Watermelon Rum Cocktail of Sorts

What I bought:

 

1 Seedless Watermelon ($1/3lbs)

1 carton of Blueberries ($1.50)

Organic apples ($? It was cheap…I bought a 3 pound bag, but can’t remember the price)

Lemon ($0.35)

Fresh Basil ($1)

 

What I added:

Coconut Rum

 

What I did:

 

**Note: this has simple ingredients, but is a bit more complicated because I used a lot of tools in the kitchen.  You can alter the recipe to be less work.

 

Step 1:  I cut half of a seedless watermelon into chunks and removed the rind.  I blended the watermelon chunks, and I added 3/4 cups of rum and poured the liquid into a 9’’x13’’ pan and placed in the freezer for 5-6 hours, or you could make it the night before you plan to have the drinks.

 

Step 2:

 

When you are ready to make the drinks, use a fork to scrape watermelon into a fluffy consistency.

 

With a juicer, I juiced a few apples and a handful of blueberries.

 

*(However, if you don’t have a juicer, you could probably just use fresh apple juice or even orange juice and add a few handfuls of blueberries in the blender with the watermelon mixture.)

 

In a cocktail shaker or a large cup, add about 1 loose cup of the watermelon fluff mixture, 2 oz (2 shot glasses) of apple-blueberry juice.  Crush and chop 3 fresh basil leaves and add to the shaker or cup and add the juice of half a lemon.  I would also add more rum to your preference here.  Shake or stir just a few seconds, then pour into glasses.

 

Assessment:  The basil and lemon added a savory essence to the drink so it wasn’t too sweet, and they really were my favorite flavors in the drink.  It’s more like a slushy if you just stir the ingredients and pour into the glasses, or can be like a cocktail if you pour through the filter of your cocktail shaker…either way, it was a very good experiment.  Probably my new favorite summer drink.  In the end, because I used my juicer, we got several servings of fruits in our drink too…who says cocktails can’t be healthful?  But I will definitely add more rum next time I make this recipe; 3/4 cups added to the watermelon wasn’t enough for our household…

Curried Chicken Vegetable Soup

Purchased:

 1 onion ($1)

1 potato ($1)

Corn on the cob (3 for $2)

Cauliflower ($1.49)

Gluten-free Anellini pasta ($3.59)

What I added:

Baby carrots I had left over

Celery

Curry powder

Salt and Pepper

Boneless, skinless Chicken

This week I wanted to use up some ingredients from my fridge before the veggies went bad, and I thought soup would be my best option.  I did some shopping at the local farmer’s market and found a few dollar vegetables, and went to the grocery store to see what they had on clearance that I could add, which is when I found the pasta.  When I studied in Italy during college, anellini pasta became a staple for me…I would just add it to some vegetable broth and eat it as a makeshift cheap meal.  I decided to embellish that idea by making my own broth from scratch and adding fresh veggies and some chicken.

Making the broth:

Fill a large pot with about 20 cups of water, and add half an onion, a raw, boneless, skinless chicken breast, some celery (2-3 stalks broken in half), and a handful of carrots if you’d like.  Bring water to a boil, then reduce flame to a simmer.  Simmer for 3 1/2 hours.  Water will reduce significantly.  Add about 1 1/2-2 teaspoons of salt (to taste), and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.

When 3 1/2 hours have passed and you are happy with the flavor of your broth, remove chicken breast and set aside.  Then remove from stovetop, and pour broth through a strainer into another large pot, in order to discard all veggies.  Toss those veggies in the trash.

*Note: for this particular recipe I used a boneless, skinless chicken breast, but you can use bone-in or just bones and skin of a chicken you’ve previously eaten to make the broth.  I actually think the broth is better if made from the carcass of a chicken, which is how I would make this recipe in the future.

Making the soup:

Dice 1 cup of carrots, 2 celery stalks, and 1 peeled potato.  Coarsely chop a small cauliflower.  (You could finely chop the rest of the onion and add it also for more flavor too).  Remove corn kernels from 1 cob.  Add all vegetables to the broth you made.  Tear or chop the chicken breast you set aside into bite size pieces and add to soup.  Add 2 teaspoons of curry powder.  (In the video, I said to only add 1 teaspoon of curry powder, but after tasting it, I prefer 2)  Bring soup to a boil, reduce to simmer and cook for about 20 minutes.  Add 1 cup of the pasta, bring to a boil again for about 5 minutes.  Then it’s ready to serve!

