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This is a modified red curry recipe I found in one of my Asian cookbooks I have been making for a few years. It is an all-in-one bowl dish which is great for dinner, and the leftovers heat up well for lunch the next day.

Ingredients

Basic Ingredients *

• 1/2 lb Beef (high quality, about 1 inch cubes or strips)
• 1 bag fresh Spinach
• 1 c Pinneapple (fresh is best)
• 2 c Rice

Sauce Ingredients **

• 2 t Fish sauce
• 1 T Garlic (minced, fresh is best)
• 1 t Soy sauce (to taste)
• 1 T Red curry (paste or powder), to taste
• 1 T Seseme oil
• 1 T Basil (fresh or dried)
• 1 can Coconut milk

Cooking

Prepare the rice according to package directions. I use a rice maker and found soaking the grains in water for 10-15 minutes before turing it on makes grains more fluffy with the right stickiness (not too dry, not too wet). After it has finished cooking, let sit/steam for 10 minutes. If you don’t have a rice maker, you’re on your own.

Using a wok or medium pot, heat the oil and then combine the garlic and sautee for 1 minute. Add the soy sauce, fish sauce, basil if using fresh and curry and blend well. Cook for 1-2 mintues.

When the sauce is hot, add your beef chunks and basil if using dried ***. Turn the heat on high and stir constantly (so your curry and garlic do not burn) and brown meat.

If you like medium-done beef, remove beef from pot and put on plate until later. If you like well-done beef, leave in pot to simmer while the sauce is cooking.

Add the coconut milk and pinneapple and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 15-20 minutes. If you like medium-done beef, add it in the last 5-10 minutes.

Preparation

Using a medium size bowl (cereal, not soup sized) scoop about 1 cup rice. Cover the top of the rice with the fresh spinach. Using a spoon, pour the coconut curry sauce over the spinach (it will semi-steam) and scoop a few pieces of beef and pinneapple on top.

Grab a spoon, fork, or some chopsticks and enjoy!

* This dish also works well with lamb, tofu, and shrimp, but I havn’t tried chicken. You can substitute pinneapple for almost any fruit or vegetable. I’ve used Portabello mushrooms, baby corn, snap peas, bamboo strips, etc. I prefer using Jasmine rice for this dish, although any type of rice should taste fine.

** You can use low-sodium soy sauce, olive oil, and low-fat/fat-free coconut milk for a healthier alternative.

*** The fragrance and taste of dried herbs fade the longer you cook them and should be added later in the cooking process than fresh herbs

seele :: Jan.31.2006 :: General :: No Comments »

These are some of my favorite things I like to cook. Some of them are simple and some require more than a few steps in the process, but all are good! The measurements are guesses (hey, I’m Italian, I don’t use measuring cups!) but the most important parts are the ingredients, how long they cook for, and what they should look and smell like when they’re ready to eat.

• Beef Curry w/ Spinach & Pinneapple

Lamb Pita Pockets

Panag Curry Vegetarian Chili

seele :: Jan.31.2006 :: General :: No Comments »

Happy Lunar New Year (of the Dog)!

World of Warcraft hosted festivities throughout the worlds with towns and cities decorated with lanterns, and special vendors providing treats such as fireworks and lucky dumplings.

I start my first classes for UBalt on Wednesday. I also signed up for an additional class (Data Structures and Algorithms) to transfer from UMUC. The University System of Maryland has a program where you can cross register between institutions without having to ‘transfer’ credits.

I’ve already had Data Strucutres at Duquesne, however if I take the graduate version of the class (not much difference) I can get it to count toward my programming core requirement for my IDIA degree and possible pre-requisites if I decide to pursue a doctorate. It is an online class so I can work on it whenever I want, however the book was $88 plus I needed to pay extra to have it shipped 2-day. Unfortunatly I could not find a used copy of it anywhere.

So begins the drive to Baltimore once a week.

I also start at my new company, User-Centered Design, Inc., in two weeks. It is a completely different job, working as a consultant on various projects from home and on-site with clients. I am senior interaction architect (IxA) and will be working between the usability engineers (UE) and developers.

The company’s portfolio is primarily government/web based, although they do have product and public-sector experience. They are also starting to get in to some industry research topics such as Usabile Voting, so it should be pretty interesting.

We’re also still looking for an apartment to move to by the end of March. There was a place we looked at in Silver Spring, but at the time of the special price they were running, they didnt have any apartments available. If anyone has any ideas, our pre-requisites include being within walking to distance to the Metro and some dining/shops/stuff-to-do. Oh, and affordable ;P

seele :: Jan.30.2006 :: Academics, General, Work :: No Comments »

After reading Katie’s recent post on tea, it reminded me how little I know about tea but how much I enjoy it. So, I wanted to blog about the tea I usually drink every day.

