Curry Recipe

While John is walking Theo back to sleep, I am eating an illicit second helping of tonight's dinner: a thai coconut curry with beef and sweet potato.  I am in love with this recipe (because it's awesome and incredibly easy), so much so that I'm writing it down for posterity below.  Amounts are approximate, since I basically make it up as I go depending on how much of each ingredient I have on hand.  It's not quite authentic, since I rarely make up my own red curry paste, and I use brown sugar instead of palm sugar, but with the results I get from standard supermarket ingredients, I couldn't care less about authenticity.  The sweet potato and coconut milk combine to make the most ridiculous velvety sauce imaginable.  If you'd like to swap out the beef to make this recipe vegetarian, I'd recommend some kind of hearty vegetable that could withstand the hour plus of brasing time in the oven so it doesn't turn into absolute mush.  Ideas?

Beef and Sweet Potato Coconut Red Curry

Ingredients

1-2 T. peanut oil or coconut oil
1 onion, chopped small
1 2-inch piece of ginger, minced
3 - 4 large cloves of garlic, minced
1 large or 2 medium red sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into large rounds or chunks
1 package (1.75 oz) of A Taste of Thai red curry paste or its homemade or rival brand equivalent
1.75 - 2 lbs. chuck roast or other type of beef appropriate for braising, cut into largish 2 or 3-inch cubes1 14 oz. can of coconut milk
1/2 - 1 c. water or broth
1 T. fish sauce (or just use salt to taste)
1 T. brown sugar (OPTIONAL - your coconut milk may be sweet enough on its own that added sugar is unnecessary)

Cooked jasmine rice
1/4 - 1/2 c. cilantro
1 lime, sliced into wedges

Serves 4

Directions

(Note: in an ideal world, I would salt the meat a day or two ahead of time and brown the pieces in oil before beginning the recipe.  But I have found that the time and effort required to pre-salt and brown the meat isn't really worth the payoff when the expediency of dinner is of upmost importance.)

Preheat oven to 325º F.

In a dutch oven or large oven-safe pan, sauté onion in oil over medium heat until soft and almost translucent (5-7 minutes).

Add ginger and garlic, cook until fragrant (30 seconds - 1 minute).

Add sweet potato and beef and stir to coat with aromatics. 

Add curry paste and coconut milk.  Add approximately 1/2 c. water or broth so that the liquid in the pan almost covers beef and sweet potato.  Stir to combine.

Add fish sauce and brown sugar, stir.  Bring to simmer, then cover pot and put in the oven.

Cook for 1.5 - 2 hours or until beef pulls apart with fork.

Serve over jasmine rice with chopped cilantro and a healthy squeeze of lime (these garnishes aren't required, but they really amp up the awesome).



... And because no post would be complete without it, here are some some shots of Theo:

Getting his boots tied by his papa.

On our way home from a mid-afternoon walk.

In Roger's arms at a recent lunch gathering with the old crowd.

Here Comes the Sun

My mood has improved with the return of light and relative warmth.  The raven is gone; either he was bothered by my sudden interest in his presence (I did end up leaving out a few chunks of sausage and cheese for him, which John accidentally snowplowed under a berm, so it looks like I will have some cleaning up to do come spring), or he was just using the carport during the most frigid nights.  His scat is still there as a fond remembrance.  I really liked going to sleep at night thinking about the raven also sleeping just a few feet away from me.  I hope he returns.

To make up for his absence, the jays, chickadees and redpoles are out in full force.  Probably because I have laid out about two pounds of cheese and seeds for them in the past week.  That is not an exaggeration.  So, basically, for want of a busy social life, I have started to make friends with (by bribing with food) the local birds.  This should turn out well.  With all the cheddar that the jays have been hiding in their caches in the trees, I am already anticipating the property smelling like a sweaty cheese monger come spring.

I've actually had a couple of great weekends and hung out with real, non-avian, friends.  Last week, my friend Michelle had a birthday party at her adorable house in Lemeta.  As I stood in her entryway under a beam of incandescent light, zipping my boots on and off, I felt completely welcome and happy to be in Fairbanks.  Maybe it was the two glasses of wine consumed at her party.  Or the tasty barbeque moose meatballs.  Or maybe what I need to do is get rid of the fluorescent light in my own entryway.  Or just get out of the house more often.

