Vietnamese Salad Roll
Although it involves multiple steps, making vietnamese salad rolls at home is relatively easy. The good thing about this dish is that it involves almost no cooking at all. Here are the key ingredients in assembling the salad roll.
- Vietnamese Rice Paper (wrap)
- Rice noodle
- Bean sprouts
- Sliced Barbeque Pork/Shrimp/Ham
- Parsley/Cilantro (optional)
Depending on what type of rice noodle you get, you might either need to hydrate it in boiling water or just let it soak in hot water. Guess what, that's all the cooking you need!
To begin assembling the roll, hydrate the Vietnamese Rice Paper in a big pan filled with warm water. If you get the good rice paper, it will only take around 15-20 seconds to fully soften the paper. Take out of the pan and place on a plate. I like to put a piece of paper towel on top of the plate to absorb any excess water. Place a handful of rice noodle on the rice paper and add your fresh ingredients on top of the rice noodle. When I said shrimp, I don't mean raw shrimp. You can use the cocktail shrimp as these are already cooked. Wrap the salad roll as you would wrap a burrito. This is the trickest part of the assembly. Practice definetely makes perfect so don't be discouraged the first few times when things don't look too pretty. Eventually you'll get the hang of it and you will be ready to serve these to your friends.
I would like to thank Martin Yan and the food network for providing the recipe for the sauce. I've tried so many times to make peanut sauce but always failed until I saw Martin Yan make it. At first I was skeptical but tried it anyways since I didn't have a better recipe. To my surprise (and delight), the sauce tasted very authentic. Ok, I don't really know how an authentic peanut sauce taste like, but it was pretty good so that's all I need to know. Here's the recipe.
- teaspoons oil
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 2/3 cup chicken broth
- 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
- 3 tbsp chunky peanut butter
- 1 tbsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp chili garlic sauce
- 1/3 cup chopped roasted peanuts, 1 tablespoon reserved for garnish
The roasted peanuts are optional since I bet not a lot of people would have this lying around at home. But as I mentioned many times, adding texture to the food bring a whole new dimension in the dining experience so it is highly recommended. As an alternative, you can put anything crispy like fried wontons (if you have leftovers from takeout) or any other type of nuts.
The recipe is very forgiving so you don't need to have everything exact. When I make this sauce, I just approximate it and it still ends up tasting good. Give it a try and tell me what you think.
House Special Linguini
Everyone has their favourite pasta recipe. Some have been passed on for several generations, others have just been recently concocted. I want to share a recipe that I just put together based on what I had at home. It was a surprise to me how tasty it turned out so I'm especially proud of this one.
My wife doesn't understand why I keep buying ground beef. In her opinion, there is no dish that involves ground beef that taste good, including this one. I just tend not to listen to her and still use beef to make spaghetti. In an attempt to reach a compromise, I also use ground pork (which is what she is used to cooking with).
To start the sauce, I cooked a pack of ground pork and ground beef until both are fully cooked. It's good to break the chunks unless you want to make it look like a meatball sauce :) Pour a can of tomato sauce and a small can of tomato paste. I like to have the strong dark red color that the tomato brings. Add some water so that it gets a little watery (same amount as the tomato sauce). If you don't add water, the sauce becomes too thick and mixing with the pasta becomes a challenge. I then added all the herbs and spices that I think will go well with the sauce: basil, thyme, oregano, italian seasoning (came with the spice rack), chili flakes, salt, pepper, and sugar. I like to put sugar on the sauce so that it doesn't taste too sour. A bit of sweetness in the sauce is actually quite delicious (at least in my opinion). Add a spoon of constarch dissolved in water to thicken the sauce a little bit.
To cook the pasta, just follow the cooking instructions written on the package. Make sure you add salt to the water. In the previous times I cooked pasta, I didn't put enough salt in the water so it actually didn't do anything. This time, I made sure I put lots of salt. The salty water actually made a big difference in the pasta as it adds a bit of flavour to every bite you take.
Everyone has their own special way of making pasta. I've shared mine, now it's your turn.
Baked Pork Chop
Every time I go to a hong kong style chinese restaurant, I'm tempted to get a baked pork chop. There is this place in Vancouver called Oscar that makes the best baked pork chop; unfortunately, I've only been there once. Since I have a big pack of pork chop sitting in my fridge today, I thought why not try and make it.
