Garlic Cilantro Naan Bread

200 ml milk, warm
2 tbsp sugar
11 gr. dry yeast
600 gr Flour
1 tsp Salt
4 tbsp Olive Oil
250 ml plain yogurt

to dust the bread with before baking
1 tbsp salt
1tbsp Indian blend of spices (curry or some other)

for after baking
25 gr butter
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
bunch of Cilantro, chopped up finely

Mix the yeast and the sugar in a bowl and add in the warm milk. Let sit for 15 minutes. Add in the flour, salt, oil and yogurt together. Kneed the dough until it is soft and elastic. You can always add more flour if it is to wet. Put the dough aside and let it rise for an hour or so.

Heat the oven at 450°F  (or broil like I ended up doing). On a plate to the side mix the salt and the Indian  spice blend together. You can split the dough up in 10 parts and make them in to 10 rolls. Pat rolls down until they are pretty thin.  Press the flattened out dough into the salt and spice blend (learn from my mistake.. easy on the salt!!)

Add the bread onto  a parchment paper cookie sheet. I used my Pampered Chef stone so I didn´t need the parchment paper. Bake for 5-7 minutes and flip them over half way through.

Once they are all baked, put them in a bowl, melt the butter, add in the garlic and cilantro. Pour over the Naan Breads and they are ready to be served.

Hmong people immigrated to the US after the Vietnam war. They are huge communities in Northern California and Minnesota. As it was explained to me, Hmong people were mountain people who belonged to no country, they helped during the Vietnam war and therefor were refugees. I loved learning about their culture, attended their New Years, learned how to cook some of their food. When I was pregnant with Isabella I lived off Pho,  it is the best comfort food!!

There is really no trick to make Pho, other than get the right ingredient. Before I moved from California I went to my favorite Hmong market and stocked up on Pho Packets. I’ve seen many variation of the packets, some are paste but I just get what my friend said was best. It says GIA VI PHO BO – instant beef broth for Vietnamese noodle soup. You should be able to get it at a good Asian store. I took a picture of it so you guys could see.

What I do is I’ll boil water with sliced onions, 2 stalks of lemon grass and then add my packet. While that is coming to a boil I prep the veggies.

These veggies are not a necessity  but are really good to have with it.

• Cilantro
• Lime wedges
• Bean Sprouts
• Fried Onions
• Crushed Peanuts
• Mint
• Basil
• Lettuce
• Green Onions, cut up

Then there are the condiments:

• Oyster Sauce
• Fish sauce
• Soy Sauce
• Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce
• Fried Garlic Chili Sauce
• White Pepper
• Sugar

When I went to school in Oxford, England I lived with 6 other people in a dorm, over there its called Halls. We were a interesting mix. Two blokes from England, girl form Thailand, boy from Sri Lanka and then a girl from China. My culinary enthusiasm took flight really there, I learned something new on regular basis… ehmm school wise not so much. My education vastly improved in the kitchen. I learned something about Indian food, Pakistani food, Thai food, Scottish food and REAL Chinese food.

Did you know that they don’t have ovens in China!!! I had no idea!! I had to teach my flat mate how to make Pizza, to her it mind boggling! She taught me how to make these Chicken Wings that are sooooo YUMMY! with a little kick!

Huifang always got the fresh chicken wings and cut them up herself. So that is what I do too. I’m sure you can use the precut ones, but since I learned it this way and its cheaper I do it the old fashion way

You get how ever many chicken wings and you cut them up in three sections, just where the joints are. It’s good to have a really sharp knife or kitchen scissor because I didn’t and now I have this massive blister on my finger!!

Once you part them at the joints you discard the little piece at the end. You could use it to make chicken broth but I just throw it away. Now you cut ginger and chili finely (I had dried chili available so I just used that). Add it to a big bowl, then add good measure of Soy sauce and Dark Soy sauce, it has to be dark soy sauce because if you just use soy sauce it will become way way to salty!! Next you add a good amount of sugar, mix it well together.

Add the chicken Wings and let marinate for at least an hour.

Then chop up a few cloves of garlic and fry them on a pan with oil. Be careful not to make them crisp. Add the chicken wings with the marinade.

Let it simmer for a while, make sure the chicken is getting cooked evenly. I put on a lid just so to make sure it cooked evenly. Kind of cheating but with chicken you can never be to careful! So after I was confident it had cooked almost all the way, I took the lid off and let it simmer for a while to get the marinate reduced. It should get sticky. Put it on a plate and it is ready to be served.

Crescent Chicken Wings

Chicken Wings, how ever many you like
1 part Soy Sauce
1 part Dark Soy Sauce
1 part Sugar
1-2 tbsp ginger, finely chopped
1-4 fresh chili peppers, just depends how much kick you want, just remember if you leave in the seeds its hotter.
2-3 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Cut up the chicken into parts, discard the wing tip. Stir together both the soy sauces, sugar, ginger and chili and the chicken wings. Let marinate for at least and hour. Fry in a pan the garlic and then add the chicken wings and fry them for a minute or two, pour in the rest of the marinate. Simmer until the chicken wings are fully cooked. The marinate should reduce to a sticky syrup. Remove from pan and serve.

I wanted to make a pumpkin cheese cake so I used a basic cheese cake recipe as a base and then I added pumpkin and spices that I thought would taste well.

