Experimental... Stuffed Mushrooms

When I was in Seattle, I had stuffed mushrooms at the Cheesecake Factory and I was amazed at how good they tasted. The other night, my mother and I decided to try to make them. We didn't use a recipe - just kind of winged it instead, and it actually turned out really good. I'll probably get a real recipe sometime in the future but if you're in a fix and you don't have a lot of time or ingredients, here's a real easy one.

This is what you'll need:

- Big mushrooms (we bought a pack of big white mushrooms from Giant labeled "Stuffing Mushrooms")

- Ground meat.. any kind will do

- Bread crumbs

- Soy sauce

- Whatever herbs you like

First, get some ground meat... we used pork, but you could also use beef or anything else. Pork worked great but I imagine beef would be even better (maybe just because I like beef more).

Add a tablespoon or two of soy sauce, and then just sprinkle on some salt/pepper and various herbs. I think we used basil, thyme, and rosemary. Mix it all up in a bowl like so:

Next, you'll want to sprinkle some bread crumbs on top of this mixture and stir it up some more.

It's time to prepare the mushrooms. Get the mushrooms and cut around the stalk. Don't cut too deep... a pretty shallow cut around the base should do the trick. After cutting all the way around, the stalk should come out pretty easily.

Do this to all of the mushrooms.

Next, put the filling into the mushrooms.

Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the mushrooms. Add Parmesan cheese if you have it.. we didn't, but we would've added it if we did. Then sprinkle some olive oil over them so that they don't get too dry and burnt during the cooking.

Now all you gotta do is cook them! Pre-heat the oven to 400 or so and stick them in there until the meat is cooked thoroughly.

DELICIOSO!

Stir Fried Beef with Chili

Here's another simple one for y'all that my dad taught me. Really really quick and easy Chinese stir fried dish... but it's DELICIOUS! Except I just had the dentist cut the gums around my wisdom tooth so eating this was quite painful due to the spiciness... but for those of you who DIDN'T just have an operation on your gums, it should be quite a pleasant experience. It's very typical Chinese... very simple, very quick and very delicious!

To make enough for two people, you'll need

- rice (cook this in the rice cooker or however you want)

- 3 green peppers (you need a certain kind of pepper, I'm not sure what they're called but you can look at the picture to get an idea. once I find out the name I'll update this, meanwhile if you know the name of this type of pepper let me know)

- beef skirt (amount shown in picture later)

- 3-4 cloves of garlic

- a bit of ginger

- a tablespoon of soy sauce

First thing you'll want to do is cut up the garlic. I explained how to do this in an earlier post so won't get into detail but basically take each clove one by one, cut off the hard parts, crush under the blade, peel off skin, and then cut it into little bits. It should look like the picture on the left.

Next, you'll want to cut the ginger. The following pics should give you a good idea of how much you should use. First cut it into thin sheets like in the first picture below, then cut these into thin strips, and then cut these strips into little bits.

Take out the peppers and wash them. Once again I'm not sure what this type of green pepper is called so please let me know if you do know:

Next thing you want to do is cut the peppers right down the middle, just like my dad is doing in the picture. If you want it to be spicier, keep the seeds in - you can also take them out to make it milder. After cutting them down the middle, slice the peppers into thin, long strips, as shown on the left. Do this for all of them. You'll end up with this:

Now it's time to cut the meat. We used about the amount displayed below, but I'd suggest a little more. Anyways first cut it into half length-wise, and then slice it into REALLY thin slices... as thin as possible. Look at the picture for an idea of what it should look like after.

Put the sliced beef skirt into a bowl and add a teaspoon of soy sauce. Using your hands, squeeze/mix the beef with the soy sauce until it's evenly distributed and the sauce has soaked into the meat.

Now it's time to cook! Look at the following picture for a model of proper stir frying technique:

First thing you'll want to do is put some oil in the wok, and then add the ginger and garlic once the oil gets hot. Medium to medium high heat should be just fine. After cooking that for like two minutes, add the sliced peppers and stir fry until it's about as cooked as you want it to be. I like to stir fry it until it darkens and softens a bit. Once it's ready, remove everything from the wok and place the peppers/ginger/garlic aside.

You'll now want to cook the meat. Add more oil to the wok and cook the meat until you can't see any more red. Because of the thinness of the sliced beef skirt, this should happen very quickly. Once there's no more red, add the peppers/garlic/ginger back in and stir for a minute, then take it out. It's ready to eat! Like any other Chinese stir fried dish, you're going to want to eat this with rice.

Here's the final dish, with a side of spinach. Sorry for the off centered picture, I was just too excited to eat it!

Bon appetit! Told you it'd be simple ;).

Ha-Gai-Thai Chicken Curry

Real early in this semester my friend from Israel and I had dinner with these two lovely ladies from Holland and even after like half a year, I never forgot how good the dish he made was. It's his own invention so there's no name for the dish, but it's basically a thai chicken curry with coconuts and a bunch of other stuff in it. Since yesterday was my second last day here, I decided I'd ask him how to make it so I could write a recipe and remember it (as well as share it with all of my loyal readers). Credit goes to my buddy Hagai for the amazing recipe!

INGREDIENTS (using these amounts yesterday, we had enough for two people and had plenty of leftovers. i forgot the precise amounts for most of these but its not really important, just put more of whatever you like):

- two chicken breasts

- 2 medium or 3 small potatoes

- a couple of spring onions (scallions)

- one lemon

- mushrooms

- coconut powder or coconut milk

- rice

- oil

- salt/pepper

- onions

- red pepper

- cumin

- minced garlic

- chili powder

- thai red curry paste

- mango (optional)

First, chop up the potatoes into small cubes. Place them into a bowl (or any container) and add a tiny bit of cooking oil. Add water until it looks like this:

Stir it a little bit, then put it in the microwave for 6-7 minutes. It should be basically cooked after microwaving - if not, just microwave it for a little longer.

