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!

Thanksgiving Eating Festivities

Back from a great thanksgiving weekend, I basically let my healthy go out the window for the weekend...but it's still lingering around today (I finished a half bag of chips while watching TV...) Anyways, my family had the classic turkey dinner, prepared pretty much by my brother. He likes to cook off of www.foodnetwork.ca and surprisingly does a pretty good job :P Saturday night was turkey night, so he let the turkey sit in a brine bath overnight, seasoned the outside, and roasted it for 4 hours I believe.

It came out a little burnt...but the meat was delicious (and the skin's got all the fat anyways :P)

After "carving" the turkey with an electric knife (we didn't really need the formalities of traditional carving), we amassed a huge plate of turkey meat :)

As a side, my brother prepared a roasted root vegetable dish, and the recipe can be found here: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Side/Vegetables/recipe.html?dishID=8640 so, thank you chef Michael Smith. We didn't have any maple syrup so it was substituted with brown sugar. It was still really good.

And here's one of four identical servings I ate that night (minus the corn for every plate). As you can see, we're super Asian when it comes to our plates for holiday meals.

After dinner, we were sentenced to chop up and freeze A LOT of root vegetables (sweet potatoes, yams, beets) since both my home and my apartment were running low. I wish I took a picture of just how much we chopped, but I didn't. I'm pretty sure it was a good 30-45min of peeling and chopping....yay! (However, the convenience and meals I make with those ingredients later will be the "real yay")

I swear it's not blood....it's just beet juice....

The next day, we decided to make chicken wings and poutine. The chicken wings came in a box from Maple Lodge Farms already marinated with BBQ and honey garlic (separately). Honestly, they took FOREVER to crisp up, and I didn't feel like waiting at the time to wait for the honey garlic wings to crisp so we just pulled them out as such:

For our poutine, we sort of followed this recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Cheese/recipe.html?dishid=11311 by letting the Yukon gold potatoes soak in water overnight, but we didn't deep fry them so it didn't really matter much. We just baked them in the oven. I wanted to have wedge-style poutine but it doesn't really work because it's just to big to fit in your mouth alongside cheese curds. Next time we're planning on super skinny fries (that we'll pan fry....we do have a deep fryer but it's so unhealthy....) and the use of sweet potatoes. Maybe another type of cheese? (I've done blue cheese before). Can you tell I really like poutine :P

Later that night, as a mahjong snack food, my brother and I made some salsa :D This time, we cut the tomatoes a lot smaller, and used a jalapeno pepper to spice it up. Also added were onions, cilantro, lime zest, lime juice, salt, and pepper. Tortilla chips were provided by Costco, the brand of which I can't recall. It looks like there's a Mayan drawing of a bird on the bag...which is also a tan coloured bag....anyways...

Hope you also had a wonderful thanksgiving and coming soon will be a post on what I'll be doing with all the leftover turkey :D

What happens when you run out of fresh food?

So the last time I went to the grocery store was September 29th, so I've been filling up on Subway, campus food, generally unhealthiness, and frozen/canned food at home. It's been crazy with exams (I just wrote one yesterday, one this morning, and one more tonight!) and I'm sure everyone has those stints with other things that make food less of a priority. So, what did I do? 

I bought some canned diced tomatoes flavoured with garlic and olive oil and so I made myself a bruschetta with defrosted olive bread. I wish I still had cilantro to top that one off..

For one of my dinners, I had a steak dinner, and every ingredient was from the freezer. I still didn't manage to cook the steak fully through without adding water at the end so it wouldn't burn...gotta turn the temperature down next time and cook it for longer (my new stove is super-powerful). I marinated this steak with some steak spice and finally with BBQ sauce at the end (thank you Ribfest :D)

For the veggies I just boiled them in some chicken broth for flavour.

A nice pink on the inside :) mmm.....

And finally to today, this was my meal post-workout. The smoothie's got frozen mangoes, frozen raspberries, orange juice, and vanilla protein powder. My soup was also from the freezer, boiled in half water, half chicken broth. I modified this one so that I'd throw in the scallops, corn, and peas last. Before I threw in all the veggies together but had to wait for the beets and sweet potato to soften, and so the peas and corn would overcook.

