Magazine Monday # 56: Latest Article from Coyote's Kitchen

Instead of providing you all with a Magazine Monday recipe today, I thought I'd share with you my latest food column, which contains two recipes! This is my piece from the Nov./Dec. issue of Bread & Molasses magazine, a publication out of Mirimachi, New Brunswick, for which I write a bi-monthly food-related article. According to my mom, the cheese ball recipe has been lost for a long time and she was pleased to have found it. Good thing I copied it down before I moved out 15 years ago! Click to enlarge. Enjoy!

Saturday Laugh

PS: I did my 50,000 words - yay!!!!

Family Dinner: Veggie Curry & Chicken Kebabs

You might recall the wonderful gift that my good blog friend and fellow foodie Palidor sent me last month. It contained a packet of Palidor's dad's own homemade curry powder, and I thought it would be great to share this with my own family, who are quite partial to curries. My SIL, Shan, suggested a veggie curry to go with some chicken kebabs she was making, so that's what we did. The results were amazing!

Here's what I did for the veggie curry.

Veggie Curry with Palidor's Dad's Curry Powder

1 onion, sliced
1" piece of ginger, peeled & grated
several cloves of garlic
3 tomatoes, diced
1 zucchini, sliced
1 red pepper, sliced
1 large carrot, sliced
a couple of cups of sliced mushrooms
1 can coconut milk
1 tbsp curry powder
cilantro

1. I sauteed the onion and ginger in some olive oil until the onions were nice & soft & translucent. I then added all the other veggies and sauteed them until they cooked down. I added the curry powder and let this all cook for a bit. The fragrance rocked! Everyone's mouths were watering and we couldn't wait to try the curry!

2. Near serving time, I added the can of coconut milk & the garlic & simmered for a few minutes until we were ready to rock 'n roll. I garnished with cilantro. I had made some nice rice to go along with our meal, too. The end result:
What beautiful colour! And it tasted awesome! Everyone was totally in love with this!

Shan made chicken kebabs by marinating chicken strips in some Greek yogurt, paprika, garlic powder, and lemon. Then she threw them on the BBQ. They were great! It was a fabulous meal all around, and we even had naan to go with it.Thank you so much, Palidor, for sharing a piece of your family with me and my family! This was a great gift!

Lunch at Frisco's Seafood & Steak House

OK, here is my latest NaNoWriMo update! The end is near - and so is my 50,000 words!

My dad gets really excited when Save-on Foods in Nelson has a case-lot sale, so we recently took another trip over there, which of course, meant another lunch out! On a whim, my dad suggested we check out Nelson's Prestige Lakeside Resort, where there is a restaurant called Frisco's Steak & Seafood House. I was game, so off we went.

Frisco's is in a lovely spot, right overlooking the water and marina located at the resort. The restaurant is quite beautiful, too, with a darker but warm ambiance and a huge gas fireplace. It was pretty busy when we got there at 12:30, but the service was excellent and the place emptied out quickly as 1:00 approached. There was a hot buffet on offer, but nothing on it appealed to us, so we perused the lunch menu and found a lot to choose from.

My dad doesn't eat seafood at all, so he went with the Beef Tender Tips with Asparagus & Portabello Sizzler. He also wanted some soup (it was a chilly day) so he ordered the French Onion Prime Rib Soup. I had a tough time choosing between the Frisco's Seafood Salad and the Frisco Burger. In the end, I went with the burger with half Caesar salad and half fries.

Both of us made great choices, except Dad wasn't keen on the soup. He said it was kind of bland, not nice & rich as a French Onion should be. But he was very impressed with his Sizzler! It came out sizzling on a cast iron platter and Dad said it was really delicious.The Frisco Burger contained beer battered halibut on a sourdough bun, topped with pickle, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and tartar sauce. It was really good, but for a signature burger it was a little bit uninspired. It wasn't particularly interesting even though it was well-prepared and tasted great. The Caesar salad, on the other hand, was fabulous! This was not your typical Caesar dressing; it definitely seemed homemade and was far better than any Caesar dressing I've had in a restaurant in ages. The fries were also good. I loved the garnishes they used on our plates; you don't get that everywhere, let me tell you!Both of us were way too full to have dessert. The prices were very reasonable given the quality of the food and the portion sizes. I had a quick peek at the dinner menu and it's very fancy and has things on it like lobster dinners, Dungeness crab dinners, and very expensive steaks. I won't be having dinner there any time soon, I can tell you that, but I'd definitely go back for lunch!

