My College Kitchen

Vietnamese rice paper wraps with porkbelly, shrimps, and veggie

2009-11-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

This weekend has been quite productive for me. Saturday we got to spend the evening taking the dogs out to dinner with us in Alhambra, and then walked them a few rounds after dinner. It was great, not only did we give them the much needed exercise (that we often lack during the week due to both of us working and coming home tired), but we ourselves got to walk off our dinner as well.

The pooches could sense that they get to go out with Mom and Dad,
they jumped on the car as soon as we got in

Then today, Sunday, I drove down to my parents in OC and carpooled with them to sister in law's baby shower. It was a great shower, her coworkers did a great job planning it. The decorations were nice (they even had fresh flower centerpieces!), the cookie flavors were very cute and nicely wrapped in little cellophane bags, the catered foods were good, and the games seemed fun. Too bad, I didn't have time to stay for the games and gift openning. I had to leave for a meeting with these two brothers who are going to help me setup with my social networking website project (yoohoo!), and I will switch to use their hosting service as well. So I'm excited about the upcoming project. I've been a bit down spirited lately, staying busy with this upcoming web project will sure keep me busy and give me something to feel accomplished I hope :-)

On my way back home after the meeting, I spontaneously popped an idea that I'd stop by the market and pick up some fresh ingredients to make Vietnamese ricepaper wraps with pork belly and shrimp. This is one of hubbie's favorites, well anything with pork belly is his favorite. I usually try to limit him from pork fats and pork/beef organs (I'm a nag sometimes to get him to listen), but once in a while I gotta treat the guy nicely because after all he takes care of my oil changes and keeps me current with my DMV registration. So here it is, his reward, pork belly.

This Vietnamese course looks sophisticated but it actually is very easy to make. Provided you've got all the ingredients ready, it takes only 30min or so to prepare. Here's the ingredient list.
Note: there's no recipe because amounts depend on how you like to make your wraps, some may like more rice noodles, some like more herbs and lettuce, etc.

Ingredients:
+ 1/2 bags of dried rice noodles (or whatever amount you want)
+ 1 package of ricepaper
+ 1-2 lbs pork belly, washed and cut into big pieces about 2-inch wide for faster cooking (see picture)
+ 20-30 shrimps, peels and deveined
+ 1/2 red-leave lettuce
+ 1 cucumber, peeled, and cut into thin slices
+ 1 small bunch of Vietnamese mixed herbs, you can use whichever kinds you like and however much you like. Ideas are: mint (rau hung lui), spicy mint (rau hung cay), Vietnamese coriander (rau ram), Korean perilla leaves (rau tia to), etc.
+ Dipping sauce: Vietnamese Mam Nem. My Mom made it for me and gave me a jar when I came visit her last weekend, I never have to make my own dipping sauce because hers are the best :-) But for those of you who'd like to know how to make it, WanderingChopsticks posts her recipe for it here.

Preparations:

+ Get 2 pots of boiling water going
+ In 1 pot, boil the rice noodle, per instruction. Typically, boil for 3-6 minutes, check the texture of the cooked noodles, then drain with cold water.
+ In another pot, boil pork belly until cooked, you can use a chopstick or knife to poke through the meat to check how cooked it is, there should be no sign of blood or pink from the poke. Iit took me 1/2 hour, but I let it boil while doing other things like washing the vegetables, etc.

+ While the pork is being cooked, you can wash and drain all vegetables, arranged in a large plate, along with sliced cucumbers.

+ Pour Mam Nem into 1 small bowl for each person to use as their dipping sauce.

+ When the pork belly is about done, add the shrimps to the same boiling water pot, and let it cook for 3-5 minutes along with the pork. Hint: this saves time and effort, you really don't have to boil another pot of water just for the shrimps, and this makes an excellent tasty fatty broth base if you want to have your rice noodle in broth.

+ Take pork belly out and let it cool down at room temperature. Then you can cut it into slices.

+ If you want to, you can cut the shrimps into halves, along its length.

+ Arrange the sliced pork and shrimp into a large plate.

Here's what you have for a healthy yummy dinner:

*** EDIT 11/17/2009 ***

I made this course again last night, using the rest half of the pork belly I bought. This time, I added 2 more side dishes: Vietnamese sweet pickled mud fish with papaya (mam thai) and Vietnamese sour pickled shrimps with papaya (mam tom chua). A common Vietnamese way of eat this is to mix the pickled side dishes and fresh vegetables and herbs to a bowl of vermicelli, then add some Vietnamese fermented anchovy dipping sauce (mam nem) or sweeten fish sauce (nuoc mam) to taste. And again, you can freely add whichever ingredients you like, we added the boiled sliced pork belly and the boiled shrimps.

pan fry porkchop with sauteed onion

2009-10-28T18:42:00.000-07:00

Warning: this recipe is totally made up by me :)

Measurements provided are not axact, you may want to adjust a little bit to fit your taste.

Ingredients:

+ 2 pork chops

+ 1/2 white onions, cut into strips of ~1cm width

+ 2 tbs oil for pan frying

+ 1 tbs light soysauce

+ dab of salt

+ 2 tbs white wine

+ 1-2 tbs sweet wine depends on how sweet your wine is.

+ sprinkle of ground black pepper

Preparation:

+ At room temperature, either wet brine porkchops for a few hours, or dry brine with a little salt, soysauce. Or you can brine and store in the refrigerator overnight, but let the meat go to room temperature.

Cooking instructions:
+ Heat up oil in a wok or pan
+ Add pork chop to wok and sear both sides
+ You may add a little bit of water at a time, and let the porkchop cook slowly without burn.
+ Add soysauce (tip: pour soysauce around the side of the wok, and not directly onto the pork chops. Use the same technique when adding water, and the wines. This infuses the flavor to the meat better.
+ When the pork is cooked half way or a little more than half way, add onions.
You don't want to add the onion too early b/c it'll get burned if cooked too long.

+ Add white wine
+ Add sweet wine.
+ The soysauce and sweet wine is going to give it the caramelized color, so we want to watch our time after this point.
+ Flipping the porkchops frequently so that both sides can soak in the sauce.
+ Optional: taste the sauce on the meat, if need to then add a sprinkle of salt, or add more sweet wine if not enough sweet.

