These are so easy they're hardly a recipe. Which makes them extra awesome. I got the idea here: A Food Centric Life. I think I got a roasted tomato recipe from this site, too, so you foodies might want to browse a bit.
Step 1: Get some nice scallops and let them sit on your counter until they're room temperature. I live in the mountains, so I thawed some ridiculously expensive frozen scallops and they worked fine. I'm hoping you folks near the coasts can do better than that, though.
Step 2: Pour some hoisin sauce into a bowl. If hoisin by itself is too sweet for you, add a little soy sauce. We used Kikkoman hoisin* with a little Kikkoman soy sauce thrown in. Heat a large saucepan on medium heat and add some vegetable oil.
Step 3: Pat your scallops dry with a paper towel (it helps them brown) and put them in the pan. Cook them a couple minutes, until you can see them browning up on the edges.
Step 4: Turn the scallops over and brush/pour some hoisin on top of them. Cook them another minute or two until they look done. (They should be kind of but not super firm when you poke them with a spatula.)
Pow! Done! Great with stir-fried veggies and rice. You're welcome.
The first time I did scallops for the kids, I just cooked them in butter, and everyone thought they were too sweet. This time, the sweet scallops and salty sauce balanced pretty well and everyone was into the scallops.
*This isn't our favorite hoisin--I can't remember the name of our favorite but I know it when I see it. Kikkoman is easy to find here, though, and not crazy sweet. Kikkoman soy sauce is our favorite, though.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
Slow Cooker Chicken Marrakesh (or Madras, or Matsumoto)
It's winter, so it's slow cooker season again. (And it's winter break, so I finally have time to think about cooking again. I swear I don't mean to let this project die!) This is a recipe from allrecipes.com, modified according to what we had on hand, and it came out so well I wouldn't change a thing.
Ingredients:
1 large white onion
1 large or two medium sweet potatoes (preferably satsumaimo)
2 large carrots (or half a bag of baby carrots)
2 cloves garlic
2 large boneless chicken breasts
15-oz can garbanzo beans
14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried parsley
1. Cut the chicken into chunks and place in one layer on bottom of slow cooker.
2. Peel the sweet potato(es) and cut into large chunks. Place on top of chicken, near outside wall of slow cooker.
3. Cut carrot and onion into chunks, place in slow cooker.
4. Mince garlic and add to slow cooker.
5. Drain and rinse garbanzos and add to slow cooker.
6. In small bowl mix together garam masala, parsley, and salt, then sprinkle over what's in the cooker.
7. Add tomatoes and stir.
8. Cook on high for 5 hours. Stir near end.
9. Serve with couscous.
Lately supermarkets here have been stocking satsuma-imo, the Japanese sweet potatoes that are purple on the outside and yellow-white on the inside. That's what we used, and they were perfect. I'm sure yams or other Western sweet potatoes would be good too, but satsumaimo have a lighter, almost parsnip-like sweetness that really worked well; plus, they get flaky and fluffy like a regular potato when you cook them, rather than soft and squishy like a yam.
The original recipe called for 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp black pepper instead of the garam masala, but we didn't have all those things while we did have garam masala (which includes those things and more), so we used it, and it was awesome. So this is the recipe.
It went perfectly with couscous.
Ingredients:
1 large white onion
1 large or two medium sweet potatoes (preferably satsumaimo)
2 large carrots (or half a bag of baby carrots)
2 cloves garlic
2 large boneless chicken breasts
15-oz can garbanzo beans
14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried parsley
1. Cut the chicken into chunks and place in one layer on bottom of slow cooker.
2. Peel the sweet potato(es) and cut into large chunks. Place on top of chicken, near outside wall of slow cooker.
3. Cut carrot and onion into chunks, place in slow cooker.
4. Mince garlic and add to slow cooker.
5. Drain and rinse garbanzos and add to slow cooker.
6. In small bowl mix together garam masala, parsley, and salt, then sprinkle over what's in the cooker.
7. Add tomatoes and stir.
8. Cook on high for 5 hours. Stir near end.
9. Serve with couscous.
Lately supermarkets here have been stocking satsuma-imo, the Japanese sweet potatoes that are purple on the outside and yellow-white on the inside. That's what we used, and they were perfect. I'm sure yams or other Western sweet potatoes would be good too, but satsumaimo have a lighter, almost parsnip-like sweetness that really worked well; plus, they get flaky and fluffy like a regular potato when you cook them, rather than soft and squishy like a yam.
The original recipe called for 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 teaspoon turmeric, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and 1/2 tsp black pepper instead of the garam masala, but we didn't have all those things while we did have garam masala (which includes those things and more), so we used it, and it was awesome. So this is the recipe.
It went perfectly with couscous.
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