Home Made Chop Suey

"Mixed pieces" is basically what Chop Suey means. An American Chinese dish of a little of this and a little of that. I saw a Food Network special on Thanksgiving telling of how Chinese chefs in San Francisco would basically do this, throw whatever they had together and cook it, making Chop Suey. Especially popular during later hours when people were getting out of work and extremely hungry. Tonight, I basically threw some stuff in a pan and cooked it up. Total crap shoot. Steve wanted some stir-fry type dish, so we had some vegetables. At the store today I picked up some chicken and marinated it in soy sauce. Threw the chopped chicken and veggies in a pan later on with a mix of olive, sesame and hot pepper oils. Threw together a sauce made with some soy sauce, teriyaki marinade and plum sauce, added a dash of red cooking wine and chili sauce and some sesame seeds. Thickened the sauce with a bit of corn starch. It came out pretty good, I think I over cooked the vegetables, there was no crispness. The sauce came out well though which I'm glad about, it was edible. The veggies were just a bit limp. Had it with a white wine from Goose Watch called Snow Goose. Steve didn't like it, but I think it's rather enjoyable. Then again he's more of a fan of dry reds and this is a somewhat sweet white. Doesn't say what kind of grape is used, but it's a nice sweet wine. I can say I did well for one of those quick throw-stuff-together-and-be-experimental dinners.

Spontaneity!

The past few days have been quite creative for me.  Unfortunately it's put me in a sort of an odd haze.  Courtney has had real trouble keeping my attention on things and such.  Last night though, after a long day of work (where we did no business), I got creative with dinner.

Many weeks back, one of my coworkers recommended a few wines to me, one of which was a Fish Eye Shiraz 2003, and now I'm seriously considering her tastes to be lacking, or she's using me to test out wines before she buys them.  Actually the other two weren't that bad (New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (I got a Nautilus) and the Fish Eye Pinot Grigio)

The label on the back said to have it with grilled meats and vegetables like chicken and peppers with onion and such.  For whatever reason though, I was in the mood for Pizza.  We went to the grocery store and picked up some dough, cheese, some sauce, precooked chicken strips (because we couldn't find any raw ones to sauté) and green peppers.

I had all of this planned in the beginning. After chopping half a green pepper, half an onion and a few garlic cloves, I sauté-ze-zizzled them (f*** you spell check, sauté is a word and so is Sauvignon Blanc) in our huge enamel pan.  Normally if the store had raw chicken in stock, I would have thrown those in with the mix.  Adding pepper never hurts too.  Meanwhile I prepped the pizza. A few weeks ago we had a wine and cheese party, and we brought some Munster, and we never got around to using it. In all we used Sharp white Cheddar, Shredded Mozzarella, the Munster (I know your humming the theme song), a three cheese blend of Parmisian, Asaigo and Romano, and to top it off some Feta.

Oh yeah and before I forget, Courtney decided not to eat a lot of the chicken in her curried chicken take out last night.  We added some of that too.

It ended up looking like this. Upon cutting though, it ended up being a fork and knife pizza since I added too many topping and I stretched the inner dough too thin.  Everything  was okay, wasn't too bad.  if I had more time to plan it would have turned out awesome, but it was pretty good for an experimental pizza with substandard dough and sauce.

The wine though, was CRAP! Drink it to know what lack luster, thin, zero dimensional wine tastes like.  This tasted like typical red wine fruits (cranberries, rasberries, etc.) with a shot of vodka.  It finished horribly with old cheap chocolate, that rasberry taste ended up turning into gushers with a hint of cheap sour apple candy.  It's like they wanted to make an ultra dry fruit bomb.  The Nose wasn't that bad, it actually smelled delightful, but the actual consuming of the wine was a chore.  I didn't even finish my glass, I went to bed with a full stomach under the effects of alchohol and woke up to a half empty glass.  But the pizza made up for it.  I do miss that pizza.

Indian Recipe with a Riesling

Okay! First official food-related post. This one is about forays into Indian cooking. This is one of those deals where we were trying to match a meal with a wine. We had a bottle of Riesling that we wanted to try and planned the meal around that.

Thankfully there's all sorts of ways to plan meals and wines. Whites with light meals, reds with heavy, reds with red meat, whites with white, etc. You can base things on flavors that compliment one another once you are more experienced with wining and dining. Or you can check out the applet on Wine Answers

We of course, chose the latter, and it was decided that I'd make an attempt at Indian style cooking.

First I started by making naan, a type of flat-bread. It starts out like normal bread, make the dough, let it rise, punch the dough, etc. Seeing how we both love garlic I made sure to put plenty of it in the dough. Then came the fun part, cooking the naan in a skillet. I've never made naan before so I was clumsy with the first couple pieces. For one thing I didn't flatten the dough enough and for another I turned the burner up too high and ended up setting off the smoke alarm :O I did get the hang of it afterwards though, and it came out rather well.

After I had finished the naan I started on this tomato-chicken recipe I found online. All Recipes is a great site, practically anything you could want is there. Of course there are other great recipe sites as well, this one's just a one-stop-shop in my book. The chicken recipe itself was rather easy, and the ingredients weren't too hard to find. Living in a small town sometimes makes things difficult.

The sauce for the recipe reminded me of the jars of past you can find in a grocery store, only without all the grease. The puree of onion, garlic, and ginger makes a nice base where you add loads of spices; cumin, tumeric, ground clove, cinnamon etc. It wasn't very hot spice-wise, but it was very aromatic. After adding spices and the chicken you add the tomato, and let it simmer for a couple hours.

I really did not think dinner would take so long, but it's an adventure unto itself. After waiting about an hour I started on some curried potatoes as a side dish. That wasn't as intensive as the chicken. Basically boil potatoes, cut them up, throw them in a pan with spices and let them get slightly toasted. I think I over-boiled the potatoes a bit so they were a little mushy, but still good.

After waiting for hours this is how it came out. It was delicious to say the least. I think I did a good job for my first try at real Indian cooking. More intensive than just following a recipe from a curry paste jar, but a whole lot better as well. It also went really well with the riesling we had with it. St Urbans-hof 2006 German riesling. Wow, that stuff was just a pineapple explosion. I never thought I could taste so much pineapple from a non-pineapple source. I liked it though, and for my first time trying a riesling it wasn't that bad. I'll be sure to try more in the future.