Of Steaks and Candy Apples

Trying to fix my sleep schedule is not easy. Especially when you nap from 4-6pm. When I woke up, I knew I wouldn't have enough time to cook the steaks I defrosted overnight and get to class by 7pm, so I grabbed a candy apple that a friend got for me earlier today (thanks dude!). I'll just present the following photos in succession. 

And done.

Nothing like waking up and enjoying a candy apple :P

After starving throughout class (granola bars are a poor excuse of sustenance...especially in place of dinner), I decided to marinate two steaks with oyster sauce and some cooking wine. For veggies, I chopped up a red, orange, and yellow bell pepper, an onion, garlic, and sautéed them together, finally adding chicken broth to reduce. To keep with the steak flavor profile, I added some oyster sauce to the veggies as well. I pan-seared the steaks, toasted some bread, puréed some of the bell pepper reduction as a fun sauce, and dug in :)

A nice medium steak in the middle.

Best part is, the 2nd steak and the remaining veggies are packed for lunch tomorrow.

How I Did It:

Veggies:

1. On medium-high heat, sauté onions, add salt. Once browned, throw in bell peppers, garlic, stir occasionally for 5 min.

2. Add about 1/3 can of chicken broth and some oyster sauce

3. Let it reduce.

4. I actually threw this mixture into the steak pan after taking the steaks out so the veggies would pick up some caramelized steak flavor.

Steak:

1. Marinade steaks and bring them to room temperature (just leave them out, ~10 min).

2. On high heat, sear steaks for 4 min, I leave the lid on so they cook inside

3. Flip and cook for 4 min

4. Take them out of the pan and let them rest for a little.

Macaroni and Meatballs

Just finished a DELICIOUS dinner. I had 1 lb of ground turkey leftover in my freezer so I decided to make my 2nd batch of turkey meatballs. I chopped up 1/3 of a white onion, garlic, a small jalapeno, and mixed it with the turkey. Added salt, pepper, paprika, chili flakes, soya sauce, and the secret ingredient: one egg. The egg helps the lean turkey become juicy on the inside since there's not much fat to start off with.

Formed them into 1 inch diameter meatballs and powdered them off with potato starch for a nicer crust when you fry them. Turned my stove on high and pan fried the meatballs, flipping them onto uncooked sides every so often. Added Classico spinach and cheese sauce along with some canned diced tomato and simmered the whole thing for another 5-10 minutes until no longer pink inside. 

Voila.

It was DELICIOUS. 1 pound of turkey made 15 meatballs, of which I've only devoured 5, so lots of yummy leftovers :)

Here's the recipe:

Meatballs:

1 pound of turkey

1/3 white onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 small jalapeno

1 egg

salt

pepper

paprika

chili flakes

potato starch

Sauce:

Classico spinach and cheese tomato sauce

1 cup of canned diced tomatoes (including juice)

Directions:

1. Combine meatball ingredients together, season to taste (though don't eat any of the raw turkey, duh)

2. Pan fry meatballs on high, adjust to med-high if needed

3. Turn meatballs once each side is browned

- the pan frying should take 6-8 minutes

4. Once all sides are browned, add sauce (to prevent burning) and turn heat down to medium

5. Cover with a lid and cook until done (another 6-8 min...I just cut them open to check for non-pinkiness)

Enjoy.

Cooking Chinese, Ordering Sushi

This post is about the actual Chinese food I make at home. I've got an assortment of food I'd eat more often, food I'd make much less often, and food to order when you're just craving.

First off is a simple stir-fried bok choy, sliced beef and vermicelli in the bottom there (though you can't really see it). Super simple, serves my veggie/protein needs, and relatively tasty (just add soy sauce).

On this day, I went full out making Chinese food you'd find in a restaurant. Little did I know how much salt and oil and that requires! This is why I don't make restaurant-style Chinese food on a daily basis, it is TOTALLY different from what Chinese people actually eat at home. However, on this day I pan-fried some chicken thighs marinated in oyster sauce, stir-fried asparagus and olives, and used the leftover oil from frying the chicken to crisp up some noodles. It was SO salty, and VERY oily, and I actually didn't feel very good after (or during the meal for that matter...I had to drink tons of water). It will be quite a long time before I fry noodles again.

