Lazy man's chinese chicken with green peppers

Because I was still feeling stuffed from yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner, I couldn't bring myself to making a much-needed pit stop at the grocery store.  And when I say much needed, I mean it.  As far as main ingredients go, I was limited to beef or chicken, tomatoes or green peppers and pasta or rice.  I was in a Chinese mood so I decided to try my hand at creating a ubiquitous Chinese dish: chicken with green peppers and onion!  I didn't have a recipe, only an educated guess of what the ingredients could be.  Moreover, I had to work with what I had!

So this is what I came up with:

Ingredients:

For two people, you 'll need:

Two large chicken breasts

1 large onion

2 medium-sized green bell peppers

4 hot peppers

5 cloves of garlic

Soy sauce

1/2 cup of chicken stock (bouillon)

1 teaspoon of cornstarch 

vegetable oil (arachid oil or sunflower seed oil, never olive oil!)

Preparation:

1. Cut the chicken and green peppers into bitesize pieces.  Cut the onions into 1/8ths. Slice the garlic into large pieces.  Slice the spicy peppers into long pieces.

2.  Pour enough oil into a wok to cover the bottom and heat it up.  Once the oil is hot, add the sliced garlic and the slices of spicy pepper.

3. When the garlic begins to turn brown, add the chicken. Stir rapidly, to cook the pieces on all sides.

4. Add the onions and green peppers to the chicken and stir.  Drizzle soy sauce over the chicken and vegetables. Keep on stirring.  Be careful not to pour too much soy sauce over the chicken, you can always add more later.

5. Add the chicken stock or bouillon, and swiftly stir all the contents of the wok through the sauce at the bottom of the wok.

6.  Mix the teaspoon of cornstarch with some water.  Add the cornstarch mix spoonful by spoonful to the sauce in the wok, up to the point where the sauce has reached the thickness you desire.  Make sure to stir  the starch in well with the sauce.

7.  Add more soy sauce to your taste.  Stir.

That's it!  Easy-peasy chinesey!  Enjoy!

Stoemp Met Wortelen (Stoemp with Carrots)

Since winter has arrived, I couldn't resist making this wonderful winter dish.  A traditional dish from Brussels, "stoemp" has everything you need to stay fat warm and happy!  It basically is a type of mashed potatoes with a large amount of vegetables mashed right in with the potatoes.  And you can do it with all kinds of vegetables, although each one will require a slightly different preparation.

This time we'll focus on Stoemp with carrots, one of my favorites, especially when served with a nice banger-like sausage (although it should have a bit more of a peppery taste to it).

What do you need?

For two people you'll need:

6 to 7 large potatoes

10 large carrots

1 large onion

butter

salt

pepper

nutmeg

1 to 2 cups of milk

Let's get cooking!

1. Start by peeling the potatoes and cleaning the carrots and onion. 

2 Boil the potatoes to the point where they're soft enough to make mashed potatoes (usually around 18-20 minutes, but it varies according to the size of the potatoes).  You can halve the potatoes to shorten the cooking time.  Make sure to add plenty of salt to the water.

3.  Dice the carrots into small cubes.  Do the same thing for the onion. Melt a tablespoon of good, unsalted butter in a small frying pan or pot.

4. Once the butter has melted, add the onion.  Stir it until it has become glazy.  At that point, add in the diced carrots.  Keep it on a low fire for about 15 minutes, while stirring regularly.  You may need to add a little more butter or olive oil if you prefer.  Once the carrots are soft, you can remove them from the fire.

5.  When the potatoes are cooked, pour away the water and leave the potatoes in the pot. Mash them up a little bit before adding in the carrots.

6.  Add the carrots, a tablespoon of butter, lots of pepper and freshly ground nutmeg.  Also pour in about a cup of milk to ensure the stoemp is moist enough.  Add more later if need be.

7.  Mash it all together so that you get a consistent orange-yellow mass.

8.  Taste it to check whether it needs more spices or butter, or milk.

Serve with sausage, porkchops or thick bacon.

To wash it down, I suggest a dark beer with spices, such as a Belgian trappist or abbey beer.  A nice pale ale will also go great with it!

Foodbuzz Publisher Community Launches!!!

Today is an important day for our foodblogging community, where we take a significant step forward!

