Happy New Year! In this first edition of our What to Cook this Week recipe series for 2023 we’re sharing warming curries for those of you experiencing bone-chilling weather, a nourishing soup if you’re in need of comfort food after all that festive party food, and Russian-Ukrainian food as it’s Orthodox Christmas Eve on Friday.
If you’re feeling left out if you’re lying on the beach in southern hemisphere where there’s blue skies and the sun is shining, tomorrow we’ll be sharing a post for you on 31 summer recipes to make this January… and in evening we’ll be publishing 31 winter recipes to cook this January for our northern hemisphere neighbours. Brrrr.
And if you’ve landed on Grantourismo for the first time – welcome! We’ve been seeing a lot of new visitors in recent weeks – What to Cook this Week is a random-ish recipe series, where on occasional Mondays I poke around the Grantourismo recipes archives, which are bursting with hundreds of recipes from around the world, for easy midweek dinner suggestions for you.
For What to Cook this Week I share meal ideas for those evenings when you’re feeling like you don’t want to spend a whole night by the stove, as well as suggestions for dishes that might require a little more effort, when you’re happy to while away time in the kitchen with loved-ones, a bottle of wine, and good music in the background. This week, we’re doing things a little different.
But before you scroll down to my suggestions for what to cook this week, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting our work by buying us a coffee. We’ll put that coffee money toward cooking ingredients for recipe testing.
Another way to support the site is by making a small donation to our epic Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon or purchase something on Amazon, such as these James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, cookbooks for culinary travellers, travel books to inspire wanderlust, gifts for Asian food lovers, picnic lovers and travellers who love photography. We may earn a small commission but you won’t pay any extra.
And lastly, you could use our links to book accommodation, rent a car or campervan or motorhome, buy travel insurance, or book a tour on Klook or Get Your Guide. Again, we may earn a small commission but you won’t pay extra. You could also shop our Grantourismo store at Society 6 for gifts designed with Terence’s photography.
Now here are my suggestions for warming curries, comforting soups and Russian-Ukrainian food for our latest edition for What to Cook this Week.
What to Cook This Week – Warming Curries, Comforting Soups and Cabbage Dumplings
My suggestions for What to Cook this Week for the first edition of our mid-week meal series for 2023.
Monday – Burmese Indian Style Chicken Curry Recipe
I’m tucking into leftover curry tonight, so if you’d like to join me, why not try this Burmese Indian style chicken curry recipe? It makes a rich curry fragrant with ginger, turmeric, garlic and chilli that has a homemade Burmese curry powder on its concise list of ingredients.
I adapted this from a charming Burmese cookbook by Mi Mi Khaing called Cook and Entertain the Burmese Way, dating to 1978. It’s a pleasure to read, as much for its insights into Burmese home-cooking and entertaining in the 1970s as for Mi Mi Khaing’s delightful turn of phrase.
Mi Mi Khaing uses a homemade curry powder blend, as most Burmese women did back in her day, which includes cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, coriander, peppercorns, bay leaf, and poppy seeds. We’ve shared her full curry powder recipe, with a couple of tweaks, but you could use a store-bought curry powder.
This curry is the perfect accompaniment to Burmese coconut rice and the refreshing salads of Myanmar that provide contrasting textures and flavours, such as this Burmese raw cabbage salad, a Shan vermicelli noodle salad and a Shan tomato salad recipe.
Burmese Indian Style Chicken Curry Recipe for a Rich Curry Fragrant with Ginger, Turmeric and Garlic
Tuesday – Classic Chicken Cacciatore Recipe
If you haven’t made it yet, why not try our classic chicken cacciatore recipe, which makes a traditional Italian chicken stew with a luscious tomato sauce?
The recipe topped the list of our 10 most popular recipes of December 2022 and after going viral, became one of our 22 most popular recipes of 2022, although it didn’t make that list as we’d published it a few days earlier.
