottom.  So I decided to let things play out.  I let the potatoes fry the suggested amount of time, then covered the skillet with foil, transferred it to the oven, already at 450 degrees, then cooked it as directed, first covered and then uncovered at the end. 

This was is the result.  The bottom layer was indeed burnt.  Well, actually, "burnt" isn't an adequate description.  Say, "charred to a completely dried crisp" and you're in the ballpark.  Or go with "turned to charcoal" and you're spot-on.  Really a shame, too, because it came out of the pan without a hitch, perfectly formed, no sticking at all.  My very first pass at this somewhat-difficult dish, and it would have been perfect, if not for the inedibly-burnt part.  Pretty big "if" though.

A tad overdone

I'm not sure if maybe our oven's settings are just a bit on the over-warm side, or perhaps this occurred because I prepared the dish in my new Lodge Logic skillet, which conducts heat really, really well.  Either way, though, I figured I'd learned something - one can, after all, learn as much or more from failures as from successes - and next time I make this, I'll start with the heat set at 2. 

I was worried this bit of learning might have come at the price of a ruined dinner, but thankfully that was not the case.  The story has a happy ending.

As it turns out, while the very top layer of the Potatoes Anna was completely inedible, it wasn't hard to remove the worst-burnt stuff (most of the top layer, as shown above), and the rest of the dish was really, really good... tender and creamy and wonderfully yummy.  And, as I wrote above, the Pork Chops with Apples and Cream turned out great.  Served up with some asparagus Juli steamed, it was still a really tasty dinner with good leftovers. 

I will be giving Potatoes Anna another try, though... and probably soon.

Special Fun this Sunday

Don't miss the South-Central Iowa Farm Crawl this Saturday, Sunday, October 3, 2010.  There are seven farms to visit this year, including:  Blue Gate Farm, Coyote Run Farm, Dan-D Farm, Pierce's Pumpkin Patch, Reichart's Dairy Air, Schneider Orchards, and White Breast Pottery and Weaving.  The crawl runs from 11 AM to 5 PM, and we'll be visiting as many farms as we have time for. 

I'm looking forward to seeing the goats at the Dairy Air (and sampling the wonderful cheese made from their milk!), and to visiting Schneider Orchards. Both places are new to me, although I've certainly eaten my share of Dairy Air chevre cheese over the past several years.  See you there!

Another New Arrival

I've written recently about some of the new cookware we've purchased.  As it happens, while we don't have a particularly small kitchen, it is somewhat lacking in terms of both cabinet and counter space.   As a result, we haven't really had any particularly convenient place to put some of our equipment while leaving us adequate space to work and to store non-cookware items. 

To solve this problem, we recently ordered a kitchen shelving unit.  We decided to get one with wheels, so we could move it around as needed to sweep under it or othewise move it as necessary.  The unit arrived yesterday, and even though we were pretty tired from a long day at work, we couldn't wait to get it set up.  Here it is after a bit of assembly, and after we'd moved our microwave to the new shelves (doing so opened up a lot of workspace).

Having done that, it was then time to move some of our equipment to the shelves.  It quickly became apparent that when one has a lot of cookware and small kitchen appliances, it is pretty easy to fill up a set of five shelves.   Aside from the microwave, the new shelves quickly became home to our two slow cookers (large and small), our electric skillet, our double-boiler and stockpots and large skillet and Dutch ovens, the spice grinder, the bread machine, the ice tea maker, the blender, the food processor and some other small appliances.










The picture to the right shows the shelves when they've mostly been filled.   You can also see two of our cats - the orange cat is Nate, the calico is Juno.   They don't seem too impressed - I'm guessing they were confused to find we'd moved their food and water dishes in order to make room for the shelves - but Juli and I are pretty happy with this new purchase.   It definitely makes our kitchen seem more roomy.  This change gives us a lot more room now for food prep, and will have a much easier time getting to the equipment we need without having to dig through over-full cabinets.  I can actually get to things like the pie plates and the pizza stones.  Until now, they were buried behind or under a lot of other things.

Hm, maybe it's time to bake a pie or try out some of the new pizza recipes I've found...