vietnamese chicken noodle soup

Posted on 10/08/2011 by oneexpatslife

I spent my college days in the middle of the corn fields of central Illinois. At this stage of my life I had absolutely no knowledge of, nor interest in, good food or its preparation. My hands-on cooking experience to date was limited to grilled cheese, chocolate chip cookies, and… actually, I think that was about it. In the college dorms I expanded my repertoire to include macaroni & cheese (from the blue box) and packaged ramen noodles. And yes, I realize that every parent who reads this is probably cringing, but just remember, I grew out of it and your kids probably will too.

Anyway, I can safely estimate that I probably ate ramen noodles at least twice a week for the first two years of college. After that I swore off ramen and refused to touch it, or anything which vaguely resembled it, for years after I had graduated from the corn fields and moved up to Chicago. It was not until a friend dragged me to one of the city’s many noodle shops and made me try Pho Bo (a vietnamese beef and noodle soup which remains one of my absolute favorite soups), that I changed my mind. Since then I have eaten more bowls of hot and spicy noodley goodness, from every kind of fancy restaurant to hole-in-the-wall take away joint that I could find, but I had not until now actually tried to make it in my own kitchen. Why oh why did it take me so long?

Dorie’s Spicy Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup looks intimidating at first due to the long list of ingredients. But I found that everything was easily purchased from the asian section of my local supermarket, and after that the soup was really quite easy to pull together. And the flavor, OH the flavor, while not really spicy (I made a note to add more chiles next time) was so deep and rich that I found myself going back to the pot again and again for just one small bite more. Contrary to Dorie’s instructions, I also cooked the noodles directly in the broth so that they soaked up some of the herby broth. So tasty!

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roast chicken for lazy people

Posted on 08/08/2011 by oneexpatslife

Roasting chicken is generally not something that I would consider doing in August, in fact, I have strict rules against turning the oven on once the temps go over 80 degrees (I know, I’m a wimp). But, while my friends and family in the US are sweating through this summer’s heat wave, I have been freezing through what the German weather teams have been kindly calling an “early autumn”. It has been a seriously weird summer here in central Europe. It started out spectacularly with a beautiful spring, and then apparently decided to skip summer and move right into autumn in early June. In fact, as I type this the outside temps are a blustery 61 degrees… in August!

But enough of that, the weather has been so bad that I’m tired of listening to myself complain about it. Let’s talk about Dorie’s Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux, which translates to roast chicken for lazy people. Now how could you not love a recipe which starts out with such a great title?

Dorie’s recipe was indeed a hit for this lazy person. It involves no more than throwing a chicken and some chopped root veggies into a Dutch oven and roasting everything together in the oven for a bit. Dorie calls for a 5 pound chicken, but there is no way I would ever find a chicken that big in Germany. The standard roasters around here tend to weigh in at 1 kilo, which is just a little over 2 pounds. So my little German chicken took a little over 1 hour in the oven and came out perfectly juicy and tender.

In short, every home cooks needs a go-to roast chicken recipe, and I think that I just found mine. This one is definitely a keeper.

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slow roasted tomatoes

Posted on 05/08/2011 by oneexpatslife

One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to seek out the local markets, and London’s Borough Market remains one of my all time favorites. It was there that I first tried and fell in love with roasted tomatoes. A few years after my discovery I opened up Nigella Lawson’s Express book and found her recipe for Moonblush Tomatoes, so named because she roasts them in the oven overnight. Nigella’s very easy and very tasty recipe has since become a staple in our home, we throw the tomatoes into salads, pasta, or simply eat them on our morning toast with soft goat cheese (or even cream cheese if that’s all we have).

This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Slow-Roasted Tomatoes, is similar to Nigella’s, but without the overnight part, and we were looking forward to giving it a try.

Verdict?

Dorie’s recipe is great. We particularly liked the addition of garlic, and the rosemary added a nice flavor as well. We served our tomatoes on toast with goat cheese and paired our toasts with salmon and lentils for dinner one night, all of which proved to be a very tasty combo. Leftovers were polished off the next morning at breakfast, which made me think that next time we definitely need to double the recipe.

A great tip is that if you pack your tomatoes in a jar with olive oil, the oil will really pick up the flavor and then you can tip the tomatoes and a bit of the oil over angel hair pasta on those occasions when you need instant dinner.

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beggar’s linguine

Posted on 01/08/2011 by oneexpatslife

This past weekend my husband was out of town and I was flipping through the previously completed French Fridays with Dorie recipes, looking for something quick and easy to throw together for my Friday night dinner. I had plans to go out with friends on Saturday but I kept Friday night all to myself because, as much as I enjoy going out with my girlfriends, I also enjoy the occasional night when I can indulge in total laziness and exercise complete control over the remote.

