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What Is A Home Chef Meal? - Yahoo Recipe Search
Food52Sometimes a sandwich is just a sandwich -- simple fillings slapped on bread and eaten in a hurry. But sometimes a sandwich is a meal much greater than the sum of it's parts. Many memorable sandwiches rely on a combination of ingredients that have been elevated to iconic like a PB&J or a pastrami on rye. Some take a maximalist approach, stuffing a whole meal between slices of bread. Think of the classic Thanksgiving dinner leftover sandwich, or Primanti Brothers' sandwiches stacked high with layers of coleslaw and fries. (Pittsburghers, you know what I mean!) This sandwich is an homage to both approaches... and the cross-cultural history of sushi. The journey sushi has taken from humble street food to art form to the Philadelphia roll you might pick up in a grocery store is a complicated one with influences from ancient China, Japan, Korea, and the many talented chefs honing their craft and adapting to local ingredients and palettes. Sushi, while rooted in tradition, is continuously evolving. Story has it that California rolls and spicy tuna rolls were created to appeal to North American palates and ingredient availability in the late 70s and early 80s, while bagels with lox & cream cheese inspired Madame Saito to create the Philly roll. With a nod to the delicious melding of foods and flavors that helped sushi gain popularity in the US, this sandwich includes a whole lunchbox worth of flavors on one bagel. As with a well-composed bento box, I aimed to include a variety of colors, flavors and textures; carbs, protein and veggies using ingredients as at home on a bagel as in a box of sushi. It starts with a toasted sesame bagel. Spicy Smoked Salmon Schmear is a nod to spicy tuna rolls. I used the ratio of sriracha to mayo from Tim Anderson’s Spicy Tuna Roll recipe in JapanEasy. Early sushi was made with cured fish more often than raw, so using cold-smoked salmon or lox seemed as appropriate as it is delicious in this spread. I included a rolled egg omelette for something similar to tamagoyaki -- a sushi and bento favorite. Lox and eggs also happen to be wonderful together. If you’d like something more classic than my freehand variation, check out Namiko Chen’s recipes on Just One Cookbook. The Cucumber Salad is reminiscent of both deli pickles and seaweed salad. It’s a variation of a dead-simple salad that I make — just vegetables sprinkled with vinegar and seasonings. The result is a refreshing foil for the heaviness of the salmon schmear and eggs. This sandwich is equally delightful with the fillings carefully composed on the bagel (like a bento box!) as they are layered between bagel halves. Most, if not all of the ingredients can be found at a well-stocked grocery store. But please, for the love of carbs, get yourself a really good bagel! We like Yeasty Boys or Wexler's in LA for bagels that make us East Coast transplants feel like we're back in NYC. I hope you enjoy this sandwich as much as I do!Food52For the most part, my husband is responsible for bringing me out of my picky eating habits from back in the day. Over the past ten years (oh my goodness…ten years…) he has diligently fought with me over trying one bite of this and that. At first I found this so incredibly annoying but now I am thankful that he encouraged me to broaden my food horizons. Otherwise, I probably would not have gotten into cooking as much as I have and I would certainly not have this blog. But I cannot talk about food exploration without mentioning my college career as a waitress for a thai restaurant in Richmond, Virginia called Elephant Thai. My friend Suzy worked there at the time and I mentioned I needed some extra money so that I could avoid eating from the Wendy’s value menu on a regular basis. She told me to stop by and fill out an application. So I did and just like that, boom, I was employed. Now, before working at Elephant Thai, I had only tried chicken satay and a bite or two of my friend Lainy’s favorite dish, Pad See Ew. I knew practically nothing about Thai food; I did not even really know if I would like it. But in the following months turned to a couple of years, I was exposed to some of the best dishes I have ever had. At Elephant Thai we would have family style meals before and after every shift. This was oh so amazing for my food budget. The catch: accepting that I had to eat things like beef tongue or coming to terms with the fact that every dish was served “Thai Hot”. Also, my husband (boyfriend at the time) had to accept that I smelled like fish sauce more often than not. Fast forward to now and my love for Thai cuisine, curried dishes, and heat has only grown. I have only tried to make Thai style dishes at home a few times and typically, for whatever reason, they turned out poorly. So, I decided to leave it to the professionals. That is, until last night! Mercury may be in retrograde, but I FINALLY created a tasty curry. It is strange how sometimes I can plan a meal for days only to have the results turn out to be mediocre but this dish came together on a whim and my husband is saying it is the best thing I have ever made. I was inspired by a can of coconut milk that had been sitting in my pantry for weeks and the memory of a little boy at Elephant Thai who often came in with his father, asking for “chicken yellow curry, please”. I must say, I’m a bit proud of this one. I combined what I learned from April Bloomfield’s Mind of Chef episode on curry with some basic ideas I picked up at Elephant Thai.Food52Koshary is the ultimate Egyptian cheap meal, though it is enjoyed by everyone, rich and poor. You'll find dusty construction workers gathered around street carts, you'll find the wealthy enjoying it at home, and in between you'll find a few restaurants serving koshary, and only koshary. Koshary, in Egyptian Arabic, means 'mixed-up,' and that is what koshary is--a jumble of rice, pasta and lentils sauced with a vinegary tomato sauce and topped with a sprinkling of crispy fried onions and a few chick peas. A garlicky vinegar and hot sauce are generally provided for you to add as you wish. Your visit to a koshary restaurant begins at the till where you'll order and pay. Your only choice here is size, and rather than small, medium and large, you simply tell the man how much you're going to pay. Your serving will be dished accordingly. When we lived there (until 2005), the equivalent of about 40 US cents was more than enough to satisfy my own, substantial, appetite. Your koshary will be assembled by a man on a raised dais with a large metal spoon. In front of him with be massive stainless steel vats of the components and your better koshary maestro will flick a bit of each into your bowl with flair and rhythm. Make your way across the sawdust-strewn floor to an open table, add the provided condiments as you like and enjoy. This recipie is infinately scalable. The most I've ever done was when I pulled a guest chef gig at my daughter's school. We served 273 kids for about US$ 90, or less than 35 cents each. Our costs on dry goods are similar to what you pay in the US. The four main ingredients and their ratios, as dry ingredients, are: lentils (one part), rice (four parts), pasta (four parts) and tomato sauce (eight parts).
