Indonesian Chicken Fried Rice for Jeet's party

Indonesian Style Chicken Fried Rice: Cook the chicken in pressure cooker for 15 minutes, in Indian whole spices. Remove broth, and save for later. Take chicken off the bones as much as it is easy to do. (Use the rest of the meat and bones for a separate curry.)

Make rice (can use a blend of parboiled, wild, brown and other rice) in the rice cooker with one cup of the saved broth, and rest water. Saute chopped bell peppers in lots of oil, and add mushrooms and soy sauce. Add the boneless chicken, and the rice and let it heat for a bit. Add spices and seasoning (we used Indonesian spices that we got from Rebecca).

Layer into a flat dish, and top with sliced boiled eggs and mushrooms, and garnish with browned onion strings and cashews.

November 22nd dinner

Menu:

• Curried sweet potato with Spinach : Boiled and mashed sweet potatoes w chopped cooked spinach, mixed with tomato curry sauce.
• Baked fish w mushroom sauce: Pollock baked on a bed of onions. Mushroom sauce: Rehydrated shitake mushrooms + ginger + chili + soy sauce + BBQ sauce. Reduced over medium heat.
• Grilled Asparagus w Sriracha salt
• Porcini and goat cheese risotto: Parboiled rice, with rehydrated porcini (soaking water + finely chopped mushrooms), Bouillon cube. Add goat cheese when almost done.
• Falooda surprise : Falooda from mix on a bed of lady finger cookies, bananas and grapes. Topped with whipped cream

Baby Shower food experiments

November 15, 2014

Menu:

• Sweet potato medallions with spinach-yogurt and seaweed topping - Pressure cooked sweet potatoes cut into thick discs and then seared in a pan. Topped with a mix of sauteed copped spinach and home-made yogurt, on a square of seaweed, with a seaweed flag for garnish.
• Crackers with Wisconsin cheese curds and Berg's BBQ chicken - Chicken breast diced and marinated in Berg's BBQ sauce and ketchup, then cooked in a cast-iron pan. Triscuits topped with cheese curds, then the diced chicken, and baked in the oven to melt.
• Mango Lassi - Canned Alfonso mangoes + yogurt + Cardamom. Poured in glasses and topped with crushed pistacios

Our favorite beans/ Americanized dhal

For our inaugural post, we had to start with the most basic of meals- what we call beans, and what can loosely be called an Americanized version of Indian dhal.  It goes with most any meal, can be served as a side dish or on rice, and varies so largely from recipe to recipe that your dinner guests will never know that it is related to the dish you served last week.  This here is one of our favorite go-to dishes in the guerrilla kitchen.

To begin, you can either simply go to an Indian store and pick up curry sauce or you can make your own at home, stir frying well chopped onion, garlic and ginger- and plenty of it, like a whole onion, half a bulb of garlic, 2 inches or so of fresh peeled ginger.  Stir fry this with a ton of herbs of your choosing.  In a future post, we'll break down into greater detail how we make our curry sauce.

Then grab a pound of dry beans (any that you'd like- whether they be pinto, black, chickpea, kidney, split pea, or any combination thereof) that you should soak in room temperature water for 12-24 hours.  When you're ready to prepare, toss in first the stir fried onion mix, then add the beans, cover with water to about an inch above the beans, a half a jar of tomato (pasta) sauce plus 1-2 chopped tomatoes, then add a bunch of greens like chopped turnip greens, kale, etc.  The beans are great because this is where you can toss in all the other parts of vegetables that you may not use as often- like beet leaves, thin stems, other random greens and veggies that may be about to go bad in your fridge.  Have some leftover cilantro?  Save it until you're about to serve, then toss it in!

You'll cook this all together either all day in the slow cooker, or 13 min if you had a pressure cooker- so that's really up to you and your own kitchen equipment.  We here in the guerrilla kitchen mostly use pressure cooker, and like most New Yorkers, do not have access to a grill, so adjust according to your kitchen.

Hopefully this is the first of many posts to come, and as we get even more adventurous in our own kitchen and the seasons come to pass, we find a way to help you explore what's ripe right now, and encourage you to challenge your self to make a meal out of what you can find on your shelves today.  Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming posts on kabocha squash, daikon, kale, fennel, beets and eggplant!

Our favorite beans/ Americanized dhal

For our inaugural post, we had to start with the most basic of meals- what we call beans, and what can loosely be called an Americanized version of Indian dhal.  It goes with most any meal, can be served as a side dish or on rice, and varies so largely from recipe to recipe that your dinner guests will never know that it is related to the dish you served last week.  This here is one of our favorite go-to dishes in the guerrilla kitchen.

To begin, you can either simply go to an Indian store and pick up curry sauce or you can make your own at home, stir frying well chopped onion, garlic and ginger- and plenty of it, like a whole onion, half a bulb of garlic, 2 inches or so of fresh peeled ginger.  Stir fry this with a ton of herbs of your choosing.  In a future post, we'll break down into greater detail how we make our curry sauce.

Then grab a pound of dry beans (any that you'd like- whether they be pinto, black, chickpea, kidney, split pea, or any combination thereof) that you should soak in room temperature water for 12-24 hours.  When you're ready to prepare, toss in first the stir fried onion mix, then add the beans, cover with water to about an inch above the beans, a half a jar of tomato (pasta) sauce plus 1-2 chopped tomatoes, then add a bunch of greens like chopped turnip greens, kale, etc.  The beans are great because this is where you can toss in all the other parts of vegetables that you may not use as often- like beet leaves, thin stems, other random greens and veggies that may be about to go bad in your fridge.  Have some leftover cilantro?  Save it until you're about to serve, then toss it in!

You'll cook this all together either all day in the slow cooker, or 13 min if you had a pressure cooker- so that's really up to you and your own kitchen equipment.  We here in the guerrilla kitchen mostly use pressure cooker, and like most New Yorkers, do not have access to a grill, so adjust according to your kitchen.

Hopefully this is the first of many posts to come, and as we get even more adventurous in our own kitchen and the seasons come to pass, we find a way to help you explore what's ripe right now, and encourage you to challenge your self to make a meal out of what you can find on your shelves today.  Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming posts on kabocha squash, daikon, kale, fennel, beets and eggplant!