Smoked Salmon Crepes with Cream Cheese and Celery Leaf Salad

We hosted a small dinner party at our house last Saturday night for Jeff's former boss and one of his coworkers - a little last hurrah before they had to go back to work in new roles after our furlough ended. As we are apt to do, we decided to experiment on our poor unsuspecting guests with a new recipe. It was a hit. These were really tasty, not too scary, and even the suspicious said they were pleasantly surprised by how good they were. We even got some people to try the edible flowers! We used our fun dinnerware set for the evening, and we thought the plates came out looking quite colorful and pretty. The only thing we might change next time would be to add a few artfully placed drops of thickened dressing around the sides, not because the food needed it, but because it might give the plates just a bit more pizazz.


We had one other new experimental dish for the night - a Savarin aux Fruits (fresh raspberries and strawberries). We failed to get any photos taken of it before we cut into it, but it was also really yummy. We might make it again someday and post that recipe as well.

Here's how to make the Smoked Salmon Crepe dish...the recipe came from "Amuse Bouche" by Rick Tramonto:

The Crepes
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tsp sugar
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups milk
3 large eggs
melted butter

1. Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the milk. Whisk the milk into the flour mixture until the batter is smooth and well blended. Whisk in the eggs until blended.

2. Strain the batter through a sieve into another medium-sized bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to give the batter time to rest.

3. Heat an 8-inch nonstick skillet or crepe pan over medium heat. Lightly brush the pan with melted butter.

4. Ladle about 1/4 cup of the batter into the skillet and tilt the pan in all directions to evenly coat the bottom. Cook the crepes for about 30 seconds or until the bottom is lightly brown. Loosen the edges with a spatula and flip the crepe over. Cook the underside for 10 to 15 seconds or until it is set, dry, and browned in spots. Slide the crepe onto a flat plate and cover with a piece of wax paper.

5. Repeat with the remaining batter, brushing the pan with more butter as needed, and stacking the crepes between wax paper. The crepes may be made up to 3 days ahead. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before using.

The Filling, The Stack, and The Salad
2 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 lb thinly sliced smoked salmon
5 Crepes (see recipe above)
1/2 cup celery leaves
1 tbsp olive oil
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp finely snipped chives
6 cucumber flowers, for garnishing (we used all different types of edible flowers)

1. Put the cream cheese in a small bowl with 2 teaspoons of the lemon juice. Mix well and season to taste with salt and pepper.

2. Using a 3-inch round cookie cutter (we made ours bigger - closer to 5 inches), stamp out 4 rounds of smoked salmon and 5 rounds of crepes (again, we went a little taller on ours, 5 salmon and 6 crepes).

3. Place 1 crepe on a work surface and top with a salmon round. Spread about 1 tablespoon of the cream cheese over the salmon. Continue the layering, so that you end with a plain crepe on top of the stack. (Our smoked salmon wasn't what we'd call "thinly sliced", so rather than making rounds, we just covered the surface of the crepe with thinly pulled apart salmon. Not quite as pretty, but it worked. We also made two batches of the filling for our larger diameter crepes and our taller stack.)

4. Put the celery leaves in a small bowl and toss with the olive oil, lemon zest, chives, and remaining 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

5. To serve, divide the celery salad among 6 small plates. Cut the stack of salmon crepes into 6 wedges. Arrange a wedge and a cucumber flower on each plate.

Rick Tramonto's Moroccan Lamb with Tabbouleh and Crispy Garlic

We spent a day a couple of weekends ago trying new recipes. We picked several out of one of our cookbooks that we love to read, but have never actually cooked anything from: "Amuse-Bouche" by Rick Tramonto. Then we narrowed it down to two recipes and hit the grocery store. The first recipe we tried didn't turn out so well, so we're not going to talk about that one until we get it right. This one, however, was quite tasty and pretty easy. It's broken into three main steps: the tabbouleh, the garlic, and the lamb. We made the tabbouleh and the garlic a couple of hours ahead of the lamb. As you can see from the picture below, we turned it into two main courses for dinner, instead of the six amuse bouche sized servings that the recipe actually makes. It will taste good served hot or cold, I'd do hot in the winter and cold in the summer (duh).