On another night, my roommate and I decided to order sushi! It's always pricey and this one came out to around $35 dollars if I remember correctly....but it gave me the excuse to pull out these Japanese dishes that I rarely use. It also came with shrimp sushi (that was put in a separate container...due to my allergies).

Mmmm....

PS...I LOVE the Korean sushi roll (that's the one in the front with the fake crab, egg, cucumber, radish, and beef).

Sometimes I get frozen dumplings (though not often anymore), and decide to be lazy one night so I them out of the freezer. You simply boil them until they float (and I also cut it open because I'm still a novice at telling when it's cooked through). I had some Chinese vegetables that I stir-fried to complete the dish. I believe this is Chinese broccoli (Gai Lan). What's important is that it's green.

Potluck Chili

I was invited to a potluck, so I wanted to do something legitimate compared to my past potlucks where I made fried rice (sounds better than it was) or edamame beans. Since I now possess a slow cooker (thanks mom), my roommate and I decided to make chili! Since he's Muslim, we went out to buy 2 pounds of ground halal beef. We followed a recipe (http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/slow-cooked-chili/Detail.aspx) but replaced a can of kidney beans for chickpeas, added a 4-inch long jalapeno pepper, cilantro, basil leaves, garlic cloves, oregano, and the other can of kidney beans was replaced with a mixed-bean can. 

After setting it on low and leaving it for 10 hours (yes, 10 hours), it looked like this:

It was pretty spicy for my taste, but my roommate didn't find it spicy at all (then again, he's Indian). We brought shredded mozzarella cheese to the potluck to top off the chili too. Since there was pizza at the potluck, my chili also turned out to be a great dipping sauce for the crust too :P 

There were some leftovers so we brought it back home. It made for a great snack/fast meal. Here it is topped with mozzarella and that herb I just love so much.

I think next time I'll try other types of meat (steak, ground turkey), and maybe cook the meat with onions before throwing it into the slow cooker (which would have some raw onions as well). So many possibilities!

Leftover Thanksgiving Turkey Menu

So I FINALLY got back to posting food, after a hectic midterm season (which still runs this week but I can't study right now). I promised to post some meals I made with leftover turkey from Thanksgiving so here they are! It's been so long since I've made these so I'll try to recollect as best I can, although the pictures do speak for themselves :)

First up looks like a salad I made with spinach, cilantro, onions, cherry tomatoes and turkey! I also had cranberry sauce leftover that was packed for me so that turned out to be my dressing for the salad. I thought it was a pretty neat idea (since the only other salad dressing I had was ranch...which wouldn't have paired with these ingredients as well).

Here we have a turkey omelette wrap (which are much healthier than sandwiches since sandwiches are pretty much 2/3rds carbs). I think I've got cilantro, maybe spinach in the egg, tomatoes, onions, and white cheddar in that wrap. I always overstuff my wraps because I underestimate how small the pita is when it wraps up haha...I don't particularly enjoy chewing on 50% wrap when I reach the end anyways (if you fold the bottom in).

For one dinner, I heated up some ratatouille (store-bought) and put turkey with leftover gravy on top. I was at  a potluck where I made meat chili but had some vegetarian friends there too, so I bought them ratatouille. Interestingly, they didn't really eat it so I brought it back home. It was delicious actually, so it was their loss haha.

Finally I had another "Deconstructed Sandwich", which was open-faced and so I mixed and matched layering of tomato/cucumber/white cheddar. You can't really see the olive bread underneath but I toasted three small slices to hold everything.

Next post: Potluck chili!

It's good to be writing again :)

Quick Update

I've been super busy with midterm season recently, so I am deeply sorry for not posting anything recently! I have TONS of pictures including my turkey leftover album, potluck chili, and more! I'll be writing midterms until Thursday, then heading to New York City (where I'll be taking lots of pictures) and writing more midterms the week I return (pending our school's strike status...) Hopefully I'll be able to sneak in a few short posts but stay tuned!