What little time I have

 

I've been super busy with life...literally. I don't even have time for my family and friends any more. Unfortunately, I will be moving out of Hawaii. But, fear not, my next location will be another great journey in life. The good news is that I'm done with my classes for now, but the bad news is that I have lots and lots of packing to do. However, I found what little time I had to cook and feed my stomach. This is over the course of a few months. Sorry....no written recipes to post. Enjoy!!

Left: My favorite kind of eggroll....healthier kind. Cabbage rolls! Same process and method as regular eggrolls except rolled in cabbabe leaves and steamed. Smothered in my spicy red hot Thai chili sauce. Delicioius!!

Right: When my mom visited, we made two trays full of cabbage rolls for my husband. He loves cabbage rolls..more than me! He especially loves it with a peanut sauce. My mom's home-made cabbage rolls are delicioius...plain, but brings back childhood memories. I miss my mom!

Left: Some friends of mine were having a picnic at the beach. My friend Debbie is pregnant and she wanted to try my caprese bagel sandwhich. I made it for her and, luckily I did because we didn't have charcoal to start the grill. Well, I ran out of bagels, but still had the tomatoes, bacon, basil, and mozzarella cheese. So I turned it into a salad. My husban plated it nicely for me but it's drizzled with a little bit of olive-lemon salad dressing. Very delicious and lite...a new twist to the regular caprese appetizers.

Right: Valentine's day. Didn't give each other anything special....nothing special left to give since we have everything special already in our lives. He still got me roses and cards and balloons. We went out for a nice family dinner and then shopping for fun. It was a nice, relaxing Valentine's. I made strawberry cupcakes (boxed) with a home-made raspberry cream cheese and for decorations, I made hearts out of sugar. Nothing too special about this recipe, but I thought it looked nice.

Left: Here is steamed shark wrapped in banana leaf on a bed of carmalized vegies. Made for my father who had never had shark and shark meat was sold plenty at our grocery store. My husband also loves shark and so we bought plenty. I had a sauce to go with it, but it's not in this picture. It does not have a fishy taste. It has a clean fish taste and very easy on the tongue too. Delicious!! I will miss it!!

Right: Hmong steamed flounder with eggplant, tomatoes, and zucchini. The sauce is a soy sauce base. Nothing really unique about this recipe...just traditional Hmong style-ish. This was made for my parents when they visited. My dad loves fish and so my husband bought flounders to impress him hahaha. I'm not a fan at picking bones, but this was very delicious too. The tomaotes and cilantro really brought out the freshness of the fish.

 Left: Recognize the picture? My husband loved the steamed shark so much that he wanted me to make it again for him. Instead of steaming the shark this time, I pan fried it. I also added saffron rice to the dish just for color. This picture has the sauce with soy sauce as a base drizzled over it. It brought the right amount of salt content and flavor.

 Right: I made a double-layer white cake with mango curd for dessert when my parents came to visit. My mom doesn't really like cake that are too sweet so I chose a white cake, eliminating the egg yolks. I used the egg yolks to make the mango curd which was fruity and not as sweet. I made the frosting from scratch eliminating most of the sugar because it would've been too sweet for my mother. She loved it! She wished she could have all her cakes like this. It wasn't too sweet for her and tasted lighter than usual cakes. I'm glad it was a success!

 Left: Seared shark fillets on a bed of sauteed asparagus drizzled in a mango sauce. This sounds like a sweet dish because of the mango sauce, but it was actually a nice compliment to the asparagus and shark fillets. My husband loved this dish and I thought it was actually quite delicious with the sweet and savory sauce. I had left over mango puree so I thought a mango sauce would be new. Plus, I love the color on the plate. Beautiful!

Right: This is a dish you've all seen before...plenty in my blog. Pho! Hmong peope love Pho and home-made pho are the best!! Nothing new, but I was just craving for a bowl of hot and spicy noodle soup. I can never get enough Pho. I just recently made Pho a few days ago and mastered the rich broth...FINALLY!!! The key is the type of meat used in the broth...and I cannot give out my little secret.

