KFC-Style Coleslaw

Coleslaw is impossible to make.

What I mean is, coleslaw recipes vary so widely. People use mustard or no mustard, add other vegetables, make it tangy or sweet or both or neither. It can be sloppy and wet or dry and barely dressed.

It's always a gamble ordering coleslaw at restaurants because you never know what you're going to get and if you'll like it. And the same principle applies to coleslaw recipes. I mean, if you know you like a mustardy slaw or a creamy one, you can look at recipes that look like they'll result in the kind you prefer. But it's hard to tell.

I do know I usually like KFC coleslaw. It's a bit too sweet and sometimes a little gloppy, but overall it has a list of things I like--finely chopped cabbage, a touch of carrot and onion, creamy and sweet but still with some tang.

So when I went to make my own coleslaw with some of the bounty of CSA cabbage in my refrigerator, I went hunting for the KFC recipe. And if you want to clone a restaurant's recipe, you go to the Top Secret Recipes website.

I made a couple changes, and the resulting slaw--is very KFC-like.

KFC-Style Coleslaw
Adapted from Top Secret Recipes.

Gluten Free
Grain Free
Vegetarian

Use your food processor to finely shred two small or one medium heads of cabbage and two carrots or a generous handful of baby carrots.

Use the food processor to mince an onion (red preferred) and add 2 Tablespoons minced onion.

Mix the vegetables together in a large bowl.

In another bowl, combine 1/2 cup mayonnaise, between 1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar, 1/4  cup milk, 1/4 cup buttermilk (I used the lemon-juice-in-milk trick), 2 1/2 Tablespoons lemon juice, scant 2 1/2 Tablespoons white vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Combine. I like to put the ingredients in the tall cylinder that came with my immersion blender and then use the immersion blender to blend everything. This ensures that the mayonnaise gets thoroughly mixed without leaving big chunks of mayo in the dressing.

Pour dressing over the vegetables and mix well.

Cover and refrigerate at least two hours before serving.

The verdict? It really does taste like KFC coleslaw, only slightly tangier and a little less sweet. The only problem is that I used homemade mayo and my recipe has a bit of dried mustard in it, so the coleslaw ended up tasting mustardy, which is exactly what I didn't want. SIGH. I wasn't thinking about the tiny bit of mustard in the batch of mayo, but it comes through really strongly. So if you're using homemade mayonnaise, leave the mustard out of it! But if you're using storebought, I'm sure it will taste exactly right.

Beef Stroganoff

The DDH doesn't make requests often. He's usually pretty content to just eat whatever I make, and will admit that he has discovered he loves lots of foods and flavors he had never tried before I made them for him.

However, I always ask him if he has any requests when I'm making my meal plan for the week, and this week he had one: beef stroganoff. Apparently he was feeling nostalgic for his mom's beef stroganoff.

The problem is, I really don't care for beef stroganoff. For one, it's usually served on egg noodles, of which I am not a fan. I'm not a fan of "cream of whatever"-type foods in general. Maybe it makes me a bad Lutheran, but I skip all those casseroles consisting mostly of different canned "cream of" soups. Blech.

But the DDH so rarely makes requests, and he clearly wanted beef stroganoff with egg noodles like his mom used to make. So I agreed to try it if he could get his mom's recipe.

A call to his mom led to the discovery of an old church cookbook containing her beef stroganoff recipe.

While the stroganoffs of my youth involved flank steak or some other sort of chopped beef, this recipe gave ground beef as an option and the DDH agreed that that would be fine.

The rest of the ingredients seemed fairly innocuous, other than the condensed cream of mushroom soup (and the strange specification that the sour cream be "dairy sour cream," which makes me wonder what other sorts of sour cream they ate in the eighties).

If I could figure out how to replace the soup, then I had all the ingredients except egg noodles. I picked some of those up and also bought some fresh mushrooms, since they were on sale at Aldi (I do often use canned mushrooms, but I'm not sure how this recipe will work with them).

I consulted Katie Kimball's cookbook Better Than a Box* to figure out how to replace the soup. Turns out, condensed cream of whatever soup is essentially a thick bechamel sauce with your vegetable or meat of choice for the base. Excellent.

