Cabbage Roll Lasagne

Every time I've ever tried to make cabbage rolls, they end up half fallen apart. While still delicious, I couldn't help but feel they were taunting me from the swirling depths of the tomato sauce, and that I was a culinary failure for not being able to replicate such a classic comfort food. I tried keeping the rolls together with toothpicks, or sandwiching them close together so they didn't have the space to dissolve, all to no avail. One day, while browsing Pinterest, I saw a recipe that essentially left the cabbage rolls unassembled, like a casserole. Suddenly, cabbage rolls seemed approachable again. And how can you get more comfort food than casserole?

I took this recipe and adapted it for my own purposes, which included using regular rice, adding a bell pepper since I already had one on hand I needed to use, and layering the meat with cabbage in a similar style to a lasagne. It maintains the essence of a good cabbage roll with the ease of throwing everything in a pan and into the oven. An ideal comfort food, even with a grandma's disapproval. ;)

Cabbage Roll Lasagne
Author: Amanda, adapted from The Primal Food Blog and Joy of Cooking
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 6+

Ingredients

• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 red bell pepper, deseeded and diced small
• 1/2 cup white rice
• 1 cup beef broth
• 1 680mL can plain tomato sauce
• approximately 1/4 head green cabbage, roughly shredded
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions
Brown ground beef in a medium sized saucepan on medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and bell pepper. Saute until onion soft and translucent, about five minutes. Add rice and beef broth, cover, and allow simmer 20-30 mins on low heat, until rice is cooked. Add tomato sauce, salt and pepper. In a lightly greased 9x13 baking dish, layer cabbage and meat sauce until dish is full. Bake at 350F for 30-45 minutes, and serve.

Step-by-Step Photos

Start off by browning a pound of ground beef in a medium sized saucepan on medium heat. Break up the ground beef into tiny pieces as it cooks.

Add the onion, garlic, and bell pepper. Saute until the onion is soft and translucent, around five minutes.

Add half a cup of rice and a cup of beef broth to the meat mixture, cover, and reduce the heat to low.

While the rice is cooking, prepare the cabbage. I ended up slicing/shredding a full half head of cabbage, and used about half of it for this particular recipe.

Lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish and layer cabbage along the bottom.

After 20-30 minutes, the rice should be fully cooked. Stir to ensure most of the excess liquid has been absorbed.

Add the canned tomato sauce, and adjust salt and pepper to taste. I added about 3/4 teaspoons salt.

Layer about half of the meat mixture on top of the cabbage.

Continue layering cabbage and meat mixture until the dish is full.

Bake uncovered at 350F for 30-45 minutes, until the tomato sauce is bubbling and the top begins to brown.

Serve! I love this with a healthy drizzle of sriracha, mmm!

Thai Green Curry with Mangoes & Cashews

Like many modern young women, I turned to waitressing to pay my bills while I went to college. I was fortunate enough to work at a great upscale Thai restaurant for nearly four years, and lovingly refer to this time in my life as my second bachelor's degree. Understandably, Thai food became a staple in my diet, so when I left the restaurant to pursue my career, I desperately needed to bring up my curry game. For weeks I researched recipes, techniques, and combined with what I was able to glean from the cooks (everything in the back of house was written in Thai), I was finally able to recreate the essence of my favourite curries. Everything in life made sense again.

The way I make my Thai curry is hardly traditional. I find it easier to prepare the curry sauce separately and allow the flavours to marry while stir frying the protein and vegetables separately, adding the curry sauce itself only in the last couple of minutes. This is because Thai cuisine revolves around four flavour pillars: salt, sweet, sour, and spice. I like to take my time tweaking the curry sauce by adding a little more of anything I feel might be missing, rather than boiling everything together in the same pan, per traditional Thai fare. Using prepared curry paste rather than a mortar and pestle is a great convenience, though adding extra fresh garlic and ginger helps the pre-prepared paste taste less so. Different brands of curry paste have different flavours and spice levels, so you may need to adjust accordingly. I have successfully kept a jar of curry paste sealed in the fridge for months with little discernible change in flavour or perceived freshness.

