Singapore-Inspired Chicken and Shrimp with Rice

To download a copy of the recipe for Singapore-Inspired Chicken and Shrimp with Rice, click HERE.

There are good reasons why Singapore Chicken continues to be a popular dish throughout Southeast Asia, available everywhere from fine restaurants to street vendors: it’s exotic, doesn’t require a long time to make, and is very tasty.

This week’s recipe – Singapore-Inspired Chicken and Shrimp with Rice - differs a bit from classic Singapore Chicken in both its ingredients and its preparation. The idea was to simplify the recipe and make its ingredients friendlier to the American pantry, while still resulting in a delicious meal that’s easy to make.

So  let’s get right to it! This recipe makes 4 dinner size servings.

Here’s what you’ll need: 1 lb. boneless chicken breast; salt and pepper; garlic powder; ground ginger; oil for sauté; 1 medium onion, rough chopped; 1 cup low-sodium soy sauce; ¼ cup maple syrup; 1 cup orange juice; 1 lb. uncooked shrimp, shelled and deveined; a 20 ounce can crushed pineapple in juice; 1 green bell pepper, diced; 3 Tbsp corn starch; ¼ cup cold water; 4 cups cooked rice; thin-sliced green onions for garnish

First, we’ll brown the chicken:

Cut the chicken breast into cubes. Season the cubed chicken with salt, pepper, garlic powder and a bit of ginger. (You'll want to go easy on the salt; remember, the soy sauce you'll use to make the topping is quite salty on its own!)

Warm some oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken to the skillet and cook until browned.

While the chicken is browning, we’ll prepare the sauce:

Put the onion, soy sauce, and syrup in a blender or food processor and process until combined into a smooth sauce.

Transfer to a bowl and stir in the orange juice.

Now back to the chicken:

If there’s no oil left in the skillet after the chicken has browned (which, when I made this, there wasn't), go on to the next step. If there is still oil in the skillet after the chicken has browned, transfer the chicken to a plate, drain the oil from the skillet, and return the chicken to the pan.

Pour the sauce over the chicken.

Add the shrimp, pineapple (including juice) and green pepper.

Cover the skillet and simmer until fork tender, about 25 minutes.

While the mixture is simmering in the skillet, prepare the rice as per the directions on the package.

When the mixture has finished cooking, use slotted spoon to transfer it to a bowl, retaining the liquid in the skillet.

Measure the liquid – it should be something around three cups - and prepare a slurry of ¼ cup cold water and 1 Tbsp of corn starch per cup of liquid. Add the slurry to the pan juices.

Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until thickened (about 5 minutes.)

To serve:

Place some rice on a plate.

Place the chicken and shrimp mixture on top of the rice.

Top with sauce.

Garnish with the green onions.

To download a copy of the recipe for Singapore-Inspired Chicken and Shrimp with Rice, click HERE. 

And there you have it: an easy meal that’s delicious and saves well too!

Hope you enjoy making and eating Singapore-Inspired Chicken and Shrimp with Rice as much as I did. And be sure to stop by next week for another great-tasting, kitchen-tested treat! Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Tomato-Basil Risotto with Roasted Red Pepper

To download a copy of the recipe for Tomato-Basil Risotto with Roasted Red Pepper, click HERE.

I recently had the good fortune of attending a gathering of friends who love to cook. Some are professionals, some devoted home cooks; all contributed their talents (and, being human, no doubt a bit of competitive spirit too) to a spread of good food more expansive than any banquet I could imagine. One of the many great dishes there was a delicious shrimp risotto that reminded me of two things: that I really love risotto, and that it has been far too long since I’ve made it. Today’s recipe corrects that.

Risotto, for anyone not familiar, is a rich and highly addictive rice dish with a unique, al dente yet creamy texture. That texture, without which risotto is just not risotto, comes from the fact that it is made from any of several special short-grain rices that readily absorb liquid and release starch, instead of the long-grain rice used in most other rice dishes. The other essential part is the constant stirring (and occasional agitation of the pan itself) necessary for the rice to release its starch. Once started, the preparation of risotto is not usually something you can walk away from to let cook on its own. (For that reason, good mise en place – having everything measured, chopped, etc., before you start – is especially important here.) If you give the preparation the attention it deserves, you – and your family or guests - will be amply rewarded.

