This is one of my favorites. So simple, yet so good. If I am submitting a recipe for competition, this would be it!
Simple and Classic Pasta
Simple and Classic Pasta - Chopped & Grated
Ingredients: Any kind of Pasta you like, Parmesan cheese, Fresh Tomatoes, Fresh Basil. Canned anchovy in olive oil, raw Garlic, Salt and Olive oil for taste (No measuring cups and spoons for this. You add more of what you like. The secret ingredient is the ANCHOVYS).
Simple and Classic Pasta - Ingredients
Step 1: Boil a pot of water for pasta.
Step 2: While you wait for the water to boil, you dice the tomatoes. For clean looking final product, I discard the seeds and inner ribs. I dice only the outer meat.
Step 3: Finely chop your basil and anchovy. A generous amount of anchovy keeps your pasta full of flavor.
Step 4: Grate the parmesan cheese and garlic. It’s important that you grate the garlic. Garlic enhance your pasta, yet you don’t want to bite into pieces of garlic.
Step 5: Cook your boxed pasta in a boiling water to your liking.
Step 6: Just mix everything together. Cooked pasta + diced tomatoes + chopped basil + chopped anchovy + grated parmesan + grated garlic + fresh olive oil + salt (just a bit for taste, anchovy is already quite salty) = the pasta you’ll ever had.
Again, for this kind of simple recipe, the quality of ingredients is ESSENTIAL to the taste of this dish. Use room- temperate tomatoes, plumped red, ripped on vine, for its peak flavor. Don’t get pre-grated parmesan cheese. More importantly, don’t use garlic paste that has been sitting on the shelf for months. And, never use dried basil.
I like this recipe so much that I bought a pasta making machine, so that I’ll be using freshly made pasta rather than dried boxed pasta. More to my fresh pasta in later post.
It’s refreshing, light, yet full of flavor. You won’t crave for meat with this vegetarian friendly dish.
Here is a fool proof deep frying recipe. I’ve tried this many times and it always works.
Fried Mash Potato
Ingredients: All Purpose Flour, Egg(s), Japanese bread crumbs. And, vegetable oil, or lard (if you use lard, your fried item will feel less greasy. It’s a contradiction. Because lard/ frying oil solidified at room temperature, unlike vegetable oil, you don’t get runny oil). Plus your fried item, in this case, mash potato.
Okay. I need to mention a bit on this frying oil/ vegetable shortening/ hydrogenated oil/ trans fat topic while I’m at it. Read more…
Tomato and Mozzarella Salad
I wouldn’t exactly call this a recipe. Because it’s just simply combining the ingredients. I’m here promoting Trader Joe’s cheese. Their cheese are relatively inexpensive and high in quality. I bought a few variety of them last time when I was there. Fresh Mozzarella is one of them. It’s great salad recipe, and it’s easy to prepare large quantity when you have a big group of guest coming over.
If you have never tried fresh mozzarella, you ought to try this recipe. Fresh mozzarella are soaked in water. If you see those in a vacuumed package, that’s not it. Not considered fresh.
You can basically slide tomato and mozzarella and serve it like sandwich. A slice of tomato, one slice mozzarella, and sweet basil sandwich in between. Sprinkle with some salt, drizzle cold pressed extra virgin olive oil, top with some balsamic vinegar reduction.
For these kind of simple dish, the freshness of the ingredients is very important. And, make sure, when consume, your tomato is at the room temperature. That’s when the tomato aroma is at its peak. Again, a tomato with waxy skin is not a fresh one.
Tomato and Mozzarella - Ingredients
Ingredients: Fresh Mozzarella, Tomatoes, Sweet basil. Balsamic vinegar reduction (optional).
Balsamic Vinegar Reduction: 3/4 cup Balsamic vinegar, 1/2 cup Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, 1/8 tsp Cayenne pepper, 1/4 tsp salt, 1.5 TBS sugar. 1 TBS water. Reduce the liquid to 1/3 cup in medium heat.
I made mine a bit fancy. First, I open the top to serve it as a lid. Then, I peel the skin. Follow by, hollowing out the inside, so that it serves as a bowl. Fill the inside with mozzarella and sweet basil (I improvised with regular I have left over from my Tom Yum Vege dish), and some salt, pepper, oil, vinegar.
One more presentation element. I use a square paper as template, powder some paprika. Done!
A simple semi-stew vegetable dish that satisfy your vege need. Choose any vegetables you like (carrots, potato, egg plant, zucchini, broccoli, pumpkin, sweet peas, etc.). I pick egg plant, zucchini, and cauliflower combination because I feel that it best compliments Thai flavors. The trick of this dish is that you make sure to pick the vegetables that cook at the same time. Or, you drop each vegetables into the pot at different time in order to be all properly cooked. You don’t want to end up with some vege are overly cooked and mushy while others are undercook and tough. Remember that root vegetables (carrots, potato) take longer to cook.