I've joined a book club and hosted it at my place this past Saturday.  Only two people showed up, and we spent more time talking about our kids than the book in question (Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"), and I nearly burned the black bean soup (though I imparted a lovely smoky essence to it, thanks to my lack of attention), but it was a super fun night.  And today, Scott, Selena and Grier were up visiting family so we got to hang out with them and the whole Hopkins/Guttenberg clan.  Selena made a delicious egg scramble with broccoli (heretofore a verboten vegetable at the Johnson/Perreault household as per John's preference, but I'm going to start bringing home again that delicious cruciferous candy).

Despite the fact that Theo is under the weather (new parenting challenge: vomit!), we took him for a little walk this afternoon up to the Solstice Trail on Keystone.  Some photos below.

Theo has a pair of sunglasses!  (Thanks to Debbie Brownlow)

John told me to take my hands out of my pockets for this one, otherwise I'd look like a hipster kid from the city getting lost in the woods.

Raven

For the past few weeks, whenever John has gone out to the carport at night to collect wood or plug the plow truck in, he's heard what seems like a bird flying away.

This morning in daylight, I saw scat in the snow underneath the beams in the carport.  Tonight, when I went out with the flashlight to see if I could catch a glimpse of our visitor, I actually saw a bird flying away, and I could hear the muffled thrumming of its wings beating in the air.  It was alerted to my presence by the not-so-subtle sound of my boots tromping through the snow.  I tried as hard as I could to be sneaky.

There is a raven roosting in the roof beams of our carport. 

So, Step One of Plan Raven has reached fruition.  Now for Step Two.  But how do I entice this raven to hang out and become my best friend, or at least to stick around and not abandon the roost?  The obvious answer is to just leave him/her alone.  But I think I'm going to be leaving some food out there, just to see what happens.  I'll probably have to sign some kind of contract with my husband promising that it will be me, and only me, who will collect the rotting food remains come spring.

So, I'm pleased as punch that our property is inviting a host of bird friends.  The jays still come around, though they are not quite as fond of the discount cheese.  We have tons of chickadees and other tiny little birds that seem to dart from tree to tree but neglect to eat the gourmet seeds from the bag of bird seed I bought from Fred Meyer.  And now this solitary raven.

But otherwise, January was a rough month.  At least one of us has been sick since mid-December.  I've lost count how many colds I've had.  I thought this whole breastfeeding thing was supposed to ward off sickness in the baby, but at least I know that Theo is building up his immune system.  (I feel like Calvin's dad for saying that, like it's some kind of character-building exercise, this slogging through the mucus bog of life.)  We are just now emerging from the congestion haze of the latest bug, so my hopes are high for a healthy February.

I'm not volunteering as a docent this semester.  I miss hanging out at the museum, but with all the bitter (and I mean bitter, like 40 or 50 below) cold we've had, and the viral kind of cold that this family has been struck with, it's very much a relief not to have a morning commitment.  I've lost my will to lead a productive life before 9am.

I am singing with the Choir of the North again.  It's somewhat easier to have a standing weekly activity at night.  Especially when that means that John is the one who's putting Theo to sleep while I'm off gallivanting around singing my Stephen Foster madrigals.  Apart from a handful of other, older community members, I'm one of the oldest members of the choir.  And that is weird.  Very weird.  I usually arrive early to choir, so I can sit and read for a few minutes (I've got to eke out the personal enrichment whenever I can), but I usually end up eavesdropping on undergraduate conversations.  Topics generally entail drinking, campus dorm life (like, oh my god, I can't believe the RA found out about us drinking in our dorm room), or boys.  I can't hear what the tenors or basses talk about, but I bet the topics are exactly the same.  Some of the kids (kids! I call them kids! I must be old) sweatshirts emblazoned with Class of 2010 mottoes or 2011 All-State Choir tees, and my brain automatically does the simple arithmetic.  I graduated high school in 1996.  These kids are fifteen years younger than I am.  It's fun to sing again, that's what I keep reminding myself.  I was one of the youngest members of the Seattle Symphony Chorale, so being one of the oldest in Choir of the North is just another notch in my belt of choral experiences.  We're doing Brahms' Zigeunerlieder (gypsy songs!) and some Gold Rush-era nostalgia songs for our spring concert on May 4th.  I am totally going to hit you up hard later this semester to entice you to go.

And now for a photo of Theo: