Catfish in clam juice sauce

Life can be busy and stressful for people who have a responsibility on their shoulder, especially in this kind of draggy economy. My husband is not exempted from this common fate. But I want him to know that, whatever he meets out there in the world, once he steps in to his house, he is king here, and is to be honored as one. So in this rainy spring day, I decided to cook him a dinner, fitting for his status.

Recipe: Catfish in clam juice sauce (for 2-3)

Ingredients:
- 2/3 pound catfish nuggets,
- 1/4 cup clam juice
- 1/4 teaspoon (tp) garlic powder
- 1 tp parsley flakes
- dash of lemon dill flakes
- romaine lettuce, shredded (to line the serving plate)

Procedure:
1. cut cross-sectionally across the vein of the muscles into thin strips. This prevents the catfish nuggets from curling up into a roll when pan-fried.
2. Place a non-stick pan on high heat until hot. Then place the nuggets on the pan to fry. Allow the fat to sip out from the fish. Do not move the nuggets until they are almost cooked. The edge of the top side should be cooked by this time, leaving only the center part pink. Then flip them once to cook the center part of the top side. Do not allow the fish to cook for too long. The bits that stick to the pan should be lightly golden, but not deep brown.
3. When done, remove the catfish nuggets from the pan and place on a serving plate lined with lettuce. Add clam juice to the pan and mix with the fat from the fish. Add garlic powder, parsley flakes and lemon dill flakes. Mix and scrub off any bits of the fish from the pan. Stir with the clam juice and herbs to make a sauce. Pour the sauce onto the catfish nuggets. Serve right away.

The clam juice makes a very flavorful sauce. However, the catfish might taste better if I cook it with some garlic or lemon juice to get rid of its characteristic taste. The fish goes well with the lettuce.

Lotus seed soup

Sometimes, a very simple dessert can be all that one needs in the middle of a drowsy afternoon. I like light dessert with very little sugar, partly because of health reason, but mainly because that's how I grew up. In fact, my desserts are almost sugarless, but then the taste of the ingredients stand out much better.

Recipe: Lotus seed soup (for 2)

Ingredients:
- 2 tablespoons dried cored lotus seeds, soaked overnight to re-hydrate
- 1 tablespoon wild rice
- 0.5 oz dried tofu sheet (about 1 8"x8" sheet)
- 1 tp honey

Procedure
Boil re-hydrated lotus seeds with wild rice in 4 cups of water for 10 minutes. Add tofu sheets. Allow to simmer for 1-2 hours. After 2 hours, the lotus seeds will be soft and powdery, while the wild rice grains have opened up and become chewy. Add honey and serve.

This is such a simple dessert. But I find it's so very comforting.

Festival squash vegetable soup

Some time ago, we had a food exchange with our neighbor. We gave them some of our turkey. They gave us a pot of their chicken noodle soup. It was so fun trying out others' food to get some new tastes on home cooking. Our neighbor's soup had a nicely sweet flavor which came from squash. So I decided to give that a try for a change. In this recipe, the cabbage, onion and potato are the primary ingredients for a good vegetable soup with the ham stock. Only a small amount of festival squash is needed to give a sweet twist to the usual salty taste of a ham soup. The meats are added just to complement the vegetables. The chickpeas give a richer texture to bite. 

Recipe: Festival squash vegetable soup (for 2)

Ingredients:
- 2 cup cabbage, chopped
- 1/2 medium onion, chopped
- 1/2 cup small white potatoes with skin, cubed
- 1/2 cup festival squash with skin, chopped
- 2 tablespoon (TB) cooked chickpeas
- 1 cup dripping from baking ham, skimmed of fat (salty)
- 3-4 oz ham pieces, boiled to remove saltiness before use
- 1 oz chicken/turkey white meat
- 1 TB flakes of basil, rosemary, thyme, savory, marjoram

Procedure:
Boil all the vegetables with ham for 20 minutes. Then add the herb flakes and allow to simmer for 45 minutes. Serve hot.

Douchi shark baked rice

This is one of my signature dishes at home. We like the taste of douche sauce on the rice. I used to cook the rice with the rice cooker, separately from the shark. But this time, I decided to try cooking the rice in the oven and add the shark to it. The heavy glassware I used to bake this dish kept the rice very moist while the shark is just done.

Douchi shark baked rice (for 2-3)

Ingredients:
- 1 lb shark meat without bone, cut to 2" pieces
- 3 tablespoon (TB) douchi sauce (fermented black bean sauce)
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 3 salted anchovy fillets in olive oil
- 1 TB sesame oil for marination
- 3 TB white wine
- 2 stalks of spring onions, chopped
- 1 TB sesame oil at serving

- 3/4 cup jasmine rice

- about 1 cup water

Procedure:

1. Finely mince the anchovy fillets, mix with chopped garlic and douchi sauce. Then add the mixture to the shark meat and coat all surfaces of the shark well with the sauce. Add sesame oil to give the meat a smooth feel. Allow to marinate for about 15-30 minutes.
2. Wash rice and place in a heavy glass baking pan. Add water. The level of water should be above the level of the rice by about 1/4 the height of the rice. Bake at 350F with lid for about 20 minutes. When done, the rice should be just cooked, but a little dry on top.
3. When rice is done as described, stir the rice to loosen the grains a little. Then spread the marinated shark meat evenly on top of the rice. Sprinkle 3 TB white wine evenly on top of the meat. Then cover lid and bake at 375F for about 30 minutes or until the shark meat is just done. The shark is cooked when the aroma of anchovy and douchi diffuses into the air.
4. When the shark is done, turn oven off. Spread the chopped spring onion evenly on top of the shark. Sprinkle 1 TB sesame oil. Cover lid again. Return to oven and allow to keep warm for about 5-10 minutes, and no more than 10 minutes. The moist heat in the glass pan should warm up the sesame oil and the spring onion to give a very fresh smell. But if the pan stays in the oven for too long, the spring onion will be cooked and loses its vibrance.
5. Serve right away.

