Damn Tasty Guacamole

So I love guacamole. Who doesn't. The name literally means "avocado sauce", and who doesn't love sauces or avocados?
Prepare:
-Peel one soft, ripe avocado. It must be ripe otherwise it won't be flavorful or easy to mush-Dice into very small pieces: red onion and a bunch of cilantro. Crush some garlic, as well. I also added a bit of tomato and a small chili pepper for a kick.Cook:
-Mash avocado with the veggies and about a tsp of salt and cumin. Spritz with a bit of lime (as much as you want - I don't like sour stuff so I use a tiny bit)Tips:
-A bit of salsa can be an easy and decent substitution for the onion, tomato, and spicy pepper.
-You can add a bit of olive oil if you want a creamier guac
-If you have a bunch of the tortilla chip leftovers (small pieces and crumbs) just pour into the guac and eat with a spoon. That's what I did today.

Tomato Okra Stew with Sweet Potato and Chive Fritter

At the beautiful market last Saturday, I bought a big bag of Okra.I emailed my family to seek advice as to how to prepare this interesting African vegetable thing. I got some nice ideas, curried, breaded and fried, tomato stewed, and a soup. I decided to combine curry and tomato stew and see how it turned out.
Prepare:
-Head and tail the okra (those are such cute verbs!)
-Peel your tomatoes or get the can ready
-Prep the spices: crushed cardamon, cumin, ginger, chopped cilantro, and garlic-Dice an onion
Cook, medium heat:
-Heat up a wok with some olive oil and sautee the onions until they're transparent - ~5 minutes
-Put in the tomatoes, spices, as well as some salt and pepper and cook, stirring, for about 10 minutes. Break up the tomatoes as you're cooking.-After ~10 minutes, throw the okra in, cook for another 5-10 minutes until the okra is tender, but not too soft.Tips: for me, the sauce was a bit to acidic (I'm not the biggest fan of tomato sauces sometimes) so I put in about 1 1/2 tablespoons of raw sugar, and increased the salt. I think some lemon would work well if you like sour foods, so try that. Serve with fresh cilantro and some Parmesan and enjoy with nice bread!
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I wanted more than one item for dinner, so I added this dish that a friend, Justus, and I made up one Saturday morning.
Prepare:
-Chop some sweet potatoes and some zucchini if you'd like
-Get some chives, cutting them to the length you would like the diameter of your pancake to be
Cook:
- Fill a pot with about half the amount of water needed to cover the sweet potatoes, boil until you can easily stick a fork in them- Drain the potatoes and mash them
- Mix in some flour, milk, the zucchini, and an egg- Mash again/mix well so it's a creamy homogeneous mixture
- Heat up a pan to medium-high with some oil
- Pour in a ladle-worth of the potato mixture
- As it's frying on one side, lay the chives on the other side, pressing them in- After 3-5 minutes, flip the fritter over and fry on the other side
Tips: it goes well with avocado, grated cheese, or soy sauce.

Garlic Fried Rice

I was in Ho Chi Minh City with my older brother when we ate at a restaurant near our hotel. The menu was fraught with options be we went for a simple one that had high potential: Garlic Fried Rice. It was amazing. I believe we ate that dish at that restaurant 3 times. I set about to recreate this delightful meal. Fried rice is probably one of my favorite dish types (some people love dumplings, meat sandwiches, chicken soups, etc.) and this ranks in the top 5 of fried rice dishes I've had (#1 would probably have to be the chicken fried rice I got several days in a row from a cart with a portable wok in Bangkok for 25cents)
Prepare:
1-2cups of cold cooked rice. This is the key to fried rice: the rice cannot be steaming out of the pot. What I always do when I cook rice is cook more than I want, put some in a Tupperware and freeze it right away. When it dethaws, it tastes as good as new.
Lots of garlic. I used about half a thing. Crush it and set it in a convenient locale.Anything else you want: the dish can be only rice, garlic, and egg, or it can have other stuff. I consider it a sin to not cook with onion and chili pepper, so I added that. I also mixed in some fresh chives in the end to give it a moister, more vibrant garlickiness.
Cook:
Heat up your wok to about 80% highest level. Get it nice and hot and drop in a bit of oil, it should heat up right away. Add your crushed garlic and let it fry until it starts browning, then take out half of it and set it aside.
Throw in veggies and about a minute later throw in the rice with a little more oil. Let it fry around, stirring constantly. Add some salt, pepper, a tsp of sugar (it helps, trust me) and some soy sauce and sesame oil if you've got that around. Once the rice is almost complete, crack an egg into the pan.
Keep stirring (you can turn off the heat now) until the rice is completely separate and there are no huge pieces of egg left. At this point you throw in the previously fried garlic, as well as chives or cilantro or whatever else you want.
I ate it with some steamed broccoli, Bok Choy, and cauliflower with a nice cold beer.

