Indian Cuisine: Paneer Recipes: My Paneer Recipes

Hi guys! This week I am making Paneer Recipes. If any of you don't know what paneer is then this is a treat. Paneer is Indian cottage cheese! It's basically a farmers cheese that can be purchased in an Indian grocery store or easily made at home. Paneer is a cheese that does not melt so it's perfect for lot's of different Paneer Recipes or recipes that require a cheese much like feta or farmers cheese. I find it to be a very versatile product. Most Paneer recipes that I am familiar with come from India. I have been watching many of my favorite Indian cooks on Youtube for months and one of them is owned by a girl named Aditi and her channel is called the eateastindian channel. I was watching this channel week after week as she made different Paneer Recipes. This is how I was introduced to paneer. There are so many Paneer recipes in India that it's mind boggling. I didn't even know that cheese was something used in Indian cuisine until watching the eateastindian channel on Youtube.

I told Aditi that I was going to have to make some paneer recipes of my own. She had been watching my channel and thought that me making some Paneer Recipes would be a great idea. I asked if I should make some traditional Paneer Recipes or should I come up with something on my own. She told me to go ahead and make some of my own Paneer Recipes as the world is full of traditional Indian Paneer Recipes.

So I had to think long and hard this week as to how I would like to prepare my Paneer Recipes. So this week I am going to make a pan seared paneer encrusted with za'atar spice topped with a nice Dijon mustard dill cream sauce. Then I will make a paneer orzo pilaf with oregan, basil, sundried tomatoes, almonds, garlic and shallots. Yum! I will also make a spring vegetable and paneer pasta dish of pan seared paneer mixed into sauteed zucchini, yellow squash, shallots, garlic, tomato along with some herbs and this will either be served on linguine. I am sure these Paneer Recipes will be pleasing to the eye's and palate.

I really struggled a bit this week trying to come up with these Paneer Recipes but it truth after watching videos on how to make paneer and how to make a multitude of Paneer Recipes it has just all come together for me. paneer is a very versatile food and Paneer recipes are just about as endless as the imagination. Just because paneer is a cheese used in India does not mean that this delicious cheese product cannot be used in the recipes of other nations. I have also found that it's cheaper to make paneer cheese or cottage cheese or even Feta cheese at home rather than buying it at the local market. So I hope you enjoy the Paneer recipes and I hope you try them at home and make them your own. Enjoy the video!



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Pasta Recipes: Linguine With Clams The Richard Blaine Way!

Pasta Recipes

 



 

 

 

 

Well, this week guys it's pasta recipes once again! It's going to be linguine with clams! Whoohoo! I know it's been awhile since I made an Italian dish but this week it's back to pasta recipes by request from one of my Youtube subscribers from England.

I don't know what it is but I'm really popular in England! I get tons of requests from the UK all the time. I feel like Bill Haley! He was a rocker in the 1950's who was even more famous than Elvis in England back in the rockin' 1950's!

I was looking over my extensive list of pasta recipes this week to come up with something simple and yet delicious for my subber. Her name is Mirella and she is a really nice person to have watching my videos! She has become my #1 fan and that's OK by me!

So I am digging through my list of pasta recipes and I came up with linguine with clams! I know what a lot of you are thinking. "Linguine with clams! Plain old boring linguine with clams just like everyone else does it!" Not the case here guys!

My version of linguine with clams will have multiple layers of flavors and textures well beyond just canned/or fresh clams in the shell and some garlic and oil! BORING! When it comes to pasta recipes I like to really work with them and either keep them traditional/conventional Italian/Sicilian or I like to mix it up a bit and truly make the dish something special. That is the case with my linguine with clams recipe!

My linguine with clams will have the benefit of butter, capers, anchovies and basil along with just a light dusting of the pungent flavor and aroma of Gorgonzola cheese! So I asked my subber Mirella about how she felt about me making here linguine with clams? Here reply to me was "Richaaaard! We love the same foods! I WANT TO MARRY YOU!" Needless to say I was blushing from head to to! Who knew that pasta recipes like linguine with clams could net you a marriage proposal! Now I know! So kick back and enjoy the video! Make this linguine with clams your recipe! Play with it and make it something special! Who know you might get a marriage proposal for it like I did!

