Thursday, September 11, 2014

Week 37 - Chicken Korma

The Recipe
1lb chicken, cubed
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
1 tsp ginger
2 heaped tbsp korma curry paste
125ml coconut milk
150ml chicken stock
1 tbsp ground almonds
1dl natural yogurt
1 tomato, diced
Chapatis, to serve

Heat oil in a pan and cook the chicken until golden. Remove from pan and transfer to crockpot.
Add the onions, bell pepper, ginger and curry paste to the pan and cook for 2-3 minutes. Pour in the coconut milk, stock and ground almonds. Bring to a boil and season with salt and pepper according to taste. Transfer to crockpot. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours. 15 minutes prior to serving, add yogurt and tomato.

Serve with chapatis.

The Verdict
First the confession - I was too lazy to cook things ahead of time, so just dumped everything in the crockpot raw. My fault, and may have influenced the final outcome of the meal, as the chicken ended up being really dry. I don't usually have that problem any longer - even when I don't cook the meat ahead of time - but it was rather bad here. Somebody once told me that the meat is dry if I don't leave it long enough in the crockpot - I've never understood that reasoning, as I would have thought it was the other way around.

Anyway, as it was I wasn't too impressed, but I guess it's unfair to base my opinion of a dish on an attempt where I cut corners, so I may still make it again another time -- properly this time!

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Week 36: Garlic Pork Chops with Cheese

The Recipe
4 pork chops
1 large tomato, sliced
4 slices of cheddar or mozzarella cheese
1 large garlic clove, minced
salt, pepper
4 tbsp olive oil

Rub the pork chops with salt, pepper and minced garlic. Heat the oil in a pan, reduce to medium-high heat and cook the pork chops for about 4 minutes on each side or until done.

Transfer to an oven-proof dish, put 1 slice of cheese and 1-2 slices of tomato on top of each and broil in the oven for a couple of minutes until the cheese melts.

Serve with baked potatoes and last week's carrot dish.

The Verdict
Really good! I find that pan-cooked pork chops often get too dry, but that wasn't the case here at all! Whether that was due to the tomato and cheese, or just because I finally stopped over-cooking them, I'm not sure. Either way, I thought it was great :)

Week 35: Spanish Carrot Dish

The Recipe
1 tbsp olive oil
3 carrots cut into thin staves
2 spring onions, sliced
5 slices of salami, cut into thin stripes
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/3 dl pine nuts

Heat the oil in a pot and cook the salami until crisp - about 3-4 minutes. Remove from pot and leave to drip on a plate covered with paper towels.
Add the carrots, spring onions and cinnamon to the pot and cook for 4 minutes. Add the salami and cook for another 4 minutes. Finally add the pine nuts and give a quick stir (1-2) minutes to give the pine nuts a bit of flavour.

The Verdict
I really liked it, but DH wasn't too fond of the salami. He thought it would be better with bacon... but then, everything is better with bacon ;) Quite a bit of work for a side dish though, so I don't know how often I'll be making this. It did taste nice though :) The original recipe also had you add raisins and caraway. I don't care for either, so I just left both out. Next time I might actually also leave out the cinnamon.