Chinese Almond Cookies

For my vegetarian friends out there, I tried to make a vegetarian option for the "International Cultural Explosion" event to go along with the wontons. However, I found it difficult to find a savory Chinese dish out there that is pure vegetarian. A lot of times it's just the vegetable, cut up, sautéd in oyster sauce or soy sauce, and served. Therefore, I decided to go with a dessert instead. Finding a Chinese dessert turned out to be difficult as well, because the traditional desserts like egg tarts or sesame balls need special ingredients like glutinous rice flour (which I totally attempted to find in three grocery stores, and failed) or need some special tools (like a tart mold). Then, I randomly came across the Chinese almond cookies recipe. Cookies! That's not hard, I make cookies all the time! Woohoo!

Although the recipe is even easier than a chocolate chip recipe, I did find the consistency of the batter a little difficult to handle. I guess the dryer batter is what makes the little cracks at the edge of the cookies, but I will cut down the flour by 1/4 cup next time and see what happens. I do also like this recipe's suggestion to brush egg white on top of each cookie prior to baking - this step gives the cookies a brownish look. I would say the cookies almost reminds me of a biscotti, so I would pair it with chocolate milk or coffee. Thus, this is definitely a good recipe for hosting a tea party or when I want to bring dessert to a potluck!

Sichuan Wontons

The MBA program hosted an "International Cultural Explosion" event, where people set up tables to represent their countries with food, dance, costumes, etc. I am not exactly the one to speak to about Chinese traditions and cultures, but I volunteered to cook some Chinese food for support. However, after I volunteered, I went into a panic attack because I realized... I don't know how to cook traditional Chinese food! The Chinese food that I have been trying to cook are classified as "American take-out" Chinese food, or "Asian-fusion." I had to spend a lot of time on searching for traditional Chinese food recipes that 1) I know where to buy the ingredients, 2) I understand what the ingredients are, 3) I know what the cooking techniques are. It wasn't easy!!! Finally, I came across one recipe that I am vaguely familiar with because of wonderful childhood memories of watching my grandmother and my mother wrap wontons. However, because I had to transport the food from home to school, I did not want to make wonton soup - Therefore, I decided to make Sichuan Wontons, which would cause less of a mess.

Wrapping wontons is definitely a lot of fun (although time-consuming). 

I think they look so cute once they are all lined up neatly, waiting to be cooked! 

I could not find Sichuan peppers in the Chinese store - Maybe it was my lack of Chinese reading that caused my inability to locate the ingredient - So after staring at the sauces for 15 minutes, I bought the ready-made Sichuan sauce (so ashamed). Timing-wise, it turned out well because I totally did not have the time to mix the sauce before running off the school. I am happy and satisfied in the end that after 28 years of being Chinese, I finally made my own wontons!

Thai-style Chicken Flatbread

Busy weekend! A good friend came to visit from NJ so we spent lots of fun times together, and the rest of the time was used to study for an exam coming up on Tuesday. However, I really like this Thai-style chicken flatbread that I made for dinner, so I want to jot down the recipe before I lose it. This recipe gives an Asian twist to pizza, using peanut dipping sauce as the tomato sauce, chicken marinated in soy sauce and honey as the topping, and naan flatbread as the pizza dough. It's a super easy recipe (provided that you are not making the naan from scratch, which I have not mastered yet) for a tasty, satisfying dinner!

Sausage-Stuffed Mushrooms

Ever hear the expression that how good your food is depends on how much someone you love likes them? Well, me neither, but Marc really loved these sausage-stuffed mushrooms that I cooked tonight for dinner. As I talked about before in another post, I just love stuffed mushrooms, so I am always on a lookout for new recipes. The original idea this time was to try and use the ricotta cheese I bought by accident (thinking I needed it for another recipe, but turned out I didn't). I searched the internet for recipes that has ricotta cheese as an ingredient, and found stuffed mushrooms. So I went out and bought mushrooms, went back to the recipe, and decided I didn't like the recipe very much because I already bought some hot Italian sausages while the recipe requires precooked breakfast sausages. Therefore, I searched the internet again for sausage stuffed mushrooms, and came across this one! And it actually turned out perfect because I had 6 oz of open cream cheese left over that I want to use and free up some room in the fridge!

