Goodfood Recap #31

As we catch up with the last box from 2 weeks ago, this is the recap with the rather interesting recipes and one familiar one that had a slight twist added to it.

Let’s check it out!

Roasted Nantes Carrots & Broccoli
with Lentils & Spiced Tahini Vinaigrette

Usually we aren’t fans of lentils or such and this is a filler meal for this box that we thought that we would take a chance on since it had nantes carrots and broccoli and we like those veggies a lot, however, this one did turn out better than we expected. I have roasted carrots in the oven before but never broccoli and it turned out really good. These boxes may be convenient but I think what I love even more is how it teaches me new things that I haven’t tried before.

Sichuan Chicken Salad
with Chilled Soba Noodles, Cucumbers & Edamame

I can’t remember the last time I had soba before this meal. That is how long that was and it might even have been on a plane flying through Japan to go to China or Hong Kong or something like that. Sichuan chicken automatically means this dish packs in some heat. If I remember well, the spice pack for this was peppers and chili and so on. But the balance of the noodles and the chicken and the veggies balanced everything out quite well. It was pretty enjoyable to eat.

Vegetarian Spring Rolls Bowls
with Jade Rice & Crunchy Peanut Sauce

The one thing I learned when choosing meals is that when you some kind of bowl option, its usually easy and delicious. Vegetarian spring roll bowl was the kind of thing that had me curious plus I had no idea what jade rice was and was slightly curious. As I was making this, the 20 minutes time was increased solely because there was a lot of prep work like cutting a ton of veggies and mangoes and such, so I took much longer than that, but then everything other than the rice and roasted peanuts is eaten raw, so it makes up for other menus and their cooking times. However, consider this one a surprise. Jade rice was good. The balance in the bowl with the peanut sauce was really delicious and the freshness of all the veggies and mangoes balanced each other out. It gobbled it up in one sitting (which is rare as some of these meals, I split them in two.)

Chicken Breasts
with Delicata Squash & Carrots, Chermoula Spiced Yogurt

The reason I wanted this box was for the return of the chicken and delicata squash dish. Much to my surprise and slight disappointment, it felt that the menu did change. Now they have this yogurt dressing which we had to put on the side and then improvise so we just used the honey to drizzle over the dish. The chicken spice and a seemingly recent obsession of Goodfood is Berbere spices which is a really spicy blend. Luckily we drizzled honey on top or else it would have been worse in the spicy department. I get that the blend asks for the yogourt to probably soothe the heat but us lactose-intolerance folks can’t. Oh well… don’t get me wrong though. The meal itself other than the mouth on fire part is still really good. Delicata squash and nantes carrotd in the oven are awesome as always and the chicken is made so juicy and tender with the partially covered cooking method and such.

This wraps up this recap! Goodfood has added to its food with a smoothie menu and being a current client, they had a deal offer for the first one so we are going to give that a shot. However, my order was processed late so it missed the cutoff of this box, bumping it to the next one in December.

Recap: Goodfood #27

Welcome to the next recap of Goodfood for last week’s box! One repeat and a few that sounded pretty good. Bowls usually are surprisimg winners, burgers always have a nice twist and well, sometimes meatballs and couscous are the simple combo that we need.

Grilled Tofu Dragon Bowls
with multicolored carrots, snow peas & red rice

Tofu isn’t our cooking specialty so a lot of it is either at my mom’s or when we get a Goodfood box. My husband isn’t a huge fan of it either. We ended up getting this because we have loves past meals in bowls. Granted, usually it is something I have generally tried before and this one, I haven’t. However, the tofu and the red rice is super nice. The sauce here is amazing. My only issue was the raw veggies which I went ahead to cook because I had a part of it raw and honestly didn’t enjoy it at all. I’ve always liked my vegetables cooked so that is honestly a personal preference.

Chicken Yakitori
with roasted carrots, chinese broccoli & miso butter

The repeat here is this chicken yakitori which still remains as delicious as what I remember. On top of that, I always forget to do it for the Battle of Ingredients but the recipe calls for roasting chinese broccoli in the oven and the leaves turns out like making kale chips. It comes out some delicious flavors and its mostly seasons with salt and pepper which is all very awesome. Plus, Jasmine rice is my favorite variety of rice so everything here really justifies why I like this meal a lot and enjoy making it also.

