I just chatted with a neighbor in the elevator.
It’s crazy that we get excited about the upcoming temperature of 40F degrees.
She is right though, about Minnesotans getting soon excited about 20F degrees!
Seriously, I think we can officially call us survivors.
Yes, I’m still enjoying creating dishes featuring apples.
This time fried rice!
You know, many Thai restaurants serve pineapple fried rice, and the idea came from it.
Apples get caramelized and create wonderful flavors.
Apples and tempeh were cooked first, rice and green onion were added and then they were fried together.
Looks good, doesn’t it?
It was so tasty!
If you like pineapple rice, you will love this one.
The apple fried rice was served with a little bit of this and that.
I love having small dishes like this for my meal.
When you go to a restaurant and order a curry dish, you usually have to pick what you want in your curry.
It usually takes me a long time to decide on one thing because I often want “everything”!
A good thing about homemade curry is that you can add whatever you want, and the options are endless!
This time I added homemade vegan meatballs, tofu, and various veggies.
This is definitely my kind of curry.
This is something you will often find at a small bar served as a snack in Japan.
But for someone like me, non-drinker, it is a great afternoon snack.
Chinese chives are not easy to find in the Midwest, but luckily at the local farmers market there is one vendor who does sell them regularly.
I packed these pancakes with lots of Chinese chives as well as fried onion to give an extra flavor.
The pancake itself is slightly chewy and very satisfying.
These are delicious as they are, but you can also enjoy them with garlic chili dipping sauce.
I shared my story about Chinese steamed buns in my previous post.
Since I was making dough myself, I decided to make another version, sweet red beans.
These buns are so tasty, either savory or sweet.
I can’t decide which is my favorite because they are both so good.
They are so pretty (pre-cooking) that I have to take pictures.
These buns are traditionally steamed (at least in Japan).
But I decided to fry both sides, top and bottom, after steaming them.
This process resulted in crispy top and bottom, which I absolutely loved!
They were so delicious, and I loved them so much.
The homemade dough really makes a huge difference.
I can’t wait to make more again, and maybe experiment with other filling options too.
Chines steamed buns are a popular fall-winter snack in Japan.
Now they have all different kinds of filling, from savory to sweet.
But when I was a child, there were basically only two fillings you can choose from: pork(savory) and red beans (sweet).
My mother made a lot of things, but this is something she never made herself, so we would buy pre-made ones and steamed them at home.
They were not bad, but they were never my favorite.
But it has been such a long time since I had my last one, so I decided to give it another try.
This time, homemade.
One of the things I was not crazy about my childhood buns was the pork filling.
So since I no longer eat meat, I made my own filling using eggplant and walnuts.
I love this process of forming bun pouches.
Another thing I did differently was frying the bottom in addition to steaming the whole buns.
(This time I fried first and then steamed them, but next time I may steam them first and then fry later to achieve even more crispness.)
It was a good idea to create the crispy bottom.
You can enjoy the crispness and the softness both from one bun!
These buns were absolutely delicious!!
Nothing like the ones from my childhood (which is a good thing in this particular case!).
Come back to see another version in my next post.
I love variety of vegetables, but I do have favorites.
Eggplant is one of the vegetables that I really enjoy, and whenever I see a dish made with eggplant on a restaurant menu, I almost always order it.
(Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen very often. Apparently not many restaurants serve eggplant dishes…)
I was lucky to be able to find beautiful fresh eggplant and zucchini at the local farmers market to make this Mapo dish.
The “meat” part of Mapo was made with tempeh and walnuts.
My initial plan was to use only tempeh, but I didn’t have enough, so at the last minute I added walnuts.
This decision was a great one!
I really loved the result.
The texture and the nutty flavor from the walnuts were wonderful.
I don’t always have time, but when I do, I try make my noodles myself.
For this dish I wanted flat and wide noodles, so I kind of needed to make them myself, too.
Absolutely delicious!!
Served with Japanese Shiso basil leaves and chili pepper threads.
This week has been a bit difficult week for me.
My energy was low, and I didn’t have a lot of motivation to cook after work.
I ate spaghetti four nights in a row, and none of them were great…
Then, today I had this idea of making potstickers from scratch.
It just came to me.
I mean, making wrappers from scratch.
I always wanted to try this, but I felt overwhelmed.
This was a lot of work, but I did enjoy the process.
It’s not difficult, but it takes time.
I always like to take pictures of potstickers at this stage, right before cooking.
They are just so beautiful.
It’ also a safe thing to do, just in case they don’t look too good after being cooked (lol).
These were so delicious!
The homemade wrappers definitely make a difference, resulting in a wonderful texture.
My husband is not a huge noodle eater, but recently I discovered that he does like “rice” noodles vs. wheat ones.
Since I’m a huge noodle fan, now I make sure we have rice noodles in our house so that we can share noodle meals together.
This is my recent favorite from Trader joe’s
It’s crunchy and spicy, and it adds a great flavor to various dishes.
Doesn’t this look good?!
It was such a satisfying meal!
My bitter melon adventure continues.
My first bitter melon dish, namul, did not fly.
I could not eat more than a few bites, because it was too bitter.
My next bitter melon dish was my previous post, smoothie.
It was still a bit bitter, but the bitterness was surprisingly pleasant.
Many people recommended tempura.
I was a bit skeptical, but when I heard some people say “I don’t like bitter melon, but I like it when it’s tempura,” I got encouraged.
I was initially planning to make simple tempura, but then I saw some meat-stuffed versions, and I thought it would be fun to stuff mine with tofu.
(I used scrambled tofu that was flavored quite heavily with various spices, including cumin, for the stuffing.)
It was still bitter, but I actually liked it.
I wonder if tempura makes bitter melon easier to eat, or it is me that is getting used to bitter melon.
I simply enjoyed it with Kosher salt.
I also really liked the combination of bitter melon and tofu.
Here was my bitter melon dish, number 4.
Braised bitter melon.
This was pretty tasty too.
Now I used up all the bitter melon I bought.
At this point I’m not sure if I will go back to buy more…