Ingredients:
1/2 cup bulger
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
2 tablespoons finely diced tomato
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 pound lamb shank or shoulder
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup chopped celery
3 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
2 cups dry red wine
Vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, sliced paper thin

Instructions for the Tabbouleh:
1. Add the bulgur to a large pot of lightly salted boiling water. Reduce the heat and simmer the bulgur for 10 to 12 minutes or until just tender (ours took closer to 15 minutes). Drain the bulgur in a colander. Allow to cool and then transfer to a small shallow bowl.
2. Add the lemon juice, parsley, tomato, and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and toss until all the grains are coated with the dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate.

Instructions for the Lamb:
3. Preheat the oven to 350 deg F.
4. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed casserole or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. When the oil is almost smoking, add the lamb and sear for 8 to 12 minutes or until nicely browned on all sides.
5. While the lamb is browning, add the onions, carrots, and celery to the pan along with the thyme. Stir the vegetables occasionally.
6. Add the red wine and cook until reduced to a few tablespoons. Add enough water to cover the lamb and bring to a boil, stirring the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to dissolve any browned solids into the liquid.
7. Remove from the heat and cover the casserole with a tight-fitting lid. Place in the center of the oven and cook for 1 hour or until the meat is tender and almost falling off the bone. Set aside and allow to cool. When cool, refrigerate the lamb until serving. Discard the vegetables and herbs. (We think we'll reserve some of the veg and broth next time and puree it to make a little sauce to go with the dish.)

Instructions for the Garlic:
8. Pour the vegetable oil into a small, deep saucepan to a depth of 1 1/2 inches. Heat over medium heat until a deep-frying thermometer registers 325 deg F.
9. Fry the garlic slices in the oil for 1 to 2 minutes or until they turn golden. Watch carefully because they fry very quickly. Remove from the oil with a slotted spoon to a paper towel to drain. Transfer to a flat plate, season with salt, and allow to cool completely. As they cool, the fried garlic slices will become very crispy.

To serve:
10. To serve, pull or cut the meat from the bone and cut into small pieces. Place some of the tabbouleh on each of 6 small plates along with some lamb. Top each serving with crispy garlic.

(The picture above shows what happens if you turn the 6 small servings into 2 bigger servings. We used an 8" pasta plate for our service. In other words, if you're making this for a family of four, I'd double the recipe, and have an additional side dish ready.)

An afternoon of cooking

We tried a couple of new recipes yesterday afternoon, one for a dish we were already familiar with, and one for a dish we weren't all that familiar with. The familiar dish was tiramisu, which we've both had out at restaurants before, but never made at home, and the other dish was prawn bisque. Of course, prawns are not available in Wichita grocery stores, so we had to improvise and substitute shrimp instead. Both dishes came out pretty well. I think we soaked our ladyfingers in the coffee mixture a little longer than we should have, because the tiramisu was rather damp. It was really good, and just melted away in the mouth, but the moisture content was a bit higher than I'd like it to be if we were to serve it to guests someday. The bisque was pretty good, but we think we'd thicken it a bit more than the recipe calls for next time we make it.

Shortly after dinner, when it came time to do our huge pile of dishes and clean the stove that we spilled soup all over and take our showers after mowing the lawn and hitting the gym, we noticed that our water pressure was greatly diminished. We called a neighbor, who said that theirs was down as well (he was in the middle of giving his young son a bath). So, Jeff called the water company to report it. It didn't come back until after midnight, so we had a pile of extra yucky dishes to wash this morning and are both craving a shower right about now. I'm so thankful for indoor plumbing!

Here are some pictures of dinner and the recipes for the bisque and the tiramisu. Both were pretty easy, just dirty dish intensive.

The bisque stock simmering away

The finished shrimp bisque

We also had caprese salad with dinner

The tiramisu with topping applied in an "attractive manner"

The tiramisu after smearing the topping all over and adding CHOCOLATE!!!