Paprika-Garlic Chicken Sandwiches on Pretzel Buns
with horseradish mayonnaise & green salad

The husband took care of this meal and the next. Its been a crazy week for us so these meals had a lot of it just being myself eating it and him only tasting it. I’m not going to lie that I ended up skipping most of the salad because of the horseradish. They gave a warning of the spiciness of it and washing hands afterwards. Luckily, my husband put together only a little bit of horseradish so it worked really well without burning my mouth. The chicken spicing with the paprika and garlic is really delicious. I’m adding this recipe to my chicken burgers ideas whenever we ever think about it and want to change up from beef.

Pork Meatballs & Roasted Vegetables
with wild jungle peanuts & lemon balm couscous

Finally, we wrap up with the pork meatballs and roasted vegetables on couscous. I have to say that the entire meal here is pretty well balanced. The tomatoes add a more acidic taste as tomatoes usually do with their more sour flavor but it works to give a lot of balance with the other vegetables added in here. The highlight here is the wild jungle peanuts which are specially picked from some region (Amazon, maybe? I can’t remember…) but taste pretty much like a peanut. The couscous is my issue as I had to pick out  the lemon balm because it was just too much in it and was so strong. Other than that, this was a pretty decent meal. I just need to remember to cut the onions into smaller pieces so the meatballs don’t have such coarse onions, making it stand out a ton. However, the spices are quite delish.

Overall, this was a pretty decent box. I liked everything fairly well. There were some issues here and there that makes me say that I love it with the obvious exception of the Chicken Yakitori. One more box next week and then we made the decision to drop the meal boxes to monthly basis for a while so we clear up some of our frozen meats in the freezer and eat some garden veggies from our garden and my mom’s garden, which she’s been sharing with us.

Dinner: One Pan Chicken & Veggies

My baking and foods section is now primarily dominated by Battle of Ingredients and Goodfood recaps and that is generally the moments in life I try new things. But, this past weekend was my husband’s birthday so since we’ve had a lot of expenses (and I did buy him more than usual Boxing Day hauls), I took it simple and took care of all the cooking this weekend. We did have some other experiences where we had to finish up leftovers from the week and went out with friends, but I ended up trying out three new recipes and this first one was a simple and efficient dinner meal: One Pan Chicken & Veggies.

One Pan Chicken & Veggies

Original recipe used as guidance via Pinterest: https://natashaskitchen.com/2015/11/23/one-pan-chicken-and-vegetables-recipe/

Ingredients

3 pieces boneless chicken thighs, sliced in thirds
1 tsp Piri Piri spices
1.5 lbs baby potatoes, halved
1 lb Nantes carrots, halved lengthwise
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt and pepper

How to make it

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. In a medium sized bowl, mix the chicken thighs with the piri piri spices. Cover and put in the fridge to marinate while preparing the vegetables.
3. Take a large cookie sheet and line with aluminum foil (or parchment paper and if you don’t mind the mix, you can just grease the pan with oil). Combine veggies in a medium (or large) bowl with olive oil, salt and pepper and toss. You can also toss in the lined cookie sheet with your hands, its your preference and saves on an extra bowl to wash. Pour the veggies into the cookie sheet, parting them in half so the middle third of the pan is reserved for the chicken.
4. Take the chicken from out of the fridge and place it down the center of the cookie sheet in the reserved place mentioned before.
5. Bake for 20 minutes, then take it out to turn the veggies and the chicken and put back for another 10 to 15 minutes. Make sure your chicken is cooked through, to be sure the internal temperature should reach 165F and juices run clear.

We definitely changed up the recipe from the original quite a bit. I needed a recipe really to figure out around what temperature to bake the whole pan at and for how long. Chicken is one of the meats you can’t eat raw so that was pretty important. This is a very simple meal and you can switch the spices around to what you like and use whatever veggies you like. In my opinion, potatoes and carrots are pretty tough to cook through so other veggies should turn it decent. We also make zucchini in a pan on the side as well since we needed to it those. It saves on dishes and is a simple preparation and cooking method which leaves time to take care of the dishes you worked with during the time (unless you have a dishwasher) and do other things during the wait time. I don’t think its necessary to turn the veggies and the chicken but I wanted to make sure that it would cook well on both sides. The chicken turns out very tender and not dry at all. I honestly improv-ed a lot of the dish so the spices and S&P quantity in the ingredient list might be a little off.

Have you tried One-Pan meals?
What do you like to cook?

Battle of Ingredients #1: Carrots and Noodles

It is finally here!
A new segment with Phoebe from Starry Traveler’s Road!
Thanks so much for joining us!

INTRODUCTION – What is Battle of Ingredients?

Battle of Ingredients (name subject to future change maybe) is the brainchild of myself and Phoebe who really love to talk about tons of things but our families have somewhat become foodie buddies. We talk food a lot and go to restaurants even more but we each have our food restrictions and our habits and with this Battle of Ingredients, we have two goals.