After a couple of searches at google, I found this website that seems to match the ones that I've tasted in the past.
Baked Pork Chop RecipeI can now understand why it alwasy takes so long to make those baked dishes from the chinese restaurant. There are so many steps involved in making these that I don't really consider this as carefree cooking. But from time to time, I have to deviate from my comfort level to be able to learn something new. Making it is relatively easy, just time consuming since I had to fry 8 pork chops individually (I don't have a deep fryer unfortunately). One problem about pan frying is that the oil gets dark very easily. The bread crumbs left from frying the first pork chop gets burned and sticks to the second pork chop. This gives the illusion that the second pork chop is burned even though it has only been cooking for a short period of time. To minimize the darkening of the oil, make sure you pat the pork chop to take out any excess bread crumbs. It may also be a good idea to fry the pork chop for a short period of time to get the desired color and finish cooking in an oven. This is what I eventually had to do as I cannot cook the pork chop too long in the frying pan (otherwise it will be completely black).
To make the sauce, I had to improvise. I didn't have tomatoes, but I did have some tomato sauce. I followed everything else except for the water and corn starch since the tomato sauce was already thick so I didn't need an extra thickening agent.
As for the fried rice, you can use your favourite recipe. The fried rice served in chinese restaurants follow the recipe in the link above so you can use that if you want an "authentic" taste. I used garlic rice (popular in the Philippines) instead of fried rice for this dish.
Combine the rice, pork chop, and sauce, bake for 5 minutes and the dish is ready to eat. I think it took over an hour to make the whole thing. My wife and sister were lurking in the kitchen way before the dish was done so I had to tell them to wait. After all the hard work, I was glad to find out that it actually tasted pretty good. So all the hard effort was worth it.
Ribs
It seems that I've been switching about sandwiches a lot recently so I thought I'd try something different this time. Ribs is one of the most popular dish in western restaurants. It's actually very simple to make.
I usually get some pork ribs (whichever variety you can get from your supermarket). Start by boiling some water in a big pot and place the ribs inside. Cook it for about 30 minutes using medium heat. After the ribs are cooked thoroughly, take it out of the pot and pat dry. Now we have to apply our barbeque seasoning. I'm not a barbeque expert so I do not have a recipe that I can share with you. I usually just get a bottle of barbeque sauce and apply that on the ribs. The brand I always use is Bull's Eye, but I bought a pack of Tony Romas sauce recently (I'll update this entry after I try it).
Place the ribs in a baking pan and apply the bbq sauce on both top and bottom of the ribs using your trusty brush. I bought a silicone brush and I must say it is one of the handiest tool in my kitchen. I used to have the old style brush (the one that looks like a paint brush), but the sauce always gets stuck in the hair of the brush so it's very hard to clean. The silicon brush is very easy to clean and it's even dishwasher safe so I suggest you get one if you will be cooking some ribs regularly.
Place the seasoned ribs inside the oven (heated to ~375 degrees C) for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, take out the ribs and apply a second coat. Heat for another 15 minutes and the ribs should be good to eat.
To serve, I like to pre-cut all the ribs so that it's easier to eat. Put a bit of tabasco if you want to kick it up a notch and enjoy.
Another Steak Sandwich
I got some flank steak last week hoping to make some fajitas. I've never made fajitas before (although it's very similar to a wrap). I didn't get a chance to buy some tortilla so either I use that for something else, or rush to the supermarket to pick up a pack. As you might have guessed (from the title above), I went the lazy route and just made a sandwich out of it.
In the past, I would season the flank with some steak seasoning and cook it like I would cook a T bone. But this time, I wanted something different, so I started experimenting with different types of marinate. I pretty much grab whatever I had in my pantry. So for the marinate, I added some dark and light soy sauce, sweet cooking wine, sesame oil, brown sugar (just to see how it would taste like), salt, pepper, and some hot sauce. I marinated the meat for about a day just to make sure that the meat absorbs all the flavour from the marinating mixture.