+ Note: you can get the onions out first if the onions have browned enough and the porkchops aren't as done as you'd like, don't let onions get burnt.

Hotpot: healthy living and home cooking made easy

2009-09-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

Is it dinner time yet?

Hotpot is common in most Asian cultures. For Chinese it is hou-gou, Japanese calls it shabu-shabu, or known as lau to the Vietnamese. Koreans have their version of hotpot too, i'm not sure what it's called (is it shin sul ro?). However they all share a common theme of a shared pot of boiling broth on a burner, fresh uncooked ingredients, This cook-at-the-table recipe is not only easy to make, it is also alot of fun to have a group of family and/or friends gathering around the table over dinner. Hotpot is one of my favorite dinner choice for colder evenings, since it is easy to prepare, hot and slurpy, healthy as I want it to be, and we can take our time eating while chitchating.

Hot pots come in many shapes and size. More popular for home use is the kind we have (see picture above), electrical pot with dial setting for on/off and temperature control. This pot can also be used as a deep fryer.

Broth:

The broth is an important aspect of hotpots. Many hotpot restaurants make their own broth and guard the recipe as it can be the secret to their success, people do come to a certain restaurant for their flavorful broth. A good hotpot restaurant in Monterey Park that we love to take families there when they visit is called Little Fat Lamb (literal translation from its Chinese name). They use a flavorful and super spicy broth that's made from 60 different herbs, the kind of broth that makes your stomach warm.

At home, I make a simple broth: water, add a can of chicken broth, also add 1 daikon (cut into big chunks about 1-2 inch length). Let the broth boil. During the course of dinner, you may need to add more broth (I usually boil water seperately, and add to the hotpot as needed)

Ingredients:

Whatever your favorites are. Really, anything goes! that's what great about hot pots.

Typical main dishes are:

+ Thinly sliced beef and/or lamb

+ Fresh seafoods:

- shrimps (usually unpeeled, heads on)

- oysters

- clams

- live fish filet (it is really worth it to get a live fish like tilapia, then filet it. A couple times we got the already-filet fish from the market it turned out not so fresh and it was a waste).

+ Fish/shrimp/squid/pork balls

+ Japanese fried tempura (fish or shrimp paste cake)

Typical vegetables are:

+ Tofu - the white kind, non-fried, is better

+ Assorted mushrooms

+ Spinach, lettuce

+ Other seasonal greens

+ Napa cabbage

+ Corn

+ Taro

+ This vegie is our favorite for hotpot - it's called Tan O in Vietnamese, what's its English name?

This is our simple version of hotpots for the two of us - and some special little friends :-)

It only took me about 30 min to wash/clean and setup the hotpot table.

Dipping Sauce:

The most popular dipping sauce for hotpot (at least the chinese style hotpot) is sacha. For home use, I buy the Lee Kum Kee sacha sauce in a jar, or else just use a good light soysauce.

Stir fried green bean

2009-08-31T21:45:00.000-07:00

For the past few months I was a bit overwhelmed with what's going on at work and everything else outside of work. But fortunately (or is it unfortunately? boy didn't I wish I have a fulltime maid who cooks and cleans, better yet works and brings money home for me) that doesn't mean I didn't cook, I was just behind in blogging.

Here's a simple recipe of green bean stirfried, another comfort food I cook pretty often. It's also easy to pack with rice for lunch the next day.

Ingredients:

+ 1 lb of green beans

+ As much dried shrimps as you like, I used about 1/2 tbsp (subtract dried shrimps if you want the vegan version)

+ 1 to 2 stalks of green onions

+ Dab of salt (about 1/2 to 1 tsp)

+ Dab of sugar (just a sprinkle should be enough)

+ 1tbsp oil

+ Optional: 1 tsp soy sauce. Note that soy sauce can add, hence alter, favor to your stirfries depends on what type of soy sauce you use. I only used salt, didn't use soysauce b/c I didn't want the dark soy sauce to over powering the fresh bean's flavor.

Instructions:

+ Wash green onions, coursely chop into chunks about 1/4 inch long.

+ Wash green beans, remove the veins on the 2 sides (as much as possible, if not don't worry)

+ Cut greenbeans into wedges (see picture).

+ In a wok or pot, heat up oil.

+ Add the dried shrimps and stir for about 30 seconds. Then add chopped green onions, and stir for another 30 seconds.

+ Then add green beans and cook for 10-15 minutes. Stir occasionally for even cooking of the bean.

+ You may want to add 1 tbsp water while the green bean is cooked so that it doesn't burn. Add more water if needed (only a little bit, like 1 tbsp, each time).

+ About 10 minutes in, you can sprinkle the salt and sugar over the bean, and mix it well.

+ Turn off the heat once the green beans are as cooked as desired.

I usually turn off the heat a couple minutes early, stir once more, and then let it sit in the heated pot for another few minutes. I like the bean's texture to be still a tiny bit firm, not too well cooked.

The day is already short enough that after a full-day at work I just don't really have time (or want to spend time) for a lengthy cooking episode in the kitchen; I think alot of you can relate. I hope this recipe is simple enough for you working wives/girlfriends/moms out there. And the nice thing that I like about this kind of simple home cooking dishes I make is that it doesn't trade convenience for healthy nutrition and quality.

Enjoy. And don't forget to pack the left over with rice for lunch the next day.

sweetened tea eggs

2009-05-17T08:46:00.000-07:00

This is my deviated version of the traditional salty tea eggs. I wanted to experiment making it a sweet dessert since I figured tea can go very well with palm sugar and would make a nice blend of flavor to the eggs.
I used black tea leaves, but you can use any type of tea. In fact, next time I probably would use either red tea or green tea since I wanted a golden or slightly red color. The palm sugar naturally adds some tint to the end result already, especially after simmering it for some time. This time around the color of my eggs is a bit too dark, IMO.

