omurice [Japan]

It's been a long time since I last cooked anything, and I *might* be going on a restrictive diet soon to diagnose why my immune system is so unhappy with my body that it is destroying my organs. But before I share those recipes from hell (a bit of an exaggeration; I'd be going from a low-protein vegetarian diet to a conveniently high-protein, low-carb meat-heavy diet), I'm trying one recipe which uses so many of the things I won't be able to eat: omurice.

I accidentally used 2x the onion I should have, but it's fine. I also used too many mushrooms. Also fine. Reflecting on it, I think I also used too much "ham". I tried Yves brand fake ham. It's actually pretty good, at least when it's cooked in omurice!

I got a chance to try out my new salt box. It's very convenient and definitely better than shaking salt out of a 1-lb box of salt. 

I didn't end up getting ketchup, so I just used 2x the tomato paste and some vinegar. The only vinegar I had was zhen jiang vinegar (a black rice vinegar), which seemed to work just fine. I also left out the milk in the eggs because I didn't want to buy more milk than I need (it always goes bad because I don't drink milk anymore).

Here is the finished product:

Verdict: It's not pretty. It didn't stay together and it definitely doesn't look like an omelette. But it's the taste that counts, and this tasted pretty good!

tomato chitranna [Karnataka]

Last meal I cooked was tomato chitranna, a simple rice dish. For some reason, my electric stove was working even better than before, so I ended up scorching the spices just a bit. It didn't seem to affect the taste though.

I made the sambar powder beforehand, toasting the spices in my pan and then grinding them with a mortar and pestle. The rest of the recipe was pretty straightforward.

Verdict: tasty, though not the best dish from the Indian subcontinent I've made during this project. I probably should have cooked it for longer, or took more care in chopping the onions and tomatoes small -- the tomatoes still had bite to them in the final dish.

pomme purée + omelette [France]

Today's dishes were French. They were very indulgent, and by that I mean I probably consumed a half stick of butter at lunch alone. 

***Pomme purée ***

The recipe is here. I used my new potato masher / ricer. It's a pretty self-explanatory recipe.

Verdict: Tasty, especially when hot. But I ate lunch after it sat while I cooked the eggs, so they were somewhat lukewarm. They were just too rich in my opinion, or maybe the combination of these two dishes was bad. I think that's probably it...

*** Omelette ***

This is a very simple omelette. It's supposed to look a lot prettier than my photo (recipe) because I think you really, really have to wait until it's very thin and firm to roll it up. Well, I'll try again tomorrow when I make it again!

I accidentally bought cilantro instead of parsley, and I'm not about to put that on my eggs. So I just left the greens out. This was, yes, a very beige meal.

Verdict: Tasty! Unfortunately, too rich with the mashed potatoes. And, I think they were too salty. But I'll try again later this week and see if I can get it right next time.

"beef" croquette [Rio de Janeiro]

Today I tried out another fried recipe, this time from Rio de Janeiro / Southeast Brazil. Here's the recipe link.

I used Beyond Meat instead of beef (I actually wanted to use Impossible Beef, but it appears my local grocery doesn't stock it). I completely forgot to buy parsley or green onion, so I left those out. For the breadcrumbs, I used panko.

 

During frying. I used oil leftover from the pakoras.

 

Finished product.

They don't look anything like the photo in the recipe, and the chunks of onion reminded me a lot more of the mystery croquettes from Kill la Kill.

Verdict: Very tasty! Hard to go wrong with fried food. I might should have chopped the onions smaller. I do wish I had some kind of sauce to go with them.

kadhi pakora, patta gobi, and masala chai [Pakistan]

Right off the bat, this is the best meal I've cooked, and maybe one of the best home-cooked meals I've ever had. It's definitely convincing me that, as a vegetarian, I should just cook from that region of the world. 

*** kadhi pakora ***

These are pakora in a yogurt-based sauce. The recipe itself is somewhat complex, since it requires first making pakora, then cooking them in the sauce. They were really fun to make, though.