I used a bit of oil to cook the steak. Since flank steaks are relatively thinner than your average T bone or Prime Rib, make sure you don't cook it too long. I wouldn't advice going for well done for this type of meat as it will not be edible. Just like any other steak, make sure you let the meat rest for a bit (around 5-10 minutes). Slicing the meat is very critical. You MUST slice the meat across the grain. From the surface of the meat, you should be able to see some lines going from end to end. Make sure you cut perpendicular to this, otherwise the meat will be very chewy.
Now we can contemplate accessories for the sandwich. We can use some green salad vegetables, but I already did that in a previous carefree cooking entry. So this time, I thought I'd use onions. Slice the onions into rings and use the same pan you used to cook the steak to cook the onions. This way, the onions get to absorb some of the leftover steak "goodness" from the pan. Just put a little bit of oil, then saute the onions until they are tender. The more you cook onions, the sweeter they get. I like to cook them really well to get all the sweet onion flavour. Normally you know onions are good to eat when they turn brown. But if you use the same pan you used to cook the steak, the onions will get a brownish color from the soy sauce so the color is not a good indication of done-ness in this case. I suggest just taste a piece to see if it's cooked to your desired standard.
To assemble the sandwich, you can use mayonaise or horseradish sauce. This is really a personal preference so I urge you to experiment. The good thing about this dish is that a piece of flank steak can make a lot of sandwich so one cooking can last a few meals. Isn't that carefree cooking.
Tuna Sandwich
Sandwiches are very versatile since you can eat them for breakfast, lunch, snack, or dinner. You can spice up the meal by choosing different side dishes that match the mood that you are in. If you feel like eating healthy, you can make a quick side salad. If you are feeling very hungry, bake (or fry) some seasoned curly fries. If you don't feel like making a side dish, a bag of chips would suffice. In any case, having different side dishes can add variety to the same sandwich.
Sandwiches can be as simple as the "bread, meat, bread" topology, or as complex as the multi-layer extra cheese double patty club house sandwich that you might get in fancy restaurants. One of the more complex sandwich is a tuna sandwich. It's complex because it requires preparation before assembling the sandwich, rather than just taking the meat from the package and slapping it on the bread.
I always think that toasting the bread is the way to go. Regardless of how fresh the bread is, I always toast it. The added texture of a toasted bread seems to improve the taste of the sandwich. You can use any type of bread you like. Tuna spread can be an excellent dip for crackers or toasted baggettes.
To make the tuna spread, you'll need a can of tuna (or any canned meats you have handy but it won't be called tuna sandwich anymore), a couple of eggs, mayonnaise, horseradish, mustard, relish, salt, and pepper. First thing to do is to hard boil the eggs. Cut the eggs into small chunks. Drain all the liquid from the tuna (otherwise the tuna spread will be too watery). Combine the rest of the ingredients into the mixing bowl and mix thoroughly. Be generous on the mayonnaise since this acts as a binder for the spread. You can put a little at a time and add as you go along until you get the desired consistency. If you don't have horseradish (no leftover packets from Arby's?), you can use dijon mustard instead of regular mustard. If you don't have that either, don't sweat it. It will still taste good. Make sure you add sufficient amount of salt and pepper to bring out the flavour of the tuna. Most of the tuna's saltiness comes from the brine that it was soaked in. Since we drained it away, we need to add salt. Remember, taste as you go along and you'll get your perfect tuna spread.
To assemble the sandwich, you can choose to add some lettuce and tomato. If you can't wait to eat it, just put a generous serving of tuna spread on the bread and enjoy.
Chicken Feet
When i was at my local asian grocery last sunday, chicken feet were on sale. I used to like chicken feet when I was younger (always order it when I go for dimsum), but now the novelty seems to have worn off. My wife on the other hand still likes to eat it so I thought why not try making it at home. It will be a good experience for me.
I looked for some "authentic" recipes online and it wasn't hard to find them. All of the recipe requires deep frying the chicken feet. Initially I thought that deep frying was to make the feet taste better, but it turns out that it is required to loosen the skin. For the chicken feet lover, you know what I'm talking about. The skin on the chicken feet when we order it at a restaurant are almost falling off the bone. This makes the skin softer and easier to eat. One word of caution when deep frying, the chicken feet makes the oil "explode" from time to time and this caused my entire stove to be covered with oil. If you do not have a deep fryer, I suggest you don't fry the chicken feet. You won't get the texture like the ones served in the restaurants, but it will still taste good.
To prepare the chicken feet, use a sharp cleaver and cut the nails off the feet. Wash thoroughly afterwards. Some online recipe calls for salting the feet first before rinsing, I didn't see the point for this step so I skipped it.
I gave up on the deep frying method when the oil kept on splashing and my stove started to get covered with oil. I had to resort to a safer method of cooking: stewing. To stew them, I put some chicken broth and water in a big pot. I dumped all the chicken feet into the pot and cover until it boiled. Once the liquid boils, you will see some stuff floating on top, need to take these out. The chicken feet is cooked at this point, but it is still not tender (especially the ligaments attached to the bone). Put your favourite seasoning. I used dark and light soy sauce, oyster sauce, brown sugar, and salt (to make sure they are salty). Turn the heat to medium-low and cook for an hour or so until you can see that the liquid has reduced considerably. Just like in any dishes you make, I recommend tasting towards the end to make sure that they are cooked to your desired texture and consistency. Also taste the liquid(sauce) as this is what flavours the chicken feet. If you want to make it spicy, I recommend adding some chili flakes early in the cooking stage.
Green Onion Pancake Taco
Is it a pancake or is it a taco? I hope you are not confused. As part of the fusion cooking (the type of cooking I like to associate my style with), I like to create western dishes using completely traditional chinese ingredients.
So how do we make a "chinese taco"? I always keep some green onion pancake in the freezer since it is one of those emergency food items that is good to have. Today was the day when I needed the service of my emergency food. To cook the green onion pancake, I learned that skimping on the oil is not a good idea. Since it is flour based, you can expect the pancake to soak some oil. Here's the technique that I use to get the best result (in my opinion).
Put just enough oil on the pan to coat the surface. You can put more oil if you want, but for health reason, I wouldn't recommend it. A few seconds after you drop the pancake, flip it immediately. This way, both sides of the pancake gets a nice coating of oil. The oil is required to make the pancake golden brown and crispy. If you do not do this (with the small amount of oil that I suggested), the side of the pancake that was initially facing down will absorb all the oil from the pan. When it's time to flip it, there will be no oil left to brown that side. The end result is that the pancake will burn quickly. Of course if you put a lot of oil in the pan, you don't care too much about the lack of oil so you don't need to do this technique.
To do the filling for the taco, I browned some ground pork, and put some dark and light soy to give it a salty flavour. I learned this recipe from my parents since they like to eat this with plain congee. The full recipe requires oil, garlic, and green onions. I didn't want to put some oil, and didn't have garlic and green onions so my taco filling only consisted with ground pork. It would have been nice to add some shredded lettuce, but I didn't have that either. As I said, today was the day I had to call in my emergency food :)
You can also use green onion pancake to make a chinese pizza. I made this for my wife last year and she liked it. Too bad I didn't take any photos of it but I will try to make that dish some time in the future and share with you how to make it and what it looks like.
Korean Pancake
Whenever I go to a korean restaurant, I'm always tempted to get the korean pancake. Unfortunately, the pancake is not usually cheap and comes in a big portion so I can't finish it myself. I always thought that the batter was made up of egg (like an omelette). Not sure why the word "pancake" didn't make me think that it was made up of flour.
While browsing through a korean supermarket for some potato noodles, I saw a pack of korean pancake mix (although it's probably just called regular pancake mix there). I grabbed a pack since it was fairly inexpensive ($2.5 CAD) for a kilo of mix. One good thing about korean people is that they are generally nice. The cashier thought I was korean and started talking to me. I gave her a confused look and she realized I was just a korean wannabe and didn't really understand the language. She then said in english that there is another brand that is currently on sale. Wow, who said you need to look for bargains...these nice people tell you where the bargains are. She even asked one of the worker to grab that pack for me. Guess how much that mix cost? $1 for the same 1 kilo pancake mix. So I happily left the supermarket.
