Saturday Project

I first heard of this in Martha Stewart’s TV show one evening.

…..BLT? ……What’s that?

……Oh right. Just another American acronym.. But wait.  It looks yummy. Maybe I should try making this on weekend.

The Best BLT with Roasted Red Pepper Mayonnaise (from www.joythebaker.com)

Ingredients: makes one sandwich

• 2 slices of your favorite bread, toasted
• 3-4 slices of tomato
• 2-3 leaves of butter head lettuce
• 4 -5 slices of crisp bacon
• generous slather of roasted red pepper mayonnaise

How to:

• Cook up bacon and drain of a paper towel.
• Rinse lettuce leaves, and pat dry.
• Slice tomato slices and let rest on a paper towel.
• Toast bread and slather with as much roasted red pepper mayonnaise as you like.
• Top with bacon, tomatoes and lettuce.  Top with other slice of bread and you’re done!

Roasted Red Pepper Mayonnaise

Ingredients: makes about 1 cup of mayonnaise

• 1 large egg yolk
• 3/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 roasted red pepper, coarsely chopped. (the canned one will save your time!)
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil

How to:

• Combine egg yolk, mustard, lemon juice, and chopped roasted red pepper in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the blade attachment.
• Mix for about 30 seconds.  Add a pinch of salt and pepper and whirl again.
• With the machine running, gradually add the oil until the mixture starts to thicken and emulsify.  I added the oil in a steady, but very thin stream.  The mixture will start to emulsify at about the 2 minute mark.
• Once it starts to emulsify, you can add the fat more quickly. If the mixture is too thick for some reason, just blend in 1 teaspoon of boiling water to thin it. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Store in an airtight container and refrigerate.  Lasts for 3-4 days.

I love love reading and writing blogs.

Why?

Because it makes me know something more every day.

Something I am passionate about = = = Foods of course!

These are many things I’ve learned about CURRY. (Facts from Wikipedia)

• The word CURRY is derived from the Tamil, an ethnic group in India, meaning “vegetable in sauce”.
• Now a day, CURRY is a generic term, refer to almost any spiced, sauce-based dishes cooked in southern Asian styles.
• CURRY’s popularity has spread outward from India. Each culture has adopted spices in their local cooking to suit their preferred tastes.
• Huge popularities are found in Thai, British, and Japanese dishes
• Japanese curry is, one of the most popular dishes in Japan. It is usually in form if karē raisu — curry rice

Hmmmm……

That’s enough. Thinking of Japanese curry rice makes me hungry.

Let’s make Japanese Curry, shall we?

Ingredient:

• 250g  meat of your choice (pork or beef or chicken), diced into small cubes
• 300g chopped onion
• 100g carrots, cubed
• 400g  potatoes, cubed
• 125g pack of Curry Sauce Mix (me use House Vermont brand)
• 1 Tb spoon butter
• 850 ml plain water (or milk if you want thick n’ rich sauce)

How to:

• Heat butter in big pot.
• Add chopped onion. Stir for a few minutes.
• Add meat. Cook until no longer pink.
• Add the rest vegetable in one go
• Add water then followed by the curry sauce mix. (This seasoning is in form of a condensed ‘brick’ which will dissolve in the boiling water.) Add salt to taste.
• Let this simmer for 30 minutes. Serve hot on rice.

 ——- I-TA-DA-KI-MAS! ——-

Remember my Gana-chai?

Yeah, the Chinese pickle that I made a while ago. I just googled around to find if there’s any dish which its ingredients contain Gana-chai. And this is the interesting one, “Stir fried Tofu with Cowpea and Gana-chai” (ผัดถั่วฝักยาวกับเต้าหู้และกาน่าฉ่าย). Hmmm…. I said sounds good with rice. What say you?

Ingredients:

• 5-7 Thai hot chili (bird chili or so-called prik-khee-noo)
• 2 cloves garlic, coarsely chop
• 10 strips cowpeas
• 1/2  cup carrot, diced into small cubes
• 4 Tb spoons Gana-chai pickle
• 1/2 – 1 Tofu cake (or sheet whatever you call)
• 2 Tb spoons Vegetable oil

How to:

1. Cut cowpea into 1/2” length and dice tofu into small cubes. Set aside
2. Heat vegetable oil in frying pan. Add tofu, fry until tofu became light brown and a bit crispy at the edges.
3. Add chopped garlic and stir for 30 second
4. Add cowpeas and carrot, stir for a few minutes.
5. Add Gana-chai, stir fry for another few minutes. Add salt or seasonings to taste.