 I'm looking forward to grocery shopping tomorrow and then back home for Thanksgiving for some delicious home food! Hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

Look Ma, I turned Breakfast into Lunch!

Today was another great day where I woke up naturally 3 minutes before my alarm would have gone off haha. So I got out of bed and went to my fridge, which is quite empty right now. I realized I still had a little bit of egg whites left in a carton (equivalent to 1 egg really), so I decided to have an omelette. Since I like my omelette (and most meals) with lots of veggies, I stir fried some broccoli with garlic and sliced an avocado to eat fresh (I didn't cook the avocado). I took out the broccoli, added some oil the the pan and cooked the egg. The best part is that the egg picked up all the flavour from the broccoli, garlic, and chicken broth brown bits at the bottom of the pan :D

Since I ate half the avocado waiting for things to cook (that's only the other half you see in the picture), I was feeling kinda full after eating the egg and some broccoli. My appetite for breakfast has never been huge. So, I decided to use the leftovers as my sides for lunch. I cleaned the same pan and cooked up a salmon fillet (after microwave defrosting).

The salmon's got a hole in the middle because I cut it in half to check if it was done (and as always, it wasn't). I added two slices of olive bread and now I'm set for my noon time lunch with a friend :D

Thanks for reading!

Chili, The Weekend Pizza Pocket, and a Deconstructed Sandwich

I've always wanted to make chili for the longest time, but never had the guts to do it I suppose. It's just one of things that seems like a daunting task until you actually do it. So I did it :) Instead of ground beef, I bought a flank tip steak and chopped it up into bite size pieces (my family doesn't like to buy ground meat...I guess we're paranoid about contamination) and browned it with onions in a hot pan for about 5 minutes. Then, I added red/green/yellow bell peppers, V8 juice, and mixed beans. Threw in some garlic cloves, bay leaves, and chili powder and let it simmer for 45 minutes.

It turned out okay, but my roommate said it was really good so I'll trust him on that :P I just felt there was something missing, so next time I think I'm going to make it from scratch (without the V8 juice). However, it was super easy and quick to make, and has been added to my repertoire :D

This weekend, I decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches just like I had back in the days of camping haha. I packed Monterey Jack cheese, pasta sauce, and cilantro in between two pieces of olive bread, and minced garlic to spread on the outside of the olive bread. I pan fried them on med-low heat, sprinkling oregano, salt, and pepper on top. The meal kinda doesn't match well with the whole 'eat healthy' thing I've been doing, but it was just one of those days where you give in haha. For three sandwiches.

For dinner I worked on my pan-fried fish (in this case, salmon) topped with a salsa made of onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, and olives. I planned to have the salmon sitting on top of the salsa, sitting nicely on top of the rice (like I would imagine it in a restaurant), but that didn't really work out... Not bad though, just needed some salt.

Finally, I threw together a spinach/cilantro omelette, olive bread, and chopped vegetables today for a Deconstructed Sandwich. Now, it's not just my fancy name for this dish, because as I ate it, I would sometimes take a bite of each ingredient or I would build a mini open-faced sandwich playing with the order of the layers of food (wow that was a long sentence). In other words, I played with my food because I'm still very a much a kid at the dinner table.

(For my omelette I use two eggs and I add egg white for extra protein and volume of food)

The Weekend Meals aka Leftovers

So I finally cooked an omelette correctly (I turned down my super-powerful stove to medium for most of the cooking time). I still got to learn how to flip them over in one piece though. This picture is a little deceiving because I use two whole eggs and I add egg white...so it's quite a big meal. This one was a mushroom and broccoli omelette I believe. 

I began to finish the fresh food stored in my fridge, and that included shredded chicken (how I miss thee), baby carrots, and leftover rice. I threw it all together and added barbecue sauce (can't beat the Ribfest-bought sauces) and it didn't turn out too bad. Whenever I eat a dish, I try to eat the stuff I don't like first (aka carrots) and the stuff I like last, so I can enjoy it. In hindsight, I should've chopped up the carrots and softened them with heat for longer.

I didn't feel like prepping any meat for this meal, so I grabbed cottage cheese for the protein, and for the awesomeness that is cottage cheese. I suppose I got all artistic with this one...makes up for the butchered omelette presentation.

