Pineapple Fried Rice

Obviously graduate school has taken priority over keeping up with this blog, especially on top of having to teach an undergraduate chemistry lab. I'm finally back though! Plus, I'm still cooking and baking when I have the chance, and taking pictures of everything...I just haven't had the motivation to write about it all. I recently started organizing all of the photos I have on my camera and transferring them onto my computer, and boy, hopefully I'll eventually catch up because I have too many food pictures.

Anyways, on to the food!

I usually have leftover plain white rice. I have a handy rice cooker and make about twice as much as I will be eating the day I'm cooking it so I have leftovers the next day to make fried rice. This is pretty much another variation of my previous fried rice post, link here!...which gives you helpful tips on how to make fried rice and prevent it from getting soggy.

There's marinated pieces of chicken, zucchini, pineapple, and egg in this fried rice. I suggest making sure the chicken is well done before incorporating it into the rice. If you refer to my other fried rice recipe, it teaches you how to incorporate each ingredient (typically the order is eggs, meat, seasoning such as soy sauce, veggies/fruit).

Leftover white rice doesn't have to be boring!

Soup with Pancakes...Weird Combination?

This post isn't as weird as the title makes it seem. I made my take on a spicy Korean kimchi veggie soup with green onion pancakes.

Spicy Korean Kimchi Veggie Soup

The soup consists of tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, tofu, kimchi, all in a chicken stock mixed with a few tablespoons of the kimchi base and black pepper. Usually, this soup isn't vegetarian (besides it being in chicken stock) because I like to add in sausage the majority of the time.

The green onion pancakes ARE vegetarian, and surprisingly not as difficult to make as I thought. Peter from Taiwan Om Nom taught me how to make these. These "pancakes" are more similar to a tortilla then a typical pancake. I'm not sure why they're referred to as pancakes since the Chinese translation doesn't translate to pancake either...

Green Onion Pancake dough

The green onion pancake dough consists only of 2 parts all-purpose flour to 1 part of water. Mix the two thoroughly with your hands, feel free to flour your hands and use a bit of extra flour to prevent stickiness. Then let the dough sit for 30-45 minutes, covered with a towel. I got impatient and didn't do this...make sure and take the extra time to do this because the texture of your pancakes won't turn out as well if you don't! I learned this the hard way. Mine were definitely not as good as the ones Peter made in this post.

Green Onion Pancake spiral shell

Separate the dough into small palm sized portions and roll each of them out. A tip is to use wax paper on the kitchen counter with a generous amount of flour when rolling out the dough. I also didn't have a rolling pin, so I usually either use a cylindrical tall drinking glass or a tall shot glass depending on the size of the dough. Take about half a teaspoon of vegetable oil and spread it on the surface of the rolled out dough and add salt and chopped green onions. Roll the dough up like a fruit roll up; remember those sweet, "healthy" childhood snacks?. Then roll the "long rope" of dough into a snail shell shape. After it's in the snail shell shape, roll it out once again and then fry it in a shallow pan of vegetable oil.

See, it's not TOO weird. Okay, maybe it is a little bit. Definitely not as weird as the pancakes you were thinking of though, right?

Time to be Vegetarian

I tend to eat like a vegetarian fairly often. It's not necessarily that I'm purposely trying to eat that way, but because I really like vegetables, am sometimes too lazy to prep and prepare meat dishes, and it's also healthy!

I really like tofu, but only when it's used/cooked correctly. I don't eat tofu when it's right out of the package... So I can see why some people have a bad impression of it since they've never had it prepared in a tasteful manner.

I didn't fry my own tofu, but bought prepackaged fried tofu puffs/balls (not exactly sure what they're called in English, haha) for this dish. This dish is really simple. I stir-fried the fried tofu, broccoli, and mushrooms with black bean garlic sauce, soy sauce, black pepper, and only about a teaspoon of sugar to balance the saltiness from the two sauces. To thicken the sauce, I added about a teaspoon of corn starch that was mixed with a bit of water beforehand. I served this simple but healthy dish over white rice.

He Would be a Great Husband...

The title is actually a quote from my mom in reference to one of my guy friend's, Peter, who cooked both dishes in this blog post. He made the green onion pancakes and the crispy chicken nuggets from scratch! 

Green Onion Pancakes

I will be posting the green onion pancake recipe in a future blog post because I tried to make them when I came back from Austin...the key word is TRIED. Peter's are definitely better. Y'all should definitely check out his and Daphne's blog, Taiwan Om Nom, that they write together. All their recipes are centered around Taiwanese food.

Crispy Chicken Nuggets

The recipe for the crispy chicken nuggets is on Taiwan Om Nom as well. The link will take you specifically to that recipe! I definitely ate well when I visited Austin, and it was nice to have a home cooked meal on top of all the great restaurants I went to. So to all men out there: learn how to cook, it'll make you a great husband! Or at least find you a girlfriend.

This is the end of my Austin food series!

