foodiefanatics

We had an unusual combo tonight. I made spicy chocolate thighs (the recipe called for wings but we like thighs better) from RAchel Ray mag (Feb 09, I believe). These were really good if you like mole. Lots of chocolate flavor. I would have liked a bit more spice next time around. Then I also made a green curry soup that we poured on udon noodles (and when the noodles ran out, ate on rice). The sauce was excellent. I invented it (probably not even remotely authentic).

Green Curry Sauce a la Vasudeva
Mix 1/2 t turmeric, 1 T chopped garlic and 1/2t salt in a mortar and pestle until paste. Add 1 T green curry paste and 1/2 T red chile paste (if you have it).  Mush it up.
Heat 1 T canola oil in a large skillet and add the mush. Fry for about 1 minute.  Add one can coconut milk and 1/2 can water and 2t sugar.  Stir until the sauce thickens somewhat (about 5 minutes). Add 1 T fish sauce and 1/2 squeezed lime. Taste for salt. If  too salty, add more sugar until the tastes are balanced. Put your noodles or rice in a bowl (probably could do some quickly steamed veggies as well or tofu) and ladle the sauce over. 
I'm just finished up a turtle ice cream pie so I haven't tried it yet. It's from bon appetit march 09 and features a graham cracker toasted pecan crust with ice cream and home made caramel topped with chocolate ganache (which is what I'm working on right now).  The caramel is made of brown sugar which I'm not sure I favor when making caramel. But we'll see.

 Sweet and spicy carrots were quite yummy, but my daughter said they tasted like carrots in lemonade and she really didn't like that combination. I substituted creme de cassis for the Elderberry liquor. 
Potatoes were tasty and had a nice, crispy crust on them. I did not peel the potatoes. See a picture of the potatoes below.
The ribs, well, they were an adventure starting with the new grill which I couldn't get on only to discover after much grumbling that the dumb thing was on already!  Okay, first hurdle overcome, now I had to figure out how to put on the hickory chips without a built in smoker on the grill. AFter doing some reading on it, I soaked the chips for 20 minutes then wrapped them in an "open roll" of tin foil which I took to mean, wrapping them with tin foil but leaving the top part open.  While they were soaking, I preheated the grill to "indirect medium" which meant (I hope) preheating the grill with all three knobs on, then turning of the middle and turning the top and bottom to medium. I put the meat in the middle (according to the Weber directions), put in a pan of water, shut the lid and ran back to re-read the directions.  It didn't give a temperature for the ribs so I wasn't sure I had indirect medium. And they seemed to be cooking too fast and the temperature was 400. So I reduced the heat somewhat. Still, I think they cooked too fast. One smaller rack was done in an hour (the recipe said 1.5-2 hours). The second rack I way overcooked.  So, this was not a big success. Hopefully, I'll have better luck (or have learned something) next time (see picture below).
The blackberry pie was great! I'll post the pie crust recipe in recipes. It turned out beautifully flaky. We topped it with whipped cream.