Recipe 11: Sweet and Sour Tofu

One of the recipes I found in last Sunday's ads was a recipe for Sweet and Sour chicken. I do not eat meat, so I substituted tofu. It was really easy and delicious. My dad made the chicken version and my brother loved it. Now he requested for me to make it with shrimp next time, so that we can all eat it (i.e. I will actually make it for him to enjoy because I can have it, too). I am thinking I might do that this week and although sort of cheating I might count it as another recipe because it will be Sweet and Sour Shrimp not tofu. By the way I served it with the Jasmine Rice, which I made again, as it is so much better than plain old rice (what the recipe called for).

Recipe 10: Lemongrass Limeade

Yesterday I made Lemongrass Limeade following a recipe on My Healthy Cooking Coach for Nintendo DS. I could not find any Lemongrass at my local grocery store, so it was not exactly right. I did, however, do a substitute recommended on Thai Kitchen's website here. It is a lot more work doing the lemon zest and fresh ginger, but well worth the flavor it adds. The other substitute I did was I used freshly carbonated water from our Soda Stream machine instead of plain water just because I like carbonation.

The Limeade did take a long time to make for the amount it made, as it took at least 30 minutes to make only 1 liter of Limeade. However, it is quite delicious, cheap to make, and well worth the effort. I think next time, though, I will at least quadruple the recipe and put the syrup in a container for mixing with the water as I want it. I think I will use the first empty bottle of the soda mix that goes with our Soda Stream. Then I will have my own homemade mix ready for use whenever I want with my Soda Stream carbonated water.

Recipe 9: Steamed Aromatic Rice

This is another recipe I made from My Healthy Cooking Coach DS game. It is rather simple and basically just cooking rice, but it really helped me realize how to cook rice right. I usually just follow the package and they say things like boil water and then cook for so many minutes. This recipe, however, has you boil it with the rice lower to medium for a little while and then cook longer on low. Definitely something I will be making again and I will never buy plain white rice again, as the Jasmine Rice makes a big flavor difference while still being pretty cheap.

Recipe 8: Orange Bruschetta

I bought the game My Healthy Cooking Coach a few weeks ago. Last Thursday I used it to make a recipe for the first time. The first recipe I made was Orange Bruschetta. I kind of knew it went on bread, but it never lists or mentions serving it on bread, so I forgot to get some. I ended up putting it on toasted wheat bread. It was not too bad, but it had way too much onions in it and I actually halved what was called for (2 scallops and I only used 1). The orange and tomato flavor was good. I do not know if I will make it again, but if I do I will definitely almost entirely leave out the onion and remember to have decent bread on hand.

Recipe 7: Cream Cheese Crisps

This Cream Cheese Crisp is one of the many recipes I have saved from magazines the past few years. It came in Family Fun back in 2008, but it is on their website here, too. It is a very simple thing using cream cheese and mini rice cakes (they were on sale this week, so I stocked up). It is also pretty tasty, although it would have been nice if I could have found plain flavored rice cakes instead of only cheddar.

Recipe 6: Angel Hair Pasta with Two Cheeses

I set out to make a three cheese pasta using another recipe from The Frugal Gourmet by Jeff Smith. The name of the recipe is Angel Hair Pasta with Broccoli and Three Cheeses. However, I could not find any Mizithra cheese, so it ended up only be a two cheese pasta. In the end I modified a lot of the recipe (mostly omitting stuff) and the result is little like the actual recipe.

Basically I just used Swiss Cheese (a little less than called for because I accidentally did not buy enough), Romano cheese (way more than called for to make up for the Swiss and missing third cheese), whipping cream, and angel hair pasta. I did not add the garlic, oil, onion, or broccoli. I just did not like the idea of garlic and onion with my cheese. Garlic probably would not have been bad, but I am not much into onions and especially did not like the idea of them with cheese. I do like broccoli with cheese, but omitted it because my brother does not like having it mixed in with pasta and he will probably eat the leftovers.

It turned out pretty good tasting as well as fast and easy to make the way I did. The overall recipe is not too hard either, but requires way more steps. It did end up a little too cheesy. Partially because I do not think I cooked enough pasta (I kind of randomly guessed what half a pound of it was since the box had a whole pound). The other thing was I ended up way overcompensating with the Romano. Honestly, though, even if done as it is supposed to be done I think it would be too cheesy without the broccoli. The 1/2 pound of broccoli is really what would make the amount of cheese called for be just right or maybe even not enough. I might make this again, but will definitely pay more attention to slowly adding the cheese to find the right amount.