Next, chop up the scallions, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and chicken. Keep them separated for now.

Cut off about 1/3 to 1/2 of the lemon and slice it into thin slices.

Now it's time to make the coconut milk. Pour some coconut powder into a glass and then fill it up all the way with water. This is how much powder we used (actually we added a bit more powder after the pic was taken), and how much milk we ended up with:

Now it's time to cook the rice. You can cook it however you want to cook it. Rice cooker would probably be easiest... what we did since we didn't have one, is put the rice into a bowl, then add hot water (amount of water = double the amount of rice) and a bit of salt and oil, mix it up, and mirowave it for 14 minutes.

Now comes the fun part... the cooking. It's pretty easy and what you're basically doing is adding the ingredients one at a time to a big pot/wok until everything is done cooking. You can basically cook it in anything that's big enough to hold the amount that you're cooking. First, add a little bit of oil to the pot and put in some of the thai red curry paste. Mix it up and let it cook for just a minute or two.

Then add the onions and stir it with the paste. You'll want to let this cook for just a couple minutes.

Add the chicken and stir it in. Mix it up every now and then.

Add potatoes, stir for 30 seconds to a minute.

Do same thing for peppers/mangos, and then mushrooms, and then the coconut milk.

Add garlic, nutmeg, cumin, chili powder, and salt and stir. Add the chopped spring onions on top and mix them in. By this point the chicken should be done cooking but if not continue cooking until it's ready.

Final step is to prepare yourself to eat some of the tastiest Thai food you've ever had in your life! Oh yeah, and put it over the rice.

Enjoy.... more coming soon!

Fettucine Alfredo

This is a repost of a recipe I put on facebook:

This is probably the best dish I've eaten since I've gotten to Australia (which isn't saying much, but it's still really good). Credit goes to my buddy Chayapol, who taught me the recipe and is a bad ass chef who hopes one day to start his own restaurant. This note is partly for all of you guys, but also for myself since the dish was so damn good I want to remember how to make it next time. Oh yeah it's also EXTREMELY simple.

Ingredients:

- Flour

- Eggs

- Roma tomatoes (We used two... the amount of this dish we made was enough for two people but we could've had a little more. I was still hungry after I finished eating)

- Garlic

- Olive oil

- Salt

- Pepper

- Milk

- Butter

- White Wine

- Chicken

- Any kind of herbal seasoning you want, we used "mixed herbs" seasoning from the grocery store which is basically just basil, oregano, garlic, shit like that all mixed together

COOKING THE CHICKEN

This is the first thing you have to do. We used two chicken breasts. Cover them in salt and pepper and place each of them in a ziplock bag. Then fill a big pot full of water and heat it to 60 degrees. It's crucial to make sure that it stays at 60 degrees... we used a little 10 dollar thermometer to monitor the temperature. If you go over 65 degrees or so you're fucked. Anyway put the sealed ziplock bags of chicken into the water, cover the pot, and let it cook for like an hour. Cooking it this way makes the texture of the chicken AMAZING... it's super moist and tastes just incredible.

chicken cooking

While the chicken is cooking...

PREPARING THE PASTA

You're going to want to get started on making the pasta. Let me tell you something... freshly made pasta is about a MILLION times better than pasta you'd get at the store. It's worth every bit of work you put into making it, and it's really pretty simple. First scoop about 4/5 of a cup of flour into a big bowl, and then add one raw egg. Just mix it up with your hands until you have a nice, sticky dough. If it's too dry you can add a little bit of water. I think the word for making the dough is kneading? Anyway you'll need to knead for a couple minutes before you get the dough right. You'll want to make more dough but it's easiest to do it one egg and 4/5 of a cup of flour at a time.

Once you get the dough ready, roll it out until it's real thin. You might want to put a little flour onto whatever surface you roll it on so it doesn't stick. Ideally you'll get it into a big flat oval but it doesn't really matter. Once it's rolled out and it's nice and thin, roll it up into a cylinder and then cut it like this:

cutting the rolled up dough

After cutting it up, unroll the pieces and place them in a bowl.

fresh, uncooked pasta. smells amazing!

After preparing all of the pasta, boil some water, put salt in the water, and then cook the pasta. Make sure to keep an eye on the chicken at all times and make sure the temperature is 60 degrees.

PREPARING TOMATOES/GARLIC/OLIVE OIL

This part is easy. Just dice the roma tomatoes, cut up the garlic, and put them in a bowl together. Put some olive oil in there too... amount just depends on how much you want.

YUM.

PREPARING SAUCE

First, cook some white wine in a pot. Doesn't really matter how much, a couple shots worth is probably more than enough. Add some butter. A table spoon or two is enough. Add an equal amount of flour... maybe a little more. Once the butter melts and starts to brown a little bit, add some milk. The amount you add really depends on how much sauce you want to make but look at these pics for a general idea. Keep cooking it and stirring it and let it thicken a little.. if you want it thicker, just add more flour. Keep it boiling for a bit and it should be done real fast.

sauce cooking

You should be keeping an eye on the chicken and on the pasta at all times. By now the pasta should definitely be done cooking. Take the chicken out (remember takes 40 min to an hour to complete) and cut it up and add it to the sauce. Drain the water from the pasta and then pour the sauce over it. Then add the tomato/garlic/olive oil mixture on top of that.

Enjoy!!!! This dish was so amazingly good that I'm actually inspired to put effort into cooking from this day forward... more notes like this will be coming soon.