Breakfast of Champions

February 26, 2021 9:51 AM

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my aunt and she recalled a time (well before I knew how to cook) where I made home fries for my little cousins to eat. And she kept saying how all I did was cook a single potato and it took me forever to cut and cook it, but my little cousin ended up loving it. And something about the way she described this story just cracked. me. up.

I was also inspired. I needed to make these home fries again. (Which is why I bought that 5 lb bag of potatoes) I had two sad looking potatoes left, so I figured, it's now or never.

I see why this took me forever. Cutting up potatoes is a lot of work. But I'm on PTO today, so it's chill and I can take my time to make myself a proper breakfast, and a proper breakfast means I need to also cook eggs.

Fried eggs are probably my favorite breakfast item. Turn up the heat to HIGH, throw in some veggie oil, crack a couple of eggs in the pan and watch it sizzle. It needs to sizzle and bubble up. If it doesn't sizzle it's not hot enough. This is exactly the type of thing that caused me to burn my leg in high school, but don't worry! I wore long pants. I was prepared this time.

I did, however, accidentally break the yolk as I was scooping the eggs out of the pan, causing me to let out some profanities. But that's okay. That happens. This is me flailing in my kitchen after all.

I even threw cilantro on top of my food because I was being fancy weird and wanted to give myself the illusion of a well-balanced meal. But also because I like to throw cilantro on anything and everything savory.

Home fries. Eggs. A piece of beef jerky. That's what I call a Breakfast of Champions.

Tilapia tacos

February 20, 2021 12:26 PM

First of all, I'm going to lessen the frequency of these blog posts. I'm trying to take it easy and also free up my time for other things. But I'll still be cooking, and I'll try to post at least once a week.

After impulsively buying tilapia a few weeks ago, I decided to finally make some tacos with it. Blue Apron has a catfish taco recipe that's been one of my go-to's, and I thought that if they have one good fish taco recipe, they must have others. So I went and searched for "fish tacos" and these are the top results:

• Tomatillo Pork Tacos
• Salmon & Cilantro Rice Bowls
• Smooth Salmon & Homemade BBQ Sauce
• Garlic & Olive Tilapia
• Sheet Pan Pesto Salmon

Wait wait wait, these aren't fish taco recipes, these are fish OR taco recipes. Blue Apron, you gotta work on your search code. What is it with recipe sites and terrible search algorithms?

So after scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling I finally stumbled upon Baja-Style Tilapia Tacos.

These tacos were easy to make, and they tasted pretty good too. But they're fish tacos. Of course they taste good. I don't know if I love the combination of avocado and orange, but it seemed to work well enough. The only problem with this recipe is that it doesn't work well for leftovers. The avocadoes end up browning.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, but I used green cabbage instead of red because it was cheaper. I also used corn instead of flour tortillas because that's just what I had already. As much as I think grocery store brand corn tortillas are awful, Aldi corn tortillas are actually pretty great once you toast them in the pan. And finally I added cilantro because of course I added cilantro.

Oh, so, I also went grocery shopping today, and as much as I told myself I wasn't going to buy any more meat/seafood, I ended up impulsively buying another bag of tilapia. It was $5! That's even cheaper than when impulsively bought it last month!

Beef stew

February 16, 2021 7:04 PM

A couple of months ago, I saw this beef stew recipe pop up in my nightly food blog browsing and I saved it because it looked really good.

Since this is a crockpot recipe, I had to make it way in advance. I had planned to prep and start cooking Friday night, but I was talking to my cousins and doing other silly things online, and before I knew it, it was midnight. I almost decided to just sleep and make the recipe later, but if I waited until the next morning, it wouldn't be ready until Saturday night and I didn't want to wait that long to eat this.

So, there I was at 12:30am, cutting up potatoes and carrots. It was actually pretty easy to prep. I had it all prepped by 1am, which means I didn't even get to eat it until lunch.

Overall, the recipe was pretty good. This was sort of an Asian beef stew, but I couldn't taste anything Asian about it. I didn't have lemongrass or any of the other aromatics, so maybe that's what I need to take this to the next level. I also had to double the broth so everything could be covered. And if I ever make this again, I think I'll need to add sugar. I was missing that hint of sweetness.

I really don't know how to make beef stew look aesthetic, but I think I like putting it next to a lump of rice.

Shumai

February 15, 2021 7:10 PM

During this past year's Christmas, my family celebrated what we like to call "Dipmas". Everyone had to make a dip, so I decided to make dumplings (and dipping sauce to go with it). One of my aunts made shumai, so this ended up turning into "Dip and Dumpmas". Okay, maybe that name doesn't sound as good.

