Braised Meat

Something that always tastes absolutely wonderful is melt-in-your-mouth braised meats!

When I went to Taiwan in the spring and visited my grandma, she told us about this duck that she had ordered specially made for dinner.  She said, you don't boil it in water at all.  You use two whole bottles of rice wine, a cup of soy sauce, some sugar, and just let it boil until it's dry.  You can also add in garlic or ginger.  The result is this beautifully dark and flavorful meat.  For our dinner, we had the duck, and it was so rich and so flavorful.

The braised duck is on the left.  Head and all!

I've since tested out the technique at home with a nice meaty haunch of pork shoulder.  I cut it up into smaller chunks because I was afraid the wine wouldn't cover it all properly.  You bring the rice wine and soy sauce to a boil first before adding the meat.  After adding the meat, I threw in some sliced ginger and added a few tbsp of sugar.  Then, you leave it uncovered and let it boil for 4 hours.  As time passes, you'll want to flip the meat over and gradually lower the temperature from high to medium to a low simmer until the liquid is almost gone.  Save some though and it will be the best sauce to moisten your meat!

I'm going to attempt this recipe again for Thanksgiving this year.  Thinking of braising a whole chicken. :)

The Japanese "Hamburg"

My boyfriend bought me a Japanese cookbook for Valentine's Day.  It was a beautiful book with great pictures, explanation on how the cuisine developed, and great recipes to try out.  The first one that I tackled was the Hambagu (ハンバーグ) , or hamburger steak.

The Japanese have a way with developing their recipes.  They take the foreign and make it comfortably Japanese.  The Hamburg is a great comfort food.  It is a hamburger patty drenched with a savory sauce often served with white rice and veggies on the side.  Now, shame on me for forgetting to take pictures of it when I made it--I've just been so keen on just eating it first!

Hamburg as pictured in an anime

The steps to make it are very simple.  You assemble the burger patty, cook it, and then create the sauce from the pan drippings.  The recipe I was following was straightforward and came out great.  I'm doing this from memory, so I hope the listed amounts are correct.

Burger Ingredients (4 large patties)

• 6 oz minced onion
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 8 oz ground pork
• 8 oz ground beef
• 1/2 cup of panko crumbs
• 1/4 cup of milk
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 egg

Sauce Ingredients

• 1/4 cup sake
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup Worchestershire Sauce

Cooking Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

The first step is to mince your onion and garlic.  You then melt 1 tbsp butter in a pan over medium heat and cook the onions and garlic until it is translucent.  Set this aside to cool as you assemble the meat mix.

Use a small bowl to hold the panko crumbs and pour the milk in.  Let the panko soak up the milk for at least 5 minutes.  My suggestion is to mix it up well before you let it sit on the counter.  Just make sure that most of the crumbs get soaked into the milk.

Now, get your other ingredients together into a mixing bowl.  Measure out your meat.  I have a handy food scale so I can easily set it to g/kg/oz/lbs without having to convert. :)  I like to put the meat in first, then the salt and soy sauce, then the panko crumbs, cooked onion and garlic, and lastly, the egg!  You then squish this mixture with your hands until the ingredients are evenly distributed.  Also, I should say that you can substitute your meats for other ground meats and the texture will still come out pretty good.  It's really the panko crumbs that makes it so tender, so you can substitute for less fatty ground meat if you wish.

The traditional Hamburg is a big burger patty.  If you want to do it this way, you divide up the meat mixture into 4 portions and then shape the patties about 1 inch thick.  I did it this way the first time I made it, but the second time, I made little meatballs instead!  I made meatballs about 3/4 inch thick, squish a little bit flat so that it's like a little slider patty rather than a rolly poly meatball.  This works just as well as a big hamburger patty--just watch your cooking time.

Heat 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp vegetable oil over medium heat in your pan.  Wait for the oil to get hot before putting in your patties.  In my normal skillet, I fit about 2 large patties in it at a time.  With little meatballs, you can put more in at once.  The average time for a large patty is about 12 minutes total cooking time.  Make sure that you flip your patty or meatballs halfway through.  To see if your meat is cooked through, stick a toothpick in and see if the juices run clear.  Then you're good to go!  Plate the patties while you make the sauce.

Keep the pan at medium to medium-low heat.  Pour the sake into the pan (I substituted with Chinese rice wine that I had) and swirl it around for 20 seconds.  Use your spatula to scrape the pan so that everything comes off the bottom.  Then add in the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce and cook for a minute or two, mixing until everything is well blended.  Then pour the sauce over your burgers and serve!