Prawn Bisque Recipe
(from "The Cook's Encyclopedia of French Cooking" by Clements and Cohen)
Serves 6-8

1 1/2 lb small or medium cooked prawns in the shell
1 1/2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 onions, halved and sliced
1 large carrot, sliced
2 celery sticks, sliced
8 cups water
a few drops of lemon juice
2 tbsp tomato puree
bouquet garni
4 tbsp butter
1/3 cup plain flour
3-4 tbsp brandy
2/3 cup whipping cream
salt and white pepper

1. Remove the heads from the prawns and peel away the shells, reserving the heads and shells for the stock. Chill the peeled prawns. (We used the shrimp shells, and in place of the heads, about 1/4 of our shrimp bodies.)
2. Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the prawn heads and shells and cook over a high heat, stirring frequently, until they start to brown. Reduce the heat to medium, add the onions, carrot and celery and fry gently, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes until the onions start to soften.
3. Add the water, lemon juice, tomato puree and bouquet garni. Bring the stock to the boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently for 25 minutes. Strain the stock through a sieve.
4. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the flour and cook until just golden, stirring occasionally. Add the brandy and gradually pour in about half of the prawn stock, whisking vigorously until smooth, then whisk in the remaining liquid. Season with salt, if necessary (it was very necessary), and white pepper. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. (At this point, we decided the stock was a little thin, so we pureed about 1/3 of our remaining shrimp into the stock. This greatly enhanced the flavor and the texture.)
5. Strain the soup into a clean saucepan. (We skipped this part, deeming it unnecessary.) Add the cream and a little extra lemon juice to taste, then stir in most of the reserved prawns and cook over a medium heat, stirring frequently, until hot. Serve at once, garnished with the reserved prawns.

Tiramisu Recipe
(from "The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian" by Jeff Smith)
Serves 6 (or 10, if you go with our size servings)

The Filling
1 1/2 cups espresso or triple-strength regular coffee at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brandy
2 egg yolks
1 pound mascarpone cheese
1 8-ounce package ladyfingers
4 oz semisweet chocolate, shaved

The Icing
1 cup fresh whipping cream
1/4 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp confectioners' sugar

Garnishes
Cocoa powder for dusting
Additional shaved chocolate

1. Stir the espresso, sugar and brandy together in a mixing bowl until the sugar dissolves. Remove 1/3 cup of the mixture to another bowl and set the remainder aside. Whisk the egg yolks into the 1/3 cup of coffee mixture. Add the mascarpone and whisk together until just smooth.
2. Line the inside of a 9 1/2 by 5 1/2 inch loaf pan with a large sheet of wax paper.
3. Dip the ladyfingers one at a time into the reserved coffee mixture and begin to place them crosswise in the lined pan. The ladyfingers should be soaked with coffee and may expand a little. Be careful not to soak them too long lest they fall apart. Continue with more ladyfingers, lining the bottom of the pan lengthwise with them.
4. Spread half the cheese mixture over the ladyfingers. Sprinkle with 2 oz of the shaved chocolate.
5. Layer again in the same manner with 7 more ladyfingers, the remaining cheese mixture, and the remaining shaved chocolate. Top the loaf pan off with the remaining soaked ladyfingers.
6. Fold the wax paper up around the top of the pan and cover the pan tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 6 hours.
7. Invert the chilled loaf pan onto a serving platter and tap the bottom of the pan to remove the loaf. Remove the wax paper.
8. Place the cream, vanilla and confectioners' sugar in a bowl and whip until stiff. Spread the whipped cream all over the cake in an attractive manner. Place the cocoa in a fine strainer and dust the top of the cake. Sprinkle with additional shaved chocolate. Slice and serve.

The weekend so far

We started the weekend with a Michael Buble concert on Friday night. It was great - the guy really can sing. The best, or perhaps most pleasantly surprising, part of the show was his band. He had a backup band of 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, 3 saxophones, a drummer, a bassist, a guitarist and a pianist. They were all outstanding musicians, and the orchestration of each piece was quite good. There was one trumpet player in particular who just blew us away with his talent. If these guys are ever in your area, you should definitely check them out. The show can be a bit irreverant at times, but the quality of the music was just phenomenal.