The press release below gives all the information on this event. Enjoy!


LAUNCH OF GLOBAL FOODBUZZ BLOGGER COMMUNITY
LEVERAGES REAL-PEOPLE, REAL-TIME POWER OF FOOD PUBLISHING

San Francisco – October 13, 2008: Foodbuzz, Inc., officially inaugurates its food blogger community with more than 1,000 blog partners, a global food blogging event and an online platform that captures the real-people, real-time power of food publishing in every corner of the world. At launch, the Foodbuzz community ranks as one of the top-10 Internet destinations for food and dining (Quantcast), with bloggers based in 45 countries and 863 cities serving up daily food content.
“Food bloggers are at the forefront of reality publishing and the dramatic growth of new media has redefined how food enthusiasts access tasty content,” said Doug Collister, Executive Vice President of Foodbuzz, Inc. “Food bloggers are the new breed of local food experts and at any minute of the day, Foodbuzz is there to help capture the immediacy of their hands-on experiences, be it a memorable restaurant meal, a trip to the farmers market, or a special home-cooked meal.”
Foodbuzz is the only online community with content created exclusively by food bloggers and rated by foodies. The site offers more than 20,000 pieces of new food and dining content weekly, including recipes, photos, blog posts, videos and restaurant reviews. Members decide the “tastiness” of each piece of content by voting and “buzz” the most popular posts to the top of the daily menu of submissions. Foodbuzz currently logs over 13 million monthly page views and over three million monthly unique visitors.
“Our goal is to be the number-one online source of quality food and dining content by promoting the talent, enthusiasm and knowledge of food bloggers around the globe,” said Ben Dehan, founder and CEO of Foodbuzz, Inc.
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The Foodbuzz blogger community is growing at a rate of 40 percent per month driven by strong growth in existing partner blogs and the addition of over 100 new blogs per month. “The Foodbuzz.com Web site is like the stock of a great soup. The Web site provides the base or backbone for bloggers to interact as a community, contribute content, and have that content buzzed by their peers,” said Mr. Dehan.
Global Blogging Event
Demonstrating the talent and scope of the Foodbuzz community, 24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs offered online food enthusiasts an international, virtual street festival of food and diversity. The new feature showcased blog posts from 24 Foodbuzz partner bloggers chronicling events occurring around the globe during a 24 hour period and included:
· Mid-Autumn Festival Banquest (New York, NY)
· The "Found on Foodbuzz" 24-Item Tasting Menu (San Francisco, CA)
· Aussie BBQ Bonanza – Celebrating Diversity (Sydney, Australia)
· The Four Corners of Carolina BBQ Road Trip (Charleston, SC)
· Criminal Tastes – An Illegal Supper (Crested Butte, CO)
· From Matambre to Empanadas: An Argentine Dinner (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
· A Sweet Trompe l’oeil (Seattle, WA)

“24 Meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs” captures the quality and unique local perspective of our food bloggers and shared it with the world,” said Ryan Stern, Director of the Foodbuzz Publisher Community. “It illustrates exactly what the future of food publishing is all about – real food, experienced by real people, shared real-time.”

Salsa con pomodori freschi e bacon

Even though this is ideally a summer dish, when ripe tomatoes are available in abundance, the weather was so nice this weekend with blue skies and radiant sun shine, that I couldn't resist making myself a dish which was equally light and radiant. (Plus I had a whole bunch of (over-) ripe tomatoes to use... ). You'll notice that it closely mimics the quintessential Italian dish, pasta all'amatriciana. This is just my own take on that classic recipe, where I used whatever I had lying around the fridge.

It's easy, fast, and most importantly, tasty!

The only things you need are:

For two people:

8 medium-sized ripe tomatoes

Olive oil

4 strips of bacon

Fresh spring onions

Black pepper

Preparation:

1. Clean the tomatoes, and remove any brown spots around the area where the tomatoes was connected to the plant. Leave the tomato whole, do not cut it up in pieces

2. Boil a pot of water and put the tomatoes in the boiling water for about 2-3 minutes.

3. Take the tomatoes out of the water and leave them to cool down for a few minutes.

4. Remove the skin of the tomatoes, which should come right off now that the tomatoes have been lightly blanched. Cut the tomatoes in halves and remove the seeds and any hard parts.