I adjusted the procedures in Katie's book, added the seasonings from my mother-in-law's recipe, and went to work while T-Rex took an obligingly long nap.

Well, guess what? I still don't really like beef stroganoff. Or egg noodles. But I did find a way to make a dish that apparently people who do like beef stroganoff think is super tasty, and it didn't involve a single can of anything. The DDH declared it tasted just like he remembered, which means that clearly the flavor of the dish comes from something other than the cream of mushroom soup, and also that the addition of Worcestershire sauce to his mom's recipe didn't change much.

I don't have any pictures of this because a) I was trying to work quickly while the baby napped and b) beef stroganoff looks like barf. Not appetizing.

Real Food Beef Stroganoff

In a large skillet or dutch oven, brown 1 pound ground beef or beef cut of your choice. Set aside.

While the meat browns, roughly chop up 1 package mushrooms (8 oz) and 1 medium onion.

Heat about 2 Tablespoons oil or butter in the  skillet in which you cooked the beef. Add your onions and mushrooms. Cook down for about twenty minutes (stirring every five minutes or so) or until onions caramelize some and everything is soft.

While your mushrooms and onions cook, mix in a small bowl: 2 Tablespoons ketchup, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. pepper, 1-5 cloves minced garlic, and 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce.

When the mushrooms and onions have cooked down, gradually add up to 1/2 cup flour, stirring until well incorporated.

Add 1 cup beef broth and 1 cup milk, whisking constantly.

Bring to a low boil and boil for one to two minutes, whisking frequently.

Add ketchup mixture. Stir to incorporate.

Add beef. Mix well.

Reduce heat to low and simmer until thickened and warmed through. Just before serving, stir in 8 oz. sour cream. Serve over egg noodles.

I made the stroganoff (sans sour cream) while T-Rex took his afternoon nap, then left it on the stove (heat off) until just before dinnertime. Then I turned the heat on the stroganoff to medium low and stirred it occasionally while I cooked the egg noodles, and it was warm and ready to go by the time the noodles were done.

I forgot to add the sour cream. The DDH thought it still tasted fine, but I could tell it was missing something and I'm pretty sure the sour cream would have fixed that. However, I'm limiting my dairy intake because it doesn't seem to agree with the baby's digestion, so, having forgotten it, I just left it out.

Like I said, I didn't think it was that fantastic, but it did indeed taste like beef stroganoff. The DDH was super happy. He made me write down what I did and even texted his mother to tell her how well it turned out. It was definitely not as terrible as some stroganoffs I've had, and I promised the DDH I'll make it again. Overall, a success.

Best of all: no cans required! :-)


*I bought this book on sale; $17 seems a lot to pay for an ebook. But it is a very interesting and educational read, going into the process behind adapting recipes to use less-processed ingredients, as well as including a number of recipes for real food versions of precisely those potluck-type foods that I don't actually like but everybody else does. ^_^

Beef and Bean Taco Filling

My default meals--you know, the meals you cook (or make your husband cook) when you realize you forgot to plan ahead and it's six o'clock and for some reason your husband is hungry--are pretty much all Mexican.

They are, in order of time/energy/thought needed to make:

1. Nachos (cheese on tortilla chips, melted in the microwave. Maybe some pickled jalapenos on top. If we add meat, that places it down at taco level on this list).
2. Quesadillas (with canned chicken).
3. Tacos with canned chicken.
4. Tacos with ground beef.

In fact, I make variations of the ground beef tacos so often that I have branched out into putting taco meat on nachos and salads and other random things.

I could tell you that tacos make a great default meal because they're cheap, meaty, filling, tasty, relatively healthy--all of which are true.

But the real reason I make them so often is because tortillas last forever in the fridge.

So I always have them on hand.

Also a few months ago I went in on sixty pounds of ground beef with my mother-in-law, so we've been eating a lot of that.

Anyway, the problem with default meals is that they're all in my head. That is, I don't usually follow a recipe or write anything down. I just look to see what we have on hand, mix it all together, and serve.

Sometimes this means that the resulting dish, well, isn't very tasty. It's bland, or oddly seasoned.