When the moisture is nicely controlled, the rice is moist and saturated with the flavor of douchi and shark. A little crust of browned rice may form at the bottom of the pan.

Chowder clam (or hard clam)

Once in a while, the international market in the neighborhood would have very interesting finds. Today, Chowder clams are sold at 3 for $1. That amounts to slightly less than a dollar a pound. This is a very good price for such big clams that are 3" by diameter. So I picked up 3 and came home to find out what to do with them. Then I found out that chowder clams are the largest of all the hard clams. Because of their size, the meat of these clams need to be chopped and cooked to help tenderize them. That's why they are great for making chowders (and thus come their name). To prepare clams, the first thing is to brush them clean in cold water. Then they are boiled in a very small amount of water for a few minutes, until the clams open up. Only then can they be chopped or further cooked. The liquid from cooking the clam is very flavorful and can be used for cooking.

Recipe: Stuffed chowder clams (make 6)

Ingredients:
- 3 chowder clams of 3" by diameter
- a little water
- 1 teaspoon (tp) butter
- 1/4 cup bread crumbs
- 1/2 tp garlic powder
- 2 tp low-sodium cream of chicken (optional)
- extra water to mix the filling
- dash of parsley flakes (for garnishing)
- olive oil (for garnishing)

Procedure:
1. To prepare the clams, brush the shells clean in cold water
2. Place the clams in a small pot with lid, fill the pot with just enough cold water to cover the bottom of the pot
3. Cover the pot and boil the clams on high heat for a few minutes (about 5 minutes). The clams will gradually open up. They are done when fully open.
4. Shell the clams. Remove the black grainy stuff in the center of the clam meat. Chop the muscle into small bits. The clam juice can be saved for other cooking purpose.
5. Mix the clam meat with bread crumbs, garlic powder, cream of chicken. Add water and stir until the mixture is smooth and holds together.
6. Spoon the filling into the halves of the shells.
7. Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes or until the fillings are slightly golden.
8. Sprinkle parsley flakes and olive oil on top. Serve hot.

Mastering pan-fried yogurt chicken fillet

I must congratulate myself for having at last conquered chicken breast! This has been one of the hardest things for me to cook (because chicken breast gets rough quickly under heat) until I discovered yogurt as a marinate. Again, the same motto: "Practice makes perfect!" So I'm practicing again. This time, my experiment is to cook chicken breast as a fillet (or a steak, whatever it's called!) so that it can be served either at dinner or as a sandwich. My objective is to control the heat better so that the chicken is properly browned without getting the yogurt burnt.

Recipe: Yogurt chicken breast fillet (for 2-3)

Ingredients:
- 1 chicken breast, deboned, skinned and trimmed of fat
- 2-3 tablespoon (TB) of whole milk yogurt
- 1 to 2 teaspoons (tp) garlic powder
- 1/2 tp paprika
- dash of cumin
- dash of salt
- 2 to 3 TB oil

Procedure:
1. Cut the chicken breast into thin slices of about 1/3" thick. One large breast yields about 3 slices with some smaller pieces. Make sure that all the pieces are no thicker than 1/3".
2. Mix the chicken meat with yogurt in a bowl enough to contain the meat. Make sure that all sides are coated. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to chill for 6 hours. Take the bowl out of the fridge to warm up 2 hours before cooking.
3. Just before cooking, sprinkle paprika, cumin, garlic powder and salt on the chicken. Mix well.
4. Heat oil in a flat bottom non-stick pan on med-high heat. Place chicken slices flat on the bottom of the pan. Initially, some of the yogurt may stick to the pan. But once the chicken starts to give out water, the yogurt will not stick to the pan any more.
5. Allow the pieces to cook until the top side becomes lightly cooked (ie. heat has transferred from the bottom to nearly the top of the pieces). Then flip the slices and cook the other side. The chicken and the yogurt sauce will not burn as long as the chicken continues to give out water. Once the water dries out, the pan will be coated with just oil. At this point, the temperature of the pan may go up quickly. Turn heat down to medium. At this point, the paprika will start to become dark red when heated in the oil.
6. Flip the chicken slices every now and then to allow all sides of the chicken to be coated with the browned paprika. Flipping helps prevent one side of the chicken stick to the pan.
7. When the desired color has been achieved, turn heat off. Take the chicken out of the pan right away to prevent it from absorbing the oil. Serve right away.

Pan-fried yogurt chicken breast.

Courage comes with curiosity. Having played with yogurt as a marinate for a while, I tried pan-frying my yogurt chicken this time. It turned out much simpler than I had imagined. This is by far my most satisfied experiment with chicken white meat.

