I found this recipe for Mapo Tofu and instantly wanted to try it. I've had it before, and loved the spicy red sauce. The recipe calls for chili bean paste and fermented black beans. The first time I made it, Wegmans neither, and tried to substitute with stuff I already had. Fermented beans are salty, so I used pancetta. I didn't have chili ( Read more... )

Last week, I found a random zucchini in the veggie drawer. I have no idea what I bought it for, but it was still ok to eat. I decided to make stuffed zucchini, and was inspired by the dish my mother in law made when we were in Rome last month. Her stuffed zucchini involved veal, breadcrumbs, and some flavor of stock. I only had what was ( Read more... )

It's been a while since I've posted food. With recovery from the appendectomy and then a long vacation, I haven't been trying much new stuff. But, now that I'm all unpacked, I've had time to experiment again. :)

I forget who introduced me to Appetite for China, but I'm so glad that I read it!

I saw this recipe for "Silk Road Ginger and ( Read more... )

After making crabcakes, we had some leftover jumbo lump crab. I didn't want to waste it, so I decided to try this side dish from Harumi's Japanese Cooking. I would put this side dish firmly in the category of "tastes better than it looks" since the white sauce is kind of plain looking, and kind of glorps over the asparagus. If I made this again ( Read more... )

I've posted about agedashi tofu before, but this time I didn't follow a recipe for the sauce, because last time I thought the dashi was way too fishy. I served it with some home made potstickers. We multiplied the recipe by 8 so that we had lots of potstickers to freeze.

( Agedashi Tofu and Potstickers )

I like tofu. I try to eat it at least once a week. The key to making a good tofu dish is to allow the tofu to absorb the flavors of the other ingredients in the dish. I made three tofu dishes recently. One had a recipe that looked fabulous: a tofu scramble with spices, dried cranberries, fennel, and pistachio nuts, all things I really like. It ( Read more... )

Even though I love to tackle new recipes, I have lots of simple dishes on regular rotation. One of my favorite books for easy dinners is Martin Yan's Quick & Easy. I've tried a ton of recipes from this book and they're all quick and tasty. One of my favorites is Jade Chicken, partially because it gives me an excuse to fry mint. Normally, I ( Read more... )

I've got three meals to post. Two of them were fantabulous and one of them was kind of meh ( Read more... )

It's been a while since I've posted. Work's been busy and I've been away on weekends. Most of my cooking has been of the "pasta with stuff" variety or things I've already posted before. But, I've got a new one now ( Read more... )

stoloniferous' story about Blue Hubbard squash inspired me to post my recent squash experiment. The recipe is from Martin Yan's Quick and Easy. It's called "Buddhist Braised Squash," but I have no idea what makes it Buddhist. It involved a Japanese pumpkinlike squash called kabocha, which I'd never heard of before I tried this dish. The cookbook pointed out ( Read more... )