Achiote chicken

It’s been a whole year since we tried this dish for the first and second time and I’ve been thinking about it ever since but somehow never prepared it again. Why on earth did it take us so long?!

My husband made it this time and it really is so, so good with the Annatto aroma and copious amounts of lime juice 🤤 It looks spicy because of the vibrant red colour but that is misleading, any heat comes from black pepper (or any other hot spice you would add to your taste).

We used a ready made Achiote paste (contains Annatto seeds) but it’s probably worth it to go the extra mile of making your own Achiote paste as suggested on the recipe website.

If you can’t find Annatto seeds or ready made achiote paste in your local shops, try an international supermarket or look online for Mexican food items to order.

Recipes for reference:
https://thenovicechefblog.com/achiote-chicken-recipe-mexican-marinade/
https://thenovicechefblog.com/achiote-paste/

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Japanese style food Friday

The challenge with Japanese food for me is not really the cooking of each dish but to get everything to be ready around the same time without any of the warm items going too cold.
Nevertheless, this collection worked out very well even though one of the two sets of gyoza was a bit tardy:

🥢 Quick pickled daikon slices
🥢 Crispy fried lotus root
🥢 Enoki Mushrooms with Garlic & Spring Onion Sauce
🥢 Crunchy gyoza from frozen (with dipping sauce)
🥢 Japanese rice
🥢 Miso soup

https://www.copymethat.com/r/celxlydq0v/quick-pickled-daikon-slices/
https://www.copymethat.com/r/kBMO4nxqO/fried-lotus-root/
https://thewoksoflife.com/enoki-mushrooms-garlic-scallion-sauce/
https://www.copymethat.com/r/sezh1TxSY/crunchy-gyoza-from-frozen/

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Chickpea and broccoli curry with tofu on rice

The other day I stumbled across an old post about food I had eaten at a vegetarian restaurant some years ago. My companion’s food looked so good that I took a photo as inspiration to make something like that at home. I had forgotten all about it but finally the day had come! 😅

I remember the meal as aromatic but not overly spicy, very German. So I looked for a recipe for a chickpea curry that would fit that bill for me and opted for the linked one below. When I found the thick brick like tofu bars at the Asian supermarket I knew I had what I wanted to create some fat slices to be fried in some oil. There was also some guesswork involved because I have no idea what kind of brown sauce was used on the original dish. Since it looked very much like a glaze I opted for Crema di Balsamico.

I forgot to add salt, to both rice and the curry 🙄 but thankfully that was easy to fix on the plate and it was a good meal. The Crema di Balsamico worked superbly on this. My co-eaters decided to also add some hot sauce but that’s just them…

https://vegancocotte.com/broccoli-chickpea-curry/

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Spaghetti all’Assassina (Assassin’s Spaghetti) from Puglia

For this fun dish (which translates to Killer pasta) pasta is cooked and fried simultaneously in a spicy sauce so that it comes out tasting extremely tomatoey. Serve with a side salad.

I made this already a while back in 2024 and it was time to try it out again - only this time I made my husband cook it. Last time I tried it with Capellini and Bavette, both pasta types that are slightly thinner than spaghetti to save on time. Yesterday my husband stuck it out with spaghetti which do take a little longer to cook/fry. Today he tried the thinner Capellini and liked those better just like I did.

The main challenge here is to find a frying pan that is big enough for the pasta to lie flat and straight and then the sweet spot where the temperature is just right and caramelises the pasta - but doesn’t burn it to a crisp. My husband did a sterling job on both days and we really enjoyed this again.

https://www.the-pasta-project.com/spaghetti-allassassina-assassins-spaghetti/

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Salmon with pasta in a cream sauce

Pasta and salmon are such a perfect combination and we’ve gone through a number of different iterations during the last 25 years or so.

We started with a simple cream sauce with smoked salmon, then I added a courgette cut into matchsticks so my small child would eat some vegetable. This became version 1 and my small child’s absolute favourite dinner and at some point I had to stop cooking this for myself as I simply had enough of it 😅
Since said small child has become a hungry teenager and now a hungry young adult, I’ve gone back and played with this meal. There is version 1.5 with a lemon sauce and cold hot smoked salmon. And then I replaced the smoked salmon with oven baked honey mustard salmon (version 2), then back to hot smoked salmon which I now warm up in the oven, definitely recommended. And the courgette is cut into thick slices, no more hiding! The pasta twirls have been replaced by linguine or tagliatelle, sometimes spinach pasta. That is version 3.