As I was flipping through the completed recipes I noticed one which received what can only be described as consistently surprised rave reviews. That is to say, nobody thought they were going to like this one, but they all ended up loving it. And not just because it was tasty, but also crazy easy, which sounded like a perfect recipe for my lazy Friday night to myself.

Beggar’s Linguine is not an easy recipe to sell and it is no wonder that most of the FFwD crew were not expecting to like this one. It is pasta topped with brown butter, chopped nuts, and (here’s the questionable part) dried figs & raisins. Whaaat? Sounds weird right? But I decided to trust all those rave reviews and give it a go, swapping out the linguine for whole wheat spaghetti (just because that’s what I always have in my cupboard). And I am so happy that I did because they were so right, it is delicious! As unlikely as it all sounds, the flavors just blend together beautifully and create a really tasty combination which I can only describe as instant comfort food.

The moral of the story is that I should trust the FFwD crew. I will definitely be making this one again… maybe even for my husband.

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citrus-berry terrine

Posted on 29/07/2011 by oneexpatslife

“While Americans of all stripes tend to turn snobby at the mere mention of gelatin, the French accept gelatin with the same equanimity with which they accept salt and pepper…”

How do you like that? Dorie called me out in the very first sentence of her introduction to this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Citrus-Berry Terrine (recipe published here if you would like to take a look). I have hated jello ever since I had my wisdom teeth pulled and could basically eat nothing but for the better part of a week. In fact, I wonder if that has something to do with the general American dislike for jello, isn’t it hospital food? Well, whatever the cause, I have long been in the ”snobby at the mere mention of gelatine” camp. Needless to say, there is not a chance I would have tried this recipe had I not been participating in this project.

But try it I did. After all, the local berries are currently at their sweet juicy best and we have been buying them like mad, so why not try something new with them. However, knowing that I would never be able to sell this to my husband as a dessert, I planned to serve it for breakfast, I mean it’s basically berries & grapefruit juice so breakfast is hardly a leap.

And do you know what? I actually liked it! I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I loved it, but with this recipe Dorie has convinced me to set aside my snootiness and give gelatine a chance. In fact, I think this would be a great recipe for those occasions when you have a crowd over for breakfast.

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oh so easy mustard batons

Posted on 27/07/2011 by oneexpatslife

Talk about bang for your buck! Dorie’s Mustard Batons recipe (a previously completed French Fridays with Dorie recipe which I am just now catching up with) is seriously easy. She has posted her original recipe on her website, but it is so easy that it barely requires an actual recipe. Basically, smear sheets of thawed puff pastry with some good mustard (Maille is considered a staple in my home), slice into strips, brush with egg wash, maybe add a sprinkling of sesame seeds, & bake… done!

The end result is elegant enough to make an appearance at a fancy dinner party, yet easy enough that I would consider making a batch just for my husband and I to enjoy with a glass of wine.

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basque tortilla

Posted on 25/07/2011 by oneexpatslife

Just to be clear, we’re talking spanish tortillas here (think frittata), not mexican tortillas. And while I love mexican tortillas, I was decidedly not looking forward to trying the basque variety. You see, I like my eggs runny, really runny, and have never been a fan of what I think of as overcooked egg dishes. This includes dry rubbery scrambled eggs, most restaurant prepared omelets, and tamago (that sweet little hunk of omelet which invariably pops up on my sushi plate). But I am still catching up with previously completed French Fridays with Dorie recipes, and the Basque Potato Tortilla looked like a relatively simple one which I reasoned I could try once and never bother with again. Well, that was the plan anyway.

That was 3 tortillas ago! I have now made Dorie’s original Potato Tortilla, as well as two of her ”Bonne Idees”, Mushroom Tortilla and now today the Spinach-Green Onion Tortilla. Of the three I think I liked the original Potato Tortilla the best, but it did also require the most time to make since my potatoes (though cut quite small as per the advice of the other FFwDers) took about twice as long to cook as stated in the recipe. However, the Mushroom and Spinach Tortillas were tasty as well and I think this may become one of my go-to lunch dishes. Paired with a salad it is really a perfect meal. I paired the Spinach-Green Onion Tortilla with a quick celery remoulade because I still had half a celery root to use up from last week’s FFwD recipe. Delicious!