Sometimes it means the dish is totally awesome, but I have no idea how it got that way and so will never be able to replicate it.

Having suffered through a few too many One Time Only tasty dishes, the DDH has learned a trick. If he likes his dinner, he immediately asks me, "How did you make this?" If I tell him I just made it up, he tells me to write it down before I forget.

When I  served this particular taco meat combination last week, he not only told me to write it down, he retrieved the laptop from whatever corner of the house it was hidden in, booted it up, set it in my lap, and refused to let me do anything else until I had written down what I did.

I guess that means he liked it.

Beef and Bean Taco Filling

Heat 1/2 Tbs. oil in a large pan.

Cook 1 onion, diced and 3 cloves garlic, pressed on medium heat until soft.

Add 1 pound ground beef.

As the beef cooks, add 1 tsp. paprika, 2 tsp. cumin, 1 Tbs. chili powder, and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon. Stir to combine.

Cook five minutes or until beef is just about done.

A bit of pink is okay, as it will cook for a bit longer.

Add 1 can kidney beans,

Black beans also work well.

9 Tbs. tomato paste (there's a reason this is a weird number. It's my estimate of how much of a can of tomato paste I used (about 3/4 of one of those little cans) based on how much was left in the can afterward. Really I just kept adding tomatoe paste until it tasted right), and 1 Tbs. hot sauce of your choice (sriracha, Tabasco, chile paste, etc.).

Sriracha strikes again!

Stir to combine. Cook on low for about five minutes or until heated through.

Serve in tortillas as soft tacos, crispy shells as crispy tacos, on lettuce for a taco salad, or on chips for beef nachos. Add cheese, sour cream*, tomatoes, lettuce, and other Mexican garnishings as desired.

*I actually just use a bit of plain Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, because I rarely have sour cream on hand. Yogurt does taste different than sour cream, but it still adds a creamy tang that contrasts pleasantly with the meat.

Vegetarian Fried Rice

I ate a lot of fried rice growing up.

My mom loves to cook, and we ate a lot of different foods when I was young. I don't think I really realized how--varied? international? something like that--our diet was until I went to college.

Still, we did have a few staple recipes in frequent rotation. A lot of them were plays on pasta--pasta with tuna fish, clam spaghetti, garlic spaghetti, even, infrequently, spaghetti with meat sauce.

Another one of those staple recipes was fried rice. And for good reason--fried rice is cheap, easy, and makes a lot of food. Mom's version included ground beef as well as a couple of eggs, so it serviced adequately as a main dish. We ate a lot of it, and with gusto.

So it's perhaps surprising that I don't think I've ever made fried rice in the history of my married career.

For one, neither the DDH nor I are big rice eaters. I am stupidly terrible at cooking rice, and after suffering through one crunchy dish too many, the DDH learned to greet rice dishes with trepidation. Rice isn't cheap if you're ruining it (and all the ingredients you add to it) all the time.

For another, though I remember scarfing down huge portions of the dish as a child, I remember fried rice as being too salty, with a slightly weird sour flavor (sorry, Mom), and generally not interesting enough to attempt to recreate.

But since the DDH has flatly refused to acknowledge the awesomeness of Tuna Fish Pasta, and with the impending arrival of someone who will eventually be a teenage boy, I've decided I need to revisit some of those cheap-and-easy childhood staples.

Then I ended up with a whole bunch of free cooked rice, and I knew that it was time to tackle fried rice. I could attempt the recipe without risking poorly-cooked rice. And since I didn't need to spend forty minutes cooking rice, I could actually get dinner on the table on a Monday evening when I had a Zumba class quickly followed by a church meeting.

I tweaked my mom's recipes in a few ways.

First, I eliminated the ground beef, not because I don't like ground beef in fried rice but because I didn't have any defrosted and didn't really have time for the extra step of cooking it anyway. Eliminating that and the accompanying beef broth turned this into a vegetarian recipe, but I'll report back with a meaty version one of these days.

Second, having eliminated the beef, I needed to punch up the protein somehow. The bites of scrambled egg are my favorite part of fried rice anyway, so it was a no-brainer to increase the egg in the recipe.