Recipe: Pan-frying yogurt chicken (for 2-3)

Ingredients:
- 12 oz chicken breast, trimmed, deboned and cut to 2-inch-thick slices
- 2 tablespoons (TB) yogurt
- 1/2 teaspoons (tp) garlic powder
- dash of paprika
- dash of salt
- dash of cumin
- mixed green salad as a side dish
- 2 TB oil

Procedure:
1. Mix chicken pieces with yogurt in a small bowl until all surfaces of the chicken are coated with yogurt. Allow to marinate in the fridge overnight. Two hours before cooking, take chicken out of the fridge. Mix in garlic powder, cumin and salt. Allow to warm to room temperature.
2. Heat oil in a non-stick pan on med-high heat. Spread chicken pieces flat on the pan and allow to cook on med-high to high heat for a few minutes. The chicken will give out quite a bit of water while cooking. Allow the water to evaporate by at least half. Then flip the chicken to cook the other side. The cooked side should be slightly browned, coated with a very thin layer of thickened yogurt. Sprinkle paprika on the cooked side. Allow the other side to cook for a few minutes. Then stir the pieces to allow the paprika to blend with the yogurt coating to give a light orange color. Serve right away on green salad.

Cooking BBQ pork

I've been cooking BBQ pork using the oven for a while. The usual method is to bake the marinated pork at a low temperature first, and then coat the pieces with some BBQ sauce and broil it at a higher temperature. After I got a steamer and a steaming pot, I tried a different approach. First, I steam the pork pieces in the steamer, then I coat the cooked pork with sauces and broil it for just a few minutes. This resulted in much more tender pork.

Recipe: Handling pork with barbecue sauce 

Ingredients:
- 1 lb pork shoulder cut, trimmed of fat
- 2-3 tablespoon BBQ sauce

Procedure:
1. Cut pork into slices of 2-3" thick. Set up a steaming pot with a steaming plate that has holes for drainage. When water is boiling hard, place the pork into the steaming pot and allow to steam on (preferably) high heat for 30-40 minutes until meat is cooked. Allow to cool to room temperature.
2. Coat each slice of pork with BBQ sauce. Then set the pieces on a rake with a drip pan. Place in oven, on the top rake. Turn the upper heating element on using the broil setting at highest temperature possible (around 500F). Allow to heat for about 2-3 minutes or until the BBQ sauce starts to caramelize. Flip the pieces and broil the other side the same way. Serve right away.

Broiling pork on bamboo stick

I always wanted to find out how to cook pork so that it's crispy outside and tender within. After consulting a few people's methods, I decided to try out the following:

Recipe: Broiled pork on bamboo stick

Ingredients:
- 2 palm-sized pork sirloin steak, cut into 2" thick strips
Marinate:
- 1 teaspoon (tp) salt
- 1/2 tp white sugar
- 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1/4 tp five-spice powder (五香粉)
- 1 TB cooking wine
- 1 TB light soy sauce
- 1 TB dark soy sauce
- 2 tp sesame oil
BBQ sauce:
- 1 tp light soy sauce
- 1 tp dark soy sauce
- 2 TB honey
- 1 TB oil

Procedure:
1. Mix all ingredients of marinate. Rub onto all surfaces of pork and give it a little massage. Let sit in fridge overnight. Before cooking rinse off all seasoning.
2. Mix BBQ sauce ingredients to form a smooth thick paste. Rub generously and thoroughly on each strip of pork. Push a bamboo stick longitudinally through each strip of pork. Then use one stick to pierce perpendicularly through the center of all strips to form a bamboo rack. Place rack on a deep baking pan so that pork does not touch the pan. Broil at 425F on top rack for 5 minutes. Apply BBQ sauce again. Flip the bamboo rack to broil the bottom side for 5 minutes.

Fried beef and vegetable rice noodle

There are some dishes that my husband is very particular about. This is one of them, that he wouldn't mind waiting at the table for it to be serve right off the stove. It's a fried rice noodle dish. The noodle comes as a package of moist folded sheet that needs to be refrigerated. To prepare the noodle, I heat it up in microwave until hot, then cut the sheet into strips and separate the folded layers in one small bowl of cold water. The noodle absorbs quite a bit of cold water during this process. Once the noodle has been separated, it needs to be cooked immediately to prevent it from sticking together when it cools down or dries up.

Recipe: Fried beef and vegetable rice noodles (for 3)


Ingredients:
- 1/2 package of wet rice noodle sheet, softened and cut to thick strips
- 3-4 oz beef, cut to very thin pieces of 1" long
- 10 oz Chinese broccoli, cut to thin slices, leaves and stems separated
- 1 tablespoon (TB) oil
- 2 teaspoons (tp) garlic, finely chopped
- about 1/2 cup ham stock (salty)
- 2 tp sweet flour sauce
- 2 tp dark soy sauce
- 2 tp sesame oil


Procedure:
1. Heat garlic in 1 TB oil in non-stick pan on med-high heat. Once the garlic starts to sizzle, add Chinese broccoli and stir fry. (Cook the stems first, for 1-2 minutes, then add in the leaves.) Add 1-2 tp of ham stock if necessary to prevent drying up. Remove from pan once the green color of the vegetable freshens up (about 2-3 minutes).
2. Then, while the pan is hot, add beef and let it cook until water starts to come out (about 30 seconds). Add 2 tp of sweet flour sauce to the hot pan surface, and turn heat down to medium. Let the flour sauce cook in the heat. Add 1-2 tp ham stock to dilute the sauce slowly as it sizzles in the pan. Then mix in with the beef. It takes about 1 minute. Do not allow the beef to overcook or the sweet flour sauce to dry out. Once the beef has been fully coated with the sauce, remove the beef from pan.
3. Add about 1/4 cup of ham stock to pan and dilute the sauce that sticks on the pan. Keep the stove at medium to med-high setting. Once the mixture starts to sizzle, add in the rice noodle and stir well. Allow the noodle to absorb most of the liquid, but prevent the rice noodle from sticking together or sticking on the pan. Add in the beef and vegetable and stir. Once the bottom of the pan is without liquid, add in the dark soy sauce and sesame oil on to the pan. Let sizzle for a few second and mix well with all the ingredients. Serve hot.