Heat the oven to 350 F, mix your crust, made out of Graham Crackers crumbs, tbsp of sugar and melted butter. Mix it well, not into a paste but so it will be crumble. Then press it into your spring pan and half way up the sides. Bake it in the oven for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile start your cheese cake filling. Whip together cream cheese, cup of sugar and 2 tsp vanilla. Whip it until smooth. Next add the pumpkin and the spices and keep whipping it until it is smooth and silky. Pour the filling int to the baked crust.

Bake at 350 F for 60 – 70 minutes. When it is done baking remove it and let it cool. Then refrigerate it for how ever long you like. When serving I heard people use dental floss to cut it, so its cut clean. It can be served with whipped cream, cool whip or just plain.

Pumpkin Cheese cake

1 and 1/2 Cup Graham cracker crumbs
5 tbsp Butter – melted
1 Cup plus 1 tbsp Sugar
24 oz Cream Cheese (3 pks) softened
3 Eggs
1 and 1/2 Cup Pumpkin puree
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Allspice
1/2 tsp Ginger powder
1/8 tsp ground Cloves

Crust is Graham Crackers crumbs, 1 tbsp sugar and melted butter, mix well and press the mix into the pan and up the sides. bake for 5 minutes at 350 F

Whip cream cheese, sugar, eggs and vanilla, then add pumpkin and spices. whip well. Pour into crust and bake at 350 F for 60-70 minutes

I love Indian food! There are so many Delicious things you can make.  I have yet to find a REALLY good Indian restaurant. So next best thing is to make it yourself.

My friend Skotta is visiting and she shares my joy for different kind of food. So we decided to make some Indian. Skotta has this recipe for a Garlic Cilantro Naan Bread that is out of this world. I’ll post that recipe when ever I get the chance but today our focus is on the Roasted Curried Cauliflower. It turned out really well, my husband really liked it.

The menu was Tandoori Chicken, homemade Naan bread, Bombay Potatoes, Roasted Curried Cauliflower and Rice.

I had never made Roasted Curried Cauliflower  before, I’ve had it many times at restaurants and always really loved it. So my quest was to find a recipe. I looked all over the internet and found many many different versions of it but finally I found a recipe on Epicurios that kind of fitted my pantry. I really didn’t want to go and buy bunch of stuff just for one recipe so I tweeked it to fit what ever I had on hand.

First I roasted the cumin seeds on a pan for 5 minutes on medium heat or until they turned a little darker, I would roast the coriander seeds too if I had any. I only had Coriander powder.

Then you add it and ground coriander to a mortar and pound it until its some what fine. After that you pretty much add the rest of the recipe in, olive oil, red wine vinegar,  salt, paprika, curry and red Cayenne pepper.

You turn  your oven to 450 F. Take you Cauliflower and break it down to florets. Pour your mix over and coat your cauliflower well. Put on a cookie sheet or something that is good for roasting.

At last you put it in the oven for 35 minutes. Once it is done you put it in a bowl and serve.

Roasted Curried Cauliflower

Fresh Cauliflower
1 tsp Coriander seeds (coriander powder if you don’t have seeds)
1 tsp Cumin seeds
1/2 Cup Olive oil
1/3 Cup Red Wine Vinegar
1 teaspoon Paprika
1/2 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
1 and 3/4 teaspoons Salt

Roast the Coriander and Cumin seeds for 5 min under medium heat. Put in a mortar and pound with pestle until somewhat fine. Add the rest of the spices, oil and vinegar. Whip it together well. Put the Cauliflower florets in a bowl and pour the mix over. Let it cover all the florets well. Put in a roasting pan or a cookie sheet and Roast in the oven for 35 minutes at450 F. Serve in a bowl.

My mom makes this awesome chutney/jelly; it’s made from hot peppers and red bell pepper. It has a little kick to it but at the same time taste sweet and sour. It is soooo yummy!! I’ve been wanting to make it for a while now, so I thought there is no time like the present. My mom uses probably Anaheim chilies since they are the only ones I’ve seen in Iceland. Like I said variety in Iceland is pretty scarce. I had the pleasure to get a hold of Thai Chilies, they are extremely HOT but they have a little sweetness to them. Sound weird I know but it’s true.

I got introduced to Thai Chilies by my friends Carolyn Xiong, Mailee L

or, Youa Chue and Nou Vang. They are Hmong and they introduced me to Hmong cooking. This is amazing! I’ll make some of the things they taught me at a later date!

Back to the Chutney, since I used the Thai chilies this was a kind of experiment to taste the hotness, so I pretty much added one by one and tasted. Kind of back fired of me, since I cut the chilies with bare fingers, which means that the hotness of the Chilies stuck to my fingers. Me being the silly person to taste the hotness of Chilies, pretty much had the burning taste in my mouth the Whole time. So the Chutney didn’t come out as HOT as I wanted but it’s still pretty hot.

I doubled the recipe and I had 8 Red Bell Peppers and cut them up and deseeded them. I put them in a food processor to mince them. The chilies like I said was by taste I cut them in half and deseeded them since the seeds are the hottest part of them. I added one by one until I thought the mix tasted hot enough.

I’m going to use the produce I bought to make a Chilli Pepper Chutney!!