Sunday 9/24

Moldavian Fish, Tomato, and Red Pepper Casserole (Russia p. 267)

Rating: 7

As usual used double the spices in this recipe. Feta cheese was really the star, and the entire dish was very tangy and unlike any fish recipe we've ever had. Definitely a keeper!

Saturday night: Indian

Menu for today:
Lamb with Kashmiri Red Chiles (India p 144-145)
Kohlrabi Greens (India p. 142-143)

Rating: 6
The Lamb was very tender and in a red sauce, which was nice and tasty. However it wasn't spectacular.
Kohlrabi greens taste like turnip greens, and there's really no way to get them to taste really good. The garlic and red peppers were meant to "hide the greens" in the dish, and it didn't really work.

Soy Delicious Food Review

I have to point out that Turtle Mountain makes the best soy dessert ever! The one I tried is Soy Delicious Purely Decadent Peanut Butter Zig Zag. It is a great balance between chocolate and peanut butter, and the peanut butter taste is further enhanced by the soy milk. Seriously, do yourself a favor and click on the link to get a coupon today!

Mexican Chicken Soup with Black Beans

To start things off, I thought I would send out this recipe for chicken soup. We like this soup particularly because it uses many ingredients that we always have on hand, and it is very quick and super tasty, which makes it perfect for weekdays. Try it with some cheddar cheese sprinkled on top and experiment a bit with your spices.

Serves: 2
Active time: 25 mins.
Total cook time: 25 min.

Ingredients:
 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
 1 small onion, chopped
 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
 1 tsp ground cumin
 1 tbsp dried oregano
 2 tbsp minced garlic
 1 can of black beans, drained
 1 16 oz can of chicken stock (bouillon works fine here)
 1 4.5 oz can of chopped green chiles, drained
 2 tbsp low-fat or fat-free sour cream
 1 tbsp fresh cilantro (garnish)
 Salt and pepper to tasts

Directions

1) Dice the chicken into small pieces.
2) Salt and pepper the chicken and stir with cumin and oregano.
3) Heat the olive oil in a medium-high heat pot.
4) Add both the onion and garlic until onion is transparent (@ 5 mins)
5) Add the chicken and continue to cook.
6) Add the chiles, black beans and chicken stock.
7) Bring the mixture to a boil and cover.
8) Reduce the heat to a simmer for 20 mins.
9) Check the seasonings – does it need salt? Tabasco? Pepper?
10) Serve. Top the servings with a dollop of sour cream.

Why Cooking to AK?

Good question. For me, there's just about three things I like to write about...
1) Life, Alaska, and other quirky stuff I find in the news...
2) Exercise (running in particular)
and...the reason I exercise, which is to:
3) Eat!

So just to organize my blogging, I decided to move two of my favorite subjects, cooking and running, over to other blogs.

So what should you find here?

Good recipes and ideas. Frank and I cook every week about 4-5 dishes from scratch for supper. The food we make is from our huge library of cookbooks -- everything from Sri Lankan to Tex-Mex cuisine. We tend to omit stuff we don't like, and substitute fresh ingredients from our garden when we can.

Let me know what you think of the new format!