Basic Swiss Meringues

Basic swiss meringue with whipped cream and berries.

I am not one to waste ingredients especially when a recipes calls for egg yolks only. While I was making my basic creme brulee, the first thing that came to my mind to use up the egg whites were meringues. Meringues are a dessert or cookie that is made up of egg whites and sugar. It's light and airy as well as crispy. I love meringues and they are so easy to make. I only make them when I make my  basic creme brulee that way I don't waste any eggs. I usually make them in mini sizes with a piping bag because I like to snack on them plain than top them with fruits. It's good either way.

Ingredients:
3 egg whites
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
3/4 cup sugar
Whipped cream
Berries
(I have a berry sauce recipe also)

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees.
**I did everything by hand just because I wanted an arm workout, but feel free to use a mixer**
Let the egg whites stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. This will make it easier to fluff it up. With a wire whisk, begin whisking the egg whites in a circular motion at the fastest speed of your arm. Add vanilla and cream of tartar and keep whisking until soft peaks form. Switch arms if you need to. Gradually add in the sugar a little at a time while whisking. Keep whisking in circular motion to incorporate air into the egg whites (air creates the soft peaks in the egg whites). Keep whisking until all the sugar is dissolved and stiff glossy peaks are formed. This will take a while depending on how fast you are whisking. Very good workout!

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and drop balls of the "cloud" onto the baking sheet. You can definitely pipe it if you want. It'll be prettier that way, but why waste piping bags. Using the back of a spoon, create a well in the center. Be sure all meringues are about the same size to ensure even cooking. This is where the whipped cream and the berries will sit. Bake the meringues on the middle rack for 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours or until the meringes are set and dry. Turn off the oven and leave the meringes in the hot oven for about 1 hour. This will ensure any uneven cooking. Cool on wire racks. Fill the shells with whipped cream and fresh berries. I made a berry sauce which was perfect! I also made the whipped cream by hand.

Simple Berry Sauce

My simple berry sauce for everything and anything

6-7 strawberries
6-7 black berries
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/2 cup water
Combine all the ingredients in a pan and bring it to boil. Simmer until liquid has reduced to half which can take up to 30 mins to 1 hour. Depends on how saucey you want your sauce to be. Let it cool before using.

Notice the bowl of heavy cream sitting ontop of another bowl
filled with ice. This keeps the cream cold and makes it easier
to rotate the bowl.

Hand-made Whipped Cream

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
2 Tbsp sugar

Place a bowl on top of another bowl that's filled with ice. Pour the ingredients into the top bowl that's sitting on ice. With a wire whisk, start whisking as fast as you can while rotating the bowl to keep the cool temperature. Be sure to incorporate lots of air into the heavy cream. Keep whisking until the mixture looks like whipped cream and forms soft peaks.

For the whipped cream, I used the leftover heavy cream from making my basic creme brulee which was the perfect amount. I've whipped heavy cream before by hand in my culinary class before so I knew how long it was going to take. However, I've gotten a lot faster since then. If you have never made it by hand before, DO TRY. It's a great arm workout. It's all about incorporating air into the cream. You'll be amaze at how easy it is to make home-made whipped cream and you can customize your own.

Basic swiss meringues with whipped cream and fresh berries

I've made all kinds of meringues, but I didn't start taking pictures of my food until this year. Meringues are easy to change. You can add food colorings and different flavors. Just substitute the vanilla extract. Be creative with this simple dish. The new Twix Truffle candybars are made with meringues. That's what gave it it's light, crispy texture.

I purposely made the mistake of topping my whipped cream and meringue with my hot berry sauce. It was still hot and it started to melt my whipped cream. But I don't regret it. I couldn't wait for the berry sauce to cool down so I ate it warm. It was delicious!! The warm sauce melting the whipped cream and softening my meringue, it was heaven for me. Plus, I love messy food and I loved the way the sauce and the whipped cream formed a pool around my cloud of goodness!