Milk & Honey Bread

This is the second recipe I've made from the most excellent book, Earth to Table.

Now, I made the recipe as printed in the book, but I realized right away that there was a flaw in it. 6 cups of water to 1 1/2 cups of liquid will simply not work. I got one loaf of bread, and although it was delicious, I needed to resolve this issue! I contacted the Random House rep I work with for the reviews and she suggested Tweeting the authors, who manage their own Twitter page. I did this and got a reply!

This is a beautiful, tasty loaf, and I'll definitely make it again.

Milk & Honey Bread, by Jeff Crump & Bettina Schormann of Earth to Table fame, recipe available on Twitter

mix together:

2 cups of flour
3 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast

Add:

1 1/2 cups milk
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup honey

- Mix until all goopy

Add: up to 4 cups of flour, until you get a nice dough

Follow these basic instructions.

And voila!Beautiful! Wonderful! Amazing! I loved the soft texture of this loaf, and the sweetness the honey gave to it!

Finally - A Toasty Torpedo!

Remember this post? Remember this ad and it's utter brilliance? Please, spend the 32 seconds it takes to watch this - it's worth it!



OK. Laughing are we? Good. Because the real Toasty Torpedo is no laughing matter!

Finally, I got to go to a Quizno's the other day. The nearest location is in Castlegar, which is about a half hour's drive from here. I'd spent the afternoon with my brother & SIL, helping them clean out the garage and making a couple of dump runs. We had to go to Castlegar to return the truck we were borrowing, so we decided on a cheap dinner at Quizno's. I of course wanted a Toasty Torpedo, so I ordered the Turkey Club one. This is it:Sigh...So unlike the picture. Well, nothing ever is, though, right? Anyway, this was puny! And not very satisfying! I came away hungry! Luckily, we went to DQ for a Blizzard afterward, so I wasn't totally starving, but still...The Toasty Torpedo was just flat out disappointing! Boo, hiss!

I still love Quizno's though; I just wouldn't order this again.

Magazine Monday #55: Glazed Balsamic Chicken

Yet again, I bring to you another Canadian Living recipe for Magazine Monday! It comes from the May 2004 issue of the magazine.

This is a really simple, delicious way to do chicken. I'm surprised I don't make it more often!

The recipe is here.

I served this with rice and the last spaghetti squash from my garden and it was total yum!

Saturday Laugh

This week's laugh comes from LOLcelebs!

Lunch at the Sunshine Cafe

It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of having lunch at Rossland's best lunch place, the Sunshine Cafe, but I got to go last week, and as usual, I was not disappointed!

I dined with my brother & SIL. Shan had the wrap special, which was Greek chicken, and the soup of the day, which was tomato & rice. The soup was so hearty she couldn't finish it all.My brother had a chicken burger with Swiss cheese and grilled onions, accompanied by the salad of the day, which was a Sweet Thai chicken pasta salad. He said it was awesome.I also opted for a chicken burger, wanting a change from my usual, which is the clubhouse sandwich. I had Swiss cheese and grilled mushrooms on my burger, and I had a side of fries because I was in a foul mood (it's amazing what a load of decent fries will do for grouchiness!). It was a great lunch!Again, the Sunshine didn't disappoint! I love this place!

Buttermilk Biscuits

Here is my latest NaNoWriMo update, including excerpt!

This is the recipe for the biscuits I made with the seafood chowder in yesterday's post. I used the technique of grating the butter with a grater, as I learned in the pastry recipe for that no-bake pumpkin pie I made around Thanksgiving last month. It worked like a charm! These biscuits were wonderful. I have no idea where I got this recipe from, but I've had it for a long time. As I mentioned yesterday, I used some lemon pepper in them for a bit of zip.

Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup buttermilk

1. Whisk together dry ingredients. Grate the butter into the mixture & toss to combine. Add buttermilk and mix just enough to blend together. Do not overmix!

2. Roll or pat dough to desired thickness - anywhere from 1/2" - almost 1" (but be aware that the thicker you pat the dough, the longer these will take to cook through). Cut. Bake at 425F until done.

