Chicken Piccata

 

Chicken Piccata

Our teenage grandson is spending the week with us and he's interested in cooking, so I picked out a few recipes suitable for him to try. We found thinly sliced chicken breasts at the supermarket which saved him a step in the directions. This dish was executed with minimal fuss and was delicious!

Rather than making a separate side dish, fresh spinach and green peas were cooked in the sauce in the final step of cooking. Our chicken piccata was served on a bed of steamed rice and was relished by all, young and the not so young alike.

Burmese Stir-Fried Spinach & Eggplants

Burmese Spinach & Eggplants

Supermarkets now stock bags and tubs of triple washed spinach which cuts down on prep time. Baby spinach leaves are small enough to leave whole and that cuts down on prep time because they don't need to be chopped.

I fry the eggplant first then add the spinach, cooking it just until wilted.The leaves have to be moved from the bottom of the pan to the top several times because the pan is usually too small to accommodate the entire contents of the bag or tub.

Sorrel

Sorrel is an herb, delicious and tart, that look very much like spinach. If sown in the ground, this vigourous plant will take over just like mint. I've bought it at the farmer's market as seedlings and potted them successfully. They die back in the winter and return in the spring. The tender & tangy greens are edible when they first sprout but become more and more bitter as they mature. 

To emulate the tangy flavour of sorrel and roselle leaves (chin baung ywet in Burmese), I add the juice of a lime just before removing this dish from the stove. 

Mung Dal with Spinach

Split Mung Beans with Spinach

This simple preparation for lentils and spinach is a breeze to make and gets dinner on the table in a jiffy.   

Saag Chicken

Saag Chicken

This dish was inspired by a post in Facebook that recommended that the chicken be cooked in the usual way and then simmered with spinach that is blanched and blended with tomatoes and green chilies. It worked out really well with minimal effort.

Thai Tom Yum Goong - Hot & Sour Shrimp Soup

Thai Hot & Sour Soup

Bowl of Tom Yum

The inspiration for this soup came from a friend on Facebook asking for a Hot & Sour Soup recipe which led me to Closet Cooking. We had it for lunch for lunch today which along with an egg roll each, made for a filling and satisying meal. Because some of the ingredients were missing from my pantry, I had to make some modifications so I've described, below, what I did to reproduce the recipe.

The hot part of this soup came from a combination of minced green chilies and gochujang, a Korean chili paste that I love! The sour aspect came simply from the juice of one lime. I dropped the squeezed out rinds of lime into the soup and fished them out before serving. This made up for the absence of lemon grass. 

Chicken and Spinach in Coconut Gravy

Chicken & Spinach in Coconut Gravy

Saag Meat is a popular Indian dish, saag being spinach cooked with any kind of meat and a lot of spices. Baby spinach goes very well with chicken and so does coconut milk. Combining these 3 flavours produced a delicious main course for dinner tonight. Keeping the dried red chilies whole provides full flavour of the chilies without adding a lot of heat. In spite of keeping the spices down to a minimum, this chicken dish tasted wholesome, peppery and creamy.

Palang Alu Posto Bhaja - Stir-Fried Spinach & Potatoes with White Poppy Seeds

Palang Alu Posto Bhaja

I usually use frozen spinach because it's so convenient, but nowadays one pound packages of pre-washed baby spinach are available in supermarkets and membership stores. They can be used right out of the container because they have been triple-washed and are very fresh. 

Sprinkling white poppy seeds or posto over vegetables as they cook is a common stir-fry technique used in the Bengali kitchen. Stir-frying the poppy seeds before adding vegetables leaves them toasted and crunchy in pleasant contrast to the softness of the cooked spinach and potatoes.

This spinach dish is seasoned very simply with sliced onions and ginger paste. More flavour is imparted by tempering dried red peppers at the start of the cooking process. Leaving them whole imparts flavour from the dried peppers without releasing a lot of heat.

Stir-fried spinach can be served as a side dish over steamed long-grain rice or with any kind of Indian bread. 

Baby Spinach with Eggplant

Begun Diye Palang Shaak

Ingredients:
1 pkg. baby spinach greens
2 Oriental eggplants, chopped
2 medium onions, peeled and sliced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
2 Tbsp. oil
½ tsp. Shah Jeera or cumin seeds
1 tej pata (bay leaf)
1 jalapeno pepper, diced
¼ tsp. sugar
Salt to taste
1 tsp. ghee
1 jalapeno pepper, sliced

Directions:
1. Cut eggplants into bite-size pieces, toss with salt and set aside.
2. Heat oil in a pan over high heat, add bay leaf and cumin seeds.
3. When cumin seeds sputter, add diced peppers, onions and garlic & stir-fry until onions turn translucent.
4. Add eggplant pieces and fry until slightly browned.
5. Add baby spinach, stir and cook until spinach wilts then add sugar and adjust salt to taste.
6. Remove from heat and garnish with ghee and sliced peppers.
Serve with steamed Basmati rice or tortillas.