The dish right after tadka. I served it with plain steamed basmati.

Verdict: Sooo good! It wasn't too spicy, but wasn't that mild. Honestly, the recipe is a bit more than 4 servings. I had so much food for each of my meals.

*** patta gobi ***

This is basically just sautéed cabbage. Still, it was pretty good. I used plain cabbage (not napa) and left it in larger chunks than the recipe shows. In the end, it was pretty tasty, if a bit more oily than I expected.

Verdict: Very tasty! Good as a side dish but slightly too oily for my taste (perhaps I just added too much oil).

*** masala chai ***

I had some good masala chai from a Tibetan food truck a few weeks ago, and was excited to try making it myself. 

Verdict: Really good, though next time I might try to make it a bit spicier. Also, though it was very relaxing to drink in the evening, it takes quite a long time to make, and requires keeping milk which I don't regularly do. But, it was delicious.

The full meal, served with rice and chai.

matapa [Angola]

This week I made matapa, which is an Angolan dish. The recipe I found was in Portuguese, so there were probably translation / cultural miscommunications (for example, the photo in the recipe appears to have red peppers and carrots, but the recipe didn't call for that, so I didn't put it in).

The first step was to grind up a bunch of peanuts into powder. I used my new mortar and pestle for it. It was pretty fun but got tiring after a while.

Instead of actual shrimp, I used All Vegetarian vegan shrimp. This was a mistake. I bought 6 packs of it (currently in my freezer) and used two for this dish. Somehow I'm going to have to figure out how to use the rest (or maybe I just overcooked it in this dish) but it was not good.

I used cabbage instead of cassava leaves. Otherwise, I followed the recipe pretty closely and served it with white rice.

It didn't end up looking like the photo in the recipe, like... at all. 

Verdict: unfortunately, I am not going to be able to finish this. I don't think it's the recipe's fault at all; I think it's the fake shrimp I used. It just has the wrong texture and taste. It doesn't help that the recipe itself is quite rich due to the peanuts and coconut milk, and not seasoned much at all (it probably does require seasoning, but it's not called for in the recipe).

重庆辣子鸡 + 私房小面 [Chongqing]

When I was researching cuisine around the world, it was very difficult to find recipes from regions of China outside of, e.g., Sichuan and Cantonese cuisine. I found that by searching in Chinese-language websites, there were tons of recipes. These recipes were my first attempts at cooking from these recipes by using Google Translate. My first takeaway is that I really need to ask some of my Chinese-speaking friends to help with the translations (and potentially also where to get particular ingredients). I thought I could get by with wiktionary and Google Images search when translators failed on ingredients lists, but I think that failed just a little bit.

This week I found two recipes from Chongqing. The first recipe, 重庆辣子鸡, is basically a spicy chicken recipe. The second, 私房小面, is a noodle recipe.

*** 重庆辣子鸡 -- spicy chicken ***

I'm (mostly) vegetarian, so I replaced the chicken with seitan. I used a prepared seitan that was supposed to substitute pork. I used way fewer chilis than I should have. I have a very pretty pepper garland I've been taking peppers -- large dried cayennes -- from, and I only took three of them, because otherwise the entire garland would be gone. That meant I used about a third of the peppers I should have. 

I couldn't find actual Welsh / naganeni long onion, so I just went with plain green onion instead. I'm not sure if Welsh onions should be easy to find in the US. 

I also had a really fun time going with a good friend to Uwajimaya to grab a *bunch* of dark brown liquids. For this recipe, I got shaohsing wine, dark soy sauce, light soy sauce, and peanut oil. 

The recipe was pretty easy to make. It just involved sauteéing. The problem is that partway through, as I'll explain later, my saucier became unavailable and I couldn't cook the chilis/fragrant bits without the seitan. This meant that the minced ginger was undercooked.