Since the sauce is very salty and savory, it's a great match with plain white rice and some steamed veggies.  Enjoy!

To Cook or Not to Cook? That is the question.

I confess, I've fallen into a habit of getting takeout more often now.

Before we moved into the house, living at our tiny apartment was simple.  I cooked all the time and we would occasionally treat ourselves to eating out or ordering pizza.  For our first night of living in the new house, we bought takeout to treat ourselves after moving.  Things were busy for the two of us--I had work 9am-5pm and my boyfriend had work 4:30pm-2am.  There was a lot more prep needed in the morning or at night to prep breakfast, lunch, and dinner for all (including my 3 cats and dog!).  So then, it became more of a habit to order takeout when we had a lot less time to unwind.

Personally, I really love cooking.  I wish I could spend all day cooking, perfecting a recipe.  (Hello, Barefoot Contessa.)  I talked about this with my boyfriend when he asked me to pack two dinners for him since he often got hungry at work because of the way his hours are.  I told him how if I didn't work, I would gladly spend more time to prep delicious meals for him.  And we agreed that, in the future, when he could support it, I would get to stay at home.  Perhaps I exhausted myself covering everything when he was unemployed, but it really felt reassuring that he supported me and we came to the mutual decision to work towards that.

But for now, I cook when I can.  If I'm not sick or lacking sleep, I spend almost my whole morning from 7 until I head out to prep food.  Prior to 7, I prep the fur babies' food.  I don't spend any time watching TV in the morning anymore.  All I do is get up, feed the pets, eat a quick breakfast, cook, and get ready for work.  And in the evenings, I am usually tired and just want to unwind.  So if it's cooking, I try to do something fast or easy that I can let sit on the stove for a while.  And when we want to, we don't feel guilty for choosing takeout over a home-cooked meal.  We enjoy what we can. :)

Noodle Strainers

Understandably, most people use colanders for pasta, but Asians mostly use strainers for the noodles.  The fine mesh gets rid of water quickly and the design of a great noodle strainer is there to help you out in the kitchen.  I recently got a strainer like they use in ramen restaurants.  It's super useful!

It's a deeper strainer with a hook to latch your strainer to the pot.  Oftentimes, a strainer that is not as deep means that the water won't sufficient cover the noodles and consequently, the noodles don't get cooked well.  With this deeper strainer, you may need a slightly taller pot, but it keeps the noodles swimming in the water and it allows the noodles room to move.  I drop one or two portions of noodles into it (I find you shouldn't do more than two portions or else it's too full), hook it on the pot, and work on the rest of my ingredients while the noodles cook.  I used to not even use a strainer when cooking.  I'd just slowly fish out the noodles to a bowl and hope that I got all of it out of the pot.  With this, I've been cooking noodles and easily tossing the perfect portion right into the bowl when ready.  Add soup or sauce and meat and veggies and you have an awesome bowl of noodles ready to eat!

Get it from Amazon

What to do with these ingredients?

For Christmas, my dad came up with a haul of food from Costco.  I specifically asked for certain things and, of course, he goes and buys extra things that I didn't ask for.  The tomatoes went to waste already and I still have cucumbers and bell peppers left to deal with.  And two baby watermelons that remain uncut!  At least I've cut up some of the apples he brought and fed them to our dog.  I'm pulling out my hair thinking about what to do before the peppers and cucumbers go bad.  I've just been so busy with cleaning up the house, handling the cats and our dog, and other things that I haven't had the opportunity to cook properly in a while.

Such is life. :(

Aidell's Chicken & Apple Sausage and New Teriyaki Pineapple Meatballs

It all started one day very long ago when I was in middle school and we were shopping around Costco.  They had a big demo pavilion set up with multiple hot plates going.  The product was Aidell's sausages.  They had cut up so many slices of the sausages and had all the different flavors to try out.  One kid that stood next to me said that he had 17 pieces of it already.  I laugh now, thinking back on it because when I first popped the piece into my mouth, it was love at first taste.  We ended up buying the chicken & apple flavor to try out at home.  It had become our go-to sausage if we wanted to purchase some because it was pre-cooked and all you had to do was heat it in the pan.

I had a moment of the same "click" with my trip this past weekend.  I drove back to NJ for a weekend visit and of course, I had to drop by Costco to pick up some things.  We cruised around getting the items we were looking for and we took advantage of the "free lunch" (we went around 1:30pm) that Costco offers.  Of the items available (cheese, mozzarella sticks, pork loin..), we were surprised by the meatballs offered near the meats/packaged section, not the freezer aisle.

