Seattle Let Us Cook Together Meetup

I have been an organizer of “Seattle let us cook together” meetup for 7 months. I started this meetup to cook something good with others at Prune Kitchen. The meetup is self-taught interactive cooking class. Our dinner cooking is like Thanksgiving dinner. The members cook appetizers, main course, and dessert and share the meals at Prune kitchen.
The fee is between $15 and 30 include all ingredients and cover the expenses. I met many new members who loved to cook or wanted to cook with others. We have cooked variety of meals include Thai, Japanese, Mexican, Italian, and American, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We cook simple common meals to complex recipes. Starting in this fall we will cook on one Friday dinner and one weekend brunch per month plus some weekend’s dinner.

Photos above are some of dishes which we cooked at the Seattle Let us cook together meetup.

Kabocha Thai curry

My life has been hectic. I haven’t written my blog for while. I will write more what kept me busy later.
I resume my blog and try to write more.
I joined Pacific Northwest cooking and recipe meetup group and attended “Your favorite Recipe Share and Tell Pumpkin and Apples” meetup. I thought Japanese way to cook Kabocha but it may not be popular among the attendants. I thought curry may do well with pumpkin. I decided to select other Asian curry rather than Japanese. I searched my collection of Indian then Thai recipe books. I found one which I could imagine to make tasty curry. I changed quite bit from original “Sweet Pumpkin and Peanut curry” in Thai the essence of Asian cooking by Judy Bastyra.(There are many good recipes and nice photos in this book.)
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Kabocha Thai Curry Recipe
Kabocha is Japanese pumpkin. It is dark green. It is smaller and sweeter than large yellow pumpkins.Original version uses peanuts,regular pumpkin, garlic and chicken stock, no meat, no zucchini. I used Kabocha and boiled them before adding them to curry soup.
Ingredients
1 large Fresh ginger cut into julienne
1 Shallots chopped small pieces
½ Kabocha peeled and cut to chunks
Zucchini ¼ inch sliced
Fresh Mushrooms sliced
Chicken ½ inch cube
Oil 1Tbsp
13.5 oz can of coconuts milk
Fish sauce 1-2 TBSP
Yellow Thai curry paste 1-2TBSP
Cooking instruction
1. Boil Kabocha 5 minutes. The Kabocha is halfway cooked
2. In a large stew pan, heat oil and stir ginge and shallots.
3. Add chicken and cook until done.
4. Add the curry paste, mix and stir.
5. Add coconuts milk, fish sauce, Zucchini, mushrooms
6. Cook until the vegetables are well cooked
7. Add pumpkin and cook until pumpkins are tender.
8. Serve with toasted Pumpkin seeds.
(Notes)This curry is very satisfactory itself without rice. Make it vegetarian by eliminating chicken and adding nuts or beans.