Anyhow, I ramble. I did mess with this recipe quite a bit, because I had 6 slightly smaller mushrooms instead of the 24 large mushrooms the recipe called for. I ended up using 2 sausages instead of 3, slightly less Parmesan cheese, and the rest of my cream cheese. However, it still turned out that I made way too much stuffing, so my mushrooms turned out very fat and chubby. I even had a little more stuffing left to eat for lunch tomorrow! Marc did love these sausage-stuffed mushrooms, and even asked me to share with his mom. I am happy to oblige. The green beans turned out very well too!

Blue Cheese Crusted Filet Mignon

Marc and I got these filet mignon steaks from Omaha Steaks online and were very excited to try them. Omaha Steaks is known to deliver extremely high quality beef, and plus, I never gotten meat by mail order, have you? I was so nervous during the day of delivery, and no matter how much I tried to stay around the apartment to catch the delivery man, I still missed the package and had to pick it up at UPS later that night. Figures, right?

Anyhow, I wanted to do a little more to the filet mignon steaks than simply put salt and pepper on them and pan sear them. I mean... They are an expensive cut of meat, why cook them with such simple preparation? So after hours of searching, I found a recipe that combined Marc's love for blue cheese and steak. I did not have port wine sauce, so I skipped on that ingredient. Oh, and the Omaha Steaks package we ordered came with stuffed potatoes, so I baked those as a side to the steak!

Korean Seafood Pancake (Haemul Pajeon)

Korean seafood pancake is one of those items on the menu I always like to order when eating at Korean restaurants, but usually it would cost my wallet about $12-$13. Granted the seafood pancake is the size and portion of at least a medium pizza, so one could feed a table of 4 as an appetizer, it's still much more expensive than a $5 appetizer from Applebee's (well, when they are running the $5-appetizer special anyway). So although a bit fearful, I attempted to cook my own "Haemul Pajeon."

First, I mixed the sauce together. I always liked the sauce from the restaurants as well, and it turned out making it myself is so simple! Who knew! All you need is some basic Asian ingredients, stir everything together with a fork, and end up with yummy sauce! I did put slightly more sugar in by accident due to my laziness to use the measuring spoons, but it tasted okay!

You can make this pancake with just scallions or green onions, but I included squid (chopped calamari rings), baby bay scallops, shrimps, and oysters! I never cooked with squid and oysters before, but I do love eating them!

The directions on many recipes I looked up said to mix the batter, then put the batter in the frying pan first, then spread all the ingredients on top. I was afraid that I wouldn't be fast enough and would end up with a burned pancake with uncooked ingredients on one side, so I decided to mix in all the ingredients prior to cooking everything in the frying pan. I think I liked this method better because first, you don't have to worry about being speedy and trying to distribute all the ingredients evenly, and second, the batter seems to cover everything much more thoroughly.

The only tricky part about cooking this pancake is flipping the pancake over! I couldn't do it successfully in one swoop, but I managed to manually flip the pancake slowly with two frying pans (yes, it was a lot of unanticipated work) without destroying the pancake. This is my fault in the sense that the recipe calls for 4 pancakes, and I decided to make a gigantic pancake plus one mini pancake instead. I also added some Korean spicy sauce as an alternative sauce to dip the seafood pancake in. 

Chicken Parmigiana

Chicken parmigiana is one of those dishes that everyone seems to make at one point or another. It's almost as if you don't know how to cook chicken parmigiana, you can't call yourself a cook. For some reason, I didn't get to it until now. I think it's because I have an abundant supply of cheese in my fridge that I have yet to find recipes for that got me thinking about cooking chicken parmigiana.

The recipe is fairly simple, but I did change one thing to quicken the cooking time (I was very hungry... studying makes your stomach yearn for food, who knew?). Instead of baking the chicken in the oven after breading it, I put some olive oil in the pan and browned both sides. Then I followed the recipe and put the chicken in a bowl with the tomato sauce. Needless to say, I put layers and layers of cheese on it... I love cheese! Especially melted mozzarella cheese!

I made some blue cheese garlic bread to go along with the pasta sauce. Again... way too much cheese lying around! I managed to use up all my blue cheese, yay!

Sweet and Sour (and Spicy!) Drumsticks

I am unsure as to how this happened... but one day, I opened up the freezer, and there is absolutely no room for more storage. However, the bigger dilemma was that I had MORE stuff that my parents bought me sitting in the cooler, and I had nowhere to put them! After massive reorganization, I finally found room to store food here and there. However, giant Costco drumsticks just would not fit - Not 10 of them anyway. Therefore, I decided to break out a pack and make some dinner!

