Crap Chef

Bonus Crap Chef! Tonight, chicken curry.  It's not complicated but it's time consuming. First, chop up an onion and brown it in a generous amount of oil.  After a bit, add some garlic (about 6 cloves), some fresh chopped ginger and some chili.  Cook them for a couple of minutes on high.   Grind up the following - 1 tablespoon of cumin seeds, 1 tablespoon of cardamom seeds, 1 tablespoon of coriander seeds, a stick of cinnamon, turmeric and some star anise if you have it (I didn't). Throw that mix in the pot, turn the heat way down and cook for a bit.  Be careful not to burn it.  When it's all brown and gooey, put it in blender with a couple fingers of water and whizz it until it's smoooooth. Throw it back in the pot and add a can of plain tomato sauce, or some fresh tomatoes chopped without the skin.  I was feeling lazy, so this is from a can.  Turn the heat up to medium and cook it for a half hour or so, stirring once in a while to make sure ...

Today I thought I'd try my hand at spring rolls/egg rolls/ arolloditos de primavera. Chopped up some bean sprouts, carrots, spring onions, basil, lettuce.  Wanted to put in some cilantro, but like usual, the little cilantro that I had left had gone off.  Those are Vero's hands by the way, not mine. Roll up the veggies in the pastry.  I bought the pastry this morning in a chinese supermarket.  Try to make it tight.  My first attempt was a loose and saggy disaster.  I'd looked for some shrimp this morning in La Boqueria to put in them, but the only shrimp they had were waayyyy to big. Fry for a couple of minutes until golden brown (more than this).  We had ours with some rice, sriracha sauce and some soy sauce.  They came out quite well, gave me lots of ideas for the future.  And it's quite light for the summer.

Tonight's dinner, General Tso's chicken.  I had planned to do some fried and breaded boquerones with a garlic aioli, and some kind of meaty mushroom as a side, but the fish in La Boqueria looked a bit old and tired, so I had to come up with something else on the fly.  It's always telling when they try to sell you fish there and it's already been cleaned.  Seems to me that they're trying to get rid of old stock.  I asked to see the whole fish that hadn't been cleaned and they were definitely past their sell date.  Monday, it's not a great day for fish there.  Anyway. Boil rice.  That's easy.  For the sauce, it's ginger, garlic, white wine vinegar, red bell pepper, chili, spring onion.  Chop them all up and mix them together. Cut up a chicken breast into bite-sized pieces.  Dredge them in a slurry of corn starch and egg.  Fry them in hot oil in the wok. When they're golden brown, take them out to drain on some paper towels.  Thr...

Today's dinner:  Fish in a coconut curry.  The fish is a tuna, I think a skipjack.  Three euros fifty a kilo in La Boqueria.  It's really meaty, the flesh is dark red and heavy.  Ideally, I suppose a lighter fish would be better for this meal, but it came out tasty.  Then there's some coconut milk, a ground spice mix (cardamom, cumin, coriander, mustard seeds, turmeric), some nam pla (thai fish sauce), some tamarind water, a couple of limes, a chopped onion, cilantro, two chopped tomatoes, three chopped garlic cloves, a thumb-sized piece of ginger, chopped of course, and some chilis.  Today it's a quarter of a habanero and a whole jalapeno. So this is what I did.  Add garlic and chilis to hot oil in a big pot.  Brown a little, add onions.  Cook until the onion is soft, add ginger.  Throw in the spice mix, stir a lot so it doesn't burn.  Chuck in the tomatoes and the tamarind water, a good couple dashes of nam pla.  Cook t...

A quick one tonight because I'm sick.  I've got a terrible head cold, I've had it for five days and I can't shake it.  There's only two pictures because I forgot to take the intermediate step ones.   That's the meat from two chicken legs, chopped off the bone.  I won't use the bones, but I put them back with the rest of the chicken carcass to use later. Because I'm sick, I wanted chicken soup.  But a couple of months ago we had a really good Sopa de Tortilla in a mexican restaurant here.  It was really good and reminded me of Yucatan and Quintana Roo.  It turns out it's really easy to make. Cut up some chicken meat like above, cook it in a tiny bit of oil, let it cool and then shred it. Fry some old tortillas until they are crispy. Brown a small chopped onion, add a clove of garlic and some chiles.  Cook for 2 minutes, add a liter of chicken stock.  Usually I have my own, but since we have no freezer in this flat, I bought some.  Al...