Showcase on Side Dishes

Some side dishes I have made at different times throughout the past month.

Sauteed organic squash with garlic and parsley

The squash is from my co-worker who owns a farm and grows most of her own vegetables! I made it for a fourth of July dinner at Hayley and Jason's.

Side dish also made for fourth of July dinner - cucumber, tomato, and onion salad marinated in an oil/vinegar based dressing also containing basil, garlic salt, and sugar:


What would I do without fruit?? Fruit is pretty cheap at the Strip District in Pittsburgh, which is where most of this fruit is from.

Berries with dark chocolate stick (called "Pocky for Men" because of its bitter nature :P)

Bruschetta, Shrimp and Green Beans

The bruschetta actually started out as pico de gallo for tacos I had made the other night, but I had so much left over that I decided to make it into bruschetta. Basically cut bread into small slices, added a little bit of olive oil to the tops and baked for a few minutes until slightly browned.

The topping consists of tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and garlic salt.

Together they are quite tasty :)

Next I made green beans with toasted almonds. First add a little bit of oil and add slivers of almond. You only need to leave them in for about 1 minute until they are browned. In my case, I left them in too long until they became blackened shards! The green beans were stir-fried in oil and lightly salted then mixed with the almonds.

Last was the shrimp stir-fried in a lemon, parsley, white wine, honey sauce that I completely improvised. Still need to work out the balance of components, but I would leave out the honey and use fresh lemon next time.

All in all though, the meal tasted pretty good. This is the final dish:

Watercress with French Tarragon Chicken and white rice

This meal is similar to the previous one and doesn't require much explanation. Here it is:

Chinese style flounder with rice and watercress

This dish is pretty simple and quick. Just poach the fish for about 3 minutes. In this case I used a filet of flounder, but sea bass works really well also. Place the fish on a plate and sprinkle chopped scallions and ginger on top. Lightly flavor with soy sauce. Then heat up oil until close to boiling and pour over top of the decorated fish. You should hear a crackling sizzle. I believe the hot oil helps to bring out the flavor of the ginger and scallions.

As usual, I was lazy with the rice and just made minute rice, which actually takes longer than a minute to cook :P Last was the watercress that was thoroughly washed and stir-fried in oil and salt with a tad of chicken broth.

Unfortunately, the watercress was a bit old, so had a bitter taste. Normally it has a sweeter taste - the important thing is to cook it pretty soon after buying it and picking out bunches that are very green and not yellow! Here is the final product:

Baked Mushroom Chicken!

Recipe Link

Time for another quick recipe :)


Here is the chicken after baking! I actually ended up cooking additional veggies along with the mushrooms, then baking them in with the chicken.

In keeping with the "quick food" theme, I just poured the chicken and veggies over rice.


Even had a bit of Carrot Ginger Soup. These soups from Trader Joe's are pretty tasty, and they just require reheating before serving.


Look for an update sometime next week as we hopefully choose a dish to both cook!

Eggrolls from scratch!

So I cheated a bit and bought organic eggroll dough squares, but I did make the insides from scratch! Basically I pre-cooked vermicelli rice noodles in water and then cut them up into small segments. I added these to cabbage, carrots, mushrooms (broken into small pieces), and extra firm tofu (sliced into small chunks) and cooked for about 5-10 minutes with oyster sauce, chicken broth, and a smidge of sesame oil. About 2-3 tablespoons full of filling was added to a dough square and the square was rolled into a wrap. I was lazy and just used water to attach the final corner so that the eggroll was firmly sealed, but a little bit of raw egg is even better. Instead of using a ton of oil, which takes forever to heat up, I just covered the bottom of the wok in about 1/2 inch of oil and added 3-4 egg rolls at a time. Each side was friend in oil for about 1-2min or until crispy and brown.



Just let them cool and then enjoy!!


Here's the filling. YUM!

Dinner Party, Saturday, 5/12/07

The dinner party was a lot of fun, but cooking was definitely chaotic since I decided to take a nap and wake up 1.5 hours before everyone was arriving! Due to the short amount of time, I don't have many pictures of the process and those that I do have don't show any close ups of my dish. The important thing here though is that the food was delicious!

So to start, I made the pan-fried noodles. These are egg noodles that I bought from the Chinese grocery store and they tell you on the package to add the noodles to boiling water for 20 seconds and then to pan fry them. I guess this helps to moisten them up and briefly cook them. To pan fry them, I used my big wok with a layer of oil that just covered the bottom. There were a lot of noodles, so I took a third of the noodles at a time and basically stirred them around with the oil. Once the oil was evenly distributed I let them sit on low to medium heat for about 5-10 minutes, flipping the batch now and again. Take them out when they start to turn a bit brown and crispy.

During the 5-10 minute incubations (uh oh, this is starting to sound like lab!) I chopped up various veggies from the Chinese store: snow peas, baby bok choy, chinese broccoli, long green beans, and watercress. I looked for lotus root at the store, but couldn't find it. Ironically the store was called "Lotus." To flavor the veggies you can make a variety of different sauces - brown sauces, garlic, ginger. Well I knew my sauces could be sketchy so I opted to stir fry the veggies in oil with garlic and salt and then make the sauce on the side. Veggies in a stir-fry are best when they are crispy, so I made sure to cook them with the lid on for no longer than 3 or 4 minutes.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I got a recipe from my aunt for a brown sauce. Unfortunately it called for chicken broth and oyster sauce, which I later realized wouldn't work because a large portion of the guests were vegetarians or vegans, so I filed the recipe away for a future date. I did find a recipe online for a ginger sauce, which did not come out well because (1) I didn't follow the directions and melt the brown sugar first and (2) I had the wrong type of soy sauce -the salty kind. Needless to say, the sauce tasted horribly salty and gross, so I threw it out. Luckily Maria came to the rescue and made an impromptu sauce composed of soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and corn starch for thickening, as well as other components that I don't recall!

The last component of the meal was fried tofu that actually came out quite well. It was also from the Chinese store and made fresh that day (the best kind!). A woman at the store told Maria and myself that tofu hardens when soaked in cold water overnight. Hard tofu is the best for frying. Since I bought it that day, I only had about 5 hours of soaking, but it was decent. I've learned that it's important to remove as much water as possible when frying, so I removed the tofu from the water and placed it in between two cutting boards (one on top, one on the bottom). A book or heavy object can be placed on top of the upper cutting board to force the water out from the tofu. After allowing this process to go for about 45 minutes, I sliced the tofu and coated it with salted and peppered flour. Then I threw the chunks into a decent amount of oil (almost burning off Maria's arm in the process!) and let them cook on low to medium heat until somewhat brown (5-10 min).



Here are some pictures of all of the food, including my tofu, stir-fried vegetables, pan-fried noodles, Maria's curry



and sauce for my noodles, Shiang Yong's pasta with tomato sauce,



Amanda's salad with balsalmic vinaigrette, Jane's homemade banana bread,



and Elisa's seasoned baked eggplant. John, Ryan, and Henry kindly provided the drinks while Colleen baked an apple pie, Chien-Chiao brought a Boston creme pie, Maria and Henry brought chocolate fondue with fruit, and Frankie made poached pear in a port wine sauce. All in all, quite tasty!