Mount Hunger Kung Pao (Mount Kunger Pao?)

Mildred (my little Kung Pao Kutie Pie) just looked over my shoulder and groaned. "It is not Mount Kunger Pao!"

Well, if it's not that, it is, at the very least, Americanized Kung Pao, given the fact that it has peanut butter in it instead of just peanuts and that we here on Mount Hunger add additional sugar, to taste. These are both very American things to do-- take a perfectly good dish, add peanut butter and sugar, and call it good. It's also taken most exotic ingredients away, leaving behind the spicy-sweet flavor combination.

Lest you be put off by this introduction, let me assure you that it is good! I'm posting this recipe in response to a couple of requests for it, so let that give you the confidence to someday try it yourself.

It's a rare dish around these parts, reserved for times when we're craving it. Guess who's craving it right now?

(Mount) Kung(er) Pao

We very loosely follow this recipe, but here's our country bumpkin version. We usually double the amounts and sometimes also increase the sauce if it doesn't seem like enough (though it should be, we are still sometimes greedy for more).

• - 8 oz. uncooked noodles of your choice (We usually use regular pasta, but rice noodles are both customary and more delicious)
  -  2 to 3 tablespoons oil
• -  1 to 1.5 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
• - 1 large onion, diced
• - 1 tbsp. freshly pressed garlic (about 4-5 cloves)
  -  a couple cups of broccoli, cooked and drained (add in any vegetables you like-- peppers are usual-- but we use broccoli)
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KUNG PAO SAUCE INGREDIENTS:

• - 1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce
• - 1/2 cup peanut butter (crunchy is best, because it already contains peanut pieces)
• - 1/4 cup rice vinegar
• - 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• - 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• - brown sugar, to taste (we prefer a sweet-spicy kung pao, so we use more than we should)
• - 1 tablespoon (or more) cornstarch dissolved in a bit of cold water
• - ground cayenne or red pepper flakes, to taste (I prefer flakes; just remember that the longer the food sits, the more heat the flakes will release)
  
  
• - additional peanut butter, to taste
  
  - toppings, if desired: chopped, toasted peanuts and/or sesame seeds

Directions:

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  1.  Make Kung Pao sauce by combining all ingredients except cornstarch together over medium-low heat until combined. Add cornstarch and cook until thickened slightly. Add more peanut butter, brown sugar, and cayenne/red pepper flakes, to taste, and set aside. (I like mine with quite a bit of sweet and heat.)
  
  
• 2.  Cook and drain broccoli, set it aside, and then start boiling pasta. Cook pasta until al dente, toss with a bit of oil, and set aside.
  
  
• 3.  Cook chicken and onion in oil over medium heat until done, then add pressed garlic and cook until fragrant, about thirty seconds to one minute. Combine broccoli, chicken mixture, and sauce. Either toss sauce/chicken mixture with the cooked pasta or top pasta with the mixture. 
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• This dish is good hot, lukewarm, or even cold. If you want it hot, lightly heat all ingredients together in a pot, while stirring, until heated through.
  
  If desired, top with chopped peanuts or sesame seeds.

Curried Pumpkin Soup with Chicken

 

(*To note: This picture actually shows curried butternut-pumpkin soup. This recipe will make a more orange soup. Close enough.)

A recipe of sorts, based on this. Makes a big ol' pot of delicious soup! The amounts given are loose, and I always add more spices, to taste, as I'm making it. I highly recommend tasting frequently as you cook. That's how I maintain this robust figure! :)

We have enough pumpkins for perhaps one more pot. I will miss it when they are gone, and will probably make it using butternut squash, instead.