Still having problems with steak on the stovetop...it burns too fast when I have it on high...but it feels so weird to be cooking steak on medium. The middle was still raw after 2 min/side on high so I ended up deglazing the pan with water for about another 3 min. Added sauteed mushroom/onion/cilantro (have you heard how much I love cilantro? and I'm out right now D: ) and olive bread from the St. Lawrence Market back in Toronto. Also running out of good bread. Who thought it could be so depressing?

Finally, we come to tonight's dinner. I didn't want to think too much so I grabbed two cans of tuna, a can of Campbell's mushroom soup, a bag of snap peas and spaghetti. Softened the peas in mushroom soup + half can of water, combined, voila (I'm getting really lazy with the descriptions aren't I...well its not that hard....seriously). Made enough for lunch as well (other half of steak turned into a sandwich today). This is quite an important point: double your dinner portion for lunch the next day - less cooking, cleaning, more How I Met Your Mother. 

Thanks if you read this far!

Homemade Guacamole and the Experiment

This one's a pretty easy snack to make, and healthy if you replace chips with veggies like sliced cucumbers. Just use one avocado, tomato, onion, cilantro, lime/lemon juice, salt and pepper. It does take some practice to get the amount of each exactly right, but its up to everyone's individual taste. It feels weird now to be out of avocados, but they went to good place :)

Last night, I experimented with some salmon and tried to make a 'salsa-y' type veggie to go along with it. I used red/green bell peppers, broccolli stems, and onions, but...it didn't turn out so hot. For some reason, I started by cooking the veggies first, then the salmon...in the same pan. Long story short, I didn't thaw the salmon enough, veggies got overcooked, and I disguised the taste failure by adding some tomato sauce. It was just one of those days.

I'm definitely gonna come back to this recipe and perfect it. Man...I still have one portion to finish still...

One of my Quick, 10 min, Automatic Dinners

So I worked out earlier and had a salad that wasn't too much of a showcase to post. It was simply shredded Sobey's roast chicken, a fried egg, greens, chocolate milk (separately). However for dinner, I made it almost completely from freezer-stored food and within 10 minutes. I have frozen corn, peas, diced beets, and diced sweet potato (thanks mom). I threw them all into a pot with half chicken broth, half water, and brought it to a boil for 10 min. At the 8th minute or so, I threw in frozen scallops so they wouldn't overcook. You'll know when the ingredients are done by stabbing them with a fork (specifically scallops and sweet potatoes). This meal is super easy to make and clean up, you just have to have some bite size frozen stuff to make it that's prepared by your parents :)
WARNING: It's kinda healthy.

It was still steaming when I took this shot. Now I'm wondering why I put it into a plate when I could've eaten out of the pot....

Grand Re-Opening

And we're back! After an extended summer vacation from the blog, I'll be starting up again and hopefully I'll be posting a few meals each week.

I feel like coming back from my home home and cooking for myself now will take a little bit of time to adjust. After all, almost every meal during my summer break was prepared and planned out for me. However, I'm trying a new system where I buy lots of veggies and chop half of them up to store in plastic baggies. That way, I can just grab a bag to snack on or use as part of a meal.

So, the first meal I just made was a simple salad with some shredded Sobey's roast chicken. I've got the layers as follows: baby arugula, cilantro, cucumbers, tomatoes, red peppers, cottage cheese, onions, chicken, balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

In terms of carbs, I try to eat them only at breakfast and after exercise. So that includes bread, rice, pasta, all the grain-y stuff. I must admit I do sneak in several crackers if I'm really hungry at night (but I handle carbs well anyways). I'm trying to fill up at the non-carb meals with veggies mainly. It's been kinda hard but it's definitely good for me.

Now, to share some of the great food I had over the summer break:

My mom stuffed salmon with parsley and cilantro and then wrapped it with prosciutto and threw them in the oven. Delicious.

My brother and I experimented with salsa recipes several times. Not bad to snack on during family mahjong games haha.

BBQ chicken wings on the barbecue made by yours truly :P

And finally, this is in memory of the Western glass I bought as a gift for my brother, which I ended up using more at home. It shattered, but it was a great colour match for my blueberry smoothie. Goodbye old friend.

Stay tuned for more!