Pad Thai Noodles

It seems that I'm in a bit of a Thai phase right now. I promise there will be more variety to this blog. It's just that lately, most of the ingredients in my fridge just so happens to be great for making Thai food. Or rather, I just have a bunch of left over stuff like tamarind soup base that I need to get rid of.

So I made Pad Thai today. It's not necessarily a hard thing to make but it's a bit tricky to get it right with the noodle part. I personally screwed it up a little bit while making it today but I'm writing about it so you can learn from my mistake.

1/2 tsp ground chili pepper (I just used pepper flakes b/c that's what I had in my cupboard)

1 egg

4 tsp fish sauce

3 cloves minced garlic

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp tamarind

1/2 package of Thai flat rice noodle

1/3 cup extra firm tofu (cut into strips)

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 minced shallot

2 cups bean sprout

lime wedges (optional)

chopped roasted peanuts (optional)

julienne green onions and carrots for garnish

1) Soak noodles in warm water for about 30 minutes. This is the part where it gets tricky. You want the noodles to be soft and pliable but not soggy and expanded. If there's such a thing as al dente for rice noodles, this is how you want your noodles. When in doubt, under soak it. If nothing else you can always add water to the noodles while you're cooking it to soften it but you can't undo the softening of noodles. When I made it, I way under soaked the noodles for fear of soggy noodles and I ended up standing at the stove stir frying the noodles for forever. Yeah, not fun.

2) Heat up the vegetable oil in a wok and when hot, put in shallots, garlic and the tofu. Stir fry until the tofu is gold brown. ( If you feel you need some meat in this dish, this is a good time to throw in some shrimp, sliced chicken or pork into the wok.)

3) Drain the noodles and put it into the wok and stir quickly to keep from sticking. Add in fish sauce, tamarind, sugar and chili pepper flakes. And a little tip about the tamarind. I just used the filipino sinigang tamarind soup base. You can find it at any 99 Ranch store. It tastes exactly the same if not better.

4) Once the noodles are cooked, put the noodles aside in the wok and make room for the egg. Scramble it really quickly and mix it back in with the noodles. Add in 1 cup of the bean sprouts. Give it a few more stirs and you're done.

You can serve it with a wedge of lime, a sprinkle of dry roasted peanuts and some raw bean sprouts on top. I personally like my bean sprouts cooked so I just dump them all into the noodles while they're still in the wok. To each his own so do what you like. Hopefully you guys give this recipe a try because the tangy-ness of the tamarind is perfect for the summer heat. Goes great with a glass of beer or ice cold lemonade. Enjoy~!

Thai Ground Pork Salad (Laab)

Today I made one of my favorite Thai dish of all times, Laab. It's basically a ground pork salad, eaten hot or cold, seasoned and flavored with fish sauce, lime juice, cilantro and chilies. The secret to making this dish taste like you just took a trip to Thailand is the ground toasted rice powder. This is one of my favorite Thai dish because it's sour, it's salty and it's got a bit of that slight crunch from the toasted rice and shallots. I used to eat this all the time when I was in Thailand. It's one of those dishes that kind of define your childhood.

Okay, I might br getting a little carried away with this whole defining my childhood thing, and it's a bit cheesy. Pretty much any Thai food reminds me of my childhood and I'm just super stoked that I found the recipe for Laab and it's simple enough that I can make at home without much fuss.

Today I make ground pork Laab but you can substitute ground pork for ground turkey, chicken or even ground beef. If you're going to be using chicken or turkey, I would suggest sauteing them with a bit of oil since they are a bit leaner than pork or beef. This recipe calls for cooking the ground meat in just a bit of water and I've tried that technique with ground chicken and it does get a bit dry.

Here are the ingredients that you would need to make this dish.

1 pound ground pork

1/4 tablespoon ground dried chili pepper or crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

3 tablespoon fish sauce

4 limes juiced

1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots

1-2 tablespoon toasted rice

chopped green onion and cilantro for garnish

You start by toasting the rice. Set a nonstick pan on medium high heat with the rice in it. You need to stick around the pan to make sure the rice doesn't burn because it happens really fast. It'll take about 5 minutes for the rice to toast. Make sure to keep stirring the rice until it is a nice gold brown.

Once it gets that golden brown color, immediately take it off the stove and transfer it to a mortar. If you don't have a mortar, go ahead and ground the toasted rice in coffee grinder, food processor or a blender. Any one of those would do the trick. I like my mortar because come on, how often do you get to use one of those things? That and it's a great way to take out your frustrations.

I love my little mini mortar that I stole from my mom's house.

Now that your rice is toasted and the shallots and cilantro chopped take half a lime and squeeze the juice to marinate the ground pork a few minutes before cooking. Make sure the juice is mixed in well with the pork.

Heat up the pan until it is super hot and then add in 2 tablespoon of water. Immediately add in the ground pork and stir, making sure that the pork doesn't stick to the pan. Cook until the meat is well done and most of the moisture from the meat has evaporated. Put the ground pork into a mixing bowl. Now add in the juice of the remaining limes, chopped shallots, cilantro, chili powder and half of the toasted rice. Mix everything together and taste. Depending on your preferences, you might want to add more fish sauce, chili powder or maybe even more lime. I personally love love, love sour food so I actually add about 6 limes into my Laab.