I didn't try it out until the other day. Unfortunately they put a sticker on top of the instruction so I had to spend some time peeling it off to figure out how to create the batter. The english instructions wasn't best in class, but I understood enough to determine how much pancake mix needs to be mixed with water. Dissolving the mix in water was quite a challenge. I need to figure out how to make this easier. Perhaps a hand blender will do the trick. Since I didn't really use a measuring cup to measure the flour (although I did measure the water), I didn't know if I was doing it right or not. The first batch that I made was too watery. So I just added more pancake mix until I got the right thick consistency. If you ever made pancake before, you are looking for the same consistency.
For the toppings, you can really use any meat and/or vegetables you want. Just make sure you cut them into small pieces. I just grabbed whatever I had in my fridge at that time: onions, green onions, frozen shrimp, chinese sausage, and bean sprouts. You can also add some kimchi but not everyone at home is a fan of that so I didn't want to risk it. I first sauteed the onions and chinese sausage just so that they will be nicely cooked. After all, when they are in the batter, they will not really cook that much. Combine all the toppings with the batter and use a ladle to pour a nice portion on a pan (make sure the pan has a nice coating of oil). One of the mistake I made was that I made the pancake too big. This makes it hard to flip it. It also causes the oil to splash after flipping so don't make the same mistake I made of burning myself. Cook until the top and bottom are "nice and golden grown". You want the outside to be crispy. I haven't really investigated what sauce usually goes with the pancake. So for now, I just use Maggi Seasoning to spice up the pancake. I'll update this entry once I find out and try the "real" sauce.
Good korean restaurants serve the pancake on a hot metal plate so the longer the pancake stays there, the crispier it gets. If you don't have such a metal plate, don't sweat it. Just put it in a regular plate and serve immediately. If you make the portion small enough, you don't have to worry about the pancake getting soggy since you'll probably finish it quickly anyways. I don't know if you consider this as carefree cooking since there are many steps involved in preparing this, but the reward is definitely worth it. My wife and my sister loves the pancake. One good thing is that you don't have to cook it all at the same time. Just put the batter in the fridge and cook it when you want to eat. Perfect dish for breakfast, lunch, or dinner courtesy of our korean friends.
Caramelized Banana
Have you ever thought about kicking up your plain boring banana? You can slice it in half and serve it with ice cream, or perhaps just cut it into small chunks and serve it with your favourite breakfast cereal. But as a standalone dessert, it's hard to imagine how a banana can be the star of the show.
I was watching Iron Chef America a few weeks ago and I saw Mario Batali cut some figs in half, sprinkle some brown sugar, and torch the top to caramelized the sugar. I thought this was a great idea. He also said that this technique works well with banana so that immediately made me want to try it. First thing first, I need to get a torch. It doesn't seem like the average cooking stores sell torches. I had to look at hardware stores for these. The price ranges quite a bit depending on how portable and stylish it is. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to purchase one since there was a big roadblock...my wife. I had to resort to plan B: my trusty toaster oven.
Preparing the dessert is very easy. Cut the banana in half (length-wise) and place it on a plate or baking tray. Liberally sprinkle some brown sugar on top so that the banana is fully coated. If you are lucky enough to have a torch (or be allowed to purchase one), you can use it to melt the brown sugar. Since I haven't tried it myself, I can't really say how long it takes. But based on watching Mario Batali on TV, it doesn't seem to take that long. Since I used the oven method, melting the sugar will take longer. I used the highest temperature setting, and also used a raised pan to lift the banana closer to the heating element of the toaster oven (set to broil mode). I believe it took around a minute for most of the brown sugar to melt. Make sure you don't have clumps on the brown sugar, otherwise it will be hard to melt (if you're using the oven method)
After the sugar is melted, wait for a while until the sugar solidifies. It might be worth putting the banana inside the fridge to speed up this process (or if it's relatively hot in your area).
To plate the caramelized banana, you can put a pool of melted chocolate at the center of the plate and place the caramelized banana on top. If you don't have melted chocolate handy, you can sprinkle/dust some confectionary sugar on top. I didn't have neither in my pantry (have to include that in my shopping list), so I just grab whatever I could find in my fridge. We had some leftover cake so I used that as a "garnish".
Stay tune for an update on this as I plan on doing this "right". But first, need to figure out how I can pass the "roadblock" :)