Weird Food of the Day

I always find the weirdest food at grocery stores. This time, I was at MT Supermarket in Chinatown Austin and found this:

This candy powder looked like dirt to me, especially with the lovely green grass printed on the bottom of the picture. According to the ingredients though, it was just sucrose and water. I have no idea what this is suppose to be used for.

Anyone know?

Can I have a bowl of rice with that?

Rice Bowl Cafe opened after I moved from Austin, but I heard many great things about this place from friends that I knew I had to try it when I was in town. The noodles for their noodle soups are made fresh, so they have a distinct chewy texture that's delicious and filling.

Szechuan Beef Noodle Soup

The portions are also very large. I can usually get two meals out of an entree. I ordered the Pork on Rice which has this really flavorful sauce that's perfect with the crispy pork, and comes with one of my favorite Asian veggies, bok choy. And yes, it came with two huge pork fillets!

Pork Chop on Rice

My friend ordered a tofu dish. I believe it was the Bean Curd Homestyle, but I'm not positive. Tofu can be really good if you know how to make it correctly, and Rice Bowl knows exactly how. This dish has a good balance of flavor and spiciness, but it's also light because of the great mix of vegetables. I had to help myself to some of my friend's food. That's what friends are for, right?

Bean Curd Homestyle

There are so many other dishes I want to try in the future. Hopefully I'll have a chance to go back soon.

Leftover white rice?

I tend to always make extra steamed white rice just to have leftover white rice the next day to make fried rice. Fried rice is one of the easiest and quickest things to make. You are not limited to what you want to put in the fried rice. In this case, I chose to include eggs, Chinese sausage, zucchini, and baby bella mushrooms.

One of the most important tips in making fried rice is that you want to have "old" cold white rice for it. Using freshly steamed rice will cause the dish to be soggy because of the extra moisture in the warm rice. It must be cold to prevent extra stickiness and sogginess. Also, most people think the reason why fried rice is brown is because it's "fried." Well it's technically stir-fried and not fried in the same terms like fried chicken or french fries, and the nice brown color in fried rice is from adding soy sauce as your cooking it.

In this dish, first I scrambled some eggs using butter (I know butter is unhealthy, but I like how it makes the eggs fluffy) and salt to taste, cooking until it's a bit underdone since it'll be added back into the rice. I remove the eggs and then saute the zucchini and mushrooms with some salt and pepper until they're tender. Next I crisp up the Chinese sausage a bit so I can use some of the grease that melts off to stir-fry the rice. I remove the sausage and add the rice. Add a couple of teaspoons of soy sauce at a time until you reach the flavor you want. Sometimes I add a bit of pepper and salt if I don't want too much of a soy sauce flavor. This step really depends on what you prefer. After the rice is stir-fried, add everything back in and combine. That's it! Quick and easy...and you don't have to spend money on take-out anymore!

Dan Tat (蛋撻) aka egg tarts!

One of my favorite dim sum items is "dan tat". "Dan tat" is literally translated to egg tart. It is basically a pastry shell filled with a smooth, sweet egg custard. The pastry shell can be light, crispy, and flaky, similar to a puff pastry; or more dense and heavy like a shortcrust typically used for pies and tarts. I've noticed over the years that the crust has changed over time and seems to adjust according to how traditional or nontraditional a restaurant is; and if they have someone with the ability to make the crust from scratch. It is traditionally known to be a Cantonese baked good, but I've also seen Portuguese and Macau style egg tarts. Each kind having its own distinction. They even have flavored ones now like green tea egg tarts!

Cantonese style egg tarts during brunch in Los Angeles. I do not remember the name of the restaurant, but it was a traditional dim sum restaurant with the steaming carts full of goodies.

 Portuguese style egg tarts. This was at very non-traditional dim sum restaurant where they served dim sum straight from the kitchen and not from those carts.

My parents came to visit me this weekend, and my dad's first request..."will you make dan tat?!"

I've figured out how to make the egg custard part, but haven't attempted making the crust from scratch yet. I use store bought pie crust instead. I use a wine glass to cut out circles from the pie crust which I then roll out to make them thinner. They are pressed into a muffin tray. I then make the egg custard using this recipe that I've adapted from different recipes online:

Preheat the oven to 350-375 degrees.

Ingredients:
3 eggs
1/4 cup evaporated milk
 <1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp powdered sugar

Directions:
1. Scramble the eggs.
2. Then add the milk and mix thoroughly.
3. A trick to making sure everything is incorporated is to add the water in parts. Add half first, mix, then add the rest, and mix again.
4. I used two different types of sugars because the powdered sugar dissolves more easily, so it's added after the regular sugar, which then has more time to dissolved. Add the regular sugar first, before the powdered sugar.
5. Add the vanilla extract.
6. Pour the mixture through a sieve to remove any egg that didn't completely mix. The sieve helps to make sure your mixture is homogenized and that the custard will be smooth after baking.
7. Carefully pour the mixture into the pressed crusts in the muffin tin.

Bake for approximately 20-30 mins. or until the center is set.

This recipe makes 12 egg tarts. 

I really like these straight out of the oven when they're still warm. The next time I make these, I will attempt to make the crust from scratch. Wish me luck! I'll let you know how they turn out.