Avocado Chicken

"Honey, I'm home."  "Does it smell good in here?"  Sniff, sniff.  "Wow, smells awesome! What's for supper?"  Turns out it was Avocado Chicken baking.  I never liked avocado when I was younger, thought it was just a mushy green gross veggie. Or is it a fruit?  How about a large berry with a single seed?  Little did I know how good it was for you - lots of fibre, higher in potassium than bananas, lots of "good" fat, and high in vitamins B and E. Phew! In any case, delicious on salads, burgers, just about anything, including chicken.

Avocado Chicken with fresh basil, coconut rice
and a simple salad.

In this case, the gist of the recipe is a chicken breast pounded flat, with avocado and fresh basil. SO sided this with coconut rice and a simple salad. I love this dish because you get to pound with the kitchen mallet. That's just fun.

Next time: maybe some hot sauce

Me: 8/10
SO: 8/10
SSO: 8/10, although we scraped off the avocado

Salmon Cakes

Cycled in to work today, so was extra tired coming home.  It was all I could do to help get groceries from the car, and drag the garbage bins to the curb. Good thing SO had dinner cased tonight. Was certainly smelling good as I sank down at the kitchen table. Potatoes plus salmon plus cilantro? Mmmm sounds fine to me.

Salmon Cakes. Somewhat lacking in presentation,
but makes up for it in flavour.

I'm not sure exactly what "traditional" salmon cakes are supposed to be like, maybe there isn't such thing. Perhaps it is just a variant of the more famous crab cakes. I know that I'm usually disappointed in crab cakes whenever I try them in restaurants. I don't think I'm overly fussy, maybe just high expectations. Oh well, this was pretty easy to throw together by the looks of it. And oh man, the  cilantro just smells so fresh. SO put in one can of salmon, we agreed that 2 cans would have been better with the proportions of potato and cilantro that we had.

Next Time: Should have added the hot sauce, more salmon and maybe even more cilantro.

Me: 8/10
SO: 9/10
SSO: n/a, but I would guess 8/10

Vittles

This is a really old favourite from when I was a child. I have no idea where it came from, although I vaguely remember my Gramma making it. In any case, the name vittles simply means food or snack. It is derived from victuals, and is likely a misspelling since it actually sounds like "vittles".

The nice thing about this is that it is extremely quick, very tasty (to me and SSO anyway), and also very flexible. The basic recipe is essentially, for each person, 1 egg, a handfull of grated cheese, and a handful of breadcrumbs. Fry it up like a patty and voila.

Vittles. No this is not a product placement for
Heinz, but ketchup is so integral to enjoying
this that I had to show it in the photo.

The beauty is there are endless variations. Depending on the size of your eggs you just add a little more or less cheese or breadcrumbs.  Have a little chicken left over from yesterday?  Shred it up and stick it in. Almost any cheese will do, although practically it usually ends up being cheddar or similar. You can also use breadcrumbs from any kind of bread. I always take the last bits of any loaf, buns, bagels, or any other bread we have lying around and put it out to dry. Into the blender after a few days, then in a tupperware in the fridge. We've been known to also try things like a bit of hummous, other types of meat, even the odd random vegetable chopped up. I don't usually go too wild as the consumer of the end product is none other than SSO, the Vittle King.

Next Time:  Cannot improve this.

Me: 10/10
SO: 5/10
SSO: 10/10

Pad Thai

 Time to finally try making Pad Thai, or at least fake Pad Thai.  This ubiquitous dish seems to be everywhere...as expected in Thai restaurants, but also the asian place in the food court, the Vietnamese place run by the nice Indian lady, and even that take-out deli lunch place near your workplace. For some reason, actually probably that reason, I've never bothered trying to make it at home.  Well here is my chance, SO bought a Pad Thai spice packet from the supermarket.

Pad Thai spice packet

Hmmm, should be OK. Basically the recipe is up to you in terms of your protein choice, and what other fresh stuff you want to put in. The suggestion was some peanuts and sprouts, along with the spice packet which you mix with water, milk, and peanut butter. Excellent, I love improvising - lots of other stuff I can try adding. And even better, a family friend was coming over - the perfect guinea pig scenario. So I settled on chicken and tofu (the firm kind, so it wouldn't fall apart when cooking), lots of sprouts, and the suggested rice noodles, called Banh Pho, a.k.a. rice sticks. I also love fresh herbs, so a bunch of cilantro (here's a link for an explanation of cilantro vs coriander). There were also a couple eggs.  I ended up cooking too much chicken, so I had to make more sauce. I just supplemented the given recipe with some fish sauce, white wine vinegar, water, and a bit more milk and peanut butter. 

The finished Pad Thai dish, with chicken and tofu

 All in all, it turned out pretty good. I should have put in more cilantro leaves. I'd read lots about how it can be tricky to cook the noodles the right amount, I was worried about overly chewy noodles. So at the appointed time I drained and cooled them off with cold water. They had to be thrown in and mixed with the rest anyway, although it took longer to heat through. 

Next Time:  hmmm, lots of things.  More cilantro, different brand of noodles, more crunched peanuts, another egg.  I'd also slice the chicken finer, and make it a bit more saucier.

Me: 7.5/10
SO: 7/10
SSO: 1/10  (hard time with this one, had to separate the chicken and a few scraped off noodles)