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Tom Kha Gai Recipe: What Is Tom Kha Gai? Thai Coconut Chicken Soup

Tom Kha Gai Recipe

This week I am making my version of a Tom Kha Gai recipe. Tom Kha Gai is Thai coconut chicken soup. The weather is getting cold and I thought I would just make some good old fashioned Jewish penicillin (New York style chicken soup) and then I thought to myself I could do that anytime and lots of people have done it already. This Tom Kha Gai recipe in my opinion is a great version of Thai penicillin. Tom Kha Gai is warming and creamy and is loaded with lovely herbs and spices to make some of the best chicken soup that one has ever had. It's really a pretty simple and yet very delicious chicken.  This Tom Kha Gai recipe has all the distinctive Thai flavors that one would expect in a Thai dish.  Tom Kha Gai (Gai is chicken) has an ingredient in it called galangal (In Thai Kha) There is one substituition I am using in my Tom Kha Gai recipe and that is using ginger in place of galangal as I could not locate any galangal this week and then I will be using the other ingredients of lemongrass and kaffir limes leaves to infuse the coconut milk and chicken broth/stock that I make as well. A good Tom Kha Gai recipe will have a good balance of salty, sweet, spicy, and sour flavors. Of course when it comes time to make flavor adjustments to your Tom Kha Gai recipe you can manipulate them in any way that you like to suit your needs. This chicken soup is a total winner to warm you up in the winter months. The combination of herbs and spices will also help to fortify you with nutrients to help ward off that cold or flu! I mean isn't that what chicken soup is for anyway? Of course it is! My version a Thai Tom Kha Gai recipe will have some garlic in it and of course the chilies will help fight off that winter cold and give you a vitamin C shot to boot! Tom Kha Gai is a soup that can be served as an appetizer or as a main course depending on how you make it.  If you add noodles or even rice to your Tom Kha Gai recipe then it then becomes a main meal and if you exclude those items Tom Kha Gai then becomes an excellent appetizer. Either way Tom Kha Gai is a delicious chicken soup recipe. I'm making my Tom Kha Gai recipe this week as a main meal with the addition of rice noodles.

Tom Kha Gai can be made many ways. When I learned to cook I learned to make chicken soup or stock/broth using whole chickens or whole chickens cut up with the skin on. Then some herbs and spices would be added to the mixture while it was simmering. Jewish penicillin can be made with the addition of chicken innards or even chicken feet! I LOVE chicken feet. I have never had Tom Kha Gai in Thai restaurants that served it with chicken feet although I think that would really give it that soul food aspect of cooking. I won't be using chicke feet in my Tom Kha Gai recipe this week but rest assured chicken feet are on my future menu! A lot of recipes out there call for using boxed organic chicken stock in their Tom Kha Gai recipe and that is fine if you want to speed up the cooking process. Today I will be simmer a cut up chicken for at least 2 to 3 hours which is chicken broth. I will then remove the meat from the carcass and add the bones back to the broth for an hour or so to fortify the flavor of the broth to be something closer to a chicken stock. There will also of course be some herbs and spices added to make the flavor of the broth/stock even better.

It seems popular today when you go to eat Tom Kha Gai in Thai restaurants that you will either have Nam Prig Pad or Pao added to the Tom Kha Gai or it will be available on the side. To my knowledge this is not traditional but, it is popular these days. I will not be offering it up in my recipe but you can use it in yours if you desire.  Some of my friends like to add either sesame oil or some form of chili oil to their Tom Kha Gai to. I will not be doing that either. I just LOVE to eat my Tom Kha Gai with rice noodles as a complete meal. In some restaurants the Tom Kha Gai is served in rather small bowls but believe you me I'll make mine a BIG bowl! This is how it's going to be made today. Enjoy the video!


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Knife Sharpening: How To Create A Cutting Edge From Scratch

Knife Sharpening

 

Hi everyone! I'm back this week and we are going to look at doing some knife sharpening. I have been on vacation visiting my brother in Los Angeles and it was good to go seem him and unwind.

This week I'm back and instead of cooking I thought I would do some knife sharpening for you. I have this friend name Chef Giovanni and he works at a place here in Vegas called Yellow tail. It's a sushi joint as the name entails and Chef Gio is one of my best friends here in town.

Ever since Gio got into the culinary industry he has been obsessed with knife sharpening and if you ask him today he will still tell everyone that everything he ever learned about knife sharpening he learned from me, yours truly! He and I have been friends a long time and it's a great compliment he pays me. He has learn his knife sharpening skills well and does some of the best work I have seen a professional chef do with their knives.

Knife sharpening is an art just as cooking is and therefore when the two are done to a high level of skill people know it. Recently Chef Gio went on a food trip to Korea. He spent a lot of time at the fish market watching how the Koreans prepare their seafood dishes and one thing Gio paid close attention to was knife skills and knife sharpening techniques.

Needless to say Chef Gio learned alot on his food trip. When he got back he brought me a knife much like the one's used at the local fish market. They come in various sizes and he brought me a rather large one for all around kitchen use. When it comes today's knife sharpening video this is the knife that I will be sharpening.

