During a trip to Washington State, Peter’s sister-in-law, Mai, prepared a delicious Vietnamese-style noodle dish.  It left such an impression that Nancy requested it during her next visit, and made sure to get the recipe as well.  Mai invented this dish and hadn’t gotten around to naming it yet.  Since her maiden name is Quach (pronounced what), Peter mischievously suggested calling them Quach Noodles.

Ronald Reagon and James Watt

Most of the ingredients can be found in a typical grocery store.  However, for the meatballs, Mai mixed in a blend of shitake mushrooms and black fungus, but Nancy is less of a mushroom fan and we only used black fungus.  You’ll need to look in an Asian grocery for that.  As for noodles, you can experiment with various rice noodles.  We really like the small sized Jiangxi rice vermicelli noodles.  This article describes what you are looking for: http://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2009/04/vietnamese-noodles-101-bun-rice-noodles.html

So without further ado, here’s the recipe:

Rice Noodles with Chicken and Meatballs

Whole Chicken (4 lbs)
1 Yellow Onion, peeled and cut in half
16 cups water
2 Tb salt
2 tsp sugar

2 lbs. ground turkey (or pork)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
½ oz dried black fungus, shredded
1 bunch cilantro, divided.

1 package of rice noodles (such as Jiangxi Rice Vermicelli Noodles)
Lime wedges
Chili sauce (such as Sriracha or Sambal Oelek)

In an 8-qt stockpot, combine chicken, onion, water, salt and sugar.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and simmer for two hours.

Meanwhile, prepare the meatballs.  Soak the dried black fungus in water for a minute, then drain.   (If you cannot find shredded fungus, buy the whole black fungus and crush them with a mortar and pestle into fine pieces.)  Mix with the ground turkey, 2 teaspoons salt, black pepper, and ¼ cup of chopped cilantro.  Form into meatballs using a rounded teaspoon to yield about 60 meatballs.

Remove chicken and onion from the stockpot.  Discard skin, bones and onion; shred the remaining chicken meat.  Bring broth to a boil and add the meatballs.  Cook meatballs at a low boil for 10 minutes; check for doneness by cutting a meatball to ensure that there is no pink meat left.

Prepare rice noodles according to package directions.  Divide rice noodles into bowls, top with shredded chicken, then ladle on broth and meatballs.  Garnish with remaining cilantro; add lime and/or chili sauce as desired.

[The following is Peter blogging under Nancy's account. Or, as she puts it, hijacking her account.]

Recently over lunch, one of our guests from Northern Carolina brought up cake balls. Apparently, these ingenious confections became a huge craze that spread across the South like kudzu, only tastier. Our interest piqued, my darling bride and I wasted no time reading up about them on the internet. After studious research, we decided to try our hands at making our own. Mind you, this endeavor was purely to lend us credence should the topic ever arise again in polite conversation. If obtaining such credibility involved stuffing our faces with chocolate-dipped wads of cake and frosting, so be it.

Foremost in our deliberations: which flavor to try? Or, at the very least, which flavor to try first? Faster than you can say “bipartisanship”, we reached an accord: strawberry. But what to dip it in? White or chocolate? We shelved that discussion until we at least had the filling baked, mixed, and in the fridge.

All of the ingredients are easily obtained from your friendly neighborhood Walmart, though their melon ballers, at 2″ across, are far too large. We found that a half-tablespoon brought us closest to the 1.25″ recommended by The Cake Ball Company. Speaking of which, who would have imagined that Texas–land of the big and the brash–would be home to such a dainty and whimsical party treat? All I know is, if I lived within a hundred miles of The Cake Ball Company’s Dallas headquarters, I would most assuredly be bigger, though in the wrong dimension. Hollywood got it wrong; Satan is not a high-powered Manhattan lawyer trying to corrupt Keanu Reeves. Rather, the prince of darkness runs a Texas bakery peddling $3 cake balls in the Neiman Marcus catalog, preying upon hapless 30-something physicians trying to keep their waistlines within Air Force regulations. But I digress…

The ratio of frosting to cake mix can be adjusted as desired. We went the easy route and combined a full 16-oz. tub with the finished product of an 18.25-oz. cake mix box. (“What,” reasoned my wife, “would we do with any leftover frosting?”) The result certainly shapes easily, though at the expense of the cake’s airy lightness. It’s almost too rich and sweet. My advice: start with just 3/4 of a tub and gradually add more as needed.