Verdict: I should have used more peppers than I did. I actually do have a large pack of dried chilis that I haven't opened yet (and I didn't open them because I don't have another good container to put them in yet...). This turned out... not spicy. I think when cooking with seitan I just have to spice things 2x as much as I would with meat, because the seitan taste was still pretty overpowering compared to the other seasonings (personally, seitan tastes fine to me, but I really wished it was more flavorful).

*** 私房小面 -- Google translate says this is "private room noodles" ***

The first issue with this dish was the noodles. Uwajimaya is a Japanese grocery, and though it's a huge store, the selection of Chinese-specific ingredients appears to be a little slim (maybe I should have tried H-mart?). I had some trouble finding the right kind of noodles, and the store was super busy so I just grabbed 300g of whatever wheat noodles weren't marketed as ramen. 

I replaced the ham with tofurky deli slices. I know I like those, so not really a problem. I also didn't garnish with tomatoes, cucumber, or cilantro... just didn't have it in me after the cooking experience. I also bought more dark brown liquids for this meal: toasted sesame oil, and zhenjiang vinegar.

The biggest problem I had here was cooking the noodles. I don't know why I thought I could cook them in my saucier, rather than in my stock pot. I think I was hoping it would be faster to get the water boiling (which is true), and that I didn't need much water if the cooking time was only 1-2 minutes (this was false). The first problem was that as the water was almost boiling, one of my old dirty rags fell right into the pot. Great. So I had to re-boil the water. Once it got boiling again, I put the dry noodles in, and they did immediately start cooking. But there was a twist in the dry noodles, so that parts of the noodles were still dry (because that part was super dense) and the other parts were getting overcooked. I ended up cooking them for probably like 8-10 minutes... oof... they were extremely overcooked. They were basically congealed once I tried cooling them in the fridge. Oh, and my nice saucier got noodles completely burnt to the bottom.* So that was an absolute failure. 

Verdict: This was edible. The fact that it was only edible was entirely my fault.

*thankfully, after soaking for 48hr, it's sparkling clean again :)

 

 The "spicy chicken" here looks a lot tastier than it was, unfortunately.

marinated feta [California]

This week, I made a simple dish of feta marinated in olive oil, with some bread on the side. This was a very simple dish to make. I used in-brine feta, which I think is necessary for this recipe. 

On the side I also had sliced bread shallow fried in butter. I got the loaf from Sea Wolf bakery in Fremont, which I hadn't been to before. I stopped by only 45min before they closed, so I don't think the bread was very fresh. But shallow frying it in butter made it so tasty, even if it was kind of stale. I'll definitely stop by again this weekend because I've heard they have really good pastries too.

I also got salted Kerrygold butter, which I think was the best the grocery store had in stock. I have gotten kind of picky about my butter, especially when not using it for baking.

Verdict: I didn't have the right dishware for this. The image in the original recipe shows a small shallow bowl where the oil can sit higher up on the feta, but even the smaller plates I have are too shallow for that. So I ended up having a lot of extra oil. I was also not sure if I had to actually marinate the feta in this oil. But it tasted really good! 

To be honest, the bread was even better than the feta, but maybe that's just because you can't go wrong with bread and butter. I'll definitely have to get some honey if I have leftover bread.

tomato soup + avocado, corn, cucumber salad + strawberry smoothie [Florida]

I got a blender (Breville Fresh and Furious) and was able to try it out with these recipes! It was my first time doing three dishes in one night, but thankfully none of them were too much effort that it was overwhelming (that's the nice thing about making soup -- you can do other things while it's cooking).

*** Tomato soup ***

I used the recipe here. I got tomatoes from a local farmer's market. They aren't Florida tomatoes, but they *are* local tomatoes! Though, I regret buying the first substantial tomatoes that I saw. It was very smoky outside so I didn't want to spend too much time perusing the booths. After I bought plain beefsteak tomatoes I saw many more vendors had giant colorful heirloom tomatoes, which probably would have made this taste even better. Oh well.

