The Cook & The Coach Blog

Fish and Veggie Red Curry

8/17/2016

Laura loves curry!!! So what do you do when your wife loves curry, you make curry for her. Sometimes I'm all about doing things from absolute scratch. In the case of curry, it would be fantastic to toast my own spices then grind them fresh and use my mortal and pestle to make a paste. But let's be honest that takes time and energy.

Instead we found a pre-made curry paste, added in some fresh veggies and fish and a couple other ingredients and we had a delicious dish in under 30 minutes. This was my first time ever using fish in a curry and it turned out pretty great. If you are completely scared of fish or don't like the flavor, too bad, try it anyways. I think you will be surprised that the curry is the dominate flavor and not the fish, so it is a good way to give fish a try.

Feel free to add your favorite veggies to this dish. You don't have to use what we used, we just had these on hand and that is why we love curry dishes so much, because they are so versatile. You could also sub out the quinoa for rice or even zoodles or sweet potato noodles if you want to go grain free. The possibilities are endless. We hope you enjoy this one as much as we did.

Ingredients

1 lb of your favorite white fish, we used flounder but you could easily use cod, haddock, pollock, even walleye
1 tbsp coconut oil
2 large carrots, chopped into bite size pieces
1 large onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
2 cups fresh or frozen green beans
3 tbsp Red Curry paste from Thai Kitchen
1 tbsp coconut sugar, palm sugar, or brown sugar
1 15 oz can of coconut milk
1 1/2 cups of water
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 cups dried quinoa
1/4 cup fresh cilantro

Directions

In a large saucepan or dutch oven add the coconut oil and melt over a medium high heat.
Add the carrots, peppers, and onions and cook for 8 minutes.
Add red curry paste and cook and stir for 1 minute, then add the coconut milk, fish sauce, sugar, and water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low.
This is where timing things out comes in handy. Depending on the type of grain; quinoa or rice, you should possibly start that before you start cooking any of the veg and curry sauce. For me I started the quinoa in our pressure cooker when I was cooking the veg. If you are doing it on the stovetop you might need to start sooner. When your grains have approximately 8 minutes left add your fish cut up into 1-2" pieces and your green beans or any other frozen veg.
Simmer the sauce with the fish and all the veg for that final 8 minutes with your pan covered. Try not to cook the fish for much longer than 8 minutes otherwise it will just start to fall apart.
Once your quinoa or rice is done, serve a couple large spoonfuls in the bottom of your bowl and top with the curry sauce. Finish with some freshly chopped cilantro and enjoy.

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Drunken Zoodles

9/2/2015

Who else loves Thai food??? Yeah I could pretty much eat it everyday. I love the flavor profiles of sweet, salty, sour, and spicy...it's just so good! The noodle dishes are probably my favorite when we go out to Thai restaurants. My go to's are Pad Thai, Pad See Ew, or Pad Kee Mao (Drunken Noodles). Given my new intolerance of gluten, I am a lot more cautious when it comes to ordering food at restaurants. I know most asian noodles are made from rice flour, but I guess I just have trust issues, especially when you add the sauce in on top of that. For example I had no idea soy sauce had wheat flour in it, prior to becoming allergic to it...and most Asian kitchens use soy in everything...so it just makes me a little nervous!

With all of that, I decided to try to recreate a Drunken Noodle dish to ensure that it is 100% gluten free. It's not a perfect representation of the authentic dish but it was pretty tasty.

Ingredients

1 pound of chicken breast cut into 1/4" thick slices
2 cups chopped broccoli
1 red bell pepper, cut into strips
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp coconut oil
1 tsp chili oil (This isn't 100% necessary)
1 tbsp tapioca starch (corn starch works too)
2 medium zucchini cut into 1/2" wide strips
1 cup rough chopped thai basil, if you can't find thai basil regular will work

The Sauce

1/4 cup Fish Sauce
1/4 cup Coconut Aminos
2 tbsp honey
2 tsp sriracha sauce, can add more or less depending on your spice tolerance

Directions

In a hot wok or large fry pan add the coconut and chili oil until it is moving around the pan freely. Add the chicken, broccoli, and bell pepper. Cook for 4-5 minutes over medium high heat. Add garlic and cook for another minute.
Add the tapioca or corn starch and toss to coat the chicken and veggies evenly.
Add the sauce to the wok and cook for 3-4 minutes until it heats up and begins to thicken.
Add the zoodles to the wok and toss. Cook for 1-2 minutes until they are heated through. If you let them cook too long they will begin to give up their water and you will have a soupy, watery mess of a sauce.
Add your basil, toss and serve!