Bacon Cookies

Maybe I'll try this next time...
from http://singlegirlwithcat.vox.com

Beef and Noodle Veg in Black Bean Sauce

This is just a nice miscellaneous stir-fry, with a black-bean undercurrent. This is a salty, savory dish so make sure to enjoy with a nice Gin n Tonic or such.
Prepare:
-Chop up some veggies, most veggies work pretty well in a stir-fry. I'd say mandatory are onion, garlic, pepper, and broccoli. For black-bean sauce, I would also consider Bok Choy to be requisite. I also had some carrot, zucchini, cauliflower, chili pepper, and green onion.
-Brown the beef in a separate pan and drain: you don't want all the fat getting in your glorious stir-fry.-Get the sauces and other additives ready. A stir-fry should be stir-fried quickly, so you don't want to be fumbling with caps and lids and sauces. I use: black-bean sauce, a bit of stock powder, oyster sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, pepper, and some ginger.
-If you're not using fresh noodles (I just used the ones that came in my Shin Ramyun pack, as I used the base for something else) make sure you boil and drain them ahead of time.
Cook:
-Heat the wok up first, get it nice and hot... a bit below the highest setting.
-Drop a bit of olive oil in and some crushed garlic
-Throw in the vegetables, making sure to stir often
-After a minute or two, add all your additives
-Add noodles and beef-When it's almost done, add all the greens that are quick to be cooked (leaves of Bok Choy and the green ends of the green onion)
-Serve it up, garnish with a generous amount of cilantro. When I made mine, it came off a bit too salty and overpowering, so I added a bit of honey and that smoothed it out quite well.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I bought some pumpkin the other day at the market with a dream to make something but no idea what. A soup crossed my mind, but then I stumbled across an interesting recipe for cookies on allrecipes.com.
Preheat oven to ~175C/350F.
In a large bowl, mix:
1 1/2-2 cups of canned or fresh pumpkin (for fresh, roast some pumpkin for around 30 minutes or until soft at ~175C/350F, then mash)1 cup sugar
1/2 cup of vegetable oil (NB: applesauce can be substituted for oil. In this recipe I did about 1/3 cup apple sauce and a bit oil, so it gives it a little fatty taste)
1 egg
Since I my pumpkin mashed, it didn't turn out so creamy, so I put the above 4 in a blender and pureed for a little bit (though not too long, as you don't want to whip the egg).
In a different bowl sift:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and/or any other of that kind of spice you have lying around
1/2 tsp of saltThen, mix the 2 aforementioned bowls and add 1 tsp of baking soda that has been dissolved in 1 tbsp of milk. I don't know what this does, but that's what the recipe called for.
Finally, add 1 tbsp of vanilla essence and as much chocolate chips as you'd like (I think I did about 1 1/2 cups) and mix well.The final dough should be pretty liquid and gloopy, unlike Natash's cookies. I tasted mine and it was lacking something, so I grated some fresh nutmeg (which I hadn't added in the first place) and it tasted much better. Always make sure to taste your dough! The final product usually tastes better, but it's convenient to spot a mistake ahead of time before you pop it in the oven and are screwed.
Spoon balls onto greased baking sheet or baking paper on a pan. Let bake for ~10 minutes or until lightly brown and pretty firm.
The top batch are cooked, the bottom were just slopped on.
Enjoy with some milk and don't forget to share.