Within the basic risotto structure - rice, onion, garlic, oil or butter, wine and parmesan – many treatments are possible, This recipe is for Tomato-Basil Risotto with Roasted Red Pepper. It’s shown in the photo above topped with cornmeal-crusted codfish nuggets and surrounded by marinated grilled zucchini and yellow squash. (The fish is based on a recipe posted here previously; if you’d like a copy of that recipe, just let me know and I’ll be happy to send it. The grilled, marinated vegetables are from a recipe published by Bobby Flay in his “Grilling for Life” cookbook. It generally consists of grilling the vegetables, then marinating them.)

Hope you enjoy this take on an Italian classic! This recipe makes four servings.

Begin by warming 4 cups of vegetable broth in a saucepan over low heat.

While the broth is warming, roast a red bell pepper on the stove burner. After the entire skin is blackened, wrap the pepper in foil and set aside to steam in its own moisture. When it has cooled enough to handle, cut the roasted pepper into small pieces and set aside.

At this point, you’ll want to check your e-mails, go to the rest room, or do anything else you might otherwise be tempted to do while the risotto is cooking. The Risotto Show is about to start, and it’s performed with no intermissions!

Put 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a sauté pan and sauté the one small onion and 4 garlic cloves, all finely chopped, over medium heat. (I used a red onion just because it was what I had on hand, but any preferred kind of onion will work.)

When they are cooked through, add one cup of Arborio rice (not regular long-grain rice!) and cook for 2 – 3 minutes, stirring constantly to coat the rice lightly in the oil.

Add ¾ cup of dry white wine (Chardonnay or similar) to the sauté pan and cook until the liquid is absorbed, stirring constantly.

Increase the heat to medium-high. Add ¼ cup of chopped, fresh basil and 1 Tbsp of fresh thyme.

Immediately after, add the broth, ½ cup at a time, stirring occasionally and waiting till the liquid is absorbed before adding more.

When all the broth is absorbed, add a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes (very well drained but not rinsed) and the roasted red pepper. Cook long enough to heat through.

Add ½ cup of fresh grated parmesan.

Stir until combined, and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

To download a copy of the recipe for Tomato-Basil Risotto with Roasted Red Pepper, click HERE.

Enjoy! And please come back next week for another delicious, family-friendly recipe. Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Brown Rice Rizzuto

Brown rice what?

As much as the title may at first appear to be the result of a guy from New Jersey trying to spell “risotto” from how the word sounds, it’s not. This is the side-dish follow-up to last week’s Italian-style breaded fish article, and a brief explanation of its origins before we get to the recipe is probably in order.

If you cook risotto, a rich (and heavenly!) rice dish, regardless of where you learned how, the first thing you were taught about it almost certainly was this: regular rice must never be used in a risotto recipe. The rice you use must be Arborio rice, carnaroli rice, or one of a few other special varieties.

When you were told that, didn’t you wonder, even just a little, what would happen if you did use regular rice? We know it wouldn’t turn out to be risotto, of course, but what would it be? It made me wonder, and there was no way to find out except to try. It taught me two things:

1. Simply substituting brown rice for Arborio rice, and in all other ways using the risotto cooking method and ingredients, results in undercooked brown rice. 
2. Cooking brown rice using the normal rice method, but using risotto ingredients, results in a delicious, rich-tasting side dish.

And while that tasty side dish couldn’t be called risotto, being made from many of the same ingredients made it seem somehow related. The solution: name it after the great Hall of Fame Yankee shortstop and broadcaster, Phil Rizzuto.

The recipe below makes 5 to 6 servings of Brown Rice Rizzuto. The overall method for cooking the rice is based on the normal cooking instructions for whatever rice is being used. Since I used Uncle Ben’s Whole Grain Brown Rice, I replaced the 2-1/4 cups of water called for on the box with the combination of broth and wine described in the recipe. When you're making this, if the cooking directions for your rice call for a different amount of liquid, simply adjust the quantity of broth and wine proportionately.

Combine 1 cup of brown rice, ¾ cup dry white wine (Chardonnay or similar), and 1-1/2 cups of broth (vegetable or chicken, depending on what you’re serving the rice with) in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce to medium heat and cover. Simmer until the liquid is absorbed, about 30 minutes.

While the rice is cooking, put 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a sauté pan and sauté ¾ pound of vegetables (I used a combination of grape tomatoes and fresh spinach), 1 small onion (finely chopped), and 4 finely chopped garlic cloves. When the vegetables are about half-way cooked, add 1/8 cup of pine nuts. Season with salt and pepper to taste. (Avoid adding the salt when you first put the spinach in the pan. Salt draws out water and, with vegetables such as spinach, which have a high water content, this can dry the vegetables too much before they’re cooked.) When the mixture has finished cooking, drain it using a colander and then rinse well with cold water to stop the cooking. Set the vegetable mixture aside.

