Recipe Review

Remind me to thank Mr. Weather every day for giving Northeastern USA 2 snow days in a row! I'll admit the first day was total veg, but today I tried to make myself useful...

Recipe modifications:

Greek Salad: 
I used 1 cucumber, 2 plum tomatos, can of medium olives (as many as I felt like), crumbled feta (as much as I wanted), and a drizzling of Italian dressing. Yum!

Chicken Egg Drop Soup:
Omitted all onions, and next time would use more liquid, 1 less egg. Still tweaking, but tasty.

Peanut Butter Cookies:
I really had a craving for starchy sugary anything, and since swearing off chocolate, I couldn't have the chocolate chip cookies I'd made for M during our 2 snow days off. An excellent recipe included in my long-ago grade school recipe book project was so simple that I remember it even now: 1 egg, 1 cup pb, 1 cup white sugar.

This time, I used this variation. For a yield of 18 cookies, I reduced the white sugar to 1/2 cup, threw in about 1/4 brown sugar (not packed), and added 2 heaping tablespoons of flour. They baked quite well -- the crosshatch held, the cookies were crisp on the outside, chewy inside, and had beautifully cracked edges. And I only used 1 bowl and none of the cookies stuck to the baking pans -- less mess! This recipe is definitely a keeper!

Recipes!

Turkey Spaghetti (slowcooker)
Chicken Egg Drop Soup
Greek Salad

Shopping List

Tomato bisque soup (2 x 10oz)
Canned corn (2 x 15oz)
Creamed corn
Ground turkey (2+ lb)
Boneless skinless chicken breast
Tomatoes (3)
Cucumbers (2)
Feta
Clementines
Ice cream or equivalent
Milk

New Recipes!

We're going to the grocery store! I'm going to make peda and creamed spinach (instead of palak paneer bc my food processor is 800 miles away).

Recipes

Peda
Creamed Spinach
Leek & Cheese Couscous Cake

Shopping List

Milk
Milk powder
Unsalted butter
Cardamom
Minced garlic, if sale price
Leeks (2)
Fruit for the week

In a pinch, we find a way: Tomato-Lentil Cous Cous

I never did get around to choosing recipes this week (might try paneer and palak paneer tomorrow), but it didn't matter bc we were too lazy / used the cold as an excuse to not step foot outside the apartment today. The menu? Pancakes, scrambled eggs for breakfast; last night's leftovers and cookies for lunch; and here it is: the lazy girl's version of stew over couscous.

Tomato-Lentil Cous Cous
Total cook time: about 5-10 minutes
~2 servings

Ingredients

1 can Wegman's low-sodium Minestrone (any tomato-based vegetable soup w/ beans will do, especially if it has garbanzo beans or a variety of lentils)
1 box Near East tomato-lentil cous cous
~3/4 cup tomato sauce (I used Tutturosso marinara)
1 tsp liquid from a can of olives

Directions

1. Prepare cous cous according to stove top directions on the back of the box.
2. Heat the soup, adding the tomato sauce and olive liquid (or salt to taste if you don't have any).
3. Serve cous cous in individual serving bowls when ready, spooning the liquid over the center of each bowl.

Enjoy!

Khao Soi Ready-Made Mix

Turns out I could've used this ready-made mix instead of running around for red curry paste and turmeric. But that one recipe has lasted us a whole week, on egg noodles first, then on rice (with extra chicken, coconut milk, and sugar to round out the heat/salt). I also verified that coconut milk doesn't curdle when reheated to boiling like cow's milk does. So nothing really to complain about!

Peanut butter frosting?

I just had the most amazing chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting. Normally I'm not a fan of alternative cupcakes (chocolate w/ vanilla frosting I love, but not yellow w/ chocolate), but this was amazing!

Of course, the whole point of this cooking blog is to choose healthy recipes and entrees to improve our day-to-day diet. So I'll just put this peanut butter frosting recipe here, for someday in the future...

Peanut Butter Frosting
(for chocolate cupcakes)

Apparently mochi, but not har gow, makes the dumpling shortlist.

Flipping through The Dumpling: A Seasonal Guide by Wai Hon Chu & Connie Lovatt, I saw all sorts of dumpling-related wonder...brilliantly colored photos, intricate diagrams explaining the various folds, recipes that altogether made the book at least an inch thick. Strangely, strawberry-anko mochi found its way amongst its more homely cousins, and somehow, the frustrating har gow "pau" fold failed to make an appearance.

Nevertheless, I had fun on my weekend adventures in har gow and mochi-making.

The "skin" of the har gow is made from tapioca and wheat starch.

I was afraid the dough would be sticky or difficult to work with, but the texture was actually quite springy and didn't stick at all.

I had neither a rolling pin or a heavy pot, though, and getting the "skin" to the right thin-ness is the most important part about good har gow. Thinness and shape...with practice!

Mochi is made with yet another type of flour -- glutinous rice flour ("mochiko"). This is sweet, or sticky, rice ground up into a white powdery substance not unlike tapioca or wheat starch. It is mixed with sugar and water. The resulting textures are very interesting: before cooking, the above is actually pretty watery. As for after cooking...

...it's fairly difficult to work with! (ever seen videos of Japanese men taking huge mallets to mochi?). I would definitely work with smaller quantities if I attempt mochi again in the future.

Above: my first, much misshapen but much-loved mochi containing a white chocolate-covered raspberry. I also left some mochi plain, to eat with ice cream at a later date. Stressful cookery, but yum!