Version 1:
https://www.copymethat.com/r/AmIWh0q48/pasta-with-smoked-salmon-in-a-creme-frai/

Version 1.5 with lemon:
https://www.copymethat.com/r/gDdxFxiRT/fresh-pasta-with-hot-smoked-salmon-in-a-/

Version 2 with honey mustard salmon:
https://www.copymethat.com/r/v6BoAvjT4/honey-mustard-salmon-oven-dish/

Version 3 with hot smoked salmon:
https://www.copymethat.com/r/V11FBpOJS/salmon-with-pasta-in-a-cream-sauce/

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Chickpea and Aubergine Curry

This morning I went into town to get more supplies for my Asian cookery, a lot of my staples were about to run out so I needed to restock.

I came back starving.

The curry luckily doesn’t take that long and was really easy to do with vegetable chopping assistance by my husband. It’s a long time favourite and is special because of the mint that goes into the creamy tomato sauce. I got some chillies out of the freezer, one of them was half a Scotch Bonnet and I was a bit worried but it must have lost its zing in the freezer so the overall heat was very modest.

As it happens many years ago this curry (without chillies) was the first ever that I gave to my baby boy to try and he grabbed it with his little hands to stuff the rice with the sauce into his mouth making appreciative sounds while eating eagerly 😍

https://www.copymethat.com/r/BqmMciSsm/chickpea-and-aubergine-curry/

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Chicken with Spinach (Saag Murgh)

More spinach! 😇 This weekend‘s main meal was a very down to earth Indian (Punjabi) curry from Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible. We had this some years back and I think I wasn’t that impressed, so I wanted to try it again. My husband did a good job and I liked it better this time.

I’m too lazy to create a version of this recipe that I can share; here’s one I found that describes the process using a whole chicken (we used chicken fillets):
https://www.them-apples.co.uk/2010/02/saag-murgh-or-chicken-and-spinach-curry/

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Gyoza with homemade stuffing

I’ve had two packs of gyoza skins in my freezer for far too long, finally it was their time to shine. I started early but it took two hours to deal with everything despite of having conscripted my guys for help. We followed the gyoza recipe from Just One Cookbook.

As we wanted a full meal I started with the rice so it could sit and wait in the rice cooker for when we were done and also got out a tin of kimchi, various furikake mixtures and miso soup to have them in place when needed. The child made the dipping sauce for the gyoza.

I had defrosted the 70+ skins and separated them carefully onto a plate while father and son were doing the chopping and mixing of the gyoza stuffing. I made sure to add some extra garlic paste (as we don’t have Nira, Japanese garlic chives) together with the other seasonings to the stuffing.

The fiddly work of folding the gyoza was done by my child and me. It took us a few attempts to get it right - but you can tell by the photos that we wouldn’t get a prize for the most accomplished gyoza 😅

While I was frying the table was laid and by the time I had used up about half of the gyoza I decided we had enough and the rest would go into the freezer.

What can I say, the taste of the gyoza was just right! So much better than most that you can buy ready made in this country (Germany) and all of that preparation work was definitely worth it 😋

Recipe followed:
https://www.justonecookbook.com/gyoza/

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Japanese Ramen noodles with spicy tomatoes, tofu and greens

This dish was created on the fly. Originally I was thinking Italian pasta with spinach in tomato sauce as I had a whole bunch of roquette that needed to go. Then I thought of Ramen noodles and tofu and Pixian Doubanjiang came to mind and off I went on a Chinese/Japanese tangent similar to Mapo Tofu just without the meat. It all came together well but I think I didn’t really need the sake.

https://www.copymethat.com/r/1gksonzk2j/ramen-noodles-with-spicy-tomatoes-tofu-a/

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Afghan Aash (of sorts)

This was quite yummy but not as good as the other Afghan pasta dish I’ve made a while ago. It’s by the same (Afghan) creator but I noticed in the comments of this one that according to other Afghans he was using the wrong kind of pasta, apparently they are supposed to be more like spaghetti. Ah well, it was good but not as good as Afghan Macaroni, so we’ll stick to that one. The name, of course, made us giggle when speaking German 🤭

The main differences between the two dishes are:
- Aash is meatless, it uses chickpeas, spinach and fresh coriander, whereas the Macaroni one is with minced meat
- Aash is served with the Chakka going on top and not underneath
- Aash uses long pasta, Macaroni uses (confusingly) pasta shells

If think making a meatless version of the Macaroni dish would work perfectly with soy mince, therefore if you feel like trying it, here is the recipe to the Macaroni dish:
https://www.copymethat.com/r/nyvuw12ffd/afghan-macaroni/

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