Accidental Kitchen

My wife and I went grocery shopping somewhat late today, and came back home with the raw materials for my latest adventure in the kitchen. As usual, I had great intentions, but underestimated the task before me.

Some of the ingredients used tonight.

I decided to cook supper for tonight, as well as a couple other dishes for the next couple of days. We're a busy family, and don't get to the supper table together anymore -- and hardly have time to make sure there is food to eat. We had spinach and shrimps with wild rice tonight. The spinach and shrimp dish may also be known to those that dine on Indian on a regular basis as saag.

Chopped spinach.


Spinach, potatoes and cheese. (Potatoes and cheese, read on.)


Spinach and shrimps cooking!


Wild rice cooking.


Spinach & shrimps with wild rice -- my supper!

To put away in the fridge, I also made some potato casserole. This was my first attempt, and I screwed it up. My mistake? I forgot completely about the onions. So when I had layered the potatoes, cheese, and parsley, I topped it all off with onions. The onions should have made it on each layer.

Potato casserole before the oven ...


Potato casserole after the oven.

I also cooked some potatoes with canned sardines and mackrels in tomato and chilli sauce. It's one of my favourite, quick dishes to make and eat!

Potatoes with sardines!

And to finish off my cooking spree, I also baked some chicken drumsticks!

Baked chicken drumsticks! (With secret sauce!)

Jambalaya Storm

Last night I went on another rampage in the kitchen -- or maybe it was the remnants of the previous day's storm. Whatever it was, I wanted to have supper for my wife and her friend when the got home from their Sunday outing. I decided around noon that it was going to be pasta -- jambalaya style! I've only had jambalaya pasta in restaurants before. I remember some of the ingredients, but just made the rest up. It had to be spicy, so I bought a hot pepper -- and I had other spices at home: cayenne pepper, chili powder and black pepper. I also cheated, as I can never make a pasta sauce from scratch. So I bought two bottles of Catelli Garden Select Country Mushroom sauce to serve as the base. The pasta was Olivieri Rainbow Pasta with Three Cheeses -- not the pasta normally associated with jambalaya. The vegetables were the usual, and then some: onions, sweet pepper, eggplant, spinach, and parsley.

First I cooked the chicken, then transferred it to the pot that would eventually get the sauce. To the chicken, I added onions, garlic and ginger. Yes, I use ginger in pasta. I use ginger in everything!

Meanwhile, I had a big pot of water on the stove, getting slowly to a boil for the tortellini.

Since this was going to be jambalaya, I needed shrimps. As usual, I had to cook the shrimps to get rid of most of the water still in it. I prefer it that way.

As the two pots and frying pan were going, I launched into the vegetables, getting them ready for the sauce.

I added the vegetables slowly to the sauce, making sure to put the ones that needed more cooking in first. I also added a little wine, as I was told once in a restaurant that there was some in the jambalaya sauce.

The tortellini itself only took about 10 minutes to cook. Once the water was boiling, I dunked it all in and stirred constantly to make sure none got stuck at the bottom.

At the end, there was a meal at the table. I was assured that it was good.

Cooking up a Storm

My youngest was protesting at lunch time today, about having the same thing for lunch that she had for breakfast: toast. So I decided to do something about it. Far be it for me to let the little one suffer with such boring fare as toast.

So I went grocery shopping -- first to local grocery store that caters mostly to the Asian community. There I picked up some choice vegetables for my enterprise: okra, eggplant and butternut squash. I also picked up staples for most of the meals I usually concoct: lots of onions and sweet peppers. I already had ginger and garlic at home, so I didn't need to purchase any. I also picked up some potatoes and canned sardines, but they never got used. The local Longos was the second grocery store I hit. More for some staples for the week, rather than for anything specific for tonight. Lastly, I went to Costco. They usually have good size packages of chicken drumsticks, and I also wanted to make sure we were covered for mango juice in the house. Unfortunately, all four bottles of mango juice that I purchased were starting to ferment. So I got to take them back tomorrow.

I had some shrimps that I had purchased a week or two ago in the freezer, and had decided they would go well with the three vegetables I had picked up. Even though the shrimps were already cooked and frozen, I decided to cook them some more. The primary reason for doing this is to get all the water locked in them out. You can see the effect in about 10-15 minutes. The shrimps start to shrink. I cooked the shrimps, then transferred them to a bowl to await my use. That's when I realized that there wasn't enough shrimps to go around. Rather than be stingy with them, I decided that only the okra and eggplant would get the benefit of the sea.

