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.

White Wine Tri-Mushroom Risotto with Scallops

In August, my husband and I celebrated our 7 year wedding anniversary. Every year, we cook something special instead of going out to eat. Last year was a picnic at the beach. This year, I wanted to cook something at home. I decided to make risotto with seared scallops. My husband loves scallops, but we don't always get them. He's also never had risotto so I wanted him to try some without spending a fortune at a restaurant. I decided to make three mushroom risotta using mushroom stock and three different kinds of mushroom. Risotto is not hard to make, but it does take patience and time. You can't rush it or else it won't be risotto. Risotta is suppose to be creamy and rice is suppose to be soft, but not chewy. If it's chewy, it's not fully cooked. If' it's too soft, you cooked it too long. I've made risotta a few times, but my husband was deployed so he didn't get to taste it. I love mushrooms and thought the pairing of mushrooms with scallops will be great. If you don't have wine or don't want to add wine, then leave it out.

**I did not write down the recipe so I'm not accurate with the measurements or directions***

SORRY!!

 

Made for 2:

4 scallops
1 cup arborio rice, uncooked
1 container of chicken stock
white wine, about 1/2 cup
2 Tbsp butter
half onion, diced
1 garlice clove, minced
olive oil
dried shiitake mushrooms and choice of 2 other kinds of mushroom (fresh)

**You don't need a lot of mushrooms for 2 people, so about 2-4 mushrooms each should be fine**

grated parmesean cheese
salt and pepper
tarragon

First, heat up the container of chicken stock in a pot and bring it to a boil. There is a possibility that you might use up quite a bit of stock so heat up all the stock just in case. When it comes to a boil, turn off the heat and add in 2-3 dried shiitake mushrooms. Cover and let sit for about one hour. Now you have your mushroom stock. After an hour, take the shiitake mushrooms out and dice them up. Wash and dice the rest of the mushrooms too.

Next, heat up a sautee pan with olive oil. Add in the minced garlic and diced onions. Sweat the onions and then add in the aroborio rice. Sautee the arborio rice, stirring constantly, until grains are lightly toasted. Add salt and pepper. Once the grains are toasted, add in the white wine or a ladle of chicken stock if you're not using the wine. Cook on medium low and stir constantly. When the liquid begins to disappear, add another ladle of chicken stock and stir. Keep following these steps until the grains are cooked. This will take some time, but you want to keep stirring to prevent the rice from burning. This process will take about 30-45 minutes on medium low heat. Be sure to not over-cook your risotto or under cook your risotto. When risotto is cooked, add in some grated parmesean cheese, 1 Tbsp of roughly chopped tarragon, and butter. Stir. Add more salt and pepper to taste.
**If you're unsure of when the risotto is cooked, taste it**
Perfect risotto should have a creamy texture with perfectly done rice; not chewy, but soft grains.

Meanwhile, heat up the chicken stock that was used to rehydrate the shiitake mushrooms to medium heat. Make sure you take out all the shiitake mushrooms. Then prepare the scallops to be seared. Make sure they're dried (pat them down with paper towel). I bought frozen scallops from my supermarket so I had to pat them down quite a bit since I thawed them out, but if you have fresh ones then you won't need to pat them down too much.  Heat up a sautee pan and drizzle a little bit of olive oil just enough to lightly coat the pan. Lightly sprinkle salt and pepper one both sides and sear them in the pan making sure the pan is hot in the first place. The process of searing is to form a nice crust on the sides so you will need a hot pan for that. Sear the scallops for about 2-3 minutes on both sides or until it forms a nice golden color. Serve ontop of the mushroom risotto and garnish with some tarragon leaves. Voila`! 

White Wine Tri-Mushroom Risotto With Seared Scallops

For our 7 year anniversary, we celebrated it for that whole week. We went out and had a picnic at the beach. I made bacon caprese sandwiches: basil leaves, tomato, mozzarella, a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper, and bacon sandwiched between two toasted bagels. With sides of watermelons, chips and dips, blueberry danishes for desserts. My husband never had a caprese before (I know...he never tried a lot of things before lols) and I wanted something easy to make and pack so caprese it was! You can substitute the bacon for turky or chicken...pretty much anything or go meatless. We had a great anniversary week and we ended it with a nice, home-cooked meal. Happy 7 Yr Anniversary, Hubby!!

Seafood Curry Soup

Soup is a great dish for a cold or horrible weather. Well, in Hawaii, you think the weather is always beautiful, but we do have rainy days. Although it does not rain badly in Hawaii, we recently had a few rainy and windy days combined. So I wanted soup, but not just any ordinary soup. I wanted fish soup. Sadly, we didn't have any fish, but we did have some shrimp and lobster tails. The tails were suppose to be for a special occassion, but we can always stock up later. So I decided to make a seafood curry soup. I'm not a big fan of soup only because I haven't found a soup that I really love, but I am a big fan of curry noodle soup. This is almost the same, but without the noodles. If you love khaub poob or thai red curry noodle soup then you'll love this. Serve with toasted bread and voila`!! It's a hearty asian soup.

Ingredients:
4 lobster tails, cooked
4 potatoes, peeled
1 eggplant
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 onion, sliced
package of crab imitation, bite size pieces
1 1/2 tsp karee curry paste (yellow curry)
1/2 - 1 tsp panang curry paste (red curry)
2 star anise
6 cloves
3 lime leaves
3 medallion slices fresh ginger
2-3 bay leaves
2 Tbsp oil
1 can coconut milk
Mint leaves
Cilantro
Toasted bread

First thing first: Cooked the lobster tails. I like to steam my lobster tails, but you can boil it if you like. The way how I steamed them, they come out looking beautiful like the lobster tails you would see at restaurants. I make a cut on the shell all the way to the tail. Then I pull out the lobster meat and let it sit on the shell. I then take a knife and make cuts on the meat half way down. I open up the meat and I repeat that step, but you can stop there if you'd like.

It's almost like butterflying chicken breast except it's lobster tails. This will make for a pretty presentation. If you're not into presentation, feel free to just steam the lobster tails in its shell.






Steam or boil for about 10 minutes. It doesn't take long to cook lobster so time may vary. I steamed it for about 6 minutes. It plumped up and turned out very pleasing to the eye.

This method of steaming allowed me to easily seperate the lobster meat from the shell. Whichever method is up to you. In the end, you want some cooked, chopped lobster tail meat.










I love to dip toasted bread in my soup and let it get soak up the soup. Delicious!!

Slice up some baguettes, drizzle with olive oil, and toast it until it is golden brown. Serve it with the soup and voila`!



Spicy Noodle Salad

Spicy noodle salad is amazing in the summer time. With my busy life schedule, I wanted something simple and refreshing to eat that will not required me to spend too much time in the kitchen or away from my school and son. My pantry is always stocked with noodles and my frigde is always stocked with peppers. This is a dish that I haven't made in a long time because my husband can't handle the heat as much as I do. However, since I was craving it so bad, I made it with less chilis. If you don't like shrimp and you're not a big fan of seafood, you can add shredded chicken or cold beef. I've done this recipe before with steamed pork which I prefer more than shrimp. You can find the steamed pork at any asian stores. I've also made this dish with fish balls which my husband prefers better than shrimp. They are all GREAT with this recipe. However, at the time, I only had shrimp which was still very tasty.

14 cooked shrimps
3 red Thai chili peppers, minced
1 tsp vinegar
2 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp + 1 1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup water
Vermicelli noodles
cilantro, minced *optional*

Boiled the noodles as directed or boil the noodles until they're cooked as to how you like it. Once cooked, drain and rinse under cold water to stop the cooking process. Set aside and start the spicy dressing.

Combing all the ingredients together except the shrimps. Mix until the sugar has dissolved.

Single Servings:
Grab some noodles and place them in a bowl, add some shrimps on top, and add some spoonfuls of the spicy dressing. Add chopped cilantro, toss, and eat.

Big Servings: *Add as much noodles as you like, but you want to make sure that there's enough dressings to coat all the noodles*
Toss noodles, dressings, and shrimps all into one big bowl. Add chopped cilantro and serve!


*I find that it tastes best right after you mix it*