Even though I used chicken as the main protein for this particular curry, dry-fried tofu works great! The curry sauce can easily be made vegan by substituting vegetarian soy sauce for the fish sauce. The recipe following is essentially identical for both red and green Thai curries - you just need a paste in the respective flavour.

Thai Green Curry with Mangoes & Cashews
Author: Amanda
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 4

Ingredients
Green Curry Sauce

• 1 teaspoon coconut oil
• 1 can coconut milk
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 inch fresh ginger, grated or microplaned
• 3-4 kaffir lime leaves
• 1/4-1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes or 1-2 Thai chilies, diced, to taste
• 1-2 tablespoons Thai green curry paste
• 1-2 tablespoons fish sauce, to taste
• 1-2 tablespoons brown sugar, to taste
• juice of 1/2 lime, to taste

Stir-Fry

• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 2 chicken breasts, cut into short strips
• 6 cups mixed vegetables (I used a mixture of red onion, bell pepper, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrot)
• 1/2 cup diced fresh or frozen mango
• 1/4 cup roasted unsalted cashews
• jasmine rice for serving

Directions
Prepare the green curry sauce by melting a teaspoon of coconut oil in a small pot over medium-low heat. Simmer garlic, ginger, curry paste, and red pepper flakes in coconut oil for a few minutes until gently bubbling and fragrant. Add coconut milk, lime leaves, fish sauce, brown sugar, and lime juice. Bring the mixture until barely simmering. Adjust salt, sweet, sour, and spice notes to taste with fish sauce, brown sugar, lime juice, and red pepper flakes accordingly. Set curry aside on low heat until ready to add to stir fry.
Melt a tablespoon of coconut oil in a medium saucepan or wok on medium heat. Add raw chicken strips, and allow to cook most of the way through. Add vegetables and stir frequently on medium heat for approximately five minutes. Add green curry sauce and mix well. Add cashews and mango pieces, and heat through. Serve on rice.

Step-by-Step Photos

Start the curry sauce with a little bit of coconut oil (vegetable oil works too) and allow the garlic, ginger, curry paste, and red pepper flakes to simmer for a couple minutes. The mixture should be super fragrant and start to bubble.

Add a can of coconut milk, lime leaves, fish sauce, brown sugar, and lime juice to the pot. Not all green curry pastes make a curry this green, and I used to puree a handful of spinach and cilantro with a small amount of water and would add it in with this step, which really brightens up the colour. If you don't have lime leaves at home, I've found the zest of a lime will work in a pinch. Adjust the salt/sweet/sour/spicy components to your individual tastes. Once you are satisfied, turn the heat down to just keep the curry hot while you begin the stir-fry, and give it a stir every few minutes to make sure nothing burns on the bottom.

Begin the stir-fry by melting a tablespoon of coconut oil (or vegetable oil) in a saucepan or wok. Add the chicken and stir often, trying to ensure the chicken pieces cook equally on all sides.

Once the chicken seems to be about halfway cooked, add the mixed vegetables. I used a mixture of fresh and frozen vegetables, because I like having a larger variety of vegetables in my stir-fries, and having a mixed bag of frozen veggies in the freezer won't spoil and take up valuable fridge real estate.

After stir-frying for about five minutes, add the curry sauce to the mixture. If your pan is hot enough, the curry should start bubbling right away. Continue to stir often, and allow the curry sauce to help finish cooking the chicken and vegetables.

Add the cashews and mango. I had a bag of frozen mango pieces in the freezer and there happened to be about a half cup left in the bag. I find that there's not too much of a texture change in mango from frozen pieces as long as it's cooked.

Stir well to combine and ensure mango is heated through. (It doesn't need to be stir-fried like the vegetables or you risk making it mush.)

Serve over jasmine rice.

Curry Fried Rice

If you sat me down and told me with the utmost solemnity that I could only eat curried foods for the rest of my life, I would probably be pretty stoked still. I love curries and if I'm ever not sure what to make for supper, the answer is probably curry.