Seafood Chowder

During my last cross border shopping trip, I picked up two cans of clams for really cheap, with the intention of making clam chowder. But I also found a halibut tail end fillet on special at LOGS the other day, so I decided to make a seafood chowder.

One of my very first posts on this blog, back in January 2005, was about a seafood chowder I made when I was living in Vancouver. Vancouver is the mecca for amazing Pacific coast seafood, and I miss that about living there a lot.

I basically used the method in that post. Only, I didn't have any white wine on hand, which made a huge difference in the flavour of the broth. I also used half & half cream instead of full whipping cream.

It was a great chowder! I got enough for four meals plus I froze four more, so it was very economical.

I served the chowder with buttermilk biscuits I made with some lemon pepper. I'll post the recipe for those tomorrow.

Award Time!

Quick post today! In fact, many of the posts you'll see this week will be quick! I continue with NaNoWriMo!

OK, I have been blessed with some awesome blog friends, and two of them, Pierce and Karen, have bestowed upon me this lovely award:
Along with this award comes a responsibility: I must give you seven facts about myself. So, here you go!

1. I sit in front of a SAD lamp every morning now. I call the SAD lamp Mr. Happy.

2. I worked as a dishwasher to help pay for university.

3. No one touches my KitchenAid mixer but ME!

4. I once ordered sea urchin pizza in Sicily, but the restaurant was out of sea urchins, so I had to order something else.

5. I have eaten fajitas in Helsinki.

6. I have sprained my right ankle several times just walking.

7. I admire a man who can cook!

Book Review: Confections of Closet Master Baker

Some time ago, Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies had a giveaway for Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado, and guess who won? Go me!

This book was well-reviewed by not only Natashya but one other food blogger whose name I cannot recall right now, but I was really excited about getting to read it, and finally, I did.

Gesine started out as a Hollywood movie executive, and it took me a while to figure out exactly whom she was related to; turns out she is Sandra Bullock's younger sister (um, yeah, the last name should have been a dead give-away but I am slow, I admit!) and for a while she ran Sandra's movie production company. But she was miserable and hated it, and her mind was always on baking and dreamy confections. So, one day after having enough of the Hollywood lifestyle, Gesine and her husband relocated to Vermont and opened a little bakery.

Interwoven with Gesine's tale of starting up the bakery and all that involved and stories of how life has been for her since the opening, are lovely vignettes of Gesine's childhood spent partially in her mother's homeland of Germany, and poignant stories about the women in Gesine's life who helped shape her passion for pastry. Including a collection of her favourite recipes, this book is a wonderful homage to the experiences, people, and flavours of Gesine's life that inspire her baking and keep her wanting to keep ungodly hours at her bakery so that she can do what she loves and is passionate about: feeding people sugary, buttery treats.

This was a light book to read, and it was a joy to read. I haven't made any of the recipes yet, but I have my eye on a couple. This book actually made me think of a lot of the common foods - both baking and savoury - that marked my childhood, too, and it made me appreciate all the more the love of cooking and baking my mother instilled in me, and the nurturing it can do for one's soul.

Thanks, Natashya! This was a great find!

Saturday Laugh

Via ICHC.

If you're curious, my latest writing update is here, including a snippet.

When in Doubt, Make Lasagna

This doesn't happen very often, but I made a crappy spaghetti sauce the other night.

The inspiration for this came when I was walking by the meat section in the LOGS (local overpriced grocery store) and there were some nice sausages on sale. They were pork souvlaki sausages. There were four of the suckers there for under $3! How could I resist? Thinking of the flavours in souvlaki, I thought these would be great in spaghetti sauce. When I unwrapped them, the smelled of garlic & oregano and no lemon; I thought I was safe.

Ugh. I didn't like the sauce. I had one meal from it with pasta and wondered what to do with the rest of the pot. I certainly didn't want to waste it at all. I am too cheap to do that.

Would this be any good in lasagna, I wondered? I had ricotta cheese left over from cross-border shopping; all I really needed was some mozzarella cheese. I went for it.

Thank God this worked out! The sauce made a far better lasagna than a spaghetti sauce, which was a huge relief. I guess you can add ricotta cheese to anything and it'll turn out (right Palidor?). Or maybe the flavours had some time to mellow. I don't know, but it was a kick ass lasagna, and 7 out of 8 pieces of it went into the freezer! Woo-hoo!

Oyster Time!