Navy beans

Beans are not all alike. Each has its own unique flavor and personality. This week's dinner menu at home features navy bean. When uncooked, this bean is white and small, about the same size as red bean. Once cooked, it becomes milky in color, with a smooth and very mild flavor. It just naturally reminds one of chicken, turkey white meat, and a mix of herbs, particularly basil and marjoram. So, this week we try out some navy bean dishes. In the casserole recipe, I tried the combination of turkey white meat, navy beans and sweet peas. The sweet peas give some pockets of sweetness to the otherwise starchy and meaty theme. In one of the soup recipes, I used navy beans with cabbage and apple to get a more complex taste for the soup. In another soup recipe, I combined navy beans with wheat berries, tofu, and enoki mushrooms, decorated with slices of sweet beef.

Recipe 1: Turkey and navy bean casserole (for 2-3)

- 6-8 oz cooked turkey white meat, cut to 1/2" cubes
- 3/4 to 1 cup cooked navy beans
- about 1/3 cup of liquid from cooking the beans

- 1/4 medium onion, finely chopped

- 1/3 cup frozen sweet peas, thawed

- 1/2 can of 96% fat free cream of mushroom condensed soup
- 1 tablespoon dried herbs mix of basil, rosemary, thyme, savory, marjoram

Procedure:
1. In a 750ml baking dish, mix turkey meat, navy beans, onion, sweet peas, dried herbs and the bean water together in a baking pan. Set aside in the fridge until 1 hour before meal.
2. Spread the cream of mushroom soup on top of the ingredients. Cover dish with foil. Bake at 375F for 20 minutes. Then turn oven up to 450F and allow to cook for 5 minutes (or until the liquid below the condensed soup starts to bubble). Serve right away.

Recipe 2: Navy bean ham casserole (for 1)

Ingredients:
- 3 to 4 oz ham, cut to thin slices of 1" long
- 3-6 TB very well cooked navy bean (equal portion to ham, by volume)
- 1 TB sweet peas
- 1 TB cubed rutabagas from can
- 1/3 package of silken tofu (equal to twice the portion of ham)
- 1/2 can cream of chicken

Procedure:
Mix everything and bake at 150F for 30-45 minutes.


Recipe 3: Navy bean soup (for 2-3)

Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup navy beans, cooked
- 1/4 cup wild rice
- 6 oz turkey white meat, cut to thin strips
- 1/2 onion, cut to 1/2" cubes
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon dried herbs mix of basil, savory, marjoram

- 1/4 teaspoon rosemary

- 1 cup cabbage, shredded

- 1/4 of a medium apple, cut to 1/4" cubes
- 4 cups ham stock

Procedure:

In a sauce pan, cook wild rice, navy beans, onion, garlic and cabbage in ham stock for about 30 minutes, or until wild rice is done (opened up). Add dried herbs, rosemary, turkey meat and apple. Allow to simmer for 10 minutes. Then turn heat off and let sit on stove top for 30 minutes. Reheat to serve.

Recipe 4: Another navy bean soup (for 2)

Ingredients:
- 1/3 cup cooked navy beans
- 1/4 cup cooked red wheat berries
- 1/4 package of silken tofu
- 1 Thai eggplant, chopped
- 1/4 carrot, chopped
- 1 cup of leaves of celery
- 1 pack enoki mushrooms, about 4-6 oz, rinsed
- 1-2 oz beef slices stir-fried in sweet flour paste
- 4 cups meat stock (salty)

Procedure:
In a sauce pan, heat the navy beans, wheat berries, eggplant, carrot in the meat stock until boiling. Add celery leaves and tofu. Turn heat to low and allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes. Then add enoki mushrooms, and turn heat to medium. Once the mushrooms are soft (about 1 minute), the soup is ready. Serve hot, topped with beef slices.

Freshly roasted chestnuts

Not sure if March is the season for chestnut, but I do find fresh raw chestnuts at $0.99 a pound in our local grocery store. So I bought a three pounds home to find out how to eat them. I've heard about roasted chestnuts before, but have never eaten it freshly roasted. So I tried out roasting.

Recipe: Roasted chestnuts (3 lbs)

Ingredients:
- 3 pounds of fresh chestnuts

Procedure:
Spread the chestnuts uniformly in one layer in a metal baking tray. Bake in the oven at 250F for about 1 hour to 1.5 hours. When the chestnuts are almost done, they give out a unique sweet chestnut smell. When that smell is come, let them bake for about 10-20 minutes. Turn turn heat off and allow to cool in the oven for 30 minutes.

They make a wonderful snack. The shells can be opened with a nut cracker. The roasted chestnuts are soft, and may need to be scooped out with a small spoon. 

Spicy pan braised shark

Sometimes, my cooking has become so dogmatic that the same ingredients is cooked exactly the same way over and over. Today I decided to try out a different combination---a spicy shark, braised in pan. When cooking fish in a pan, movement should be minimized. Seasoning is sprinkled on top of the meat. Then, the meat is allowed to cook by the steam.