One: we want to learn more about the Quebec foods through different seasons which will be a huge focus on how we pick our ingredients.
Two: To expand and explore new recipes and ways to cook as well as try out new ingredients.

However, we do also want to say that this is a battle of ingredients but we use the word ‘battle’ loosely because we aren’t actually battling each other. Our judges are family and close friends and they offer us suggestions on how to improve our recipes. Its more the challenge of figuring out a good way to incorporate the selected ingredients. There will be times, like the next one, where we will be working together to put together a meal with the next selected seasonal ingredients which will be announced at the end of this post.

Battle of Ingredients #1: Carrots & Noodles

The first challenge is a simple one. We wanted something that we could use readily, plus carrots are about the best looking vegetable available at our supermarkets now. The meat is free to our choosing and noodles is for a nice carbs base that everyone gets a good energy boost. Two noodle dishes are heavy so we served them in moderate portions.

PHOEBE’S MENU
Homey Osso Bucco with Udon

Homey Osso Bucco with Udon

I know Kim wanted to try osso bucco and it is freezing outside thanks to Canadian winter, so I decided to cook this dish as part of the cook-off. This is one of my mom’s thermal cooker recipes that I managed to replicate with some adaptations over the years.

Given I had to prepare more portions than usual, I had a hard time putting numbers on the quantities of ingredients.

• Osso bucco
• Carrots
• Celery
• Sweet onions (normal onions are okay, but I prefer sweet ones)
• Bay leaves
• Chicken stock (powder)
• Water
• Udon

Instructions:

1. Wash the osso bucco and put in the inner pot.
2. Wash and chop all the veggies to your desired size (please note if it is too little, veggies will disintegrate into the soup). Put in the inner pot on top of the meat (I usually cut carrots first because they are bulky when compared to celery and onions).
3. Wash the bay leaf and put into the inner pot (I always prefer 2-3 in my cooking).
4. Pour water into the inner pot and make sure it covers the meat and veggies.
5. Boil it until it starts bubbling and add chicken powder to taste (One thing that I noticed if you are cooking more portions than usual, you may need to reboil to ensure the osso bucco is thoroughly cooked).
6. Boil it a bit longer and put the inner pot into the vacuum insulated cooker.
7. Let it cook over night.

While my family usually eat this with rice, I prefer udon after doing a lot of testing in dorms. My mom used to vacuum seal some with veggies so I can enjoy it while doing my assignments. I remember trying rice vermicelli, egg noodles, pasta and udon. Rice vermicelli got soggy really quickly while egg noodles held themselves a little better. Pasta was okay, but udon stood out for remaining bouncy when it took me a little while to finish dinner.

That is pretty much it for my recipe. Hope you enjoy it! 😊

KIM’S MENU
Chicken Rice Noodles with Carrots and Cucumbers

Chicken Rice Noodles with Carrots and Cucumbers

Unlike Phoebe, my recipe is somewhat of a combination of a few things I like making. I did end up forgetting something in this one and our judges definitely did realize even if I don’t honestly mind that much.  Here are the ingredients I used:

• Rice Noodles
• Nantes Carrots
• Cucumber
• Eggs
• Garlic
• Ginger
• Chicken Thighs
• Rice Vinegar
• Green onions
• Soy Sauce
• Sesame Oil

How to make it:

1. In a bowl, mix together sesame oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar and garlic. Set aside.
2. Prepare the chicken. Cut the chicken lengthwise and mix with the marinade above.
3. Boil water in a saucer. When it starts to boil, put in the rice noodles to cook. Place in for few minutes. Remove and put in strainer. Rinse with cold water. Rest strainer on a bowl to let water drain.
4. Peel the carrots and cucumbers and chop them lengthwise (or however you like them that makes it easier to cook). Mince the garlic and chop the ginger.
5. Heat up the wok on medium-high heat. Put in some oil (sesame, olive, whichever you use; I used avocado oil) and let it heat up.
6. Put in some garlic and ginger into the wok. Afterwards, add the carrots and cucumbers. Let them cook through and remove on plate.
7. If you need, add a little bit of oil to the wok and cook the scrambled eggs.
8. Next, cook the chicken with marinade as sauce.
9. Once its cooked through, add back the eggs, carrots and cucumbers. Let it cook a little more and add the noodles to heat everything back up.
10. Remove from heat and put in plate.

COMMENTS FROM FRIENDS (AKA TASTERS)

Phoebe’s Osso Bucco was cooked thoroughly and enough time. The only comment was on the choice of using the Udon noodles and that dials down to a personal preference.