Ingredients:
+ 1 tsp tea, keet in a pouch (or +/- to your taste -if you want more tea flavor)
Alternatively, you can use the ready-made tea bags
+ 6-10 eggs
+ 3 whole bar of palm sugar (or +/- to your taste)
+ a dab of salt
+ (Optional) 1 star anise

Here's the palm sugar bar I'm refering to

Instructions:
+ Boil the eggs in a separate pot. Once done, drain, crack (but not remove) the shells of the eggs. This will give your eggs the effect of dragon-eye once finish.
+ In another pot, boil 4 cups of water.
+ Add to dissolve the palm sugar. Add the tea. Also add the star anise if you want. This should now give you a slightly browned base.
+ Add a dab of salt to deepen the sweetness.
+ Test taste your broth, add more sugar/tea, etc. if needed, to your taste. Be free and creative, add more tea if you want deeper flavor, add sugar if you want it sweet - it is YOUR dessert :-)
+ Add the eggs and simmer for at least 1/2 hr. Once the broth reduce, you can add more water and other ingredients - goal is to maintain the water level such that it about to cover all your eggs, we don't want the broth to become syrup-like.

Serving hot, this makes a healthy and nutritious dessert.

My sweet tea-egg dessert (um...i forgot to crack the egg shell so no dragon eye effect)

Here's the dragon eye I'm talking about

Steamed Fish with soysauce, scallion and ginger

2009-03-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

I didn't take a very good picture of this dish. But it is a very healthy yummy dish which is amazingly quick and easy to make. It's best to use live fish, not frozen. I love to use talipias for this dish because they have delish lean white meat, categorized as lowest in mercury risk (for those of you who's concerned about mercury level in fish and other seashelled seafood), and their sizes are about 1-2 lbs just perfect for a meal for the 2 of us.

Ingredients:
+ 1 live fish ~1.5lbs
+ 1 small stalk of green onion
+ 1 piece of ginger, about 2 in. piece
+ 5-6 tbsp Lee Kum Kee seafood soysauce (this can be home made easily by mixing soysauce with sugar, a dab of salt, and diluted a little bit with water)

Preparation:
+ Wash and drain the fish (ofcourse de-scale and clean out the guts and all that). Head on or not, s'up to you ! :-) it's a culture preference...hehe...I know some of my Caucasian friends were surprised seeing fish served with heads on at Chinese restaurants. Haha...do you see that fish winking at ya?
+ Cut/shred ginger into thin long strips (see picture).
+ Cut/shred green onion into thin long strips (see picture).

Cooking instructions:
+ Steam for 10-15 minutes depends on size of fish (I usually do 10 minutes for a 1.5 lbs fish)
+ Drain the water from steaming (some people keep this broth as part of the sauce - I drain it and only use soysauce mix as the sauce)
+ Place shredded green onions and ginger on top of the fish. And add the soysauce mix.
+ In a small pot/wok, heat up 2 tbsp oil. Once you see a little smoke that means the oil is heated.
+ Pour hot oil all over the fish and onion/ginger, this will help fragrance the onions and brown the fish a little bit.

Serve hot with white rice.

Quick movie night snack - fudgy chocolate chip cookie

2009-02-27T23:27:00.000-08:00

I can be a pretty cheap date...LOL... We were staying in for a Sunday night movie, and then I remembered that I've had a couple of the Betty Crocker instant desserts. I made the fudgy chocolate chip cookie, not the best cookie but its something to satisfy my sweet craving at the moment, without me having to interrupt our moving watching. These instant desserts can be bought at any Target. I'm not going to post the instructions here because it is very straight forward and you can find the instruction on the back of the package.

I enjoy browsing the Target's grocery section, by the way. I usually don't end up buying much from there, typically just pick up a pack of Activia yogurt, but its just fun browsing the different ailses. The frozen lunches look so tempting too (especially with the unpredictable work schedule, skipping lunch or late lunches seem like the norm for my project group nowadays). But so far, I still cook for both of us, and eat dinner left-overs for next day's lunch. We live close enough to work that I am able to go home at lunch time, eat and let my 2 dogs out and sometimes able to squeeze in some simple house chore like dropping the laundry into the washer so that it'll be ready for drying after I get home from work, etc. My 2009's resolution is to strive for work life balance, that means to maintain a work schedule that is non-interfering with my regular everyday life and activities. In even simpler words that means "screw work" ...LOL...

Vegetarian five-spice duck egg noodle soup (Mi Vit Tiem chay)

2009-02-14T21:24:00.001-08:00

I've been wanting to try out WanderingChopstick's recipe for Mi Vit Tiem Chay (vegetarian five-spice duck and bamboo shoot soup with egg noodles) for a while now. A few weeks ago I asked the hubby to especially take me to the San Gabriel's market to buy the mock duck :-) hehhe the cans come in smaller than I thought, so I bought two. I also picked up the dried bamboo shoots. These have been sitting in my kitchen cabinet for a couple weeks, but I just haven't had a chance to make them.
Last week with the cold raining weather and all, it just seemed like a perfect time to make noodles for slurping dinner.

I didn't follow W.C.'s recipe axactly (well, you can read my post on my cooking philosophy, you'll see that I'm quite informal when it comes to cooking measurements). Anyways, I used
+ 2 cans of mock duck meats.
+ 1 package of dried bamboo.
+ 10 fresh shitake mushrooms.
Turned out it was a bit too much bamboo and mushrooms for our pots....but we both liked lots of mock ducks the way it was. So for next time, i'll scale down my bamboo and mushroom, other than that everything else seemed perfectly good. For vegetable and garnishes, I had beansprouts, watercrest, cilantro and green onion, and a little bit of siracha chili sauce gave it that spicy touch which helped bring out the spiciness of fivespice and ginger in the broth.

The hubbie asked why didn't I use real duck ? Um....I answered, well...b/c it's a vegetarian version! But I guess the truth is I never realy care for real duck that much, a mock duck version is perfectly fine for me. Hubbie liked the Chinese crispy duck for the greasy crispy skin, but other than that I guess he doesn't care much for a simmered duck in a noodle broth that much either. So yeah, this recipe is good for us, satisfied, I say two thumbs up !! Thanks W.C. !