Recipe: Pan braised spicy shark (for 6-8)

Ingredients:
- 2 lbs shark fillet, trimmed of skin, and cut to 2-3" pieces.
- 1/4 cup Sichuan chili sauce

- 1 tablespoon (TB) oil

- 2 TB garlic powder

- 1/2 teaspoon (tp) extra hot chili powder 

- 1.5 TB soy sauce
- 1/3 cup Shaoxing cooking wine
- 1/4 tp salt (to taste)
- 1 TB tomato sauce
- 1/4 tp huajiao pepper corns
- 4-5 stalks spring onion, sliced
- 2 Thai eggplants, quartered
- 1/4 onion, thinly sliced
- 1-2 cup white meat stock

Procedure:
1. Heat Sichuan chili sauce in oil in a nonstick pan, large enough to hold all the shark meat in one layer. When it sizzles, add shark meat pieces on the pan. Cook on med-high heat until the side facing the pan is slightly golden.
2. Flip each piece of shark once to cook the opposite side. Sprinkle garlic powder and hot chili powder on the top face of the shark meat. Add Thai eggplant to the pan, filling in the gaps between the shark pieces. Mix soy sauce, cooking wine, salt. Add the mixture to the pan, being careful not to wash away the seasoning on top of the shark meat. The level of the liquid in the pan should be up to half the height of the meat. Add meat stock if necessary to make up for the level of the liquid. Cover lid and allow to boil on medium heat for about 20 minutes, until the shark meat is just cooked. At this point, the shark meat should be firm, and only flakes very slightly.
3. When the shark is just done, remove the pieces from the pan. Add onion slices and huajiao pepper to pan and fry slightly. Then add 1 cup of meat stock to dilute the liquid. Add tomato sauce. Turn heat up to med-high. Cover lid and allow to cook for 1-2 minutes until onion is soft and the liquid has thickened to a gravy. Add spring onion and stir until the spring onion curls up. Pour the gravy with the spring onion on top of the shark meat. Serve hot.

Twice baked potato

Though my husband has always been greatly appreciative of my cooking, I often fear that he may miss the food he grows up with. There are days that I just feel the urge to cook something really familiar to him, even if he does not ask for it. I've often felt a blush of embarrassment that I don't know how to bake potato. So I decided one day to learn the twice-baked potato.


Recipe: Twice-baked potato (for 1)


Ingredients:
- 1 medium potato
- 2 teaspoons (tp) yogurt
- 2 tp lowfat cream cheese
- 1 tp butter
- 1 tablespoon (TB) shredded cheese
- 1 tp bacon bits
- 1/4 tp oil


Procedure:
1. Use a brush to clean the surface of the potato thoroughly, scrubbing off all dirts and removing all blemishes on the skin. Dry the surface of the potato with a cloth. Rub a little oil over the skin. Use a fork to pierce holes about 3/4" deep over the surface of the potato. Place in the oven on a rake with drip pan. Bake at 400F for 1.5 hours. When done, the potato will be slightly soft and with wrinkled skin.
2. Cut a wedge, about a quarter the size of the potato, off the top. Scoop out the flesh on the wedge and inside the potato. Be gentle not to break the skin of the potato. Flake the flesh and mix with yogurt, cream cheese and butter. Fill the mixture back into the potato shell. Top with bacon bits and then shredded cheese. Bake in oven at 350F for 30 minutes. Serve hot.

When my husband sampled his potato, he remarked that it's well baked and finished it all. After dinner when I was washing dishes, he quietly slipped in to hug me and give me a kiss.

three layer salmon vegetable bake

This is one of those times that I want to be really experimental with baking. So I try out a salmon baked with various vegetables: potato, squash, broccoli, carrot and purple cabbage. The tricky thing in this combination is that the potato take much longer to cook than other vegetables; and the proportion of vegetables I use (2 vegetables to 1 fish) make it even more tricky. So my instinct is to cook the dish as three layers. The first layer is sliced potato and squash, which needs to be cooked first. On it, add a layer of shredded broccoli, carrot and cabbage, and then a layer of salmon on top. I cook this dish in the toaster oven because of the small portion size and the convenience of having a glass door. The cooking time is longer, but I have better control of the process during the experiment.

Recipe: Three layer salmon vegetable bake (for 2)

Ingredients:
- 3 oz potato (about the size of 1 very small potato), sliced to 1/8" pieces
- 1 oz festival squash, sliced to 1/8" pieces
- 1/3 cup broccoli slaw, from package (mix of broccoli, carrot and purple cabbage)
- 3-4 oz of salmon strips, 1/4" thick (I use scaled fresh trimmings)
- 2 tablespoon (TB) light mayonnaise
- 2 TB meat stock
- 2 teaspoon (tp) dijon mustard
- 1 tp honey
- 1/4 tp dried dill and lemon peel
- 1/8 tp salt
- 1/4 tp paprika

Procedure:
1. Place potato and squash slices on a baking pan. Add 2 TB meat stock. Cover with foil and bake at 300-350F in toaster oven for about 30-40 minutes, or until potato is soft. Squash cooks faster than potato. Do not allow the potato and squash to dry.
2. When the potato is soft, spread a layer of broccoli slaw on top of the potato and squash. Mix in 2 TB of light mayonnaise. Then Place the salmon strips on top of the broccoli slaw. Mix dijon mustard, honey and dill and lemon peel in a small bowl. Spread the mixture evenly on top of the salmon. Sprinkle salt and paprika on top. Cover with foil and bake at 350F in toaster oven for about 30 minutes. Then uncover  and bake for 10 more minutes to give the top a little browning. Serve hot.

