Lazy Chicken Curry using Patak's Hot Curry Paste

When I feel lazy about cooking something, I get some help from some products such as these Patack's jarred paste. I had curry paste from them and all I had to do was add meat, onion and diced tomatoes.

This is the paste which I used for this dish.



I used "Hot" but it was not very hot for my taste but it tasted pretty good. This is a great product to use when I am feeling lazy.

My husband loves curry and he also liked this curry. I didn't tell him how easy it was to make it. I think that he believe I spent lots of time making this dish. Well, nothing wrong for him to think that way to maybe I just let him believe that.

Well, I recommend using these curry paste when you don't have time to make indian curry from scratch. I also think that there are some other creative ways to use this paste for some other dishes. I will think about it and post it when I come up with some ideas and trial dish!

I buy Patak's product from my local supermarket. They have many different kinds of paste and sauces. I like most of their products, if you have a chance, please try them :-)

Things I recently made and cook books I recently borrowed

Summer is finally here and I am enjoying my first summer with a baby. Sometimes, it is too hot but I put him in a water bath outside my house and he loves it. We take him to the beach sometimes also. He doesn't really like the ocean water. I think it is too cold. Anyhow, my life is perfect with him!
He is already 5months and we just started to give him solid food. we started with rice porridge. (He is a half Japanese :-) It is interesting to see how he develop. He is growing up too fast!

Well, I have been cooking more lately but just didn't have time to update my blog. So I would like to upload some of the things I made recently.

First of all, I made biscuit. I had homemade biscuit the other day at a restaurant in Brooklyn and I wanted to try making it myself ever since. Here is how it came out.

Not bad, right? It tasted good also! I didn't know how easy to make biscuit at home. I love having it with butter and strawberry jam when it came right out from the oven. Yum!

I used the recipe in this book which I had for this biscuit.















Also, I made an indian dish. This is chicken with some indian spices with lots of cilantro and tomato. My husband and I love this dish. I didn't make it super spicy this time so we didn't need to be crying while we ate. For some reason, I love eating spicy food when it is hot.

Next, I made salmon and napa cabbage. Salmon is just with salt and pepper and sautéed in a pan. Napa cabbage is cooked with bacon and some vinegar. I love this cabbage dish. I can eat a bowl full of this cabbage.

And, this is a edamame salad. We love edamame and we eat them quite often but I never had it in this form. This is a warm salad with mushroom, roasted bell pepper, snap peas and so on. I found this recipe on Martha Stewart magazine. I bought frozen shelled edamame. For flavor, I used vinegar and chili paste and stuff so it is a bit spicy but very good. To my surprise, my husband liked this dish. It is very healthy but tasty dish.

Speaking of edamame, I bought edamame plant this year for my container garden. It is growing some edamae but it is just like 5 of them so I don't really know what to do with them.

I also got basil for my garden as I always do every year. This year, basil has been growing really well so I have already harvested them twice and made pesto pasta. This pesto was really good. I wrote it down the recipe so I would like to upload it some other time.

I went to the library the other day and borrowed some books again. One of the book I borrowed was for my husband. This is from my favorite Japanese author named "Kotaro Isaka". He is very popular in Japan and I found that one of his books is finally translated into English. I always wanted my husband read one of his book so I borrowed it for him.

This is the book.

I read many of his book but I actually haven't read this one yet. I thought about reading it in English but I decided to get it in Japanese and read it in Japanese.

My husband finished reading it and he liked it.

He said he didn't like the first half of it but then he got into it and really liked it when he finished reading.

I went to this Jpaaneses used book store called "Book Off" in Manhattan the other day and purchased the original version of it. I am excited to read it. My husband ask me every day if I read it already or not. But I still have other books to finish so I haven't really started yet. (Plus, with a baby, my reading time is quite limited right now)

Other than the above book, I borrowed lots of cook book again. I realized that there are many celebrates publishing cook book lately.





This is a cook book from an actress "Eva Longoria". Since her parents are Mexican, I thought I can get some good Mexican recipes from this book. I liked many of the stuff I saw. I am excited about trying it.










This is my favorite celebrity chef Jaime Oliver's cook book about food from American continent. There are many dished which looks really good from all different regions. Very interesting book.