Chayotte stirfry (su su xa`o) - and a little bit on my cooking philosophy

2009-02-14T19:08:00.000-08:00

Chayotte has its natural sweet taste and provides for a light, refreshing vegetable. Vietnamese uses chayotte (chouchou, or "su su") in alot of our vegetarian dishes and soups. Chayotte wasn't cheap in Vietnam since only certain region with cooler climate (like Da Lat) can grow it. I remember the couple times our family got to go to Da Lat, you could tell who the tourists were because they were stocking up chayottes, potatoes, beets, strawberries, etc. L.O.L. The excitement was like when one goes to Hawaii and finds the heaps of fresh locally grown tropical fruits.....well, perhaps not so much for Californians since we do have many tropical fruits available locally, but say for an Asian who's been living in the midwest for a long time for example, anyways you get the idea. I remember growing up as a kid in Vietnam, we didn't get to eat such "cool-climate" vegetables very often, since it is rather expensive at the local market in Saigon, due to the transportation I supposed. So when we did, I enjoyed it immensely. Here in the US, chayotte is widely available in grocery stores, American and Asian markets alike. My family always likes it, my Mom often incorporated chayotte into her home cookings. And because of its refreshing sweet taste, chayotte stir fry has always had its place in my list of favorite home-cooked foods.

I didn't "learn" this dish from my Mom, but watching her cook it plenty of times was enough for me to pick up on the recipe, which is very simple and isn't much of a recipe at all. Hahah...but that's perfect, didn't I admit that most of my home cookings are simple recipes and easy to make? and mostly healthy, just what home foods are supposed to be :-) For me, it doesn't take a chef and everything doesn't have to be made from scratch, as long as I put some time, some care, and some consideration into the loved persons that I feed, it'll be all good :-) Though I try to put some measurable quantities in my recipes, in reality I don't usally measure my recipes axactly to the tsp, alot of times it is taste-and-feel, if I like it more salty, sprinkle on some salt, or if I like it a little sweeter then add a dab of sugar....you get the ideas. Cooking is about feeling the foods and create it to each person's taste, a recipe is a guideline but in no meaning should it be a formula.

Back to the stir fry dish, here's the simple cooking instruction for it. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

+ 3 large chayotte, peeled.

+ 2 tbsp of dried shrimps

+ 3 stalks of green onions

+ 2-3 tbsp water, depends

+ 1tsp salt or less

+ 1tsp soysauce

+ 1 tbsp oil

+ Sprinkles of ground pepper

+ 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced OR 1/2 tsp garlic powder.

Preps:

+ Cut the chayotte into halves, scoop out the seeds. Then cut into thin strips (sized around the diameter of a chopstick, length about 2-3 in)

+ Cut green onions into 1/2 inch lengths, seperate the green and the white.

Cooking Instructions:

+ Heat up the oil in a big wok. If you use fresh garlic, add it now.

+ Add dried shrimps and the white parts of onions, stir occasionally for 1 minute to let the shrimp, onion and garlic brown a little bit.

+ Keep high heat, add chayotte strips. Then add soysauce, a little bit of water, sprinkle salt (and garlic powder if use powder) evenly onto the mix.

+ Stir occasionally for 5-7 minutes so that the strips can cook evenly.

+ Add more water and salt if needed. The chayotte itself yields some juice, you don't want it too dry it'll burn the chayotte, but don't want too watery either. About 3 tbsp of "juicy sauce" left at the end is about what we want.

+ Lastly, stir in the green parts of onions and sprinkle some ground pepers. Let it cook for another 1 minute.

+ Turn off heat, keep it covered for another few minutes.

Mon An Chay - Vegetarian Stirfry

2009-01-30T22:56:00.000-08:00

Happy Chinese NewYear !!! Gong Hey Fat Choy !! Chuc Mung Nam Moi !!

This year I took the Monday (1st day of the lunar year) off to spend with my family. We visited a few temples to offer incents, and it was really nice feeling the New Year spirit all around. On the first, we followed our Mom to eat "chay" (vegetarian). I actually like to eat "chay" every now and then, I'm not too much of a meat person to start with, so I can easily afford to go vegetarian a day or two. Healthy, easy to cook, I like to share with you this simple vegetarian stirfry.

Ingredients:
+ 1 pack of cubed fried tofu
+ 1 can whole straw mushroom, washed
+ 1 can bamboo shoot, washed and cut into thinner slices (see picture)
+ 1 cup baby carrots (or 1 medium carrot, cut into small finger-size pieces)
+ 1/2 cup soysauce
+ 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar , or to taste
+ 3 cups water
+ 3-5 cloves garlic, chopped.
+ 2 tbsp oil

Cooking Instructions:
+ Wash all ingredients, cut bamboo shoots into thinner slices, drain and put away in a container
+ Heat up the oil in a big wok, add garlic.
+ Add carrots, bamboo, and mushroom, tofu. Stir a few times to heat them evenly.
(I use baby carrots so I cook them at the same time as bamboo, mushroom, and tofu. If you use regular carrots and cut into smaller pieces, they will need to be cooked a little longer, therefore you should cook the carrots in the wok first for 2-3 minutes before adding other ingredients)
+ Add soysauce, water, salt, sugar. Mix up well and stir occasionally so that all the vegetable can soak up the sauce.
+ Let it cook for 20 minutes, stir and mix occasionally
+ Additional water, soysauce, salt, sugar to taste if needed. You do want to keep some sauce, the sauce is sooo good poured over rice :-)
+ Let it cook for another 10 minutes. Turn off heat and keep covered.

Served with hot white rice.

water crest soup

2009-01-10T10:58:00.000-08:00

This isn't a Vietnamese soup since I never had it growing up, at least not being cooked this way. My Mom has made salads and other main dishes using water crest, even water crest soup cooked with ground pork, but the taste of the soup broth is remotely different. This is a Chinese (Cantonese?) version that was introduced to me by the hubbie back when we were still dating. The soup broth is a bit "sweet". I've very soon picked up this one of his favorite soups as my fav also. Come to think about it, the hubbie is pretty easy going at eating since he has a...lot... of favorites.