We spent much of the day Saturday cleaning our house, fun, fun. We didn't finish, so we'll get to do some more of that next weekend. We took a break late in the afternoon to see a couple of the houses in this fall's Parade of Homes. We toured a nice $2.5M home (that's a lot here in Wichita) with a nifty wet bar in the basement that looked quite similar to what I have planned to install in our basement sometime in the next 20 years. The house also had amazing trim work throughout and some very nice faux painted ceilings. The weirdest thing was that it had a warming drawer in the bathroom. Yes, a warming drawer. It wasn't disguised in any way, it was just this appliance sitting in the middle of a bunch of built-in drawers in a cabinet. We assumed it was for warming towels, and the builder confirmed that it was. We wondered why he didn't just install a heated towel rack, and he looked at us like we were crazy. The house also had a wine cellar area behind the wet bar in the basement that was about 12 feet by 5 feet. I'd venture to say that you could put 1000 bottles in there if you were smart about it. Unfortunately, they weren't, and had installed mostly regular cabinets and a few diamond racks in there for a bottle capacity of about 30. Sigh. What a waste.

After the house tour, we stopped off at the grocery store to pick up a rack of lamb and some other ingredients for dinner. Jeff's been wanting to "cook" all week (apparently weeknight meals don't count because they don't take as long). We made a yummy mushroom dish that we've made before, but this time we served it over some gnocchi. It was a nice accompaniment to the lamb and our green beans. Here's a picture of the mushrooms (note the use of our new dishes!) and the recipe:


Mushroom Stuff, adapted from a Tyler Florence recipe:

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 pounds assorted mushrooms (cremini, oyster, shiitake, chanterelle, or white), trimmed and sliced
Leaves from 2 fresh thyme sprigs
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup Cabernet Sauvignon
1/4 cup reserved beef broth or drippings from whatever you're roasting
Splash of heavy cream
1 tablespoon minced chives

Place a clean skillet over medium heat.
Add the butter and a drizzle of oil.
When the butter starts to foam, add the mushrooms and the thyme, then season with salt and pepper.
Stir everything together for a few minutes.
Add the red wine, stirring to scrape up any stuck bits; then cook and stir to evaporate the alcohol.
When the wine is almost all gone, add the beef juices or reserved drippings.
Let the liquid cook down and then remove from the heat.
Stir in the cream and the chives, and adjust the seasoning as needed.

We serve this sauce as an accompaniment to beef or lamb roasts, or over gnocchi.

Chocolate Dessert Cakes

It's been quite a while since we last posted a recipe. So, here's an easy dessert that we make when we don't want to have dessert on hand for days on end. It makes four little personal sized ooey gooey fudge cakes. We use ramekins to make ours, and we usually have a bit of ice cream on top to cool them off when we eat them straight from the oven (or as is the case today, toaster oven). The recipe is from "The Instant Cook" by Donna Hay.

Chocolate Dessert Cakes

185g (6 oz) butter, melted
1 cup caster (superfine) sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup cocoa
vanilla bean ice-cream or thick (double) cream to serve

1. Preheat the oven to 160 deg C (320 deg F).

2. Place the butter, sugars and eggs in a bowl and mix until combined.

3. Sift over the flour, baking powder and cocoa and mix until combined.

4. Place in four 1 cup (8 fl oz) capacity ovenproof tea or coffee cups and bake for 20 minutes or until fudgy.

5. Serve warm or cold in the cups topped with some ice-cream or cream.

Makes four generous portions. (You could easily divide this into five or six cups.)

Broiled Pork Chops with Sage

I've got nothing new to post on, so I guess it's time for another crescent fresh recipe from the House of Boy and Girl! Yes, friends, more pork chops. We really only eat these things about once a week, although it seems like every recipe we post is some form of pork chop, doesn't it? Well, you're just going to have to deal with it. This one comes from Jacques Pepin's "Simple and Healthy Cooking," pairs extremely well with German Riesling, is really easy to make, and has a bonus lemony sauce factor that tastes great with green veg like broccoli and asparagus. We had it tonight with polenta and broc.

Broiled Pork Chops with Sage
6 servings

2 cloves garlic, peeled, crushed and finely chopped
1/2 tsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
6 pork loin chops (about 7 oz each and 1/2" to 3/4" thick)
1/4 tsp salt
6 fresh sage leaves, chopped (about 1 tbsp)
Grated rind of 1 lemon (1 1/2 tsp)
2 tbsp lemon juice

1. Preheat the oven broiler. Line a baking tray with aluminum foil.

2. Combine garlic, soy sauce and pepper in a small bowl.

3. Sprinkle the pork chops with the salt and brush them on one side with half of the seasoning mixture. Place the chops, seasoned side down, on the tray and brush them on the other side with the remainder of the seasoning mixture.

