5 Spice Chicken with Jade Rice

Fairly recently two of my favorite bloggers each posted one of these recipes, Birin from Roti and Rice made a wonderful 5 spice whole roasted chicken and Ann from Anncoo Hobby made a Jade fried rice.  This inspired me to combine the two and what a great pairing it was.

Chicken Cacciatore with Wild Rice

This is one of my favorite winter stews, caccatorie, its been on my blog before and all I did this time was to add zucchini and sweet potatoes. I think over time dishes can be perfected and improved upon like this one. 

Anchovies and Spinach with Linguini

Anchovies are an ingredient I haven't used before, I always wondered how these little fish melted away and made a tasty sauce. So I made this simple pasta dish, super easy and tasty, must admit not really my cup of tea but hubby liked it :-) 

American Culinary Federation SE 2/20/12

Date Shake

Here's a wonderfully simple milk shake made with dates, dates are a great source of fiber, potassium, minerals and carotenoids. They are famous in the middle east and were introduced by the Persians around 550 BC Arabian warrior's brought them. I would imagine they made a wonderful easy to carry energy rich snack. Date's are grown on a palm tree in hotter climates and traditionally dates and milk are eating to break fast during Ramadan. The palm leaves from date palm are also often used to make crosses during palm Sunday. 

 Our daughter loves them and calls them big raisins, they make a great naturally sweet snack. 

from wikipedia 

Ingredients:

• one cup of milk
• about 6 dates
• a little sugar is needed, but honestly most dates are naturally sweet enough and its not needed

Method:

1. add milk and dates to a blended and blend
2. enjoy

In other news, voting ended yesterday for the Shorty awards (social media awards) and I am in 5th with 251 votes, the support from friends, bloggers and fellow dietitians has been amazing truly honored to know you all. So now we just wait and see what the judges decide, finger's and toes crossed :-)

Have a fun weekend everyone 

Hugs 

Mohinga Myanmar (Burmese) Fish Soup

I was in Greensboro a couple of weeks ago and spotted a store -Myanmar grocery store (next to super G the Asian store), one of my sister in laws, the lovely Yu Yu is from Mynamar (Burma) so I had to go inside. After chatting with the owner and getting recipe tips and showing pictures of my dear sister in law. I came away with a packet of fish soup mix to make Mohinga a popular dish there, mostly eaten for breakfast. She even had the little fried bean fritters for sale frozen, (seen on left) just needed to be warmed up.

 I love learning about others cultures and cuisines and often the very act of making the effort to cook a dish from another persons country shows you love them so this post is for you Yu Yu. 

Valentine potato stamps

British Scones from Short and Sweet

I recently bought Dan Lepards book Short and Sweet The Best of Home Baking. I love reading the Guardian and often link up the best food articles and recipes to the Chow and Chatter facebook page. I started to follow Dan on twitter some time back @dan_lepard and he's lovely such a warm genuine person. Not only is he an amazing baker and bread maker, he's an award winning one and author of numerous books on baking. 

Mahane Yehuda Market שוק מחנה יהודה

I met David on Twitter @LoneTreeBeer he is fun guy from Scotland now in Israel who loves his Mrs. and has 2 grown daughters and 2 sons. He enjoys good food and often tweets pictures when he visits his local market like he did the other day. I saved them on my phone and asked him for a guest post. As us food lovers love a good tour of the fruit and vegetable market!

Banana and Nutella Bundt Cake

I hadn't heard of bundt cakes before moving to America and often saw them on folks blogs or had them at friends homes here. A couple of weeks ago I finally got a pan and decided it was high time I made one. 

Wild Mushroom Soup

I made this lovely mushroom soup recently it was super easy and deliciously creamy, my little daughter loves mushrooms and loved the pack of wild mushrooms we got that day. She makes me smile as she really likes mushrooms and often picks enoki when we go shopping.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of vegetable stock
• a dash of white wine
• about 2 tablespoon of butter
• 1/2 an onion chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic chopped
• one pack of baby bella mushrooms and one small pack (about a cup) of mixed wild mushrooms 
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup of fresh parsley chopped

Method:

1. saute the onions and garlic in butter 
2. add the mushrooms keeping a few for garnish and saute for about 8 minutes 
3. add the wine, parsley and stock and simmer for an hour 
4. blend until smooth
5. season with salt and pepper and serve 

and remember mushrooms are super healthy rich in  Fiber, Protein, Vitamin C, Folate, Iron, Zinc and Manganese, and a very good source of Vitamin D, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Pantothenic Acid, Phosphorus, Potassium, Copper and Selenium.

Have a wonderful start to the week everyone :-)

Run Rabbit!!!!

This is brilliant a sheep herding rabbit Champis in Swedish, he must have learnt from the dogs on the farm and he's good :-)

we all need a little clip to make us smile.

Last but not least please see the clip below for why you should vote for me for a Get shorty award in food, you simply vote using twitter. It would be an amazing way to promote food bloggers and dietitians in the world of social media. So far I have 70 and need at least 198 to be in top 6 to be reviewed by the judges by feb 17th 

Please help friends, anything is possible :-)

 

Get Shorty Award

Hi all so I was nominated for a get shorty award, these are basically like Oscars for twitter, I would love a vote - http://shortyawards.com/chowandchatter 

I explain in the clip above why you should consider it. Voting is only open till February 17th :-) so we don't have long.

I am really an underdog but anything is possible right and I would love to use this to promote registered dietitians and healthy cooking at home. 

love you all Rebecca

Bruschetta

Another dish I made New Years eve was bruschetta, I didn't think it would be amazing as tomatoes are not that great this time of year. But it turned out wonderfully and they were all gobbled up in no time at all. I even got away with a good quality can of fire roasted tomatoes as I didn't want to remove the skins. I think the technique of making the garlic baguettes made this dish shine.