Meet the ingredients

The HOT stuff!

And the star….. Gana-Chai

Stir them all in frying pan and you will get this. It’s soooo easy and yummy, believe me ;-D

Blueberry Crumb Bars

I just bought a new 9”x13” baking pan from Isetan, so, I thought it would be nice to bake some “Bars” dessert. And again, I skimmed through Smitten Kitchen (which is my favorite at the moment) and found this interesting recipe = = “Blueberry Crumb Bars”. I thought of some good reasons to go for it.

…First, it looks so easy.

…Second, it looks delicious.

…Third, I got almost all needed ingredients on hand except for…

…Forth, WHAT!!?? Fresh Blueberry!?!? How could I find 4 cups fresh blueberries here in Thailand (…sigh).

But, still, I was so determined to bake it so I decided to risk it and substituted the fresh fruit with the ready-to-eat canned blueberry filling. I had also use lime zest in my batch (although the original recipe said lemon zest) since lemon is quite rare in Thailand. Okay, let’s move.

Ingredients:

For dough…

·         3 cups all-purpose flour

·         1 cup granulated sugar

·         1 teaspoon baking powder

·         1 egg

·         1/4 teaspoon salt

For filling option#1 (according to the original recipe)

·         Zest and juice of one lemon

·         4 cups fresh blueberries

·         1/2 cup  granulated sugar

·         4 teaspoons cornstarch

For filling option #2 (if you live in a hot & humid country like Thailand where finding fresh blueberries is impossible)

·         1 can of blueberry filling

·         Zest of 2 limes

How to:

1.    Preheat oven at 375 F (or 190 C). Line 9”x13” baking pan with greased baking sheet.

2.    In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup sugar, 3 cups flour, and baking powder, salt, and lemon (or lime) zest. Use a fork or pastry cutter to blend in the butter and egg. Dough will be crumbly. Pat half or dough into the prepared pan to make lower-base crust.

2.1  This is just a comment added by me. For those who live in tropical zone, you may find it’s hard to prepare such “crumbly” dough as butter will melt quickly in the room temperature like 37 C (or 90 F). You have to do this process very quick or ingredients will be combined together and become a big chunk of cookies dough. So, I suggest that one should put butter in the freezer before mixing crumb. Also, mix crumb using food processor (attached with 2 curved blades) if you can. Mixing ingredients in food processor takes much less time than using a fork!

Crumb

Pat crumb into pan to make lower-base crust

3.    In another bowl, stir together sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice. Gently mix in blueberries. Sprinkle blueberries mixture evenly over the crust.

3.1  For those who pick filling option #2, just open the blueberry filling can and spread it all over the lower-base crust. Easy huh?

Spread blueberry filling over the crust

4.    Crumble remaining dough over the berry layer.

Crumbs on top, ready to bake

5.    Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until top is slightly brown. Cool completely before cutting into small rectangular bars. Yield approx 36 bars.

YAY ME! I DID IT, I DID IT…

A few weekends ago, my grandma asked me to help her in making Ga-na-chai (กาน่าฉ่าย). For those who don’t familiar with Chinese food, “Ga-na” is a Chinese word for an Olive-like fruit (but not the same as Olive in western dishes) and “Chai” means vegetable. And owing to Ga-na fruit’s unique flavor and aroma, Chinese people add it to sour-pickled vegetable to spice up the pickle. So, “Ga-na-chai” is a traditional pickled vegetable dish with a tasty flavor of Ga-na fruit. It has usually been served with rice congee, as a fast-and-easy breakfast. But personally, I love having it with steamed rice (ข้าวสวย). This dish is made of 3 major ingredients; sour-pickled vegetable (ผักกาดดอง), Ga-na fruit, and dried Shitake mushroom (เห็ดหอมแห้ง). I’ve tried looking up in dictionary to find out what this Ga-na fruit called in English. It is a small green oval-shape fruit of approx 1” long and very similar to Olive fruit. With big help from Ae, the best we can find from internet is “Chinese Olive”. Well, Chinese Olive, that’s it!

Ga-na fruit

Below are ingredients that my grandma prepared 1 day beforehand. She planned to make a very large batch in order to give to all of her sons, daughter and grandchildren. If anybody wants to re-create this dish for just one family, I suggest that you should reduce the following ingredients size by 80% (just 1/5 of below ingredients). 

Ingredients:

·      1kg Chinese Olives

·      2kg Dried Shitake mushroom, soaked in 4-cup water

·      5kg Sour-pickled vegetable (ผักดองเปรี้ยว), thinly sliced

·      2-3cups Vegetable oil

·      Salt

·      Soy sauce

How to:

1.  Soak dried mushroom in warm water for 30 minutes. Squeeze out water from the softened mushroom with your hand. (Keep the water, don’t pour away). Mince mushroom into small dices.

How to dice mushroom.

2.  Smash/crush Chinese olives with grinder (ครก). Based on Grandma’s suggestion, one should leave seeds with its flesh. Olive seeds will add more flavor to this dish.

3.  In big pan, add 1 cup oil, wait a few minutes until oil is hot. Add minced mushroom, stir fry mushroom for 5-10 minutes. Use your frying pan spade shovel up mushroom and leave it in a clean bowl.

4.  In the same pan (add ¼ cup oil), add sour-pickled vegetable and stir fry for 5-10 minutes. Add the left ½ cup of left-over water from soaking the mushroom. Add 80g. of salt. Keep stirring for another 5 minutes then shovel up sour-pickled vegetable and leave it in the same bowl where you had put mushroom.

5.  In the pan (add ¼ cup oil), add crushed Chinese Olives and 40g salt. Stir fry for 5-10 minutes then put all ingredients together into one very large deep pan (or large pot).

6.  Use low heat. Leave it to simmer on the oven top for 8 hours. Season with soy sauce. Keep coming back to check and stir ingredients every half an hour (or all will become dry and stick to the pot). Add the rest of water and oil (2-3 tablespoons) every half an hour that you come to check and stir ingredients.

Leave it to cool down. Keep it in dry clean containers. Can be kept up to 1 year.

Sour pickled vegetable, sliced into small pieces

Diced dried Shitake mushroom

Crushed Ga-na fruit

Stir frying pickled vegetable

...then, stir frying crushed Ga-na fruit

Simmer at low heat but keep coming back to check every 1/2 hour

Can be kept in clean and tight container for a year!

I came across this recipe in Smitten Kitchen weblog and saw the nice and delicious photos of Lemon Bar. It made me think of a dessert I had tried since I was studying in undergrad school. There was a food market held every Friday in the university area where many merchants set up food stalls selling various kind of food, mostly local Thai foods though. And there was a small bakery stall selling pastries like pies, brownies, and also small 1”x1” bars Lemon cookies. In Thai, everybody calls it “Cookies Ma-now” (meaning Lime cookies in English). These small so-called cookies were quite popular at that time due to its tasty sweet&sour flavor which is quite different from the usual plain butter cookies. Some of my colleagues (who graduated from C.U.) have still talked about it in these days.

After skim through the posted recipe, I was so certain that this is it. This is the “Cookies Ma-now” that I‘ve used to buy from the food market J I’m so happy and eager to re-create it and share the recipe to my friends or anybody who has just stopped by reading my blog. It’s easy, I guarantee you. And those bars were so yummy! Here are ingredients.

For the crust:

230g unsalted butter, leave at room temperature

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 cups all purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon salt

For lemon layer:

4 large eggs

1 2/3 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 tablespoon grated lemon zest (from 3-4 lemons)

2/3 cup squeezed lemon juice

2/3 cup all purpose flour

Powdered sugar, for dusting

How to:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (or 180 C). Line 9” x 13” baking pan with greased baking sheet.

2. For the crust, cream the butter and sugar with electric mixer (fitted with the paddle attachment) until light.

3. Combine the flour and salt and, with the mixer on low, add to the butter until just mixed.

4. Pave the dough with floured hands and press it into the greased baking sheet, building up a 1/2-inch edge on all sides. Chill in the freezer for 10 minutes before ready to bake.

5. Bake the crust for 15 to 20 minutes, until very lightly browned. Let cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on.

