Bombay Sliders

Can you tell I've been fascinated with east Asian flavors lately? I had difficulty coming up with a name that didn't involve the word "curry!"

I started off with a pound and a half of ground beef. It wasn't terribly lean just your average 80%. I've got a lot to feed!

Add a little salt.

Add some nice green curry paste! You can use my recipe or you can buy a can of it at your local Asian grocery.

Mix it in well! I used my hands. They're so good at mixing heavy things.

Make up some little patties! I was doing this earlier in the afternoon so after I made the patties I let them sit in the refrigerator for awhile. If you were working with something like ground turkey I'd think this step would be absolutely necessary.

Now for a sauce! Get yourself some GOOD plain yogurt. This type has a layer of hardened cream at the top. Mmm! Stir the cream back into the yogurt where it belongs.

We'll need about a cup of it.

Now give it a taste. Its so good I could faint. You can even paint it on your face for an at home acid exfoliation. My skin loves it. I had big plans for this yogurt. A lot of plain yogurts are gelatinous and have no flavor other than sour milkiness. Those yogurts need lots of "help" to form a good sauce. They need grated cucumber, salt, garlic etc. to give them flavor. This stuff, really needs nothing!

I want some mint. At this time of year this is the only mint I have around the house.

A little dried mint in the yogurt is all that's needed. It'll give the yogurt an extra hint of brightness. A little POW.

I'm heating up my griddle! My sliders are too tiny for the grill. They'd fall through! If I had to I guess I could try putting them on skewers.

Throw them on the griddle!

Flip! They're shrinking because I have the heat up a little high. But heck how would the family know to come to dinner if I didn't set the smoke alarms off? They're my own personal dinner bell!

The necessary accompaniments! A little raw purple onion would be delicious too. If your curry paste didn't have enough onion in it. It'd be tasty in the yogurt sauce.

My hubby doesn't like raw onion though . . . It's a flaw . . . I couldn't handle it if he was perfect though. There's only room for one perfect person in this house!

That would be the cat.

We added these to our sandwiches too! They're salty, spicy, rich, and have a texture not unlike a beautiful oil cured olive. It'll wake up your taste buds!

Slip it all in a pita pocket and sing!

This is darn close to the perfect sandwich! The meat is hot, tender, juicy, and full of herbs and garlic. The vegetables are cold and sweet. The sauce is creamy with an acidic bite that compliments the rich ground meat. The mango pickle adds a salty, spicy kick that surprises. The pita contains it all!

If you're not "into" messy sandwiches then slice everything up, including the pita, and make it a salad. Then you can be clean and lady like while you stuff your face with abandon.

Bombay Sliders

for the sliders
1.5 lbs of ground meat
1/2 cup green curry paste
1/2 teaspoon salt

for the sauce
1 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon dried mint

for the sandwich
6 whole pita pockets, sliced in half
tomatoes, sliced
cilantro leaves
cucumber, sliced
mango pickle or other spicy pickle of your choice

Mix ground meat, curry paste, and salt together throughly. Form into pattie and allow to rest in refrigerator. Mix yogurt and mint together and adjust seasoning with salt as necessary. Refridgerate yogurt mixture.  Fry patties in a hot nonstick skillet about 3 minutes per side. Warm pitas and serve!

Fresh Green Curry Paste

Green curry paste.

I have a brand new passion for green curry paste. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I've discovered I can make it? I suspect its because it's green and my kids will eat it. I have been really using it in a lot of different ways lately. If you like Mexican food you'll like this because . . . the ingredients are essentially the same. Except for ginger. I've not found a lot of fresh ginger in Mexican food.

Here's how I make it!

I use a food processor because if your husband buys you expensive machines for Christmas you should use them as much as possible. It's also sort of fun watching stuff fly around the bowl. It's not fun to clean though. Many Indian mamas and grandmothers have been making green curry paste without electricity for generations. So I am comfortable saying you don't have to have one. You could use a knife or a blender or a mortar and pestle.