Here is my latest NaNoWriMo update! I'm happy to report it's going well - better than I anticipated! And just so you know, the posts you are reading now were written a while ago and set for scheduled publishing. So no, I am not cooking and writing!

OK - I love oysters! My first taste of this sensuous sea creature came when I was young, at Christmas time when my mom used to buy canned smoked oysters. This was one of the items we'd only get at this time of the year, so it was a real treat. My brothers and I really liked them, though I don't recall my mom ever eating them and my dad is repulsed by fish so he wouldn't touch them. I do remember our cats getting excited about them, though...

Anyway, when I was in my early twenties, I went on a camping trip to Galiano Island, and we went for dinner at the Hummingbird Pub. On the menu was an oyster burger, and I was so intrigued by the idea that I had to order it. Until this experience I'd never had a fresh oyster, and let me tell you, when I bit into that burger, I thought I'd bitten into heaven.

Since then, I've had oysters on the half shell - fantastic - and other oyster burgers that have been good, but not as good as that one at the Hummingbird. Here in the interior, you get these things as they're available. And last week, LOGS (local overpriced grocery store) had oysters on sale: 8oz for $1.99. I couldn't resist! I bought a container and a nice bun and decided to make an oyster burger for myself!

When I opened the container of oysters, I found that I got 8 HUGE suckers in there and I was thrilled! Not only would I get a nice burger out of this, I would get some extra oysters too eat as well! The due date on the container was the next day, so I knew I had to use them that night as I had another plan for the next night.

So here's what I did.

I laid the oysters out and just sniffed in their sea-fresh aroma. It was heady, let me tell you!After doing that for a little while, I gathered up these ingredients: bread crumbs, cream, and Old Bay Seasoning. My plan was to shallow fry the oysters. I was going to buy buttermilk, but I had cream left over from the apple tart I'd just made, so I decided to use that. I usually use buttermilk when I go to make calamari, so I figured this method would work for oysters, too.I poured the cream over the oysters and mixed them around to cover them all very well. Then I dipped them in bread crumbs mixed with the Old Bay (I love this stuff; thanks to Pierce for recommending it to me) and fried them in a bit of oil until they were nice and browned.
Now, here is a caveat: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS RECIPE/METHOD WITHOUT A GREASE SPLATTER SCREEN!!! There is a lot of liquid in an oyster and they splattered like hell when I put them in the oil!

The result: YUM! HEAVEN! OH MY GOD!They were so wickedly amazing! The burger was great, but eating the left over oysters just on their own was even better. I savoured every bite, let me tell you! This was so good!It's so nice to have a treat like this once in a while!

Apple Pizza

This is the second recipe I've made from Lucy Waverman's A Year in Lucy's Kitchen. The original recipe calls for plums, but I don't like plums and a had a whack of apples on hand that my dad had acquired from his neighbour. The original also specifies an 8" springform pan, but I only have a 9" and so I decided to make this into more of an apple tart, using my 9" ceramic tart pan (there was too much crust for my 8" tart pan with removable side to accommodate). I was attracted to this recipe because of its simplicity - which is what this book is all about. The end result was marvelous! This was a lovely tart and I'll for sure make it again.

Apple Tart (adapted from Lucy Waverman's Plum Pizza recipe on page 208 of A Year in Lucy's Kitchen)

Crust:

1 cup all purpose flour
1 tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cubed

- sift dry ingredients together and add butter, cutting in to make a coarse meal. press into tart pan. bake @ 350F for 15 minutes or until lightly golden.

Filling:

4 apples, peeled & cored, & sliced in to thick slices
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 egg yolks
1/2 cup whipping cream

- toss apple slices with sugar & cinnamon. arrange over crust.
- whisk yolks & cream; pour over apples
- bake @ 350F for 35 - 45 minutes, or until custard is golden & apples are softened
- serve & enjoy!

Like I said, this was wonderful! I even ate it for breakfast one morning!

Cooking with Kylie: Wonton Soup

All right, after last week's dreary chicken noodle soup, I decided to use some of the left over stock for wonton soup. I just love wontons and wonton soup! And luckily, Kylie's wonton recipe is one of the best I've ever made. You can find the recipe for the wontons here; it's the same one that appears in this post.

When I made this batch of wontons, I saved myself a lot of hassle by whizzing the ingredients all up in the food processor. This was most excellent. Again, I used my #100 cookie scoop, which is about 1 tsp, to easily fill the wonton wrappers.