Third, I cut back on the soy sauce, since I remembered it being too salty (though cutting the beef broth probably also saved some sodium).

And finally, I added some other sauces and spices to give it a more interesting flavor. Adding sambal oolek gives it a touch of bite--not what I think of as a lot, but you do taste it. In retrospect, it's possible that Mom's fried rice was mild-flavored because we were kids. Specifically, I'm the kid who liked everything bland and hated spicy foods. So, umm, keep in mind that it's probably entirely my fault her recipe wasn't perfect to begin with. I bet when she makes it for just herself and Dad it's deliciously seasoned. Ahem.

Vegetarian Fried Rice

Vegetarian Fried Rice
Adapted from my mom's recipe.

As I mentioned, I started with pre-cooked rice leftover from an office lunch. If you did not have the opportunity to rescue rice destined for the trash can, you should cook it first. Cook 1 1/2 cups rice according to package directions (to yield 3 cups rice, cooked). Set it aside and allow to cool. If you're really on top of things, you could cook the rice over the weekend and refrigerate it so it's ready to go for a fast weeknight dinner. I have never actually been this on top of things, but I pretend I am all the time.

Rice courtesy P.F. Chang's and my boss.

Once you have some nicely cooked rice ready to go, proceed with the recipe:

Chop 1 medium onion and 4-5 cloves garlic so they're ready to go. I speed-demoned them in the food processor:

to:

They never knew what hit them.

Heat 2 Tbs. oil in a large wok or skillet (if you know me, you know this is coconut oil, but clearly you can use whatever fat you'd like).

Add the onion and garlic

and sautee until onion is translucent.

Transluscent onion.

Add 12-16 oz. vegetables. The fastest and easiest is to use a bag of the small mixed veggies (peas, cube-cut carrots, and the like), but you can use any kind of frozen veggie mix or fresh vegetables. Almost any vegetable will taste good in fried rice.

I cut the bag open with scissors and still managed to spill
veggies all over the counter.

Cook until soft (aka thawed, if using frozen). You can stick the lid on the skillet to speed up the process.

Meanwhile, if you promise not to get distracted, scramble six eggs. I got distracted measuring out the ingredients for the next step and semi-burned the eggs. Luckily I sort of like semi-burned eggs, and the DDH didn't seem to notice. It's best if you don't get distracted, though.

Eggs.

Once your eggs are off the heat and your vegetables are done,

add 3 cups cooked brown rice and a scant 1/3 cup soy sauce (between the 1/4 cup and 1/3 cup lines).

Or more, if you like soy sauce.

In a measuring cup, spoon out 1 tsp. fish sauce and 1 tsp. sambal oolek/chile paste/hot sauce. Fill the measuring cup with water to make 1/4 cup liquid.

Add to the rice mixture.

Stir to combine and cook until rice is heated through.

Add your scrambled egg

 and mix thoroughly.

And there you have it. I was worried the DDH wouldn't find it filling enough without any meat, but six eggs seemed to add enough protein to satisfy him. Plus, brown rice tends to be pretty satisfying, fullness-wise, versus white rice. And then there's the fact that that particular combination of frozen vegetables is his favorite. At any rate, it got two thumbs up from him.

Quick, easy, cheap, tasty--it even tastes just as good the next day. Huzzah for fried rice!

Vegetarian Fried Rice

Lemony Lentil Salad

I love lentils.

Maybe that's a weird thing to say about this little legume. But it's true. I like the taste and the funny texture.

It's rare to find a food that's cheap, filling, healthy, and tasty, but lentils are all of those.

Dried lentils, like dried beans, are incredibly inexpensive, but they don't require soaking or long cooking times the way their bigger cousins do. So while I have a balance of cheap dried beans and more expensive, convenient canned beans in my pantry, with lentils I just buy dried.

I confess I've been in a bit of a rut cooking lentils, however. I add them to soups and stews to thicken them up, make them more filling and meaty without actually adding more meat. But I rarely do anything else with them.

At five o'clock yesterday afternoon, I had no meat defrosted, the thermometer read100 degrees, and a hungry DDH who needed leftovers for lunch the next day.

