We’re doing the cooking!

The smell of grease and an open fire was upon me as I lazily sauntered into the kitchen a few afternoons ago. My mom, an avid cook, your typical 5 foot, half an inch Asian lady, was at it again. She really doesn’t know how to relax after years of working non-stop. So, after cleaning the house from top to bottom and tending to her wild herb garden, she decides that it’s time to make her own eggrolls. We usually get this treat after she sees that we’ve eaten healthy for an extended amount of time.

I had the dangerous task of lighting the backyard gas burner which my dad insisted on setting up after incessantly complaining that our regular kitchen range flame was too weak. He is a cook in a Chinese restaraunt so he knows his heat. After about 30 seconds, the entire bottle of vegetable oil I poured into the wok was nice and watery, which is the indication that it’s prime time for some frying!

Here is my mom carefully placing the eggrolls into the piping hot vat of oil. It’s a delicate process.

Here she is manuevering the eggrolls in place for the first fry phase (the second phase is to help keep the crispyness of the outer shell after the eggrolls cool off (I didn’t know that either!).

The finished product: Lean ground pork, thinly sliced carrot strips, fried egg strips, stir fried cabbage (extra pepper), wrapped up in a mouthwatering crispy shell. “Sweet and Sour” glaze drizzled on top (tomato paste, vinegar, sugar, water, cornstarch, bring to a boil) with green onion shavings.

Damn straight!!! I’m a bit biased, but it was obviously delicious. You risk burning your lips on the fresh off the fryer shell to get to the “ham”, which is warm and inviting. The texture was grainy because of the pork but not dry, thanks to the juices from the cabbage and carrots. I ate eight of those rolls of heaven for dinner. And another five the next day. That’s why mom only allows for this every other month. =)

Reader’s Collection 1

As promised… I said if you guys take pictures of food, I am willing to post them on here.

So first we have A&J’s homemade specialities. I asked for a description… because I didn’t taste it, but I guess I will just have to wing it. Why didn’t you guys invite me over for food? anyhow…

First is a homemade pizza. From what I was told, it contained mozzarella cheese that was only like 1~2% milk, due to people who had issues with lactose. The pizza dough was the ready, store brought kind, good for people in a hurry.  Tomato sauce was mildly spread on, then topped with green peppers, tomatoes, and lots lots lots of jalapeno. The cheese comes on at the end. Looks pretty scrumptious.

Next, they made an onion potato casserole. It looks rather cheesy… unless, its the soup base for the casserole… but we all know that casseroles = lad’n with cheese.

Lastly, we have a remake of TGIF potato skins with some sort of a ranch dressing. Potato skins look really tasty and dressing looks creamy. This has cheese on it too! Someone sure likes cheese a whole lot, but I don’t blame them, I love cheese too!

Good job A&J, thanks for the pictures!

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Next, AS has provided us with a special opportunity to see what people in Ipswich, England eat for lunch. Its called the Ploughman’s Lunch. Here is a description for it in his own words:

First, I’ll say that I did have the option to choose between either a hunk of ham or cheddar and I chose the ham. Along with my meal I ordered a pint of Adnams Broadside which I heard was a beer amongst beers.

First, the beer. It had a pretty good colour and smell, but it had a very musky finish though it quickly faded into a decent aftertaste. As I’ve describe it before, it was kind of like kissing someone who smoked a pipe.

 

To the dish itself. The bread came out most favourably. Three thick slices of fresh white bread. To add to that, they came out with a large hunk of butter. Normally I wouldn’t indulge myself with the butter, but when in Rome. The ham was nothing to speak of, though it wasn’t bad. Just your typical ham slices. The side salad had a mixture of greens and some red cabbage. The real kicker to the meal was the condiment section. I’m not actually sure what they were. The dark purpley was so bitter and salty I didn’t fully try it. What I think was baby onions soaked in vinegar were actually quite good, and the next almost seemed like a mustard vegetable medley.

 

I may order this dish again, but next time I’ll just stick to the meat and bread and let the other parts stay where they are.

Thanks buddy and also thanks to M for emailing me this.

Cucumber Cream Chicken Pasta Trio

I should nickname this, pasta del trio C, heh!

So, I had to make a meal (4/1/07) for my trainer because she requested a birthday meal… can’t go wrong with chicken and pasta right? Found some chicken thighs on sale at the grocers this weekend so decided to use that instead of chicken breast (white meat take a break). The sucky part was trimming the fat off the thighs and then shredding the thigh meat; in the end I think I just said screw shredding and started dicing. Anyhow, cooked that with olive oil and garlic. The cream sauce is made from white wine, which is awesome if you deglaze the pan right after the chicken, Italian dressing seasoning, and cream cheese. I thought about adding more cheese, but decided that the dish was fattening enough as it stands. Oh and of course I put butter in there somewhere along the line… Threw in the chicken and then the pasta, the cucumber was kind of an after thought. I needed to veg up the dish, but refused to do broccoli or celery or those staple veggies, and then came cucumber. I thought cucumber would be crisp, refreshing, and mild in flavor. However, it wasn’t exactly mild in flavor, but I don’t mind cucumber one bit, so I think it was alright.  For the pasta, since I was having fun with random veggies already, I decided on using a trio of pasta: penne, shells, and twirls.

I was happy. It tasted great. albeit, a little tad wittle on the salty side for me.

Now that is what I call a mean sandwich…

I’m not in the best of moods right now but will be posting anyway. Bear with me.

See below for the definition of a “mean” sandwich.

Sushi–not bad. I’ve had better. I guess I should have taken a picture before we started eating.

Errrmmmm, that’s all I have to offer for now. I have food pics on my phone that I need to extract. Will try to do so tonight.

Peace out.

Asparagus Beef Stir-fry

So…

I felt really ambitious last Wednesday (3/14/07), so instead of going to the gym… I went home early to cook! I had some beef top round left over in the freezer and I wanted to put it to good use. Kroger had a sale on asparagus ($1.99 per lb) totally awesome and they were pretty tender too, picked that over broccoli. For my stir-fry, I used beef, asparagus, canned straw mushrooms, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, cornstarch, and beef broth. One thing I did differently is I steamed the asparagus first to get them cook and tender, which I found out later that they were so fresh to begin with, they didn’t even need to be steamed first. Using beef broth and cornstarch kinda made the sauce a little gravy like, which I didn’t mind. Some people like to add sugar to asian stir-fry, but not me, sorry.

The rice I believe is Botan Red Rose, short grain rice. THAT is the only kind I keep around at home, the red and yellow label. The stir-fry turned out pretty good, above my expectations… maybe that is due to the fact that I used thick slices of round roast which comes with some fat in between. All of those factors made it taste like steak. Mmmm… steak. So it was like eating stir-fry w/thin steak… yeah, good stuff.

Honestly, I think this dish is pretty healthy too… not bad.