I don’t remember when I became a tea fanatic, but I think it was around the same time I became a chocolate snob (ah, but I will save that story for later). While I was in college, I was mostly a coffee drinker. Getting hot tea at a restaurant or brewing a bag in my room never excited me. Sometimes if I was at home eating my mom’s biscotti, I would make a cup to dip it in (I think coffee overwhelms biscotti and should be used to dip in only when the biscotti isn’t as good as my mom’s ;)

It all started sometime before Mark bought me my first tin of Taylors of Harrogate loose green tea pearls. (I imagine I had an interest in tea before this otherwise I wouldn’t have been so excited about getting loose tea). The difference in quality, aroma, and color of the tea compared to the crushed, dried tea in tea bags was astonishing, I never turned back. For a while, if I ran out of quality tea I could go back to a generic Lipton green tea bag, but now I really have no taste for it.

Now, if you look in my kitchen, you’ll see boxes upon canisters of herbal, black, white, and green teas. Tea has become my primary source of hydration. I drink tea from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, only consuming water if I run out of tea at work or too thirsty to wait for tea to brew.

I have two tea pots: one small clay pot (~6oz) and a large iron pot (~12oz). On the weekends I’ll steep a large pot of tea when I wake up and drink it for the rest of the afternoon. I have a tea basket and a tin of tea at work, as well as an ample stock of brewed, bottled tea in the fridge. I am extremely picky about ‘tea’ flavored foods and check the ingredients to be sure that it is actually made with tea and not ‘tea flavoring’.

By far I prefer steeping my own tea, however sometimes the situation doesnt allow the luxury of a pot and strainer. To make do instead of without, I’ve found a few brands of tea which provide bags of whole tea leaves which are preserved in foil wrappers to preserve freshness. But nothing beats a post of freshly steeped tea. What I am looking for now is a nice Gaiwan cup (covered tea cup) to try loose steeping.

Although there is a variety of herbal, black, white, and green teas that I drink, I prefer green and white teas. Here are three of the teas which are regularly replenished in my collection:

Honest Tea

Honest Tea is a local company (Bethesda, Md.) which brews, packages and distrubes organically grown tea in various forms. I forget how I found them, but it was while I was on the impossible quest to find a brewed and bottled tea with no high-fructose corn syrup, with very little sweetness. This tea is it. As you can see from their website, they have a huge variety of tea, all of them very low in sweetness and many of them with no honey or sugar cane added.

Keep in mind that one teaspoon of sugar (~4g) is 15 calories. To me, a teaspoon of sugar is plenty if not too much sweetness, and most ‘tea’ beverages contain around 20 grams of sugar, and thats on the low end!

Their tea is available in both glass and plastic bottles, however I think the plastic tastes different than the tea in the glass (the original packaging). I actually asked them about this, and they said its the same recipe, however the tea for the plastic bottles is brewed slightly different. Both are still good.

It was only recently I tried their tea bags. I was very impressed with the quality of tea in the foil-sealed bags. The tea was fairly whole and the bags were large to allow the leaves to move around in the water.

My favorite tea in both bottle and bag form is the Moroccan Mint Green (green tea, peppermint, spearamint).

Novus Tea

Novus tea is a company who wanted to preserve the tradition of brewing tea but make it more available for a modern lifestyle. They provide a minimal selection of excellent teas which are uniquely packaged. The tea is whole-leaf and in a nylon, pyramid-shaped bag. This open bag allows the tea to move around while steeping. This method is very similar to steeping loose tea in a strainer.

You can buy a box of 12 individually foil-wrapped bags on their site for $6.50, so it isn’t very moderatly priced for a ‘bagged’ tea.

My favorite Novus tea is Pai Mu Tan, a delicate and fragrant white tea.

Rishi Tea

Rishi tea is organic and fair trade tea company which has tea available by the ounce online and in many stores including Whole Foods. They have beautiful and fragrant teas of many varieties, and their website provides beautiful sample pictures of their teas. This is probably one of the best loose teas I have been able to find in a supermarket (specialty tea stores can afford to provide higher-quality/higher-priced teas).

My favorite Rishi tea is the Jasmine Pearl green tea, although the Silver Needle white tea is also very good.

seele :: Jan.26.2006 :: General, Tea :: 3 Comments »

Since I havn’t posted in a while, a quick QOTD:

kawakokappa (10:55:29 AM): could you imagine reproducing a series of steps with half of them missing?

seele varcuzzo (10:56:15 AM): no, and youre going to make me core dump if you make me

seele :: Jan.26.2006 :: General, KDE Dev Blog :: Comments Off