Trader Joe's Spinach Punjab Simmer Sauce and Curry Potatoes

Having bought EVERYTHING at Trader Joe's in Rockville in Sunday, the Kleinette is now prepared to make lots of different simmer sauce dinners.  Last night, I made this one and I thought I'd share the recipe in case you too would like to have an idea for a pretty easy Indian type dinner at home...

I made rice with onions, peas, tumeric, and cumin. I also made curried potatoes and Spinach Punjab simmer sauce vegetables.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Rice/2 Cups Water

1 Onion

3 small potatoes

3 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon Curry Powder

1 bag Trader Joe's Vegetable Hodge Podge (any back of frozen veggies will do, but the Trader Joe's ones actually taste really good).

1/4 cup Trader Joes frozen peas.

1 tsp garlic powder.

1 tbsp each Cumin/Tumeric

First Step- Potatoes-: Preheat oven to 450.  Wash and chop potatoes into 1-2 inch 'cubes'.  Melt butter in a small saucepan and mix in the curry powder.  Spread the potatos over a cookie sheet and top/toss with the curry butter mix.  Put in the oven for 35-40 minutes.

Second Step: Rice- Put your usual rice pot on the stove and heat to medium hight.  Add 2-3 tbps of olive oil to heat. Chop/Dice one whole onion.  Sautee 2/4 of theonion with garlic/salt/pepper until it is translucent.  Next add cup of Rice and sautee briefly until the grains start to become translucent too.  Add 1 tbsp Cumin & Tumeric to the Rice, mix and cook just about 30 seconds longer.  Next add 2 cups of water (or whatever the correct moisture/rice combo is for your rice) and about 1/4 cup frozen peas.  Bring to a boil then turn to low heat and cook per rice directions.

Third Step: Heat 3 tbsp olive oil in a wok or big skillet.  Stir fry the remaining onion and the frozen vegetables.  Add the whole jar of simmer sauce and 1/2 cup of water.  Let simmer for about 15 minutes on low heat to bring the sauce together.  The Trader Joe's recipe calls for an entire jar of water, but I find that waters down the taste too much.

Enjoy!  This should take less than one hour :)

A quick home made balsamic tomato sauce

As the Kleinette has been on a very strong spree of cooking for everyone in sight, she thinks it might be nice to share a delicious recipe for quick home made marinara sauce that you can serve to any guest or group of guests that you'd like.  The trick to this tasty marinara - balsamic de-glazing.:) There are a few things that you should always have on hand in order to make home made sauce, a 32ounce can of crushed tomatoes [either the ones on sale, or the best ones that you can afford], onions [fresh or frozen chopped], italian seasoning, garlic, olive oil and of course balsamic vinegar.  The recipe I am including here is a more souped up version of the most simple one you can make:

Dinner Parties and Disaster Avoidance

Chuck Norris will cook you a really, really mean lasagna.

The Kleinette is really the chef of the couple; at best I'm somewhere between "sous-chef" and "that gangly kid from Ratatouille." But I do like to help as best I can, and I have a couple thoughts about preparing a dinner party like last night's, when the most important things can be not to promote good outcomes but avoid the worst possible outcomes and let the fun build more organically:

-> Don't panic. This is the most important thing. Last night, midst-lasagna prep, the Kleinette realized she had forgotten the ricotta with no time to get more. Oh noes! But fortunately she remembered a recepie for bechamel sauce.Whew. But she was so frazzled from her nearly screwing up she nearly screwed up the bechamel. Oh noes! The key is not to cook on tilt and not let your mistakes lead to more mistakes. Once the Kleinette and I were making ravioli, only to discover that we really screwed the proverbial pooch and we ended up with a pot full of boiling water and cheese. Lame. Fortunately, we decided to just let it boil, leaving behind a delicious cheese sauce that we poured over fettuccine. Yum! We almost ruined the whole evening but salvaged it into something delicious.

-> DIY activities are fun. One of the Kleinette's friends was a bartender. We let her mix the drinks (good call on our part). Rather than watch a movie in the conventional sense, we put on a goofy 80s action flick (Chuck Norris FTW) and played upbeat, fun music beneath it. We alternated between a homemade MST3K-style roasting of the events on-screen and drifting off into conventional conversation. Actually sitting and watching a movie outside a theater setting would've been too anti-social, but just sitting around and expecting conversation to materialize can sometimes be a bit too demanding and awkward, even if everyone knows everyone else. A relaxed group activity is the best compromise.

All told, we had a fun Friday night. And, yes, Edy's Double-Churned Ice Cream is pretty delicious...and would explain why the Kleiner is finding his old jeans a tad constricting lately. :P
-The Kleiner