The instructions say to freeze the balls for 6 hours, but warned that over-freezing would subsequently cause the coating to crack. At this point, we faced a dilemma because the 6 hour mark fell somewhere between midnight and half-past-don’t-wake-me-up. So we avoided the freezer and plunked ‘em in the fridge.

The next afternoon, we pulled the tray from the refrigerator. Toothpicks proved useful for skewering and dipping. Yes, they leave a pinhole defect in the dome, but spare us from having to drop $4.50 on a two-tine candy-dipping fork. Speaking of drop, an entire 24-oz. package of almond bark proved insufficient and left us with half-a-dozen unglazed cake balls. Perhaps adding a teaspoon of vegetable oil to the melted bark would have stretched it. Oh well, c’est la vie.

This blog is about making dinner more delightful, and these fun little cake balls can certainly do just that.

Informative link: http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/food/latest-recipes/20100614-bite-size-cake-balls-are-popular-new-treat-with-home-cooks-bakeries.ece

Recipe:
Cake mix, 18.25 oz box
Frosting, 16 oz tub
Almond bark, 24 oz package
1 teaspoon vegetable oil

Prepare cake mix per instructions and bake in a 9×13″ pan. While warm, crumble into a bowel and mix in the frosting. (Tip: start with 3/4 of the frosting and add more as desired). Chill in refrigerator for 2 hours. Shape into balls, about 1.25″ in diameter, and either freeze for 6 hours or refrigerate overnight.

Melt almond bark in a double boiler. (Alternatively, melt in microwave, stirring every 15 seconds.) Dip balls into melted bark and set on waxed paper to cool.  Leftovers (if any) should be kept in the refrigerator.

Update: We read the instructions of the almond bark and it said to use a tablespoon of vegetable shortening (not oil) to thin for dipping.  The difference is amazing; the shell of almond bark is thinner and crunchier.

I did it, Missy! We followed your advice and directions and made your homemade sauce and lasagna. And we tweaked it to make it ours!

Making the sauce with three kids under three feet takes me at least two days. I used Sam’s Club sized sausage packages (15 sausages total) and I prefer them in smaller pieces so I took the skins off and chopped them up before cooking them. So, cooking the meat is one day. The next day I made the sauce with lots of canned tomatoes (diced and stewed), 3 green peppers, lots of garlic, 1 onion, 1 cup of red wine (which I probably won’t do again since we have enjoyed this sauce before without it also). Here’s what it looked like before cooking:

I cooked it for about 5 hours, stirring now and then, and then had spaghetti for supper that night! I froze the rest of the sauce since I did not have the rest of the lasagna ingredients on hand. Mostly, I was in search of Missy’s refrigerated lasagna noodles, but never found them. (Is this a Canada thing? Or where could I find them in the States?)

So, I finally made lasagna with boiled lasagna noodles (which next time I won’t boil) and added spinach, parmesan cheese, ricotta cheese and mozzarella cheese. I did not get a final picture of the “best lasagna I have ever made” and “the best lasagna Peter has ever tasted,” but the result was well worth all the time and energy! Thanks, Missy! Here’s some more photos of cooking and what your kitchen could look like if your attention is given to making sauce instead of playing with kids.

Hannah, especially, loved the lasagna and finished 3 full baby servings.

