Butter Chicken

Use medium or medium-high heat. Fry until onion starts getting translucent (just starts to, not fully translucent - maybe 5 min):

1T butter or ghee (butter works fine because the dish as a whole shouldn't be cooked too hot)

1/2 lg or 1 sm onion

garlic to taste (whole head :))

Add:

1lb chicken, chopped into bite-sized pieces (I like thighs because they have more chicken-y flavor and are moister)

The dish is more or less done when the chicken is cooked, though if you let it simmer longer, you get a better blending of flavors. Add and mix in the following while the chicken is cooking:

1/2 can of tomato paste

2T lemon juice

1t grated ginger or 1/2t powdered ginger (add with onions to mellow more)

1/2t garam masala

1/2 curry or hot curry powder

cayenne and/or sriracha to taste

Optional but nice:

1/2t cardamom

1/4t cumin

1/2t turmeric (it's anti-inflammatory!)

1/2t tandoori masala

Cover and turn to low for about 10 min.

Now, this still doesn't have the "creamy" part of butter chicken. Depending on your tastes and dietary goals/constraints, pick one or more of the following:

heavy cream

greek yogurt

cream cheese

It's pretty harsh without at least one of these (especially if you put in a lot of spicy ingredients). If all your diners agree about what to add, you can add it to the pan as it's cooking - particularly with the cream, you can add it right before the simmering stage. If you're trying to keep probiotics alive, you'll need to add the yogurt directly to your plate to avoid getting the little fellas over 120F.

Goes well with rice, or just eat it by itself.

Baaaaacon

After extensive experimentation (involving eating a lot of bacon), I think I've hit a local maximum on bacon preparation (maybe even a global maximum, but who knows if you could do better by searing it in the breath of a dragon or something). I had stumbled across the idea of oven bacon in some food article a while back, and it's definitely an improvement over pan cooking. Since we have a convection oven, we use that, but I suspect this would work fine in a regular oven.

20 min

350F

Cook on a rack

Those are the main elements - not too hot, and the bacon should be on a rack/griddle - something where it's not sitting in the grease (have a pan underneath to catch the grease, of course). The best brand I've found is Applegate Farms Sunday Bacon (no nitr[a,i]tes, has an organic option). All this together produces an amazing fluffy-crispy texture without any burnt or gooey spots.

Chewy Food Bars

Amy and I decided to make our own Food Bars right before the West Highland Way trip. And some kind of magical alchemy happened, because they came out great! They ended up being one of my favorite snacks on the trail (followed closely by the canned sardines, and some kind of pre-packaged indian meals... Okay, maybe that reveals something about my taste, so perhaps you should approach this recipe with caution). Here's what I can remember from the gist of it. There's probably lots of room for experimenting... suggestions in the comments are most welcome! The one thing I would suggest is to keep some variation of the syrup in there. It's handy for keeping the bars glued together and lending some structural integrity. If I recall correctly, these had about a 1-week shelf life, unrefrigerated. 

WET 

1 part nut butter (e.g., peanutbutter, almondbutter, or some mix) 

1 part brown rice (or barley malt) syrup vanilla 

DRY 

1 part buckwheat flour 

1 part oats 1/2 part ground flaxseed 

1/2 part coconut (or 1 part? hmm) cinnamon 

optional: few tsp of coffee grounds 

TASTY ADDITIONS 

1 part chocolate chips 

crushed walnuts 

Melt together the nut butter, syrup, and vanilla on low heat on the stove. Stir it into the mixed dry ingredients. If it's too dry, make and add more wet ingredients as needed. It should be a squishy dough; never liquid, just no dry parts. 

Butter and flour a pan (do this! verrrry sticky otherwise). Bake at 300F for 30 mins, or until not squooshing in the center. If it *is* still squooshy, consider baking a little longer on a lower heat (say, 250F). They'll harden up a little after cooling, too, but not much. You do want them chewy, though, and not dry or crunchy. :) 

Suggestion: after cutting bars, wrap individually in foil or plastic wrap.