This is a book from iron chef Cat Cora. I actually have never tried her recipe so I would like to try something from this.













This is a cook book from Trisha Yearwood. I think she is an country singer (I am sorry but I am not sure about who she is)

In this book, there are lots of American classic recipes and some of them looks really good. I would definitely try her chicken salad and chicken casserole.







When I borrow or buy cookbook, the most important feature is pictures of the dishes. I don't like cookbooks without any pictures of the dishes. All of these cookbook above had many pictures of the dishes. However I wish they have pictures for each and every one of the recipe they have in the book.

Anyway, I am excited about trying some of the dished from these book. The only problem is that it is too hot to cook lately!

Manhattan Soup Dumpling Lunch & Indian Feast dinner with great friends

On Weekend, my husband and I went to Manhattan to see a Play called "Elling". There are famous actors in this show such as Brendan Fraser, Denis O'Hare and Jennifer Coolidge. It was a quite small theater and our seat was great!

The play was pretty funny and heart warming. The actors were great. I think their timing is just wonderful. I never had a chance to see those famous actors act right in front of you so this was a great experience for me. I feel blessed to live close to Manhattan at the moment like this.

Anyhow, our play was Matinee so we decided to have lunch before the show. We went to a Chinese place called "Joe's Shanghai. This is a famous soup dumpling place and I have been to their downtown location a few times and I liked it so I wanted to try their Midtown location also.

We ordered two different kinds of soup dumplings.

It has super hot soup and meat inside so we have to be very careful to eat those things.

The dumplings are really good. We had crab dumpling and pork dumpling. I think crab ones were a bit too crabby for me so I preferred pork ones.

The other thing I always order at this restaurant is Shanghai Fried Rice. This fried rice is my favorite. It is so good. It is just simple egg and scallion fried rice but the rice is always very shiny and it is so good. I wonder what kind of rice they use for this. It is just amazing in my opinion.

After the show, we walked around a little bit since it was such a nice day. Some people were wearing short sleeves and everybody was enjoying nice weather.

Then, we went to our friend's apartment since we were invited for a dinner at their place. They prepared wonderful Indian food for us.

Chick Pea dish and Cauliflower dish.

Cucumber, Red Radish, Pomegranate.

Lamb Keema.

Everything was so good and I had to go back for more after I finished my first plate. Lamb Keema reminded me of the lady who I used to like with when I was in California because she used to make this quite often. I missed this dish! I should try to make this at home. I wish I could eat something like this everyday. I love Indian food!

After the dinner, we had dessert.

We had cake and ice cream.

Cup cakes.

Banana Pudding.

And they made us great milk tea with tea leaves from Assam area. It was also really good.

We ate so much and we had a great time. We also had a friend of theirs from Cypress and all of us had a great time. I really enjoyed spending time with them. I wish we live much closer so we can do this more often.

Next time, I would love to invite them over and make something special for them. We are so lucky to have such great friends everywhere we go. Anyway, we had another great weekend!!!

Easy Chicken Curry & my favorite Clam Linguine & The men who stare at goats

Today, I would like to post some of the stuff which I made for the last few weeks but didn't get to upload on this blog.

First, this is easy lazy chicken curry using patak's curry paste.

All you need to do is mix this curry paste with chicken, onion and tomatoes then you will have a pretty good tasting chicken curry.

This is my secret weapon for those days when I don't have time or don't feel like cooking too much. I think it taste even better if you add some cilantro.

Next is clam linguini. This is one of my favorite dish. I learned this dish from one of my roommate back in California. (Check out the past post for more details about this clam linguini. Click here)

It has some cream so it is little bit creamy but also have lots of lemon juice so not too heavy. I also add lots of garlic, green onion, parsley and basil. It is soooo good!!

My husband doesn't like clam too much but when he tried it he said he liked it. Maybe I can make this more often from now on :-)

By the way, I watched a movie called "The men who stare at goats". It is a bit strange movie but I liked it from the beginning since one of my favorite actor Ewan Mcgregor was in it. Also, there are many other good actors in this movie.

George Clooney is also in this movie. I never really liked him and I didn't quite understand why he was so popular but after I watched this movie, I became a fan. He is a good actor and even though he is not my type, he is a good looking man for his age.

