All From Scratch.

September is the month of birthdays. What better way to celebrate then to learn how to bake someone a cake from scratch?! Several of my friends/family love the semi-sweet Chinese layered fruitcake. For those of you who know me, I am NOT good at baking ANYthing, except maybe chicken. Funny then, how I attempted a LAYERED fruit cake from SCRATCH? :-D

The first time I tried to make a cake for the first birthday I decided to try the Italian Dessert Rosa imitation from Carrabas which turned out okay. For the second, I went for the Chinese cake -
Started with this recipe - its not that difficult -especially if you have a standing mixer.

Not very good at cutting the layers..

Voila! Worthy of eating! :-D Triumph for DoctoraFoodie!

More Indian Food!

Been experimenting with more Indian food since I have so many Indian spices now and a lot of Basmati rice. Tried making Butter Chicken - it was nuts - the recipe I followed called for 1 whole stick of butter in addition to whole cream for *1* chicken breast. Also tried out Chicken Biryani - not sure what its supposed to taste like, but it was like a spiced Chinese Sticky Rice without the Sticky.


Today, however, was a success - found a recipe that was as quick as it was easy: Chicken Curry. It pairs well with the Indian-Style Okra.

It calls for only 3/4 cup of coconut milk. I used the rest of the can in a Coconut Drink - very refreshing! for the vanilla, I just used a dash of Vanilla Extract.

Fire in the Hole!

Will elaborate on the events in the past couple weeks later, but this past weekend, had Korean food twice! which necessitated my making my *own* Korean dish. Oh what a disaster! I needed hot pepper paste, but the jar I bought was not properly sealed - so I returned to the grocery store to exchange, and the second jar was also not properly sealed. Then I exchanged again for the box-type with the plastic seal - and that also was not properly sealed. In a conversation with a friend, I decided not to use them, especially because they were made in the P.R.O.C. Made in China AND not properly sealed? No way. The recipe I was trying to use was for Korean Spicy Chicken and Potato - So for chile paste, I substituted 1.5 tbp hot pepper powder and 1 tsp of minced fresh ginger. I tell you what - I'm going to get a stomach ulcer if I keep eating this - but i LOVED it!

Red Hot Spicy! Woohoo!

Korean Food Day

On my random spree through the grocery store when I got the basmati rice, I picked up a container of Korean fermented black bean sauce. My very first encounter with Korean JaJiangMyun was my freshman year of college - I had some at a Chinese-Korean restaurant - looked like tar, tasted like tar on too soggy noodles and I wanted to vomit all the way until my philosophy essay test the next day (ate nothing, but did okay in the class anyway :) my hypoglycemic ramblings). My next few encounters were with my new roommate my last year in college - her mother had taught her how to make a version which I liked very much but I'm not sure if I've ever duplicated it. Anyways, got a craving for it today, and was tired of curry, so here it is!:

Yummy! Here is where I got the recipe. I pretty much followed the recipe exactly as written. However.. I would not recommend using Pork Belly. Bought it for the first time today - pig skin kind of grosses me out, and it has a very porky taste too which I am not a fan of. Plus, I couldn't even cut it with my knives - had to use sewing scissors :-X. I'm going to use normal pork loin next time. Also I pickled some daikon radish (the Vietnamese way) which goes well with the dish. My previous roommate had used stew beef chunks, potato, and carrots, black bean sauce, onion, and soy sauce, I think. I like this daikon-japanese sweet potato combo. Yum!

Indian Food Week!

Curry Curry Curry! Curry everywhere! Spilled on countertop, in the food, under the cutting board.. :-)

One of the recipes I tried was for Chicken Tikka Masala. The difficult part of this recipe was that it required grilling of the yogurt-marinated chicken. 1) I do not have a grill, and 2) the rack on my broiler pan is spaced too far apart for bite-sized chunks. Earlier this month, I bought a random cheap grill pan for kicks in case I wanted to try grilling (I've never grilled before), so I brought that out. I bought metal skewers too (too big for the pan, so I bent them) - FAIL! Ended up taking all the chicken off the skewers and just cooking them as is on the grill pan and made sure they had black stripes :) Anyways, the food turned out really well. The fresh cilantro makes a difference in the taste.

As for the basmati rice - since it was Indian week, I bought a huge 11# bag of basmati rice. Looked over the net for some recipes and called a friend, since i didn't feel like boiling it, put it into my electric rice cooker.. My friend uses more water than usual (she likes it more moist?) but I think using the same amount of water as Jasmine rice works well - because I like to soak up the curry with the rice and also have my rice in separate grains. Anyway I cooked the rice like normal, and after it was done, added some frozen carrots/peas and about 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, mixed it up, covered and let it sit for a while.

I don't have a picture of a vegetable, but I found the BEST okra recipe EVER on allrecipes.com: Indian Style Okra. So easy, and SO GOOD!

Tried a coconut curry chicken recipe a couple days ago too, as well as a Honey-Dijon Mustard-Curry chicken, but they were so-so.

Finished Indian week this morning with some Bollyrobics! :-D

Creativity..

So, after the minestrone soup, I had a lot of leftover pieces of vegetables to use up. So entered.. Vietnamese food week! I made a crispy Vietnamese chicken dish - the majority of the preparation was making the marinade ( which involved boiling celery, carrots, fish sauce, among other ingredients); the chicken was then poached in this liquid and finally roasted topped with lime-fish-sauce-honey mixture. It was great, but I'm not sure it was worth the prep time; as similar tasting dishes (like Martha Stewart's Everyday Food recipe for lime-ginger-curry crisp chicken) take less time. Also tried some five-spice chicken, but I'm not sure if that one is worth posting either! However, this pickled raw carrot and daikon salad recipe (similar to the side that comes with fried cha gio at the Vietnamese restaurants) is really simple and tasty! I used regular white sugar instead of caster sugar.

This week, i've been experimenting with Indian food - I went to the grocery store today and decided to buy a few random things - including a huge bag of Basmati rice. Planning on making Chicken Tikka Masala today. I'll let yall know how it turns out. And I also plan on making the Basmati in the electric rice cooker :).

Now, on the subject of creativity, so recently someone in the household has had to be on a pureed-liquid diet for health issues, temporarily...or maybe weeks. I personally think that puree-ing normal table food to drink as a smoothie is kind of gross, so I've been trying to find real recipes for this diet. So far things have turned out well - yesterday made a cream of celery soup that is quite tasty, as well as pureed cauliflower (with heavy cream, butter, and nutmeg) - not bad, but i realize not that nutritious/filling either. Supplementing with Carnation Instant Breakfast, yogurt, milk, soymilk.. Today making some congee with preserved duck egg and salted duck egg. We'll see how that goes.

Oh, did I mention that roasting tomatoes is one of my favorite things to do now? I love the taste - how it really brings out the sweetness and aroma of the tomatoes. Love it. Can't buy canned tomato sauce for pasta anymore.

Bowl of Fiber!

So, I attempted to make minestrone Olive Garden style from some of the online recipes. Its crazy what it called for - 4 cans of BEANS, along with all the other stuff you see on the right. What a workout to carry it all back. Anyways, I was getting a little excited at the prospect of getting to eat minestrone at home instead of at the restaurant, but sadly, the recipe I used didn't quite match the restaurant caliber. So it just tasted like beany vegetable soup. But you know what? I think if all the constipated people drank this soup everyday, they would be cured! Check out all that fiber!!!!!!