The carrots were also local, bought a few weeks ago. The half onion was left over from a few weeks ago. In fact, the basil was also from a few weeks ago. It's doing well in my windowsill; I just have to water it a bunch. Now, when I'm gone for the next week and a half...

I didn't have crushed red pepper, so I used two dried cayenne peppers instead. It definitely made the soup spicier than other tomato soups I've had. It was a great addition! 

The blender worked super well. I just blended it in halves. 

Verdict: really delicious! I should get a soup spoon sometime (currently working with small teaspoons). 

*** Avocado, corn, and cucumber salad ***

I used the recipe here. I originally wanted to find frozen avocado chunks, but couldn't find them anywhere so just used a ripe avocado instead. I also didn't use corn off the cob, just frozen corn. 

I tried out my new citrus juicer for the first time this week, too. Unfortunately it juiced the lime a bit *too* well because the salad came out very lime-y and wet.

Verdict: with less lime juice, it could be really good. But it's just a bit too wet for my taste. 

*** Strawberry smoothie ***

I used the recipe here. I used a frozen banana and strawberry mix rather than fresh fruit. I also used whole milk instead of skim, and local plain sheep's milk yogurt. The blender worked very well here too! It only took a few seconds to fully blend.

Verdict: very good and refreshing! It's hard to go wrong with a smoothie though. I only had half of the batch the first day, so kept it in the fridge in the blender the second day. It was a bit too liquidy when I had it after a day. So I'd probably blend it a little less, or use a higher fruit to liquid ratio next time. Using whatever the local yogurt is was a good idea -- it is similar to Greek yogurt and so it has a bit of a bite to it, which really added to the taste.

All three dishes! I apologize for the presentation. I have very little dishware with me here x)

rice sevai upma [Jharkhand]

This recipe was originally found at this link. I was originally also going to make paratha and a vegetable korma, but I don't have a mortar and pestle or rolling pin yet, so I just had this dish.

I've never cooked with rice vermicelli before, and besides my stove taking 45 min to boil a very small amount of water, it was pretty easy!

All of the other parts of the recipe were easy to follow.

Verdict: The final dish was very tasty! It has a mild taste (there isn't any chili at all). The pulses have a great toasted taste to them.

fajeto + vagharela bhaat [Gujarat]

The second meal I cooked alone included fajeto (soup?) and vagharela bhaat (rice). I cooked the fajeto first; it got late and my kitchen is tiny, so I ended up making the bhaat the next day.

*** Fajeto ***

I love how this recipe site gives step by step instructions with photos. It's so helpful!

This is a mango / yogurt dish. The recipe says it's best to make when mangos are ripe; well, mangos don't grow in Seattle, but I can get decent (... decent, not good, passable, I guess) frozen mango. I ended up straining out a lot of tough mango chunks because I didn't use pulp or puree (I tried to mash them a bit before putting in the pot...). 

For the yogurt, I just picked up a 2c jar of sheep's milk yogurt at the farmer's market and let it sit on my counter a few hours before using (as the recipe suggests). I finally cleaned out the jar so I have to remember to return it on Sunday...

Neither my or my partner had experience cooking with more authentic Indian ingredients. I think he mostly just used whatever we had in the pantry. But I decided to stock my pantry with more authentic ingredients (e.g., actual red chili powder rather than the kind you'd get at a typical grocer). I used Desi Basket to order a bunch of dry goods. It was great! It's just incomparable to how expensive grocery store spices are. The whole order was like $80 and I got multiple pounds of pulses, flours, rice; I probably got like 1600g of various spices. There was only one fatality when it was shipped; the mustard seeds had leaked a bit. Also, unsurprisingly mostly everything comes in plastic bags rather than glass jars, so you have to have your own storage. That's fine with me though; I planned ahead :)

I don't have a mortar and pestle yet so I couldn't really paste-ify the ginger. Oh well, I think what I did still worked (chop it up really finely and then strain it at the end). 