I thought I show you all how I come up with recipes and how I write them down. This is why it's hard for me to keep track of them and have an accurate recipe. I do lots of testing and experiments so I have lots of recipes thrown away because they did not turn out quite as good. I write all my recipes on scrap papers. Mostly from papers that I've printed for my online classes so they're a little scrunch up. I've been very busy lately so I try to do my best to experiment and post up some recipes every month. This is a recipe I've written down while making it. The top part is a recipe for my tortilla rolls which I will post up soon. The bottom part, as you can see, is my simple berry sauce. This is one of my many many handwritten recipes. Also, I only write down recipes when I remember to.

This was one of the nicer looking recipes that I wrote down...
the other recipes were barely legible

Basic Creme Brulee

Basic vanilla creme brulee

I had my first creme brulee when I was in the 10th grade. It was a green tea creme brulee and I fell in love. Great smooth custard texture and the flavor of the green tea with the carmalized sugar on top was the perfect balance of sweetness. My favorite part of the creme brulee was breaking the carmalized sugar on top. But now I love to torch the sugar. My husband has never had or heard of creme brulee and I wanted to make it for him. It's soooo much cheaper to do than ordering it at a restaurant. It's really not hard or difficult to do. My husband enjoyed the creme brulee. I made him an almond creme brulee topped with whipped cream and fresh berries. He's not into sweets, but he really enjoyed this dessert mostly because he got to use the torch. The ingredients are very simple and easy. I divided the ingredient list into sections so that it's easier for you to go along with.

***Don't throw away the egg whites!!! Make basic swiss meringues instead!!***
Ingredients:
3 egg yolks
2 Tbsp sugar

1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Pot of boiling water (4 cups)

torch
sugar

First, preheat the oven to 325 degrees then combine the cream and the 2 Tbsp of sugar into a saucepan over medium to low heat. Constantly stir the mixture to prevent cream from scorching. Once the sugar has dissolved, turn off heat and add in the vanilla extract.
Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolk and 2 Tbsp sugar together until sugar has dissolved.
HERE'S THE TRICKY PART: You are now going to temper the eggs (this means slowly mixing the egg mixture with the cream mixture without making scrambled eggs). Sounds difficult but it's not.
You are going to keep the bowl of the egg mixture on the table. Hold a whisk in one hand while you are holding the hot pot of cream mixture in the other.  With the hand whisk, start whisking slowly and then begin pouring a little bit of the cream mixture at a time.  DON'T STOP WHISKING. Pour a little bit more cream mixutre and keep whisking. Pour a bit more until you know for sure that the egg and cream mixture are about the same temperature. If you're unsure, just keep whisking and pouring until all the cream are mixed with the egg. However, be sure that all the mixture are poured back into the pan so that it keeps the warm temperature. So in the end of this process, all the mixture (egg and cream) should be in the pan in which the cream mixture was in.
 ***For the last step, it's best if you place the baking pan in the oven first with the ramekins so that you would not need to place it in the oven after adding the hot water which will prevent spills***
Place ramekins in a deep baking pan to prepare it for the water bath. Pour the mixture evenly into ramekins. Pour the boiling water around the ramekins MAKING SURE NONE OF THE WATER GETS INTO THE RAMEKINS. Fill the baking pan to about 1 inch deep or until the water is half way up the ramekins.
Bake for 50-55 minutes or until the center is set. Let it cool on the counter and then refrigerate it for about 4 hours. After 4 hours, sprinkle the top with an even layer of sugar and torch it. PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH THE TORCH. If you don't have a torch, you may use the broiler (read the bottom) or eat it without the sugar crust. If you like a thick crunchy layer of sugar on top, feel free to sprinkle a lot but I find that it's great without all that sweets.

Make sure the sugar is spread out evenly

Torch the sugar using a right-to-left hand gesture until sugar is carmalized

**Broiler: After chilling the creme brulee, let it stand on room temperature for about 20 minutes before putting it in the broiler. Then place the ramekins on a baking sheet and broil it about 8 inches from the heat for about 5-8 minutes or until sugar is carmalized. Refrigerate it for 2-3 hours until firm and eat.***