You'll need garlic! Lots and lots of fresh garlic! It's good for you . . .

and fresh ginger! It's FULL of vitamin C.

and this beautiful jalapeno!

Oh cilantro! So beautiful!

and green onion! Green curry paste gets its color naturally from fresh ingredients. Now if you're working with just a knife it's time to get chopping! Mince up all the vegetables as small as you can. Or you can do it my way!

Turn the machine on and start to dump.

In goes the garlic! It goes first because it really needs the nice empty dry bowl to go into. Otherwise it might just fly around in there not getting chopped.



Next comes our friend ginger

The jalapeno goes in next! I took the seeds out of this one because it was spicy when I tried a little bit of it. It's really good with the seeds and membranes though too.

Now for the green onion! I chopped it up a little to make it easier on the machine.

Now for the juice of one lime!

In it goes! This really helps everything puree.

Scrape down the sides.

Half a teaspoon of salt . . .

Half a teaspoon of ground cumin.

Just a hint of cloves. These are really strong so just a smidge will do.

Now the salt and lime juice start to work on the veggies and break them down.

You'll actually end up with a puree! If you are mincing this by hand the salt and vinegar will work on the vegetables too. This stuff is so versatile. You can use it as a dipping sauce. You can put it and coconut milk in a crock pot with meat and have dinner. Imagine it in chicken soup! Add it to hamburgers! I made a sort of Indian meatball sub/gyro sandwich with it the other day and almost swooned!

Oh fresh green curry paste, how I love thee!
Let me count the ways!

A brilliant green to all who witness,
You are cilantrolicious,
Full of cuminy richness,
Bright bursts of lime juice so so citrus,
Then the throb of jalapeno hits us.
You really wouldn't want to miss this!

Fresh Green Curry Paste

5 cloves garlic
5-6 slices of fresh ginger
1/2 cup cilantro, leaves and tender stems loosely packed
3-4 green onions, rough chopped
1 whole jalapeno
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
pinch of cloves
2 Tbsp fresh lime juice

Mince all vegetables finely or puree in food processor or blender.

The Golden Grill

It's time! Look at it! A thing of beauty if there ever was one! 26.5 inches of pure glory!

It's been so hard looking at you all boxed up in the garage! I've been waiting for weeks to put you together . . .

Egads! It's a little too reflective!

It looks so complicated and scientific . . . I like that in cooking equipment!

Seriously, you are so pretty! Almost too pretty to dirty with charcoal and drippings . . . I couldn't hold you back from your purpose in life though! It would be wrong!

There's 2,165 square inches of beautiful surface area to cook for a family of six!

What should I grill first? A brisket? A chicken? A steak? A pizza?

The possibilities are endless!

Do you have grilling issues? Are there certain cuts you'd like to cook but have little success at? Are you interested in making the entire meal outside?

Lead me and I'll follow!

Unless you want liver . . . I don't do liver . . . blech

Simple Curried Chicken Breast

Do you love chicken breast? I sort of do. I love that you can give it tons of flavor! I don't like it overcooked though and I don't like it undercooked either!

They've had the bone-in, skin on chicken breast on sale a lot lately and it makes my husband think I'm feeding him light and healthy things so it's a win-win situation.

Here they are! Now I like to soak mine in a brine first. A quart of water with 1/4 cup of table salt dissolved in it is fine. An hour or hour and a half will thoroughly saturate your chicken and make it take the heat better.  You don't HAVE to do this though its not like we have fatty thighs that we're trying to cook in the same heat at the same time. I think it gives it a flavor boost and I can cook it extra long without it drying out. If you do choose to brine it rinse it off before you do anything else.

I went digging in the fridge looking for some plain yogurt but had none. But I found this rich flavorful acidic dairy product! It'll do! Chicken and dairy are meant for each other.

I poured some in a cereal bowl.

