Grilled Pork and Mango Salad

From my new favourite cookbook, Company's Coming: Simple Suppers.

1lb Pork Tenderloin
1 tsp Chili powder
1/4 cup hickory bbq sauce

8 Cups cut or torn romaine lettuce
14 oz can of sliced mangoes, chopped
1 cup thinly sliced red pepper

Sweet and Spicy Dressing
1/2 cup Italian or ranch dressing
2 tbsp Lime or orange juice
2 tbsp liquid honey
1/2 tsp chili powder

Sprinkle all sides of pork with chili powder. Cook on grill until done, turning occasionally. Brush with bbq sauce and cook for another 4 to 5 minutes. Remove to cutting board. Cover with foil and let stand for 10 minutes. Cut into slices.

Layer next 3 ingredients on 4 large plates. Top with pork.

Dressing
Combine all ingredients in bowl. Makes about 3/4 cup. Drizzle over salads.

Okay, here's my improvisations. First of all, I was only cooking for two so I halved the pork and the lettuce. For the pork I actually used two boneless pork chops and cooked them on the George Foreman. I didn't have romaine lettuce so I used iceberg. I used one fresh mango. Use two if cooking for four. I cut up half of one red pepper.

For the dressing I used the Italian and the orange juice. Lime would have been better, but I didn't have it. I made the full recipe and kept the left overs to use on my lunch salad the next day.

The meal turned out great and was quick and easy. Would have been better with a nice white wine.

Yam Fries Dipping Sauce

Made this in Victoria a little while back. No pictures I'm afraid.

In a sauce pan, sauté shallots garlic and onions in some butter. Reduce heat, add gobs of mayo. Spicify it with smoke paprika, salt, pepper, cumin, dried parsley and whatever you desire. Add secret ingredient which is pureed chipotle peppers. Add second ingredient: a massive amount of parmesan cheese.

Apply liberally to yam fries.

Have heart attack.

Sweet Potato Coconut Soup

A friend sent me this recipe and I decided to try it this weekend. It seemed kind of interesting. I would have never ever thought of combining sweet potatoes and coconuts in a million years. Especially not in soup form. Anyways, here's how it went.


I started out by frying up some onions and garlic in a saucepan. This is always my favorite part of cooking because it smells sooooooo good :)


Next step was to add some chopped up sweet potatoes and some chicken broth and boil for a bit (until the potatoes turn soft).


Once the potatoes were soft, I was supposed to add some coconut milk and spices... so I did. The recipe called for curry powder, but I didn't have any, so I used chili powder instead.


I put everything into the blender for a bit to get it all into one consistent mixture. Have I mentioned that I love my blender?


The result was interesting. It wasn't quite was I was expecting. It was good, but I wasn't blown away by it. Maybe cuz I didn't follow the recipe to the letter. I think next time I might try using regular milk instead of the coconut kind. That may work better for me. We shall see!

Taco Pie

I made my infamous taco pie for dinner tonight. Soo good. The ingredients are shown above. Ground beef, taco seasoning, onion, green pepper, tomato, cheese, shells, and spicy death sauce.


I started out by frying some onion and green pepper and browning the ground beef simultaneously.


Once that was done I dumped the veggies into the beef and added the taco seasoning and spicy death sauce. I suppose you could add some beans to the mix too. But, like most things beans give me gas, so I chose not to :P


I also added some chili powder and some "secret ingredient". I then simmered everything until most of the liquid was gone.


Once that was done, I layered the shells and the taco beef mixture in a casserole dish. If you use your casserole dish as much as I do you may want to wipe out the dust first. (I think this was actually the first time I used it). Then I threw some tomatoes and shredded cheese on top and baked the whole thing for about 20 min or so.


And here it is! It was pretty tasty and I ended up eating more than I should have. Soooo full now. The good news is I still have over half of it for leftovers this week. I probably won't have to cook again until the weekend. Nice.

Breakfast Skillet Wraps

I made myself a tasty breakfast this weekend. (It was actually an afternoon thing, but it was the first meal of the day, so it still counts as breakfast.)


I started out by cutting up some sweet potato and throwing it into the frying pan.


Then I added some green pepper and onion as well as some random spices.


I also cut up and added some breakfast sausages I found in a ziploc bag in my freezer. I think they were pork, but they may have been turkey. Who knows? I threw out the box a long time ago and don't really remember. (I like to subdivide food into single person portions before I freeze it.) They did have a slight maple flavour.


And finally I threw everything into a wrap with some shredded cheese and salsa and ate it all burrito style. It was pretty tasty if I say so myself. I was contemplating adding some scrambled eggs to the mix, but I'd had a few drinks the night before, and didn't really think that would be a good idea. Maybe next time.

Beef Patties

Here is another recipe. I used to do this kind of thing for lunch but now I'll only do this kind of thing for dinner. It's basicly seasoned ground beef in puff pastry.

First you need ground beef, lamb, chicken, turkey... tofu? Don't know, haven't tried tofu. Try it and let me know.

Then you need all of this:

Basicly you throw however much you want of whatever you have in the meat. I use various hot sauces, dijon mustard, ginger and garlic paste, soy sauce, worchestire sauce, brown sugar, cornstarch, salt and a little oil. Missing in this picture is baking soda and freshly ground black pepper which I forgot to include into the picture. Your aim should be to include hot, sour and sweet flavours. You can emphasize whichever taste you prefer (I prefer hot) but it's important to have all three. If you add soy sauce go easy on the salt. Cornstarch gives the meat some stiffness and baking soda makes fun fizzing noises and helps with the whole marinating process.

Once mixed it should look something like this: (sorry, think it's out of focus)

Then you saran wrap the bowl and leave it in the fridge overnight.

The next day you fry the meat. You should not need to add oil. You added a bit to the meat mix and that should carry you through. Should look something like this:

Then you use puff pastry like the one seen below.

Then you cut the pastry into squares, put the meat in the middle and fold over to form triangles. Then you bake them and get the final product as seen below.

Chindian fried noodles

I've been asked if I was Chindian before - a mix between Chinese and Indian, though I think she meant Native American. Anyways, this cooking experiment is fusion food with Chinese and "real" Indian.

I got the idea from who I think was the owner of Charisma East Indian Restaurant in Winnipeg. Upon discovering that me and my family was Chinese, he said that in India, a big trend was fusion food with Chinese food. Apparently, using Chinese noodles with Indian spices is big and he was contemplating adding it to his menu.

I completely made this up as I went along. I figured that I still had the jar of Indian curry and I had instant noodles. Why not try and make some fried noodles?

Ingredients: curry and instant noodles

Put some water and oil in the pan. More water required than the fried udon b/c the instant noodles need to be reconstituted. This wasn't enough water as I had to add extra water later.

Add the instant noodles

Cook the noodles until they break apart and is no longer hard

Spoon in some curry

The finished product

It was ok. Not that flavourful. I also put in too much oil as I was afraid of the noodles sticking and I was having problems getting the curry paste mixed in. I probably should've added the curry paste earlier when there was still some water in the pan, though the noodles were crispy, which was nice. The excessive amount of oil combined with the concentrated nature of the paste, it ended up being pretty heavy. It seemed like I needed something else in there. Maybe I should've made it more like real curry by having the noodles in a soup-like base. I don't think the curry paste is supposed to be eaten without adding additional stuff. Maybe I was supposed to use other Indian spices for the fusion dish. I also may have used the wrong type of noodles. Got any ideas?