Tom Yum Vege Pot
Tom Yum Vege - Ingredients
Ingredients: 2 medium Onion (finely chopped), 2 cloves garlic (finely chopped), 1 small cauliflower (cut into small pieces), 1 small egg plant (cubed), 1 medium zucchini (cubed), 1 TBS fish sauce, 1 bunch basil (coarsely chopped, use Asian basil, not the sweet basil you use with your pasta), 2 TBS water, One 15-oz can Straw Mushroom (drained. It adds great texture to the dish), Few chili (depend on taste, but essential for flavor), One 5.6-oz Coconut Milk (key ingredient), 2 TBS Tom Yum Soup Paste (key ingredient).
Tom Yum Vege - Chopped
You chop up all the vegetables. Open all the cans. If you’re a fast chopper, you can chop up onion first. While the onion is caramelizing, you chop up the remaining vegetables. Make sure you have big enough pot. After you chop up the vegetables, you’ll be surprise how much you end up with.
Step 1: Grease pan with vegetable oil (my favorite is peanut oil, just add more flavor), cook the onion until golden brown (about 3 minutes).
Step 2: Add garlic and chili. Stir (30 seconds).
Step 3: Add in all the vegetables (depending on the cooking time of each vegetable type, you might need to wait few minutes between each addition. In this case, no waiting needed).
Tom Yum Vege - Important Ingredients
Step 4: Add those “base ingredients,” fish sauce, tom yum paste, and coconut milk. And, a little water to easily mix it all together.
Step 5: Vegetables should give out some liquid. Once it comes to a boil, it’s done! You can leave it a bit longer if you want your vegetables to be more tender. Personally, I like mine with some crisp texture in the vegetable.
Optional: Thai food tend to have heavy sugar. You can add 1 TBS Sugar if you like. I like mine to be sour and spicy, so I add a splash of lime juice.
If you try my recipes, please let me know how it turns out.
Rice congee/ porridge is great to eat when you’re having a flu. When you’re having a sore throat, runny nose, nasal congestion, and so forth, this is something great for your body. It’s full of nutrition that your body can easily absorb. Of course, typical Chinese don’t just have it when they’re sick. It’s eaten primarily as a breakfast food.
Congee
Rice congee is basically rice cook for a long period of time. I like mine on the watery side, so I don’t use a rice cooker with the congee setting. I simply cook it in a pot for an hour. When I prepare a pot of rice congee, I eat it all day, even for a whole week. Great for diet. I substitute congee for rice, and goes great with side dishes.
Congee - Ingredients
Ingredients: 1/2 cup raw rice, 3 slices ginger (depend on taste), 4 dried scallops (secret ingredient here), 9 cups water (more or less depending on your heat and thickness preference). Serves 4.
Step 1: Soak 1/2 cup raw rice in cold water for at least one hour. You’ll see that the rice will expand to about a cup.
Step 2: Put everything in a pot (rice + ginger + dried scallops + water). Lid on. Heat high.
Step 3: Watch closely, because once boiled, it will overflow. You remove the lid, stir to prevent rice sticking to the pot bottom. ***Optional*** At this point, I add a fillet of frozen fish.
Step 4: Heat on medium to low. Lid half closed. Stir occasionally to prevent rice sticking to the bottom.
Step 5: After one hour. Rice grains should broken down considerably. The liquid has gluey consistency. Done!
Note: If you don’t have a measuring cup, the proportion is half to 9.
You can see from my picture that I enjoy my congee with “thousand year old egg.” I don’t know who came up with that name. It’s basically a preserved egg. And the first time I saw it on TV was on the Fear Factory. It was hilarious to watch those contestants chock on it. I was saying in front of the TV that I’ll take that $10K and eat all those eggs for you. I LOVE that 1000-Year-Old egg. Good in a salad too!
Every Asians should know how to fry up his/her own version of rice. If you’re an Asian, and don’t know how to fry rice, shame on you! But, no worries, you can copy my version.
Fried Rice
Ingredients: 2 cups cooked rice, half small onion (diced), 3-4 shrimps (chop into chunks. I use shrimps cause it’s left over from my Spicy Shrimp few days ago, you can also substitute it with dried shrimps), 1 dried Chinese sausage (it’s a stable in my freezer. You can store it FOREVER there. Versatile to use in every dishes), 1 egg (beaten, use 2 if you want your fried rice to be looking deliciously golden yellow, but watch out for those cholesterol if you’re an old man like me), 1 TBS soy sauce (you don’t need much, even half TBS works. You just need some for flavor), 2 springs green onion (for looking colorful of course!)
Steps are important here. Egg is added at the end. Green onion is added at the end end.
Step 1: Grease your pan with butter, olive oil, lard, whichever fat you like. Of course if you use lard, it’d taste the best.
Step 2: Sauteed onion until soften.
Step 3: Add the raw meat. In this case, shrimps and sausage.