This dish is very flavorful. The potato has absorbed the flavor of the meat stock. The mayonnaise gives the broccoli slaw a nice dress up. However, both the mayonnaise and the mustard are strong in this dish, so much so that they compete for the attention of the palate. The salt, on the other hand, heightens the flavor of the mustard and the honey. Next time, I'm going to reduce the mustard and the honey to just enough to bring up the flavor of the salmon.

Baked salmon rice

Whenever I see fresh salmon trimmings coming out of the fishmonger's table first thing in the morning, I would not hesitate to pick them up. The fishmonger of the local grocery store usually cuts and cleans several salmons at a time (in preparation for 2-3 days of stock). After he has prepared huge slices of the fillets, he'd cut off the thin edges of each fillet so that the fillet's thickness is more uniform. The thin strips are then sold as trimmings at $1.79 a pound, instead of the $6.99 for the fillets. I'd think the trimmings are good bargains, as long as they are the freshest cuts of the day. Being the thin strips from the belly (white) and tail parts of the fish, the trimmings tend to have a higher skin-to-meat ratio, about 1:4. Some trimmings may have leftover scales, which need to be removed. Other than that, I find trimmings pretty good materials for creative cooking. 

Recipe: Baked salmon rice (for 1)


Ingredients
- 6 oz salmon trimmings, long strips from belly
- 3/4 cup cooked rice, best if 1 day old
- about 2 tablespoon (TB) water, depending on the dryness of rice
- 1 teaspoon (tp) dark soy sauce
- 1 tp sesame oil
- 1/2 tp chopped spring onion


Procedure:
Mix rice with water and spread uniformly on a small baking pan. Because of the baking temperature, it's good to add a little more water than normally needed to reheat cooked rice. Line salmon trimmings meat side up on top of the rice, making a crisscross pattern. The thickness of the fish layer (about 1/4" to 1/2") on top should be comparable to the thickness of the rice layer below. Bake covered with foil for 5 to 15 minutes at 400-425F, until the fish is almost cooked, with just a little fresh pink on top. The timing and baking temperature can be flexibly adjusted to achieve fast cooking at high heat. Turn heat off. Uncover and allow to sit in oven for about 1-2 minutes until the fish is fully cooked. Sprinkle spring onion, dark soy sauce and sesame oil on top. The soy sauce and sesame oil should sizzle on the fish for a few seconds, and then trickle down to the rice and get cooked, making the rice very flavorful. Serve hot.

This cooking method works particularly well for trimmings because they are very thin, but with skin, which prevent them from flaking at high heat.

Chang fun (rice noodle roll) experiment 1

My husband took me to a Cantonese dim sum restaurant and told me the dishes he liked. That gave me some good ideas what to try out during my leisure moments at home. Chang fun (肠粉) is one of the dishes that can be either very difficult, if made from scratch, or very simple, if ready-to-use materials are use. So I decided to start simple, to get a feel of the materials. Ready-to-use rice noodle sheets are sometimes sold in the international market. They come in packages that need to be chilled. The instructions on the package say the noodles can be softened in the package using the microwave. After softening, the sheets can be used as wrappers to make meat rolls and steamed. 

My first experiment with the packaged noodle sheets is not completely satisfactory. Here are my problems. With microwave, the heat is not uniform. Any unsoftened parts of the noodle sheets tend to be brittle, making the sheets hard to unfold. After softening, I used the sheets to wrap up some cooked meat and steamed the rolls in a steamer with med-high heat for 20 minutes, then serve right away with sesame oil and soy sauce. The rolls were a little dry even after being cooked in moist heat.  This suggests that the noodle sheets may need to absorb some water at the softening stage. So my next experiment will be to try softening the noodle sheets by a different means, such as soaking in warm water. 

Creamy catfish soup

I've never mastered how to make a creamy soup. But it's good to have it once in a while. So I use the canned solution. When I tried this catfish soup, my husband liked it incredibly! It went well in a dinner with a lamb chop, a potato rosemary bread, and a stir fry of asparagus and baby bella mushrooms. What a perfect dinner after a cold day out at work.

Recipe 1: Creamy catfish soup (for 2)

Ingredients:
- 1/2 can low salt and low fat cream of chicken soup
- 3-4 oz catfish nuggets, cut to 2" length
- 3-4 TB frozen sweet peas
- 2 cups meat stock
- 1 cup leaves of celery, finely chopped
- 1/3 cup purple onion, finely chopped

Procedure:
Cook the cream of chicken, celery leaves and purple onion in 2 cups of meat stock until the soup is thickened. Add catfish nuggets, turn heat to low and allow to simmer for 5-10 minutes. Add sweet peas. Let simmer for 2-3 minutes or until the peas are heated up. Serve hot.

Recipe 2: Creamy catfish shrimp soup (for 2)

Ingredients:

- 2/3 can low salt and low fat cream of chicken soup

- 2 cups meat stock

- 3-4 oz catfish nuggets, cut to 2" length

- 8-9 medium sized shrimps, shelled and devined

- 3-4 TB frozen sweet peas

- 2 TB yellow sweet corns

- 1 TB onion finely chopped

- half a medium carrot, chopped

Procedure:

Cook the cream of chicken, carrot and onion in meat stock until the soup is thickened. Add catfish nuggets, turn heat to low and allow to simmer for 5-10 minutes. Add sweet peas and sweet corns. Let simmer for 2-3 minutes or until the peas are heated up. Lastly, add shrimps and allow to cook for 10-20 seconds. Serve hot.

Guess what this is!