I really like ordering shumai when I get dimsum, and for some reason I figured that everything I order from dimsum places must be way above my cooking level. But I saw my aunt's shumai, and it was really good, and I thought "I can totally make this."

I asked her for the recipe, and she actually sent me a screenshot from allrecipes, but I thought, "This is fine, I can search for it."

...No I can't. There is no "shumai" recipe in allrecipes. I even tried various spellings of the word like "siu mai". I eventually decided to google "allrecipes shumai" and I found a very shumai-looking recipe called "Hawaiian Pork Hash". Of course Google knows what I'm looking for. Apparently this is Hawaii's version of shumai.

I had never folded shumai before. It took me a few tries before finding a method I liked. At first, I just kind of scrunched it all together, but that looked kind of ugly. Soon I realized that I just needed to make little folds in a spiral pattern.

Hey, I'm really happy with my improvement just from my first to second batch.

The other part of this that was a little scary to me was steaming the dumplings because I had never used a bamboo steamer before. I looked up youtube videos to learn how to do this and there is a lot of conflicting advice. Do I place the steamer in water or not? Do I wait for it to boil, then put the steamer in, or just put it in at the start? Do I need another contraption to keep the steamer baskets up higher?

Plus, I hate watching videos to learn things. Most of these youtube videos are kind of obnoxious. I ended up going to my most trusted source for Asian cooking, The Woks of Life. I took out my largest pan, filled it up with some water, brough it to a boil, and then placed the steamer basket in and let it cook for 12 minutes.

This was a lot easier than I expected.

Great, easy recipe, but there are things I think should be tweaked:

• I didn't use water chestnut. I don't really like water chestnuts because my mom puts them in everything and the texture throws me off. But maybe I'll add it next time.
• I think it's silly to only use part of an egg when cooking, so I used a whole egg, not just the whites.
• Of course, that means that we now need more pork and more shrimp so the filling is stickier. I think I'd double both.
• Really, I think this whole recipe needs to be quadrupled in order to actually use up a whole 14oz package of dumpling wrappers. I think this recipe made 18 pieces of shumai.
• I would add some dark soy sauce next time for color
• And I need some peas to top the shumai!

Well, maybe I'll just use the Woks of Life recipe next time.

But I am very happy with my first attempt at shumai and I am definitely making this again at some point.

Food thoughts: 2/6 - 2/12

February 13, 2021 10:45 AM

in which I buy real ice cream

At work, I'm a team lead, so I have to write two management updates every single week. Some of the other team leads at the company write their updates in the same exact format every week. I've tried to do that in the past, but I find that I just get bored or things change and the format makes no sense anymore. Some weeks I use paragraphs, others I use bullet points. Sometimes I have headers, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I write project updates, and other times I focus on people. It's just...whatever feels the best each week. And I feel the same way about these blog posts.

So, no whiteboard picture this week. Maybe no whiteboard pictures for a while. I'm still feeling the grocery store pics though.

Recognize that "Good and Gather" brand? That's Target. That's right, I did my grocery shopping at Target because I needed to buy some non-food items and in these COVID times I figured I should limit my shopping trips.

Grocery shopping at Target is terrible. I don't know why anyone would willingly do their grocery shopping here. Also, note to self, never buy ground meat from a tube again.

You might be wondering why I bought a 5 lb bag of potatoes. Well, I wanted to make some beef stew (post to come later!), and yeah, I could have just bought two individual potatoes, but then I thought of other potato possibilities and the lower price per pound and the fact that I bought a single lemon three grocery trips in a row. So here I am now with way too many potatoes.

Even though I said I would limit my shopping trips this week, it just happened to snow way more than I expected it to on Tuesday, and for that reason I decided it was the perfect time to walk a mile to Trader Joe's to buy ice cream.

And I was right! There was no line when I got there. That's practically unheard of during these COVID times.

I'm of the opinion that Trader Joe's isn't a real grocery store (they didn't even have veggie oil!) but their ice cream is 👌 and for that reason I'm forever a sucker loyal customer. And those mini cones are so good! They're like tiny little drumsticks, but even better!

As far as what I ate this week, I'm also going to ditch the table of my breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, and just mention some highlights.

It was Chinese New Year and I missed being around family. I didn't even plan to make any Chinese food! But I figured I could eat something Asian and cook some more 腊肉 (lat bhat).

Hey, I really am getting better at this deep frying thing! I didn't overcook the meat this time!

I also had some leftover Dim Sum from last week, and I made some cucumber salad to go along with it. Normally I don't take pictures of food that I didn't make, but the salad looked so sad by itself.

I gotta get back to making more Asian food next week!