An easy dinner idea from Everyday Food

Leftover Curried Chicken Casserole

]]> http://missyween.com/dinners/?feed=rss2&p=368 0 http://missyween.com/dinners/?p=362 http://missyween.com/dinners/?p=362#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:47:26 +0000 missy http://missyween.com/dinners/?p=362

I think I’m supposed to be making lasagne tonight.

But we started back to school this week, and my brain fell out somewhere, and in the craziness of getting all the books back out, skiing instead of working on Monday, cleaning up after a New Years party which was bigger than we expected, and undoing Christmas….we ended up eating the lasagne sauce on spaghetti noodles night before last, and so I’ll be starting all over  on that on Friday.

Here is the picture of the Delightful Dinner my family will be enjoying in an hour or so.    Good old store marinated chicken grilled by my sons, risotto and a big salad.    We are in survival mode until further notice.

The moose tenderloin was AMAZING!

The most tender, buttery, flavourful piece of meat I have ever tasted.     So, if anyone ever offers you a bow-shot tenderloin of moose, as our neighbour did on Saturday, grab a bag of charcoal and open a bottle of red wine and get ready for something special.  Here’s what it looked like,

And here is the specatacular spinach salad we served it with.   (I will get the recipe from my neighbour Brigitte, who made it .)

And here is the wine that was so delicious alongside.

I was not looking forward to that meal, I can tell you.  But it was such a fun surprise!

I promised a post today about making tomato sauce.
And since  I wanted to make sauce  as I wrote about making sauce, I got myself all prepared.
Here are my ingredients, ready to go in the big stew-pot.

But something happened.   Something that only happens in a kitchen with two or more cooks.

Jon came in and said “Oh, were you going to use that stew pot?”  looking kind of alarmed and as if he might lunge over and grab the pot himself.
“I was going to cook my moose in that pot……”  was what he said next.

So, there is a pot roast of moose being cooked on my stove today, in my favourite tomato sauce cooking pot.   I’ll make lasagne tomorrow.

But just in case anybody purchased fresh basil with the idea in mind that today was “Sauce Day”, I’ll give a quick rundown on how to make this sauce.

First,  assemble your
canned tomatoes
onion
garlic
red and green peppers
Italian sausages

Oregano (fresh or dried)
Nutmeg
olive oil
red wine
Tobasco sauce
fresh basil

Next put three or four sausages into a nice big stew pot
(providing  you can find one not occupied by a large ungulate).
Cook in batches of  enough sausage  to cover the bottom with spaces between.  Too much meat in the pan will lower the heat, and cooking will take longer.

As your sausages get brown, remove them to a plate and keep on cooking until you have enough.  Some people like lots of meat in their sauce, some like only an accent of meat.
Cook for your palate and your crowd.
The gigantic packages of sausage in the photo above (under the onions and garlic on the stove top)   are from Costco, and I have here a pack of Mild Italian, and  pack of Hot Italian.
(I will use all but three in each package…..leaving those six to freeze for another dish we like which requires six sausages.)

While your sausages are cooking, you can chop up a large onion, and a head or so of  garlic, chopped tiny.  You may also want to add chopped red and a green pepper. They will make it extra nice.

Once your sausages are all cooked and sitting on a dish, look in the pot and see how much fat was left.  American sausage will tend to leave more fat behind in the pot than Canadian sausage.  What you want to see is some nice brown (not black) sausagey bits and stuff to flavour the vegetables.    And you want enough fat to keep them from sticking.
I’d advise you to add one  TB of olive oil if you are in Canada,
and then toss all those chopped veggies in and cook on a low-medium heat until they are all translucent and soft.
Then dump  six or eight cans of chopped tomato in, add One TB of oregano, and a quarter tsp of nutmeg.
Chop up all those sausages into little bites, or even smaller.  And put them all into the pot.  At this point, give it a good critical look and stir it around and think about the consistency.  It should be have more liquid at this point than when it’s finished simmering.   It should not appear to be too heavy with meat.  It will be simmering for the next several hours.
It’s good to have sufficient liquid there so that the “cooking down” will have a positive effect.

