Tilapia Curry

In India, if you live on the coast, you eat lots of fish. I didn't get a whole lot of it, but it's really a staple in places like Calcutta. (Even many vegetarians there eat it, since they don't consider it "meat")

Annamaria got some tilapia for us for Valentines, and we had a bunch of frozen fillets left over, so I set out to find a nice fish curry. I found this recipe for Tilapia curry, which was very tasty and pretty easy. For once, I actually followed the recipe fairly closely, so you'll get what I got if you follow it. I did substitute some canned tomatoes for fresh, and you'll probably have to skip the curry leaves or substitute bay leaves, unless you can find some, which you should - seriously, go find a store that sells curry leaf...mmm... The recipe only feeds probably two people, though, so use the amount of fish you want, and add a lot more onion and garlic/ginger then you think you'll need; it condenses down a lot. Enjoy!

For a more complicated and, I assume, tasty curry, try this recipe too.

Marbled Pumpkin Cheesecake

from Recipegal.com

We just tried this on Thanksgiving. Very tasty! The recipe makes a 10 inch cheesecake, or third the recipe to fill a ready-made graham cracker pie crust

Ingredients (amounts for small pie crust in parentheses):

-Crust
1 1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
2 T sugar
1/4 cup butter or margarine, melted
(or ready-made graham cracker pie crust)
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate (1 cup)

-Cheesecake
3 eight ounce packages cream cheese (1 package)
1 cup sugar (1/3 cup)
1/4 cup brown sugar (2 T)
1 3/4 cups pumpkin (2/3 cup)
4 large eggs (2 eggs)
1/2 cup evaporated milk (little less than 1/4 cup)
1/4 cup cornstarch (1 1/2 T)
3/4 teaspoon Cinnamon (1/4 t)
1/8 teaspoon Nutmeg (1/8 t)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350
  
• To make crust, mix graham cracker crumbs, sugar and butter. Press into greased 10-inch springform pan (or get out your handy ready-made crust).
• Sprinkle with half the chocolate chips.
• Beat together cream cheese, sugar, and brown sugar.
• Beat in pumpkin, eggs, and evaporated milk.
• Beat in cornstarch, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
• Melt remaining chocolate chips in saucepan or microwave.
• Remove 1/2 to 1 cup of pumpkin mixture and stir into the melted chocolate.
• Pour the remainder of the pumpkin mixture over the crust.
• Pour the chocolate mixture over top and swirl with a small knife.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 60 minutes (about 35 minutes for small pie crust) or until edge of filling is set.
• Turn off oven; allow cheesecake to slowly cool: in the oven for a while, then at room temperature, then in the fridge.
• Chill for several hours. Serve with whipped cream or Blue Bell homemade vanilla ice cream.

Hints from the kitchen:
In addition to using a small recipe with a pie crust, we also substituted the evaporated milk with an almost 50/50 ratio of powdered milk and water (slightly less powder).
We'd post a picture, but uh, we ate it already!

New recipe site: Internecipes Blog

Ashley recommends Internecipes, a blog where you can sign in under the author's name and post whatever recipes you want. Share and Enjoy.

New recipe site: Sailu's Indian Food

As I was looking around for various things I could add to "cool up" the blog, I found this site. It's a blog of Indian recipes, with a lot from Andhra Pradesh, where I spent most of my time in India. In fact, it's by a lady living in Vizag, one of my favorite areas. It has some fantastic pictures! Time to go exploring!

Oooh! It also has a long list of other Indian food blogs...fun!

Texas Two-Step Chicken

from Pace Picante Sauce bottle

This recipe is becoming a Weaver favorite. It's very easy, and tastes great. It can be found at the Pace website here, as well as lots of other places online.

Ingredients:

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 1/2 cups Pace® Picante Sauce or Pace® Thick & Chunky Salsa
3 tbsp. packed light brown sugar
1 tbsp. Dijon-style mustard
3 cups hot cooked regular long-grain white rice

Directions:

• Place chicken in 2-qt. shallow baking dish.
  
• Mix picante sauce, sugar and mustard. Pour over chicken.
• Bake at 400°F. for 20 min. or until done. Serve with rice.

Hints from the kitchen:
A couple times, we have cooked the chicken and sauce on top of the rice like a casserole, which adds a nice spice and crunch to the rice. Most of the time, though, the rice isn't ready by then, so we just serve it at the end as suggested.

Tequila Lime Grilled Chicken

from Suzanne Forbush

We got this recipe from our friend Suzanne Forbush in our ward. Since we also stole the idea of having a recipe blog from them, we thought this would be a good first entry. We tried it a couple of nights ago, and it's yummy! (though a little strong for some).

Ingredients:

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (1 1/4 lbs)
2 tsp grated lime peel (it takes about 2 limes to get 2 tsp)
1/4 cup lime juice (the juice from 2 limes)
1/4 cup olive or vegetable oil
2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 small jalapeno chili, seeded and finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped

Directions:

• Mix all ingredients (except chicken) in a shallow bowl or plastic bag to make the marinade.
• Flatten each chicken breast half to 1/4 inch thickness between sheets of plastic wrap or waxed paper.
  
• Add chicken to marinade; turn to coat with marinade.
  
• Cover dish or seal bag and refrigerate at least 30 minutes but no longer than 24 hours.
• Prep grill on medium heat. Remove chicken from marinade, cover and grill chicken 4 to 6 inches from medium heat 8 to 10 minutes, turning once, until juice of chicken is no longer pink when centers of thickest pieces are cut.

Serve with rice, noodles, or chips and salsa
Makes 4 servings

Hints from the kitchen:
For a milder taste, cut down on the lime zest and pepper, and substitute parsley for the cilantro. We actually used about twice the amount of zest and some parsley and serrano peppers from our garden!

To use the leftover marinade as a sauce, boil it for 1 minute to destroy any bacteria that may have been transferred to it from the chicken. It can also be poured on the chicken as it cooks, as long as that side is cooked again for a couple minutes.