Fish Curry

Fish Curry

If you live in Philadelphia or visited Philadelphia, you would know how crazy the weather is here. One day might be warm and beautiful and the next day will be unbearably cold and windy. During those chilly days, nothing warms the soul better than something hot to eat or drink- soup, stew, hot beverages, chili, etc. For the cold day, I decided to make some fish curry. I complemented the curry with slices of multi-grain baguette and chow it down like soup. I can definitely say that this dish kept me warm and satisfied my craving. Read more for the Fish curry recipe. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Shrimp and Vegetable Egg Rolls

Finished Shrimp and Vegetable Egg Rolls

Egg Roll Wrapper

Uncooked Filling

Cooked Filling

Placing the filling a little below the center of the wrapping

Folding in the bottom corner

Folding in the sides

Rolling the egg roll

Sealing the egg roll with water

Wrapped Egg Rolls

Egg rolls are delicious, but deep-frying them can add more inches to your waistline than desired. Well, here I got a recipe that will enable you to enjoy the treat without the excessive calories as compared to deep-frying it. To reduce the fat, I cooked the filling and then pan-fried the wrapper as oppose to dumping the egg rolls in a pot of oil. Now, I can feel a little less guilty for eating these egg rolls.

Below is the recipe I used. Similar to the potstickers, I am not going to state the amount of ingredients I used. I am just going to list them. You can essentially put anything you want in them. I mainly used shrimp and vegetables because my brother is a vegetarian that eats seafood. An idea that my brother suggested that I might consider next time is using taro instead of jicama. He didn’t like the crunchiness of the jicama. Taro is actually softer and would yield to a more binded filling. I do recall my aunt using them in her egg rolls and them tasting good. Next time, I shall try it.  If you get a chance to pan-fry egg rolls, please let me how it turned out and if you liked them.

Also, if you don’t pan-fry all of them at once, you can freeze them and save it for later.  When you are ready to cook them, you can thaw them in the refrigerate a day before or put them in the microwave to defrost. Once they are defrosted, add 2 tbsp of vegetable oil to a skillet over medium heat. When the oil is heated, add the egg rolls and roll them around the oil. Then make sure you put the lid on. This will help heat up the center of the egg roll. Keep the lid on for about 3 minutes. Then lift the lid and turn the egg rolls to the other side.  Then put the lid back on for 3 minutes. Then lift the lid and cook all side to obtain crispiness.

Pancakes, Scrambled Eggs, Home Fries, and Fruit Salad

Pancakes, Scrambled Eggs, and Home Fries

Kiwi, Papaya, and Blackberry Fruit Salad

Home Fries Close-Up 

Today, I made myself an elaborate breakfast. Cooking at home is definitely better than going out to eat at places like iHop because you have control over the amount of salt, fat, and sugar in your food. In addition, your kitchen is probably cleaner than the restaurant’s kitchen.

The ingredients I used should be enough for 2 people. I made some substitutes for the pancakes though since I did not have any butter or buttermilk. I used vegetable oil in place of butter. In order to make the buttermilk substitute, I put a tablespoon of white vinegar in a one cup measuring cup and then filled the rest of the cup with whole milk. Then, I let it stand for 5-10 minutes. 

For the potatoes, I soaked them in cold water for 20 minutes after cutting them to remove some starch so that it becomes crispy on the outside and fluffy in the inside when I cook them. I also gave my home fries a kick by adding jalapeños and cayenne pepper, but you don’t have to incorporate any jalapeños or cayenne pepper if you don’t like hot foods. For the fruit salad, I kept it simple and just combined various fruits that I found in my refrigerator- kiwi, papaya, and black berries. You can squirt a little honey to the fruit for some more sweetness; however, I omitted the honey.

Read more for a detailed recipe of the pancakes, scrambled eggs, and home fries.

Shrimp and Vegetable Potstickers

Delicious Shrimp and Vegetable Potstickers

Potsticker Filling

Dumpling Wrapper Used

Wrapped Potstickers

What do I do on my day off? I spend the whole day making pot stickers for myself and my family. Potstickers or shall I say pan-fried dumplings make great appetizers or dishes for potlucks. Making potstickers can be a tedious task as it requires a lot of dicing, wrapping, and pan-frying, but I do enjoy the process and think it is worthwhile at the end. Maybe in the future I will invest in a food processor to speed up the processor. We shall see.

For my potstickers, I used an assortment of vegetables and minced shrimp, but you can really put anything you want in potstickers.  Most people usually use ground pork or chicken. Feel free to experiment with ingredients you like.

Tapioca Pudding made with Coconut Milk

Tapioca Pudding 

Sometimes I think I am a pregnant woman with all the cravings I have. This time I wanted some tapioca pudding. I was about to purchase some at the Asian supermarket, but decided to make myself some instead. How hard can it be? I found a recipe online for Cambodian banana tapioca pudding. I think this is the closest to what I was craving-coconut milk and tapioca. I omitted the banana’s from the recipe. I just kept the recipe simple to water, tapioca, coconut milk, and sugar. When I was making the pudding in the evening, my mother came into the kitchen to question what I was making and why. I told her my life wasn’t sweet enough. It’s true. It’s not. That’s why I need a dessert to make it sugary sweet!!!

