Recycled meals

As someone who likes to have a lot of varieties with her meals, living alone doesn't really give me a whole lot of chances to get rid of left overs fast enough sometimes. I've been getting take out meals from the Hawaiian place lately. Usually, I get their combo Kahlua pork + chicken katsu meal. The portions are huge and it's not someting I can finish in one sitting. So I eat most of the chicken katsu, some of the kahlua pork, all the macaroni salad and some of the rice while it's still hot. The rest of the katsu is normally consumed for the next meal and the pork is reserved for other things. carnitas quesadilla pork rice porridge (jook) with thousand year old eggs pork and cabbage (or some other veggies) wrap pork and scrambled eggs pork with gojujang (Korean spicy bean paste) with some kind of starch It's been working out pretty well.

Pomelo Skin

Pomelos ... I love the fruit. Since discovering chinese grocery delivery, I've been ordering and eating them. I've been feeling nostagic every time I eat them though, remembering how I used to help my grandma makes this dish with the skin (when I was in elementary school). I wasn't able to find any recipes for it online, or in any of the cookbooks (Chinese or otherwise). So this year, I decided to kind of "wing" it based on memory. Furtunately, there are some youtube videos of people making it around, but none of them are quite like I remembered. It seems to be a cantonese dish since all the youtube videos of it are in Cantonese. A few of the dishes were vegetarian, I decided to pass those by. I have also decided to forego the preserved pork belly and other preserved meats since I didn't really care for them all that much and just use lap cheng (chinese sausage) only. A couple of the videos used shrimp roe and this is not an item that's available for purchase, so I decided to use and make a shrimp broth instead (more on this later). I remember burning the outer part of the pomelo skin to be soaked and scraped off in water. Since I don't have a gas stove, I used my creme brulee torch instead. Less than half a skin later, I ran out of butane fuel in it and I just scraped off the outer layer with a grater instead. After soaking and wringing them out and changing the soaking water on a daily basis for several days, they were finally ready to be cooked. They were cut up into smaller pieces and blanched in water and boiled for half an hour. The shrimp broth was prepared using shrimp shells that I have saved from a week ago (Christmas dinner), roasted in my toaster oven to intensify flavor). A quick boil and simmer along with a couple of star anis and chinese pepper corn later, I very flavorful shrimp broth was ready. The pomelo skins were scooped out and water squeezed out of them once again. I threw some spare rib pieces in the liquid to do a quick blanch and scooped them out. In a large (deep-ish) pan, add in the spare ribs, add a mixture of oyster sauce, dark and light soy sauce, cooking wine, a couple of tsp of sugar. Add pomelo skin pieces Add shrimp broth Add sliced lap cheng (optional) add sliced shitake mushrooms Let it simmer for roughly 20 minutes, add a bit of sesame oil. Stir it up and the dish is ready to be served. I don't quite remember how it was supposed to taste all that much, but I'm pretty sure this is about as authentic as I'm going to be able to get. I gave some to my aunt to taste and she seems to be able to recognize the taste (I guess that's a good thing). I still have a bunch of the simmering liquid left and a few pomelos I have not consumed yet. I will probably make it one more time. We'll see if this turns into a regular thing. It's a simple dish but the prep is kind of time consuming.

Pandemic Eating

Since mid-March, everyone have been asked to do their part and stay at home so we can hopefully slow the spread of this Cornona Virus (COVID-19). As a result, I spent most of my time at home and cooking/eating on my own. I actually feel better and managed to lose a few pounds and kept my weight pretty consistant. Among some of my favorite single serving meals: Japanese curry with rice. Fried rice. Baked potato with butter sauteed kimchi as topping. *Sounds like a weird combo, but oddly works very well Sauercraut quasadilla. Beef Stew. Pan Fried lemon garlic chicken Brussel Sprouts (baked with bacon) *Highly Recommended Simple noodle soup with veggies and whatever protein (including baloney) with "better than boulion" English muffins made with sour dough starter *I may never go back to store bought. So fluffy ... Lately, since temperature's been dipping, I have been making more soups and stews. My latest was to recycle my previous night's kahlua pork with cabbage over rice. I ended up with several bowls of "jook" the next day. Just so happened that lean pork with thousand year old egg porridge is a classic chinese lunch menu item and I had just bought some thousand year old eggs a couple of weeks prior to. That was very satisfying and I didn't end up getting tired of eating the same thing over and over again. I'll probably be posting some photos eventually ...

