I have seen the future.

I'm way behind on recording recipies again. I've made this one a half-dozen times and it's turned out great every time, so I really should have written it down sooner.

Paprika Chicken And Spinach In White Wine Butter Thyme Sauce.

( Recipe reproduced to avoid linkrot, with notes. )

I've actually forgotten what I made that originally required fresh rosemary, but one of the side effects of buying fresh herbs is that there's ALWAYS way more than you need for any one recipe. Which left me with a ton of rosemary left over and a need to use it up.

So here's what I did!

First: This is a recipe for Crispy Sriracha Rosemary Chicken, which may not be a flavour combination you'd think is great and, uh, you're kinda right. I made it according to that recipe and while it was far from inedible, the cool taste of the rosemary and the bite of the sriracha and lemon and garlic just never meshed well for me. So I remade it with FRESH GINGER instead and that turned out awesome.

Reproducing here with notes and to avoid linkrot:
Crispy Sriracha rosemary GINGER Chicken!

Ingredients (modified from the original):
4-ish boneless skinless chicken breasts (If they're really plump, slice them in half. You want the marinade to reach as much of the meat as possible)
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons Sriracha
A moderately large piece of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into chunks about the size of your thumbnail and half a finger thickness. About 4 tablespoons, ish.
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt

Directions (unmodified! the directions worked great, the ingredients just needed adjusting):
1. In a large bowl, combine Greek yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, ginger, sriracha, minced garlic, and salt and pepper to taste.
2. Place chicken breasts in a large resealable plastic bag and pour marinade mixture over them. Seal bag and toss carefully to coat chicken.
3. Place bag in refrigerator and let sit 2-4 hours to marinate.
4. When chicken is fully marinated, heat oven to 375 degrees F. Place chicken in an oven and broiler-safe baking dish and pour extra marinade over the top.
5. Bake chicken until cooked through, about 40-45 minutes. Heat broiler to HIGH and cook chicken until crispy and golden brown, about 5-7 minutes.

Serve with a couple of the ginger pieces on the spicy chicken.


Second! Crispy Baked Rosemary Garlic Fries

As-written, these were a little disappointing - it was a lot of fiddly work compared to many other "oven fries" recipes, and the decision to add so much of the seasoning *after* cooking led to some oddities in the flavour - ambushes of near-raw garlic and entire rosemary leaves sticking in the teeth. As well, I wasn't nearly careful enough about making all my wedges both the same size, and small, so some of them were cripy and awesome (although underseasoned) but others were doughy. So I'm definitely doing these again, but I'm going to make some changes.

Ingredients (mostly unmodified - I'm keeping the ingredients, I'm just doing different things with them):
3 potatoes, peeled and cut into even wedges. Wedges should be approximately all the same size, and try to avoid them getting much more (OR LESS!) than 2 cm wide on the wide edge.
olive oil to rim pan
1 Tbsp olive oil (for coating fries)
Salt and pepper to taste (recipe says ~ 1/4 tsp each, I plan to *at least* double that next time)
"large handful" rosemary (About a sprig and a half, denuded, worked well for me. Especially because it was all I had left. Recipe says to leave the leaves intact and add late - nope, I'm going to mince and add early next time)
2-3 cloves fresh garlic, minced

Instructions (here's where my bigger changes are - I'm going to throw the rosemary and garlic in early, instead of late):

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.
2. Soak potatoes in hot water for 15 minutes, then drain and dry thoroughly with paper towels or clean dish towels.
3. Dry the bowl they were in and then place them back in. Drizzle with 1-2 Tbsp olive oil and add salt, pepper, minced garlic, and minced rosemary, and toss.
4. Coat a rimmed baking sheet with oil and drain off any excess. Transfer fries to baking sheet and arrange in a single layer.
5. Cover with foil and bake for 5 minutes. Then remove foil and bake for 15 minutes more. Remove from oven to turn over with a spatula. If they stick, just gently nudge them with the spatula and they will lift off the sheet. Make sure to keep them in a single layer to ensure even baking. Place back in oven to cook for another 5 minutes.
6. Remove from oven, flipping once more. Return to oven for 5-10 minutes more or until golden brown and crispy.
7. Remove from oven and transfer to a large bowl. Season with additional salt to taste while still hot. Toss and serve warm.

Originally expressed as "DON'T FUCKING REHEAT RICE", the NHS clarifies it to "Never eat rice that has been at room temperature after cooking. Cook it, eat it hot, put it in the fridge still hot, then reheat it to hot once and only once, and you're okay. But if it cools to room temperature, or you're tempted to fridge it a second time, don't."

I did not know this.
I am learning more cheffery.

CHEFFERY.