It's cactus being grilled. I saw some cactus in the market, and was very curious about what to do with it. So I got a pack. Then, during one of the dinners with friends, we decided to try out grilling it. The tough part about handling cactus is the thorns. They are really tough to remove. Not that they stick to the leaf, but they poke my fingers a lot and it hurt. After some unsuccessful attempts to pull them off, I finally decided to just peel of the parts where the thorns grew out of the leaf. That was easier.

Once there is a cut on the leaf, juice would ooze out. So I had to work rather fast to remove all the thorns. Then I just coated both sides of the leaf with oil and placed it on the grill. It took about 10 minutes to caramelize each side. When it's cooked, it tasted surprising like green pepper!

Kohlrabi salad

Times and again, I come home with a bunch of items I've never heard of or seen before. This week, the aliens in the shopping bag include a festival squash and a kohlrabi. So one afternoon, I find myself searching for kohlrabi in the web, and discovering that it's a mild-tasting turnip. And then, here comes my salad. I like salads very much because of the fullness it gives to the stomach without any weighty feeling. In general, the more ingredients there are, usually the better the salad tastes. For a good salad composition, I like to use mild, crispy, and even bland items as the main ingredients. Kohlrabi turns out to be one such material. Cucumber, snow pea, red pepper and chickpea are great too. Ingredients with strong flavors and distinctive textures are used in sparing quantities, so that they heighten the excitement of the senses. In this salad, the apple, peanut, onion and ham used for this purpose. The dressing is a mix of spiciness in the dijon mustard and with the sweet flavor of hoisin sauce. The roasted sesame gives an extra aroma, which along with the peanuts and hoisin sauce, reminds me of rojak. Festival squash has a nice color and a sweet taste, but it's hard to munch. So I use only a small quantity for its color.

Recipe: Kohlrabi salad (for 1)

Ingredients:
- 1/3 cup kohlrabi, very thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup cucumber, very thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup snow peas, halved
- 1/3 cup red pepper, cut to 1" strips
- 2 tablespoons (TB) apple, cut to 1/2" small pieces
- 1 tablespoon (TB) cooked chickpeas
- 1 TB festival squash, cut to 1/4" small pieces (else it's hard to munch)
- 1 teaspoon (tp) peanuts
- 1 tp onion, finely chopped
- 2 tp chopped ham
Dressing
- 1 tp dijon mustard
- 1 tp hoisin sauce
- 2 tp lemon juice
- 1 tp red wine vinegar
- 2 tp roasted sesame

Procedure:
Mix all salad ingredients and place in a salad bowl. Mix dijon mustard with hoisin sauce in a small sauser. Then thin the mixture with lemon juice and vinegar. When dressing is done, sprinkle sesame and mix. Serve at once.

Cooked cauliflower mix

I like vegetables, if not raw, then only very lightly cooked just to bring forth its freshness. In this experiment, I try to cook cauliflower without oil, and season it with small amount of various very flavorful ingredients. These ingredients include meats, dried herbs and spices. I also use a small amount of colorful vegetables for decoration. Since they are not the main ingredients, they are chopped finely for the ease of munching.

Recipe: Cooked cauliflower mix (for 2-3)

Ingredients:
- 1/2 a head of cauliflower, cut to 3/4" small florets
- 1/4 cup onion, thinly sliced
- 1/4 cup carrot, finely chopped
- 1/4 cup snow pea, cut to 1/2" pieces
- 1 stalk spring onion, chopped to 1/4" pieces
- 1/4 cup chopped cooked ham
- 1/4 cup chopped cooked turkey
- 1/2 cup meat stock
- 1 tablespoon (TB) dried flakes of basil, rosemary, thyme, savory and marjoram
- 1 teaspoon (tp) black pepper
- 1 tp chili paste

Procedure:
1. Place cauliflower florets, sliced onion and dried herbs in a large non-stick pan with 1/2 cup of meat stock. Allow to cook until the cauliflower is very slightly softened, stirring frequently to enable uniform cooking and mixing of the herbs. Add in cooked ham, cooked turkey, chopped carrot, snow pea and chili paste. Sprinkle black pepper. Continue stirring to mix thoroughly. Do not allow the pan to dry out. Add 1-2 tp water if necessary. Sprinkle chopped spring onion and serve.

Chipotle black bean

On trying out all types of beans, the one that fascinates me a lot is the black bean. I never liked it growing up because my parents cooked it in a soup with catfish. The taste was simply yucks! But then, the Southern Americans seem to have much better recipes that do this bean some justice. Here is one I modified from Lisa at homesick Texan and it tasted really nice. I cooked the chipotle peppers whole, and they tasted so sweetly succulent when done.


Recipe: Chipotle black bean (for 2)


Ingredients:
- 6 oz dried black beans, soaked overnight
- 1/2 purple onion, chopped to 1" cubes
- 1 clove garlic, chopped finely
- 1 carrot, chopped to 1" cube
- 2 chipotles in adobo with 1 teaspoon (tp) sauce, from can
- 3/4 tp cumin powder
- 2 tp basil flakes
- dash of salt
- 5 tablespoon (TB) unsalted tomato sauce
- 3 cup water from boiling the beans
- 1 cup thick turkey/chicken stock


Procedure:
Boil soaked black beans in 4 cups of water on med-high heat for 5 minutes. Then cover lid and let sit  for 1-2 hour. At this point, the beans are cooked but crispy. Remove excess water until 3 cups are left. Add 1 cup of stock. Reheat beans. Add onion, carrot, garlic, chipotles, tomato sauce, cumin and basil. Mix and bring to a boil. Then let simmer on low heat for 2 hours. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. Allow liquid to slowly thicken into a paste. Serve hot.

