make/break

Dinner!

2008-04-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a chance to really go into detail about my personal "food revolution" (that's what I'm calling it), and I hopefully will some time soon. But last night was my first trial run in this new approach to food, and I think the results were pretty wonderful. I made the following dinner for Jeni and myself.

I didn't really get a good photo. It was too dark to not use flash, and flash just sucks.

What you're looking at is the following:

#1) Couscous cooked in vegetable broth with ground cinnamon, raisins, and pine nuts.
#2) Roasted eggplant, tomatoes, and garlic with sundried tomato and garlic seasoning
#3) Salad of red leaf lettuce, tomatoes, carrots. Dressing made of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a dash of hot mustard, and rosemary and garlic seasoning.

YUM!

The couscous was my favorite of the dish. I've never roasted eggplant before, but it came out really nice. The salad was pretty basic, but it wasn't intended to be too fancy. The three elements blended well together. The one thing I'd have changed was that I'd have added tofu to the vegetable roast. There was a common consensus between Jeni and I that it was missing something "meaty". Considering I don't eat or cook meat, tofu would have to do. It just needed something a little heavier in protein.

Thanks so much to Sage for the suggestion on the Eggplant roast. I'm sorry I bought tomatoes out of season! It wont happen again.

How to Make a Broken Laptop Screen Still Work

2008-04-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

The stupid latch on my laptop broke a few months back after years of use, making it impossible for the screen stay up on its own without flopping flat on its back. It really wasn't a big deal as I still have a desktop that worked just fine, but last week a nasty virus took over, and despite 5 straight days of battle, I finally had to throw i the towel. So to satisfy my internet fix, I had to find a way to make my laptop functional again.

I've had a few designs in my head since the laptop originally broke for a device that would make this work, but hadn't gotten around to making it. I took a rare sun break on a rainy day last week and attempted to put together a very basic form of this design using some scrap wood I had laying around under my work bench. Here's the result.

It works pretty well. I had to eyeball the angle, and I'd say it's a bit too obtuse. I certainly don't want it at 90 degrees, and 135 degrees was going to be way too large. I think I hit it at around 120, but I should probably have made it around 110. Considering that I only had scrap wood and 15 minutes of sunshine (my workshop is my backyard), I think I did a pretty good job.

Ramen Experiment

2008-04-29T19:22:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks back I came across Matt Fischer's Ramen Page with a lot of very curious-sounding recipes for ramen. I decided to try a few out, and the results were actually quite pleasant.

Egg & Green Onion Ramen

This one was really simple. As the ramen was cooking, I mixed up an egg with a little bit of milk and soy sauce. When the ramen was done, I threw it in to a pan with a little bit of olive oil and mixed in the ramen and green onions. I gave this a B+

Pad Thai Ramen

This was really similar to the previous ramen I made. I added some baked tofu, carrots, peanuts, and peanut sauce. Very delicious and filling. Super cheap. I gave this an even A.

Mexican Ramen

I just kind of made this one up on my own. Again, after the ramen was done cooking, I pan fried it a little bit with some black beans, corn, taco seasoning, and crumbled up corn tortilla chips. Topped it off with a dash of salsa. This one was a little "runnier" than the other two, mainly because of all of the water in the beans and corn, but the crunchy chips added an awesome change in texture. The flavor of this one really stood out. I gave this an A-

I'll get around to trying some more ramen recipes here soon. I just bought a huge box of ramen, so we'll see what happens.

Make Your Own Sushi

2008-03-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

I love sushi. You probably do to. Who doesn't? Crazy people, that's who.

But sometimes going out for sushi can be an expensive endeavor, especially if you like variety, and fancy sushi. My solution to this is to just make my own sushi. It's actually quite easy if you have the right ingredients, and it doesn't really take that much longer than preparing any other nice dinner for yourself and a loved one. For this, Jeni and I made three different kinds of sushi: Carrot and Cucumber rolls. Avocado, Cream Cheese, and Tempura Asparagus rolls. And one of my personal favorites, Inari. (Note that all of these are meatless because I am a vegetarian. Feel free to make meaty ones using local fish or imitation crab from your local supermarket.) Here's what you'll need:

* 2 cups uncooked medium grain rice.
* Rice vinager
* Sugar & Salt
* Flour
* Ice Water
* 1 egg
* Nori (seaweed sheets for the sushi)
* Inari pouches (I believe its called Ajitsuke or something like that)
* Veggies (Avocados, Asparagus, Carrots)
* Cream Cheese
* Vegetable Oil
* A sushi rolling mat
* A well-sharpened knife

Here we go:

Make the Rice
Making 2 cups is a good idea, that way you don't come up short. You'll actually probably use up all of the rice if you distribute it right. Go ahead and cook the rice, and when its done, mix in 2 tablespoons of rice vinager, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 2 teaspoons of salt. Make sure you mix it well. Cover it and then toss it in the fridge. Let it cool for a couple of hours. It's best to make the rice ahead of time to give yourself plenty of time for it to cool.