This soup is earthy, healthy, yummy, and easy to make.

Ingredients:
+ 2 bundles of water crest, washed.
+ 1 lb of pork ribs, cut into smaller pieces (remove the fat if you like)
+ (Optional) 20-30 dried almond seeds
+ 1 dried sweeten fig (see picture). This is usually sold in a plastic package at Asian grocery or herbal store like Wing Hop Fung
+ My "secret ingredient" :-) is a few small pieces of "tran bi`" (dried citrus peel). Some type of citrus peel is already sweeten, so you'll need to adjust the sweet-salty balance of your broth (for example: choose a smaller sized dried fig, add more water and salt to proportion out the extra sugar, etc.)
+ 2-3 tsp salt. Or to taste.

Cooking instruction:
+ Boil a pot of water
+ (Optional) if you have dried almond seeds, add them to the pot and cook from the beginning. These seeds are hard so it'll take a long time to cook them. By adding at the beginning, we give it more cooking time.
+ When boiled, add the pork ribs, 1 dried sweeten fig, and dried citrus peel into the pot
+ Let it cook in the broth for 1/2 hour. Scoop off the foam if any.

*Note* The dried fig should be pretty sweet (sometimes I scoop it out after I think I've got enough sweet taste to my soup - and let the soup continue to cook without it)

+ Add the water crest, and lower the heat to medium. Let cook for another 1/2 hour (the vegetable appears all soft) or longer if you want.
+ Add salt and sugar to taste at the end, before turning off heat.

I used to ask the hubbie why they cook until the vegies all soft, presentation wise, it doesn't look as nice, taste wise you can't "eat" the vegetable it pretty much melt in your mouth. This is alot different from the Vietnamese way of cooking, because in Vietnamese cooking at least you want to be able to bite on or chew on the vegetable to savoy its taste and texture. So according to the hubbie, chinese "loo fo" soups (literally translated to "old fire") emphasize only on the broth. That's why they usually cook for a very long time (hence, loo fo) so that all the nutrition and flavor can yield into the broth. All the ingredients that go in a soup (meat, vegetables, etc.) are meant to give nutrition and flavor up the broth and people would mainly drink the broth, sometimes don't even bother about the rest. Interesting concept. But then again, I thought its a little bit wasteful.

Pho - yes it can be quick and easy too - 30 minute

2008-12-31T20:23:00.000-08:00

I admire people, like my mom and sister, who can cook everything and anything from scratch, that's the best and most original way to cooking. But cooking for two, I'll just stick to my quick and easy cooking philosophy, which involves alot of Lee Kum Kee sauces, and other alikes. What can I say, I am a fan of the ready made sauces !! Sometimes I feel so fortunate to be living in So Cal where there's an abundant supply of these, so many, and so many varieties to choose from.

So I was planning to make Pho and went grocery shopping for the ingredients. I picked up 1 lb. thinly sliced beef eye round (yup, they slice it for you at the Asian grocery store), a package of beef ball, 2 packages of fresh pho noodles, some bean sprout, green onion, basil, and sawleaf herb (ngo gai). AND the most important ingredient is the canned Pho broth :-) This saves me hours cooking the broth from bones and meats and daikon, onion, etc...

Make 6 servings (yup, that's 6 steamy slurpy bowls of pho, all made in 30 minutes! Impressed? :-)

Ingredients:

+ 2 cans (size 28 oz.) of Pho Tau Bay beef broth

+ 1 lb. beef eye round - thinly sliced

+ 1 package of beef balls, washed and cut into halves

+ 3-4 stalks of green onions - cut 3-4 inch from the root and use the bulbs to cook. The green part is chopped.

+ 2 packages of fresh noodles (banh pho) - NOTE: this is the fresh, not the dried noodles

(each noodle package makes 3 servings)

+ 2-3 tsp salt

+ Dash of sugar

+ (Optional) 1-2 small pieces of ginger, slightly grilled for more flavor

+ Prepare other pho's essentials: bean sprouts, basils, sawleaf herbs, plum sauce, chili sauce, a few wedges of lime/lemon

Cooking instructions:

+ In a large pot, pour in 2 cans of Pho broth. Add an equivalent of 3 cans of water. Let it bring to a boil.

+ After slightly grill/burn the gingers, add them to the broth pot.
+ Add beef balls

+ Add green onion bulbs
+ Add salt and sugar, to taste

+ In another pot, boil some water to blench the noodles. Don't need to cook long, just blench for about 30sec to 1 minute should be enough. Drain and put into bowls for serving.

Serving instructions:

+ You can either place the rare beef on top of the noodles and pour hot soup over, or you can blench the beef in the Pho broth, then place onto the noodle bowl.

+ Add beansprout, herbs, some chopped green onions, squeeze 1 wedge of lemon/lime

+ In a seperate dipping dish, give yourself as little or as plenty of plum sauce and chili as you please. Use this as dipping sauce for the beef balls and beefs.

I usually mix up the plum sauce and chili sauce well together, then scoop some into my pho bowl and mix well to add to flavor to the broth base. The rest, I use as dipping sauce.

Spinach ravioli in red sauce with shrimp and basil - 30 minutes

2008-12-28T13:51:00.000-08:00

I bought the spinach and cheese ravioli dual pack from Costco (I also like their chicken ravioli). These are great because you can store them in the freezer, and it does not require defrosting before cooking. Perfect for unplanned dinner making last night.

Ingredients:
+ 1 pack of ravioli, either frozen or defrosted (I bought from Costco)
+ 1/2 jar of spaghetti sauce (I used Francesco Rinaldi brand bought from Target - see picture)
+ (Optional) 1-2 fresh tomato, cut into chunks
+ 10-20 shrimps - peeled and deveined (I bought the already peeled and deveined frozen shrimp package from Asian grocery store)
+ 20-30 basil leaves
+ 1-2 tsp oil
+ 3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped
+ Dashes of salt and sugar to taste

Cooking instructions:
+ Boil the ravioli per instructions on the package (cooking time for frozen versus defrosted). + Drain ravioli and set aside
+ Heat up 1-2 tsp oil in a sauce pan over low to medium heat, then add the chopped garlic for a quick 30 sec
+ Stir in the tomato chunks and shrimps quickly for 2 minutes, then take the shrimps out into a seperate bowl
+ Leave the tomato chunks in the sauce pan, add spaghettie sauce.
+ Reduce heat to low and stir often for about 20 minutes to let the sauce heat evenly and to avoid splatting, cover if you want.
+ Add back the shrimps and add basil into the sauce for a few minutes before serving.
+ Add salt and sugar to taste, if needed.