Step 4: After the meat is cooked. Add rice. When the rice is breaking down into individual grains, it’s ready for the next step. There’s a secret here. If you use cold rice, rather than fresh cooked rice, it is better to handle, and to better avoid the risk of MASHY fried rice.
Step 5: Drizzle some soy sauce. Mix the soy sauce into the rice.
Step 6:Add egg on top of that steamy fried rice and stir QUICKLY. If you like to see pieces of egg, then stir SLOWLY. Quickly stirred fried rice will make the egg into small pieces and almost invisible, but leaving a nice golden-yellow colored rice.
Step 7: Turn off heat. Add green onion. Stir and ready.
As you can see from the picture, I use my freshly pickled Persian cucumbers as my condiment. Yummmy!
This is one of my signature dishes. It’s simple and very good. And, yet it’s still around five ingredients, sort of.
Spicy Shrimps
Spicy Shrimps - Ingredients
Ingredients: 1 lb of large shrimps (take few out for fried rice later), 1 TBS (table spoon) of paprika or cayenne pepper, 1 TBS fish sauce plus 1TBS Evian water (if you’re a poor student, you can use tap water), 1 median size onion – finely chopped (yield about 2 cups), 2 cloves of garlic -finely chopped, few fresh chili (the more the better, it’s an aphrodisiac), a spring of green onion for garnish.
Caramelized Onion - Before
Step 1: Generous amount of oil is the key in restaurant quality tasting. Heat oil burning hot in pan. Add onion. The secret technique in this dish is to caramelize the onion to super golden brown, almost to the verge of burning. But, of course, don’t burn it (see before and after pic).
Step 2: Add chopped garlic. Stir it into the onion for 15 seconds.
Caramelized Onion - After
Step 3: Add paprika, and shrimps. Stir for another 30 seconds.
Step 4: Add fish sauce with water. When the shrimps are firm, it means they’re cooked.
Step 5: Add fresh chili and green onion for color and heat.
Spicy Shrimps - Ingredients
Note: Onion, garlic, and paprika are the base of this dish. You can replace shrimps with mushrooms for a vegetarian appeal. Fish fillet is also a good supplement.
Three-cup Pork - Result
My variation on the previous recipe: I simply replace 1 lb of chicken with 1 lb of pork. It’s an inexpensive piece of cut, usually Butt Roast or Shoulder. To make it fancy, I just switch the ginger to garlic (about 2-3 cloves).
You cut the meat into thumb-size pieces. The difference is you DON’T put ginger/garlic right after the pan is heated with oil. You put the meat FIRST and cook it for about 10 minutes until the moisture is evaporated. You left with just pork and oil. Pieces of pork are dried and brown with a pork jerky like feel. It’s important that you add the garlic/ginger at this point when the pork is completely fried. Because it takes long time to cook the pork, if you at the garlic in the beginning, you’ll end up with burn ones. Finally, you add those three cups of liquid. Cook for a minute or so to let the alcohol evaporate.
Though both Recipe 001 and 002 have similar ingredients, the order you put in ginger/garlic makes a big difference. Two taste completely different too.
Why not cook both at once. Monday, pork with rice. Tuesday, chicken with rice. Or, you can go, pork lunch, and chicken dinner. I’ll post a shrimp recipe next!
Here, my challenge is to create recipe with fewer than five ingredients. And, I’m contemplating if I should consider soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine as part those those 5 ingredients. With that in mind, let me start off with the classic Taiwanese dish, Three-cup Chicken. Those three cups refer to one part rice wine, one part soy sauce, and one part sesame oil.
Three-cup chicken - Ingredients
Ingredients: 1 lbs of chicken boneless thigh, 2 table spoon of each: Rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil. And, about 4 slices of ginger, the amount is depending on your taste. Ginger, you can cut it, chop it, or julienne it. Chinese basil is optional, though it will add authenticity to the dish; you add this right before you turn off the fire.
Step 1: Put generous amount of cooking oil in the pan. Oil should coat the entire surface. Heat on.
Step 2: Cut the chicken into bite size pieces. Note about the different chicken thigh meat and chicken breast meat is the taste texture and health perception. Thigh meat tends to be more tender due to its higher fat content, whereas breast meat is dryer when sauteed. Thigh meat doesn’t dry out fast, which means you can cook it longer and it still remains tender. More suitable for amateur cook to handle. FYI, thigh is dark meat; breast is white meat.
Step 3: Once your pan is super hot, add ginger. Browning ginger takes about one minute.
Step 4: Add chicken. Spread out the chicken quickly. Don’t stir the meat for first two minutes, because you want to create a nice brown crust on the chicken surface.
Three-cup chicken - Result
Step 5: Once, the chicken is deliciouslybrown, and thoroughly cooked, Add those three cup of liquid. Cook off the liquid. When the dishes has a proper moist consistency you like, it’s done!
Note: If you’re on the heavier-taste side, which means you like your food highly seasoned with salt, you can sprinkle some salt into your raw chicken prior to browning it in the pan.
May you have a successful YUMMY dish!