Cook this on  medium-high heat just until it begins to bubble a bit.    As soon as it’s obviously heated through and cooking vigorously,  lower the heat to simmer, and let it do just that for about  four hours.

Don’t forget to check on it and stir it from time to time, you don’t want the bottom to get too thick, or to scorch.

And as you stop by to stir, take a taste now and then.   It will need salt and pepper as it cooks, and you might want to add more oregano, basil, or maybe some garlic powder.

*********************************************

Once it’s all cooked down, I like to add a cup of red wine, a dash of Tobasco Sauce,   more chopped garlic, and a big bunch of fresh basil all chopped to tiny bits.

Stir it up, move it off the heat and let it cool.  Then put in the the fridge and or the freezer.   We can put the lasagne together another day.

I think that making the sauce is enough for one day, particularly for ladies with knee high children and babies all over the floor.

And after you make all this sauce, you can just boil up some spaghetti noodles and have a spaghetti dinner.

There is a lasagne in your future, and you’re almost there.

I will not put up the third part of this lasagne stuff until next week, as I have something like a hundred people coming to my house on Saturday, and I need to finish vacuuming up the needles under the Christmas tree, do 36 loads of laundry, and remember how to clean a powder room.

]]> http://missyween.com/dinners/?feed=rss2&p=342 4 http://missyween.com/dinners/?p=314 http://missyween.com/dinners/?p=314#comments Sun, 26 Dec 2010 06:23:37 +0000 missy http://missyween.com/dinners/?p=314

“You will never get out of pot or pan anything fundamentally better than what went into it.

Cooking is not alchemy; there is no magic in the pot.”

‘Dishes & Beverages Of The Old South’
Martha McCulloch-Williams (1913)

Here is the first in my promised series on Principles of Lasagne.  These are only my principles, they are not THE principles of Lasagne.
Marcella Hazan has  an entirely different list of Lasagne Principles, and we don’t really overlap very much.
And since she’s the Italian, and my heritage is almost entirely British and French, she should be The Standard.
But, I like mine better than hers.   Some people don’t, which is why I am including the link to Marcella’s method.
If you want to make mine, here are the first steps and the first prinicple.
Since you have to shop for your ingredients before you can cook your lasagne, I’m making the first principle of lasagne this:

Principle one says: Your lasagne will be only as good as what goes into it, so shop well.

You will need the following:

1)   Fresh vegetables and herbs  (Canned chopped tomatoes are OK for the sauce)
2)   Fresh lasagne sheets (not the dry kind, the kind in the fridge).    These are just a fresher, more pliable variety of lasagne pasta, and their advantages are that you don’t have to boil them, and they have a more interesting texture.
3)   You want to have at least three kinds of cheese.   At our house, that’s Mozzerella, Parmesian, Ricotta, and I also like a bit of feta mixed in with the  spinach
4)   Enough garlic to disable a vampire
5)   Mild and/or Hot Italian sausage
6)   a nice bottle of red wine
7)   good quality olive oil

Fresh ingredients are what give it a complex flavour, and that’s what everybody wants.

Lasagne is either vegetarian or …..not vegetarian.   I have a few kids who really love that kind of lasagne thats just meat sauce, béchamel sauce, cheese and pasta….in repeating layers   (this is Marcella’s Lasagne…). And that’s all good, too.  But while  I love a bit of meat in my lasagne, I think that the vegetables are the thing that makes it most delicious.    What I make is  a really meaty vegetarian lasagne.     I  include eggplant, spinach, mushrooms, onion, peppers, and sometimes zucchini.  And tomatoes in the sauce.   Sometimes I only use one or two of those veggies, sometimes all of them.  If I’ve got a group at my table who might find spinach and eggplant controversial, I just leave them out.  It’s like jewellery…..sometimes all of it looks great, sometimes you just need a little accent piece.  You can decide according to the occasion.