So I made a modified version of THIS.
This is an awesome recipe. Holy SHIT it is rich. And I modified it. But here's ( Chicken With Bacon And Leeks In Cream Sauce )

via spurious_logic

So I had this eggplant. I don't normally eat eggplant, and I'm actually pretty sure I'm never cut one open before. Eggplant is the kind of thing that shows up in the curry someone else at the table orders and I have a few bites of.

But I had this eggplant.

So I googled and found an easy-looking recipe for fried eggplant rounds. And the verdict..... yeah I'm not making that one again. But I might make a variant on it, especially with zucchini or something other than eggplant.

Short recipe:

1 eggplant, cut into 0.5in thick rounds.
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1 quart vegetable oil, for frying.

Instructions:

1. Mix the cornmeal, chili powder, and oregano in a small dish. Add some salt. Dredge the eggplant slices through it to create breading.

2. Heat a thin layer of oil in a frying pan. Fry the eggplant rounds, 2-3 minutes a side, adding oil whenever you need more oil.

And the result? Well, let's put it this way. I ate them, but I ate them with ketchup. They weren't inedible, just not very good. Bland, and mushy. I thought the instruction to regularly add more oil was weird, until I started cooking - and realised that no, the eggplant is like a sponge, absorbing all the oil. So you need more oil or it won't fry. And then it's saturated with oil when it comes out, bleeds oil when you cut into it, and drips. I don't think I used anywhere near a full quart of oil (I had to look up what a quart was. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE, USE METRIC. OR AT LEAST "cups" BECAUSE THOSE ARE SOMEWHAT NORMAL FOOD MEASUREMENTS) and it was still too much. I added *way* more salt, ate 'em with ketchup, and they were still kinda bland and mushy. And the cornmeal was crunchy - little bits of solid cornmeal, sticking in my teeth and giving a rather unpleasant mouth-feel. I just used generic cornmeal, is there a variant that's more like powder and less like sand?

I think if the cornmeal had been powdered and they'd been cooked on a grill instead of fried in oil, they'd have been better.

Anyway. Suggestions for altering the recipe to make it not bad? Or have a preferred way of cooking eggplant that's just way better?

I have made ZUCCHINI BOATS.

This is a new thing that apparently EVERYONE BUT ME KNOWS ABOUT.

So. You need zucchini, and stuff to put in the zucchini. The recipe I stoleused uses halved grape tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and garlic.

So!

Slice your zucchini in half lengthwise. Take a vegetable peeler to the back side to flatten it so it will lie flat in the cookie sheet. What cookie sheet? Why the one, lined with foil, that you will be putting your zucchini halves on!

Scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Make sure you get them all - you're really going to gut this, because otherwise you'll have zucchini seeds in your final product. GUESS WHAT I DID

Drizzle the halves with olive oil, smear with crushed garlic, add salt and pepper.

Halve grape tomatoes and toss 'em in the halved zucchini, leaving space.

Throw the whole thing in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Waited your 30 minutes? Okay, good. Pull out the zucchini and drop in diced mozzarella. Change the setting on the oven to broil: put it back in under the broiler, until the cheese is bubbling and browning.

Pull the boats out, drizzle with olive oil, and add parmesan cheese.

DEVOUR.

Meant to post this Tuesday, didn't.



So! Week 2 of Local Vegetables From A Box.

Left to right, those are:
One normal cucumber, 3 Lebanese cucumbers, green onions, orange pepper, yellow pepper, asparagus, chives, radishes, "spring mix" salad (in the baggie at the back), a head of spinach, and 3 tomatoes. In front, low-sugar strawberry jam.

Leftover from last week: the head of spinach, one tomato, one bundle of asparagus. All still edible and We Have Plans For Those.

Went bad before being used: Some of the chives, but that's because we didn't store them well, and that was only about 10% of the bundle. We ate the rest.

So far, so good!

We signed up for a local farming collective's "big box of local veggies every week". This is week 1!



Those are, left to right: three Lebanese cucumbers and one standard cucumber, a whole head of spinach, a pile of really nice green onions, a bundle of garlic chives, three large carrots, a bundle of swiss chard, a baggie of "spring mix" salad greens, about 2kg of asparagus, a bundle of radishes, a baggie of last year's frozen raspberries and one of blueberries, and four tomatoes.

(The white paper bag in the back is the last of the delicious jalapeno cheddar bread from the local bakery. It wasn't in the box, just in the picture.)

So far we've used: One lebanese cucumber, one carrot, half the green onions, some of the radishes, and one tomato. I think I'm going to keep track of what we get and what we use, each week.

(I don't think I've ever EATEN chard. Suggestions?)