Download Recipe Card for Drunken Zoodles

Thai Pizza with Peanut Sauce, Shrimp, Carrots and Broccoli

12/8/2014

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I have to apologize for not posting too many recipes as of late. We've been doing a lot of super simple stuff like roasting fish and veggies with salt and pepper. I didn't think that you need help doing that. If you do, then I'm happy to help and feel free to shoot us a message.

We made this Saturday night, I was really craving pizza after my brother stopped by and mentioned he was on his way to go pick up a pizza from a local pizza place. My normal go to pizza is pepperoni, sausage and mushrooms, LOVE IT!!! Laura likes her pesto, shrimp with goat cheese combination. I don't want to say we met in the middle with this one, but maybe... It had Laura's shrimp and it had some spice that I like in my pizza. All in all this pizza took maybe 45 minutes to make the dough from scratch, prep the toppings and then bake. So yeah a little bit longer than a frozen pizza but so much better for you and just as fast a it would take to have a pizza delivered.

Ingredients

Pizza Dough - This is a modification from the other dough recipe we posted earlier this year. The other one is completely whole wheat flour. If you want that recipe you click here.

2/3 cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup water, heated to 110 degrees
2 tsp honey
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp instant yeast
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp Parmesan cheese (optional)

Peanut Sauce - This peanut sauce could be used for anything a marinade for chicken to a dipping sauce for spring rolls.

1/4 cup natural creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup water or stock
2 tbsp Liquid Aminos or low sodium soy sauce
1 tbsp Chili Garlic Sauce
1 tsp Sriracha - feel free to adjust depending on how spicy you like things
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Toppings

1 cup steamed broccoli, chopped into bite size pieces
1/2 cup shredded carrots, raw
1 cup cooked shrimp, cut into bite size pieces
1/4 cup green onions, finely chopped

Directions

Pizza Dough

Mix the water, honey, oil, yeast together to dissolve the honey and also allow the yeast to activate. Let rest for 5 minutes. You should see the yeast at work. I did this right in my stand mixer.
Mix together your dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
Using the dough hook attachment on your mixer, turn it on at a low speed. Slowly begin adding your dry ingredients a little at a time. Once all the dry ingredients are added your dough ball should start climbing up the side of the bowl, when this happens you can stop. If you do not have a stand mixer, knead the dough for 2 minutes by hand.
Cover the dough and let rest for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes remove the dough. Place on a lightly flour dusted countertop.
Roll out into a 6″ circle with your hands trying to keep it as round as possible. At this point I switched to a rolling pin because my pizza tossing and hand pressing skills are not that good. I rolled it out to about a 1/4″ thick and it was roughly 12″ across.

Peanut Sauce

Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan and warm over medium heat until peanut butter melts. After everything comes together, keep on lowest heat setting until ready to use.

Assembly

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. If you using a pizza stone, keep your stone in the oven while you are preheating.
Once your stone and oven are hot, remove stone from the oven. A trick to keep your dough from sticking to your stone is to sprinkle a little bit of corn meal on the stone before putting your dough on it. After that, put your dough on the stone. Brush on a little olive oil. Using a fork pierce the top of the dough in order to keep it from bubbling up while it bakes.
Put the dough in the oven for 5 minutes WITHOUT any toppings. It should be slightly brown.
Remove from the oven, add your sauce evenly on the dough, then add your toppings. Bake for another 6 minutes or until your crust begins brown and crisp up.
Cut and ENJOY!!!

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Fish and Veggie Red Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Drunken Zoodles

Ingredients

Directions

Download Recipe Card for Drunken Zoodles

Thai Pizza with Peanut Sauce, Shrimp, Carrots and Broccoli

Ingredients

Directions