When the rice has absorbed all of the broth and has finished cooking, add the vegetable mixture and heat through. Stir in ½ cup of grated parmesan (fresh grated is best, and usually costs less per pound too!), then check again for seasoning, adding salt and pepper to taste if necessary. Serve immediately.

I think you'll enjoy this delicious and simple-to-make side dish. And if at some point you feel like jumping up and yelling, “Holy Cow!,” we’ll understand completely.

If you'd like a cookbook style, notebook ready copy of this or any other Kissing the Cook recipe, just let me know in an e-mail or comment and I'll get it right out to you.

Be sure to come by next week for an all new recipe! Till then, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)

Stuffed Porcupines

Hopefully, no one reading this will be disappointed to find that enjoying stuffed porcupines does not require stalking small game with a shotgun in some deserted wooded area. The stuffed porcupines to which this week’s entry refers are actually tasty cheese-stuffed rice-infused meatballs from the American south.

 

Though this version takes a few liberties with the original, the origin of this recipe is a wonderful treasure with which I was fortunate to be entrusted: a decades-old notebook of recipes kept by my wife’s grandmother back in Meridian, a small town just outside Waco in the sovereign nation of Texas. Written in pencil on the blissfully food-stained pages of a Waco School System tablet notebook, the recipes have authentic warmth that is not taught in any institute of higher culinary learning or on any cable network. These are more than instructions for preparing a certain dish; each is a doorway leading back many years and across hundreds of miles, to the kind of place you know existed in color but that you think of in black-and-white anyway. A place where today’s eager cook gets to mix and measure in joyful earnest alongside people conventional wisdom foolishly says have been gone a long time.

This is the first of what will be several recipes from my wife’s “Grandma Texas.” It is a great pleasure to share them, and an even greater privilege to cook them.

To make about 14 one-and-a-half-inch meatballs, start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees. While it’s preheating, cut about a 2 ounce block of sharp cheddar cheese into ½” cubes, and set the cubes aside. (You’ll need one cube per meatball.) Then, get a large bowl and prepare the meat for the meatballs by combining (by hand) 1 pound of ground turkey (maximum 90% lean), 1/3 cup uncooked rice, 1 egg-substitute egg, 2 tablespoons of diced shallots, ¾ teaspoon dried thyme, a pinch of dried sage, 1 teaspoon of salt, and some fresh ground black pepper. Mix the ingredients thoroughly but don’t overwork the mixture.

Divide the mixture into 1-1/2” diameter meatballs, stuff each with a ½” cube of sharp cheddar cheese, and close. (See the stuffing method below.) Bake the meatballs on a parchment-covered baking sheet for about 50 minutes.

Stuffing method: Flatten each meatball, press a cheese cube into the center, and bring the sides of the flattened meatball up around the cube. Smooth the ball with your fingertips, and roll them gently in your palms to make them round again. Repeat for each meatball.

While the meatballs are baking, heat in a large saucepan 2-quarts of V-8 juice combined with 2 teaspoons of chili powder. (The liquid should be deep enough to cover the meatballs when added.) After baking the meatballs, add them to the liquid, cover, bring back to a boil, and then lower to a simmer for about 10 minutes. After that, set the meatballs aside while you use the liquid to make the sauce as described below.

To make the sauce, separate 1 cup of the hot liquid and add ½ cup of all-purpose flour to it, mixing until combined and there are no clumps of flour. (I know we’re all usually taught to do this with cold liquid. I did it with the hot liquid, and it worked. Go figure.) Add 1 large chopped pepper to the liquid in the pot, bring it back to a boil, stir in the flour mixture, and cook to the desired sauce thickness. (I recommend cooking it down to half.)

Now all you need to do is top the meatballs with the sauce and some grated cheddar cheese, serve it up, and accept the gratitude of a well-fed family or guests! (I’ve found this is especially good served over rice mixed with finely-diced green or red bell pepper and seasoned with Adobo.)

In the photo, you’ll see the porcupines and rice being served with green bean bundles wrapped in turkey bacon. These are from a Paula Deen recipe you’ll find on the Food Network web site.

Enjoy this delicious – and very special – dish. As always, if you’d like a notebook-ready cookbook-style version of this recipe, just let me know and I’ll send it along.

That’s it for this week, y’all. Till next time, stay well, keep it about the food, and always remember to kiss the cook. ;-)