Tag: Pepper

Thai Red Curry with Chicken, Leeks and Peppers

Thai Chicken Red Curry

Print Recipe
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 40 minutes
Course Main Course
Servings 8 servings

Ingredients
  

  • 4 chicken thighs (boneless, skinless, cut into bite-sized pieces)
  • 1 Tbsp vegetable oil (canola, safflower, peanut, avocado, etc.)
  • 2.5 Tbsps red curry paste
  • 1 inch piece of ginger (or galangal, peeled and grated)
  • 1 clove garlic (peeled, grated)
  • 2 cups chicken broth
  • 800 ml coconut milk
  • 6 makrut lime leaves
  • 4 small potatoes (washed and sliced into medallions)
  • 1 Tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 bell pepper (cored and cut into large chunks)
  • 2 leeks (white only, sliced into 1" thick pieces)
  • 1 Tbsp lime juice (fresh, from about 1/2 lime)
  • 1/2 Tbsp sugar
  • salt (to taste)
  • 4 cups steamed white rice (to serve)
  • chopped fresh cilantro or Thai basil (to serve)

Instructions
 

  • Heat the oil in a wok or large pot at medium-high heat and add the garlic, ginger and curry paste, and stir until fragrant.
  • Add the coconut milk, broth, and makrut lime leaves. Stir until the curry paste is mixed into the liquid and it comes to a simmer.
  • Reduce the heat to medium and add the chicken pieces, potatoes and leeks, cover and cook for 5 minutes.
  • Add the fish sauce, sugar, and peppers, stirring in well, cover and  cook for 5-10 minutes, or until chicken is fully cooked.
  • Take off the heat, squeeze in the lime juice and serve with rice.
Keyword Chicken, Curry, Thai, Vegetables

And now for the details…

Hello dear friends. I know it has been quite a long time since I last posted a recipe, and I apologize for that. Computer screens have been a bit of a nemesis of late, and I have been restricting my time in front of them in order to cut down on my headaches and dizziness spells. Here is to hoping that my brain will be able to better manage these going forward! Especially since it is really hard to create media online when one needs to limit the time in front of a computer screen 😛

Let’s talk about Thai curries. Like most Thai foods, it’s focused on a balance of flavours: spicy, salty, sweet, sour, and bitter. If you hear the word “curry” and immediately think of Indian curries, Thai curries will be quite far from what you are picturing. The spices used tend to differ quite significantly, and the texture of the curry itself is quite different. I would use words like “rich”, “hearty”, or “spiced” to describe Indian curries, while I would use “vibrant”, nuanced” or “bright” to describe Thai curries.

The interesting thing that I found while researching for this post is that the Thai word “kari” for curries is specifically used when referring to Indian style curries, or Thai curries that have used Indian style spices. Gaeng or Kaeng are usually used to describe what we in the western world call “Thai Curry”. I am not sure when we as Westerners decided to use the same word to describe what I have experienced as very different types of dishes; I think I need to go for a more in-depth research on the etymology…

In this recipe, we are going to create a red curry with chicken, potatoes, leeks, and bell peppers. You probably noticed in the photo that the curry itself is not super “red”. The “red” in the name comes from the red curry paste we are using, which uses dried red chillies, along with a number of other ingredients, like ginger, garlic, galangal, shallots, coriander and cumin. The paste itself is a deep red, and it becomes the more orangey colour you see in the photo with the addition of the coconut milk. You can find a fairly wide variety of curries pastes in asian grocery stores, and I have found that a lot of western grocery stores now carry curry pastes as well.

Let’s get started.

