Ramadan Recipes

Ramadan has become commercialized so much lately what with food advertisements/offers, late night enticements and TV shows that there is one particular irony I find: Ramadan, the month of fasting and technically an ABSENCE of food from your day becomes.. the month OF food..

So keeping in line with the "food" theme of Ramadan, here are some of the things that I have cooked since the start of the month.
chicken and leek pie
roasted vegetable risotto
tomato, chilli, and olive salad
grilled chicken with green olive butter
pasta with aubergine and tomato sauce
cherry and almond cake
chicken chilli stirfry

I personally thought that the chicken and leek pie, roasted vegetable risotto, and chicken chilli stirfry were the top three. The chicken and leek pie was a big dish covered with puff pastry and was substantial enough for Iftar. The herbs mixed with the chicken and milk brought out a wonderful flavour.

The roasted vegetable risotto was interesting because I used carnaroli rice for the first time instead of arborio! I personally didn't notice many differences between the two except that maybe carnaroli takes a little longer to cook and doesn't soften as easily as arborio does. The vegetables were roasted, thus bringing out stronger flavours, and the risotto was made separately completely plain which was good!
Interesting article I found: http://www.finecooking.com/articles/other-risotto-rices.aspx

I've always stayed away from cooking chicken or meat in stirfries because for some reason I always find that the meat/chicken stays hard. This time however, I had an amazing result! I cooked with peanut oil for the first time.. which is what you should use when stirfrying, and cut the chicken up into smaller pieces thus increasing the surface area and having it cook easier and faster. The sauce.. oyster sauce tasted fabulous with freshly ground black pepper. The vegetables I used were beansprouts, red capsicum, and snow peas. I love how when you make a stir fry and throw all the vegetables in the wok, they're huge... but a few minutes later they're cooked through and become half of their size..

I've also been experimenting with table settings. I got these amazing napkins and placemats from London. Here's the website of the company that makes them: http://mydrap.com/ES/index.php . They're cotton and linen placemats and napkins that come in kitchen roll style.. so all you have to do is unroll the amount you need and tear at the perforated section. Best part is that because they're cotton or linen you can wash them and reuse them!

Some table themes I've been using lately are summer lunch, carnival, beachside picnic, and classic dinner... which is mainly cream and ivory with little bits of light green.