I like the combination of lime with green chilies, so last year sometime when I had some of both, I started adding things until I had a dish I liked.  I liked it so much, I wrote it down at the time, but I haven’t made it again until today.  I still like it–a lot.

Instead of starting a charcoal fire, I just got out my George Foreman grill and used that for both the chicken breasts and the chilies.  It worked just fine. I like to use Bolner’s Chicken Fajita seasoning on my chicken breasts, but if you can’t find that, just season them up the way you like them.After I grilled the chicken, I set it aside to cool a bit, and put the peppers on the hot plates until they were softened a bit.  Usually I like to char the peppers so I can peel them, but I didn’t do that this time.  These peppers were nice and fresh and the skin wasn’t tough, so I could get away with it.This is the green chile enchilada sauce I used.  Down here, we have a plethora of canned sauces to choose from; I like this Las Palmas brand, but Old El Paso is also good, and there are many others.

I chopped up about half an onion and sauteed it until it was slightly browned, then added the diced chicken breast, diced green chilies, the enchilada sauce, and the juice of half a lime.  Then I simmered it a bit to finish cooking the peppers.This is the way the stew looks when it’s just about ready to eat.

Serve over white rice, with more lime and a dab of sour cream.

Green Chili Chicken and Lime Stew
2 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, seasoned with Bolner’s Chicken Fajita seasoning or salt and pepper to taste
1/2 onion, chopped
3 Anaheim or Hatch chilies, roasted, peeled, and diced
1 can Old El Paso (or other brand) green chile enchilada sauce
juice of one lime
Salt to taste
To serve:
white rice, cooked
sour cream and cilantro to taste

Sprinkle chicken breasts heavily with Bolner’s Chicken Fajita seasoning, and grill over a gas or charcoal grill until done. Cut into cubes.
In a medium saucepan, cook onion in a little olive oil until browned. Add chicken cubes and stir.
Add green chiles, enchilada sauce, and about half the lime juice. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes or so.

Serve over white rice with the sour cream and remaining lime juice, and chopped cilantro if desired.  Serves 2-3.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d make one of my two favorite sandwiches for lunch today.  It’s called Pan Bagnat.  For this recipe, you need some good French bread (I used French rolls today), oil-packed tuna, lemon juice, sweet onion, brine-cured olives, tomatoes, olive oil, and basil.

the ingredients

Mix up the filling ingredients, slice the bread lengthwise and pull out a little of the insides, and brush them with olive oil.  Then layer the fresh basil over the bottom, and pile on the filling.Top with the top of the bread, wrap with plastic wrap, and lay them out on a baking pan.  Cover with another pan, and top with weights.  I used these cans. Larry is so used to me cooking things which seem strange to him, he hardly seemed bothered when he calmly asked me what I was planning to do with four cans of tuna and enchilada sauce.  I guess I really can’t shock him anymore.

Anyway, after the sandwiches are weighted down for about 20 minutes, the juices from the filling have seeped into the bread, making it extra yummy.  Later in the summer, I’m going to make this again, after my basil plant has had time to grow a bit.  I like a bit more basil in them, but I didn’t want to denude the poor plant.

Pan Bagnat

1 1-pound loaf unsliced French bread, about 14 inches long
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup basil leaves, plus sprigs for garnish
2 6-ounce cans tuna packed in olive oil, undrained
2 plum tomatoes, diced
2/3 cup coarsely chopped pitted assorted brine-cured olives
1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Slice bread in half lengthwise.  Using hands, remove interior of loaf, leaving 3/4 inch shell.  Brush interior of both halves with olive oil and line with basil leaves in single layer.

Combine undrained tuna, tomatoes, olives, onion, and lemon juice in medium bowl to blend. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Spoon salad evenly into bottom bread shell. Cover with top half and wrap tightly with plastic. Place in shallow baking pan; top with another baking pan and weight with heavy cans. Let stand 20 minutes.

This is called “Asian”, and maybe the soy sauce and the jasmine rice help it to qualify, but I wouldn’t have identified it that way.  I loved it–don’t get me wrong–but if it’s going to be Asian I think it should have another flavor, or a couple of flavors.  Next time I make it I’m going to add a grating of fresh ginger to the glaze, and I’m going to use sesame oil to give the spinach that brief saute.

This comes together very fast.  The first thing you need to do is make the glaze, which is very simple: saute a bit of garlic and red pepper in some butter, then add maple syrup (yes!), lime juice, and soy sauce–equal parts.  Let that all cook together for a while, thicken it with a bit of a cornstarch slurry, and set aside.

Get your jasmine rice cooking, and heat the oven to 400.  Brush the salmon filet with some of the glaze, keeping some back to use as sauce.  Bake the salmon until it’s as done as you like it.  Even though I like mine slightly undercooked, I still cooked it just a little longer than the recipe called for–about 14 minutes total.

While the salmon is roasting, just heat a bit of oil (as I said, I will opt for sesame oil next time) in a skillet and add the baby spinach, stirring until it is just wilted.

When the salmon is done, layer the rice and spinach in your bowl, add a portion of the fish, broken into chunks, and drizzle the rest of the sauce over.  The recipe says to sprinkle with black sesame seeds, but I didn’t have any.  Maybe that would have added to the Asian flair, but it was pretty enough even without them.  

Asian Salmon Bowl with Lime Drizzle
serves 4–originally from SELF magazine, June 2012
1 cup jasmine rice
2 teaspoons unsalted butter
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
3 Tablespoons pure maple syrup
3 Tablespoons fresh lime juice
3 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornstarch
4 salmon fillets (4 ounces each), skin removed
1 teaspoon canola oil
2 packages (5 ounces each) baby spinach
2 teaspoons black sesame seeds
Heat oven to 400 F. Cook rice as directed on package.  In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.  Saute garlic and pepper flakes until garlic is lightly golden, 1 minute. Add syrup, lime juice, and soy sauce; cook until bubbling, 3 minutes.  In a bowl, combine cornstarch and 1 teaspoon water; stir into garlic glaze.  Cook until slightly thick, 1 minute.  Arrange fillets on a foil-lined baking sheet.  Spread 1 teaspoon glaze over each fillet.  Roast until just cooked through, 12 minutes.  In a medium skillet, warm oil over medium heat.  Add 1 package spinach; saute until just wilted.  Remove from pan; set aside.  Repeat with second package of spinach.  Divide rice among 4 bowls; top each with 1/4 spinach and 1 salmon fillet, broken into large pieces.  Drizzle with remaining sauce; sprinkle each with 1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds.

I’m saying this is pretty healthy, too.  What more can you want?

I don’t remember Candy’s last name and I can’t call her face to mind, but I sure do like her corn bread.

Candy’s Corn Bread
makes 1 8 x 8 pan or 9-inch round 

1 cup cream style corn
1 cup yellow corn meal
1/2 cup oil
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 large jalapeno, chopped

2 eggs

6 ounces shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
2 teaspoons sugar
Combine all ingredients and bake 30 minutes at 400 degrees in a greased skillet, or a 9×9 inch pan.

the ingredients for the topping

According to the show, you take garlic, kosher salt, and rosemary and chop them up together.  The chef on the show took the side of his knife and mashed and chopped at the same time.  His was a little more of a paste than mine, but mine worked out fine.Then you heat up some olive oil to where it’s just warm.  As he said, if you heat it up any more, the virtues of the cold pressed olive oil (if that’s what you started with) are negated and it’s a waste.  Then you put the garlic/rosemary/salt mixture in the pot to warm.  After a while, take it out and slather it on the bread slices.

And grill it.  Looks pretty, and tasted fine, but it was a tad chewy for my taste.  As I said, I’m willing to try again, with a softer bread.Let’s just say it did not go to waste.

So now I’m back to tell you how I made it even better, which wasn’t rocket science but I thought it made quite a difference in the overall finished product.