A quick perusal of the internets yielded an idea or two, which led to this: a summery cool vegetarian meal that even the DDH enjoyed.

Lemony Lentil Salad.

I told you I love lentils.

Lemony Lentil Salad

Lentils roughly double in volume when cooked. I wanted about three cups cooked lentils, so I measured out 1 1/2 cups dried lentils. This would be an easy recipe to double (or halve) to serve to a crowd (or just yourself).

Lentils.

Put your lentils in a strainer and rinse with hot water. Paw through them and check for little stones or other debris. Alternatively, put the lentils in a bowl, cover with hot water, and drain. The latter method will get them cleaner; the former is quicker and uses fewer dishes.

Rinsing--check for stones and grit.

Put the lentils in an appropriately sized pot and add twice as much water as you did lentils. So for 1 1/2 cups lentils, add 3 cups water. Warm or hot water is better.

You should have way more water than in this picture. I
just barely covered the lentils and had to add more water
almost immediately.

Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer until done. The lentils will dramatically increase in volume, so add more water if you need to. It will take 15-45 minutes for your lentils to cook, depending on how old and dry they are, how high you keep the heat, etc.

See how much the lentils have risen?

While the lentils are cooking, mix up your dressing.

In a small bowl or a handy shaker thing like I have, add 1/3 cup lemon juice (a bit more than one lemon, unless your lemon is pretty big and juicy). (Tip: Squeeze two (or more) lemons, measure out the juice you need, and pour the rest into an ice cube tray. Freeze and pop out into a labeled bag; pull out whenever you need fresh lemon juice. The lemon juice I'm using is actually frozen leftover lemon juice rather than true fresh juice.)

Lemon juice.

Several sprigs fresh dill or 1+ teaspoon dried dill. Just add some, taste, and add more if necessary.

Dill from the garden.

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard. Or brown mustard of your choice. Or yellow mustard, if you must. Or even some mustard seed or dried mustard, if you're out of the usual condiment.

1/4 teaspoon salt. Add more to taste.

Black pepper to taste.

Mustard, salt, pepper.

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil. (Read instructions below for how to add it to your dressing mixture!)

Olive oil.

Now. If you're using a dressing shaker, you can just layer everything in there and shake vigorously for thirty seconds. If you're using a bowl, you'll want to s l o w l y add the olive oil while constantly whisking the mixture with a fork or whisk. You want your oil and acid to emulsify and turn creamy, not separate into lemon juice with a grease slick.

Pretty layers.

Tasty emulsion.

Chop any vegetables you'd like to add to your salad: tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, summer squash, blanched green beans, steamed broccoli...whatever you have lying around that you think would be tasty.

At some point in here your lentils will finish cooking. Drain the lentils and put into a large bowl.

Lentils.

Add your vegetables. I had a nice juicy red tomato

Summer tomatoes for the win.

and a white onion.

Onion.

Pour on your dressing and stir to combine.

Mix well. Some will pool at the bottom, but you want
to make sure everything is coated.

Serve your lentil salad on top of lettuce, rice, or pasta--or all by itself! This would also make a nice accompaniment to a salmon filet or some other fish.

Delicious and nutritious!

It occurs to me that some parmesan cheese grated on top of that would be divine.

We ate it room temperature last night and chilled for lunch today. I loved it. So good.

And the DDH? We all know that vegetarian recipes have to garner his approval if I want to make them again for general consumption. Luckily, he likes lentils (though not raw onion, oops), and lentils are filling and chewy enough to make up for meat. He ate a big bowl and expressed his approval (except for the raw onions). Success!

Dak Bokkeum Tang (Spicy Chicken Stew)

Chicken soup is for the soul in Korea, too.

I should probably issue a disclaimer here that this isn't actual dak bokkeum tang. A key ingredient in the Korean stew is gochujang, a sauce made of fermented soybeans and chiles.

I stock a lot of Asian ingredients in my kitchen (I find that using an Asian, Mexican, or Italian flavor profile is a good way to turn the exact same dish (pasta, chicken, vegetables, etc.) into a completely different meal), but I did not and never have had any gochujang on hand.

