And the winner is...

Red Pepper!!

With an astounding 40% of the vote, Red Pepper won this week's battle.

As I have the three hour time delay/advantage and do not need to be at work until 10 a.m. tomorrow, I now have a head start on research for a soon-to-be-tried recipe. I would love to do a Kara favourite - stuffed peppers but I have a few others in mind that look tasty.

I was hoping to have to find a recipe containing all five ingredients in the event of a tie. Yum, something that contains shrimp, red peppers, ginger, cocoa powder and bananas... what a treat? On that delicious note, I will sign off but not before reminding you to check back on Sunday for some red pepper recipes and reviews!

-Koren

Getting Curryous!

Curried Chicken

*can be curried veggies, pork, beef or whatever you like :)

What you'll need

1lb Boneless Chicken (or preferred substitute)

2 tbsp Olive Oil

1 large Onion

2 cloves Garlic

1 cup Coconut Milk

1/2 cup Plain Yogurt

1 tbsp fresh grated Ginger

2 tsp Curry Powder

Salt & Pepper to taste

Sliced almonds or toasted coconut

Cooked rice to serve 4

How it's done

1. Rinse chicken, pat dry and cut into 1 inch pieces.

2. Heat 1 tbsp of oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add half the onion and saute until tender. Add chicken and saute 5 minutes or until slightly browned. Transfer chicken to bowl.

3. Add remaining the rest of the oil to the pan. Add the rest of the onion and garlic. Cook until onion is tender.

4. Add coconut milk, yogurt, ginger, curry, salt & pepper to the pan. Bring to soft boil and lower to heat. Add chicken and let simmer at least 10 minutes.

5. Transfer to serving bowl, garnish with almonds or coconut if desired. Serve with the rice.

How it turned out

I don't think I have cooked with curry before and have probably only eaten it two or three times. As I like to be adventurous from time to time, I was happy to have a "new to me" ingredient to try out. I am glad I did, because I loved it! This was the perfect recipe for me (not very time consuming, pretty simple ingredients and something that can be taken to work the next day) and I know I will make it again. I certainly will be cooking with curry from now on. 1)cause it's quite tasty and 2) well, I have a 140g pkg of it now!

I cooked this dish last night. I was pretty sure I had chicken thighs here at the house but as it turned out, I didn't. I did have boneless pork chops and they worked just fine although I would have probably preferred chicken as it is my favourite. The sauce isn't very spicy at all and can certainly be adjusted to your personal tastes. With the rest of the yogurt I bought (only could buy a large container and only needed a 1/2 cup for the recipe) I decided to make tzatziki. I made up my own recipe threw a half cucumber and a small piece of onion in a food processor gadget, added some fresh garlic, s & p and the yogurt. It turned out delish! Served the meal with pita bread and it was a real international experience! And the fresh cool taste of the tzatziki went really well with the curry sauce.

The picture I took won't be showing up in any foodie magazines but I had forgot to take a pic until it was transferred into Tupperware. I just had it this evening for a snack and I think it was even better after sitting there overnight, kinda like a stew. I would definitely recommend this recipe. I will definitely be trying out the Curry Soup Mom posted. If Kaleb gives it a 7/10 then it must be good, I mean, what hasn't he eaten??

Curry Soup

Well, the Maja part of this team is writing first and that’s not hard for me to be an early poster as I’m located in the Atlantic Daylight Savings time zone. Hope you like the design of the page – can’t take any of the credit as the junior member of the team did the setup and naming – creative daughter that she is. We’re hoping you’ll participate with us, as it’s a fun project.

Using the ingredient curry which was randomly selected from the list here is my initial offering. First my version of the recipe, and the link where I found the original I modified, then a brief summary:

Curried Apple and Onion Soup

1 tablespoon butter
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 small onion chopped
3/4 cup diced potatoes
2 apples -- peeled, cored and chopped
3 cups chicken broth
salt and pepper to taste
¼ cup plain yogurt

1. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in curry powder and cook 1 minute. Stir in onion, potato and apples and cook 5 minutes. Pour in broth and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes.
2. Puree in a blender or food processor, or using an immersion blender. Season with salt and pepper and serve with a swirl of yogurt.

My recommendation would be to use an immersion blender for pureeing or…remember your basic physics and not put the cover on the blender with hot soup inside then turn it on! The resulting first-degree burns will remind me temporarily.

Now I’m not sure of your audience of critics but I have to tell you that father and son here lapped up this first course and the review from Tim the well dressed/coiffed food critic on the left here was “this tastes like something I’d eat at Charlotte Lane Café” so that is hard to top. Kaleb gave it a 7/10 but said it was a good 7. So an all round success. Let us know how you make out if you try it or what modifications you made. Have fun.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Curried-Apple-and-Leek-Soup/Detail.aspx

In the beginning...

Laurel and Koren have been searching for a project to do together. Taking into account our distance apart, time required vs. actual free time available, and our individual interests we finally decided on a recipe blog (involving my two favourite things: food and getting my opinion out there). So here's how it works... every week we will each cook with a new recipe using the same ingredient. On Sundays we will post our recipe and a blurb about how it all worked out.
We will have a poll here on the blog where you can vote for next week's ingredient and the one with the most votes on Wednesday evening will be the one we'll be trying out and writing about the next Sunday! Make sure to check in each week!

This week's ingredient: Curry!

Watch tomorrow for the success stories :)

<3 Koren