Velvety Veggie Soup

This is a great winter soup that my mom would often make. It's filling, healthy, delicious, easy, and non-specific enough that you can make it with whatever veggies you have. Here's what I used today:
~1 L of water... pending how much soup you want & how many veggies you use.
For the veggies, chop into medium sized chunk. My veggies were:
1 cup squash
1 cup zucchini
1 cup broccoli
7 Brussels sprouts
Half a large tomato (adds a nice earthiness)
A small onion For seasoning:
Chili pepper (I used 2)
Garlic (I threw in about 6 cloves since I love it)
1-2 bay leaves
Parsley (optional)
Any other fresh herbs you have floating around... I used some chives and a bit of basil in this one.
Stock/bullion...you can use stock instead of water or throw in 1 or 2 bullion cubes while it's boiling.
Once it peak boils turn to low heat, cover, and leave for about an hour.Once it's been cooking for a while, the air should smell good and the veggies should be super soft. Ladle the veggies into a blender but you can keep the soup water in the pot.Blend for a couple seconds till it's nice and thick, then chuck it back into the pot, mix well.
Optional - pasta. If it comes out too watery or bland (mine did, unfortunately) then leave it on high heat and throw in some pasta: the heat will evaporate some water as the pasta absorbs some more. Did the trick for me.
Pour into your bowl with some shredded/cut cheese (a nice sharp cheddar would work well) and enjoy with some crusty bread!

Fruit Smoothie

After an early bike ride, there's nothing better than a high sugar, cool, tasty smoothie for breakfast. Smoothies are pretty easy to do: just throw in whatever you have lying around. But I think it's important to keep a balance... crisp-sweet (watermelon, pear) plus tart sweet (citrus), and some milk or yogurt for richness and consistency. Anyway:
2 mandarins, seeded
half a carrot, grated
1 kiwi
1 banana
some fresh lime
soy milk
iceThen blend well, check for taste. If it's not sweet enough for your liking, honey is a good additive. Also a bit of vanilla can accent creamier tastes like banana, if you were

Poached Egg Breakky

For the last 4 or so years of independence, come the weekend I would always reward my lazy and free mornings with a nice breakfast. This breakfast was, without fail, 2 sunny-side-up eggs, several pieces of bread, some cheese, tomato, and cucumber. That was until a month ago when, on a trip with some friends, Ben taught me about the gloriousness of poached eggs. See, I chose sunny-side-up eggs as a vehicle for the delivery of runny yolky goodness. But they could break upon landing, or get stuck to the bottom of the pan and never come out, not to mention they required oil. Well, poached eggs is an easier and healthier delivery system that I have come to integrate into my weekly meals.
Prep:
I use a small frying pan, since it is wide and short, and fill it with water and a splash of vinegar. I hate vinegar but it's not used here for the taste; rather, to help keep the eggs from being stuck together. Place it on medium heat.
Prepare a plate with some bread and veggies that you like.I like to dig a little hole in my bread, if possible, for better settling of the eggs. I also have cheese on the side to eat with the white of the egg.
Once the water is plenty hot, that is small bubble but not huge ones, I crack the egg in a little saucer.
Then, you need to carefully and slowly slide the egg into the pan. The slowness allows for it to keep together. If there are too many bubbles, it can break up the egg. So lift up the pan for a second, drop the egg in, then place it back down.
Wait as long as you like, pending on how runny you like your eggs. I wait about 45 seconds since I love them runny. Get the eggs out w/ a colander-ladle (whatever that's called) and place it on your bread. I always pray for 2 perfect eggs but sadly this doesn't happen as often as I'd like. I interpret the integrity of the eggs as a sign of the day... with two messed up eggs being especially forboding. Looks like today will be only okay.

Natasha's Triple Choc Cookies

I was sitting next to my friend Matt in lecture one day when his friend Natasha handed me a sumptuous chocolate chip cookie. It was very tasty and so I demanded the recipe and reproduced the cookies for my class.
Preheat oven at 180C/356F
Melt together:
150g (5.3oz) of dark cooking chocolate
180g (~1 cup) of margarine or butter (I used butter)
Just put them together in a microwave for ~2 minutes, then woosh them around till they mix fairly well.
Mix:
2 cups of flour
1.5 cups sugar (I used white)
3/4 cup of cooking cocoa
Then add:
Choco-butter combination
3 beaten eggs
Mix these around for a while. The consistency was much grainier and less liquid than I had imagined for a cookie dough. It tasted pretty good in dough form, too. Then add some chocolate chips, though I suppose you could do walnuts or dried cherries or something if you were so inclined.Then make some balls and evenly space them on a pan with baking paper or a greased pan. They should take 10-20 minutes depending on the size of the balls. You can tell they're ready when you try to move them and they seem semi-solid. Take them out and let them cool/continue cooking outside for about 5 minutes, then enjoy!

Creation

So my other blog was quickly spiraling out of control with too much food related shit. I decided to avoid a faux-pas in the blogosphere so created this blog to be solely pertaining to foods and the preparation of said foods. Enjoy with an open mind, a more open wallet, and with your stomach the most open.