Cooking - About this much, about that much

My mom is a great cook and I've never really fully appreciated until I was about to move to California.  Whenever I asked my mom for a recipe, she always gave me "rough" ingredient measurements of the  which being somewhat new to cooking didn't help me very much.  It was always "about this much soy sauce" or "about that much" as she poured the oyster sauce into the wok.

I find that somehow that approximation of sauces, spices and other seasonings has seeped into my mind.  When I cook my mother's recipes now, I hardly take out the measuring spoons/cups.  So far so good and I think it has encouraged me to taste the food as a cook.  (Yes, I used to hardly do that).

I made my mother's eggplant & ground meat stir fry the other day.  It's a quick and easy eggplant recipe, which I don't eat very often.

My Mother's Eggplant & Ground Meat Stir Fry

Ingredients (again below measurements are estimates):

• 1lb ground meat -  I use ground turkey but my mom uses pork. My mom usually adds a teaspoon of fish sauce to the meat for some extra flavour but I didn't since I didn't have any.
• 1 small - medium sized Japanese eggplant (the long skinny eggplant) but into 1-2 inch pieces about an inch thick
• 1 small chopped onion
• 1 small tomator
• 2-3 tbsp of vegetable oil
• 2 cloves of garlic - chopped
• 4 tbsp of oyster sauce - more may be needed.  Taste it as you cook!

Instructions:

• Sautee garlic and onions in vegetable oil until a bit translucent
• Add the meat and oyster sauce
• Once the meat is cooked remove everything from the pan and set aside.
• Sautee the eggplant with vegetable oil.  If it's too dry add a bit of water. 
• When the eggplant is half way cooked, add the tomatoes and a couple tablespoons of oyster sauce
• Once the eggplant is cooked, add the meat and mix everything together. 
• Serve with rice

Meal Planning *Update*

So I didn't do too well.  I didn't make the trip to the Chinese grocery store so all of my mother's recipes that I planned on making this week just isn't going to happen.  However, I did make the others.

Pasta with sausage & a simple salad - I cheated with Classico Tomato & Basil sauce and I 'unwrapped' sausage from its casing to make mini sausage meatball.  I think this is in a way to make me feel as though I'm really making dinner.  I threw in some green peppers, chopped onions and a bit of garlic because there  should be some vegetables in it.  It's okay, but I find that canned/jarred pasta sauce not as tasty as the ones in restaurants.  Probably because it's more processed and not fresh.  Oh well, I'll try to make my own sauce one day.

Today I went a bit ambitious and made:

• Balsamic chicken - I actually used a different recipe since I didn't have rosemary and left out the parsley & sesame seeds since I didn't have them.  It's very simple and since I only ended up making 5 drumsticks I halved everything except the garlic (I love them).
• Ingredients 
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 sugar (I used white since I ran out of brown sugar)
• 1//8 cup low sodium soy sauce
• 3 minced garlic cloves 
• 5 or 6 drumsticks
• In a bag or container (I use a container since I think using a bag is wasteful) mix everything but the drumsticks together.  Once mixed, throw in the drumsticks and coat them well.  I usually just put on the lid and give the container a few shakes.  I marinate it in the fridge for 2 to 3 hours and give it a shake whenever I remember while its marinating. 
• Preheat the oven at 450 degrees and then bake for 30 minutes.  I used to turn the chicken over half way through but I didn't do so this time and found the chicken was fine.  By not turning it also left some crispy skin (so good...and so bad)
• This recipe turned out a lot better than I expected.  I feared it was going to have a vinegar taste to it since the smell was pretty strong but all that honey and sugar really took care of it.  I'd make it again. 
• Lemony white bean & arugula salad - followed this Giada De Laurentiis' recipe but left out the capers.  The cannellini beans tend to all gather at the bottom of the bowl so you just have to remember to scoop them out when you serve it.  I didn't think I was going to like the dressing because I wasn't too fond of it when I tasted it by itself but with the beans & arugula it was great. I don't think I would have liked the capers in this salad.  It would have too much of a sharp salty taste.
• Potato and bacon soup - I have a bag of potatoes and a package of turkey bacon in the freezer that have both been sitting there waiting to be eaten.  I found this on allrecipes.com and since it had great ratings I tried it out.  Modifications (it seems like I can't follow a recipe very well): 
• I used turkey bacon which isn't as fatty as regular bacon so there was hardly any bacon fat to saute the onions & garlic in.  I ended up adding olive oil to it.  
• I didn't have half & half so I used the skim milk that I did have in the fridge and added a couple tablespoons of butter so compensate.
• Instead of 3 tablespoons of flour I used four since I wanted it a bit thick.  I still didn't get the consistency I wanted but left it at 4 tablespoons.  
• The soup was good but didn't have the bacon taste I was expecting since I used the turkey bacon.  It was still pretty good and probably healthier than the original version. 

