Asian sauces
April 2, 2023 4:19 PM
Guys, I'm making such good progress on my quest to get rid of everything in my pantry, and I think I'll actually be able to get through everything by July! I've gotten through various ingredients with long shelf lives, and now I pretty much only have sauces and vinegars left.
And I have a lot of Asian sauces, so it's time to make some Asian food.
Last entry I mentioned that I have a bottle of Chinese black vinegar that's been expired for a while. I've been looking up recipes to use up that vinegar, and I came across these glass noodles with cabbage. I love glass noodles. I've made a different cabbage and glass noodle recipe from Woks of Life before, and that was delicious, so I figured this one would be too.
And it was! But it was also a little too spicy, and I really should have known better than to put four dried chiles in this because this is exactly what happened last time I made glass noodles.
I also figured that this Chinese black vinegar would go well with some dumplings, so I bought some frozen dumplings (I know I usually make them myself, but I was lazy). I mixed it into a dipping sauce along with golden mountain seasoning sauce, sugar, sesame oil, and some water, which tasted great with dumplings.
I had saved this hot and sour dumpling soup recipe from Woks of Life because it looked really good, and this was the perfect opportunity to make it.
My first attempt wasn't that great, and the soup looked really dark. I guess I didn't have the chili oil that I needed to give the soup a red color like in the recipe. But it was also too oily, too salty, and too sesame seed-y. The fact that I only have black sesame seeds didn't help the color balance either.
But I tried it again a few days later, and I adjusted the amounts of each sauce. I also fried the garlic for a little to bring out the flavor more. It was definitely better, but I think it could still use more tweaking. I'm all out of dumplings for now, though I might buy more because those dumplings were really good.
And just yesterday, I made some fried rice! I had leftover Chinese sausage from another meal, and this was a good way to use that up. Because I basically just use Woks of Life for finding Asian recipes, I also used their Chinese sausage fried rice recipe.
I realized this isn't shown in the picture, but I have a bottle of rice cooking wine that's been sitting in my pantry for who knows how long, so I used that instead of Shaoxing wine. I only used a dash of it, so I have no idea if it really made a difference in flavor. I also added waaay more soy sauce than the recipe called for. (The recipe calls for 1 teaspoon! That's nothing!) (Wait, I said this last time I made it)
This was really good! I still have two links of the sausage so I think I'll make some more this week. I need to get better at just pouring soy sauce and salt and sugar by feel instead of always measuring.
Finally, I made some beef and cabbage stir fry! I don't quite remember why I decided to make this, but I think it's because I knew my boyfriend was coming over, and he really likes this dish.
Look at those carrot slices! My sister bought a mandoline, and kept it at my place, and it's been sitting in a drawer for years, and I finally used it to slice up my carrot. Thanks sister!
Sticky rice
March 25, 2023 6:23 PM
My aunt keeps wondering if I'm still adding posts to my blog, and I am! It's just slow going because I've been busy! I've been doing a lot of cooking and I occasionally take photos, so hopefully I'll get a few short posts in just to show off what I've made.
In one of my cabinets, I have had a bag of sweet rice that's been sitting there for years. I honestly don't remember why I originally bought it. But it was a 5 lb bag, and I finally got through all of it.
I usually use my sweet rice to create kind of a sticky fried rice, but I wanted to try something different so I made this pork chop sticky rice bake. I actually liked this a lot better than I expected to!
I also tried sticky rice stuffing. This was pretty good too, but I'm not really sure why it's considered "stuffing". It kind of just tastes like the sticky fried rice that I've made in the past.
And just to round out the meal, I added this smashed cucumber salad. This was good too! I found the smashing a little unnecessary though. When I attempted to smash my cucumber, it didn't really work out so well, and I think this would have been just fine to cut the cucumber without smashing it.
Fried rice
January 19, 2022 7:05 PM
So I looked at this photo and I thought, "What is this?" At first I thought it was some sort of beef and cabbage stir fry, but if it were that then I'd have rice on the side, and then I realized there is rice in this, it's just fried rice.
I think it does have cabbage though. It also looks like there's onion and egg and little dried shrimps. I'm sure I used a recipe for this, but I don't know if I could track that down now.
I'm sure it was good. Fried rice is always good.
Fried rice
February 27, 2021 9:51 AM
Last Sunday I made some fried rice.
I needed an easy, filling meal for a lazy Sunday and I figured this Chinese Sausage Fried Rice 香肠炒饭 recipe would be good for this. In Teochew, I think I would tell my family I ate 炒饭合腊肠 (cha beung gat lat chiang).
There was a decent amount of prep work involved, so it took a while, but it was easy.
I think I may have had more rice than I needed. The recipe called for 5 cups of cooked rice, which is the most unhelpful measurement since I needed to cook the rice first and I have no idea what the ratio of "uncooked rice cooker cups" is to "cooked rice measuring cup cups". I used 3 cups of uncooked rice cooker cups, and I think I should have at least doubled the sauce.
But overall, this was a good meal that I would definitely make again. The best part of this was definitely the crunchy bits of rice at the bottom of the pan. If I have extra time, I'll reheat this again on the stove, which makes it even better.
Just like my mother, I had to add some sriracha to top this off. Well, not exactly like my mother. She would have had this swimming in hot sauce.
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.