Lazy Bones

Apparently, it's been a few years since my last post. It's a new year. I'm trying to eat and live a little healthier. Starting by drinking a glass of water right out of bed, which basically means it happens sometime between getting up to before breakfast or heading outside, whichever comes first). Read an article about how people on the go are trying to eat better/lighter when they travel. people have been known to cook their own food in their hotel rooms with basic stuff that's usually already there. An example of a complete meal would include cous cous and poached salmon (in the coffee maker caraf) with steamed vegetables (in the coffee maker drip basket). Others have made toast or even grilled cheese sandwich on the plate of an iron (with a piece of foil). Tempted to go on a trip so I can try.

Bacon!

Ah ... one of life's better joys.  I mean ... it's BACON!  It makes practically everything taste better.

After some experimentation, I found the best way to cook bacon is to bake it.

I know pan frying is the classic way, but it always curls up weird so that you get some areas that's all crispy goodness and other areas that's kind of gross, fatty and soft.

Baking on the other hand heats the entire thing up evenly, but it means a lot of drippings to clean up, or the bacon will be sitting in a large puddle of grease.

So, this is the easiest, cleanest way I'd found to cook MY bacon.  Two pieces of foil, one laying and wrapping an oven pan, the other one slightly crumbled up and laid on the lined pan.  Place slices of bacon on top of the crumbled foil and bake away.  The drippings will just collect on the lined pan, leaving me some slices of crispy yummy bacon.

Fun with Dishwasher

Found a recipe for cooking "fool proof" fish (Salmon) in your dishwasher.  Sounds VERY interesting.  Didn't get a chance to try it out, but given that it may make my dishwasher all fishy ... I may just pass on that.

Normally, my salmon cooking's simple enough and involves the following:

1 slice of salmon (about 2-3 finger's width, depending on how hungry I get).
Lemon
Butter or olive oil
Salt & pepper
Dill

Place salmon (no skin and trim off the darker fleshy stuff  next to the skin) on a piece of foil
Put on salt & pepper to taste
Sprinkle some dill over that
A few lemon slices arrange to cover the fish
Drizzle olive oil over the whole thing
Fold foil over and seal well

Bake in oven (toaster oven works well) at about 350 degrees or so until you smell food.  Sorry, I'm a bit hazy with my cooking, but it probably takes about 15-20 minutes or so if you start with a cold oven.

Presentation is nice, cleaning is a snap.  Good lazy-gal dinner.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was pretty quiet.  Since 2 of our family members were out of town, there were just the 4 of use left, with one other guest, it made only a gathering for 5 people.

We thought about going out to eat, but Thanksgiving's just not quite the same without the turkey and all its fixings at home.

I volunteered to cook the entire dinner this year, bought a small turkey (11.4 lbs.) and started out wanting to do something simple, but ended up being sort of so ... but the menu turned out to be:

Roasted Turkey
Stuffing with mushrooms and maple syrup sausages
Mashed potatoes with truffle shavings
Home made Cranberry sauce
Mushroom Gravy
Roasted Aspharages (white and green) with cheese and lemon juice
Green salad with apple slices
Beet salad
Roasted vegetables
Sweet potato cheese pie
Cherry pie
Ice Cream

I'll have to say ... while turkey turned out juicy and rather painless to make, the gravy was my favorite.  I happen to be able to get to a farmer's market the day before and scored a bunch of different kinds of fresh mushrooms, so ... sauteed chantrell mushrooms, roughly chopped, add in slices of brown mushrooms.  Stock, turkey drippings and flour to thicken ... ummm ...

Then there's the cherry pie ... D made it himself and I have to say it was awesome!

All in all, we were full, but not stuffed to the gill.

We didn't end up with too much left overs either.  I managed to take one turkey breast home and it's all gone by now.

I think we're doing it again this Christmas.