Serve 3 servings (for us! you may be hungrier)

Steamed Napa cabbage stuffed with ground pork

2008-12-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

Stuffed cabbage is a simple southern Vietnamese dish that my Mom used to make. My family likes it in a soup, so my Mom usually made the cabbage rolls, and then dropped them into a chicken or pork bone broth that she prepared seperately and garnished with chopped green onions, and served as hot soup. Another comfort food for me as a kid.

It has been such a long time I haven't had it, and have actually forgotten about this popular Vietnamese dish. Until recently I came across ShavedIceSunday's entry on stuffed steamed cabbage, it was like a suddenly awaken childhood memory...lol....so I figured I would make this dish myself.

I followed her recipe pretty closely so I won't repost a recipe here. I didn't have time to try making the sauce, however, so I just used soysauce to dip. The trick is to blanch the cabbage leaves and onions, it makes it much easier to roll and wrap.

Ginseng chicken soup

2008-12-24T23:45:00.000-08:00

PREP:

+ 1 boneless skinless chicken breast

+ Soak 3 ginseng roots in hot water, while waiting for water to boil

+ Optional: about 1 tsp worth of ke-ji (a chinese herb, dried small red fruit, seedless)

COOKING:

+ Boil 1 pot of water (about 5 small bowls of water)

+ Pour boiled water into slow cooker

+ Add whole chicken breast

+ Add sinseng roots (and ke-ji if you have) into the slow cooker

+ May leave in slow cooker over night, or for at least 2-4 hours.

+ Add 1 tsp salt, or to taste

Bitter melon soup

2008-12-17T23:14:00.000-08:00

I remembered hating bitter melon as a kid, I couldn't stand the taste. And I forgot what triggered me to try (probably it was because my Mom just insisted and made me try ? hahaha I dunno) but I became more accepting of it, and now as adult I just love it. Bitter melon is a very healthy vegetable, good for lowering cholesterol, it's considered "cool" (leung) for your internal body. It is one of those that you don't like it...you don't like it....and then once you get used to its taste you love it.

Cooking dinner for two, I usually make some main dish (meat or fish) or some stir fries to be eaten with rice, and then either steamed/stired vegetable or soup. This usually feed us dinner, and then lunch/dinner the next day. Not too bad, so I cook one day, then we eat left-overs for the next day. This works out ok. I usually try to cook at least 1 or 2 times a week. In between, we may eat out with coworkers at work, and usually we eat out on weekends, and grocery shop for the following week.

PREP:

+ Boil a pot of water (if you have chicken broth, you can use them)

+ Wash 3 medium sized bitter melons. Half them, scoop out the seeds.

+ Cut bitter melon into thin slices as shown in picture (or you can cut them into squares)

+ 1 stalk of green onion, cut into pieces of length 1/2 to 1 inch

+ 1 boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into thin slices

COOKING:

+ Once water is boiled, add the bitter melons into the pot.

+ Add chicken (not particular any time, you can add right after or wait 1-2 minutes)

+ Let it cook for another 5-10 minutes, then add the green onions.

+ Add 1.5 tsp salt, or to taste. (I also add 1/2 tsp of the vegetable seasoning powder for better taste)

+ If you like pepper like me, add some ground black pepper into the pot right before turning off heat.

Another rice porridge recipe - with chicken

2008-12-10T22:13:00.000-08:00

I made rice porridge (jook) quite often lately, I guess due to the colder weather, plus my tired appetite after looong *rough* days at work (that's another whole topic in itself which I may need a vent blog to write about, but I'll keep this blog strictly to food :)

I was blogging about plain jook with salted eggs before. Here's another jook recipe, I like this jook more because it is more tasty but it takes a teeny tiny more work since you'll need to prep the meat.

Here's the steps:

+ 1 cup of rice, washed and drained (I add about 1/3 tsp of olive oil and mix well into the damp rice)
+ Boil a pot of water ( ~ 1.5-2 quarts)
+ Add 1 can of chicken broth and let boil with the water.
+ Add rice, reduce heat to medium-to-low and stir every once in a while to avoid boil over.
+ Scoop off the foam occasionally
+ Add additional water as needed (depends on how thick you want your jook, I usually like my less thick and more silky, so I just add more water and cook longer)
+ Add 2/3 tsp salt, or to taste.
+ Let simmer for 45 min to 1 hr

While letting jook simmer on the stove, prep the chicken and ginger as following:

+ 1 chicken breast, boneless skinless, cut into thin slices, put in a large bowl
+ Add the following ingredients, and mix them all well with the chicken pieces
1 tsp of cornstarch (can be skipped if you don't have it)
1/2 tsp of salt
Ground black pepper to your liking (lots of pepper in mine - I love that challenging hot AND spicy feeling)
A small dab of sugar (optional)
+ Cut ginger into thin threads as following:

Add the chicken and ginger into your pot of jook about 1/2 hr before turning off heat and serve hot.

You may cook the chicken in your jook longer, it may make the chicken overcook and drier (that's why I add cornstarch to help moist the meat).

Serve very hot, add ground pepper and chopped green onion as desired.

Braised Pork with Eggs (Thit Heo Kho Voi Trung)

2008-12-08T19:54:00.000-08:00

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I was making Braised Pork w/ Eggs (Thit Heo Kho Voi Trung) for dinner last week, thanks to Wandering Chopsticks' recipe. I didn't have CocoRico, nor any Seven-Up, so I used some beer instead! LOL!

My Mom and sister usually use the pork belly to make this, but I don't want too much fat so I used pork butt instead, and follow the above recipe, with little bit of modifications on ingredient measurements to fit our own taste.

