Cold Shredded Chicken

Need an easy appetizer? This is it...

Shredded Chicken
Soy sauce
Sesame oil
Green onion and/or cilantro
Sesame seeds 

Just mix all together and chill. Wish I had shredded jelly fish to add. I think thin cucumber slices would go well in the mix as well. 

Cumin Fatty Beef

Tis the season for hotpot...and sometimes we forget we can't eat as much as we used to in our youth. In this case, we had an extra pound of fatty sliced beef leftover. It can't be refrozen...so what to do? This:

Fatty sliced beef
Onion
Cumin
Caraway seeds
Chili pepper 

Soy sauce
Sesame oil
Salt
Green onion garnish

Sauté the onions with the spices, add the beef. Continue sautéing with the rest of the seasoning until all the liquid is evaporated. Then garnish with green onions for color. Goes great with rice! (What's even better is to do this with sliced lamb.) Enjoy!

Classic Chicken wing stew

Stews make easy meals as well...I can chop veggies during Baby's early afternoon nap and then during the early evening nap I put everything into a pot/slow cooker/thermal cooker and let it simmer for a couple hours until Hubby's home and it's all ready to eat. And if the stew is chocked full of veggies then I don't have to prepare that either. Just make rice and enjoy!

Here I actually pan seared the wings first, added the veggies, a bit of stock (not too much because the veggies let out a fair bit of water too) and seasoning and then covered for 45min on low heat. Chicken wings cook pretty fast...especially if seared already. 

Chicken Wings

Various veggies you can find: Carrots and Green & Yellow zucchinis were in my fridge this time

Soy sauce (dark and light)

Sugar

Cornstarch (to dust the chicken wings in before searing)

Cooking wine

Sesame Oil

Enjoy!

Steamed Turbot

 
Growing up, I loved eating steamed fish. When fresh, it tastes fantastic dipped in soy sauce over steaming white rice. Now that my thyroid's been stable for a year, I'm slowly reintroducing seafood back into my diet.

Turbot...it doesn't even sound like a fish...but it's like a cross between sole and halibut. They're all flat, bottom dwelling type fish that swim on it's side...with two eyes on the same side of the head. Pretty creepy looking but pretty cool. Anyways....really easy to cook:

Corn starch - lightly rubbed on after fish is gutted, washed, patted dry
Ginger - steam WITH the fish to reduce the "fishy" scent

Green onions
Light soy sauce
Sesame oil

These last three ingredients you add when the fish is confirmed cooked. Just add and cover for a minute so the steam softens the onions a little. Then enjoy!

Green Steak and Ham

A MEAT post!!! Finally! ...but no ham in this...I was just thinking about Dr Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham book.

My husband told me about a cilantro mint chutney that his coworker shared with him once. It's simply:
A bunch of fresh mint
A bunch of fresh cilantro
Thai chilies (as many or as little as you like....I would recommend at LEAST one)
A spoon of sugar

And then blend it to a saucy consistency.
We only have the Magic Bullet...and had trouble with the leaves sticking to the walls and not coming down. So we added about 1/3 cup of olive oil. It ended up being a thick paste. Keeps for a couple weeks in the fridge.

What's great about it, is that it can be used to marinate ANY meat. In this case, I used it on steak. I thinned out several spoons of the paste with some grapeseed oil since it was going into the BBQ. In hindsight, I should've only used grapeseed oil since olive oil burns in high tempuratures....like in the BBQ. Here I've got some rib steak marinating in the green goodness:




And after grilling to a beautiful medium rare, I took more chutney, added some lemon juice and minced garlic to make a chimichuri sauce for the steak. SO GOOD.



The sides are a quick Asian pickles and grilled cauliflour.

Pickles:
Cucumbers
Couple spoons of white vinegar (you're supposed to use rice vinegar)
Spoon of sugar
Minced garlic
Spoon or two of soy sauce
few drops of sesame oil

Grilled cauliflour was tossed in grapeseed oil, salt, pepper and parmesan cheese.

Soy Lime Salmon

Another easy marinade:

Fresh Salmon
Soy Sauce
Lime juice
Sugar
a few drops of Sesame Oil

As you pan fry, watch the meat turn color from the pan upwards. When the pale color reaches halfway, then flip the fish and watch the pale color come up again. I personally like it "just" cooked so that it's still got a little bit of pink in the middle. Skywalker, my husband, like it cooked through so that you can flake the fish easily. Up to you though! Cheers.

Warm Asian Slaw

In my mind, this was supposed to be a warm Asian slaw. What makes something Asian? It seems to be the use of soy sauce, sesame oil and if you have toasted sesame seeds handy (which I didn't but close enough)...oh and cooked vegetables. I think the only raw vegetables I've ever seen growing up were the garnishes. You know, the dyed turnip roses, carrot butterflies, sprigs of cilantro, etc. Yes, I'm Asian and we eat vegetables cooked!

 

Purple cabbage

Carrots

Onion

Soy sauce

Sesame Oil

Pinch of sugar

 

It tasted really good...but visually, I think I would cook the carrots separately before mixing it into the purple cabbage at the end. That way the carrots' bright orange colours won't be muddied. Adding some green through some chopped cilantro would also be awesome too. Next time.

Wings!

I <3 chicken wings. Big time. I could never turn down an offer of wings. There's so many ways and recipes to marinate them and it just so happens I also love trying out different flavors. An easy way to prepare wings is to marinate them in a baggie then freeze it. When you want to use it, just defrost and cook...it's perfect whether you pan fry, BBQ, bake or smoke it.

I bought a big package of wings from Costco yesterday. After roughly dividing them into three bags, I prepared the marinades. They are (from left bag to right):

Left:
The Quick BBQ Marinade

Center:
Curry/Garam Masala mix
Cumin
Paprika
Sugar
Salt

Right:
Date honey
Soy Sauce (light and dark)
Garlic
Sesame Oil

Can't wait to eat these!

Adhoc Korean Shortrib Marinade

This happens more often than not...I look up a recipe for inspiration and find that I'm missing an ingredient or two...or five. Unless it's the main ingredient, I consider myself too lazy practical to make a trip out to the grocery store to get it. No time and not worth the gas. I always look for what's "close enough" and already in my cupboards or fridge. That was the case for the Korean shortribs, or Galbi, I wanted to marinade. But I made do with this:

Soy sauce
Rice wine
Brown sugar or Honey
Garlic
Ginger
Lime juice
Black Pepper
Sesame Oil

What I was missing or had substituted from the real recipe (taken from Maangchi.com):

Cooking wine
Korean pear or Bosc pear
Onion

But you know, my adhoc one was still really really tasty. =)

Essential Korean Ingredients

If you've ever wanted to know, and I did, here are the essential Korean cooking ingredients:

http://www.maangchi.com/guide/essential-ingredients