So I improvised. But if you happen to have it or are feeling like a trip to Asia Mart (yes, this is the name of one of the grocery stores in Tulsa. This magical place stocks every imaginable Asian and almost every imaginable Mexican cooking ingredient, plus things like fans and woks and one million pound bags of rice and geisha robes and also the most delicious fresh bubble tea), substitute the soy sauce, fish sauce, and chile paste below with 1/6 cup gochujang + about 1 1/4 Tbs. soy sauce.

The soup as made below is also pretty darn spicy. The DDH's reaction, and I quote, was, "This is spicy! But really good. But spicy!" So caveat ederator.

Dak Bokkeum Tang
Halved and liberally adapted from Cooking Light March 2012

We marinate the chicken for at least a half hour, so bear that in mind when planning. I'm sure the stew would still be tasty if you don't have time to marinate the chicken, but marinating will make the chicken more juicy, tender, and flavorful.

(Why is the noun marinade, with a d, but the verb is marinate, with a t? Has anyone else ever noticed this? I love the English language.)

Measure 2 Tbs. soy sauce. Add 1 Tbs. chile paste (sambal oelek, for example), and then add fish sauce (and/or oyster sauce, and/or any other fun Asiany sauces you have lying around) to make 1/6 cup. Roughly.

Pour into a large bowl (with a lid if you have one).

Add:

• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tbs. ginger, peeled and minced
• 1 Tbs. sesame oil
• 1/2 Tbs. brown sugar
• 3/8 tsp. crushed red pepper

Grating ginger.

A note on ginger: freezing ginger makes it easier to grate with a microplane dealy like in the picture above. If, however, you think this means you can just freeze the whole dang root and chop off pieces as you want it...well, all I have to say is you'd better have a sharp knife, a strong arm, and a lot of patience.

It does, however, stop the damn expensive stuff from rotting before you can use it all. Just saying you might want to chop it into one-inch-ish pieces before freezing, is all.

Marinade

Mix your marinade well with a fork or other favorite mixing implement. Mostly you want to break that brown sugar down and dissolve it into the liquids.

Add ~1 pound chicken tenders (or boneless skinless chicken breasts/thighs/etc. cut into strips or chunks). When the DDH and I went to eat the soup, we realized I should have at chopped the chicken into bite size pieces, as we ended up trying to eat chicken strips with spoons. That did actually work, though, as the chicken turns out tender enough that you don't really need a fork-and-knife.

I've cleverly left the part of the lid the dog chewed on
out of the picture.

Cover and leave to marinate at room temperature for about thirty minutes. If you'll be leaving it longer, you may wish to refrigerate it.

Here's another note: This procedure and time uses white rice. If you're using brown rice, it's going to take longer.

Place 3/4 cup white rice in a medium saucepan. Cover with warm water two inches above rice. Stir the rice; drain. Repeat twice more.

Add 3/4 cup water to drained rice in pan. Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat, and simmer for twenty minutes. Remove from heat and let stand ten minutes.

Meanwhile, chop up some vegetables for your stew. I had and thus used potatoes and carrots. If this were summer, there would inevitably be summer squash and zucchini. Sweet potatoes would work, and winter squashes of various sorts; I can picture broccoli and cauliflower in the mix here. Onions, mushrooms--whatever. Chop 'em up.

Two carrots; four medium-small potatoes.

Bring 1/6 cup water to a boil in a large Dutch oven.

Add chicken mixture and bring to a simmer.

Add root vegetables and any other long-cooking vegetables:

Cover, reduce heat, and simmer twenty minutes.

Uncover and simmer ten minutes more or until mixture thickens, stirring occasionally.

At this point I added some frozen spinach:

And left it on the heat until the spinach thawed, then removed from heat and I meant to add green onion tops, sliced, but of course I forgot.

Portion rice into bowls

and top with chicken mixture.

As I said, it is spicy, but warm and delicious. It's somehow a comforting familiar food--chicken and rice soup--yet still a novel and interesting flavor combination.

The bonus to most soups and stews is that they make great leftovers, and this is no exception. I made it Friday night and it was still delicious at lunch the following Thursday.