This recipe really brings out the best of cumin in the tomato sauce and the chipotle!

Red bean and beef chili

The small red bean takes a lot longer than many other types of beans to soften. It takes me 3 days of soaking, or 1 day of soaking plus 4 hours of cooking to get it the texture that is soft for chili. Based on my previous experiment with black beans, I adjusted the recipe to match the flavor of red bean. 


Recipe: Red bean and beef chili (for 2-3)


Ingredients:
- 3 full cups of cooked red beans with liquid from cooking
- 8 oz ground beef, 80% lean
- 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 3/4 medium onion, thinly sliced
- 1 medium carrot, chopped to 3/4" cubes
- 3 white mushrooms, chopped to 3/4" cubes
- 1/4 cup red wine
- 2 teaspoons (tp) dried basil flakes
- 2 tp mix of dried rosemary, savory, marjoram
- 1/4 tp dried thyme 
- 1/4 tp cumin powder
- 1 chipotle chili with 1 tp adobe sauce, from can
- 3/4 cup (~6 oz) unsalted tomato paste


Procedure:
Brown ground beef with garlic and onion in a pot. When the onion softens in the juice of beef, add all the dried herbs and continue to heat until the aroma of the herbs comes out. Then add red wine and let cook until its aroma comes out. Now add red beans with its liquid. Add mushroom, carrot, cumin powder, chipotle and tomato paste. Let cook on medium heat for 5 minutes to boil. Then turn heat down to med-low or low, cover with a lid (with hole), and keep it at a mild boil for 2 hours. Stir every 20 minutes, especially when beans start to melt, to prevent sticking. Ready when the liquid thickens into a watery paste. Turn heat off and let sit for 1 hour or so to let the paste thicken to the right texture. 

My household loves this dish very much!

Ham and tofu casserole

I begin to appreciate casserole when it turns out so tasty. Tastiness is the trick to get people to eat vegetables. Here is one recipe I tried with tofu and meat from a big leftover ham. The taste of this dish comes mainly from the ham, the croutons and the cream of chicken soup. The other ingredients absorb the flavors and provide a rich texture. In this recipe, the proportion of ham+tofu to broccoli is actually 1:1. The tofu will give out water, which cooks the broccoli while it is boiling in the pan. Broccoli cooks really fast in water, so this is a quick dish. 


Recipe: Ham and tofu casserole (make 1 full 10"x10" pan)


Ingredients:
- 8 oz cooked smoked ham, cut to 1/2" pieces
- 1/2 package of tofu, cut to 1" cubes
- 3/4 head of broccoli, using only the flower part, cut to 1/2" pieces
- 1/3 cup croutons with italian seasoning
- 1 can of cream of chicken, healthy request
- 1/4 cup evaporated whole milk


Procedure:
Mix broccoli, ham and tofu in a 10"x10" glass pan. Sprinkle croutons on top and mix lightly. Spread cream of chicken on top to cover all the ingredients. Then add evaporated milk. Mix lightly. Cover and bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes or until the liquid in the bottom of the pan start boiling. The cream at the side of the pan should not be browned, else it is already overcooked. Serve hot.

Stuffed fuzzy melon

The name fuzzy melon (毛瓜) sounds like a joke to me! But this melon really has little hair all over its skin, and it tastes pretty mellow too. I particularly like it with pork and dried scallop. Here is a recipe of stuffed fuzzy melon I tried out some evening. I've found that stuffed melons taste much better steamed than baked. Baking uses dry heat, which makes the melons hard and dry. The moist heat of steaming makes the melon soft and tender. If the melons are allowed to sit for a while after steaming, they absorb the flavor of the fillings much better.


Recipe: Fuzzy melon stuffed with pork and dried scallop (make 5 stuffed pieces)


Ingredients:
- 1 medium fuzzy melon, about 1 lb
- 1 tablespoon (TB) dried scallops, soaked overnight in 2 TB water
- 3 oz minced pork

- 2 teaspoon (tp) dried black mushroom, soaked and chopped to fine pieces

- 1 tp small dried shrimps

- 1 TB sesame oil

- 1 tp light soy sauce

- 1/4 tp salt
- 1/4 tp sugar
- 1/2 tp cornstarch
- dash of pepper
- dash of cumin
- 2 TB water
- 1 tp spring onion, finely chopped


Procedure
- Peel fuzzy melon, and chop into rolls of 1.5" tall. Use a corer to dig a cavity of 1" deep in each roll. Set aside.
- Mix pork with water, sesame oil, light soy sauce, salt, sugar pepper and cumin. Mix thoroughly and let sit for 10 minutes. Then tear re-hydrated scallop into thin threads. Save 1/4 of it for later use. Add remaining scallop with dried shrimps and mushroom into pork. Mix and stir in one direction until the mixture becomes gluey. Then fill the cavity of each fuzzy melon roll with the pork mixture. When stuffing the melon, try to leave no air bubbles between the cavity and the filling. Top each filled roll with threads of scallop. Steam right away or chill until 30 minutes before steaming.
- Set up steamer. Place fuzzy melon rolls on shallow plate and steam for 25-30 minutes. Sprinkle spring onions on top and serve hot.

The fuzzy melon tastes really good after absorbing some of the juice from the filling. The leftover melon flesh and seeds from carving does not have to go wasted. It can be used to make a soup. The seeds are completely edible and actually taste great in congee.