This dish is hot!

Picked up Easy Indian by Das Sreedharan at the library last week and its been a treat to read through it. Though the real treat was tasting the beef vindaloo I prepared over the weekend after reading it!

Vindaloo is a traditional dish from Goa, and its origins can be traced back to the Portuguese colonizers that introduced a similar dish as early as the 16th century! The spice mix of turmeric, cumin, chili flakes, and peppercorns gives the dish some heat, but it doesn't overpower the flavour of the beef. I accompanied the beef vindaloo simply with fragrant jasmine rice and the scattering of fresh mint.

nomnomnom

I'm updating my blog, its a christmas miracle!

I love pork. I love it so much. I prepared roasted pork short ribs in sherry/wine with potatoes, yams and carrots. So tasty, I really love pork.

Yes, I just did that

I had spare beer/vodka batter so for fun I deep-fried some freakin' hotdogs! Deep frying is a blast, I can totally relate to why people deep-fry their cheesecake and snickers bar now. That being said the real treat tonight was my Fish n Chips! The chips took approx 2 hours to complete. I boiled them and gave them a double fry to reduce their moisture content, creating an extra crispy chip. I used fresh cod as my fish. The batter was a simple mixture of equal parts rice and white flour with equal parts lager and vodka.

I went French, will I ever go back?

I was served a bowl of vichyssoise two summers ago during summerlicious. The closest I had ever been to tasting chilled soup previous to that was pouring milk or fruit soda into the soups my Grandma made me everyday as a kid. Not surprisingly it didn't taste that well and I stopped soon after starting. The point is that chilled soup, is something different, away from the norm that I had associated with soups. I was able to share that experience when I made vichyssoise for my family last night. Even my sister had a bit, reluctantly.

There was nothing overly complicated with the preparation, but damn was there flavour. I let it sit in the fridge for two nights before serving, it really does get better with time.

*Big thanks to Jel, for providing me with a really amazing cookbook, I obtained the recipe to make this soup from it.

Week 3 and a very long bit

I had a couple of great sirloin steaks left over from our family dinner over the weekend. I decided on making some steak sandwiches for Auri and I on her day off. I sautéed some peppers and onions with some Portuguese bacon, along with the steak slices before piling it all on a nice slab of pita bread. I topped off the sandwich with a serious amount of blue cheese and mozzarella on top of tomatoes, and put it in the oven for a couple of minutes. My god was it good.

Week 2 and a bit

I decided upon Fried Chicken for this weeks dish. Gotta say it was one of the simplest things I've ever made and one of the tastiest. All I did was leave the chicken overnight in the flavoring liquid I made. Before frying I applied an assortment of spices before coating with flour. 30 minutes later I had some of the best crispy fried chicken I've had without the 1 inch layer of skin found in the KFC variation.

Week 1: Pretzels

Every week I'll be posting something new that I've made. This week its pretzels! Little interesting piece of information about making pretzels is that before baking, you quickly run them through a bathe of boiling water mixed with baking soda. This allows for them to brown quickly.

They were very tasty in my opinion, but next time I'm defiantly going to jazz them up a bit.