Cut the Veggies
This is pretty simple. For the carrots and cucumbers, cut long, thin slices that will roll up nicely in the sushi rolls. For the avocado, cut it in half and then cut little slices in to the flesh of the tastiest fruit ever. For the asparagus, just cut them in half. They'll be easier to fry this way.

Make the Tempura Batter
Tempura is just a fancy word for "Fondue", which is itself just a fancy for for "fried food". Take 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of ice water, and 1 egg, and mix it all up in a mixing bowl. Next, heat up some vegetable oil in a big pot. To check if your oil is hot enough, take a little droplet of the batter and drop it in the oil. If it immediately crisps up and floats to the surface of the oil, it's hot enough (usually putting your stove top between medium and medium-high should work well). Take an asparagus spear and put it on the end of a fork or some skewers of some sort. Dip it in the batter so that it is all covered, and place it in the oil. you'll have to hold it up so that it doesn't sit on the bottom of the pan. Let it cook for a little bit until it's quite obviously crispy. Take it out and set it aside on some paper towel to dry off. Make about 4-6 spears of tempura asparagus.

Make the Rolls
Making the acutal rolls of sushi requires a bit of attention to detail. Lay a sheet of nori out on your sushi rolling mat. Then, cover about 3/4 or 2/3 of the sheet in a thin-to-medium layer or rice (maybe the height of your pinkie finger nail). Handling the rice can be a bit difficult because it will be sticky. A little tip: have a bowl of water near by that you can dip your fingers in when you are spreading the rice out on the nori. Make sure you spread the rice all the way to the edges. Otherwise you'll have some lame end pieces.

Next, add the ingredients. Don't be afraid of over stuffing the rolls. Too often in the past I've been overly conservative and have missed out on some flavorful sushi pieces. Lay the stuffings out so they lean over the edges, and place them at about the middle of the rice (maybe a bit below that). Some photos:

Then take the bottom edge of the rolling mat and start to roll the sushi up very tightly, being careful not to let the stuffings get pushed up. Think of this as if you were rolling up a sleeping bag really tightly. Here's where it can get a bit tricky. When you get to the point where there is no more rice visible as you're rolling, and all you have is a strip of nori at the end, dip your fingers in that bowl of water I told you about and wet the part of the roll where the end of the nori will have to stick. It will take a little work, but think of this water as the glue that will hold the roll tightly together. You might have to rub the edge of the nori sheet a bit to get it to stick.

Cut the Rolls into Smaller Pieces
Next, take the big fat roll of sushi, and do your very best to resit taking a big bite out of it. Believe me, you'll want to. But it's not a burrito, so don't treat it like one. It's better to wait! Take your knife, and make sure its very sharp. If it's at all dull, it will rip the nori up when you are trying to cut the sushi, and your pieces will fall apart. Cut the rolls in to pieces that are about 3/4" thick. Cut very slowly, but purposefully. Also, between each cutting, take a wet cloth and wipe off the knife. Its best to keep it clean and wet in between each slicing. It will insure a much cleaner cut. Once you've cut up all of your sushi, set it aside. It's time to make the Inari!

Make the Inari
Inari is a super-simple delicious addition to any sushi meal. It's pleasantly sweet and compliments the more ambitious sushi stylings that one can come across. I never exclude it from my sushi meals. It is made by stuffing pouches made from fried bean curd (tofu) with sushi rice. It's possible to buy the bean curd in a can and form your own pouches, but this is just extra work. Any asian market will have the pouches pre-made, and they usually come in packs of 12, and are called Ajitsuke, or something to that effect (it'll be refridgerated). That's what you see in the photo below. Follow the instructions on the pack, but pretty much all you do is boil the inner pack for a few minutes, take the pouches out, and stuff them with the sushi rice. This should use up the last of your rice!

Spruce It Up
Slow your roll there, champ. You're not ready to dig in just yet. I'm a firm believer that when you really want to enjoy your meal, you should take the extra step of putting a little thought in to the presentation. Grab some of your nicer small plates (Jeni has these great green and black ones that I've always been very fond of) and arrange a selection of your three different sushi in a neat, orderly fashion. Put some soy sauce in a small container (We used some really nice tea cups that I bought for Jeni last year at an Asian market in Seattle), and put a little dab of wasabi on the plate to add a bit of extra excitement to your sushi. You can also add some fresh ginger, but I didn't do this because I was in a hurry when I was at the store. Then, open a bottle of nice wine, and sit down to enjoy your sushi!

Enjoy!