There were meatballs available so I had one.  It was flavorful and not dry at all!  It was a juicy chicken meatball and as I tasted it, my eyes lit up.  I checked out the sign and found out it was Aidell's Teriyaki Pineapple Meatball.  It was a brand I trusted and loved and I quickly grabbed a pack from the shelves to bring home with me.  It was Costco-sized at 46 oz (2.875 lbs) for $20 and split into two vacuum-sealed packages.  As with their other products, it is pre-cooked.

They recommend that you have it with rice or other plainer fare.  I had to make something quick for lunch today so I took some macaroni pasta I had leftover in the fridge, chopped up an onion and chopped up the meatballs to match the size.  I cooked the onions first (S&P), then add the meatballs, and added (accidentally add a little more than I intended) marinara sauce to it.  Added some basil and mixed it all up for a hearty pasta.  I thought the flavor might be weird because of the teriyaki from the meatballs, but it actually tasted perfectly good with the tomato sauce. :)

I was hungry and it was so delicious so I didn't get to take a picture of the pasta for you!  Sorry!

A Grocery Budget vs Eating Healthy

I came across a great article today talking about food inequality.  You can read it here.  The article talks about the stigma of fast food vs healthy food for low income families.  It talks about how income (or lack thereof) highly influences decisions to purchase one item over another.  When there's a whole family to feed, the unhealthy carbs are more cost-effective and keep everyone full.

I didn't grow up poor, but I understand what it's like to make food choices.  My family would fall into the lower-middle class.  We were a family of 4: my parents, myself, and my younger sister.  Both of my parents worked full-time.  My sister and I were somewhat picky eaters, but we'd always have food on the table and snacks for after school.  Growing up, my mom would bring us with her for grocery shopping so that we could learn how to pick things like veggies and meat.  I had always paid close attention, trying to absorb the information in--and it worked.  I am now on my own and making my own food choices.

Just two girls growing up in Jersey.

Thinking back, I didn't know what the grocery budget was.  At one point though, my mom had been trying to make some extra money to have more for groceries because both me and my sister were growing kids and needed more and more food to sustain us.  We got groceries from Shoprite, Costco, and the local Chinese market.  Sometimes, my mom would weight the fruits or vegetables as she gathered them into the plastic bags.  She'd ask us what we wanted to have for dinner and we'd go and look for ingredients.  It was great when we developed a love for something like bok choy and it was cheap yet healthy. She would firmly tell us when, no, we couldn't have salmon because it wasn't on sale.  We'd get frozen dumplings or chicken cutlets.  Fresh vegetables includes bok choy, bean sprouts, and broccoli.  Our family lived off of rice and we'd only buy boxes of pasta if it was $1 or less.  With that came jars of pasta sauce (also $1 or less) and some ground pork (from the Chinese market rather than more expensive beef) to add to macaroni.  Mom would let us get crackers or cookies for snacks.  We also had cheap ramen or cup noodles on hand where we'd cook it in a bowl and add ingredients to it (eggs, scallions).  She would pack everyone lunches every day.  Sometimes it was a small thermos of fried rice or a Hot Pocket wrapped in foil (ham and cheese was my favorite until meatball mozzarella came along).  Overall, I estimate our weekly budget was less than $100/week for a family of four.  It is probably average for our income and lifestyle, but for those less fortunate, a lot of concessions would have to be made.

Cup Noodles with Fish Balls & Scallions

I think why an article like the one above resonates with me.  I understand the difficulties and the choices, and now that I'm living on my own, I am understanding the difficulties of needing convenient choices vs eating healthier.  Even now, I only buy grapes, my favorite fruit, when it's on sale.  That's why, a project like Good and Cheap by Leanne Brown is wonderful!  Cookbooks nowadays are focusing more and more on eating fresh foods when in season, but also using ingredients within your means to create a sustaining meal.

For my sister and myself, we ended up more and more involved in our food choices when we started watching Lidia Bastianich and Jacques Pepin on PBS.  When we got home from school, Rachel Ray would be on.  We developed our own passion for cooking and exploring different foods and that helped shape what we bought for groceries.  It was homemade and not necessarily the healthiest (think: meatloaf) but it was wholesome and we enjoyed it.  Now, when I cook for myself, I try to make healthy choices, but also allow for the occasional ramen or chips to fill me up.  And that's okay.