Thank you AnnaG...very much appreciated! It's printed out and waiting for the right moment...which could be very soon! I'll fiddle with the spuds and I'm sure I can handle those OK...(I like those nasty little habanero chilies)
Your favourite food(s)
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Thank you AnnaG...very much appreciated! It's printed out and waiting for the right moment...which could be very soon! I'll fiddle with the spuds and I'm sure I can handle those OK...(I like those nasty little habanero chilies)
lol Better you than me. I'll go as hot as cayenne and bananas but the habaneros are a bit much for me.
Yeah, Mexican spuds is an easy one to make and you can vary the spices to whatever your tastebuds prefer.
You should try Belize if you like the hot foods.
Yeah, the habaneros are a bit of an acquired taste (takes years!), but the beauty of this dish should be that all that dairy stuff would/should take the edge of the little buggers and make the flavours stand out even better....Muchos gracias again!
A few years ago, I got on to Indian cooking and really enjoy that stuff now too.
But, my first love in spicy foods is Mexican as that was my first introduction to something beyond the Scottish and Mennonite foods I was raised on. They were pretty good in their own right (good country / natural ingredients) but when I first tasted refried beans with jalapenos in a restaurant in Winnipeg at the age of 19, I was hooked. Forever.
I now make my own tortillas all the time (flour and masa), my own salsas, and a bunch of other stuff...much of it is adapted to locally-available ingredients but it works OK.
My favourite Mexican dish? I also have many, but I have to say that mole poblano is at the top. It's an elaborate (many ingredients) dish with turkey, chocolate, chilies, and even pumpkin seeds. But it is incredibly delicious. I've heard it referred to as the National Dish of Mexico but not sure if that's really true.
Couldn't agree more on the chocolate...it's really good stuff. I like the really dark bittersweet type but not everyone likes it that extreme. Chocolate and wine go together nicely...
My husband is italian, and I cook some nice italian meals.
good old authentic italian spaghetti, green herb salad,
oil and vinegar dressing, and red red wine.
A nice italian risotto, made with chicken broth, sauce and
parmesan cheese, and can be varied in different ways.
We also love steak, barbecued, 'just right'
Love fish and chips, and have one place in particular we
travel for that treat.
Roast Beef and mashed potatoes complete with veggies etc.
Homeade apple pie (granny smith), made with lard, and
done up 'just right'.
We love egg dishes too, could eat eggs everyday.
A good seafood chowder. (white)
good old authentic italian spaghetti, green herb salad,
oil and vinegar dressing, and red red wine.
A nice italian risotto, made with chicken broth, sauce and
parmesan cheese, and can be varied in different ways.
We also love steak, barbecued, 'just right'
Love fish and chips, and have one place in particular we
travel for that treat.
Roast Beef and mashed potatoes complete with veggies etc.
Homeade apple pie (granny smith), made with lard, and
done up 'just right'.
We love egg dishes too, could eat eggs everyday.
A good seafood chowder. (white)
That all sounds good! But a question - white seafood chowder with an Italian husband? Not the red stuff (tomato)? I like both styles, but I surely love Manhatten Clam Chowder.
Your Italian dinner at the top of your post sounds positively delicious! Do you have any secrets you'd care to share on tomato sauce? :-|
stewing beef, ground beef, small amount of ground pork,
tomatoe paste with garlic, tomatoe sauce.
brown all meats, add water and chicken stock, and tomatoe paste/sauce,salt and pepper to taste, I use very little,
rosemary, white wine, italian seasoning, small amount
of paprika, bring to boil, lower heat and cook for 2
hours without lid, add butter, lower heat to simmer, cover
and cook approx. 4 hours, or more. stir occasionally.
'optional' saute mushroom in butter/grape seed oil and
garlic, add to cooked sauce.
I don't measure anything, just figure out how you like the
sauce, not too much water and broth unless you have lots of
meat. I make three large pots of sauce at one time, then
put in containers and freeze.
This sauce is meaty and rich and flavourful, but not hot
or spicy, and can be used as a sauce in many different
recipes. When I'm making soup, I add a little sauce.
I'm not italian, i'm english/irish, and we were born here,
we had immigrant parents, so we are 'canadians', eat like
canadians, italians, englishmen, irishmen and chinese.
and we like both kinds of seafood chowder, just prefer the
white, we just had manhatten chowder today.
Thanks for that, Talloola! So with the stewing beef, it's a bit chunky then? Sounds great! (Just had dinner and I'm hungry again...)
You can cut stewing beef smaller if you wish, or leave it
big, it will be tender either way, as long as you cook
sauce long enough.
I forgot to mention to use 'McCormicks Italian Seasoning', I tried a few others, but
does not produce the flavour I am looking for in the sauce.
The Rosemary should be fresh, and I use quite a lot.
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I used to try the white chowders in restaurants when I was a full-time traveller, but some of them were pasty and yucky. Never really had any seafood chowders when I was a kid in Manitoba, as our "seafood" was limited to frozen blocks of codfish or cans of salmon. (When I was really young, I thought a salmon must be shaped like a cylinder 'cause it was always perfectly round in those cans!)
Then, I was down in the Cape Cod area of Massachusetts one time and had a huge bowl of really good white chowder. Then I finally realized how "good" a good white chowder can be! I like both as well but usually end up making a red one if fresh tomatoes are around.
There is a great restaurant here that make a seafood chowder, love it. $13.00 for a large bowl, so we don't
go there often, BUT the best seafood chowder we ever ate,
was last fall, in the hotel in Halifax.
Yeah, the east coast really has some nice food. Used to eat in a restaurant close to the waterfront in Halifax that had an "all you can eat" mussel bar. I like mussels a lot and used to get my money's worth! Another place in Moncton was called Cy's Seafood Restaurant and it was a dandy too. But the chowders down there are always good, white or red, with white being the more popular one, I think.
Like I mentioned, I was "introduced" to white chowder on the Prairies and they just didn't get it right. (But they a great job on the local stuff like steaks, chicken, etc.)
Sometimes for a quick supper or lunch, we whip up a batch of Japanese Okonomiyaki, which is a savoury (not sweet) pancake with chopped up veggies like cabbage, onion, and/or whatever. It's served with thick sweet/salty sauce which is usually called "Bulldog" sauce...that's the name of the most popular brand of it in Japan. It sounds a bit weird, but it's a nice meal...
Habanero peppers are somewhat popular but most people seem to buy serrano peppers. People mix them up with Jalapeno's though. Some know they are buying serrano's but many think they are buying Jalapeno's. I don't know which is hotter.
You have to do what I do to notice this but the truly odd thing about food is - for some truly odd reason, eaten by many people in one city per evening. I will for example start to notice that everyone who goes through the till is planning on a lasagne dinner or spaghetti. Anyone would know by the ingredients they are purchasing. Person after person will go through with the same stuff. You almost start to wonder if everyone is going to a community hall for a community dinner. On another night you will notice that everyone is having taco's or quesadilla. I ask on purpose just to prove myself right. It's not because the stuff is on sale that day because I thought that and I read through a flyer and the stuff isn't on that week. It's really an odd thing. It's one of those strange things that you wonder if it's influenced by the weather or if "thoughts" spread. By that I simply mean, you are wondering what to have for dinner and you see the stuff in someone's buggy for spaghetti so, it looks good and your thoughts go to having spaghetti and as you wander through the store someone else sees you and so on. It's weird.