Called pollo alla cacciatora in Italian, which translates to ‘hunter’s chicken’ – ‘pollo’ is ‘chicken’ and ‘cacciatore’ means ‘hunter’ – it’s a rustic old Italian dish traditionally eaten alone as a main course with crusty bread to mop up the rich sauce.
I think a panzanella – an Italian bread and tomato salad from Tuscany – is fantastic on the side. If I was feeding a group of family and friends, I’d also be inclined to serve roast potatoes, such as these hasselback potatoes or, in winter, creamy mashed potatoes. Just don’t tell your Italian friends that suggestion came from us!
Chicken Cacciatore Recipe for a Traditional Italian Chicken Stew with Luscious Tomato Sauce
Wednesday – Cambodian Chicken Soup with Pickled Limes
With Christmas and New Year, it’s been a while since I’ve made Cambodian food, so I’m going to make this Cambodian chicken soup with pickled limes recipe for sngor ngam ngov this week. It’s a slightly sweet, slightly sour, citrus-driven soup of succulent chicken, lemongrass and coriander.
Easy to make, it’s a nourishing soup that’s one of the best winter soup recipes. The bowl should brim with pieces of tender fall-off-the-bone chicken, fragrant from the lime you roasted them in and aromatics that swim in this healthy soup.
In many ways this is Cambodia’s chicken soup for the soul and of Cambodia’s countless soups there are few more comforting. While I can polish off a pot of the stuff on my own, this is a soup that should be shared.
Comforting Cambodian Pickled Lime Soup with Chicken Recipe for Sngor Ngam Ngov
Thursday – Korean Japchae Recipe for Stir Fried Glass Noodles
This classic Korean japchae recipe makes a delicious Korean noodle dish of stir fried glass noodles with mixed vegetables. Called dangmyeon in Korean, the sweet potato starch noodles are doused in sesame oil, soy sauce and sesame seeds, then combined with stir-fried carrot sticks, onion, mushrooms, and spinach.
An old Korean specialty long before it was popular Korean restaurant fare and a Korean takeaway favourite, japchae was a centuries-old Korean royal dish served at palace banquets. It was invented in the 17th century for King Gwanghaegun and is documented in the royal records of the period.
The original japchae consisted of thinly sliced mixed vegetables with a special sauce – hence the name: ‘jap’ means mixed and ‘chae’ is vegetables. This recipe makes a vegetarian japchae, but you can add strips of beef, something like rib eye, marinated in soy sauce, garlic and sesame oil.
Classic Korean Japchae Recipe for Stir Fried Glass Noodles with Mixed Vegetables
Friday – Cabbage Dumplings and other Russian-Ukrainian Food for Orthodox Christmas
Friday 6 January is Orthodox Christmas Eve so I’ll be busy on Friday preparing my Russian Ukrainian recipes. Every year in the lead-up to the Orthodox Christmas and New Year, no matter where we are in the world, I take time to cook the recipes of my family.
My grandparents were born during the Russian Empire in the land we now know as Ukraine and while my grandfather identified as Russian, my Odessa-born grandmother identified as Ukrainian.
Her repertoire included both Russian dishes and Ukrainian dishes and sometimes a fusion of the two and she’d spend days cooking before Christmas Eve, which was spent at the small Orthodox Church in Blacktown in Sydney’s western suburbs. After the service, the priest came over to bless the food before the midnight meal.
I’ll be making some of that food this week: definitely baboushka’s Russian pelmeni and Ukrainian varenyky, her borscht, a small batch of stuffed cabbage rolls, beetroot potato salad and classic garden salad, maybe her piroshki and most certainly my cabbage filled varenyky. Will you join me in making a dish and two?
Cabbage Dumplings Recipe for Russian-Ukrainian Vareniki with a Rich Cabbage Filling
Please do let us know if you make any of these What to Cook this Week recipes, as we love to hear how our recipes turn out for you.
