Crusty Chicken Thighs in Mushroom Sauce

They say never to apologize for your cooking, and unless someone dies from hysterical tastebud euphoria or E. coli, I never will.  In fact, the first time I tried this, I ruined the sauce so badly that I had to improvise into a cream sauce, which became delightfully unapologetic.  And okay, this recipe is staggeringly similar to that accidental recipe, crispy chicken thighs in a mushroom cream sauce, which I won't usually repost.  But since it took me three tries to get this right, I'd like to post the recipe and process that inspired this whole adventure, given that it is actually delicious when done correctly.  Plus, this original recipe has no added fat or carbs, making it relatively healthy.  I'm still amazed by this style of cooking chicken - dry, with the lid on, yet yielding a crispy delicious skin that rivals the best hand-battered southern fried chicken.  Unreal.

Having made this now enough times to get the method sorted out, I will modify the original recipe slightly with double the chicken, so that you can serve twice the number of meals.  But you can't crowd the pots, so shoot for 4 thighs per cooking vessel unless you have the world's largest dutch oven.

Yum Woon Sen (Chile Lime Glass Noodles)

My first encounter with chile lime noodles was at a vegan food market, where it was framed as a gluten-free, animal byproduct-free meal.  As I ate it, I thought "this would be much better with some animal byproducts in it."  But all of the recipes I found were somewhat bland, Americanized versions of this dish.

Enter the real deal - yum woon sen, which is a Thai salad using mung bean noodles.  You've probably seen these before - they start off pale white, and when you cook them they turn translucent, earning them the name "glass noodles".  They're fairly easy to find, and not to be mixed up with rice vermicelli, which will cook up white, and though they are the same diameter, that's about all they have in common.  Glass noodles are chewy and have a much more neutral flavor, making them perfect for this dish.  And the Thais don't mess around with the whole animal byproduct thing - they thrown in fried, dried shrimp, and often ground pork (which I didn't add here, to try just the standard dried shrimp version).

In addition to getting to buy two new ingredients I had never purchased before, which is always fun, this dish surprised me by how easily it came together.  You don't really cook anything, in the traditional sense.  You basically just soak the noodles in boiling water, then crisp up the dried shrimp and peanuts, and toss everything together.  I was waiting for the stir-fry step the first time I made it, but it never came.  The end result was very healthy and fresh as a result, so now I see why this dish became popular.

Yum Woon Sen (aka Chile Lime Glass Noodles)
From ThaiTable.com

• 5-6 sprigs cilantro
• 1 2 ounce (dry) bundle mung bean noodles (aka glass noodles, clear noodles)
• 1/4 cup dried shrimp
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon fried garlic
• 1-2 limes
• 1/2 sliced onion
• 1/2 cup peanuts
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 3 Thai chili pepper
• 1 cup cut Chinese Celery, or regular celery if you can't find Chinese

If you can't find the Chinese celery above, just use regular celery.  But do at least keep the tops

This single bundle is all you need for the recipe posted here.  Don't get carried away, it will throw off the balance of ingredients

Rinse your vegetables well, and chop them to the right sizes.  They won't end up being cooked, so it has to be bite-sized and ready to go.

Take one of the 2 oz bundles from the noodle pack, and place in a large bowl with boiling hot water for 6 minutes. Strain the noodles and drain, then pour the noodles into a large mixing bowl and cut them with scissors randomly to make the strands easier to serve and eat.  Cut the Chinese celery into 1 ½ inch pieces. Slice onion, top to bottom to get crescent pieces. Chop cilantro and chili peppers.  If making your own, make the fried garlic by placing 6 cloves of garlic in a microwave-safe bowl and cover with 1-2 tbsp neutral oil, then microwave on high for up to 2 minutes, 30 seconds in 30 second increments until nicely browned and fragrant.

If using raw peanuts, fry peanuts in 1 teaspoon of oil over low to medium low heat until light brown and cooked, about 5-7 minutes. Remove peanuts and set aside. Fry the dried shrimp over medium heat until crispy and brown, about a minute, depending on the size of your shrimp. When the shrimp turns whitish, remove from heat and set aside.

Dry-fry the dried shrimp - this was a new one for me.  I found these in the refrigerated section of the Asian grocery store

Make the sauce / dressing - 1 tablespoon of fish sauce, 5 tablespoons of lime juice, and 1/2 tsp (or less) of sugar.  It should be more sour than salty; you should also take into account how salty the shrimp are. The role of sugar here is to round the flavors.

Add a tablespoon of fried garlic to the noodles and mix them. Fried garlic gives the noodles flavor. Add 5 tablespoons of the dressing to the noodles and mix well, reserving the last tablespoon to add only as necessary. Add the peanuts, dried shrimp, onion, Chinese celery, chili peppers and cilantro to the noodles. Toss well and taste. You may need more dressing, depending on water content of the noodles and the concentrations of your seasonings.

Toss all ingredients to combine, and you're done!  Minimal cooking necessary

Wild Mushroom, Barley, and Spicy Sausage Stew

After a bit of a pause, I am back to start posting again.  Wanted to start with a real winner - one of those that everyone who has tried it has had rave reviews on.  A soup that caters to the gluten-free without sacrificing anything.  It's spicy, rich, filling, somewhat simple, and just plain delicious.