Because I knew beforehand that the stock needed help, I was able to tweak it so it was flavourful - and I did a damned awesome job, if I do say so myself. I made half a recipe and got two meals out of it.

Prawn Wonton Soup (adapted by me from Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking, page 46)

1/2 bunch of bok choy
3 cups Chinese chicken stock
1 tbsp grated ginger
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp sake
2 tbsp oyster sauce
green onions, sliced, for garnish

wontons

Simmer everything except the bok choy & green onions for a few minutes. I boiled the wontons in a separate pot because I didn't want a starchy soup. When wontons are done, add to soup with the bok choy & simmer for a minute. Serve with green onions.
The chicken noodle soup failure was a good learning experience, because this soup was far more flavourful than the chicken noodle soup. In fact, it was fantastic! The wontons were also fan-fracking-tastic! It is so worth it to make homemade wontons, I think.

So this was another winning Kylie recipe!

Magazine Monday #54: Chicken Soup

I've been keeping myself busy with NaNoWriMo (or my version of it) and if you want to see my latest update you can do so here. If I've been quieter around blog land, this is why. I'm surprised at how productive I am with this novel-writing thing; it's going better than I expected!

I haven't made a new Magazine Monday recipe to post this week, so I thought I'd repost a recipe I initially posted here in October 2005. The original post is here. This is, once again, a Canadian Living recipe, and for some reason, I haven't made it in ages! I'd better remedy that!

This recipe isn't in the CL online recipe database; knowing those guys, it's probably been taken off because the recipe is in one of their cookbooks.

Chicken Noodle Soup

2 tbsp vegetable oil
12 oz boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
1 grated carrot
1 tsp each dried oregano and basil
4 cups chicken stock
2 tsp Dijon mustard
3 oz. spaghettini, broken up (about 1 cup)
2 cups sliced celery
2 tbsp all purpose flour
2 1/2 cups milk
salt & pepper to taste

1. Brown chicken is a large saucepan with oil. Remove to a bowl. Add onion & carrot and saute until onion is softened.
2. Add stock and mustard; bring to boil. Stir in celery and pasta and return to the boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and simmer until noodles are almost tender. Add chicken with accumulated juices and cook for 5 minutes longer.
3. Whisk flour into milk and gradually whisk this into the soup. Simmer, stirring, for about 3 minutes or until slightly thickened. Serve and enjoy!

Saturday Laugh

Via ICHC.

Cookie Time

I love it when I get to bake for other people. It means I get to enjoy the process of baking, but I don't have a whack of sugary treats tempting me all the time. Giving baking away gives me joy, gives the recipient joy, and is good for my waistline!

Giada di Laurentiis's recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies with Hazelnuts is currently my favourite cookie recipe. I went to visit a friend the other day, and as usual when I go to see this friend, who has a 9 month old baby, I take along some baking. She & her husband always appreciate it.

The recipe is here.

I left out the nuts because A) I don't have any hazelnuts left, and B) I didn't know if anyone in my friend's household had issues with nuts (turns out, nuts aren't a problem; good to know for the future).

These are amazing cookies!

Chicken Fajita Salad

This salad helped me with a recent fajita craving. Avocados were on sale at Save-on Foods, four for $2.99 - an excellent price! Use whatever veggies you like.

Chicken Fajita Salad

1 boneless skinless chicken breast, cubed
2 tsp fajita seasoning
3 tbsp water

salad greens
sliced avocado
sliced red onion
chopped peppers
kalamata olives
shredded cheddar cheese

for the dressing: 2 tbsp salsa, 2 tbsp light sour cream, a couple squeezes of lime juice

Fry chicken until cooked, add seasoning & water & simmer a couple of minutes until thickened.

Place chicken on top of salad greens & other veggies. Top with dressing, cheese, and olives.

Excellent!

Cooking with Kylie & 101 Uses for a Roasted Chicken #21: Stock & Soup

First of all, a Coyo-NoWriMo update can be seen here. So far so good with the word count, but my back is feeling it sitting in my chair all day! I'm peeking in on your blogs, by the way, but not posting as many comments.

OK, now onto Kylie...

