Thai basil stir fry

August 22, 2022 1:55 PM

Whenever I need Thai basil for a dish, I always end up having some left over, so I end up making a stir fry dish using the rest of it. That was my plan with pho. But we actually went through so much basil while we were eating noodles, that I didn't have enough left for a stir fry!

Thai basil also goes bad really really fast, so by the time I wanted to make stir fry, I felt like it was already rotting. But I was committed to making this dish, so I had to buy another bag. I actually went to one of the nearby Asian grocery stores, and when I asked the person working there, they told me they didn't sell Thai basil and to "check Giant Eagle". What?! I know the local Giant Eagle doesn't stock Thai basil, and if they did, they would charge me an arm and a leg.

So I drove to the better Asian grocery store the next day. Okay. I finally had everything I needed.

This tasted pretty good, but it just seemed like way too much effort for the amount of food it produced. Pulling apart basil and mint leaves is SO tedious. It's worse than chopping!

And the worst part of it all was that I used a really hot red pepper. I think it was a red jalapeno! I didn't realize those could be red! I just thought, oh, this will add some nice color. Nope. Should have gone with a bell pepper. I deseeded the pepper with my bare hands, and then I popped a piece of beef jerky that I was snacking on into my mouth, and it started to BURN. I was still feeling the sting days later. I went to wash my face in the morning, and then my eyes felt it. I could even feel it burning my fingernails as I was trying to pluck my armpit hairs!

ANYWAY, back on to the topic of cooking. I was feeling way too lazy, so I only ended up using half of both bags of leaves. That meant I had enough to make the dish again!

Hey, I learned my lesson about the peppers. I had to make some adjustments:

• Slice up one red bell pepper instead of a hot pepper
• Use a whole pound of chicken
• Use a larger onion
• Use ALL of the basil and mint you have
• Water down the sauce a little, and double the sugar

Okay, this definitely could have used more basil/mint, but I wasn't about to go to the Asian store a fourth time. I liked that I made a larger amount of food this time. I might have added a little too much water, so I think the right amount would be just a single teaspoon added to the sauce mixture.

It was a very, very good meal.

Tomatoes and mozzarella

August 21, 2022 4:59 PM

My favorite pizza topping is tomato. Not tomato sauce, fresh slices of tomato. Why did I decide to make pizza in the first place? Maybe it was because I had a small amount of shredded mozzarella cheese that I wanted to use up.

So, I bought a bag of tomatoes from Aldi. Even though I didn't have too much shredded cheese in the bag, I still wasn't able to use it all up, and now I had four more tomatoes to go along with it. And, I'm gonna detour away from the pizza for a moment to show you a couple of other tomato-y things.

One of the things I made with the other tomatoes was tomato rice. This wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. I know I was thinking, "hey, I could use up a tomato in this!" But it actually called for diced tomatoes and tomato paste, so this didn't really help me cut down on my tomatoes.

I was able to use up some tomatoes (and mozzarella!) in my tomato and mozzarella panini. This was probably way too much effort for a workday lunch, but it was pretty good! I actually made it twice, and the second time I added basil and mint because I felt like it needed something leafy inside. It was a little strange, but I thought it was a good addition.

But before I made it, I actually went and bought a log of mozzarella because I was worried that my shredded mozzarella wasn't going to be enough. I used up all of the shredded stuff, and then I still had a lot of the mozzarella log left.

And I know. You're seeing a never ending cycle now, where every time I finish using up one ingredient, I still end up having too much of another. Does it ever end???

I don't know. But I'm gonna make more pizza tonight.

This time I won't buy more tomatoes or mozzarella. Hopefully.

Something that vaguely resembles pho

August 18, 2022 10:14 PM

Every once in a while I get a sudden craving for pho. I don't know how it hits me, but I just think about that pho smell and then I want some. I'm not about to spend 6 hours simmering some broth though, so I needed a shortcut. I remembered that Budget Bytes has a "faux pho" recipe, and it has decent reviews, so I decided to give it a try.

Her recipe uses chicken, and it just doesn't feel right to have chicken pho. I wanted beef. So I used beef broth instead of chicken broth and sliced beef instead of cooked chicken. I had a container of beef Better than Bouillon that expired earlier this year that I wanted to use up, and I bought the cheapest piece of beef I could find at Aldi, which was an "eye of round".

The soup is really simple. It's just broth and five spice. And so I mixed my beef broth with five spice and took a sip. It...felt like it was lacking something. I wasn't really sure what, but I ended up throwing in some bullhead barbecue sauce (hot pot sauce) and a little bit of hoisin, and, well, it didn't really taste like pho, but I guess it wasn't bad.

I ended up squeezing a lime slice into my bowl, and that made it taste a lot better. Still didn't really taste like pho, but it was some good noodle soup. Later that day, after I got back from a walk, I remember stepping into my living room and thinking "hey it vaguely smells like pho in here!"

I had some leftover broth and fixin's so I made more the next day, but I just went completely hot pot on it, and added cooked broccoli as well.

I really like noodle soup, and I want to give pho a try again. Maybe I'll actually use a recipe from an Asian person next time.

Salt and pepper tofu

August 14, 2022 12:18 PM

I don't know when my mom got into looking at recipes on the internet, but she has been raving about Made with Lau. They have videos on how to make a lot of classic Chinese dishes with good explanations on how restaurants make certain dishes that are hard to replicate at home.

One night during my usual youtube browsing, Made with Lau's recipe for Salt and Pepper Tofu showed up in my feed and I figured this was a good time to see what all the hype was about.

Okay, it looked really good. I had to try making it. It also looked like a lot of work. I'm sure any one of their videos could have shown up on my feed and I would have had that same reaction, so maybe I could have picked something simpler. But I watched the salt and pepper tofu video so salt and pepper tofu went on my mental list of things to make, and when something goes on my list, I have to make it.

I looked at their website and it lists 30 minutes as the total cooking time. This recipe requires you to boil, deep fry, AND stir fry the tofu! There is no way I could get this done in 30 minutes. I guessed it was going to take me 3 whole hours to finish it, so I needed to do this on the weekend when I had plenty of time.

Some parts of the recipe used such small amounts of ingredient that they seemed a little ridiculous to me. It requires 0.5 egg. What am I supposed to do with the other half?! I'm not going to waste half an egg! I'm also only supposed to use the white part of the green onion. Why would I do that when the green parts add so much nice color? During the stir fry step, I'm supposed to put a few dried chili peppers in the pan, stir around for 8 seconds, and then remove them. At least I already had a lot of dried peppers in my pantry, because I wasn't going to buy some just for this recipe.

But I guess this guy really knows what he's doing. The tofu turned out really well, and it only took me 1.5 hours to make! Half as much time as I expected (: Coating the tofu in cornstarch was kind of a mess, and I got cornstarch all over my kitchen, but overall, not too hard to make.

I couldn't just eat tofu though. I made some rice and a Korean spinach side to go along with it. And I still kind of wanted some actual meat, but this was already way too much work, so I went to Aldi and bought some precooked Hawaiian chicken thighs that I could just heat up in the microwave.

It was a very, very good meal.

Smoother hummus

August 12, 2022 5:07 PM

Hummus has been one of my go-to recipes, and in the past I've always preferred a chunkier hummus. But I wanted to try something different. I had been meaning to try the Woks of Life hummus recipe for a while. I really like their food blog, but I've mostly ignored their non-Asian recipes. Their hummus just looks so aesthetic though!

It wasn't bad. This was certainly more work than the hummus I'm used to making. I usually just throw all the ingredients in a food processor and let it run for a minute, and I'm done. This recipe has you blending in stages. Honestly, I don't think it's worth it.

I must have blended this for at least 5 minutes, but it was still kind of grainy. I think that I would have needed to peel the chickpeas in order to get that super smooth texture, but that's definitely not worth it.

I mostly made hummus just so I could use up the rest of my cut fresh veggies. I had already run out of tomato, so I used mini sweet peppers instead. I think a red sweet pepper would have looked nicer but the bag I bought had way more orange and yellow peppers, and I needed to save some red ones for those fajitas I made.

I used a meatball recipe for the cooked ground beef (except I didn't turn it into a meatball), and that was very good.

Next time I make hummus, I think I'll be more creative with what I mix in.