I am going to start by stir frying my chicken. You have a Choose Your Own Adventure option here. You can also start with the chicken, or you can wait until the curry is formed up and made and add the chicken toward the end. The main difference is that you will get the caramelization of the meat in the “dry” stir fry (known as the Maillard reaction) if you cook the chicken first. Whereas if you wait until the end to add your chicken, there will be no Maillard reaction and the chicken will be cooked by simmering in the liquid of the curry. Cook’s choice if you want that browning/caramelization and are going to join me now, or add the chicken later 🙂

If you are going to stir fry the chicken, add the vegetable oil to your wok or large frying pan and heat up on medium-high heat. Then add your chicken, and stir, cooking just until the outsides are slightly browned, but the chicken does not need to be cooked all the way through. We will be adding it back to the curry later to finish off the cooking process. Transfer the chicken to a dish to the side until we are ready for it later. You may notice in the photos that my chicken is still a little bit frozen when I added it in. It is so much easier to cut chicken when it’s a little bit frozen. So if you are taking it out of the freezer to use for this recipe, cut it just before it’s fully thawed to make your life easier! If you have fresh chicken, you can put it in the freezer for around 5-10 minutes until it partially freezes to make the cutting process easier.

Next, we move on to the curry itself. If you have opted to not cook your chicken first, now is where you add the vegetable oil to the pan. For those who cooked the chicken first, there should be some residual oil in the pan, but add a little bit more if the pan is quite dry. If you want to be a bit more authentic, you can use some of the coconut cream skimmed off the top of your coconut milk instead of using the vegetable oil.

We are going to keep the heat at medium-high. Add the curry paste, garlic, and shredded ginger to the pan, smooshing (yes, we are getting very technical) the paste, garlic and ginger together and around the pan. As it heats, these ingredients will become very fragrant, at this point (about 60 seconds), add the coconut milk to the pan and stir well so the paste mixes fully into the milk and you pick up any caramelized bits from the bottom of the pan (you may need to scrape your spoon a bit along the bottom of the pan to do this). Next, add the broth and makrut lime leaves and stir until the broth is fully mixed.

I have talked about makrut lime leave before, but I am going to take a moment to talk about them again. Words are hard to use to describe the aroma that these little leaves provide to your dish. They are floral, citrusy and add a layer of complexity to the taste that cannot be replaced by a different ingredient. I have had a hard time finding makrut lime leaves lately, but often they can be found at an asian supermarket. If you cannot find them, you can omit them. The flavour will still be good, it will just have one of the layers of flavour out of the picture. If you cannot get lime leaves, use a bit more lime juice and a little bit of grated lime zest at the end of the cooking to help amplify the citrusy flavour you will be missing from the leaves. I have tried using dried makrut lime leaves as an alternative and I do have to say that they are basically as useless as dried basil. The aroma from the fresh leaves seems to be lost almost completely as they dry, so I would say it is probably best to just omit if you cannot find the fresh leaves. I have heard that you can find frozen lime leaves as well. I haven’t tested this, but I would imagine they are much more flavourful than a dried counterpart. I should also note that, unlike basil leaves, the makrut lime leaves are quite tough, and are typically removed before/while you eat, similar to bay leaves.

Moving on, we are going to allow the liquid to heat until it comes to a simmer, then lower the heat to medium. Add the potatoes and leeks, pushing the ingredients into the liquid so they are submerged. If you did not brown your chicken at the beginning, you will also add your chicken to the pan at this point. Cover the pan, and allow these ingredients to cook for 5 minutes. You can lift the lid every couple minutes to give the curry a stir to keep the ingredients from sticking to the bottom fo the pan.

Next, add the bell pepper, fish sauce and sugar. Stir well, cover the pan back up and cook for another 5 minutes.

For the folks who opted to not stir fry their chicken first: Check the ingredients for doneness. If the chicken is fully cooked and the vegetables are cooked to your liking, you can remove from the heat. Cook for another few minutes if the ingredients need a bit more time to be done.

For the folks who stir fried their chicken first, now is when we add the chicken back in, stirring into the liquid. Cook for another few minutes until the chicken and vegetables are fully cooked, then remove from the heat.

Squeeze the fresh lime juice into the curry and stir in, then serve the curry immediately with steamed rice, topping with some fresh cilantro or Thai basil.

Happy eating.