Curried Pumpkin Soup with Chicken

-6 small New England sugar pie pumpkins, halved, de-seeded, and roasted until flesh is tender

-a stick of butter

-3 onions, finely chopped

-a large head of garlic (a full head, not one clove), pressed

-2 tbsp. yellow curry powder, more to taste

-1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg, more to taste

-a couple of tablespoons freshly minced ginger

-1/2 tsp. ground cayenne (optional), to taste

-1 tsp. salt, to taste

-1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

-6 cups chicken bone broth (or stock/broth)

-1 can full-fat coconut milk

-additional cow's milk or cream, as needed

-several pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced into very thin strips

-chopped cilantro, if desired

-pumpkin seeds for garnish, if desired, either toasted from the pumpkins or green pepitas given to you by your mother-in-law :)

Directions:

1. Scoop the cooked pumpkin flesh out of shells and puree in batches in the blender with enough of the bone broth and/or coconut milk to help blend evenly. Place in a pot and stir in the remainder of the broth and coconut milk. Add additional cow's milk or cream until you reach the desired consistency. 

2. Saute the chopped onions in the butter over medium heat until soft and translucent. Add the minced ginger and pressed garlic until fragrant. Add to pot with pumpkin puree.

3. Add remainder of ingredients (except pumpkin seeds) to pot and heat over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until chicken is cooked through.

If desired, add pumpkin seeds for garnish.

Glow-in-the-Dark Turmeric & Coconut Fish Curry

 

Seriously, that fluorescent yellow around the edges of the bowl is not a trick of the camera!

Here's another recipe based on someone else's concoction, with the specialty ingredients omitted.
This is more of a sweet curry than a spicy one, and it's the perfect winter comfort food, only healthier than most.  I usually top it with a sprinkle of cayenne to add a little heat.

We double the following, and it serves our family of 12.

Ingredients:

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• -1 lb. mild white fish (we use tilapia)
  -1 onion
  -2 tbsp olive oil
• -4 garlic cloves, or more, pressed
• -1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
• -lime juice, to taste
• -1 can full-fat coconut milk

-1 cup chicken stock/broth

-ground cardamom, to taste (if desired)

• -1/4 tsp cloves, ground
  -2 tsp ground coriander
• -1 tbsp ground Turmeric, or to taste (we buy it in bulk and just dump a bunch in until it tastes good
• -1 tsp. ground cumin
  -fresh cilantro (we use fresh, frozen, chopped from summertime)
  
  

-Basmati or white rice (we cook four cups dry for 12, so 2 cups dry should be enough to easily serve six)

Directions:

1. Saute chopped onion in olive oil over medium heat until soft and translucent. Add grated ginger and pressed garlic and saute for about one minute until fragrant.

2. Add lime juice, coconut milk, chicken stock, and spices, and cook until heated through. Add thawed fish and cook until done. Once fish is cooked (this will not take long), break into chunks with a spoon and then add in the fresh (or frozen) cilantro.

3. Serve over rice.

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Romantic Thai Red Curry (19!)

 

I'll try to get an appetizing shot next time we make this, but for now, a split-second shot of the last bowl.

Millie first made this for John's and my 19th anniversary meal (nineteen years...wahoo!). She's heard me rave about Thai red curry since John took me to a Thai restaurant several years ago, and now there's no need to go to restaurants!

We loosely follow the recipe found here but omit a few of the rarest ingredients, making this a definite splurge meal but not so excessive that we can't still make payments on our house, which is just the right balance for a nineteenth anniversary. We omit the butternut/pumpkin and green beans to streamline it, substitute lime juice for the kaffir lime leaves, and regular basil for the Thai basil. I'm guessing our version is a greatly dressed down version of Thai Red Curry, but it's doable, and it tastes close enough to the restaurant version to make me swoon and eat it for three meals running.

We double or triple these amounts, but I'm putting in the original amounts with our alterations. Most of the children like the rice/curry ratio to heavily favor the rice. I'm the opposite and eat the curry as a soup with just a small amount of rice mixed in. Slurping is encouraged.

Red Curry Paste

-one can of Maesri Thai Red Curry paste (the cheapest, and, according to the recipe's author, the best!) *USE LESS IF YOU DON'T LIKE HEAT. The author recommends 5-6 tbsp. or less, to taste. We use the whole can, which makes me happy and most children unhappy.

