Soupy Sunday

Ok so I watch Semi Homemade with Sandra Lee.

She rarely makes anything from scratch, and when I am tired, I take a page from her book.

Vegetable soup from a can.

Doctoring it up means:

Crushed Red Pepper

Hot sauce

Tamarind (for a little warm richness)

Tiny bit of honey (1tsp) - it cuts the tartness of the tomato soup

Some chicken and feta cheese, and I'm good to go!

Long Bread

Michael Chiarello, creator of NapaStyle made bread for his wedding and anniversary meal. He actually catered the entire meal.
I thought I would try it.
This is how it came out when I followed his instructions.
I didn't put all the herbs he added.

I just added the red pepper flakes.

Bready Cheesy Rolls

I didn't want to make pizza. I wanted to use my dough though.

I just made little rounds, buttered and cheesed them up, and placed into an oiled dish

Baked at 375 for 15 minutes.

They taste really good.

Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

On the plate there is the Roll, Tomatoes, Tamarind Chutney, and Curried chicken

More kinds of yum :)

Tamarind Chutney

I started off boiling the garlic (5 cloves) in 3 cups of water.

I used 200grams (half my block of Tamarind paste).

1/4 cup of strawberry jam

1.5 cups sugar.

1 TBSP crushed red pepper and hot sauce if you want it spicier (I always like it spicy)

Boil down till thickened to how you like it.

All kinds of YUM

You will see my chutney in other dishes I make to eat :)

Behind the Apron Roundup

Was posted by 28 Cooks.
It was exciting to see all the people behind the food blogs. The ROUNDUP was a great idea
We should all meet up :)
There are so many great food blogs...How am I ever going to read them all!

Deep Freeze

The deep freezer is another Trinidad food tradition.

For as long as I could remember when I was younger, my mother wanted 'A Deep Freeze'.

The DEEP FREEZE was actually a freezer apart from the fridge where you could store all the tons of meat that you wanted to.

Numerous chickens, pieces of pork, beef and wild meat chunks could be stored there.

I found out recently that they also put all the food they cook but would be eater 'later', bits of cake, icecream, and other desserts.

The bad thing is that if the freezer breaks you are fresh out of luck!

This is the one at our house.

Valentine Brownie

This is highly recommended.

When I first met Bear, he brought with him a package from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

He remembered that I liked chocolate cake.

I opened the bag and found a brownie that had a Snikers bar coating. That was the BEST brownie I have ever had!!! Chocolatey, nutty, caramely, creamy, nougaty, rich, thick, yum.

On my way back to Tally I stopped in at the FACTORY and got one.

So far I've had it in the fridge waiting for me. I am waiting on a special occassion to have it. I am going to cut it in half and then quarters.

Four different days worth of Yum :)

Too Much Rice

I think we got rid of half of it.

We got our curry at the Caribbean Market.

It was delicious as usual but they give you so much rice.

The first wrong thing about it is that we need to stick to our low carb lifestyle.

My stomach can't handle too much carbs (the pain begins to be unbearable at times), and it's just too much calorie-wise :(

It helps if you take your acidophilus afterward

I didn't eat the potato
I think everywhere you go, its too easy to serve carbs. They are everywhere in abundance, in everything (just about everything).

You have to special order a low carb meal almost everywhere you go. UGH :(

Sometimes you don't want to have a salad...

Restaurants sometimes include high amounts of starch vegetables which will be toublesome if you can't identify them :(

What if I wanted to be a low carb vegan...(Which was my original thought before I realized being a vegan was out of the question for me), I'd be in trouble for sure!

Or maybe not! Let me think about this....

Dinner Theater

Dinner Theater dinner is actually very good. Very Carborific but still gooooddd:)

The soup (tomato and cream), which was the best part for me, I forgot to take a picture of, but I did get everything else.

The Salad

The Main course hoice of three meats: (chicken, beef, or fish) with mashed potatoes and vegetables

The Dessert (yummy cake).

The servers were the cast members, which made the experience fun. I laughed a lot because it reminded me of MFA (Masters of Fine Arts)college students with an idea. You never know...it could actually be that! :)

Kitchen Cutsies

I really like this little jar

So cute.

I'm never gonna use it in the kitchen probably.

Hamburgers

I despise airport food.
The sandwiches look really dry.
The salads are look are mainly lettuce
Pizzas are just ew!
Nothing tastes the way it does in the real world and it is all so expensive.
I have to take a flight so I am going to carry my own sandwich.
I decided on sandwich because everything else would be too messy. I am going to pay for it later with stomach pains but I decided to bring my fiber and my acidophilus to help with digestion :)


So my hamburgers go as follows

1lb hamburger meat
1 tbsp soul food seasoning
3 tbsp mayonnaise (to bind)
1tbsp chili powder
2 tsp black pepper



Combine all ingredients and mix



Form Patties




Place into heated skillet (DO NOT ADD OIL OR BUTTER)



Cook until well browned on both sides (about 2.5 minutes each side)



Take buns and add 1tsp mayo and 1 tsp mustard




Make hamburger and add ketchup as desired :)

Yum (but beware...carbs carbs carbs).
Once in a while it's ok.
ONCE IN A WHILE...