You see the knife he brought back from Korea has no cutting edge on it and I don't know if that is a matter of knives leaving the country or if the maker does it that way for the person doing the knife sharpening to put his or her own type of edge on the knife.

As far as the knife sharpening goes Gio told me that most of the people he saw using this knife had a 50/50 grind on the blade much like a European knife would have and I can see that the blade type is closer to a "V" or saber type grind.

This weeks knife sharpening video will show you how I will put a single edge bevel on this Korean knife. The knife is hand made and somewhat rudimentary but from the videos I saw they will just cut and cut and cut! The knife is made from hand hammered carbon steel so as far as the knife sharpening is concerned should not prove to be very difficult.

I will be using the standard gear that I always use for knife sharpening which is DMT diamond plates that I use in 220/325/600/1200 grits respectively. I will also be using Spyderco ceramic stones Models 204F and 204UF respectively. I will also most likely use my surgical black Arkansas stone as a final blade polishing stone. So sit back and check out how I do knife sharpening and enjoy the video!

Soup: Seafood Chowder: Bay Shrimp Chowder

The weather is finally getting really cold here where I live and that means it time to make some soup! This week I am making Bay Shrimp Chowder, a seafood chowder idea from a friend of mine named Tango Joe. I love soup in the winter! Who doesn't? Soup is warming, comforting and filling. The best part about soup is that they are easy to make and they really don't take much time to prepare. So this winter I will be making lots of soup recipe videos! So this week I am making  Tango Joe's Bay Shrimp Chowder. I've been experimenting with it lately and this is soon becoming a favorite soup of mine.

I got the recipe for this soup/seafood chowder from my friend and sub on Youtube named Tango Joe of the Tango Spice Company. The soup is called Bay Shrimp Chowder and it's a recipe that Joe has been working on for awhile. The reason I am making this soup is because I got interested in Joe's spices and I asked him to send me some to try out and in return I would make one of his recipes with it. He sent me the spice called Tango Verde Green and along with it he sent me a starter recipe for his soup recipe bay shrimp chowder. I make seafood chowder all the time but I usually make either A Manhattan style seafood chowder or a New England clam chowder. I have never made bay shrimp chowder or any kind of shrimp chowder at all. This was going to be good.

The soup recipe he sent me was his starter for Bay Shrimp Chowder. He told me to work on it because he didn't get the recipe where he wanted it to be.  So I am going to make Joe's soup with my little twists and make a final recipe for this seafood chowder/bay shrimp chowder! Now Joe and I love heat and for this reason this soup is going to be very warming indeed as I am going to be using Joe's Tango Verde Green in this seafood chowder.

Joe's Tango Verde Green is a dry spice that's a bitchin' combination of Jalapeno pepper, Habanero pepper, cuming, oregano, celery salt and black pepper. The balance of this spice will be delicious in this seafood chowder and I am sure in just about any soup recipe that requires some heat in it. This Tango Verde Green can be a bit tricky because it's not hot right off the bat, it's really a creeper and can catch you by surprise!

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Asian Cooking: Vietnamese Food: Caramelized Pork Belly W/Eggs Thit Kho Tau Or Kaw!

Asian Cooking

Vietnamese Food

 



 

 

 

This week it's  Vietnamese food! Whoohoo! I LOVE my Asian cooking! Everyone knows I LOVE my Asian cooking! Everyone knows I LOVE my Vietnamese food! I love the flavors of Southeast Asia in my Asian Cooking. This week I am making Vietnamese food again. I am making a dish that I was introduced to by my friend Saveda Lee on her Youtube channel. This week I am making caramelized pork belly with eggs. This dish is called Thit Kho Tau or Thit Kho Kaw. This is a true 100% Vietnamese dish that is also very popular in Cambodia as well.

Thit Kho Tau is enjoyed year round in Vietnam but it's really popular during the lunar new year and this year it's the year of the Dragon! Happy New Year! Happy New Year of the Dragon! (Chúc mừng năm mới và năm hạnh phúc của con rồng!) Thit Kho Tau originates from South Vietnam. The name Thit Kho Tau literally translates into braised pork in light sauce. I think that's very interesting because when I made this dish during my research the sauce gets to be a nice dark brown and if you add some thick soy sauce to it for coloration then it will get even darker.