You all know of my love for whole chickens, right? And I believe I have lamented a few times that this leads to a build-up of chicken carcasses in my freezer. I refuse to throw these things away because you can do so much with them! And because I'm cheap!

So, I decided to make another Kylie recipe with one of my carcasses, as she has a chapter in Simple Chinese Cooking on different kinds of stock. She uses whole chickens in her stock, but since I have a surplus of carcasses hanging around, I thought I'd use one of them. And then, I decided upon a soup to make once the stock was done.

So, I made Kylie's Rich Chinese Stock on page 22 of Simple Chinese Cooking. As usual with stocks, I did it in my slow cooker and it turned out great! I added some stare anise as I had some courtesy Palidor's wonderful gift, and the house was filled with such a wonderful aroma.

Rich Chinese Chicken Stock (adapted by me from Kylie Kwong's recipe)

1 chicken carcass
2L cold water
2 star anise
5 spring onions, cut in half crosswise
1 medium red onion, roughly chopped
5 large slices ginger
5 cloves garlic, whole

Stick everything in crock pot & crank it to high for about 6 hours. After that, strain out all the solids & pick the meat off the carcass, reserving the meat for soup.

Notice there are no seasonings in here, just aromatics. I wondered about this, because when I make stock I always make sure to season it & adjust the seasonings as I need to. In this case, however, the seasonings are added when the soup is made, as you will see in the upcoming recipe. I can see why holding off would be an advantage; you get a more neutral -tasting stock that can be seasoned in a variety of ways when you go to make soup, making it more versatile. This stock was good & I'd make it again.

The soup I decided to make was the Chicken Noodle Soup from page 40 of the book. It calls for Hokkien noodles. Well, good luck trying to find those around here! LOGS sells fresh Udon noodles but they are very cost-prohibitive for me. There were also some fresh chow mein noodles, but I've tried using them for soup before and they didn't work so well. Over in the Asian section of LOGS (and it's a miracle there is a small Asian section as this is an Italian grocery store) there were some rice noodles, more chow mein noodles, an a selection of different Chinese egg noodles. These were decently priced, so I went with them. This would turn out to be a big mistake.

Chicken Noodle Soup (adapted by me from Kylie Kwong's recipe on page 40 of SCC)

3 stalks bok choy, chopped
3 bunches Chinese egg noodles
3 cups rich Chinese chicken stock
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp white sugar
meat from chicken carcass, about 1 cup
1 tsp sesame oil
green onions, sliced, for garnish

In a medium pot, cook noodles according to package directions. Drain & set aside.

In a separate pot, bring stock to boil. Add soy sauce, oyster sauce, ginger, & sugar. Simmer gently for a minute or so. Add bok choy & chicken & cook about 2 minutes. Add noodles. Serve.

This soup was terrible! It's the first recipe of Kylie's I haven't liked. It was bland, for one thing; I needed to add a lot of soy sauce to the soup as I was eating it in order for it to be palatable. Also, the noodles were awful! My first clue was when I went to drain them, a terrible yellow slick of God knows what separated from the rest of the water, alarming me as I saw this all go into my sink. I don't think it was fat, though it was thick like that, and I don't think it was unnatural colouring in the noodles. But the noodles left in the pan after draining were a different colour than they were when I put them on to boil. This prompted me to take a very close look at the ingredients, which were also quite alarming! Check this out:
First of all: "lye water?" WTF is that? Second of all: MSG? Shit! I try to avoid the stuff like the plague.

I also love the third part of the instructions: "serve with meats, vegetables, or soys, if pleased."

But I wasn't pleased! These noodles, weird yellow slick and all, tasted terrible and had a heavy texture.

I am not sure what I'm going to do with the soup now. I hate throwing stuff out, but I just didn't like this at all. And I will never buy those noodles again.
Sigh...Oh well, onwards and upwards, right?

Butter Chicken

Save-on Foods had Patak's curry pastes on sale when I was there the other week, so I picked up a jar of butter chicken sauce. I love Patak's; I always have a jar of mild curry paste on hand because it's easy to use and very versatile.

I've only had butter chicken a few times in my life, and I've always liked it as long as the spice was kept down. This mild sauce was perfect.

I used the directions on the jar!

This was soooooooooo gooooooooood! Rich and wonderful and just perfect. And it took no time at all! I'll definitely be making this again, and am thinking it would actually be good with shrimp, and even salmon. Hmmmm...