When Company Shows Up, Fast Snacks Do The Job

   If it hasn't been crazy enough around here, one of our best friends from LA showed up. He was doing some workat Pixar and so decided to come up to Sonoma for the long weekend. Any visit usually brings a wave of cooking, but since we've had our plate relatively full, the cooking morphed into eating out all over town and then inviting our local friends over to eat and drink late into the night at our house.

   The sudden influx of company seemed like the perfect opportunity to give a test run to some of the products that the good people at Saffron Road Food wanted me to try. I'm not a huge  night-time snacker, but when company comes for movie night or just plain whatever, I like to be able to throw some tasty stuff at them. Usually the way it works is I tell people to bring whatever they'd like to drink, I'll supply the food.

   Since the snacks are usually Indian even though this is Wine Country, the preferred beverage  for most of our guests is beer. In this case a very special beer only available for a brief period of time around here... the legendary Pliny the Elder from Russian River Brewing Company, Racer 5 from bear Republic Brewing and Red Tail Ale from Mendocino Brewing Company. There may have been other things too, but I was too busy preparing food and guzzling fizzy water to notice. I am after all the designated cook.

   I usually make everything from scratch so this evening of using prepared Indian snacks was a first for me. I must say Saffron Road made it pretty easy. I served three different bags of their Crunchy Chickpeas, Falafel, Wasabi and Bombay Spice. They're rated at different heats, roasted not fried, (big plus there) and Gluten Free. Yes, a gluten free snack food. You'll never miss your chips again.

   I sampled all three flavors and preferred the Bombay Spice, but that's just me. Needless to say, all three bowls of crunchies were quickly emptied. For the main event I opened a couple of boxes of their Tandoori Seasoned Chicken Nuggets. I preheated the oven, opened the box, popped the frozen nuggets on a cookie sheet and 15 minutes later we were eating chicken.

The chicken nuggets were made of lean breast meat. While everyone was chowing down on beer and chickpeas, I whipped up a couple of dips to compliment the flavor.  One was a Quick Tomato Chutney and the other a cooling Mango Curd
 

Both were fast and easy, links to the recipes are above.

Because I am a total glutton, I also couldn't resist making Momo to add to the table. In the name of ease however, I used wonton wrappers instead of making my own momo dough. It worked just great.

   So how did I Iike my first foray into using prepared frozen treats for entertaining guests? It was easy, tasty and simple. I liked the idea that while the main feature was not made by me, the dipping sauces were, which added an easy homemade touch. Will I be trying this again? I think that these products will make a nice addition to my larder/freezer. It's always great to have stuff around for company and I've learned that I don't always have to do everything myself. It's about time. Thanks Saffron Road for giving me a chance to entertain easily.

   Coming up next, my Super Bowl, Academy Awards watching food. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

Curried Peanut Soup

   I haven't been doing a lot of cooking in the last month. Dealing with family matters and my moms' death have kept Alan and me running. Of course to say that I've been eating well would be a joke. Meals have been grabbed on the run  when they do occur with any regularity, and mostly involve pizza. Lots of pizza. Sometimes good pizza, sometimes not so good. Frans last outing before she died was to her favorite pizza place, and even though Fran was many things, a gourmet she was not. Since that place was also my parent's favorite place, it's where we've been spending a whole lot of time with my dad. Mezzo-mezzo pizza and Manhattans (no Manhattans for me though) have been on the daily menu and I am more than ready to get back to Indian food and a regular healthy diet that actually includes fresh vegetables.

   For me, the perfect passport to healthy eating has always been soup. No matter how bad and food-degenerate I've been, soup can put me back on the straight and narrow. It's my edible Rescue Mission in a bowl. Soup seemed like the perfect first step back to a normal diet after all the "I'm the Foursquare Mayor of this gin joint and I get a free dessert! "days. It's also been cold cold cold up here in Sonoma. I know that people who really live in a frigid clime must laugh at what we call cold, temps in the upper 20's and low 30's every morning. But when darkness falls and the mercury or whatever they're putting in digital thermometers nowadays drops, I want something filling and warm. I want Soup.