As in other cuisines around the world Vietnamese food like this dish of Thit Kho Tau uses certain ingredients. The traditional cut of pork for this dish is pork shoulder although my friend Saveda who turned me onto this dish uses pork belly. Well! Fat is where the flavor is with Thit Kho Tau. I live by the frame of mind that there are no rules in the kitchen and this holds true with Asian cooking as well. In my research I found people using pork tenderloin, pork short ribs, pork belly and pork shoulder. This just goes to show you that there are no rules in the kitchen.  So with this recipe for Vietnamese food I decided to use one and a half pounds of pork belly and one and a half pounds of pork shoulder. Well, I do have to watch out for my girlish figure you know! No matter which cut of pork you decide to use if you cut off to much fat then you will certainly lose so much of the wonderful flavor of this recipe. So resign yourself to eating this dish and loving it as much as I do with the fat. Remember! You aren't eating this dish everyday of the week! You can handle it!

Asian cooking is so versatile and that is why I love to cook it so much. The base of this recipe is all Saveda's recipe and then I am going to add a couple of little things here and there to give my own little twist to the recipe but believe me this recipe is all Savy's! So if you love Vietnamese food as much as I do I would urge you to try this excellent recipe! This recipe as far as I am concerned is Vietnamese soul food and the soul of Vietnamese food! This recipe is best served with a side dish of Chinese pickled mustard greens which are called Kiam Chai or Hum Choy or Chrouk Spey and/or pickled bean sprouts called dua gia (pronounced yua ya) these are some of the favorite mon chua or pickled dishes of Vietnamese people when eating thit kho tau.  Make this dish! Enjoy this dish! Make this dish you own! Enjoy the video! And thank you Savvy for a great recipe!



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Malaysian Food: Nasi Lemak: My Nasi Lemak Recipe

Malaysian Food: Nasi Lemak

 

 

This week I am making Malaysian food a dish that is considered the national dish of Malayasia! This week I am going to prepare Nasi Lemak. I am doing this to fulfill a request by one of my Youtube viewers named Deeya Kaur. She is Malayasian and she has been watching some of the Asian dishes that I make and eventually she hit me up to make a Malayasian food. I asked for a suggestion from here and I got two words in reply: Nasi Lemak! I have never had Nasi Lemak nor had I even heard of Nasi Lemak before and I thought I knew Asian food. I had never experienced Malaysian food of any type and I guess now was as good a time as any. So I did some research on Malaysian food and Malaysian dishes of different types and I focused on Nasi Lemak. So this week I am going to make my Nasi Lemak recipe. I think I am going to be adding lots of Malaysian food to my Asian cooking repertoire in the future as the food looks absolutely delicious! So here it is! My Nasi Lemak recipe.

Naturally, Nasi Lemak has it's humble beginnings in the cuisine of Malay. The term Nasi Lemak means "fatty rice", not to worry there is no fat in the rice except for the content of the coconut milk and it is delicious! If you want to break the meanings of Nasi Lemak down even further you can say that Nasi Lemak means "rich" or "creamy". Originally, the way this coconut rice was cooked was by soaking the rice in the coconut milk or cream and then the mixture was steamed. Flavor is added to the Nasi Lemak by the addition of something called "screwpine" leaves or "pandan" leave. Generally the coconut rice is cooked with one or two of these leaves knotted up and put in the pot with the rice to cook. These leaves impart some of the traditional flavor to the Nasi Lemak dish. There are some additional herbs that can be added to the Nasi Lemak rice that will give it an even more spicy flavor and aroma and those herbs are lemon grass and ginger.

Nasi Lemak is traditionally served on a plate or platter that is loaded with side dishes that are wrapped in banana leaves. In most modern iterations and recipes we find that the Nasi Lemak is served on a plate or platter with a banana leaf on top and the side dishes put on top of the banana leaf. Such Nasi Lemak sides dishes as regular or seedless cucumber slices, some small fried Ikan Bilis or anchovies, roasted peanuts or roasted peanuts mixed with some friend anchovies or Ikan Bilis, quartered hard boiled eggs, and of course some hot and spicy sambal sauce. There are other sides that can be used as well such as fried chicken, fried fish, pickled vegetables, Kangkong vegetable, beef rendang, or even cuttlefish in chile called "sambal sotong". Nasi Lemak is all about whether you want your Nasi Lemak to be at some level vegetarian or not. Since Nasi Lemak is the national food of Malayasia you can find it just about anywhere. In schools, in restaurants, and even in street vendor stalls all over Malayasia! I am making my Nasi Lemak with a variety of side dishes like hard boiled egg, quail eggs in sambal (Sambal Telur), grilled ono fillets, sliced cucumbers and cashews in sambal (cashews dalam sambal). There are other side dishes that you can have with Nasi Lemak, things like fried chicken, chili cuttlefish, and vegetables of all kinds. It really is up to you to make your Nasi Lemak that way you want it to be! It is all up to you and you should try this dish at home yourself and make it yours! Enjoy!

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