The recipe as I found it is here.  I made it as written the first time, and it was delicious but the sauce was, I thought, much too thin.  So this time, I actually doubled the cornstarch, and modified the method a bit.

this is the way it looks before it’s cooked

Beef and Broccoli
(serves 4)
1 lb. stewing-type beef (I recommend arm roast), sliced thinly
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 cup beef broth (I used reconstituted Orrington Farms brand)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon sesame oil
4 Tablespoons cornstarch
2 cups frozen broccoli florets
White rice for serving, plus red pepper flakes if desired
Combine the soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, and beef broth in the insert of the crockpot.  Turn to low.  Add the sliced, raw beef and chopped garlic.  Put the lid on, and cook on low for 4 hours.
At the end of 4 hours, remove about a half cup of the sauce from the crockpot and place it in a bowl.  With a whisk, combine this liquid with the cornstarch to make a slurry.  With tongs, remove the beef from the crockpot and set aside.  Return the slurry to the liquid in the pot, and combine well.  Return the beef to the pot, replace the lid, and cook for an additional 30 minutes or so to thicken.  Add the frozen broccoli and combine well.  Replace the lid and let it cook on low for 10 minutes or so–the broccoli will be perfectly done at the end of this time.  Serve it over the white rice with red pepper flakes if desired.

and this is how it looks after it’s cooked

That’s it.

Now, here’s something I figured out as I was cleaning up after the meal–this would be perfect to make in the summer, when you don’t want to heat up the stove.  The stove doesn’t make an appearance in this meal.  The crockpot and the rice cooker sat side by side on the counter, handling my dinner with very little help from me.  I cut up the meat the night before and refrigerated it in a ziploc bag, and just dumped it in.  Not much in the way of preparation!

Next time I make this, I’m going to add carrots.  Even though Larry always says that just when I make something he likes, I start to fool with it too much, he did give his okay to add carrots.  Of course, it won’t actually be beef and broccoli any more, but it will be delicious.  And colorful.  I think red peppers and onions would also be delicious, but in my house the carrots will be enough of a departure.

I don’t really have a recipe, or amounts.  I just make it up as I go along, but my favorite kind of fish taco starts with an easy chipotle mayonnaise.  Just chop up some canned chipotles in adobo sauce, as many as you want, and combine them to taste with mayonnaise–Hellmann’s, please, always.  I also like just plain chopped cabbage on my tacos.  Get these things ready first.As for the fish, I like tilapia.  Tilapia is mild, affordable, accessible, and sustainable.  I like to slice the filet lengthwise down the center to make two halves, and I use one half filet in each taco.  I like to cook tilapia the way my mother always cooked fish.  We didn’t eat a lot of seafood in my house when I was growing up.  But every year we spent some time down on the Texas coast and my father would go fishing.  We’d eat what he caught, usually flounder as I remember, and my mother would dredge the filets in seasoned cornmeal and fry them.  That’s what I do, too.  I don’t like them battered; the crunchiness of the cornmeal is what I’m going for.Then, just get the oil really hot, and fry them till they’re crispy.  It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.  When they’re brown, they’re likely done.  The ones in this picture are ready to come out.After that, it’s just a matter of heating up a good corn tortilla, putting a piece of fish on there all crunchy and hot, and adding the cabbage and chipotle mayonnaise.  Oh, lordy, that looks good.

If you like curry, you should give it a try.  It was warm and comforting, and I’m looking forward to eating the leftovers later.  It’s a nice savory antidote to all of those infernal Cracker Bars I’ve been eating.

I could not find fresh Chinese noodles at my HEB, which caters to the open-a-can-and-fry-it-up set, so I opted to buy a couple of packs of Ramen noodles and use those.  Perfectly acceptable, but I’d like to try it with fresh noodles sometime.

As for the chicken, I used the method used by the cook on the original website, rubbing the breasts with some of the red curry and baking and shredding them, and they came out delicious.

The first of these, Coconut Cupcakes with Pineapple Curd, was a three part recipe, but one that could be spread out over several days, so the work involved didn’t seem so bad.  If you were going to have to make them all in one day, you would probably be cursing yourself for choosing this recipe–at least I would.  But by making the pineapple curd one day, the cupcakes the next, and then making the frosting and assembling them on the third day, I was left with nothing but fond feelings for these.  When I tasted them, I decided they will go into the permanent file.