+ 2 lbs pork butt, cut into 2-inch cubes
+ 8 hard boiled eggs, peeled
+ 1 cup of beer (I wanted to follow WanderingChopsticks' CocoRico recommendation, or Seven-Up, but didn't have either one around my kitchen, the only thing available in stock is beer!)
+ 4 cloves of garlic, minced
+ 3 tbsp soy sauce (instead of fish sauce)
+ 1-2 tsp salt or to taste
+ 1/3 bar of palm sugar, crushed a little for easy dissolve (or 1-2 tsp sugar to taste)
+ 1 tsp caramel (WanderingChopsticks makes her own caramel)
+ 2 cups water (or more)

Heat 1 tbsp oil on medium heat, add minced garlic. Then add the pork cubes, stir around a little so the meat can brown a little bit. Add caramel, and stir around alittle bit more.

Add beer (better if it's CocoRico coconut juice, or Seven-Up).
Add soysauce and palm sugar.
Add 2 cup water. Let it all simmer on low heat for 15 minutes
Add in the eggs (I like the eggs to absorb more taste, so I add them in at the beginning - if you don't want your eggs hard cooked you can add them in later).

Watch your sauce amount, it should level around where it can cover the meat and eggs. Add more water, add salt+soysauce+sugar to taste, and let simmer more as needed. Stir the meat and eggs around occasionally so they can be evenly marinated in the sauce.

This is excellent eaten with hot white rice.

Roasted Duck In Thai Green Curry

2008-12-01T22:16:00.001-08:00

I was reading WanderingChopstick's entry on duck curry and it got me craving for one. We were in Monterey Park area over the weekend, so I did our grocery shopping and conveniently picked up some roasted duck from Sam Woo.
Today I got home from work a little earlier (well, 7pm, but that's relatively early compared to my schedule lately), so I felt like doing some cooking and would save up the left-over for tomorrow as well. Looking around the kitchen, the only kind of curry paste I have on my shelf is green curry, so I just made up a dish with it :-) Have to admit, it turns out surprisingly tasty, exceeds my expectation.....haha I'm just easily contended like that.

Here goes the recipe and easy cooking steps:

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 roasted duck, chopped into pieces
2 tbsp green curry paste (I buy the paste from asian grocery store)
3 small tomato, cut into medium small wedges
1 small green bell pepper, cut into slices about 1/2 inch thick
1/8 of a small cabbage, cut into pieces of size about 2x2 inch squares
6 oz can of coconut milk
1.5 tbsp oil
1/4 bar of palm sugar
3 tbsp water
~15 basil leaves

- Heat up the oil in a sauce pan, medium heat.
- Add the green curry, slowly stir for 1 min. Add the coconut milk and palm sugar, slowly stir for another 1-2 min.
- Add water (note: the curry paste is already salty enough for me, but if you want you can add some fish sauce or salt to taste)
- Add the pieces of ducks.
- Make sure the sugar dissolves, if it gets too hot you can remove the sauce pan from the heat while stirring so that the curry/coconut won't burn.
- Add all the prep'ed vegetables, and slowly stir for 2 min. Add the basil leaves for 30sec-1min
- Turn off the heat, but leave it on the stove, stir slowly for another 1min .

Served with hot white rice. Got 2 thumbs up from the Hubbie !!

Homemade plum jam + plum juice

2008-11-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

This was old...but since I'm blogging on my easy cooking recipes, I thought I would go back and document about my plums as well.

We have a Santa Rosa plum tree, and this past summer it had an incredible crop. We gave bags and bags to family and friends, still had alot left over so I decided to make jam and juice with them. Santa Rose plums are very sweet, fragant, and have lots of meat. Funny thing is last year we barely had much fruits at all, this year there was sooo much that we became a plum victim :) hahah . We didn't want to leave them on the tree because they would fall once too ripe, and that would be such a waste. To get an idea, this was about how much plums we had at one picking.

So here goes the easy steps to make jam and juice and preserve them for later consumption (refrigerator and its freezer is the best invention ever!)

1. Wash and de-seed about 30-40 plums for the jam, and 30-40 plums for the juice.

2. Cut them into pieces depending on how chunky you want them. I like mine jam a little chunky, so I cut the raw pieces into sizes of about 1/2 inch cubes. For the juice I leave the pieces as-is because they'll go into a blender anyways.

3. For juice: blend in the blender, adding 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water.

4. (Optional) Add a dab of salt if prefered. When I mix something sour with sugar, I usually add a tiny dab of salt to bring out the two contrasting tastes.

5. Sample the juice, add sugar and water to taste. I like my somewhat thick, almost like a smoothie

6. Pour the juice into bottles and store in refrigerator for later consumption. You can even freeze them.

7. For the jam, I follow this recipe.

8. I also added some fresh mint leaves from my herb garden. I used ~30 leaves, coarsely chopped into size of about 1/4 of the leaves.

9. This plum jam is excellent with waffles. They make very quick and healthy breakfasts. In the morning, I usually just throw 2 pieces of waffles into the toaster while I'm getting changed for work, then come back to add butter and the plum jam, then....tahdah!!!

porridge (jook) and salted egg

2008-11-24T17:11:00.000-08:00

I always love porridge as a "cleansing" meal. I remember my Mom used to make the best porridge (jook) for me when I was sick. Sometimes, she'd add ground pork, ground shrimp and other ingredients, or sometimes just plain jook with side dishes like salted egg, dried shredded pork, or pickled radish (dua mo'n). Porridge is my comfort food, it is the equivalence of the chicken soup for me. Hot, light, non greasy, it totally cleanse up my system, works well for a healthy diet every once in a while :) hehe.