No pictures of the chicken & salad because I was way too hungry once everything was ready to take pictures (left the soup for last since it needed to cool down).  Oh well!  The recipe links have pictures except for the salad if you're that interested.  I'll try to be better next time!

My Favourite Korean Dish

'Ja jian myun', 'ja jiang myun' or some other form of spelling is a Korean black bean noodle that I love.  It's the one dish that I almost always order if it's on the menu.  According to my Korean friends it's originally a Chinese dish that the Korean adapted and called their own so it's difficult to find it in restaurants in Korea. 
I wanted to try to make this at home so thanks to Google, I found this blog.  It's fantastic since it seems to have real authentic recipes and she also has video of her cooking various dishes so it's pretty much a no fail way of cooking up her recipes.  
A few changes that I made: 

• Substituted the pork belly with ground turkey since it's healthier
• Substituted turnips for carrots since I don't usually eat turnips and didn't want to have left over unused turnips
• I garnished it with green onions instead of sliced cucumbers. 

There are a number of Korean supermarkets in the Bay Area so finding the black bean paste was really easy.  The dish was easy to make and delicious!

Here is a link to the recipe: Ja Jang Myun

Meal Planning

In an effort to cook more and save money I have decided to try to cook more. While I have tried to cook more previously, I never took the time to plan out days in advance. It seems like it would have been logical to start awhile ago but oh well - starting it now! With my Pinterest boards filling up and my Google Doc with a list of my mom's recipes, I really don't have an excuse not to plan so here it goes. And yes, it only goes from Tuesday to Friday for this week and for the weekend, I'll try spontaneity, which I'm unfortunately not well known for - so here's to trying!


Monday - Yes, I'm starting off the week with a bit of cheating. I'm going to my husband's work to have dinner. Small steps!
Tuesday - My mom's tong ho soup and chicken & shiitake dish
Wednesday - Pasta with sausage & salad
Thursday - balsamic chicken, lemony white bean and arugula salad
Friday - My mom's steamed fish with soy sauce and eggplant stir fry


So while this is my plan, it's booked in my calendar (since I check it every day) and I'm also going to try to take photos to post.  I have found that when I  have tried this previously I get caught up in cooking (more like eating) that I forget to, so like I said - here's to trying!

Drying Basil

I find that I never use all the herbs that I buy so finally I looked up how to dry basil.  I bought some at Trader Joes and it only came in a large quantity and they were the biggest basil leaves I’ve seen.

I figured that all I’d have to do is hang them up dry but just in case I Googled it.  The first couple of links led me to methods involving a dehumidifier or a dehydrator which is all well and good but I wasn’t going to buy one just for drying herbs.  I don’t do it often enough nor do I plan on doing it that often to justify a purchase.
So I finally found my air drying method confirmation on instructables.com: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-air-dry-basil/

My shortened take on how to dry them:

1. Wash basil clean
2. Discard the ‘bad’ leaves (ie. leaves with holes, discolouring etc)
3. Pat dry
4. Bunch them up by the stems & tie them at the stems.  I used yarn since I have a lot of scrap yarn from my knitting projects.
5. Hang them where it’s dry.  I’d avoid anywhere where it may come into contact with steam (ie. above where you put a rice cooker/kettle/stove) since it won’t dry properly.
6. Once fully dried, cut/scrunch/crumble them into bits and store them in a dry container/Ziplog bag. I used scissors and snipped away at the leaves.   It’s quick, easy and I can snip them directly into the container.