*You could easily make this soup rather quickly if you didn’t want to make your broth from scratch…I just think it tastes better with a homemade broth, and it’s an easy way to cook the chicken at the same time.  If you used a pre-made broth, I would recommend adding pre-cooked chicken meat as well.

*Vegetarian Option:  Use vegetable broth and leave out the chicken.

Makes about 8 servings.

End of Meal Notes:  The soup was good.  However, I would add less cauliflower because the next day all the veggies absorbed all the broth and it was more of stew than a soup when we went to eat it again.  Also, it had good flavor, but I think I would have made my broth with some bones and skin of a chicken I’d previously baked with herbs to make the broth a little more savory.  It was good enough though that I’d make it again with these changes.

Quorn and Baby Corn Stirfry with Peanut and Passionfruit Sauce

I was determined to do it today. I’d got paid in cash for a gig last night, I’d had a good class this afternoon, the weather was sunny… it was time to cook. The really fun bit was cycling home and trying to figure out what to do with what I found in the reduced items (yey! to the yellow stickers!) shelf of the big fridge at Tesco’s on my way home from work in Marble Arch.

I bought one each of whatever they had on the shelf, except for the pork loin steaks. Like all good Jewish boys I like the pig, but such thick chunks of it are sometimes a bit too much!

So I got:

Baby Corn, reduced to 79p

Spring Onions, reduced to 55p

2 Lemon & Black Pepper Quorn Escalopes, reduced to £1.35

3 Passion Fruit, reduced to 55p

And I added from home:

Beansprouts

Chunky Peanut Butter

White Wine Vinegar

Soya Sauce

Coriander

I don’t remember the exact thought process, but I’ve been into peanut sauce lately – mainly with rice noodles and cucumber and baby peppers and mint and stuff (basically, the insides of a summer roll, but as a salad) – so I knew I wanted more of that, and the passion fruit… or granadilla as we call it back home, and indeed, the granadillas were from South Africa… they seemed like a good combo with the peanut butter, and some chopped spring onion, and I knew I had some coriander left at home. So for the sauce I mixed in  1 tbs peanut butter, 2 tbs white wine vinegar, 2 tbs soya sauce, the pulp of three granadillas, 3 tbs chopped coriander. And that was it for the sauce.

I love stir-fried baby corn, so that blinds me to other ways of preparing it – is there another way? – and because there was going to be a stir-fry, then the escalopes needed to be sliced up, and there was a bag of beansprouts at home… so that was decided. First I grilled the quorn escalopes for about 20 minutes in the oven. I sliced the baby corns in half down the middle, chopped up some spring onions and fried them until the baby corn started to brown. I sliced the escalopes and threw them into the pan with 2 big handfuls of beansprouts, and fried that on a high heat for a minute. Then I added some soya sauce, half a teaspoon of brown sugar, and a generous pinch of coriander.

Verdict: The flavours were great and the sauce went well with the stir fry. The only problem was that the seeds of the granadilla were a bit to hard. Next time I think I’d use mango, perhaps, or a ripe peach. Later, I tucked into what was left over, and even though it was cold, it was delicious. Which reminds me of the years when I was into cold pizza with cottage cheese, but that’s another story.

A Makeshift Fruit Tart

What I bought:

1 nectarine ($1)

1 peach ($0.50)

1 banana ($0.24)

1 box of raspberries ($1.25)

1 box of vanilla instant pudding ($1.69)

What I had at home:

Left over chocolate chip cookie dough…only enough to make about 2 large cookies.

 

Summer is evidently approaching in Southern California because fruit is practically being given away with the lowest prices of the season that I’ve seen thus far.  I figured I had to make something wonderful with a variety of these luscious fruits I picked up.  It was too sweet for me to pass up making a dessert for this blog, so I decided to come up with a makeshift fruit tart.

 

What I did:

In a small, greased pie pan, I pressed my left over cookie dough in the bottom, about 1 centimeter thick, and baked it at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes.