Zoodle (Zucchini Noodle) Lasagna Stuffed Peppers

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Zoodle (Zucchini Noodle) Lasagna Stuffed Peppers

Print Recipe
Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Total Time 1 hour 5 minutes
Course Main Course
Servings 6 peppers

Ingredients
  

  • 1 small zucchini
  • 6 medium bell peppers
  • 1 cup ricotta
  • 1 cup arugula or spinach (loosely chopped)
  • 1/2 cup parmesan cheese (shredded)
  • 1 egg
  • 1 pinch ground nutmeg
  • 2 cups mozzarella cheese (shredded)
  • 3 mild italian sausage, uncooked (vegetarian option of 1-2 cups cooked orzo)
  • 2 cups pomodoro sauce
  • salt and pepper (to taste)

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 350ºF/175ºC. Trim ends from zucchini and slice into long noodles (zoodles) using vegetable peeler or mandolin. Cut top off peppers and scoop out any of the seeds/core. Remove sausage from casings and place in a frying pan and cook on medium heat, breaking the meat apart with a spoon as it cooks. Once cooked, add the Pomodoro sauce to meat, stir well until fully mixed and sauce is heated through, then remove from the heat and bring to prep area (vegetarian option: add sauce and cooked orzo to a pan, heat through, then remove from heat). In a small bowl, mix together the ricotta, parmesan, egg, nutmeg and salt and pepper to taste. Fill the pepper in layers: start with a small layer of the meat sauce, layer of zoodles (1-2 thick, cut zoodle to size to fit), small layer ricotta mix, layer zoodles, repeat until pepper is filled. Fill all peppers the same way. Sprinkle top of peppers with mozzarella cheese. Place in oven for 40-45 minutes, or until heated all the way through and cheese has browned. Serve.
Keyword Lasagna, Peppers, Stuffed Peppers, Zoodle, Zucchini

And now for the details…

Have you seen the beautiful piles of peppers at your farmers markets recently?? Oodles of peppers of different sizes, shapes and colours. Everything from little globes of crimson cherry peppers, to the long pale chartreuse Hungarian wax peppers, to the little orange lanterns of habanero. Now for the people that know me well, this waxing poetic about peppers is going to come as a bit of a surprise. I don’t like peppers. Or at least I didn’t. But I have managed to expand my horizons.

What I don’t like? Green peppers. They’re like the bitter, obnoxious guest in your meal. From the first whiff of your food, they come barreling in with a distinct aroma and flavour. “HEY!!! I’M HERE! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!” There is very little room for pleasant or quiet conversation when the green pepper is invited to the party. They speak loudly, bowl over any other ingredient that is trying to talk, and they stick around to the very end, sometimes returning after you’ve ended the meal and everyone else has gone home (ever burped after eating something with green pepper? Blech.)

But I have come to appreciate the many other peppers out there that aren’t so boorish or demanding. Where the flavours are a bit more refined, sweeter, and nuanced. The peppers that compliment the other ingredients and make them better. And in the case of this recipe, those are the types of peppers I decided to pair up with the cheesy, tomatoey, unctuous flavours of lasagna.

This recipe comes together surprisingly quick. If you have more mouths to feed, or want to set yourself up for leftovers, you can easily size this recipe up (or down if you don’t want as much!) and since it reheats really well as leftovers the next day or day after, it’s a great weekday option!

First thing’s first: preheat your oven to 350ºF/175ºC.

We start the creation off by getting our fillings ready. The sausage/sauce is first. In this case, for the Pomodoro sauce, I had some homemade in the freezer that I pulled out for this recipe. If you don’t have any in the freezer, you could be extra and make some, as it does come together pretty quick, but a good can or jar of sauce goes over just fine.

Remove the sausages from their casings and place the meat in a frying pan. This might seem inherent to some people, but when I was first learning to cook, I did not realize that removing sausage from casings was something that could be done. The meal-makers of my childhood (predominantly mom, but also grandma’s and aunties) were all fabulous cooks, and we usually ate meats that they had prepared from scratch. The only sausage that I was familiar with was the occasional kubasa (Ukrainian garlic sausage) and hotdogs. I didn’t know that sausages came uncured and raw. For this recipe, when purchasing your sausage, make sure it is of the raw, uncured variety. You’ll be able to tell quite quickly if that’s true with a quick poke through the packaging. Raw sausage feels, well, raw. It’s soft and squishy, much like poking raw ground meat. To get it out of the casing, snip the tip off one end, pinch the other end tightly between your fingers, and then push the filling from the pinched end down, like you’re trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube. Alternatively, there are some places (check out your local Italian market) that will sell the sausage loose, without the casings, if you feel a bit squeamish about handling the sausages.

