Cooking over Easter Break!

7 April 2012 Dinner

garlic, onion, green onion, ginger, red chili pepper, red bell pepper, cabbage, 豆干/dòugān (dry tofu?), mirin

I was loosely following a recipe I found in a Chinese vegetarian cookbook. I like the nice, bright colors! (Or is that because of my camera?)


8 April 2012 Lunch

egg, onion, green onion

sweet potato, cilantro

The onion and green onion added to the fried egg was a nice touch! (Would this be considered an omelet?) So was the cilantro added to the steamed sweet potatoes! Yay for spices!

8 April 2012 Dinner

red curry paste (shallot, garlic, galangal, lime juice, lemongrass, cilantro seeds, cumin seeds, kaffir lime leaf, red chilli pepper, olive oil), coconut milk, green bean, broccoli, baby corn cob, cilantro, basil, Japanese ramen noodle (I'm typing this list from memory. I have a feeling I forgot something!)

In the morning, I decided I would try a recipe I found for "red curry with cashews" for dinner, so I went out to the Queen Victoria Market to gather all the ingredients. (I couldn't find some, so I left them out.)

The recipe didn't look so bad, at first. But making it took forever! First, I had to make the red curry paste, which involved a lot of chopping. Then I had to do more chopping. And I cooked some Japanese ramen noodles on the side while doing all the other preparation. This was a bad idea because I couldn't keep track of everything.

Finally, I had everything ready for stir-frying except the coconut milk. So I took the can of coconut milk and a can opener, and proceeded to open the can. Except I couldn't figure out how to use the can opener! After 10 or so minutes, I realized I was working with the wrong end of the can. So I turned the can upside down and spent another 5 minutes before I figured out the proper angle to hold the can opener. Sigh...

But everything worked out after that! And I think it turned out well! There were so many different flavors coming from all those ingredients!

Making the dish took me well over 2 hours! I was super exhausted by the end. I think I need a break from trying out new dishes. Especially if they are all this tiring!

9 April 2012 Dinner

garlic, green onion, broccoli stalk, carrot, dou gan, cabbage, basil, egg

Like I said yesterday, I needed a break after that super complicated recipe. Nothing exciting tonight. I'm just trying to get clear out the refrigerator.

10 April 2012 Dinner

I'm still in the process of clearing out the refrigerator! I was thinking earlier about what I could do with all the vegetables, and one thing I thought of was: pasta! Except I didn't want to use pre-made tomato sauce, so I attempted to make my own sauce with absolutely no idea how to proceed. What I ended up doing was using a can of tomato paste. The result was nice, but nothing like tomato sauce that I am used to.

12 April 2012 Dinner

More tomatoes! This time, I used a can of diced tomatoes instead. And I added a bunch of spices in an attempt to make a tomato and egg curry.

15 April 2012 Lunch

Before break started, I was looking online one day for ideas with fried rice, and found one that used pineapple! When I saw the pictures, I knew I had to try something like that, so I'm glad I was able to get to it on the last day of my break.

I even did the whole pineapple-bowl thing, which was lots of fun!

The dish turned out super sweet!

15 April 2012 Dinner

Some fried quinoa here. Nothing super exciting really; I'm just trying to clear out the refrigerator some more. I had some leftover "red curry paste" (in quotes, because I don't think it turned out correctly!) which I had made for an earlier dish, so I decided to throw some of that in.

And that ends my Easter break cooking spree. I wish the ending was a bit more exciting.

More cooking!

Thanks for everyone's support on my first blog entry on cooking! It's really encouraging! Here are some more pictures of dishes I came up with, mostly by mixing random things together. Hopefully I'm getting better?

Now that I am on Easter break, I plan to spend more time cooking and learning how spices and sauces and seasoning and everything else works, so that I won't have plain vegetables all the time. So maybe the next cooking entry will be better. (Or maybe not!)

24 March 2012 

Butternut squash! (Or here, they call it "butternut pumpkin.") I had never tried this until I went to Princeton, and I loved it so much that when I saw it at Costco back home, I asked my mom to buy some!

25 March 2012 Lunch

Butternut squash noodle soup! With an egg added! I think I am getting better at varying things!

25 March 2012 Dinner

Between lunch and dinner, I biked to the Queen Victoria Market, and bought some fruits and vegetables. Among other things, I bought some cabbage and sweet potatoes!