6. For the lemon layer, whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and flour then pour over the crust and bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

7. Leave it on wire rack to cool completely. Cut into rectangular and dust with powdered sugar.

Lemon bars

I came across a food blog called “The Crepes of Wrath” and saw a posted recipe for Mongolian Beef and it seems simple plus delicious. Also, I remembered that Ae mentioned about this dish a few times. It was one of his favorite dishes when he ordered Chinese food in the U.S. So I decided to try cooking this dish but using pork instead of beef.

Here are ingredients….

500g pork (tenderloin), thinly sliced crosswise

200g mushroom of your choice

¼ cup cornstarch

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoons minced ginger

2 tablespoon minced garlic

1 cup water

1 cup low sodium soy sauce

½ cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

6 large green onions, cut into 1” long

Rice for serving, 4-5 people

3 cucumbers, slices, for decoration and fiber added

How to:

1. For the meat, make sure slices are dry. You may patting them with a paper towel before slicing into strips. Add cornstarch to the meat. Place them in a strainer and shake off excess corn starch. Begin to cook rice while you prepare the rest of the meal.

2. For the sauce, heat half of the oil in a pan at medium-high heat then add garlic and ginger. Stir fry for a few minutes. This will help adding great flavor to the sauce. After garlic and ginger turned into light brown, add soy sauce, water, brown sugar, and pepper flakes. Cook the sauce about 2-3 minutes and transfer to a bowl.

3. Place the meat in the same pan and cook. Keep stirring until it is no longer pink. Add mushroom. Pour the sauce back into the pan and let it cook along with the meat. The corn starch in the meat will thicken the sauce up.

4. You can continue cooking the sauce to make it thicken or leave it thinner. Add green onion on the last minutes so it stay green and fresh.

5. Serve it hot over rice, with 4-5 cucumber slices.

Comment:

It kinda like a Chinese dish called “Khao-na-kai” (chicken in gravy sauce over the rice) in Thailand. Taste good though. Maybe taste better if you use beef instead of pork.

Here comes another simple and well-know recipe, Brownies! I had read about its origins once and thought it was quite interesting. According to one story, the brownie was invented by a Chicago chef. He was requested to make a small piece of dessert for ladies attending the fair. Another story said brownies were accidentally invented by a lady who forgot to add baking powder into her batter and then served a collapsed flat chocolate cake. I kinda like the second story as I’m a forgetful lady too

I could not remember since when I had tried my first brownie bar, maybe from local bakery shop. Brownies sold here (in BKK) come in a variety of forms and they may include nuts, frosting, cream cheese, chocolate chips, or other ingredients. However, most bakeries in Thailand tend to bake a “Cakey” brownies rather than “Fudgy” one. However, I love the fudgy kind, dry outside but rich and gooey in the middle. And I just found the perfect brownie recipe in a lovely food blog called “Coco&me”. The website writer explained her site as a dairy of market stall holder. And she is so generous that she shares several great recipes to others. Brownies recreated based on her recipe is so rich (as it uses both cocoa & solid chocolates in the recipe) and yummy, I can guarantee you! Even a week later after baking, these brownies still taste good, or I say even better than when it was newly baked. Strange huh?

Ingredients:

230g Unsalted butter, leave at room temperature

300g Sugar

4 Eggs

230g Dark Chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chip

140g All purpose flour

40g Cocoa powder

200g of nuts (can be any nuts you like)

How to:

Cut butter into little cubes, put it in a large mixing bowl, and then melt it completely in Microwave.

Add sugar to the melt butter. Dissolve and leave it to cool down a few minutes.

Add eggs to the butter&sugar mixture. Mix well with a whisk

Pour the hot mixture over the chocolates in another large bowl. Mix thoroughly until all the chocolates have dissolved. (Chocolates can be melted faster if you put it in the microwave for 10-20 second)

Spatula in the flour & the cocoa powder. Mix until no traces of flour can be seen.

Mix in the nuts. (Make sure you leave some aside for decorating the top with).

Pour the mixture in to the prepared tin and decorate some more nuts on the top surface.

Bake in the oven that has been pre-heated at 180 degrees for 25 – 30 minutes. It’s cooked when the edges have gone slightly dry, the top is shiny and has cracked. The centre of the brownie shouldn’t be wobbly when shook.

Leave aside to cool. Don’t cut until they’ve reached room temperature, or even better leave it untouched for a WHOLE DAY to rest.

ENJOY!