I normally see him in a serious role but I think he is great at comedic role.

This movie is a little bit strange movie but there are many parts which we laughed a lot and I personally liked this movie. If you like George Clooney, I think you should watch this movie sometimes :-)

Japanese Karaoke Box in Manhattan & Indian Dinner

After we had Chinese dumpling in Flushing, we head to Manhattan to meet up with some of friends. Since we couldn't do Karaoke on Sat night, we decided to go again. (This time I made a reservation.)

In American, typical Karaoke is at a bar singing in front of all the strangers but in Japan, we have Karaoke box. It is a small room with sofa and karaoke machine. You can rent these rooms by hour per person. This time we went with 6 people and I was the only Japanese so this was first time Karaoke box experience for everybody else.

In the beginning, we were not sure what we wanted to sing but when my husband started to sing, I think we felt more comfortable and start adding songs and singing. I sang some Japanese songs and I also tried English songs but English songs are difficult for me. I need to practice more English songs.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun at Karaoke and promised to go again. Next time, we should make a list of songs which we want to sing before we go.

After Karaoke, we went to have Indian food at a restaurant in Midtown called "Bay Leaf".

We ordered bunch of different dishes and shared.

These are some appetizers which I don't remember names. (One of them is samosa, that is all I know)

This is my favorite okura dish. I just love them!

Chicken Tikka Masala.

The front is spinach and cheese and in the back you can see lamb dish.

Puffy bread.

We also order some rice and Naan.

All the food was good and the service was excellent. The only thing was that all of the items were not spicy at all. I was expecting something little bit more spicy. Maybe they thought we can not handle spiciness. Next time, we definitely have to tell them to make it spicy.

Anyway, I had a wonderful day and it was perfect! On the way home, we took some photos of Manhattan night. It is amazing that we live in NY.

Shrimp Biryani

The temperature in NY has been cool and nice this past few days so it seems like my appetite and cooking desire is coming back! I feel like I haven't cooked real food for a while so the other day, I decided to make Shrimp Biryani for the first time in my life.

When I was invited for a dinner at our Pakistani friend's house at the end of last year (Click here for that post), she made lots of dishes and one of the dish was shrimp biryani. I watched how she made it so I decided to give it a try!

She used this Biryani Masala Mix so I bought the exact same one she used. She also added lots of spices and onion, tomato, cilantro, etc.

First, I made the sauce with this mix, onion, tomato, spices such as cloves, cinnamon, cardamon, ginger, garlic etc. I was supposed to add yogurt but I didn't have it at home so I added sour cream instead.  I added shrimps at the end then the sauce is done.

Then, I layered cooked rice and the sauce with some lemon juice and cilantro. Then, I put in the oven for a while to warm it up and at the end, sprinkled with saffron with milk.

When I was layering, I thought the sauce it too little but I think it was actually perfect ratio when it came out. Also, when I tasted the sauce, it was really salty but it became perfect after layering with rice.

My husband loves Indian food so he was really happy that I made this. I hadn't been cooking much lately so I felt little bit bad for him. Hopefully, this one made up for it. This biryani was pretty spicy for me though my husband said it is perfect spiciness.

This was the first time I made biryani and I am very happy with the result. I still have lots of biryani masala mix left so I am sure that I will be making this more often.

The funny thing is that I ate leftover next day and it was not as spicy as the night before. I wonder if the spiciness goes away with the time.

Anyhow, I am happy that my appetite and cooking desire is back. Now, I have to be careful eating too much :-)

Indian Butter Chicken

Since I still have some sweet saffron pilaf from the weekend, I decided to make some Butter Chicken to eat the pilaf with. I used the spice mix which I bought the other day.

This is the spice mix I used this time. I had never used this brand before.

First, saute chicken in butter and add this mix with tomato paste.

Add milk and cook more.

Add heavy cream at the end and serve with some rice.

It tasted really good but it was a bit too salty for my taste. Maybe I should add more milk or heavy cream. It was good that the rice was sweet so it evened out.

We had salad with it also. It is just simple salad with lettuce, corn and tomato with cilantro dressing. Tomato is from my garden!