4. Place the chops under the broiler so they are 3" to 4" from the heat. Broil for 4 minutes, turn, then broil for 4 minutes on the other side.

5. In a small bowl, combine the sage, lemon rind and lemon juice.

6. Turn the chops so the moist underside is facing up and arrange them on a platter. Add any accumulated juices from the tray to the sage mixture in the bowl. Using a pastry brush, paint the chops with the mixture. Cover loosely and let rest for 5 minutes before serving.


(10 points if you know where "crescent fresh" came from!)

Crab Salad in Wonton Cups

We were watching Food Network yesterday during our morning snowstorm, and this recipe came on. It sounded tasty and looked pretty easy to make, so we headed over to the grocery store, picked up the ingredients, and made it for an appetizer for dinner. We had Matthew and Joella over, and we all agreed that it was pretty good. Here's a link to the recipe. It was really easy to make. I added an extra splash of lime juice to ours because it wasn't quite tangy enough for my taste, and I think you could add some extra chili flakes, too, if you like your food a little spicier, but otherwise, I wouldn't alter the recipe from what is written. The wonton cups were super easy to make, and you could fill them with almost anything and use them for all kinds of appetizer dishes.

Pork Chops with Camembert Sauce

This is beyond yummy and super rich. We like to have a nice acidic German Riesling or Champagne with it for dinner. We soak up the extra sauce with some plain rice.

2-4 pork chops, pork fillets, whatever pork you want
1 tbsp butter
3 tbsp dry white wine
1/2 to 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream or creme fraiche
1 tbsp chopped fresh mixed herbs such as marjoram, sage and thyme
1/2 wheel Camembert cheese (4 oz), rind removed, sliced
1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
freshly ground black pepper
fresh parsley, to garnish

1. Melt the butter in a heavy pan over medium-high heat until it begins to brown, then add the meat. Cook for 5 minutes, or until just cooked through and the meat is springy when pressed. Transfer to a warm dish and cover to keep warm.



2. Add the wine and bring to the boil, scraping the base of the pan. Stir in the cream and the herbs and bring back to the boil.



3. Add the cheese and mustard and any accumulated juices from the meat. Add a little more cream if needed and adjust the seasoning. Serve the pork with the sauce and garnish with parsley.

Experimental Cooking

You know those little fried wonton pieces that you get with your soup when you buy takeout Chinese? We never eat ours. But a few days ago, I kind of started to munch on them after dinner, and I was thinking how good they'd be with some chocolate and some powdered sugar on them. So here you go, wonton desserting a la House of Boy and Girl. Melt some dark chocolate with some brandy (just a touch, or use butter or cream if you don't want the alcohol), drizzle over the wontons, dust with powdered sugar, and serve with some vanilla bean ice cream. This would probably be even better with crumbled up fortune cookies. Yum, if you're into that sort of thing...

Tasty Pork Chops

We had a pretty tasty dinner tonight. It's not the prettiest to look at, but it's yummy, and pretty easy to make on a weeknight. Here's the recipe from our copy of "The Cook's Encyclopedia of French Cooking," which is one of those cheap Barnes and Noble cookbooks, and some pictures:


Pork Chops with Tomato Sauce (Cotes de Porc Sauce Nenette)

1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 large center loin pork chops, about 1 inch thick
salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tbsp white wine or chicken stock
1 tsp dried thyme
1 cup whipping cream (we sometimes go half cream, half milk)
1 tsp tomato puree (we occasionally skip this)
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tomato, peeled, seeded and chopped (we use diced canned tomatoes)
1 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon (we use dried), chervil or parsley


1. Melt the butter with the oil in a pan over high heat until sizzling. Season the pork chops with salt and pepper, then add to the pan and reduce the heat to medium-high. Cook for 2-3 minutes on each side until browned. (Adjust cooking time for thinner pork chops.) Transfer the pork chops to a plate and pour off all the fat.