-2 large garlic cloves, minced
-2 tsp. fresh ginger, finely grated
-1 tbsp. lemongrass paste (found a tube in Walmart's refrigerator section, and it lasts for several big curry batches)


Thai Red Curry

- 1 cup chicken broth/stock
-14 oz. full-fat coconut milk
-a splash or two of lime juice, to taste
-1 tbsp. sugar
- 1 tbsp. or so chopped basil, if desired (we just dump in a bit of chopped, frozen, garden basil, to taste)
-2 tsp. fish sauce, plus more to taste (one bottle will stretch a looong way in curries)
-boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into very thin slices-- as much or as little chicken as you want. More is better. :)

Jasmine rice, cooked

Cilantro leaves, for garnish


DIRECTIONS

• Heat oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat.
• Add canned curry paste, garlic, ginger, and lemongrass paste and cook for about 2 minutes so it "dries out." 
• Add chicken broth and stir to dissolve paste. Simmer rapidly for 3 minutes or until liquid reduces by half.
• Add coconut milk, lime juice, sugar, basil, and fish sauce. Stir, then bring to a simmer and turn heat down to medium. Cook until sauce is almost the thickness you want, and then add sliced chicken. Cook for several more minutes until chicken is cooked through. 
• Taste curry and add more fish sauce for saltiness, as needed, and/or more sugar for sweetness.
• Serve over jasmine rice, garnished with cilantro leaves, if desired.

Italian Wedding Soup

(The last half-eaten bowl of soup-- more delicious than it looks.)

Before I type the recipe, here's an extra paragraph in case you haven't made bone broth before.

Homemade bone broth is the base for almost all of our soups these days, and it turns a good soup into an extraordinary one, with minimal effort.

First of all, SAVE THE BONES. ALWAYS.
After a meal, we just throw the bones in a ziplock bag and store them in the freezer until needed.

To make poultry bone broth, take a turkey carcass, a roast chicken carcass, or any combination of bones thereof and place in a crockpot. Add an onion, quartered, about 6 cloves garlic (split), a stalk of celery cut into chunks, a carrot or two, cut into big chunks, half a dozen peppercorns, a couple of teaspoons of salt, and a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (this will help the bones break down more easily so you can get all the goodness of that marrow). Add about a gallon of water (I usually just fill to top of crockpot) and simmer on low heat for about 24 hours. Strain into a bowl for use.

*I also now make bone broth in our instant pot when I forget to do it the day before and am feeling time's pinch. It only takes a couple of hours in the instant pot, but when I remember, I prefer using the crockpot.

ITALIAN WEDDING SOUP

This is a sloppy "recipe," as it's basically my notes to Susannah typed word-for-word. I can always come back on here later and type it up in proper recipe form.
A couple of notes: 
1. The ingredients are in bold
2. These amounts are general. As I told Susannah, throw in whatever you want! You can't ruin it!
3. If you don't have a huge stockpot and want to fit this soup in a normal pot, cut it all in half. This fed 11 Owen people for supper with leftovers for the next day's lunch.

One gallon+ of turkey or chicken bone broth (or store-bought chicken stock, though it will cost more and taste less) for the soup's base.

For the meatballs:

2-3 pounds ground turkey (could use pork or beef)
1 and a half pounds sweet Italian sausage
1 cup dry bread crumbs (ours are plain homemade ones; if you're using storebought seasoned, keep that in mind when you shake in the dried seasonings at the end.)
3 eggs
1/2 grated Parmesan cheese
1 large onion, finely minced (we used food processor to turn it to mush)
6 plump cloves garlic (turned to mush with the onion)
1 tsp. salt
a couple of shakes each of dried sage, rosemary, thyme, and basil

Mix all these together by hand in a bowl. Shape into smallish meatballs and bake on tinfoil-lined, rimmed baking sheets for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees, or until cooked through.

Slice 5-6 carrots into coins and set aside.
Thaw 1-2 bags of frozen spinach (we used two 12 oz. bags) and squeeze out excess liquid. In the summer, use fresh!