Basic Banana Bread

Holy Schamoly! This was so mind-meltingly good. And so simple. Next I gotta try a variation with sour cream, but for now... 

DRY 

1 c flour 

1 c hazelnut flour 

1 tsp baking soda 

dash salt cinnamon, ginger, cloves 

WET 

1/2 c butter 

3/4 c brown sugar or honey 

2 eggs 

vanilla 

lots of mashed, overripe bananas 

TASTY ADDITIONS crushed walnuts chocolate chips 

Mush together wet, sift together dry, combine. 

Stir in mashed bananas. 

Fold in tasty additions. 

Pour into one or two bread pans (depending on size of pans; don't overfill them!). 

Bake 350F/175C, for 45 - 60mins. 

 Pro tip: if eating slices hot out of the pan, add a smear of butter. OM!

Curried rice 'n' bird

This is something Nik and I kind of made up one evening, because we had a hankering for it. We originally meant to use chicken, but had a bunch of turkey leg meat around instead, and it came out awesome! So, turkey is good. Chicken is probably good, too. Or other poultry. Pick your bird! 1 lb filleted bird meat (chicken, turkey) coconut oil turmeric cumin coriander cinnamon curry powder (these come in many varieties... pretty much any will do, though if you want to get specific I'd recommend going for something more like sambar powder than garam masala) black pepper chili powder and/or fresh chili peppers garlic onion rice (jasmine is good, though I'm sure there are others equally tasty) spinach (frozen fine... probably the easiest, in fact, esp if it's pre-chopped!) tomato any other veggies you feel like throwing in (we used chopped green beans, I bet peas and carrots would be good) white wine a few cups of chicken broth Cube up the meat. In a large pot, saute on high heat in coconut oil, along with all the spices and some salt, until browned (seriously browned, not just cooked). Remove meat and decrease heat to low. Add more coconut oil if needed, and saute chopped garlic, onion, and chilis. Add more of the spice mixture at this stage, to taste. Add back the meat, along with the chicken broth, a few splashes of white wine, and rice. Bring to a boil, then simmer until rice is almost cooked. At this point, add any veggies that don't need a long time to cook: thawed spinach, chopped tomato, thawed mixed veggies. Check on the mixture periodically to see if it needs a stir, or needs more water for the rice. It's finished when the rice is cooked. Serve with shredded cheese and salt and pepper to taste. VARIATIONS: If you wanted to make a vegetarian version of this, I bet it would be equally tasty to use lentils in place of the meat! I.e., just skip the meat stage, and add an equal amount of lentils (yellow ones, maybe) along with the rice. And more water/broth, of course, to cook the little guys.

Steamed clams

• 3 - 4 lb steamer clams (live) 
• 1 small onion lots of cloves of garlic 
• 1 small tomato 
• bunch cilantro 
• crushed, dried red pepper 
• 1 bottle dry white wine 
• generous butter 
• 1 lemon 

PREPARATION 

Cover the clams in fresh water with some salt and black pepper. Believe it or not, this induces them to spit out sand and grit! Be sure to use non-iodized salt (sea salt maybe), because conventional wisdom says iodine in conventional table salt will kill the clams before cooking. And you don't want to cook dead clams. After the clams have soaked for at least 30 mins, rinse them off and scrub the shells with a vegetable brush. If the shell is open, tap on it. If it doesn't close, throw away the clam. 

COOKING: 

In a large pot or wide, deep pan (my preference), saute chopped onion and garlic in generous butter. Add wine and red pepper and bring to a simmer. 

Add clams, chopped tomato, and chopped cilantro. Cover pan and steam just until clams open, about 5 - 10 minutes. Keep a close eye on them and be careful not to overcook, as overcooking will make them rubbery. Note that you want just enough wine to steam the clams, but not cover them (ie, steam, don't boil). Err on the side of too little liquid: the clams will release their own liquor as they cook! So if you use too much liquid initially, you'll not only have too much by the time you're done, but you'll dilute the delicious natural clam broth. And that would be a shaaaaame, believe me. :) 

SERVING: 

Discard any clams that didn't open (these were dead before cooking). Transfer clams to deep plates or flat bowls with a large, flat spoon, being sure to include some liquid and veggies from the pan. Slice lemon and squirt lots of lemon juice over each plate. Eat with bread and the rest of the wine. Soooo good!

