Pesto pasta

February 8, 2021 7:59 PM

I had a little nub of cream cheese in my fridge, so I was looking for recipes that use cream cheese. I saw this One Pot Creamy Pesto Chicken Pasta on Budget Bytes (which I may or may not have made in the past. I don't know. I've made a lot of pasta recipes). This recipe called for 3 oz of cream cheese and I only really had one. Oh well, I'm not buying more cream cheese. I just need to use up this nub.

So I'm reading the recipe, and this is what I see in the description:

This Creamy Pesto Chicken Pasta comes together in about 25 minutes, is super luscious and creamy, and uses just a few simple ingredients. ;)

25 minutes? Really? Well Beth, I'm testing this out now. I didn't bother reading the recipe in advance, so I'm going in blind.

It ended up taking 42 minutes total. I guess I wasn't being super efficient. I cut up the garlic and chicken before I turned the heat on the stove, and I probably could have saved time by turning it on, then cutting things up. It also took me 10 minutes to cook the pasta when the recipe calls for 8. And I added a tomato since I had one.

But this recipe really was easy to make. It was a very chill meal-making time for me, and I think I could get it done in 30 minutes next time. Overall, it's a great pasta recipe. 5/5.

Greek Turkey Rice: Take 2

February 10, 2021 9:31 PM

Two years ago, back when this blog was in its infancy, I made a post on Greek turkey rice. This week, I had a few ingredients that would work well for this dish, so I decided to make it again. I remembered it being good and easy to make.

Well, I still don't disagree with that statement, but after a few chill meal-making sessions, I went back to flailing like crazy. There were flying pieces of rice, spinach, chicken broth, and lemon zest. This is why I gotta write down my recipes in advance.

(Throwback to when I took pictures of food right underneath the spotlight! Not as nice as the pictures my sister would take though.)

Also, I used ground turkey from a tube. I didn't realize you could buy ground meat in a tube, but the tube was cheaper than the non-tube form. I don't know if I'll ever do that again. I mean it tasted fine, but it was weird. Any time I tell my family I'm cooking ground turkey I know they'll respond with "TURKEY?!" and I can see them making a disgusted face that says "why would you ever do that".

Hey, I'm just following a recipe.

You know what else is in the ingredients list? A lemon. But this recipe doesn't even call for lemon, just lemon zest. Now I've got "Naked lemon slices" in my leftovers.

Unfortunately there were no sun-dried tomatoes in either Target or Trader Joe's, (I know, these are terrible places to grocery shop. But I was there for other reasons.) so I was missing that extra pop of color/flavor. I also didn't put the aesthetic lemon slices in the middle of the pan.

But that doesn't matter. It tasted good. That's what really counts.

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!

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.

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.