Curry a la His & Hers Kitchen

To make life easier for her self, Hers plans out the week by making a week menu. Today was home created Curry day ~ a family favorite.

First a few facts about Curry.

The word curry is an anglicised version of the Tamil word khari(கறி ), which is usually understood to mean "gravy" or "sauce" rather than "spices". Curry (IPA: /ˈkʌri/) is a generic description used throughout European and American culture to describe a general variety of spiced dishes, best known in South Asian cuisines, especially Indian cuisine.

Curry is a generic term and although there is no one specific attribute that marks a dish as "curry", some distinctive spices used in many curry dishes included turmeric, cumin, coriander, fenugreek, and red pepper.

In Norway Curry, Karri in Norwegian, is the name on a very specific spice mix made out of cumin, coriander, fenegreek, chili, and turmeric, and it has a very distinct yellow color.

4 persons

1.2 - 1.5 lb lb thin pork chops

Box of pineapple

Two apples (don't mind the picture)

Two small or 1 1/2 half medium size onion

8.oz pineapple juice (from the box)

8 oz. half and half

Curry - either powder or paste

Salt and Pepper

Jasmine rice

Use paper towel to dry of the pork chops. Cut each pork chop in three and brown in hot frying pan.

Dice onions and apples ~ put them in a medium casserole dish. Add the diced pineapple. Mix pineapple juice and half and half in a big measuring cup.

Add the curry (either paste or powder depending of what you have) and stir. I used Pataks hot curry paste and used 3 tsp. That was a little to HOT for this kitchen. Next time we will most def. limit it to 2 tsp :) Taste the liquid before you use it to make sure it has the spiciness you want - if you don't know the spice mix, add smaller amount to the liquid at a time and taste to make sure it doesn't end up to HOT. Add a little salt and pepper if wanted. Put the pork in together with the fruit and onion and pore the liquid over the mix.

Bake the dish for 30 min. on 400F.

Serve with rice.

BON APPETIT!

For the secret Love of RR. Family style pasta with friends!

So tonight we wanted to try a recipe from Rachael Ray. His really likes her show, and when His is home he watches it "almost" every day ~ sometimes he gets so inspired by her recipes that he serves the dish for dinner. Tonight His has promised to make Rachael Ray's Hot Sausage, Pepper and Onion Ragu with Rigatoni and Provolone Besciamella. We have posted the link at the bottom of the post. The instruction were pretty clear and simple, but as His was going through the list we realiced that a few changes were needed. His used regular green and orange pepper instead of the listed cubanelle peppers. To help with the seasoning His also used pre maid sausage. Instead of using all pork His used 1.2 pounds of ground turkey and 1 tube sausage. His does not have the luxury of having gourmet butcher available, and could therefor not find pancetta or speck so we just used BACON! His also forgot to purchase Provolone, but we had a block of cheddar in the fridge ~ it worked out perfectly.

From prep to table one should plan about 1.5 hours. If you start the sauce first, both the noodles and besciamella will be ready at the same time. One should make sure that the onions and peppers are tender like the instructions state. When it comes to the seasonings it depends on how much "kick" you want. We His makes this again he will not add as much cayenne (add half of what the recipe says). :)

The Besciamella sauce was simple enough. It worked out great.

Once all the parts were done and ready, it was time to combine and serve. At this point the anxiety starts to set in. We have guest over and His has never made this dish before.

His and Her had just been given a "family" sized casserole dish. Rigitoni went in, then the sauce and finally the besciamella. The ingredients just barely fit. His popped it into the oven to broil for not very long. ** keep and eye on it or it will char before you can catch it.**

Once it was broiled His is telling the house that once it comes out of the broiler it will be ready. It looked fantastic coming out of the oven and once set on the table you can really smell everything. Very nice.

Now for the taste test. Everybody loved it. This dish gives His' custom lasagne dish a run for its money as the favorite pasta dish. Depending on you personal taste, His and Her decided it was just a bit to spicy.

His' review of the dish: Very direct and simple to follow, flavorful and plenty of food for an army.

Here is the link to the recipe

Rachael Ray's Official Website :: Hot Sausage, Pepper and Onion Ragu with Rigatoni and Provolone Besciamella