Stuffing

• 1 loaf medium-weight bread (not too heavy or too light -- a Bauernbrot is good, e.g.) 
• yellow onions 
• chopped celery stalks 
• lots of sage (dried or fresh leaves) 
• lots of parsley 
• some thyme 
• lots of butter 
• chicken or veggie broth 
• salt and pepper to taste 

Preparation: cut the bread into cubes, and dry it out. Either: 1. Leave it out on the counter for a couple of days, or 2. Spread the cubes on a cookie sheet and place in a 170C/350F oven for an hour. (have also made this with toasted bread, and it's just fine!) 

When the bread is dry: Chop onion, celery, sage, parsley, and thyme. Saute in very generous amounts of butter (maybe 1/2 cup or so), in a pot large enough to hold the bread. Prepare about 3 c of broth. When the onion and celery are soft and translucent, toss in the bread and coat thoroughly. Remove from heat. Pour in broth, tossing bread to distribute. Cover to keep warm, and let the mixture rest until all broth is absorbed (20 - 30 mins) and stuffing is chewy (not mushy or crunchy). Stir and enjoy!

Pumpkin pie

I can't believe we haven't posted this until now! Here's my favorite version: 

• 2 c canned pumpkin or squash puree 
• 1.5 c heavy whipping cream 
• 3/4 c sugar (or honey) 
• 3 large or 4 small eggs 
• generous amounts of: cinnamon, ginger dashes of: cloves, nutmeg, bourbon vanilla, salt 
• pie crust 
• additional whipped cream for topping 

Preheat oven to 425 F / 220 C 

Prepare crust and lay carefully into pie pan. 

Beat all ingredients together in a large bowl, and pour into crust. 

Bake for 15 minutes; reduce heat to 350 F / 175 C and bake for another 40 - 50 minutes, or until center of pie is no longer jiggly and liquid (but before too much browned). 

Completely cool before serving. Serve topped with whipped cream.

Winter squash puree

For making pumpkin-based desserts, when you can't get cans! 

1. Obtain: a medium-sized winter squash with orange flesh. Hokkaido or butternut are excellent for this and really easy to find, though any of the winter squashes will do. 

Real pumpkin -- even sugar pie pumpkin -- is certainly also doable, but it's actually more stringy and watery than the other squashes, so may not be worth the extra effort. Even the Libby's canned pumpkin is not all pumpkin, but mostly other squashes! If you do use a sugar pie pumpkin, be sure to do the extra step of straining the puree on a cheesecloth in the fridge overnight, before using (or freezing) it, or you'll get a watery pie. 

2. Steam: use a large, heavy knife (samurai sword would be excellent) to carefully slice the squash in half. Scoop out the seeds and other guts. Place the halves skin-side down (may need to cut into quarters or eighths, actually) in a steamer basket, and steam until the flesh is entirely soft and cooked, maybe 20 mins.  

3. Mash: when squash is cool enough to handle, scoop the flesh out of the skins. For some varieties, you can just leave the skin right on, no problem: hokkaido, for example. Puree the flesh with a food processor or immersion blender. I've used just a potato masher, before, and it made a slightly chunkier pie, but wasn't bad. You can get it really smooth with the right equipment, though. Can be used immediately, or frozen for later.

Homemade cranberry sauce

So easy, and so yum! Never again will I use the canned gel...

1 c ruby port

3/4 c orange juice

frozen cranberries (frozen raspberries + frozen cherries are a delicious substitute in a pinch)

approx 1/4 c sugar, brown or white (use more for cranberries, less for other fruit)

cinnamon

cloves

Bring port and o.j. to a boil. Turn down to simmer, add fruit, and add spices and sugar to taste. Simmer until fruit is mushy and sauce is reduced to desired thickness, maybe 20 mins or so. Sauce will also thicken as it cools.