Go ahead and arrange the Laab on a bed of lettuce or just eat it as is. Garnish it with some cilantro and the rest of the toasted rice and you're all set.

And there you have it~! This dish is great. If you're not one for giving up meat with your salad, you can eat this by the bucketful. It's only fat is from the ground pork itself since we cooked it with water instead of oil. And in my opinion, this is probably a lot better than all the oil that goes into your caesar salad dressing. Definitely give this dish a try and if you do, be sure to let me know how you like it~!

Sauceless Pizza

After and extremely trying day at work, my biggest questions is : What am I gonna make for dinner and what goes good with a glass of white wine?

Basically, my day sucked yesterday and well, family issues definitely didn't help make it any better. All I could really think about towards 4pm is what am I gonna have for dinner and what kind of white wine I should get. I was browsing online for recipes of comfort food. Let me tell you, comfort food ain't so comforting for the person making it~! Comfort food takes A LOT of time and tons of ingredients that are not readily available in my kitchen nor at most chain grocery stores.

Once again, my old friend Fresh & Easy came through for me. They usually have a pretty good selection of wine so I went there in search of a good bottle of white and hoping that wandering down the isles would give me some inspiration.

When I think of white wine I always always think of cheese. Might be the whole white thing. I think of cheese, green grapes and some sarong wearing, wash board abs pool boy fanning me with a giant banana leaf and feeding me grapes. I kid I kid. I only think of cheese and green grapes. So, what better way to eat cheese than having it warm and melty on pizzas? Ready made fresh pizza dough is awesome~! I remember a Food Network show I saw awhile back that had something called a sauceless pizza. I was intrigued by the idea. I mean, how do you have a pizza without sauces? The best part of the pizza is the sauce~!

Anyway, I digress. Sauceless pizza pretty much means what it is, sauceless. The way I see it, sauceless is just another excuse for me to load up on cheese...mmmmm....cheese.

So this is what I put on my sauceless pizza. Ricotta and mozzerella cheese; fresh grape tomatoes, sliced; a handful of torn arugula leaves; sprinkling of garlic infused olive oil and then a generous amount of fresh cracked black pepper and some salt. Bake in the oven at 450 degrees for 20 minutes.

And.........

It. Was. Awesome. And paired with a glass or two.....or three....of Chardonnay....yummmmm. *sigh* <----content sigh *grin*

Chicken Adobo

It's been awhile since I've had time to cook. It has been a busy month. Weddings, birthdays, MBA school info sessions....man I'm tired. So what events did I miss blogging? Did I mention I got a puppy? She takes up most of my free time, especially during the weekdays. I'm thinking that sometime in the near futre, I'll give some doggie treat recipes a try. Also, me and the bf celebrated our one year anniversary. Can't believe it's only been a year. The way we argue, you'd think that we've been together for a looooong time. =P

So, the bf went on a motorcycle ride with his buddies this past Sunday and was gone for the better part of the day. With roughly 6 hours of free time, what did I do? I decided to cook of course~!

I drove myself to a nearby 99 Ranch (it's an asian supermarket for those of you who don't life in the San Gabriel Valley area or don't have any asian friends) without much of an idea as to what I was going to make. I only knew that I'd wanted to get some green grapes for the bf cuz he's had this thing for crunchy green grapes for awhile and well, green grapes at stores like Ralphs and Fresh & Easy just aren't as crunchy. When it comes to fruits, hands down, asian supermarkets' got it right.

As I was wandering down the overly crowded aisles at 99 Ranch, I remembered that I had some recipes on my phone. Chicken Adobo was the first recipe I came across so there you have it. It's fate~!

Well not really, it's mostly cuz chicken adobo's easy to make and require less ingredients.

The recipe calls for a 3 lbs whole chicken quartered, 1 cup of soy sauce, 1 1/4 cup white vinegar, 2 bay leaves, black peppercorn, 1 glove of garlic and a few slices of ginger. Instead of getting a whole chicken, I opted for some drummettes and wings instead. Not a fan of having to dissect a raw chicken. And instead of white vinegar, I used cidar vinegar because that's what I had on hand and figured that added bit of sweetness might be a nice touch. It'll make the sourness less harsh. So I pretty much just put all the ingredients in a pot and brought it to a boil. I let it boil for about 10 minutes, all the while stirring and basting the chicken to make sure they get a nice brown tint to it from the soy sauce. After about 10 min of boiling, I turned the heat down to a simmer and just let it sit there for a good 30 minutes to an hour, occasionally stirring so nothing sticks.

It might not seem like there would be much liquid to properly cook the chicken, but the chicken itself has a lot of moisture so there wasn't any problem there. I have this thing with adding onions to a lot of my dishes. I have no idea why except I like that added veggies that goes into a meat dish. Makes me feel a little less guilty about consuming all that meatage. =P So I sliced up a medium onion and tossed it into the pot to cook along with the chicken. If you're a purest when it comes to cooking, nix the onion part cuz I don't think that's very filipino.

Not quite sure if the bf liked the dish or not since he didn't eat much of it but I certainly liked it. I'm a fan of anything sour. I'm thinking next up, a jicama recipe. I found some at the 99 Ranch market and totally brought back memories of my childhood in Thailand. Suggestions anyone?

Date Night Dinner

So the boyfriend has this thing with food with fruits in it. In my opinion, what's better with fruits than pork? I've had quite a few bad experiences with pork chops so I decided that as much as pork chops and applesauce might be the thing that the boyfriend would be like most, I went with a nice pork loin.

I googled some recipes for marinating the pork loin but ultimately settled for a variation of a few dry rubs that I found. I used a dry rub consisting of garlic powder, chilli powder, sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, and brown sugar. It gave the pork loin a nice spicy kick and the brown sugar made a nice crispy coating. Oh but I didn't stop at the dry rub. I also made fruity glaze to go on top of the pork loin which doubles as a glaze and dipping sauce. I reduced some concentrated raspberry juice, added in some apricot jam, some garlic powder to make it a savory glaze and a slight touch of honey to mellow out the tartness of the raspberry juice. And then of course, I must have applesauce. Made some homemade applesauce which the bf thought was store bought. Guess I did my job there.

Now the question came down to, what about the side dish? I left that up to my trusty Fresh & Easy stor3. Found myself some arborio rice. Why of course~! Risotto~!

I've never attempted risotto before. It always seems to me that it's something that's slaved over and has to be done just right, preferrably in a full stocked kitchen at a five star restaurant prepared by a chef that studied under some french chef in Paris for 10 years or something. Well, I've definitely never studied under any french chef in Paris nor do I have a full stocked kitchen (I live at home and shares the kitchen with a 2 yr old niece that likes to play tea with the pot and pans). But there were definitely some slaving away in front of the stove. Apparently you can't take your eyes off the risotto or it burns. And the constant stirring. Seriously, I couldn't even tear myself away for long enough to give my bf the proper greeting when he showed up =P.

Thankfully the risotto didn't burn, the pork loin came out perfectly cooked and the bf now thinks I'm an awesome cook (ok, I lied about the awesome part but at least he thinks i'm a decent cook). Can't wait to finally have my own kitchen where my electric mixer attachments won't mysteriously end up in my niece's playhouse.

Whore's Spagehtti

Yes, I said whore. I made Pasta Puttenesca for my mom today for mother's day. It turned out great. It's a great salty dish consistign of anchovies, olives, garlic, tomatoes and sun dried tomatoes. Of course, I didn't exactly do my homework until afterwards. I wikipediaed pasta puttanesca and realized that it's commonly known as whore's pasta. Oi. Well, I guess no one has to know about that lil part. Anyway, happy mother's day to all the mothers out there~!

Carb-o-rific Weekend

Oh the carb overload this weekend~! I wonder how many bike rides or skipped lunches it takes to make up for my carbfest this weekend.

Let's start with how I came about the guilty pleasure that is baked brie. A few weeks back, me and Kathy went to a hole in the wall wine bar for some girl time. We had heard that they served one mean baked brie in bread bowl. We heard right. So about 10 minutes before leaving work on Friday, I'd decided that I'm going to recreate that baked brie. Did I ever mention that I love Fresh & Easy? Since I don't exactly live near a farmers market nor am I snotty enough for places like Gelsons, Fresh & Easy has been my go to store for all spur of the moment food obsessions. And it does help that there's one right around the corner from my house.

So, I found some brie, sourdough bread bowl and some Granny Smith green apples. And this is where the excess indulgence begins. I cut off the top of the bread bowl and hollowed out the inside. I cut up the brie into half inch cubes to allow for faster melting and placed them in the bread bowl. I actually stuck the bread bowl into the microwave for about a minute to help the melting along. Set the oven at 400° F and then popped it in for about 15-20 minutes.

All I can say is MmmmMmmMmmmmMmMmmmm. The bread came out nice and crunchy on the outside but warm and chewy on the inside. The cheese was all gooey and melty and made a perfect dip for the sliced green apples. The saltiness of the brie works great with the tangy sweetness of the apples. And of course, I devoured the apple slices with the brie like I
had the body of Heidi Klum. Oh but it didn't stop there. The best part was the actual bread bowl. The oil from the melted cheese had seeped into the bread bowl and a layer of the brie had adhered itself to the bread as if to say "eat me". Who am I to say no to that? Yup, I ate the whole bread bowl.

What I've learned this weekend - yeasty, chewy, crunchy bread makes me happy. =D And the guilt that comes with scarfing down a giant wedge of brie and a whole sourdough bread bowl? Considering how I made another baked brie in sourdough bread bowl (3 more to be exact) for a lunch party my brother threw at the house - I think it's safe to say that the yummy goodness of the baked brie totally eclipse the number of hours of biking that I'll have to do to get rid of all those calories. =P