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!