While that was baking, I made the instant pudding in a pot on the stove…following the box directions.

When the cookie was done, I set it aside, and poured the pudding into the pie pan until it almost reached the top, and then I decorated it with slices of the fresh fruit I purchased.  I put the whole tart in the refrigerator to chill…I didn’t time it…we just ate it after we were done eating dinner!  It was great…turned out better than I expected, and we served it to guests, and everyone had seconds!  I will definitely make it my new staple for a quick dessert when having company, or make it when I’m craving something sweet.

Chicken Shish… not just for drunks on their way home…

Now, I forgot to photograph this, so I apologise… but I picked up the following five items that were reduced:

Chicken pieces (free range of course – I DO live in Crouch End)

A bag of spinach

A nearly too-ripe avocado

Cayenne peppe (how can spices be reduced to clear I don’t know)

A lemon

Sour cream

Not wanting a curry and instead feeling like I wanted something hearty, healthy and tasty, I decided to go for the Turkish plate mix of a overly green salad, chicken shish and rice.

The salad, I added some tomatoes, bell peppers, spinach, spring onion and avocado to a bowl before dousing it in lemon, a tablespoon of oil and pepper. There’s something quite satisfying about almost kneading the dressing into the salad with your hands, get the food all over your fingers, that tactile relationship that I had with food before knives and forks were imposed on me.

For the chicken, I asked on twitter and facebook for advice on how to shish it up, but got the usual pithy responses about barbecuing it to within an inch of its former self, adding rat etc, and instead, had to try and remember those years I lived on Green Lanes, when a nice hearty chicken shish from a non-kebab shop was par for the course.

Into a bowl, I added:

3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Added the chicken pieces in and uses my tactile food-loving (clean) hands to cover everything in marinade. Leaving this for an hour and realising I couldn’t be bothered to fire up a barbecue, got the grill going. Deep pan covered with tin foil, the pieces all laid out individually (not on top of each other) and the grill fire up, they were under for 20 minutes in total, turned frequently.

Served up with a handful of rice, a lot of salad and a dab of raita (sour cream, lemon, chilli powder and cucumber), the chicken shish was tasty, hearty and surprisingly healthy, despite its reputation preceding it.

A Simple Citrus Salad

This week most of the reduced produce I found was in the citrus family, which I thought would make for an interesting tossed spring-fruit salad.  Inspired by a seasonal fennel-citrus salad at one of my favorite Los Angeles restaurants, Forage, I decided to create a simple citrus salad.  Spending about $5.00 for the ingredients, my salad recipe will feed 4-5 people, and there were many left over ingredients to make up more if I’d had more people eating.  It’s a great light lunch salad, or it can be served with dinner as a side, which is what I did.

Salad Ingredients:

6-7 leaves of red leaf lettuce ($0.88)

1/2-1 sliced medium sized cucumber ($0.25)

2 oranges ($0.45 each)

1 grapefruit ($0.45 lb.)

Whole milk ricotta cheese ($1.73)

Dressing Ingredients:

1 teaspoon fig jam (or an apricot or marmalade jam would work too)

1/2 lemon juiced

1/3 of grapefruit, juiced

1/4 cup canola oil (or oil of choice)

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Directions:

To make dressing, cut the top of the grapefruit off, about 1/3 the size, and juice it.  Cut lemon and juice 1/2.  Pour both juices into a jar.  Add oil, apple cider vinegar, jam and shake.  Sometimes the jam has difficulty breaking down, if this happens, it helps to smash it with a spoon against the walls of the jar.  Set aside.

Wash lettuce, blot dry with paper towel, and tear into bite size pieces.  Using a knife can brown the lettuce.  Peel and thinly slice the cucumber either with a mandolin or knife.  Peel and dice the two oranges and remainder of the grapefruit.

Toss lettuce, fruit, and cucumber in large bowl with salad dressing.  Serve into bowls and top with crumbles of ricotta cheese.

Note:  The salad was good, and the dressing wasn’t too heavy or too sweet, which really allowed the citrus fruit to be the focal point of the salad.  I think the cucumber was good for texture, and I would probably add more slices to each dish if I made this again.  This salad could easily be embellished with slivered almonds, or fresh berries.  Even slices of cumquats could be added for an additional citrus flavor because the ricotta helps mellow out the strong tanginess of the citrus fruits.  Overall, it was a good experiment, and I would make it again.

*In case you wanted a dinner suggestion, I served the salad with rosemary-lemon chicken, using homegrown lemons and homegrown rosemary to keep the cost down.  Using a dutch-oven pot, I put a whole chicken (about 7 pounds) inside, sprinkling it with 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and several sprigs of rosemary.  I squeeze 1-2 lemons and pour juice into the bottom of pot along with 1 cup of water to keep the chicken moist.  I bake for 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees, covered for the first hour and then uncovered the last 30 minutes to make the skin a bit crispy.  Let rest for about 15 minutes before serving.  It’s a simple way to make chicken, and after we eat the chicken meat, I use the carcass to make a chicken broth for an affordable homemade soup the following night.

Re-steamed Rice and Chilli Shrimp with Spinach and Avocado

What I bought:

1. Baby Spinach (reduced to £0.95)
2. King Prawns (reduced to £2.35)
3. Avocado (reduced to £1.55)
4. Mixed Chillies – Medium (reduced to £0.39)
5. Organic Spring Onions (reduced to £0.63)

What I added from home:

1. Leftover rice
2. Three tablespoons of coconut milk
3. Soy sauce
4. Garlic powder
5. Lemongrass

Evolution of the cooking method: The way I cooked this dish was dictated a little bit by the fact that I wanted to re-steam leftover rice so I evolved a sort of oven bain marie process. Anyway, you probably want to know what I made and how I made it.

The Dish: I’ve called it Re-steamed rice and chilli shrimp on a bed of blanched and fresh spinach with avocado on the side; say it quick enough and you’ll win an Oscar. Total prep time was about 25 minutes.

Preparation (per portion):

• Chop half a medium heat chilli and a spring onion into fine shreds and sauté for about a minute with a handful of king prawns, some garlic (to taste), a shred or two of lemon grass and a dash of soy sauce. (Pre-heat your oven to 210 c while you’re doing this)

• Transfer the mix into a Ramekin dish and add one tablespoon of coconut milk.
• Put a portion of leftover rice in a Ramekin dish and spread two tablespoons of coconut milk on top of it.
• Place the two Ramekins in a bain marie of sorts (I used the dish I usually use for making the family crumbles) and cook in the oven for 15 minutes.
• While the Ramekins are in the oven, quickly blanche half of the spinach (this is to add moisture as there is not much sauce, but also gives you a lovely contrast of paler and darker green on the plate) and chop a few slices of avocado (put some lime juice on the avocado if you don’t want it to oxidise/brown).
• Remove the Ramekins, plate and serve. Depending on how you handle the rice you might have a bit of crunch on the exposed side which just makes for textured eating 🙂

How it tasted: Considering I just made this up, it tasted quite balanced. MissMissus (who took the pictures with some Android thing) loved it and my mother, who is visiting, said she wanted to taste it and ended up eating half of it. I think it works because the chilli in the prawn gives you a nice kick, which the spinach and avocado help neutralise. Also, in addition to adding moisture, the blanched spinach undercuts the intensity of flavours from the prawn/chilli/soy/lemongrass… In a word, it was good; simple, but good.

Leftovers: In case it’s of any interest I used my leftover prawns to make a basic tumeric-coconut milk-shrimp paste-lime-lemongrass-ginger-chilli-onion-fish sauce curry soup. I threw in the last few leaves of spinach for good measure.

Looking for a crew

Image via Wikipedia

What is this blog? Simple; I love food and I love the challenge of making good food. To keep me company, I’m looking for a crew of people who love food and food challenges. The challenge for this blog is, once a month (more often if you wish) you go to the aisle with reduced to clear items in your supermarket, pick five items, go home and cook something with them and then share the recipe with us on this blog. Pictures would be nice, but are not essential. Video would be cool, but not required. What I do need is a minimum of four people to start. I’ll add you to the blog, we’ll pick a day and get going. Are you in?

Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Writer & Food Lover