Recipe 5: Japanese Cucumber and Crab Salad

I found the Japanese Cucumber and Crab Salad recipe in an old cookbook (really old to me, as it is older than me) we had called The Frugal Gourmet by Jeff Smith. The recipe is really easy, although to do it entirely right it needs 45 minutes prep time for the cucumbers, but I realized that too late and instead just used a little salt and skipped the draining part.

I liked the easiness of the recipe, but not the taste. It was not horrible, but it is not all that great of a dressing in my opinion, although my mom loved it. I would not mind making it again, but I would omit the sesame seed oil, as I am pretty sure that is the ingredient that I do not like the taste of. Or maybe just use a regular Balsamic Vinegar dressing, although then it would not be very Japanese anymore.

Recipe 4: Miso Soup

To go with the Tempura last night I made Miso Soup. The tempura may have ended up tasting fine, although not quite right, but the miso soup was all wrong. I followed this recipe. After it turned out tasting bad and looked way too dark I looked at the miso paste package and found it called for way less miso paste than the recipe I was following.

It ended up way too strong of a flavor. Definitely another recipe I am going to do again and try to get right to my taste. This time with way less miso paste. The miso soup I am used to has a very light color and yesterday my miso soup was very dark almost black rather than light brown.

Recipe 3: Tempura

At the beginning of the year when I asked my brother for ideas of things for me to make he asked for shrimp tempura. Last night (Wednesday is me cook night and game night at our house) I made tempura with some help from my dad. I mostly made shrimp tempura, but tried some broccoli and mushrooms as well.

The recipe I used for the tempura can be found here. I tried it with both all purpose flour and wheat flour. I kind of liked the taste of the wheat ones better, although the all purpose is like what you get at Japanese restaurants. My brother did not like either. I think because we put too much batter on them (mostly the wheat ones) as well as did not cook them long enough (both kinds).

Overall I liked them and it did at least taste right. The consistency of the batter was not right. Definitely something to practice and perhaps try again to get right.

Recipe 2: Pomegranate Sorbet in Orange Bowls

I have been wanting to try to make orange bowls as a fancy treat for a while. Today I finally tried it. I did not follow any specific recipe and basically just made it up.

I started by cutting an orange in half. I then scooped out the orange flesh with a spoon. I think there are more effective kitchen utensils made for this kind of thing, but it was not too hard to do with a spoon and then my hands to get the lasts of the orange out of the rind.



Next I made pomegranate sorbet using a bullet blender. I used 1 cup of frozen pomegranates and 1/2 cup of Cranberry Raspberry juice. The pomeganates do not really add much flavor, but the frozen aspect made the juice become a nice sorbet consistency fast. Next time I think I will do it with the blueberries or raspberries I have stocked in the freezer from super sales.



Once the sorbet was made I spooned it into the orange bowls. It tasted great from the bowls, as the peel added an orange flavor to it. It certainly made it an unique sorbet flavor, as well as quite beautiful and gourmet looking.

Overall this was a surprisingly easy recipe. I knew the sorbet would be easy, as I have made it with the bullet before, although never with frozen pomegranates. I really thought making the orange bowls would be hard. I was delighted to find that it did take about 10 minutes to make two bowls out of one orange, but it was actually quite easy. The key, though, is to have chosen an orange that can easily stand upright on both ends.

Recipe 1: Snowman on a Stick

Today I tried my first new recipe for 2010. The recipe is a healthy snack recipe from Family Fun. The recipe can be found on their site here.

It was really easy to make the Snowman on a Stick. I modified it a little. First of all I did not use any grapes for the top of the hat, as they were too expensive (not on sale at all) to buy at the grocery store this week. I also did not buy any mini chocolate chips to use. Instead I planned to use raisins, but only found a little box of them buried in the snack drawer. I did use the raisins (pulled in half) on a few of the snowmen, but they were mostly old and hard, so I only used a few for looks.

The other alternatives I did were making some snowmen using banana slices on pretzel sticks and trees with apple slices and bananas on pretzels sticks. These actually turned out better, as it is all edible. They are also cooler because I used banana slices on the bottom, so they actually stand up on their own. It also does not waste bamboo skewers, which may be cheap, but I felt they were wasted with the snowmen because not even half the stick was used.