31 March 2012 Lunch

I only used half of the sweet potatoes the previous time, so I tried to steam the rest. First time using a steamer!

31 March 2012 Dinner

I visited an Asian supermarket between lunch and dinner, and saw Japanese ramen noodles with "great for stir-fry" on the packaging. How could I not buy that? I mixed the noodles with celery, red bell pepper (or "red capsicum" as it's called here), carrots, mushrooms, and... what is all that tiny mushy white stuff? Tofu! I didn't intend for it to become like that, but I liked how it turned out!

1 April 2012 Lunch 

Fried rice! (Except it's kind of moist.) And I used up the remaining tofu. Not surprisingly, it ended up in the same condition as the previous time.

3 April 2012

Quinoa with some vegetables!

5 April 2012

I decided to try cooking some sweet potato in the same pot as the rice. I think it turned out nicely! I also tried to fry an egg, and it mostly stayed in one piece! (It was very dry though.)

6 April 2012

I used the same cabbage from a few days ago! And there's still a bunch remaining. Ahh! I'll be eating lots of cabbage in the next few days! (And I only bought a quarter of a cabbage too!)

Also, I don't know if they're very visible, but I started off cooking with some cumin seeds! Trying to spice things up, literally! The seeds starting popping up from the pan like firecrackers, which kind of scared me, but I learned that it's actually normal for that happen.

Initial attempts at cooking

When I was sorting out my living arrangements for this semester, I ended up making the fateful decision to cook for myself, despite having no experience with cooking.

My very first attempt at cooking something on a stove here was an "egg with tomato" dish. Originally, I wanted the egg to be in one piece, but it just kept breaking apart. (I probably shouldn't have prodded it so much with the spatula.) In the end it was a big mess, consisting of tiny chunks of tomato mixed with even smaller pieces of egg. And I didn't know how to tell when the egg was done. I was well aware that it was not a good idea to eat raw eggs, so I probably overcooked the egg by a lot.

When I first came here, I did have the idea of taking a picture of everything that I cook, but I was feeling so discouraged and embarrassed after this first attempt that I didn't take a picture. (I didn't even mention what had happened to me before I even started cooking: while lighting the gas stove with a match, I burnt my thumb nail!) I didn't take pictures of the next few dishes either, which consisted mostly of stir-fry vegetables. Not taking pictures of any of these is quite a regrettable decision.

Here are the pictures that I do have. Before moving on to them, I should give a warning: When people usually write about food and include photos, those photos probably contain food that looks super delicious. But when you see these, I highly doubt you will think "Wow! I wish I could try that!" (But maybe my photos will for some people! I'll keep my fingers crossed!)

I should also talk about how these dishes ended up tasting. Being the overly health conscious person that I am, I didn't add any salt, pepper, spices, or other seasoning to these dishes. People might say that these dishes have no taste, which confuses me a little. Don't vegetables have taste on their own?

4 March 2012

Here were some vegetables with a little bit of lentils on the side. I don't know what I did, but the lentils turned into mush!

10 March 2012

Some more vegetables, but with rice this time. I started with around half a cup of uncooked rice. I didn't know it would turn into this much!


11 March 2012

Cooking with tofu for the first time! (I got it at a local health food store. There's no Asian supermarket within walking distance.) I didn't end up with too much rice this time!

14 March 2012

Ever since I became acquainted with tempeh at Princeton, I've always been fascinated with it for some reason. I could never find it at any of the supermarkets back in California, but I found it here at the health food store. Cooking with  baby bok choy makes me feel Asian!

15 March 2012

I was finishing up the rest of the tempeh. I also cut up an entire eggplant, so I ended up with more than I could eat in one meal. (Note the pot to the left of the pan. I was using it to cook the rice. I always add too much water to the rice, which I have to pour out at the end. It's better than not adding enough water though.)

17 March 2012

I took the leftovers from the previous photo and made a noodle soup. My mom did this so often back home, and I always loved how the noodle soups turned out. So I knew I had to try that here! And I liked it, so now I know what to do with leftovers! (I got the noodles at an Asian supermarket I found during my exploration of the city centre.)

18 March 2012

Here, I tried to cook with a type of tofu called dou gan. It's drier than regular tofu. I like how the carrots make this dish look brighter and more colorful!

20 March 2012

Surprise! Leftovers turned into noodle soup!