  One of our favorite soups around here is Curried African Peanut Soup. There's a story to this soup. Once upon a time in a Beverly Hills of Long Ago there was a restaurant called The Rangoon Racquet Club. The Rangoon Racquet Club was one of those places that was always booked up months and months in advance. It was an extremely popular and fancy "adult" restaurant. It was not the sort of place a recent NYU film school grad who lived on Mickey D's, wore jeans and tennis shoes, and drove an ancient VW bug would go for a meal, but that's where Alan took me one evening for dinner.

   He told me to dress up and showed up at my door in a pale grey raw silk suit that he'd bought for the occasion. I can't remember what I wore but I'm sure it was equally ludicrous. We most likely looked like a couple of prom kids out for a night on mom and dads' credit card. I don't know how he did it but he'd gotten a reservation at The RRC and off we went from the bowels of SilverLake to Beverly Hills. Good thing there was a valet because I could never have let myself out of that car as there was no inside door handle on the passenger side.

   I can't remember too much about what we ate. The place was fancy and filled with potted palms. We had stepped into some sort of Private Club from the days of The Raj. The food was Colonial Style "Indian food." That is, Indian food filtered through the taste buds of some ancient Memsaab. No wonder I don't remember it. It was hardly Indian food as I know it now. The one thing about that meal that I will not forget however was  the Curried Peanut Soup we were served.

   The original recipe called for whipping cream, creamy peanut butter and the English version of curry powder. That yellow gold stuff that's sold as "curry" and really is more the sort of ingredient that's found in some classic Japanese curries rather than Indian. My version of this soup is a bit different. I use a lighter chicken broth and my universal method for avoiding heavy whipping cream in soups, which is the substitution of 1/3 cup of arborio rice for the dairy. I also use a plain ground chunky organic peanut butter free of salt and sugar, rather than the salted, sugared, jarred version. This time around courtesy of the nice people at Saffron Road I was able to try out Saffron Roads' chicken broth.

   I don't often make broth from scratch anymore, there's usually not enough time and so I'm always looking for good quality pre-made. The Saffron Road broth is organic, low fat, low sodium, and halal. The flavors are fresh and delicious and it's always good to know that if something is coming out of a box or package, the people who are putting that whatever it is in the box or package care about what they're doing. In a word. I really liked this broth and it's now on my pantry staples list.

   When it comes to soup making, there's not always time for long prep, and what I like about the Curried peanut soup is that it cooks up very quickly. Less than an hour from pot to bowl. It's always been a big favorite at our house. This is a soup that kids also seem to like too as the flavors are mild. So, without further ado.

Curried Peanut Soup

Here's What You Need:

4 cups of chicken broth. (I used Saffron Road Traditional Chicken Broth)
1 onion finely chopped
1/3 cup of uncooked Arborio rice
Fresh cilantro
1 bunch of green onions finely chopped
1 Tbs peanut or coconut oil
3 shallots, chopped
3 carrots peeled and sliced
3 Tbs of curry powder
1 and 1/2 tsps of sugar
1/2 cup of crunchy peanut butter
A bit of yogurt

Here's What To Do:

Heat the peanut oil in a heavy pot.
When the oil is hot toss in the onion, shallots, and curry powder.
Stir everything around until the onion is golden and translucent.
Add in the chicken broth and bring everything to a boil.
When the broth is boiling, toss in the Arborio rice and the carrots.

Turn down the heat and simmer everything together for about 20 minutes. Stir it every once in a while to make sure nothing is sticking.
Take the pot off the fire  and add in the peanut butter.
Using a food processor or immersion blender puree everything to nice smooth blend.
If you prefer your soup a bit thinner, you can add more broth now. It's purely a matter of taste.
Reheat the soup again gently.
Add in the sugar.
Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle the chopped green onions and cilantro over the top and add a dab of thick yogurt.
Serve it up!

   This is a delicious warming soup and it's even better the next day as the flavors mellow. Its also the only recipe I make that actually uses traditional English curry powder, which of course is absent in Indian cuisine. I want to thank the good folks at Saffron Road Foods for allowing me to give their broth a test run in my kitchen. If you've got some peanut butter, carrots, and curry powder around the house, round up the broth and you can have this soup in a bowl pretty dang quickly. It's perfect for a cold Winter night.

   Coming up next, I experiment with some food for our version of the Super Bowl, Oscar Night! Follow along on Twitter @kathygori