The pineapple curd is definitely the fussiest part of this recipe.

the curd mixture: eggs, sugar, pineapple juice, and cornstarch

To make it, stir the mixture together in a pot over low heat, and stir, stir, stir.  The egg yolks will make it thicken, but they also need a lot of attention if you don’t want scrambled eggs.  After the curd is made, it is important to force it through a sieve.  No matter how careful you were to stir constantly, you will still get some set egg whites in there–and no one wants to get a mouthful of that.  Here’s what my sieve looked like after I strained the mixture.  All those white bits are curdled eggs.  Maybe that’s why they call it curd.  Anyway.The pineapple curd tastes divine.  As the recipe states, you will have more than you need for the cupcakes, but it is so good you will have no problem using it up.  I loved it on crackers, but it would be delicious on toast, pancakes, English muffins–mmm.  It only took me a couple of days to finish it off.

Put the pineapple curd in the refrigerator to chill; it thickens considerably.  Then you need to bake the cupcakes, which are pretty much your usual yellow cake but with coconut milk in place of regular milk.  They have a very subtle coconut flavor.

After the cupcakes are baked, the fun part begins.  I pulled out my cupcake corer, which I bought for a recipe a while back but haven’t used again.  Alton Brown prohibits gadgets which only have one use, a position I generally agree with, but this gadget was cheap, and doesn’t take up much room, and besides, it’s FUN.  To use it, just press it into the center of the cupcake, twist, and remove the core.  Push the plunger to release the core.  Then it’s time to fill the cupcakes.  The easiest way is to put the pineapple curd into a ziplock bag, seal it up, snip the corner off, and squeeze some in each cupcake.  After that, just top with the center piece, and you have filled cupcakes.

The frosting is a simple cream cheese frosting.  I piped my frosting in circular swirls, then topped the finished cakes with coconut and a piece of pineapple.  Yum!The other dessert that I made is called Cashew Caramel Cracker Bars–though I guess to be accurate I should say that I made Almond Caramel Cracker Bars.  You can top them with any kind of nuts you like, but almonds were what I had on hand.

I first made these over the Christmas holidays to give away, and every single person I gave some to asked for the recipe, so I guess they were a success.  I have made a variation of these before, which did not have the sweetened condensed milk, but the addition of that ingredient takes them to a whole new level.

To make them, melt butter in a pot, and remove about 1/4 cup to brush on the foil that lines your pan.  Even though I followed this step, my foil always sticks a little.  After buttering the pan, lay out Saltine crackers so that your pan looks like this.Then to the remaining butter in the pan, add brown sugar, and clip on a candy thermometer.  Bring it to a boil, and when the temperature reaches 248, remove from the heat and add the can of sweetened condensed milk.  Pour this mixture over the crackers and bake until the topping is brown and bubbly.  Sprinkle on a package of chocolate chips and let them sit for a bit to get warm and soft, then spread them out.
And sprinkle with nuts while the chocolate is still soft.  Put the whole pan into the freezer for 30-45 minutes, before breaking them into chunks.  And try to resist the crunchy caramely deliciousness.

At first glance, since there’s no meat, they seem to be a healthy choice but…butter.  And that’s what makes the dish.  Oh well.

These noodles make a great quick supper or lunch, and most of the ingredients are usually on hand.  The exception is cilantro, which doesn’t last all that long in the refrigerator and therefore I usually have to make a run to the store to buy some.  But the recipe doesn’t use much, so I can have these noodles three or four times before the cilantro goes bad.

At Budget Bytes, they talk about how spicy this dish is, but I don’t think so.  Seemed just right to me.

Dragon Noodles
2 servings (though really I can eat the whole thing myself)

4 ounces dried pasta noodles (I use fettucine or linguine)
2 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon Sriracha sauce
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 Tablespoon brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 green onion, sliced
a handful of cilantro, chopped
Boil water and add the pasta; cook according to package directions.

While the pasta is cooking, in a frying pan over very low heat, melt the butter.  When it is melted, add the egg and scramble it over the low heat, until just done but very soft.  This seems like a high butter to egg ratio, but the butter really works in the finished dish to smooth out the sauce.  Don’t skimp.

Combine the Srircha sauce, brown sugar, and soy sauce in a bowl.

Drain the noodles.  Add to the butter and egg in the pan, then add the sauce mixture and stir to combine.  Top with cilantro and green onion and serve.