RogueChef
“It IS all about the TASTE”
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Meatless Mondays – Slow Oven Roasted Tomatoes
This may be thinking ahead a bit, but this technique is great for the coming months when one can not find a decent tomato. Nothing beats the taste of a local tomato picked at the height of its ripeness, and many people can these harvest tomatoes to enjoy them all year round. This is another technique, and will yield unbelievable depth and complexity of flavor when used them to make a quick pasta sauce.
For appetizers put some roasted tomatoes in the food processor with a handful of Parmesan cheese and some extra virgin olive oil, spread on baguette slices and top with grated Parmesan.
Puree them in a food processor with roasted garlic cloves for a great garlic tomato paste. Thin that with wine or stock and add herbs for an out of this world pasta sauce.
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Okra With Onions
Quite a funny dish, it is a memory memory of my youth, fresh okra from the garden, washed and cut, then fried in bacon drippings along with a rough chopped onion. Add a bit of seasoning and you have a quite tasty dish, substitute a bit of vegetable oil instead of the bacon and you have a tasty vegetarian meal.
I made this for one of my associates, who commented that “You had finally mastered one of the most basic of Indian dishes.” It would seem the okra is almost ubiquitous in use.
Okra also known in many English-speaking countries as lady’s fingers or gumbo is a flowering plant in the mallow family. It is valued for its edible green seed pods. Originating in Africa, the plant is cultivated in tropical, subtropical and warm temperate regions around the world.
The products of the plant are mucilaginous, resulting in the characteristic “goo” or slime when the seed pods are cooked; the mucilage contains a usable form of soluble fiber. While many people enjoy okra cooked this way, others prefer to minimize sliminess; keeping the pods intact and cooking quickly help to achieve this.
To avoid sliminess, okra pods are often briefly stir-fried, or cooked with acidic ingredients such as citrus, tomatoes, or vinegar. A few drops of lemon juice will usually suffice. Alternatively the pods can be sliced thinly and cooked for a long time, so that the mucilage dissolves, as in gumbo. The cooked leaves can also be used as a powerful soup thickener.The immature pods may also be pickled.
In Syria, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Yemen, and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus and Israel, okra is widely used in a thick stew made with vegetables and meat. It is one of the most popular vegetables among West Asians, North Indians and Pakistanis alike. In most of West Asia, okra is known as bamia or bamya. West Asian cuisine usually uses young okra pods and they are usually cooked whole. In India, the harvesting is done at a later stage, when the pods and seeds are larger.
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Peperonata Rustica
Peperonata [pehp-uh-roh-NAH-tah] An Italian mixture of sweet peppers, tomatoes, onions and garlic cooked in olive oil. It’s served hot as a condiment with meats or cold as an antipasto.
While dining out with a business partner, I was presented with a very seasonal and very local Italian dish. The mix of colored peppers (red, yellow, and green), sauteed in olive oil with sweet onions, tangy vinegar, garlic, and then finished with ripe tomatoes, fresh basil and oregano is wonderful as a side dish hot, or mashed and spread over toasted bread as a appetizer, or as a “dressing / sauce” for a bowl of pasta.
Since this was such a splendid dish, and a slow night, one can guess what happened. Yes, a couple of bottles of wine shared with the staff, some chit-chat, some flattery, some bragging and off to the kitchen to prepare this dish with the chef. (A BadWolf ball cap, T-shirt and doll will win you many new friends …
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Basil Dressing
My hanging garden is rampant with Basil and Parsley. The heat and the rain have generated a monstrous explosion of leafy green herbs. I suppose I will need to do something about that.
Basil is a tender low-growing herb. Basil is a culinary herb prominently featured in Italian cuisine, and also plays a major role in the Southeast Asian cuisines of Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The plant tastes somewhat like anise, with a strong, pungent, sweet smell.
There are many varieties of basil. That which is used in Italian food is typically called sweet basil, as opposed to Thai basil, lemon basil and holy basil, which are used in Asia. While most common varieties of basil are treated as annuals, some are perennial in warm, tropical climates, including African Blue and Holy Thai basil.
Basil is originally native to Iran, India and other tropical regions of Asia, having been cultivated there for more than 5,000 years
Basil is commonly used fresh in cooked recipes. It is generally added at the last moment, as cooking quickly destroys the flavor. The fresh herb can be kept for a short time in plastic bags in the refrigerator, or for a longer period in the freezer, after being blanched quickly in boiling water. The dried herb also loses most of its flavor, and what little flavor remains tastes very different, very weak.
Basil is one of the main ingredients in pesto—a green Italian oil-and-herb sauce. Its other two main ingredients are olive oil and pine nuts. The Chinese also use fresh or dried basil in soups and other foods. In Taiwan, people add fresh basil leaves to thick soups. They also eat fried chicken with deep-fried basil leaves. Basil (most commonly Thai Basil) is commonly steeped in cream or milk to create an interesting flavor in ice cream or chocolates (such as truffles).
I’ve done a pesto post prior, perhaps a Basil vinaigrette suitable for a salad dressing, an Italian sauce or a marinade for fish or meat.