5. While heating some olive oil over a low fire in a frying pan, dice the bacon in small pieces. When the oil is hot, add the bacon. Stir frequently as you don't want the bacon to go brown.

6. Dice the tomatoes, and add the pieces to the bacon. Add freshly ground black pepper and stir well. Let the whole cook slowly over a low fire for about 15 minutes. Stir occasionally, in order to mix the juices.

7. Boil water and prepare the pasta.

8. Chop up some fresh spring onions and add the majority to the tomato sauce, while saving a small portion of the spring onions. Stir them into the sauce and remove the frying pan from the fire. Let the sauce sit for another 2 minutes.

9. Pour the salsa over the pasta and sprinkle the remaining spring onions over the sauce.

Serve with some fresh ciabatta and a dry, light white wine!

Buon appetito!

A trio of sauteed mushrooms

I love mushrooms. Strange, however, that as a kid I would try to avoid eating mushrooms at all costs. I'd pick them out the sauce and throw them outside when my parents weren't looking, I'd scrape them from my plate into a napkin and hide them in the pocket of my pants only to dispose of them later. I'd even hide the mushrooms before my parents had even started cooking them. But, all of a sudden, I started appreciating the viled mushroom. Some years later I began to discover more varieties of mushrooms. And now I can justly call myself a true mushroom lover. Shitake mushrooms, enokis, fresh forest mushrooms, funghy porcini, ... The other day a Chinese friend of mine made a dish with mushrooms which can only be found in her region in China...gorgeous! All these types are grand prize winners, however my post will feature a type of mushroom which is sometimes looked upon as being too ordinary for some of today's high culinary artists... the plain white Parisian champignon or white button mushroom. I'll be showing three ways in which you can thoroughly enjoy these babies as a side dish (to be honest I could even eat them as a main dish!). So, without further adieu, three sumptuous recipes for making quick sautéed button mushrooms.



Numéro Un: Baby button mushrooms with soy sauce

What do you need for two people?

One basket of button mushrooms (I think it's about 250 grams) or if you're lazy/in a hurry, you could even use the canned ones for this.

light brown soy sauce

pepper & salt

olive oil

Preparation:

1. Pour some good quality olive oil in a frying pan.

2. Clean your mushrooms, you don't have to slice them if they're still baby mushrooms; just trim the stalks.

3. Once the olive is hot, add the mushrooms. Sautée them; don't fry them! Keep them moving around in the frying pan and only cook them on a medium to low setting.

4. Add the soy sauce to the mushrooms.

5. Add the salt and pepper (I personally like to add a good amount of freshly ground black pepper).

6. Keep on sautéeing them until they're cooked. Serve and Savor!
These mushrooms go very well with grilled chicken, makes for a very light and tasty meal!


Numéro Deux: Garlic Mushrooms

What do yo need for two people?

A basket of button mushrooms
2 cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon of butter (or margarine)

olive oil

freshly ground black pepper

light brown soy sauce



Preparation:


1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the olive oil. Once the butter/oil is hot, add the garlic. Briefly sautée the garlic.

2. Add the sliced mushrooms. Stir them into the butter-oil mix, and let absorb the goodness.

3. Drizzle the soy sauce over the mushrooms so that all are nicely coated with it.

4. Add the black peppper. If you want, you could also add some garlic powder at this point.

5. Cook for another ten minutes on a low to medium fire and then serve.

These are great with steak, or as a sidedish to just about anything.


Numéro Trois: Sauteed mushrooms with lemon and parsley

What do you need for two people?

a basket of mushrooms
1 tablespoon of butter
olive oil
fresh, chopped parsley (optionally also chopped chives)
1/2 lemon
black pepper
salt

1. Put about three tablespoons (or more, depending on the amount of mushrooms) of olive oil in a frying pan, along with the butter. Melt the butter and mix it in with the olive oil.

2. Slice the mushrooms. Add them to the butter-oil mix. Stir them well, so that they're all coated with the oil and butter.

3. Squeeze the half lemon, and add the juice to the mushrooms. Stir well.

4. Add the freshly ground black pepper and salt. Stir well.

5. Add the freshly chopped parsley (and chives if you wish)

6. Softly cook the mushrooms for another 7 minutes or so, until they're light brown.

Serve and enjoy!