Paige and I were in Thailand a year ago and I still remember being completely blown away by the food. Everything was fresh, had crazy amounts of flavour, and most of the time I had just bought it off a street vendor. I picked up a cookbook in a Thai airport - Classic Thai Food by Srisamorn Kongpun, and it's a great resource to flip through and fall in love with Thai food all over again. I used a recipe for fried rice from that book but changed a couple things to make it reminiscent of a curry fried rice I ate on a tiny island in the south of Thailand. Short of a fresh pineapple bowl and an ocean breeze, it turned out pretty darn well.

As I mentioned in another fried rice recipe, the key to great fried rice is using day-old rice. It's much less likely to stick together, and fry instead of steam. I had a package of salad shrimp in the freezer I needed to use up, but if you have larger prawns, those would still be great. And if shellfish aren't your thing, some diced up chicken breast would work fine.

Curry Fried Rice
Author: inspired from Srisamorn Kongpun's Kao Pad Supparod
Difficulty: easy-moderate
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

• 1/2 can drained diced pineapple
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 Thai chilli
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 cup precooked salad sized shrimp
• 1 egg
• 4 cups day-old white rice
• 1 teaspoon + 1.5 tablespoons coconut oil
• 2 heaping teaspoons yellow curry powder
• 1-2 tablespoons fish sauce, to taste

Directions
Dice bell peppers, onion, and Thai chilli. Dice the pineapple chunks into smaller pieces, between 1/2-1/4 of original size. Heat 1 teaspoon of coconut oil in a frying pan and break egg into a small bowl or cup, and use a fork to scramble well. Once the pan is hot, pour the egg mixture onto pan and roll the pan around to form a thin sheet of cooked egg. Remove from heat, and roll and shred the egg mixture and set aside. Heat remaining oil in pan, add curry powder, and allow to toast. Add onion and Thai chilli and saute until onion is translucent. Add day old rice, and fry the rice in the oil, flipping frequently and ensuring grains do not stick together. Fry rice for about 10 minutes or until starting to "crackle" in the pan. Add pineapple and bell peppers, and continue to fry. Add shrimp and heat through. Turn off the heat, add fish sauce to taste. Serve garnished with shredded eggs.

Step-by-Step Photos

Melt some coconut oil in a good sized frying pan on medium heat. It should heat up pretty quickly, so crack an egg into a coffee mug and use a fork to scramble it well.

Pour the scrambled egg into the pan, and rotate the pan around to spread out the egg as it cooks. It should cook pretty quickly, but when it's done it will look like this. Roll it off the pan (if you can), and set aside.

Add the remaining coconut oil to the pan on medium heat and add curry powder, allowing the curry powder to toast before moving onward.

Add the diced onion and Thai chilli to the pan, and saute until soft and translucent - about five minutes.

Meanwhile, shred the egg and re-dice the pineapple chunks so that all components of the fried rice are of a similar size.

Once the onion has had a chance to start cooking, add the rice. Use a spatula to break up larger pieces and flip the rice frequently. Eventually, you should be able to hear the rice sizzle and pop as it fries. That's a great thing.

After frying the rice for 10-15 minutes, add the pineapple, bell peppers, and salad shrimp to the rice. Mix well to incorporate, and heat through. I prefer my peppers on the crunchy side - if you like them softer, add the peppers first, and give them a few minutes to fry before adding the rest of the ingredients.

Turn off the heat and add fish sauce to taste. I loved the use of fish sauce in this case because I didn't want to muddy the pretty yellow curry colour with soy sauce, but you could use that if that's what you have on hand. Flip the rice around some more to ensure extra steam is let off.

Garnish with the shredded eggs, and serve.

Bacon Pineapple Fried Rice

I am a sucker for fried rice. When I was first living on my own and trying to get the hang of feeding myself on a regular basis, fried rice was a staple. It's a great way to use up odds and ends in the fridge, so the possibilities are endless! Over the years I have learned little things here and there that have really brought up my fried rice game.

