Stir fry
April 4, 2021 10:12 AM
Before I knew how to cook, my go-to meal was stir fry. My mom makes stir fry all the time, so that's what she sort of attempted to teach me in high school. I remember trying to cook for myself back when I was trying to get more fit and lose my freshman 40. I used Nerd Fitness and referenced their chicken stir fry blog post. I think people have this notion that stir fry is super easy. Whenever I look at stir fry recipes online, they give me cook and prep times of 15 minutes. What a fast meal!
...lies. They're all lies. Stir fry takes forever. I have to cut vegetables and meat. If you're new to cooking, you're probably new to chopping. You also should be stir frying food at high heat. High heat is not good for beginners. Also, what beginner cook has a giant wok available? If you use your standard 10 or 12 inch pan, your veggies are going to fly everywhere and hot things are going to smack you in the face.
But I guess I'm past being a beginner. I'm okay with using high heat again. I am still kind of slow at prep work though. I made this Chicken and Thai Basil Stir Fry about a week ago. I don't remember when I started prepping (maybe 8?), but it was 9:30pm when I finally had my meal ready. I know, I was just being slow.
It was good though! I always enjoy a good stir fry meal.
An attempt to satisfy my burger craving
April 3, 2021 7:27 PM
I first learned what the word crave meant some time in elementary school. I distinctly remember this because once I learned what it meant, I used the word all the time. "I'm craving bananas." "I'm craving quail meat." "I'm craving some baby chicken eggs."
(You might think, those are weird things for a 10 year old to want to eat. You're probably right.)
I think my mom told me it was weird that I kept saying that because it made me sound like I was pregnant, so I stopped.
But I think about food all the time, and when I don't get to eat something that I even have a small desire for, it just grows and grows until I finally have some. I had a craving for pizza from Thanksgiving all the way until last month. The thing is, I actually ate pizza several times between Thanksgiving and last month, but none of it was hitting the spot. I was finally satisfied when I got a supreme pizza and a cheesy bread twist late one night after helping my friend move a bunch of stuff to her new house.
Two days after that, she sent me a photo of a burger that she got from the restaurant next door, and I thought, "Man, I want a burger." So, I bought a burger from a nearby restaurant. It wasn't great. I bought another burger from the same place she got her burger. It wasn't bad. I made myself some smash burgers.
It was fine, but it was literally just smashed ground beef, and I like burgers to have a little more flavor than that.
So, yeah, I still haven't satisfied that burger craving.
Chimichurri chicken and fish
April 2, 2021 8:02 PM
Two weeks ago, I made Chimichurri Chicken Kebabs (except not in kebab form) and I also cooked some tilapia.
I first had chimichurri when I was at a restaurant called Gaucho. It's a super popular place in the area and they used to not take reservations, so if you went at noon on a Saturday you'd have to wait in line for like an hour. Was it worth it? Only if you went at 11am when they opened and could beat the rush.
What I liked best about this place was their sauces. I basically think of chimichurri as cilantro sauce. And you know I love cilantro. I buy cilantro almost every week, but sometimes I'm not able to use up all of it. So what do I do when I have sad looking herbs? Blend them up.
Chimichurri is delicious.
I love dumplings
March 31, 2021 9:00 PM
My sister left a strange looking bag of something in the freezer that happened to be soup dumpling mixture. (Sorry, I don't have a picture of that) I'm not good at wrapping soup dumplings, but I decided to throw some extra ground pork that I had in the freezer into the soup dumpling mixture to make somewhat soupy dumplings.
I know, they just look like regular dumplings.
And I don't have anything interesting to say about them.
But they're so good.
Spring rolls with pork belly
March 27, 2021 12:59 PM
I've made spring rolls a lot in the past, but every time I make it I feel like I'm missing something: pork belly. My family always puts pork belly in their spring rolls, and whenever I don't have it, it just doesn't quite hit the spot. The reason I never included it is because pork belly is kind of hard to get around here, and I had no idea how to cook it.
Well, we have a meat place really close to the Asian place, and it turns out that all I have to do is boil the pork.
Simple, right? Well, I don't know. I did just plop the pork belly in the boiling water, but I had no idea how long to cook it for. When I asked family for advice they told me "just take it out and cut it up and see if it's cooked." So I did that. And I did that again. And again. And again. And again. Man this pork takes way longer to cook than I anticipated. I really should have been keeping track of the time or at least noted how much pork I bought in the first place. Can't say I'd change how I cook this next time since I have no idea how long I cooked it this time.
Oh well, it all worked out in the end. I was dipping it in soy sauce and just eating it like that to begin with. So good.
But even better in some spring rolls.
Every time I make spring rolls, I try and figure out where to put the shrimp to make the spring rolls look all fancy like they do in the restaurant. I don't think I ever figure it out. In fact I think I'm getting worse at wrapping these. They definitely looked nicer last time.
Doesn't matter though. These taste so much better. It's the pork belly. And the oyster-sauce-y onions. And it's lunch time, and I'm hungry, so I think I'm going to eat some more right now (: