Pad Kra Pao

December 15, 2020 9:38 PM

Last week I had bought Thai basil so I could put it in my green curry. In hindsight, I should have either put all of it in the curry, or just not bought it at all. Because what that left me with was some basil that was starting to look kinda sad. But that's okay! I can just put it in another stir fry! A bunch of leaves were getting really dark, so I did throw some out, but it still smelled fine, which is the the important part.

I decided to make Pad Kra Pao (Ground pork and basil stir fry) since it looked easy. And it was, but I realized I deviated a lot from the recipe:

• I added a bell pepper, since I had one that I needed to use up.
• The recipe called for two shallots, and to me, shallots are just expensive tiny red onions. I didn't even have those, so I just substituted it with half a yellow onion.
• Holy crap, this called for 7 cloves of garlic! If I had known that, I would have bought more garlic two days ago. I only used 5 cloves because I needed to save some for a different dish.
• I didn't add the chicken broth/water since it didn't seem necessary.
• I used Thai basil, not Holy basil. Obviously.

As I was just about done cooking this, I had a realization. I didn't make rice yet! So, there I was, frantically getting rice, washing it, and then putting it in the rice cooker. And then I figured I should cut up a green onion to garnish this dish. I was getting really impatient, and right as the rice cooker clicked to "Warm" I took some rice out.

I don't know if other people's rice cookers function like mine, but you pretty much always have to wait 5 or 10 more minutes after it claims to be done cooking before it's actually done cooking. So the rice was a little on the hard side.

Slightly undercooked rice aside, this was very good.

More Asian food

December 12, 2020 10:24 PM

Just showing you the two things I cooked this past week.

First, Thai Green Curry Chicken. This is the second time I've made this recipe, and it's very flavorful. Preparing the veggies takes a bit of time, but I'm just slow at cutting things, so it's really easy to make.

Also, this made a huge batch, so I'm probably going to freeze some of this.

Later in the week, I made Sticky Rice with Chinese Sausage. Did you know I used to hate Chinese sausage 腊肠? I was a really picky kid, but my tastes have evolved a lot since then.

I did use sweet rice in this, which worked out really well. This is the first time I've ever cooked sticky rice and it was pretty easy. The combination of sticky rice, shiitake mushrooms, and Chinese sausage was great.

I even attempted to form this in an upside down bowl shape. But I was being lazy and didn't pack it very well, so I had to quickly take this picture as it was slowly falling apart.

Everything was delicious.

Meal Plan: 12/5 - 12/11

December 12, 2020 11:41 AM

Last week I showed you what was in the PERISHABLE section of my whiteboard. This week I'll expand that and also show you the PANTRY.

You see how some of the items aren't underneath a date? That means they're so old, I've forgotten when I actually bought them. And that can of bamboo shoots? I think it's been expired for a while. My go-to recipe for using up bamboo is curry, so I decided to put green chicken curry on my list of dishes for the week.

Obviously, that means I need to go to the Asian store to buy green curry paste. And since I've got that on my list, why not just make it a full week of Asian food? Sweet rice (sticky rice) is at the top of my PANTRY section, and the reason I bought that in the first place was to make Sticky Rice with Chinese Sausage. But, the last time I made it, I didn't feel like actually opening that new bag of rice, so I just used my normal Jasmine rice. And that bag of sweet rice has been sitting in a cabinet, unopened, ever since.

For my third dish, I looked up noodle soup recipes on The Woks of Life since it's cold out now, and noodle soup sounds really good. I settled on Udon Noodle Soup with Chicken and Mushrooms since I've made it before and it uses dashi, which I currently have, and shiitake mushrooms, which I'm going to buy anyway for the sticky rice meal.

And that would have settled it, except I looked back at my whiteboard and realized I STILL NEED TO USE UP THE CABBAGE. I was trying to think of other Asian dishes that use cabbage, and my mind went to Singapore noodles. I don't know why my mind associates that with cabbage, but it works since I also have vermicelli noodles.

So, my original shopping plan was to just hit up the Asian store. But then I put together my list and realized I needed to buy chicken, and I just do not think buying chicken from the Asian store is a good idea. I don't even know if the local Asian stores here sell chicken.

So, I made a trip to Aldi. And look at all that produce! I'm definitely getting my greens this week. And yeah, Aldi sells ginger now. Crazy.

Aldi also sells coconut milk, but I just decided I'd get it at the Asian store instead. I'm not actually sure which option would have been cheaper. The Chinese sausage and dried shrimp are also kinda pricey. In total, I spent $48.37 on my groceries, which is way more than I should spent on food in one week. But, I did have a very light grocery haul last week, and next week will probably also be light. If we're averaging, I'm still under $30/week.

So, it's Saturday now, and I'm sitting here and I cannot remember well enough what I actually ate on Wednesday. Usually I try to write this down the day of, but I just happened to forget to do that on Wednesday. Did I actually skip a meal? Why in the world would I have skipped breakfast? Maybe I snacked on something. Maybe I had beef jerky in the morning.

I did sort of skip lunch on Thursday. I mean I ate food. I was grazing all day. I definitely had a yogurt and some beef jerky and probably something else as well. You'll also notice that I had McDonald's on Friday. I just really wanted those french fries. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything else on the menu I really wanted. But I got a few other things and it was still satisfying enough for a lazy Friday evening.

Ending with an obligatory photo of the pulled pork tacos:

Singapore noodles

December 6, 2020 9:39 PM

In my quest to finish using up all of my cabbage, I decided to make some Singapore noodles. (Apparently I associate cabbage with Singapore noodles) I've made this a few times using a recipe on Budget Bytes, but I don't love the way she says to prep the noodles, so I decided to check out The Woks of Life. I settled on their Vegetarian Singapore Noodles recipe, since I've been lacking vegetables in my diet lately.

And there were a lot of veggies in this! So many veggies that I think it took me about 45 minutes to prep for this dish. I realized that I don't know how to julienne carrots. I was slicing them with a knife in probably the most inefficient way possible. I gotta watch a youtube video on this for next time.

I also realized that I had way more cabbage than I thought I did! And I already thought I had a lot of cabbage. The recipe calls for 6 oz, and I definitely had more than that. I also don't think I know the right strategy for cutting up Taiwanese cabbage either. Cabbage was flying everywhere as I was cutting it. As I was dumping all the veggies in my pan, I decided to only put half the cabbage in, so now I still have more cabbage that I need to use up.

All in all, it took me 1 hour, 20 minutes to make this, which is 20 more minutes than the actual recipe says. I blame at least ten of those minutes on the fact that this recipe calls for salt. That was weird. I never put straight salt in my Asian food. It's always some sort of sauce that gives it that saltiness. And as I was pouring my salt into a bowl, I realized that I was low on salt. So I look for the big container of salt, because of course I have more salt. I looked in every cabinet, and turns out, I'm COMPLETELY OUT OF SALT. How in the world did I run out of salt?!

(I'm having a deja vu moment. I'm pretty sure I suddenly ran out of salt when my sister was here earlier this year. How the heck do we use up so much salt? But I'm only out of normal salt. I still have garlic salt, seasoning salt, and that pink himalayan salt that everyone just happens to stock in their kitchen for some weird reason.)

In the end, I'd say these noodles were alright. 3/5. They're not bad, but I really should have used soy sauce instead of salt. There was actually a comment in the original recipe that questioned why this didn't have soy sauce. I should have listened more to that commenter.

Fried mac 'n cheese

December 6, 2020 2:03 PM

There was one point last year where I took this book called Cook90 out from the library. It's about a challenge where you cook all the food you eat 90 days in a row. That's a lot of time. I didn't do that. I just got it because the recipes looked good.

One of the concepts in this book is something called "nextovers". Basically, you cook things, and then you use what you cook, to cook something else. I do this all the time, but I never came up with a fancy term for it.

Anyway, because I had a ridiculous amount of mac n cheese left, I figured I'd give it the "nextover" treatment. I really love ordering fried mac n cheese balls from restaurants, so why not try to make it myself? So, shortly after I made this mac n cheese, I went and cut it up into little cube things. Honestly, I should have cut them smaller, but this was already way more work than I wanted it to be.

I looked up fried mac n cheese ball recipes, and I found one on Damn Delicious. You literally take mac n cheese, roll it up in a ball, dip it in egg, coat it in breadcrumbs, and deep-fry it. Okay, that's barely a recipe, but whatever, let's try it. And I already have breadcrumbs because my aunt mailed me some!

I also figured I'd be kind of fancy and make my own marinara sauce. I have a lot of marinara sauce now.

I think this turned out...okay. I guess fried mac n cheese only tastes as good as the pre-fried version. If I try this again, I think I need to use flour as well. Dip it in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs.

Also, I don't think I quite know how to deep-fry things. I was just telling one of my friends how I don't bother putting a thermometer in the oil. I just kind of wait for the thing to be able to sizzle, and hope for the best.

I ended up overcooking the second batch. Oops. I made about 12 of these and that used up all the breadcrumbs I poured into my bowl. I still have a lot of mac n cheese, but I was staring at the weird looking cubes thinking "Okay, I need to stop."

Moral of the story: when you want mac n cheese, make a very small batch.