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“Amerasian” Cuisine – StopLight Pepper Steak
Well, It had to happen.. The loyal fan club has started kvetching that I am introducing too many new foods, too many new ideas, too many new tastes. Seems they like boring.. (To me boring is only good in a combat zone…)
Ah, well, here is a tried and true Asian specialty that even my fan club can make and enjoy. And just to make sure I don’t stretch any brain cells amongst my readers, I’ll use a recipe that is truly an American’s vision of Chinese food… (Also StopLight peppers are Red, Yellow and Green bell peppers, not a pepper that grows at a stop light…)
Wikipedia says:
Pepper steak also called green pepper steak) is a stir-fried Chinese American dish consisting of sliced beef steak (often flank, sirloin, or round) cooked with sliced green and/or red bell peppers and other seasonings such as soy sauce and ginger, and usually thickened with cornstarch. Sliced onions and bean sprouts are also frequent additions to the recipe. Evidence for the dish’s existence in the United States dates from at least 1948.
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Meatless Monday – Vegetable Korma (Navratan Korma)
As spoken prior:
Like it or not, summer is drawing to a close, and while we still have all kinds of fresh veggies from our gardens, I can feel the breeze turning from warm and inviting to cool and chilling. Time to start thinking about autumn and winter dishes, and of those, one of the simplest and quickest is the curry.
But it is 90 today and I have a garden full of veggies to use, perhaps a curry that takes little tending, (time over the open stove), and will deliver the full taste experience of the veggies.
Korma (sometimes spelled kormaa, qorma, kavurma, khorma, or kurma) is a dish originating in Central Asia or Western Asia which can be made with yoghurt, cream, nut and seed pastes or coconut milk; it is usually considered a type of curry.
Korma is a characteristic Persian-Indian dish which has its roots in the Mughlai cuisine of modern-day India. Korma is defined as a dish where meat or vegetables are braised with water, stock, and yogurt or cream.
Very popular in Indian restaurants in the United Kingdom, where a korma usually refers not to a particular cooking technique but to a curry with a thick, cream-based sauce or gravy. The korma popularized in UK curry houses is invariably mildly spicy.
Background
Korma or kormaa, or qorma, or khorma, or kurma, (etc, etc, etc) is a mild, pale, creamy, vegetarian or non-vegetarian curry dish originating in South Asia, made with yoghurt, cream, nut and seed pastes or coconut milk. Rooted in the Mughlai cuisine of modern-day Pakistan and North India, it is a characteristically creamy and silky Persian-Indian dish and can be traced back to the 16th century Mughal incursions into present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh and the North-Western parts of India. It is popular a lot in the UK and can be found in most Indian / South Asian restaurants.
The flavor is based on a mixture of spices, including ground coriander and cumin, combined with yoghurt or coconut milk nuts can be used but not in great quantities. Korma is generally a mild curry with either chicken, beef or lamb and only a few vegetables, such as onion and potato, but can be made as a vegetables only dish.
There are wide regional variations of korma and other mild curry recipes. Chili is nearly always used, but the precise method of preparation results in widely different flavors.
Overview
- Build Sauce
- Prep Veggies
- Cook Veggies in Sauce
- Serve over rice
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Tomato Soup and Pasta Sauce
Cold and rain,
Such a Pain,
How’s a soup from Spain?Ok, the weather has been bleh for the last several days. Rain, mist, cool, cold, at one point, hot, steamy, sweaty at another, and then back to cold and wet, just the perfect thing for pneumonia…
Now there is just one thing to defeat the achy, bakey feeling… SOUP!
But what if I start with a super thick and hearty flavorful tomato sauce and then thin down to a soup consistency with my homemade chicken stock, and kick the mouth feel up with real cream….
When Roasted, the peppers get a nice char on them, the garlic and shallots become soft and deep-flavored, and the tomatoes get so sweet, you’ll know the final sauce has got some other rogue chef secret ingredients. Even just plain roasted tomatoes will be awesome on your pasta or pizza. Also great about this sauce – the thick consistency. As anyone who’s tried to make a fresh pasta sauce knows, tomatoes are FULL of water and make for a runny sauce, you spend hours simmering to cook off the water and caramelize the tomatoes . Not so with roasting. The sauce is thick and rich and oh so delicious!
Does this take time YES!. Is it worth it? YES! It IS all about the taste and the comfort that good food brings. If you can not understand that experience, I’ll leave the can opener out on the counter
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Basil and Japanese Eggplant, Thai Style
I have some very nice Japanese Eggplants, and I have Basil, I have hot peppers, I have garlic, sounds like a quick stir fry. Now Since I HAD planned to grill some chicken, I’ll chop up a breast or so and add that in. One might leave the chicken out and use soy sauce to replace the ubiquitous fish sauce, and have a quite delicious vegan meal…
Really this is truly Thai soul food, so I might as well go all the way with sugar, fish sauce, the heat of the chili’s and the bitterness of the Basil for a flavor balancing….
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