We are having heat wave in NY. Yesterday, we had 98F. It was so hot. I think it will get better today. And we have Germany vs Spain game today! The whole neighborhood is cheering for Germany now because of us :-) I hope they will have a good game today!

Grilled Lamb Kofte & Safran Pilaf

Last weekend was three days weekend for Independence day. We did lots of fun activities but one of the thing we have to do during Independence weekend is BBQ.  Instead of regular hamburger and hot dog, we decided to have Middle Eastern BBQ with Lamb Kofte (Ground Lamb kebab). I mixed lots of cilantro, mint, garlic, onion and ginger with ground lamb and add some kebab spice mix. Also, corn is cheap in summer so we grilled corn. 

I love this ground lamb kebab. Ever time I go to Middle Eastern restaurant, I order this dish. I thought I didn't like lamb too much but with herbs and spices, I realized that I love Lamb. I think normally, you add parsley instead of cilantro but I had a bunch of cilantro in my fridge so I used that. It came out really good. The only thing is that it is quite difficult to grill. When we try to flip it over, some of the meat fall off the skewers. I wonder if there is any good way to avoid this. 

When it is done grilling, I sprinkle more cilantro on top with some sumac. I love sprinkle sumac on some meat. It has some lemony taste to it. 

I also made some rice to eat with. This is called "Zarda Pulao" from India. I made this rice before and loved it so I decided to make it again. (Click here for the previous post about Zarda Pulao.)

This pilaf has nuts, dried currant, Cinnamon, cardamon, saffron and some other spices and it is very very tasty. It was supposed to be really sweet but I didn't want to make it too sweet so I cut the sugar amount to 1/3 of what it required in the recipe. 

I made Lamb Kofte a bit spicy so this sweet rice was perfect with the spicy Lamb. Also, the corn was really sweet and crisp. The meal was so good, it was so difficult to stop eating.

After the dinner, we went to our neighbour's place and watched Independence day fireworks on TV. There are some people doing fireworks in neighborhood also. I thought fireworks are illegal here in NY. I wonder how people get fireworks. Do they go all the way to different state to buy them? Anyway, fireworks on TV was beautiful and we had a great time. 

By the way, did anyone watched World Cup on Saturday? Germany did pretty well on that game. My husband and I went to a local pub to cheer Germany with some other Germans. It was very exciting and lot of fun! I hope they will do well again on Wednesday.

Curry Flavored Spicy Cauliflower

I don't remember where and when I had this dish but I vaguely remember having something like this at an Indian restaurant or Indian family house. So I don't know the name of this dish but it is basically cauliflower and tomato cooked in many different kinds of spices. I tried to re-create this dish from my memory.

I believe this is something like a side dish but I ate it as a main dish. Since it is curry flavor, I can eat lots of rice with this dish :-)

Here is how I made it.

Curry Flavored Spicy Cauliflower
Ingredients
Cauliflower   half (about 2 cups of florets)
Onion            1
Canned diced tomato   14oz
Garlic            1 clove
Vegetable Oil       2 table spoon
Brown mustard seeds   1 tea spoon
Cumin seeds                1 tea spoon
Ground Coriander seeds  1 tea spoon
Ground Cumin seeds       1 tea spoon
Curry Powder              2 table spoon
Turmeric                     1 tea spoon
Gram Masala              1 tea spoon
Salt                             1 tea spoon
Chili Powder              1 tea spoon
Lime Juice                  1/2 lime

1. Cut cauliflower into bite size pieces. Chop garlic and onion.

2. Add oil into a pot then add brown mustard seeds and cumin seeds and heat it up. When the seeds start to make cracking sound, add garlic and onion.

3. When onion is started to get soft, add all the spices. (ground coriander, ground cumin, curry powder, turmeric, gram masala, salt and chili powder) and mix well.

4. After you sautéed a little bit, add cauliflower and coat them with the spices.

5. Add canned diced tomatoes and turn the heat low. Simmer.

6. When cauliflower is soft, it is done! At the end, add juice of half lime.

This is very easy ( I just added whatever spices I had at home) and came out really good. It was good spice level but if you want it spicier, you can add more chili powder and if you want less spicy, you can omit chili powder.

This dish is great for side dish but it is also great as a main dish. Enjoy!