Sweet Bread

In Trinidad, this is bread that is sweet.

It is a really good and delicious part of any meal. I can't have it because it's really CARBY, but when I was younger I used to eat it a lot.

Nen an' em (various aunts and great aunts, mothers, friends) would go visiting and invariably sweet breads would be exchanged or brought out as part of the refreshment platter.

At least in my family it seemed as if that was the way it was...

So much so, that my mum had a running joke that she told us when we were little. The joke even had a tittle "Ma, Nen bring ah sweetbread".

I can't repeat the joke here but it's funny if you are a trini :)

Well the sweetbreads were great regardless of who brought them, but ingredients seem to vary.

With or without coconut, raisins or those 'fruits' that you see in deplorable fruitcakes sold in the US.

These days its seems that the 'fruits' are taking over.

If I still indulged in carbs a lot, I would eat the bread after I scraped off the 'fruit'

The pic shows one of the breads with the incriminating 'fruit'

Sweet breads can be eaten plain, with jam, butter, peanut butter or whatever you want :)

Fried Fillets

Of Tilapia

I dredge in breadcrumbs and Parmplus

Then fry till golden

Yum

Vegetarian Lunch

Broccoli

Sweet Peas

Carrots

Baked and seasoned.

It's really good.
Ok I know that that sounds like I am trying to convince myself as well as others that the vegetarian stuff is good, but it really is!
I put some feta cheese on top and had a ball! :)

PUFFS! :)

NO CHILL SIMPLE PUFF PASTRY FROM SCRATCH

1 stick butter
1 c. water
dash of salt
1 c. flour
2 eggs


Bring butter, water and salt to a rolling boil. I added a dash of paprika.

Mix in 1 cup flour very well

Raise saucepan a few inches above heat.

Stir briskly.

Mixture will come away from sides of pan and form a ball in center
Remove from heat

Break in 1 egg at a time and beat well with wooden spoon.

Beat until eggs disappear.
Remember to add one egg at a time and beat until smooth after each addition.

Drop by spoonfuls, however large you'd like them onto cookie sheets, making sure they won't touch while baking or else they might cook together.
Bake at 375-400 degrees until puffed and golden and they look dry, though the center will still be soft.

You may have to adjust heat if they brown too quickly, being very careful while opening oven door if you don't have an oven light.
Good for all things that you normally use puff pastry for, from puddings, to eclairs, to about anything else you need a good dough for. I like cheese paste or tuna salad filling

Strawberry crumble Squares

STRAWBERRY CRUMBLE

BASE:
1 c. flour
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. chopped almonds
Strawberry Jam or preserves

Method:
Cut butter into flour and sugar

Add nuts and mix in

Reserve 1/4 cup for topping.

Press base into 8x8 inch pan.

Add Strawberry jam to base

Spread evenly

Cover with rest of crumble base

Sprinkle a little sugar to the top

Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

Tip: Go crazy with the nuts...add more if you want! :)

Let cool in fridge if you want great squares

Hold back on the jam if you don't want too much

Pholourie Bakes

I don't know how to make pholourie but this started out as Bara for doubles from Trinigourmet.com. Nikki noted that the bara ingredients are similar to that for pholourie...

I wanted to experiment and subsititued yeast for baking powder and egg white. I added more curry and made more of a batter than a dough
It tasted like pholourie when I was done but didn't look like it, so I am gonna make this my recipe for pholourie bakes :)

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups flour

½ tsp salt

2 teaspoon curry powder

1 teaspoon gheera (cumin)

½ tsp ground pepper

2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup warm water

1 well whisked egg white

Oil for frying

Method

Mix all ingredients

Drop spoonfuls of mixture into hot oil

Fry till golden

The egg yolk ended up here too :)

The bakes tasted light and airy and soo good!

Marcel Vigneron

The only Top Chef contestant that I ever found interesting. I don't know much about him except for what I saw on TV but what I saw I really liked.


I think that we may have similar personalities too. I could see that when they were given a challenge, he would start to think and work things out in his head. I realized that because he wasn't as sociable and mainstream as the other contestants, they couldn't feel comfortable around him. They needed him to entertain them and he wouldn't. I felt he may be an INTJ like me.


I really GOT him and what he was like. The other contestants thought he was arrogant and he grated on their nerves. The thing is though, he never was mean to any of them. He was straightforward and not even rude! They just couldn't deal with the fact that they couldn't figure him out, so they put a label to him..Whatever! They were mean and rude to him!


He has so many facets to him, and is so confident in his abilities. He is also so smart about what he does and who is is, and what he won't tolerate. I just DIG this dude so much. I kinda wish I could talk to him. I read a couple of articles and interviews that he gave, and one of my favorite interviews he did was for the GOTHAMIST.


In that interview he said that his idea of comfort food was this " I’ll get some cabbage and bacon, and braise it. Just really tasty stuff. It could be a grilled cheese sandwich, a BLT, fried chicken, collard greens."



I was kinda surprised by Food and Wine Magazine online article. It seemed like a fluff piece compared to the Gothamist. But they had a good picture at least :(


Geez I want to meet this guy!