Now, before you go shopping, figure out how much you want to make.  And since it’s going to be a bit of a project,  why not go ahead and make enough for four dinners?   Then you can share some  (How sweet to have a frozen lasagne all ready to give to somebody who needs a meal), and you can also  have a couple of nights where you just thaw your frozen lasagne and heat it up…..like a NIGHT OFF!

So, take a look at your lasagne pan(s) and get familiar with how much space you are preparing to fill.      Then, when you go out to the grocery store,  get enough lasagne sheets to make four or more layers in each of your pans.  Only you know how large  your pans are, so only you can decide how much you need.

For the sauce, I use canned diced tomatoes with fresh basil and  a head or more of garlic.   I think it works out to about three cans of tomatoes per pan of  lasagne for me.  I also put Italian sausage, mushrooms, onion, garlic, red and green pepper, and just at the end I chop up a bunch of fresh basil and a head or more of garlic.  At the end of cooking the sauce I throw in a cup or so of decent red wine. Sometimes I might add a jar of good quality prepared sauce, but I always make a large amount of sauce which is almost from scratch.  You have to cook it for three or four hours, but you can make a huge amount of sauce and use some for spaghetti sauce, and it freezes quite happily.

The cheeses are listed above, and there is no shame at all in buying the stuff that’s already grated.  It’s just more expensive.
Now, think about what you want between your sheets of lasagne pasta.  You’ll have the tomato sauce with sausage in it, and the cheeses.  I think that a nice oven roasted eggplant is ultra delicious, and I always put in a layer of  spinach (pre-cooked and with all extra water squeezed out), mixed with feta cheese.

Once you have thought through the items in bold print, write up your list and buy what you want in your casserole.

Tuesday, Part Two:  The Sauce.

Christmas dinner is coming up in a few days.
For many people, Christmas means turkey dinner.   And I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t love a nice turkey dinner.
But at our house, Jon cooks dinner for Christmas Eve, and he always makes us a fabulous roast beef dinner with gourmet trimmings.  This is  followed annually  by the most perfectly smooth and creamy Creme Brulee I have ever encountered.    It is an amazing treat for me to have a husband who’s a far better cook than I am.

For Christmas Day, he likes us to collaborate on a meal in which he cooks the main dish and I make the supporting side dishes.  Last year he and our neighbour famously had a goose cooking competition for December 25.   There was a fair bit of fanfare and  good-humoured posturing as we approached the big day, and it was all a whole lot of fun.   But everyone agreed, when we tasted both geese, that they were nothing to write home about, and that we would attempt another form of hopefully more delectable fowl in 2010.

So, here we are, and this year we are having duck.  Here below are the girls, just waiting for their biggest and most final performance next Saturday evening.

Jon’s going to prepare Orange Duck using a recipe posted by a reader of Jamie Oliver’s blog.
And this is how it’s going to be prepared:

Firstly, clean the inside of the bird out… rinse well!

Take a good sized orange and slice the ends off (about up to an inch thick)

Put the bird into the oven on a medium heat for about 20 minutes (make your stuffing up at this point…)  and then remove and allow to stand for 5 minutes before carefully inserting one of the pieces of orange (orange skin side out!) and gently pack with stuffing (I tend to make up shop bought stuffing and make it slightly wetter than the box says to)  and then place the final piece of the orange end to seal over the end of the duck…. use a couple of cocktail sticks to nail the duck skin to the orange peel and then roast on a medium heat for an hour….