Porridge is extremely easy to make. All you need is about 1 cup of rice, or if you have left-over cooked rice, that would do too :-) Both the hubby and I have been a little bit under the weather lately, its usually dard and cool when I get home from work, so "jook" sounds like a good slurpy dinner recipe. I made a pot of just plain jook to be eaten with salted eggs (I also like to keep in stock either salted egg or dried shredded pork for rainy "jook" days like this)

Here's the simple steps to make plain porridge:

1. Wash 1 cup of rice, and drain (I add about 1/3 tsp of olive oil and mix well into the damp rice)

2. Boil a pot of water

3. Turn heat down to medium, add rice, watch and stir every so often to avoid boil over

4. (Optional) I also add some sweet corn, because I had some left over in my fridge.

5. Scoop off the foam if any

6. Add additional water as needed (depends on how thick you want your jook, I usually like my less thick and more silky, so I just add more water and cook longer)

7. (Optional) Add a dab of salt

As for the salted eggs, I've tried several brands from the Asian grocery stores, but this brand is so far my favorite. I don't really like the ones made in China, they seem overly salty. These are made in Taiwan, the eggs are not too salty, individually wrapped and that somehow gives me a warm assurance of quality. Now, as biased as it sounds, the kind I like best is still the ones my Mom makes herself (she does that once in a long while).

Recent OC wild fire

2008-11-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

As most of you have already heard about the Diamond Bar, Anaheim Hills wild fires last weekend. We were in North OC on Saturday, and definitely could smell the smoke, not only that we could actually see pieces of ashes falling down our windshield. It was sad to see the thick layer of black smoke layer, and hearing about it on the radio at the same time.
I'm posting a couple pictures I snapped while we drove on freeway I-10 later that evening. The sunset was especially glowing red, wonder if that was because of the contrast from the dark smog layer?

Vietnamese lemongrass porkchop

2008-11-02T19:14:00.000-08:00

I usually visit my Mom and oldest sister on weekends and go grocery shopping together. They usually insist that they'll make some foods and pack it for me so that I'll have something ready to eat for the week :) My Mom and sister always worry that I don't have time to cook and eat healthy. Aren't they the cutest?

One of my favorite and most convenient is the lemongrass porkchop. I'd store the marinated meat in a container and keep it in the freezer. I'd bring it down the eveing before, and the next day after coming home from work it's already defrosted and ready to be cooked. This can be grilled or panfried, though I love to grill for a couple reason: 1) no frying oil 2) quick and easy, we all own some type of grill right? (I remember my first George Foreman grill, I still miss it). Then all I need is to cook some rice, and perhaps some quick steamed vegetables.

Ingredients and Instructions:

- 6 slices of porkchops - washed and drained

- 5-6 tbsp of ground lemongrass (we buy the already-ground lemongrass from asian grocery store)

- 1 tbsp of ground chili garlic sauce

- 2/3 tbsp of salt (sprinkled 1/3 tbsp on one side of the porkchops, then flip and sprinkle 1/3 tbsp salt on the other side)

- Rub all ingredients well onto the pork chops.

You can let it marinate for at least 1/2 to 1 hour before grill. I usually let it sit overnight, or as mentioned above, leave it in the freezer and defrost prior to cooking.

Instant Noodles Dinner - who says it isn't nutrition balanced? hehe

2008-10-28T12:47:00.000-07:00

These past few weeks my work schedule has been 10am to 8-9pm and some weekends :-( I wish I could get up early and start my work day earlier, but once I've stayed late a couple nights at work it's becoming hard to get up early the next day and then the pattern has formed for the whole rest of the week. It gets dark earlier nowadays as well, making it tiring and depressing getting off work.

So last week I was too lazy to cook dinners, and decided to made myself some instant noodles. Quick and tasty, a hot soupy dinner after a tiring day at work, hmm....yum.... And it only took me less than 15 minutes, yes that's right, even quicker than driving myself to a burger drive-through :-)

I usually boil the noodles first and drain with cold water. Here's my little trick to save time: I wash the eggs (the egg shells often times aren't clean!) and boil it along with the noodles. Drop the egg(s) into the water pot at the beginning luke warm temperature, if you put the egg in while the water is already too hot it'll crack the egg. Wait until the water boils, drop the dried instant ramen noodles to the water pot to cook 3-4 minutes. I like my ramens neither overcooked nor undercook, so I find with this brand, boiling it for 3-4 minutes and let sit another 30 seconds would do it :-) Can you tell? I'm very particular about my noodles :-) hehee Drain the noodles with cold water, and put aside into a serving bowl.

Then I boil a second pot of water for the actual soup broth. Here's a second time saving trick for you: while waiting for this water pot to boild, I peel the eggs, prep the green onion, tofu (or whatever else that I find in my fridge that would go nicely with my quick meal). I also have 1/2 can of whole kernel corn left over from previous cookings, so I decided to add some into my soup. I wanted some green veg but ran out, didn't find any in my fridge...hehee...so corn would do it for this dinner.

Then I'd drop the tofu and vegetables into the pot and let it cook for 1-2 minutes before adding the favor pack (I usually use only 1/2 pack, and add a little bit of salt or soysauce into the soup if needed). Let the soup boils up again, then pour over the ramen.....and voilla !!!

Slurping away while watching this TVB series called "Last One Standing". Anyone else watching this series? I tell ya, its pretty good, somewhat intense.

My kitchen essentials

2008-10-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

Eventhough alot of my cookings are quick and easy, I still try to keep a balanced nutrition. Here are a few things that I usually keep stocked up around my kitchen

1. Fresh eggs

2. Some easy vegies (cabbage, tomato, green onion)

3. Canned vegetables (whole kernel corn, sweet pea, baby corn, mushroom)

4. Tomato paste, Tomato chunks

5. Luncheon Meat or Spam

6. Tofu (either the fried cubes or the soft silken white tofu)

7. Kimchi

*Pictures are linked from other sites.

Welcome to My College Kitchen

2008-10-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

My College Kitchen is a place for me to share my easy cooking tips and recipes. Reality is, I am no chef, and I have no time. While in college, I was studying full time and worked part time. After graduation, I worked full time and attended grad school part time. The usual fast foods is not the long term solution for me. I am still an Asian at heart who *needs* her comfort food and, at the end of the day, a hot meal from her own kitchen. With My College Kitchen, my hope is to share some of my ideas and tips for easy cooking, while encouraging busy young people like myself to continue cooking and eating healthy.