Archive for October, 2010

Vegetable Curry With Chicken

This is a basic vegetable curry recipe with chicken. The basic curry requires a little bit of vegetable oil for cooking, some chopped garlic, whole cumin seeds, red onions, tomatoes, mild green peppers, chopped ginger plus some turmeric root powder and some coriander powder. This is the basis for most any vegetable curry and takes about 6 to 8 minutes to cook thus far. Into this mixture you will add some vegetables. In this case I chose to add cauliflower, broccoli and yams. The vegetables require softening so they need to be cooked for about 25 to 30 minutes. Then I add some chicken cut into small pieces. Cook for another 5 minutes (don’t cook the chicken too much … you don’t want dry, hard chicken).

The basic idea for making curry is to have the ingredients all chopped up and prepared ahead of time. Start by sautéing chopped garlic in oil and gradually add each ingredient one after the other in a certain order, cooking each ingredient a little at a time. After sautéing the chopped garlic for a couple of minutes then you will add the whole cumin seeds. Cook them until the seeds are dark and the garlic is a very light tan color. Next, add the onions and cook them … you don’t want them brown., Next, add the tomatoes … this will slow it down because tomatoes will contain some water. The last ingredient before adding the vegetables is the chopped ginger. You don’t want to cook it too long and cook away the flavor … then you add the vegetables. You will probably need to add a little water for the vegetables. ... Read More

Mediterranean Salad Dressing

You can make your own homemade salad dressing very easily in about 5-10 minutes with this healthy recipe. The main advantage is that you can control the ingredients – you know what’s going into it.

The main ingredients of this salad dressing are olive oil and red wine vinegar. These are typical ingredients found in Mediterranean foods so I call it “Mediterranean Salad Dressing.” It also has a spicy flavor because it has curry powder, pepper and Dijon mustard. Place it in the refrigerator after mixing and shake it up real good before using it. ... Read More

Herb Roasted Chicken

Ahhh, tasty herb roasted chicken with crisp skin! You can cook this yourself with some basic ingredients in about an hour and a half. Buy a whole chicken – preferably pasture raised (as organic as possible … not corn fed and not fattened up with hormones and antibiotics). I try to buy chicken that doesn’t contain any hormones or antibiotics, but it can be tricky getting the correct information.

Currently, there are some chickens being peddled as “Free Range” which are pretty much meaningless. The term, “Free Range”, does not mean it was not fed with corn laced with chemicals, and the terms “no added hormones or antibiotics” doesn’t mean that the growers didn’t add the chemicals into the food, so caveat emptor, “Let the buyer beware.” ... Read More