Want to know the biggest secret?

Day old rice.

Yep. That's the biggest bit right there. Fresh rice is delicious, but it won't fry. It'll steam, sure, but is that really what you want? No. You want the chewy, almost-greasy-but-not-quite fried rice that will welcome you without judgement and with open arms. So, for the best results, either use leftover rice from another meal or make it the day before and leave it in the fridge overnight. If you're really pressed for time or forgot to think ahead, make fresh rice and spread it out on a cookie sheet to let it cool quickly for an hour or two. That will also give you similar results.

This fried rice utilizes the bacon fat to fry the rice in, which in my humble opinion is the way to go. It saturates the rice in bacon flavour, so you can stretch out that package of bacon for another meal. With the rising price of pork, I think that's a splendid idea.

Bacon Pineapple Fried Rice

Author: Amanda
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

• 6 cups day-old white rice
• 1/2 package bacon
• 2 eggs
• 1 white onion
• 1/4 fresh pineapple, cored
• 1 red bell pepper
• 3-4 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/2 bunch cilantro (optional)

Directions
Slice bacon and fry in wok until crispy. Dice onion, bell pepper, and pineapple. Wash and finely chop cilantro. Remove bacon from wok, set aside, and drain fat, reserving 1-2 tablespoons of fat in wok. Scramble eggs in wok, and set aside. Use the spatula to break up eggs into small pieces. Wash wok if necessary, and return approximately 3 tablespoons of fat into wok. Saute onion in bacon fat on medium-high heat until translucent, 3-4 minutes. Add rice, and fry for 7-10 minutes, flipping rice mixture frequently with spatula. Rice should "pop" while frying. Add bacon, pineapple, and bell pepper to mixture and continue to fry an additional 5 minutes. Add soy sauce to taste, and fry an additional 2 minutes to allow moisture to evaporate. Remove from heat, and add eggs and cilantro. Stir to combine, and serve.

Step-by-Step Photos

Make your rice the day before, and store in an airtight container in the fridge.

I used half a 500g package of bacon. Slice it up ahead of time so that it will crisp up evenly. I find that easier than trying to cut up crisped bacon, anyhow.

Go ahead and crisp that bacon up in the wok. Once it's nice and crispy, turn off the heat and remove the bacon and set aside. Drain the bacon fat, but reserve it for later. Keep 1-2 tablespoons in the bottom of the wok for the eggs.

Scramble the eggs and fry them in the bacon fat on medium-low heat. Once they're sufficiently done, remove them from the wok and set aside. If there's some egg left in the wok like mine here, it's a smart idea to wash it out quickly before continuing.

At some point, maybe while frying the bacon or eggs, dice up an onion.

Start frying that onion in about 3 tablespoons of the bacon fat.

While the onion is frying, capitalize on that time and prepare the bell pepper and fresh pineapple.

Once the onion is translucent, add the rice and crank up the heat to medium-high. This is where you have to exercise some patience. Frying rice does take a little bit of time, but if you want that signature fried rice texture, there's no way around it. Flip the rice mixture around frequently so that all of the rice gets a chance to get to the bottom of the wok, where the heat is the most intense. After a few minutes, you should start to hear the rice crackle and make "popping" sounds. This is exactly what you are looking for. Keep going.

After 7-10 minutes, this is what the fried rice should look like.

Now you can throw those add-ons in, and keep up that frying technique for another 5 minutes or so.

Add the soy sauce to taste. I usually add a little bit, stir it in, and taste to see if it's enough. That way you won't accidentally over salt all of your hard work. Keep the heat on to allow extra moisture to evaporate. I mean, after working this hard for that delicious texture, the last thing you want to do is make soggy rice, right? Right.

If you have a spare minute while frying, wash up a half bunch of cilantro, discard the stems, and finely chop it.

Finally, turn off the heat, and return the eggs to the pan. Add the cilantro...

...and stir well to combine.

Serve.