I tweaked with this recipe a bit, mostly because I personally do not love the sweet honey taste on meat. I like a little more kick to my food to complement the sweetness, so I added some spicy Sriracha hot sauce. I also was unsure what kind of vinegar the recipe was referring to, so I used the Chinese "black vinegar" (which apparently is the same or very similar to Worcestershire sauce). The recipe called for 8 drumettes, while I had the mac daddy of drumsticks, so I used 4 servings of ingredients even though I had 3 drumsticks. Besides having to open the window to fan out the smoke from frying the drumsticks, which set off the smoke alarm, the drumsticks turned out crunchy but coated in a nice sweet, source, and spicy glaze!

Chicken and Shrimp Jambalaya Casserole

After eating at Don Pepe II over winter break, I have been craving jambalaya and paella. Since saffron is so expensive but a key ingredient in cooking paella, I have been putting off making paella. Jambalaya is a close cousin of paella with creole seasoning and uses chicken, shrimp, and andouille or smoked sausage. So until I get rich and can afford the costly saffron, I will stick with cooking the similar-tasting jambalaya.

The timing of cooking this jambalaya is definitely not ideal - I am leaving my apartment tomorrow for 3 days and therefore did not want to grocery shop and risk having to leave leftover vegetables in my fridge. Therefore, I end up not using onions, green peppers, or celery ribs in my jambalaya. Supposedly though, those are the essential vegetables, so next time I make jambalaya I will make sure to include those ingredients. Instead, I used what have been in the freezer for awhile - A mix of corn, green beans, and sweet peas. I also have chicken andouille sausage, chicken breasts, and shrimps in my fridge, so I threw them in the casserole as well. The key is to adjust the amount of spice and chicken broth to accommodate for these extra ingredients. You may want to adjust the amount of spice you put in the casserole anyway depending on your personal taste. If there is not enough chicken broth, the rice will be way too dry. I didn't use the "browning sauce" because I have no clue what it is and when I "googled" it, it seems like all it does is make the food slightly brown. I also sprinkled some thyme and creole seasoning in the casserole before putting the baking dish in the oven.

I never baked uncooked rice before, but everything turned out well! Of course the top layer is slightly "crunchy" because the jambalaya casserole is oven baked, but if you know me at all, I love slightly burnt rice! So I served myself the top layer of the casserole and served Marc the jambalaya underneath.... Perfect!

    

Baked Pork Chops

I have never cooked pork before. I don't know why - It's always chicken, beef, or seafood. I know for awhile I stayed away from pork with the whole swine flu fiasco going on, but other than that period, I don't know why I have never been motivated to cook pork. I saw these pork chops from Wegmans while shopping for groceries and as usual, I couldn't resist but grab it. Then for the next couple of days, it was "Why do I do this to myself? I have no clue what to do with pork!!!"

Thanks to AllRecipes.com and some spare time in between classes for website browsing, I came across this recipe that seemed at first suspicious. Bake the pork chops in the oven for 1 hour? Wouldn't the pork chops be hard as a rock and dry as the desert by the time I take them out? However, since I have no clue what else to do with the pork chops, I decided to try it. The pork chops surprisingly turned out extremely tender, and the sauce complemented the pork chops very well!

Alaska Salmon Bake with Pecan Crunch Coating

My parents bought me some salmon fillets from Costco. I love the way Costco packaged these fillets because they are individually wrapped, so you can take out however many is needed for dinner. Plus the taste is so fresh! However, I wanted to do something more than simply bake it with some salt and pepper, so I found this recipe with a yummy pecan crunch coating. What I didn't expect is that the honey mustard layer underneath the pecan and bread crumbs turned out to be so flavorful. Marc said this is the best salmon he ever eaten - I say maybe until next time I make salmon?  Haha we will see! Challenge accepted!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Brownies

I love chocolate chip cookies, and I love brownies. So what's the perfect solution when you are craving for both but don't have room to eat a serving of each? Make chocolate chip cookie brownies! 

The one thing that is special about this recipe is the ingredient Nutella! It definitely gives the brownie portion a little of a hazelnut taste instead of just a plain chocolate flavor. 

I did not use the cardamom because I do not have it in my pantry, but the brownies turned out fine without it. Be careful when putting the cookie dough on the brownie batter, because if you put too much at one time, the cookie dough will sink down too much into the batter. Therefore, place a little bit at a time and then use a spoon to smooth out the cookie dough to cover the brownie. The brownies turned out chewy and gooey, and the cookies remained soft. Yummm!