The [trademarked chocolate and peanut butter confection] Challenge. For the last few weeks I have been constrained by trying to make things suit a particular cuisine. With just an ingredient challenge I am free to go whole “California Fusion.” To mix and match flavors and techniques with only one constraint–it should all taste good when I’m done.
Karl’s Chicken Cacao with Peanuts and Mango
Filed under Main Dishes, Poultry
In the 1970’s I was working for a diving company based in Belle Chasse, LA. I have been thinking about that time lately (it probably has something to do with Lent and Mardi Gras). I can’t think about N’Orl’ns (one word) without thinking about the food. For two years I lived off of Muffulettas, Shrimp Etouffee, boiled crawfish, and Jambalaya. I have had a sudden desire for the flavor. Louisiana food generally falls into two main cuisines Creole and Cajun, which roughly corresponds to city and country.
Karl’s Cajun Jambalaya
Filed under Main Dishes, Pork, Poultry, Seafood
When your refrigerator and freezer are getting cluttered with bits and pieces, it is time to make Stone Soup. This is not entirely in the spirit of the story, but Stone Soup sounds so much better and classier than; “What is in the refrigerator soup?”
Karl’s Stone Soup with Bread Dumplings
Filed under Main Dishes, Poultry, Soups
Adapted from *Parsley* (Food.com)
This week’s challenge started when Jan and I were watching “Diners, Drive Ins and Dives.” One of the featured dishes was Lebanese Za’atar Pizza. I made this for dinner the next night and it was such a hit that Jan wanted a Lebanese meal built around it for Sunday.
Lebanese Chicken and Potatoes
Filed under Main Dishes, Poultry
All of my girls have colds this week, so I decided to make garlic chicken soup. My mother, like most, swore by chicken soup as a remedy for colds. Garlic is also a natural antibiotic. And although a cold is a virus, it couldn’t hurt.
Filed under Main Dishes, Poultry, Soups
Karl’s Basque Chicken in a Clay Pot II
This recipe started out as one of the challenges that Myr wrote about when she set up this blog. The Sunday before this dinner one word was announced at the dinner table, “Basque.” While I have been to Basque restaurants and I knew that I liked the food, I had never attempted to make any Basque dishes before. This is my idea of a good time, searching the Internet for a cuisine that I have never tried and knew little about.
What makes a dish “Basque?” The Basques live in the area of southwestern France and across the border in Spain. Continue reading
Filed under Clay Pots, Main Dishes, Poultry, Techniques
Myr got sick as she was coming back from Peru so she wanted comfort food. In our house this usually means an Asian chicken soup. I found a Cooking Light recipe that was close to what I wanted and with only a few tweaks I developed what I was looking for. I saw some fresh bamboo in the Japanese store that I just couldn’t pass up. Another recipe called for using marinated chicken, instead of the shredded cooked chicken of the Cooking Light recipe. Continue reading
Filed under Main Dishes, Poultry, Soups
The reason that most of my recipes start with “Karl’s …” is so I can tell the ones I downloaded from the internet (usually for reference) from the ones I have changed enough to call my own. This is one of those occasions where I had a dish in my mind (a faded memory of some dish served at a Chinese banquet), but how it was made and what when into it was a mystery.
One search technique I used for this recipe was Google Images. Using the search “clay pot chicken” brought up hundreds of pictures that I could then scan for ones that “looked” like what was in my memory of that dish in China. However, the recipes I found on the internet did not come close to what I was looking for. I had to be creative. I took an ingredient from this recipe. Oyster sauce as the marinade base seemed a good choice, I was also making Ma po Dofu for this meal so I did not want to use Hoisin (another common marinade ingredient in clay pot chicken).
Filed under Clay Pots, Main Dishes, Poultry, Techniques
karllueck
Miriam
Jabberwocky Stew 