My major complaint when cooking (not about the recipe) is that I have a crappy electric stovetop now that's very small. It took probably *half an hour* for the fajeto to start simmering after I started it. 

Tadka / tempering was also new to me. I found it quite fun! 

This is the fajeto immediately after adding the tadka to the liquid part.
 

*** Vagharela bhaat ***

This is a spiced rice that seems to usually be made with leftover rice but I decided to use fresh rice. 

I was really impressed with my rice cooker's basmati! I just set it on "mixed" setting to cook. It was so fresh and fragrant when done.

I didn't use any cilantro. I'm hoping to figure out if I actually have the cilantro soap gene sometime soon. If I do, maybe I'll just swap it out for culantro in the future.

The only annoying thing about this recipe (and this was true of the ulam rice too) is that mixing rice in takes a while and it gets kind of chunky. 

The bhaat and reheated fajeto.
 

Verdict: This was a lovely meal! I will say, I didn't adjust the recipes at all, and to my unaccustomed palate the fajeto was quite spicy. The rice helped with that a bit, but it is also relatively spicy. I probably should have had yogurt on the side like the bhaat recipe suggested.

The rice has a wonderful toasted taste to it. I also really like the mustard seeds in it. 

Both dishes reheated really well.

First post + ulam rice [Indonesia]

Hello to the void!~

I'm creating a new blog to document my experiences re-learning how to cook.

Background: I've somehow managed to avoid really learning how to cook until now, through various circumstances (parents who cooked, living in dorms, soylent v1.0, free lunches and dinners at the workplace, somehow sustaining myself on sauteed vegetables for six months in my first year of grad school, and a partner who is an amazing amateur cook). But now that I'm living by myself again and my partner's ~3k miles away, I figured I'd actually learn now.

I always found meal planning really overwhelming. Especially when I was in college, it was almost impossible finding a lunch to pack that didn't need to be microwaved or refrigerated. Being (mostly) vegetarian at this point, it's even harder. I've experimented a few times with cooking foods from around the world, and it never really worked, partially because my source for recipes was Wikipedia and I wasn't selective enough with choosing recipes. Some of the recipes that came from those experiments were quite tasty, like koshari; some became ... interesting memories, to say the least (don't use the "shred" option on a blender if you want to shred a potato).

Anyway, this time I'm actually doing it! And it's been great so far. I've cooked a few meals now, and it's actually very enjoyable. I *think* I have a good strategy for meal planning. We'll see how well I can keep it up!

(Also, if anyone does happen to see this blog and I'm cooking your food wrong, I'm so sorry! I don't mean to. My family is white and Midwestern so most of my meals growing up were things like spaghetti, chicken sandwiches, pork chops, taco night tacos, etc. I don't have a lot of experience with food cultures around the world.)

*****

The first meal I made was ulam rice! I believe it is a Betawi recipe. 

It looks a bit unappetizing because the lighting in my apartment sucks.

I used this to try out my new Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy rice cooker. I really love this rice cooker; it does take longer to cook than the Instant Pot we have in NYC though.

I wanted to find some pre-frozen fresh coconut. It was somewhat hard to find (weirdly enough specialty organic stores in Seattle didn't have any) but H-Mart had it. I used coconut oil as the cooking oil. 

I didn't use dried shrimp; I also didn't use anchovies. I instead used some "vegan fish sauce" from Ocean's Halo. I'm guessing this made it far from authentic-tasting but it still tasted good. 

I also got a bunch of "living basil". ~2 weeks later, it's still doing okay in my window, but it's finally starting to wilt. I'll have to use it soon.

Verdict: this was so tasty when it was fresh! Coconut is really delicious. My partner told me that I probably cut the cucumbers wrong (apparently you're supposed to skin this kind of cucumber). It didn't reheat very well; the rice was quite dry.