In the pan, fry up that sausage over medium-high heat until slightly browned and fully cooked. In my photo here, I have coarse-ground sausage. Yours might be a bit finer, so don’t fret if is doesn’t look quite like the photo. Break apart the sausage as it cooks, to get smaller pieces of meat that will be easier to fill the pepper with (big chunks of meat will make the layering of the “lasagna” quite a bit more challenging). Once cooked, add that tomato sauce in, and stir well.

For the vegetarians in the crowd: you’re going to complete skip the entire meat-cooking step (okay, so that part is probably obvious). This fabulous idea for a vegetarian alternative came from my friend Zoe: cook some orzo according package directions, drain, return to the pot with the Pomodoro sauce, stirring well and heating until the Pomodoro sauce it heated through.

Next step is the ricotta cheese filling. In a small bowl, mix together the ricotta, arugula, egg, parmesan cheese, a pinch of nutmeg and some salt and pepper. This will seem like a shocking thing for a saltaholic like me to say, but don’t go too heavy on the salt. We are already getting salt in the dish from the sausage, pre-made Pomodoro and parmesan. If you’re worried about it, mix everything but the egg and give it a taste-test, then mix the egg in when you’re happy with the flavour.

The last thing to do before assembly is to make zucchini “noodles”, i.e. zoodles. If you have a fancy mandolin, you could definitely use that, or if you’ve got some serious knife skills and can cut the zucchini thinly, that is also an option. I went cheap and easy and used a vegetable peeler. If you’ve not made zucchini noodles with a peeler before, there are a few videos out there you can use as examples. Basically: trim either ends of the zucchini, and run the peeler down the length of the zucchini, and voila! You’ve made your first zoodle! Repeat the peeler step over and over until the zucchini has been converted to zoodles. A lot of the videos/blog posts will tell you not to use the center, but that’s probably because they are making a dish where they are sautéing the zoodles. In our case, the zoodles are forming the “noodle” layer of our lasagna and won’t be moved around during the cooking process, so the centre bits are a-okay. I like using the zoodles instead of pasta noodles to avoid the extra step of cooking regular lasagna noodles. And extra pot to clean and an extra cooking step? No thank you. Another advantage: any of the zoodles you don’t use can just be chopped up quick, thrown in a sealed container in the fridge and added to a sauce, soup or stew later that week.

Are we ready to assemble? Heck yeah!

Cut and core the peppers (thank you Martha!) and lay them in a baking dish. I did a couple different kinds of peppers here. For the typical bell pepper, just cut around the top (stem side) like you would with a jack-o-lantern and pull out the core. Turn it upside down and tap out any extra seeds, and if there is quite a bit of the white inner pieces, just tear them out with your fingers. I also did a long, sweet red pepper, and since it can’t sit upright, I cut out one of the sides instead of the top (the piece I cut off got chopped and tossed in with the sauce to avoid any wastage ;P).

Your first layer will be the sauce (add around two tablespoons per pepper), smoothing the sauce across the base as evenly as possible. Then place some of the zoodles over the sauce, then the ricotta mixture (again, a couple tablespoons per pepper and smoothed out evenly), more zoodles and back to sauce. To get the zoodles to fit, cut them to approximate lengths and layer them on top of each other so that they somewhat cover the layer underneath. We are working with weird shaped here, not a typical rectangular lasagna pan, so don’t worry about getting the layer perfect. Repeat the sauce, zoodles, ricotta, zoodles order over and over until you fill the pepper.

When you’ve filled the pepper, make sure a zoodle layer is the last, top-most one, then top with the shredded mozzarella. Put the peppers into the pre-heated oven for 40-45 minutes, or until the filling has cooked all the way through and the cheese is golden and bubbly. Serve immediately.

If you’re wanting some for leftover, let the pepper cool completely, then place in a sealed container in the fridge for up to three days. You could go through the effort of reheating in the oven, but to be honest, the microwave worked just fine for us.

Happy eating.