Remove from oven and using a turkey baster (it’s easier) remove the duck fat… this allows it the time to rest before putting it back in the oven again… baste if necessary…

Give it a good half an hour before removing again and using the baster… this time however, make small insicions to the back of the legs and under the wings – the fat will run out a lot better…

Give it another 30 minutes and then turn the heat UP about a quarter of the way… at this point, drizzle freshly squeezed orange juice over the top and baste with a little of the ducks own fat…

Allow to rest before serving…
Oh – and I always make a fantastic sherry & orange gravy to serve with a selection of roasted vegetables (except for the sprouts, which I boil with some finely chopped onions, a splash of wuster sauce and a pinch of salt)

I am still a little hazy on what my side dishes will be, but I will post it here when I figure it out.

Meanwhile, I’m feeling very optimistic about this dinner.   Because, in case you missed it in the first picture, these aren’t ordinary ducks.  They are  SPECIAL.

Please try to picture this:   This morning, I was heading for the car (which was running), telling the kids who were going shopping with me to get into their seats, and telling the kids who were staying home what I expected them to accomplish while I was away.  I was also  finishing up a conversation on the phone, starting the dishwasher and moving laundry into the dryer.
As I pulled on my coat, and with my shopping list clenched between my teeth,  I did what all fragmented mothers of more than three children do as they head out the door.   I checked my e-mail.
And there was a comment from the very lovely and well organized Nancy Phan, asking me for my lasagne recipe.
My first reaction was that  I was glad Nancy couldn’t see me at that moment,  as it would kill any urge she might have to ask my advice about anything in the future.

Next, suppressing my impulse to bring the computer with me in the car and make a blog post right then and there about lasagne, I drove all over Pickering, Ajax and Whitby writing a blog post in my head, making  a quick mental re-surface  every third minute to answer questions from the backseat like “How do the guys at the health food store get the pollen away from bees?  Do they hypnotize them? ”  and “Since I’m a  I pirate, can I have rum with lunch instead of milk?”.

I’m sharing all this extraneous information so that you can understand that even though I’m an older mother, I still have that crazy miasma swirling around my house and car which makes all the ladies feel like they have attention deficit disorder.

Which brings me to the point of this post:  First, remember that Nancy wants my lasagne recipe.  Other ladies have asked for my bread recipe.  I have been asked how to make quiche, cream soups, omelettes, and gumbo.
And maybe other things.
I don’t know, as I have a very short attention span.

My sheepish answer, whenever I get a recipe question for something that I am really comfortable with , is that I cook those items by principle not by recipe.

And I have no real skill at converting my method of cooking into a reproducible recipe.  (Ask Stacey Freeman about the time she asked me to teach her to make bread.)

I’ve just made these things  enough times that I understand  what each ingredient does, and so I have the freedom to improvise, to make them extra special, or extra basic, depending on the occasion.  And I don’t have to keep consulting a recipe.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I have three, five or seven people talking to me, I get lost if I’m trying to follow a printed recipe at the same time.  If I know the basic formula of a dish, I can relax, chat with the kids, listen to the dog howl along with the piano, talk on the phone,give a spelling test, post photos on a blog,  all while cooking a reasonably palatable dinner.      Everybody has more fun when we are doing it this way.  No small hands are turning the cookbook page while I’m not looking,   or finger painting over the top the recipe, or accidentally dumping cilantro into the laptop keyboard, because I’m not looking at a recipe on the screen.

There are a few basic principles for good lasagne.  There are also some basic principles for bread, quiche, cream soups,  omelettes, gumbo  and anything else worth cooking.   Once you have the principles down, you are in charge.

So, I’m not going to share my lasagna recipe, I’m going to share good principles for good lasagna. And I’m going to list the ingredients that I think make lasagne extra nice.  And if you just practice and learn the formula and get a feel for what tastes great in lasagne, you are the boss on lasagne night, and you will never feel intimidated by it again.  Same goes for those other dishes I listed, and anything else you can think of.

So, I’m working on that road map to lasagne, and it might possibly arrive here before Christmas.

And then I will give formulas for whatever else I can think of.   Then, we just read the principle, practice them a couple of times, improvise with them a little bit, and it’s like flying free in the kitchen.