Smile, I got Cupcakes:)

Happy Valentine's Day- Cupcakes from Pamcake

At work today, we had cupcakes from Pamcake, a cute Philadelphia cupcakery located in Rittenhouse Square to celebrate one of my co-worker’s birthday and Valentine’s Day. I had a chocolate cupcake. What I enjoyed about the cupcake was its moistness and its taste. It wasn’t too sweet and didn’t taste at all like your average cupcake. When I say average cupcake, I am mainly referring to cupcake mix from a box. However, I thought the cupcake was too crumbly for my preference. When I tried to cut the cupcake in half, it fell apart very easily. Also, regarding the frosting, it was more on the fluffy side. I don’t know how I feel about that. I generally don’t like frosting. I think the cupcake would actually taste fine without the frosting.  Overall, I will give the cupcake 3 stars for its moistness and its taste. The chocolate and sugar was well-balanced and not overpowering, but I think the cupcake could of still been moist without being to crumbly and good without all that frosting. I guess it is okay to have all that frosting on it since you can just take it off if you don't like it. I pretty sure there are people out there who love frosting. 

Vegetable Stir-Fried Glass Noodles

Vegetable Stir-Fried Glass Noodles

I had a carving for glass noodles or clear noodles as some people might call it so I made some. Below are the ingredients and instructions. They taste good with hot sauce. Another thing is that you can also use it as a filling for egg rolls. This time I didn’t use them to make egg rolls. I just ate some and saved the rest for later.

Seafood Congee

Seafood Congee

I wanted something hot and not to complicated to make so I made some congee with frozen vegetables, frozen fish balls, and scallion.  Congee or rice porridge is traditionally served for breakfast or late supper in many Asian cultures. Depending on your texture preference of the congee, the time spent cooking congee can vary.  Some individuals might leave congee in the slow cooker overnight for the rice to soften more and become more soup-like. Some individuals like my mother still likes the grains to be visible and do not cook the congee very long. She just waits until the water boils and cooks the rice over medium heat for about 10 minutes. Although you can cook the congee this way, I think traditionally people cook it longer to obtain the soup-like texture. For my congee, after the water boiled I add the frozen mixed vegetable and diced fish balls and then waited for it to boil again. Once it boiled, I turned the heat to medium low and cook for about 20 more minutes.  To serve, I topped it with scallions and fried radish.  I didn’t add any extra seasoning to my congee, but feel free to add some salt for more flavor when cooking. 

Pizza = Too Lazy to cook

      

 Mushroom Pizza from Romeo Pizza on Passyunk Ave. in South Philly

The other night I had mushroom pizza from Romeo Pizza in South Philly for dinner. Their delivery was overall fast- it only took about 20 minutes to arrive. I mostly judge pizza based on the crispiness of the crust and ooziness of the cheese, but I thought the pizza was just average. There was nothing really amazing about their sauce, crust, or cheese. So far in Philly, I really enjoy three places for pizza. They are the following:

Lorenzo and Sons on South Street- Their slices are huge and the price is very reasonable (I believe is only $2 or $3 for a slice). The slices are bigger than my face and if you know how big my face is, you know you are getting your money’s worth.  What really stands out about the pizza for me is the cheese. It has the right amount of chewiness.

Lazaro’s on South Street- For one of my co-workers’ birthday, my boss bought pizza from there to celebrate. The pizza was very big in size and the cheese is extra oozy and the sauce was very fresh. Very good.

Allegro Pizza on Spruce Street in University City- I love their pizza for their thin and crispy crust. If you like thin crusts, I would whole-hearty recommend this place.

Next time, when I go to these establishments I will definitely take pictures of the pizza and add them to this post so you can either admire or drew over them:)

Pomegranate and Blueberry Shake

Pomegranate and Blueberry Smoothie

Pomegranate and Blueberry

The other day I bought two good-sized pomegranate and one 6 oz container of blueberries from Italian market in South Philly. All for $3 (they were a dollar each).  I decided to make a smoothie with the antioxidant-enriched fruits. After taking about 30 minutes meticulously extracted the pomegranate seeds, I washed and threw them in the blender along with the washed blueberry, some water, and a cup.  The ingredients yielded about 4 cups of filtered juices. Overall, the juice was fresh and sweet. At first, I forgot to filter the juice so remember to filter the seeds out or every mouthful of juice will be with seeds, which can be annoying.

Hopefully, gulping down this tasty concoction will be a step toward getting a little bit healthier, especially, since studies have shown that blue berries and pomegranate are beneficial in heart disease prevention and cancer prevention.