I adapted the recipe from Cooking Light: Soups, a book I highly recommend that is a collection of their most popular soup recipes.  Everything in there is golden.  The main changes are the mushroom type and the grain, for which I present an alternative (brown rice) for dietary restrictions.  Barley is slightly preferred for a bit more bite, but only slightly.  Some pictures are for the barley version, and some for the brown rice, but only because they follow almost an identical cooking process, and I have made this multiple times with progressively better photography skills.

A forgiving recipe packed with flavor, great for a cold night

Wild Mushroom, Barley, and Spicy Sausage Stew
adapted slightly from Cooking Light

• 2 tbsp olive oil 
• 2 cups thinly sliced onion
• 8 ounces spicy Italian sausage (turkey or pork)
• 1 cup chopped celery, about 2 stalks
• 1 cup sliced carrot
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 cups dried wild mushrooms, or 5 cups fresh
• 1 1/2 cups chopped portobello mushroom
• 3/4 cup uncooked brown rice, or 1/2 cup uncooked pearl barley
• 42 ounces low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons brandy
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh parsley

Quite a few ingredients to prep, but the cooking is completely linear and almost idiot proof.

Prep the ingredients.  If using dried mushrooms, reconstitute in boiling water for up to 20 minutes.  Drain, and chop into coarse bits.  Slice onions thinly, remove sausage from casings.

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat.  Add onion, and cook for 5 minutes or until slightly soft.  Add sausage to the pan, cooking 8 minutes or until sausage is browned and stirring to crumble.  Break up with the edge of a spoon, but don't break up too finely or you'll destroy some of the body from large pieces of cooked sausage.  Add celery, carrot, garlic, and bay leaf; cook 10 minutes or until onions are golden brown, stirring frequently.  Stir in the mushrooms and cook 10 minutes or until mushrooms release moisture.

Make sure to brown the sausage, but you have a healthy error margin on this recipe.  Just keep cooking until things start to develop caramel flavors, then add broth and cook for an hour.

Once all vegetables and fungi are incorporated, stir in the barley or brown rice, chicken broth, brandy, salt, and pepper.  Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 hour or until barley is tender, or 40 minutes for the brown rice version.

Discard the bay leaf.  Sprinkle with chopped parsley, and serve immediately with crusty bread and a salad.

Cranberry Oatmeal Pancakes

Let me temper this recipe with a caveat - I'm not a huge fan of pancakes.  I feel like people who love pancakes are basically ready to stab their own mother for just one more hit of maple syrup-soaked cake goodness, and somehow they can devour a whole plate of these things without batting an eye.  I, on the other hand, usually get through about 3 bites of pancake before I'm ready to walk away in need of something with a bit more flavor.  Unless they're really good, which they most often are not, pancakes are just kind of vanilla.

In stark contrast to your average pancake recipe, I found a very bizarre-sounding recipe in a Vitamix blender cookbook, of all places.  It called for different flours, the use of oats, seeds, and berries, and generally all healthy stuff.  And since I don't think many of you have a Vitamix, or pore over the recipe book it came with if you do, I'm going to repost it here, with slight variations (I don't have a Vitamix either, is the weird part).  I thought this was really good, had an interesting consistency, and was rather healthy by pancake standards.  Also, with minimal tweaking I believe this is a gluten-free dish, but I can't back that up. 

These pancakes have all kinds of surprises inside - seeds, oats, and cranberries.  It's like a piñata for your mouth

Cranberry Oatmeal Pancakes
From: Vitamix blender cookbook

Yield: 10-12 pancakes
Total Time: 25 Minutes

• 1.5 cups milk, soy milk, rice milk, or almond milk (I used rice milk)
• 1 large egg
• 2 tbsp light olive oil or vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup (60 g) uncooked, rolled oats
• 1.25 cups (150 g) whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup (26 g) flax seed meal
• 1/4 cup (30 g) dried cranberries
• 2 tablespoons (15 g) unsalted sunflower seeds

Not your average pancakes!  This is kind of the royal family of pancake ingredients, including flax meal, a very  interesting nutty product made from ground whole flax seeds

Place milk, egg, oil and ¼ cup (20 g) rolled oats (NOT ALL OF THEM!!!) into a blender or food processor bowl.  Blend / chop / whatever you've got on medium speed for about 20 seconds to incorporate.

I didn't know if my food processor would properly pulverize the oats, but there was so little compared to the amount of liquid that this was no problem

In a large bowl, combine the remaining oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and flax meal, stirring to combine.

Crazy pancakes - when a big bowl of white flour just won't do.  Clockwise from top: salt, baking powder, oats, flax meal, whole wheat flour

Add the wet to the dry.  The order matters!

Pour wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix gently by hand to combine.  Stir in the dried cranberries and sunflower seeds.  Allow mixture to set for 10 minutes before cooking.

Fold in the seeds and berries, and let this sit for a few minutes.  You want the double acting baking powder to act once, creating air bubbles that will give you a nice fluffy product before cooking.  The second 'act' of the baking powder happens when you heat it.

I found that this batter was a bit thick, so you can dilute with a bit more milk if you like thinner pancakes.  Cook in melted butter on a skillet, ideally one of the electric variety, until bubbles around the edges start to set.  Flip and cook for another couple of minutes.

Look for the bubbles around the edges to set up

To serve, I would use a berry-based syrup such as boysenberry or blueberry.  Or if you really want to drive home that you're eating something different, use cranberry sauce!

Crunchy, nutty cranberry oatmeal pancakes.  Treat your body to a healthy breakfast.