Kim’s Chicken Rice Noodles was cooked well however it was on the more bland side. Something that Kim suspected out of her eating habits and the fact that she forgot to use broth. The suggestion was to use chicken broth to add some natural flavor instead of using salt and it would help infuse the meal overall.

This concludes our first BATTLE OF INGREDIENTS!
Hope you enjoyed it!

The next battle will be held next month as a collaborated full course meal featuring MAPLE SYRUP!
Right in time for cabane a sucre season!

Dinner: Oven Roasted Tricolor Carrots

I have a confession to make. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with Tricolor Carrots, Brussel Sprouts and Portobello Mushrooms. I see this obsession particularly with the Tricolor/Nantes Carrots to last a while. So far, I’ve found the best way to do them is oven-roasted. I actually would like to replicate what I tried in Kelowna at Basil & Mint Restaurant. Those carrots were absolutely delish. Its because of that that when I went to Atwater Market a few weeks ago, I got a bag of these carrots and amazingly, also the second reason why I love buying carrots is that they can be preserved for a good while.

This is a simple recipe and I’m sure someone else has probably done it but I did put this together on my own.

Oven-Roasted Tricolor Carrots

Ingredients

10 Tricolor Carrots (or Nantes carrots), scrubbed and cleaned
2 tbsp Avocado Oil (or extra virgin olive oil)
1 tsp Herbes de Provence (or as you see fit)

How to make it

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Line baking tray with parchment paper.
2. Lay carrots in a single layer on top of the parchment paper.
3. Drizzle oil over the carrots.
4. Sprinkle on the Herbes de Provence.
5. Put in oven for 20-25 minutes or when carrots are tender enough for your taste.

Simple and easy is what I usually aim for. We paired this up with Tourtiere which is a meat pie. Plus, Tricolor carrots have a sweeter taste, especially my favorites are the purple ones with the orange center that taste a little like sweet potatoes. Plus, Herbes de Provence is one of the best herb blends for making a lot of different varieties of food from pork chops, chicken, turkey and even vegetables. It is our go-to spice for a quick solution that packs a little extra taste.

How do you like to cook carrots?

Dinner: Roast Beef

Man, you can tell that its the holiday season when I’m filling up the space with tons of recipes! This one is from a week before the holidays when we realized that we were truly running out of stuff in the freezer and had to desperately go do some major grocery shopping even if meats were expensive…  Still, here we are with my first attempt at roast beef! 🙂

I got the recipe and adapted it a little to what I had available from the Made in Quebec cookbook.

Roast Beef

Serves 8

Ingredients

1 standing rib roast, 4 to 4 1/2 pounds
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 tsp spices of your choice (commercial spice mixture or about 1 tsp each of red pepper flakes, dry mustard, dried thyme and rosemary)
6 tbsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 medium carrot, coarsely chopped
2 stalks celery, coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
1 strig fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves)

 1. Remove roast from the refrigerator 2 hours before starting to roast.  When ready to cook, preheat oven to 250F. Sprinkle meat all over with salt, pepper, and spices. Insert meat thermometer in thickest part of roast, avoiding the bone.

2. Place a rack just a little longer than the meat in a roasting pan and add oil to the pan. Place roast on the rack. Roast for 2 hours, then scatter onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and bay leaves around the meat.

3. Stir thyme into pan juices. Continue roasting for another 2 to 4 hours, depending on the size and thickness of the roast. When the meat thermometer registers 120F, the meat will be rare.  Remove from the oven or continue roasting until the meat thermometer registers 125F for medium-rare, 130F for medium, or 140F for well done.

4. To brown the roast, increase oven temperature to 500F and continue roasting until richly browned, from 5 to 15 minutes.

5. Remove meat from the oven, cover with aluminum foil, and let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes before carving.

 Note:

• I honestly don’t remember what was the cut of the roast but it was definitely not 4 pounds. It probably was less.
• I used their recommended spices but without the dry mustard
• When I did this recipe, I was incredibly low on veggies so I ended up making 4 carrots in the place of the celery.
• This recipe is paired with a gravy made with the pan juices. If you would like to know it, just email me

The experience of making roast beef the first time is definitely memorable. It took a lot of time. Its been a long time since I had taken so much patience and care on cooking. While I felt a little like a headless chicken around the kitchen and somewhat unsure about how it would turn out, but it did work out alright.

The meat was rather tender. The outside was a little drier because the inside wasn’t cooked enough so I popped it back in for a little bit. I should have added some wine or water or sauce to evaporate to help. However, it was well worth the effort.

Have you made roast beef before? What suggestions do you have? What spices do you use?