Thai basil pork noodles

I love noodles. Doesn't really matter what kind of noodles, I love noodles. I especially love instant ramen noodles. They are a guilty pleasure of mine. These are not instant and they are delicious, but super easy to make. They really don't take more than 15 minutes to cook including prep.

Paleo Thai styled cauliflower fried rice

Ever since we started on our paleo journey, I've been doing a lot with cauliflower rice. We love it. We think that it's versatile enough to go with a lot of dishes and we don't mind the flavor at all. A few of my friends are not fans. They say they don't like the taste of cauliflower, but I think the taste is so mild that it really doesn't come through when we add other things on top of it.

I've been looking for different recipes to use with cauliflower rice and this one caught my attention from the Real Paleo Fast & Easy by Loren Cordain PhD cookbook. It's super tasty and has become a favorite at home.

Slow cooked Thai chicken curry soup

I have been very slack on the cooking blog front for two reasons. (1) I went back to some temporary full time work, helping out my ex-boss as he looked for a new assistant and (2) I have been living in an apartment with no kitchen and cooking facilities, hence much less cooking. Between the two, there has only been some intermittent cooking on weekends and next to no experimentation. My sincere apologies.

I do, however, have a post for you today.

This weekend, we managed to head home to spend 3 days which was glorious as I got to sleep on my own bed, which felt fantastic.

We also have a couple of nights home and I felt energetic enough to cook though I felt like I was coming down with the flu. The Boy has had the flu for a week and he has been very poorly. I think I caught it but started dosing myself with the doTerra oils "flubomb" and quickly overcame it. More on that in another post.

So, for dinner on Friday night, The Boy, who has been sick, always likes something hot and spicy to give a little zing to his little germ bugs.

I saw my friend Suzie post a picture of this Thai chicken curry soup which she found somewhere on Facebook and I really have no way of pointing to the original source. This looked delicious though, so I decided to make it. Plus, it's slow cooked, which is a bonus cos it usually means that it will be easy to prepare and I was not up to a complicated meal.

Here's the RECIPE for the dish:

Ingredients:

• 2 Onions (Browned )

• 8 Chicken Thighs (Browned)

• 1 Carrot Thinly sliced (Roasted)

• 2 Red Capsicums Thinly sliced (Roasted)

• 6 Teaspoons of Minced Garlic

• 6 Teaspoons of Ginger

• 6 Fresh Mushrooms Sliced

• 1 Can of Coconut Milk

• 1 Bunch of chopped up Basil

• 3 Heaped Teaspoons of Red Curry Paste 

• 4 Cups of Chicken stock

• 3 Tablespoons of Fish Sauce

• 3 Tablespoons of Lime Juice

• 2 Tablespoons of Raw Sugar

Instructions:

• Brown onion in a pan

• Brown thinly sliced chicken thighs 

• In a large bowl mix garlic, ginger, fish sauce, sugar, stock, curry paste.

• Put in slow cooker, chicken and onion pour the sauce over 

• Cook for 4 Hours on high or 7 hours on low

• Roast up capsicum and carrot

• 1/2 an hour before serving stir into slow cooker, roasted capsicum & carrot, chopped basil, mushrooms, 1 can of coconut milk

• Just before serving stir in lime juice !!

Explodes with Flavor !
Serve with Crusty Bread

Of course, I never follow the recipe exactly. I forgot to buy 2 red capsicums, so I ended up with only one.

I had about 5 carrots left in the fridge, so I used them all up.

I bought a small punnet of mushrooms, about 250g and rather than have a bunch of mushrooms leftover, since I was not cooking the rest of the week I decided to use them all. I also didn't slice the mushrooms but halved them instead as I wanted something chunkier to chew on for the soup.

I was very generous in my heaped tablespoons of red curry paste. :-)

I added 3 fresh chilis which I sliced up and added to the stock mix to slow cook for a little added zing and flavor.

I did roast the carrots and capsicum but I don't think I'll do that again next time. I think it doesn't make that much of a difference between roasting and not roasting in this instance because there is already so much flavor from the soup mix.

I didn't slice the chicken too thinly because I knew that the chicken pieces needed to be fairly large as they would fall apart in the cooking after being in the slow cooker for such a long time.

I cooked my soup on high for 3.5 hours and then added the last ingredients and cooked it on high for another 45 minutes. That seemed to have worked well in terms of integrating all the flavors and the chicken meat was very tender.

This turned out to be a very flavorful soup which was bursting with flavor. It's not a spicy soup either, so even if you can't handle heat, you would still be able to make it and enjoy a very tasty soup.

Add some noodles to it and you will have a Thai curry laksa.

A big thank you to my friend Suzie for the recipe.

If you do make this, be sure to post pictures for me to see either on Instagram - be sure to tag me with @langshipley or on my Daz In The Kitchen Facebook page.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny's Fortunes Pty Ltd


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Thank goodness for friends bearing food

I want to apologise for not blogging more often recently. Work has got me rather tired lately and I'm finding that I am getting home much later than anticipated. While I thought I was adjusting to the routine, the routine has changed a little bit on me and I have discovered two things.

(1) I am getting home later than anticipated.

(2) I am not hungry when I get home so all I want to eat is fruit. I have been craving a lot of fruit for dinner. That does not entail much cooking.

Tonight, we were meant to be heading out to HUX @ Nortons for dinner but just before heading out The Boy got a call from the best bud asking us if we would like Thai food. They were heading out to their favorite Thai place and thought they'd pick up the food and bring it back to our place for dinner.

What a fabulous idea!!

Hence that scrumptious display of Thai food in a sea of take away boxes on the dining room table that made up dinner for tonight.

Very yummy all around.

Hooray for best buds and not having to cook because I was too tired.

© This work is copyrighted to Invest-Ex and Destiny’s Fortunes Pty Ltd