Now be warned! Sweet curry powder isn't actually sweet. It's just not spicy you see. Well it's actually full of lovely rich deeply flavored bitter spices but they're not of the cayenne variety. Or at least there's very little of it. See it's like the last ingredient in this spice mix. Tones makes my favorite "sweet" curry powder. I had this in the cabinet though.

Dump some in.

I'm OUT of garlic powder! What is wrong with me? So I had these little pre-peeled cloves in the fridge. I went ahead and minced them up and put them in. You've got to have garlic in your curried chicken! It's more important than the curry powder practically! Heck leave the curry powder out if you want.

If you didn't brine your chicken you're going to want to add some salt.

Since, I usually use a higher fat dairy product in my coating I decided to throw a tablespoon of olive oil in. I had plans to leave my chicken sitting in this stuff during soccer practice so I didn't want things to get dry.

Coat your chicken with the sauce/marinade/rub I don't know what to call it! I even picked them up and did the bottoms. You can see I put these on a rack.

The nice thing about bone-in chicken breast is that it really has its own rack that holds it up off the pan.

Now throw them in the fridge until guitar lessons and soccer practice are over.

Sorry about the photograph quality. It's the kids. They came home. They've been compared to the Mongol Horde. Yes, it was their grandmother that made this comparison. Needless to say, it's a little frightening and can make anybody jumpy.
Bake them in a 400 deg F oven for 30-40 minutes. This is homework time! Or bath time or whatever else you have going on. Check your chicken after 20 minutes. If its getting too brown or if you have smoke turn the heat down to 350. (Not all ovens or chicken breasts are created equal!)

Mmmmm! I love curry. The turmeric, garlic, ginger, cumin, fennel, cloves, paprika, all mingle together in harmony. Did you know that turmeric is one of the latest health crazes? Its supposed to do good things to all your parts. I'm fond of what it does to chicken parts!

Now back when I had babies we'd peel off the curried part and chop up the chicken in the middle for them.

These are great on the grill but I'd highly recommend doing the brine in that case!

Curried Chicken Breast

3-4 bone-in, skin on, chicken breasts
1/2 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt
2 Tbsp curry powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder or 1 Tbsp freshly minced garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp olive oil

Mix buttermilk, curry, garlic, salt and oil together. Heat oven to 400 deg F. Brush marinade on chicken and bake for 30-40 minutes.

***If you wish to brine the chicken-->Mix 1/4 cup table salt with one quart of water and soak chicken in solution for 60-90 minutes.

Manager's Special!

I have this problem you see . . . whenever I see this little tag I freak out and start scurrying around the grocery meat case examining everything that has it on it.

Sometimes the manager's special isn't all that special. Sometimes it's old shrimp. Yuck!

But sometimes . . .

It's my FAVORITE steak in the whole wide world! Then I buy them! I buy them all!

Last summer I had 30 steaks in the freezer. But they were just tiny 8 oz. ribeyes and strip steaks. Just baby steaks! I only paid $2 a piece for them. They went to the church men's canoe trip.

I have a steak habit. I buy steak whenever I see it at a good price. My friend Donna has counseled me on this before. I practically had myself under control but I failed today . . . I found four T-bone steaks! They were 20 oz steaks for $6 a piece! What could I do? I couldn't LEAVE them there! What if somebody who didn't appreciate them got them?

It's so pretty! It's actually a combination of two steaks. That's the tenderloin over there on the right side. You know, the fillet Mignon? It's tender and juicy. On the left is the strip steak I think. It's not as tender but it has beautiful marbling and just gorgeous beefy flavor!

These steaks go on sale because they start to get a little brown color in the refrigeration case. That's called dry aging baby! You pay EXTRA for that at the steakhouses. So my store throws this super salty, peppery, paprika laden, meat tenderizer on the steaks to cover up this misunderstood color. It's gross so I wash it off and rewrap them.

Look at all the lovely marbling! It's going to be so delicious in a couple of months when I throw them on the grill!

We don't even eat steak that much! We keep on having to throw steak parties to get rid of them. Do you think there's a 12 step program for steak buyers?