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at least the wine was good

Posted on 22/07/2011 by oneexpatslife

Have you ever had one of THOSE days in the kitchen? You know the ones I’m talking about, the ones where EVERYTHING you cook is a failure. The days where no matter how closely you follow the recipe, it inexplicable refuses to come together. Well, that was my experience with this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Coconut Lemongrass Braised Pork.

Let me preface this by saying that I was really looking forward to this recipe. I love a good curry and this one looked delicious. Granted, it didn’t really strike me as a summer recipe per se (anything which requires that much time in the kitchen with the oven turned on just doesn’t strike me as something I’d like to spend time with in the middle of July). But we have been having a relatively mild summer here in Germany, I had a new lemon rice recipe which I had been wanting to try, and we had recently made a trip to one of our favorite wineries to stock up on some nice crisp Riesling, so it really seemed like perfect timing.

Things seemed to be going well at first, all the pork got a nice searing on the stovetop and my spice mixture was smelling absolutely delicious! Not only that but I was very excited to be using up ingredients which I had previously purchased for earlier FFwD recipes, namely cardamom pods and white pepper. Am I the only one who gets geekily excited about using up those random specialty ingredients in my cupboards? I really hope not.

But moving on, after 30 minutes in the oven my pork was cooked through but none of the liquid had evaporated and my sauce looked more like a broth, so I put it back in for another 10 minutes. This may have been my fatal error, though I’m not entirely sure. 10 minutes later I took it out and tasted it. The pork was now overcooked and dry and my sauce looked and tasted like a watery broth. I know that Dorie states in her recipe that the sauce should not be too thick, but mine was so thin that, when ladled over the pork and veggies, it simply splashed into a pool at the bottom of the bowl, leaving the pork looking dry and unappetising (see the above picture of my first attempt at plating compared to Dorie’s beautiful picture).

In a last-ditch effort to save the dish I strained all the meat and vegetables out and boiled the heck out of the broth for about 5 minutes until it turned into a reasonable looking sauce. While thus distracted my rice burnt and the broccoli which I had planned to serve as a side got over-steamed. It really seemed that I just couldn’t win.

In the end the sauce & veggies were saved, the pork was dry and overcooked, the broccoli was mushy, and the rice was bitter… but at least the wine was good!

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savory cheese and chive bread

Posted on 20/07/2011 by oneexpatslife

Some recipes are crowd pleasers, and Dorie’s Savory Cheese & Chive Bread (click here for recipe) is definitely one of them. I can’t imagine anyone not liking this recipe. I mean, it’s fresh out of the oven bread, jam-packed with cheesy goodness. What’s not to like? Oh, and did I mention that it’s easy? I mean, when the most difficult part of the recipe is grating up a little cheese, you know you’ve got a good one.

I made this to go with a substantial dinner salad one night and we ended up eating the rest for our breakfast the next day. In fact, the only reason I might consider not making this more often, is because there’s only two of us in the house and we polished off that first loaf a little too quickly.

Note that this recipe was actually done by the French Fridays with Dorie crew last year and I am just catching up with old posts.

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gerard’s mustard tart

Posted on 18/07/2011 by oneexpatslife

In my university days I spent a semester abroad studying in Aix-en-Provence, France. In my not entirely unbiased opinion it is one of the most beautiful places in the world and I cherish the memories of my time spent there. It is postcard perfect France at its very best, including narrow cobblestone lanes, gurgling fountains around every corner, and amazing food. Thank goodness I was young at the time because somehow I managed to eat a croissant almost every morning for breakfast, followed by a baguette & cheese for lunch, all without gaining a pound. There is no way my metabolism would put up with such nonsense now!

The first bite of Dorie’s Mustard Tart (or as she has named it, Gerard’s Mustard Tart) instantly brought me back to Aix. THIS is the kind of food which reminds me of France and makes me return again and again. Because while I like macaroons & steak frites as much as the next girl, THIS for me is what French food tastes like… simple, fresh, and delicious.

For anyone who is interested in a little taste of France, Dorie’s original recipe was written up in Bon Appetit. In her book Dorie points out that the classic version of the tart is made with tomatoes, and since we are now in the middle of summer, that is how I chose to make it. In doing so I realized that the tomato version is probably also much quicker since there is less chopping to be done and no need to pre-cook the veggies.

We served the tart for lunch with a light green salad, and also found the leftovers to be a delicious breakfast the following morning. I cannot rave enough about this recipe, it is hands down my favorite French Fridays with Dorie recipe yet! We will definitely be making it again… and again… and again…

Note that this recipe was actually done by the FFwD crew last year and I am just catching up with old posts.

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