Meanwhile, sauté about one-two cups chopped celery and one large onion in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and butter until softened. Add the celery mixture to the bone broth, add the sliced carrots, and cook until carrots are almost soft. Add 12 oz. small-shaped pasta (acini de pepe is standard, but we just used egg noodles broken in pieces) and spinach and cook until the pasta is al dente. Add the meatballs, add additional salt and pepper (and garlic powder, rosemary, thyme, and basil), to taste, if needed, serve, and slurp.

Healthy Muffins #2

Ah, yes, here are the carrot-apple spice muffins from 2015.  I'm preeetty sure that I just found my scribbled notes.   I threw these together, too, but if they were good enough to stuff the notes in a recipe box, then they're good enough to slap on here.

 

 If you end up making something from the notes that I'm preeetty sure belong with these pictures, and your end result is, say, a fragrant and spicy Indian masala sauce, do let me know, will you?  I'll warn the others who come after you. 

I Do Hope This Is the Right Scrap of Scribbled Paper

Makes a whole mess of muffins-- I'm guessing 2 dozen-- so grease 2 muffin tins, please.

- 1 cup butter, softened (I often use 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce)

- 1/2 cup white sugar (or honey)

- 1/2 cup brown sugar

- 2 eggs, beaten

- 1 tsp. vanilla

- 2 cups flour (or 1 and 3/4 cup flour + 1/2 cup ground flaxseed)

- 2 cups oats

- 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg

- 1/2 tsp. ground cloves

- 1 tsp. ground cinnamon

- 1 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder

- 1/2 tsp. baking soda

- 1/2 tsp. salt

- 3 ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 to 1 and 1/2 cups)

- 1 to 1 and 1/2 cup finely grated carrots

- 1 cup raisins

1. Cream butter and sugars (then add applesauce and honey, if using); mix in egg and vanilla, then stir in bananas, grated carrot, and raisins.

2.Combine the dry ingredients and make a well in the center.  Add wet ingredients all at once to the dry mixture, stirring just until  moistened. (Batter will be lumpy.)

In a 400-degree oven, bake for 10-12 minutes or  until done.

ReJuVn8

Creeeeeeeak. 

Squeeeeeeeaak.

The door was nearly fused shut with rust, but, hey, it's been 5 and a half years since my last post! Hope springs eternal, as they say, and if this unplanned resurrection is any indication, I think buildabelly also springs eternal.

In the last few years, I've almost entirely stopped taking pictures of food because finding them on my camera brought to mind buildabelly, that old vault of food, now so thickly covered with dust that it causes people to sneeze in Africa. Thinking of buildabelly just made me feel guilty.

Even though there are recipes on buildabelly that I have not made in over a decade and will probably never feel worth the time to make again, I have a soft spot in my heart for ye olde recipe blog. It's charming in its way, and every time my brother Joel tells me how he's doctored up and improved the bland black bean "bake" that I have not made since Susannah was a baby, I laugh and think that I really should just take the recipe down. But I don't.

How did I find my way back here again, then? Today, as I sat eating the LAST BOWL of Susannah's masterful soup from last night's supper, I asked her if she still had the notes of instruction I'd jotted on a piece of paper, because this was not a soup I wanted lost to the abyss. She uncovered the scrap of paper in a recycling bin, I took a picture of my bowl of half-eaten soup, and I determined to post it here so that we could eat it again and again in the future.

But when I arrived at buildabelly, what did I find in my drafts folder but a heap of food pictures I'd piled here three years ago when I last thought I might start posting food again. Ulp. 

The least I can do is post the snapshots, in the same jumbled manner in which I piled them. If anyone stumbles back here like I did, and one of these snapshots causes your belly to rumble (in a good way), let me know, and I'll try to give a general roadmap-recipe. 

p.s. If you want a recipe for that double-yolked egg at the end, I'm afraid you're out of luck.

Almond Peach Oatmeal Muffins (1 tsp. of almond extract and a quart of chopped peaches...less salt)

The strawberry lemonade cake.

cinnamon apple yogurt?