2. Add the wine or stock and the thyme to the pan and bring to a boil. Cook for 2-3 minutes until the wine has almost evaporated.

3. Add the cream and the tomato puree and simmer for 2 minutes, stirring frequently, then return the pork chops to the sauce and cook for 4-5 minutes over a medium-low heat until just firm to the touch. Take care not to overcook.

4. Add the mustard, chopped tomato and herbs, stirring and shaking the pan to distribute them, and cook for 1 minute to heat through. Serve the chops with the sauce.

We added some leftover brown rice from takeout Chinese to soak up the sauce and had some veg on the side (Jeff had broccoli, because he HATES peas and I LOVE them, LOL!). It made for a nice, quick and easy dinner.

C is for Cookie

Ok, here's the chocolate chip cookie recipe I promised you all a while back. It comes from the cookbook that came with our oven, and every time we give someone else the recipe, it fails. So, it seems that there's something magical about our oven that seems to turn out these wonderfully yummy things. I suspect it's the fact that it's a convection oven, and everyone we give the recipe to uses non-convection ovens to make them. It's much more fun to claim that we have a magical realm surrounding our oven. :)


Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies
makes 20 cookies

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 sticks (170g) unsalted butter, melted
1 Cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 Cup granulated white sugar
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 Cups chocolate morsels (we usually use 50%-70% dark chocolate, which makes for a more grown up flavor)

Preheat oven to 330 deg F.

Grease two cookie sheets.

Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda in a medium sized bowl.

Combine the melted butter and sugars in a large bowl and mix in the egg, extra yolk and vanilla extract.

Add the dry ingredients and chocolate and stir until just combined.

Divide the dough into 20 even sized pieces and roll into balls. Place evenly on two cookie sheets. Don't flatten the dough balls as they will form cookies that are soft and chewy in the middle.

Bake for 12-17 minutes and allow to cool on the tray for five minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

The cookies should be ooie gooie in the middle when they're done, and crispy around the edges. If you take them off the tray too soon, they tend to deflate a bit and start to fall through the cooling rack, so make sure you let them rest on the tray for the full five minutes.

Recipe: Chicken, Bell Pepper and Orange Stir-Fry

12 oz boneless, skinless chicken, cut into thin strips
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion, sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced
3 oz snow peas
4 tbsp light soy sauce
4 tbsp dry sherry
1 tbsp tomato paste
finely grated peel and juice of 1 orange
1 tsp cornstarch
2 oranges, peeled and segmented
2 cups bean sprouts
cooked rice or noodles, to serve

Heat the oil in a large preheated wok. Add the chicken and stir fry until sealed and lightly colored on all sides (2-3 minutes). Add the onion, garlic, red bell pepper and snow peas to the wok and continue cooking until the veggies are just tender and the chicken is completely cooked. Mix the soy sauce, sherry, tomato paste, orange peel, orange juice and cornstarch in a separate container. Add to the wok and cook, stirring constantly, until the juices start to thicken. Add the orange segments and the bean sprouts to the wok and heat through (about 2 more minutes). Transfer the stir-fry to serving plates and serve immediately with cooked rice or noodles. Makes 4 servings.

Recipe from "Greatest Ever Wok and Stir-Fry"

Recipe: Provencal Style Chicken with Couscous

boneless skinless chicken, cut into bite size pieces (we use 6 tenderloins or 2 breasts to serve 2 people)
olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 can (14-15 oz) of diced tomatoes, with juice
1/4 teaspoon cayenne (optional)
1/2 cup dry white wine, chicken or vegetable stock
1 cup Nicoise olives, whole or chopped
1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme, or 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup couscous, prepared with butter and chicken stock

Add olive oil to a saute pan and cook the onion over medium heat until it begins to soften. Add the garlic, tomatoes (with juice in can), cayenne, if desired, and raise the heat slightly. Cook until some of the tomato juice bubbles away. Add the wine or other liquid and cook for another 2 minutes. Add the olives and the thyme, along with some salt and pepper. Cook 1 minute. Add the chicken to the sauce, submerge the chicken in the sauce and cover the pan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked through. Serve over couscous with a drizzle of olive oil.

Makes 2 hearty servings.

This recipe was adapted from a recipe in "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman.