Braised Trio –Shitake mushrooms, chicken, and tofu

The soy-sauce braised trio consisting of shitake mushrooms, chicken, and tofu is so warm and delicious when served over a bowl of white rice. This dish is a favorite for my boyfriend and I, because we are both a fan of Asian shitake mushrooms. The dish is definitely not the same without the mushrooms.

Braised Trio –Shitake mushrooms, chicken, and tofu

Ingredients

1 cup of shitake mushrooms, pre-soaked in water, sliced in half.

1.5 pounds of chicken legs

3 cups water

½ cup of soy sauce

1 tbsp sugar

1 chunk of fresh ginger

2 cloves of garlic

1 packaged cube of firm tofu, sliced into cubes.

extra water for boiling the chicken

Instructions:

1. The night before, soak the dried shitake mushrooms in water, so they soften.

2. The day after, drain the mushrooms, slice in half.

3. Boil the chicken legs in water for about 5 minutes, until foam emerges from the chicken.

4. Toss the foamy water and wash the chicken legs under running water.

5. Place chicken in a pot, add the 3 cups of water and ½ cup of soy sauce.

6. Bring the pot to a boil, and then add the sugar, ginger, mushrooms, and garlic.

7. Cut tofu into cubes. You can either add the cubes directly into the stew or fry up the tofu cubes until golden on all sides (yum!) then add into the stew.

8. When boiling, lower the heat to a simmer. Simmer for 25 minutes, turning the occasionally.

9. When finished, the chicken leg tendon should pull away from the joint bone, and meat should fall off the bone.

Serve the chicken, mushroom, and tofu in a bowl of steamed white rice. Ladle some sauce into the rice.

Scallion Pancakes/Green Onion Pancake

Scallion pancakes are a Chinese dish, is a salty non-leavened flatbread folded in oil and green onions. The name in Chinese translates to “Scallion Oil Pancakes”. I always loved these as a kid. Now, I can make them myself, anytime I want! And so can you!

This dish is fairly time consuming, but it makes a great family activity!


Scallion pancakes

Ingredients:
- ¼ cup of vegetable oil
- 1 cup of hot water
- 4 cups of all purpose flour
- 4 stalks of green onions/scallions, diced finely.
- 5 tbsp of salt (or if you are me, make a mixture of 3 tbsp of chicken boullion powder with 2 tbsp of salt).
- Extra flour to flour your hands and large cutting board.

Instructions:
1. In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour and water together. Make sure the dough is not so sticky that dough sticks badly to the mixing bowl. Add more flour or hot water accordingly.
















2. When the dough is thoroughly mixed, let the dough sit in the bowl for about 20 minutes.

3. Break the dough into 4 pieces.

4. Roll out 1 piece of dough onto a large cutting board. Flatten the dough into a large round pancake shape, about 1/8” thick.
















5. Add a thin layer of vegetable oil to the whole surface of the pancake.
















6. Add a thin layer of the salt mixture over the whole surface of the pancake. Lightly rub into the oily pancake surface.
















7. Add a thin layer of chopped scallions onto the surface of the pancake.
















8. Slice the pancake into 6 (or 7 or 8, depending on size) flower petals with the center of the pancake unsliced.
















9. Fold each petal on top of the pancake center, each petal going on top of the previous petal.
















10. Your pancake ball will now have 6 layers. Roll the pancake into a ball, then use the rolling pin to flatten the dough into a flat 1/8” thick pancake again, set aside.
















11. Repeat steps 4-10 until all the dough is used up.

12. Heat up a well oiled skillet.

13. Place pancake in the skillet. Flip the pancake when golden.
















14. Pancakes are done when both sides are golden.
















15. Slice pancakes into wedges, and enjoy!

Chinese Pork and Cabbage Pot Stickers / Pan Fried Dumpings

I love pot stickers (also known as pan fried dumplings). They're so crunchy on the outside, and tasty on the inside.
And making the pot stickers makes a fun afternoon activity too!

I definitely will make these again sometime soon.
I chose to make pork and cabbage dumplings because they are very basic ingredients, and it's very hard to go wrong. It was my first time making these, and I didn't have any recipe or guidance to help me out, so I was very nervous.

But now that I have made the dumplings with a very successful and delicious outcome, I will definately make more dumplings and switch up the ingredients. Ingredients that I will definitely use in the future are: chicken, shrimp, chinese chives, green onions... what else?


Chinese Pork and Cabbage Pot Stickers

Ingredients:
- 2 pounds of ground pork
- 1.5- 2 cups of cabbage, finely shredded and chopped (this is the hard part!). amount of cabbage depends on how much veggie to pork ratio you want. (i joked around that I was making cabbage dumplings with an essence of pork. hehe!)
- 1 tsp salt
- 4-5 tsp of soy sauce
- 1- 2 tsp pepper (white or black, your choice)
- 2 tsp tapioca or corn starch
- 2 - 3 tsp of minced garlic
- Extra flour to coat the pans for dumpling storage.
- 2 packets of store-bought dumpling wrappers/skin. (You can make the skin yourself too, but I'm not thaat patient.)

Instructions:
1. Chop the cabbage.















2. Mix in the salt into the cabbage and let sit for 10 minutes. Then squeeze out the excess water (i used a paper towel to get the water out).

3. Mix all the ingredients together (except the excess flour and dumpling wrappers). Stir until thoroughly mixed.





























4. Lightly flour some cookie sheets.















5. Get the dumpling wrappers and fill it with enough meat mixture, making sure that you don't put in too much that it oozes out when you close up the dumpling.















6. Use a little bit of water to wet the edge of the dumpling, so when you close up the dumpling, it stays closed (like an envelope!)

7. When closing the dumping, bend the edges so it has a scalloped look.

8. Continue until all dumping wrappers are used. For me, I prepared the perfect amount of meat mixture with the perfect number of dumpling wrappers!

9. Set the made dumplings onto the floured cookie sheet.
















Pan Fry the Dumplings:

9. Generously oil a nonstick pan or wok, and heat oil up on high.















10. Place dumplings into the pan, standing up.

11. When dumplings turn golden on the bottom, cover the dumplings 1/3 to 1/2 way up with water, and cover the pan. Turn heat on medium.















12. Let the dumplings cook in the boiling water and steam until almost all the water is gone.

13. Remove lid, turn heat to High, until all water evaporates.

14. EAT!

Pinto Bean Bacon Soup

a warm, hearty, filling soup

Pinto Bean Bacon Soup

Ingredients:
- 1 cup of pinto beans, dry
- 4 cups of water
- 1 tbsp of salt to taste
- 4 -6 strips of bacon
- some chicken or pork bones to make broth.

Instructions:
1. To decrease cooking time, soak pinto beans over night. Not a requirement, but who has the time to sit around at the stove all day?
2. Set bones and 4 cups of water to boil then simmer for about 30 minutes to make the broth.
3. Add the soaked pinto beans. Cook for about an hour.
4. Fry up bacon, and break into small pieces.
5. Drain bacon and add bacon to the soup.
6. Add salt to soup.
7. Cook for about 45 minutes or until beans are soft and cooked thoroughly.

Whole Steamed Fish

Ok.. so..
the dish tastes better than it looks, and the whole fish did not look as disgusting in real life, as it does in the pictures!
I usually have no problem cleaning, cooking, and eating a whole fish, but once I uploaded these
whole-fish photos off my camera... I think I might have a problem cooking whole fish from now on!!

Anyways, for those who don't know, this dish is very chinese. So go for this recipe if you want an asian meal.

Whole Steamed Fish

Ingredients:
- 1 fish of your choice (I used milkfish, since it was on sale =D) about 1-2 pounds
- 2 stalks green onion, sliced
- few slices of gigner
- 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- salt
- some soy sauce if you want (i did!)

Instructions:
1. Make sure your fish is fresh, gutted, scaled, with incisions across the meat. This allows meat to cook more thoroughly, and easier to take a chunk of meat off when eating.














2. Place fish on a plate. Place half the ginger and half the green onions on top and inside the fish.
3. Pour vinegar over fish.














4. Place fish in a steamer, and steam for about 25 minutes. Around 15-20 minutes if your fish is thin and lightweight.
5. When fish is done, take the fish out of the steamer, and discard any juices. This will reduce the fishy flavor.
6. Heat up the vegetable oil, then fry up the remaining green onion and ginger and few drops of soy sauce.
7. Pour this mixture over the fish. It should smell very fragrant.














8. Consume with steamed white rice.

Whole Stuffed Camel

I was introduced to this lovely recipe for camel today!!

Stuffed Camel

1 whole camel, medium size
1 whole lamb, large size
20 whole chickens, medium size
60 eggs
12 kilos rice
2 kilos pine nuts
2 kilos almonds
1 kilo pistachio nuts
110 gallons water
5 pounds black pepper
Salt to taste

Skin, trim and clean camel (once you get over the hump), lamb and chicken. Boil until tender. Cook rice until fluffy. Fry nuts until brown and mix with rice. Hard boil eggs and peel. Stuff cooked chickens with hard boiled eggs and rice. Stuff the cooked lamb with stuffed chickens. Add more rice. Stuff the camel with the stuffed lamb and add rest of rice. Broil over large charcoal pit until brown. Spread any remaining rice on large tray and place camel on top of rice. Decorate with boiled eggs and nuts. Serves friendly crowd of 80-100.

Shararazod Eboli Home Economist, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
http://home.tiac.net/~cri_d/cri/1997/camel.html

Leftover Turkey? Make turkey soup!

When I made the Thanksgiving turkey, after the turkey was carved, I immediately bagged the carcass (with vegetable stuffing) and threw it in the freezer.

I finally decided to take the turkey carcass out and make soup out of the bones, leftover turkey meat, and vegetable stuffing.
Nothing beats hot brothy soup on a chilly evening!!


Brothy (Leftover) Turkey Soup

Ingredients:
- 1 Thanksgiving turkey carcass. (and any other leftover turkey bones you have)
- Handful of excess Thanksgiving turkey (in chunks or shreds)
- Vegetable stuffing from the turkey carcass' cavity
- 3 stalks of celery, chopped
- 3 carrots, chopped
- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- 2 Italian squashes, sliced
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 3 tsp salt
- 6 cups boiling water
- Add any herbs if you desire. I didn't, but you sure can.

*note: salt and pepper amount varies depending on your preference, and also on the saltiness of your turkey bones and meat. Adjust accordingly*

Instructions:
1. If your turkey bones/leftovers were in the freezer, defrost your frozen goods.
2. Tear your turkey carcass into small pieces, so they fit into your pot.
3. Fill a pot with 6 cups of water, and bring to a boil.
4. Submerge your turkey carcass, vegetable stuffing, and any turkey bones, and boil for about 40 minutes. This creates the broth for your soup.
5. Skim off any foam or fats on the surface of your broth.
6. Wash and chop all your fresh vegetables















7. Place the carrots and onions into the soup, and boil for about 8 minutes.
8. Toss chopped celery and leftover turkey meat and boil for about 3 minutes.















9. Toss in Italian Squash and bring soup to a boil.
10. Add the salt and black pepper and herbs (optional)
11. Let soup simmer for another 10 minutes, or until desired vegetable tenderness.















12. Soup is done! You can either discard the turkey bones from the soup or enjoy your soup while gnawing on the turkey bones.

Breaded Pesto Pork Chops

A quick post, a quick recipe!
Perfect for pesto fans, such like myself.

Breaded Pesto Pork Chops

Ingredients:

- 3 pork chops

- 2 tbs basil pesto (store bought is fine!)

- 3/4 cup bread crumbs

- ¼ cup parmesan cheese

- salt and pepper

Instructions:

1. Wash and pat dry your pork chops
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Sprinkle your pork chops with salt and pepper
   
   
3. Thinly coat the pork chops with pesto
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Mix parmesan cheese and bread crumbs together in a separate bowl
   
   
5. Coat the pork chops in the bread crumb mixture.
   
   
6. Preheat oven to 400 F.
   
   
7. Place pork chops in a oiled baking pan, and spray the top of the pork chops with cooking spray, to make the bread crumbs crunchy.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
8. Bake at 400 F for 15 minutes, and then decrease temperature to 350 for another 20 minutes. Turn the chops halfway.

All done! Close-up shot: