Something different for a change...

Okay... I owe my utmost, deepest apology for not being able to keep up with the blog as much as I wanted to. After all, I was supposed to post a recipe a day. 

Truffles

Happy almost Val's! Val's is all about chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate. So here's a simple truffle recipe adapted from the book of everything chocolate-ish.

Dimsum day part 1 - easy dimsum

...and there goes my diet. I caved because I'd been working late nights working on the proposal. So today, I treated myself to dimsum. I think I will have to pay dearly for this "excursion". 


But! On to dimsum... It is single-handedly the kind of thing that will make you feel like you've pigged out quite a bit. It's certainly not the kind of thing for single consumption. Plus, because they're all "bite sized", well... if you don't watch it, you may end up overeating...


OK! Now that those dire warnings are out of the way... Below are recipes for simple dimsum, simple meaning all you have to do is to throw everything together in a steamer and call it a day. The dimsum itself isn't a one dish meal. It's actually several dishes. So, you can combine the recipe below with the congee and twice cooked rice recipes and the spring roll recipe (sans chili sauce) for a full dimsum meal.


Alternatively, you can also use this recipe to make some wontons/pot stickers for your noodles, and the pork to accompany your quick stir-fry.


I'll discuss the more "complicated" ones later on (because I'm at a cafe and I don't bring my bible for pao's/steamed buns).

Interruption to your scheduled programming...

I have to say that real life is "calling"... Well, I have things I have to work on since I have due date coming up. Don't worry, I've been compiling recipes and drinking plenty of water and orange juice to keep up with everything life's throwing at me. 


Recipes will come back after I'm finished with my fellowship. It's like the fellowship of the ring except with computer, lots of typing, and words.


Bear with me, y'all...

The ever creative omelets

They are something REALLY simple to make. I love omelets. They're also really versatile in that you can stuff whatever you want in it, vegetables, cheese, smoked meats... They can deliver a ton of flavor too, depending on how you season your omelets. Plus, you can make it as you want it. My mother was the first person who taught me how to make omelets. I got more practice because my cousins like omelets and I was the one in charge of making them.

Below is a recipe for smoked salmon omelets. The idea came from bagel and lox. I'm not sure really what happened when I created this, but I think I wanted to do something with my smoked salmon and I wanted something spicy and sweet and still be something savory at the same time.

Cream of mushroom soup

I created this recipe because I like making things from scratch. One of the things I like is green bean casserole. And I know some of you may think that green bean casserole is something "gross", but it's not so when you make it from scratch. 

So here's my recipe for cream of mushroom soup. I know that it's quite a significant amount of butter, but this recipe will yield about 2.5 quarts of the soup and it's in form of a soup stock (similar to condensed soup), which you can then thin more.

Despite the name, Elsa doesn't eat this. But she's my partner in the kitchen. I work the counter, she works the floor nibbling on carrots, green pepper, and tomatoes...

Crab rangoons

Let's start with a disclaimer: I don't claim to know everything about the Chinese table. Now that we get that out of the way... I've never seen crab rangoon until I arrived in the US. This isn't something we do with our crabs (this sentence doesn't sound right...). Even more surprisingly, I found that the "crab meat" is actually a surimi, a flavored fish meat. It is, however, understandable, considering how cheap this "snack" is. 

Here's my take on crab rangoon. I modified the recipe a little bit because the last time I eat real crab chowder in Indonesia (I will post the recipe later), with real crab meat, corn was added to it. I found that corn somehow highlights the sweetness of crab meat. So that's how I modified this crab rangoon recipe.