While the shrimps were cooking, I got into the drumbsticks. There were over thirty in the bag I picked up. I only used half of them tonight -- the other half went into the freezer. I like to marinate -- if you can call it that -- meat into lemon juice. I filled a bowl with water, poured some concentrated lemon juice into it, then add the chicken. It's not really marinating, but what it does is clean away rank that comes from blood. Even though cooking is supposed to get rid of that, my quirky senses seem to pick it up. It's psychological. I have a thing about meat. It took some time before I was brave enough to tackle meat in the kitchen.

As the chicken did its thing with the lemon juice, I washed and cut the okra into pieces. I took the head and tail off the okra, as they were not going to make it into the frying pan.

I then placed half the shrimp that was already cooked, into the frying pan with all the okra. If you've never dealt with okra before, you're in for an interesting first time. It's really slimy! Even after it has been cooked. As the okra cooked away, I washed and sliced two tomatoes, one onion and two sweet peppers into the frying pan. I added some ginger and garlic, as well as the usual salt and black pepper. In the frying pan, the lot looks rather colourful.

At this point, I decided to get the chicken going in the oven. So I took the drumsticks out of their lemon bath, and dropped them into a baking pan. I sprinkled salt and chilli powder onto the drumsticks, then popped them into the oven at 400. I carefully covered the baking pan in aluminum foil to make it easier to clean afterwards. Unfortunately, the foil got ripped, and some of the chicken juices and marinate got burnt onto pan. One baking pan was destroyed in the making of this meal.

The eggplant was next on my hit list. I washed, then chopped the head and tail ends off, before cutting the two beasts into tiny little pieces. As usual, I overestimated the amount of eggplant I would need. One would have been sufficient.

A quick look at the okra, showed that all was still going well.

I dropped the chopped eggplants onto the last of the shrimps in the second frying pan, and covered it to get the heat to work its magic. One thing with eggplant -- it may look like a lot, but it shrinks when cooked. I used olive oil both on the eggplant and okra, btw.

As the eggplant cooked, I chopped up a couple of tomatoes and sweet pepper (orange and red), as well as another onion. I dropped them all on top of then eggplant, which was already succumbing to the heat. At this point, I added salt, ginger, garlic and black pepper as well.

All the eggplant needed from me was some attention to make sure it didn't get burned. At this point, the okra was done, and I transferred it to a dish, and placed it in the microwave to hopefully allow it to keep some of the heat -- as we wouldn't be sitting down for supper for another hour, and there was more cooking to be done. I took the knife and went at the butternut squash. The skin is friggin difficult to cut through. After I peeled the skin off, I chopped it into little pieces and placed it in the first frying pan that I had washed after cooking the okra. I used olive oil here again. This was my first time cooking squash. Previously, I had only seen the results of my mother cooking it. I didn't know what she used as spices, but I did remember her using onions. I decided to add garlic, ginger, salt and black pepper, cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Meanwhile, a quick check on the eggplant revealed things were really going wild. I decided to remove the lid from the frying pan, and lower the heat at this point. There was way too much liquid in there, and it needed to lose some.

The chicken was not forgotten while the chopping and frying was happening. I had taken the chicken out of the oven once, and turned each piece over to make sure it was being cooked evenly. The third time I took them out, I was going to baste them with a special concoction. I had some cassareep I had acquired from my parents some time back. I mixed that in a small bowl with some teriyaki sauce and ginger. Then I spread the concoction liberally with a teaspoon over each piece of chicken. The chicken was then placed right back into the oven. At this point, I should have lowered the temperature from 400 to 250 or 300. I didn't. As a result, the chicken was a bit burnt, and a baking pan was sacrificed.

All of this took me about two and a half hours. The part of the meal that wasn't mine was the nan -- the roti substitute, not someone's grandma. I picked that up from the Bombay Bhel, as I am incapable of cooking roti. To tell the truth, I've never tried -- and since the whole baking thing is a mystery to me, I haven't worked up the nerve to try. Turning vegetables into mush and burning meat is more my forte.

I was told the meal was good by my family. The empty plates did back up their words too.

For me however, the reward wasn't the tasty meal. And it was tasty -- I'm a very harsh judge of food. It wasn't the food. For me, it was watching my youngest eat. She's very cute when she's into her meal. Especially when she's chewing, and her cheeks are all puffed out.