Sweet Pea Journey

Family, Friendship, Food, Fun and Everything in Between!

Author: Sweet Pea

Cooking

Cinnamon Sugar Crescent

If you are like me, you always have a few cans of crescent dough in your fridge, for a quick easy breakfast in minutes. But my kids are getting bored with the plain old crescents. One easy twist you can do with proven kid-friendly flavors is cinnamon sugar crescents.

 

Cinnamon has tons of benefits. Cinnamon is full of antioxidants, has anti-inflammatory properties,  reduces the risk of heart diseases, improves the sensitivity to hormone insulin, lowers blood sugar and is anti-diabetic… the list goes on and on. But you get the idea, don’t be too guilty of having a little bit of cinnamon sugar in your crescent!

The name says it all, this breakfast only requires 3 ingredients:

1 can of store bought crescent dough, produces 8 crescents

2 table spoon of sugar

1 table spoon of ground cinnamon

 

Method:

Pre-heat the oven following the instruction on the can. Unfold the dough onto a baking sheet. Note, if you don’t like scraping off the baked crescents off the baking sheet, use a silicone sheet. I did not have my morning coffee yet, so silicone sheet was forgotten. But it won’t happen again, coffee or not. Jokes aside, even if you forgot the silicone sheet, or don’t have one, it’s not the end of the world. All you need to do is to soak the baking sheet in water for a few minutes, the stuck on dough will come off easily with a little bit of scrubbing.

Mix sugar and ground cinnamon in a small bowl with a spoon. Sprinkle sugar mixture onto the spreaded dough, and smooth the mixture closer to the edges of the dough using the back of the spoon.

Roll up the lovely triangles as you normally would. Now it’s a fun time for the kids to pick up the leftover cinnamon sugar that escaped the dough. Then into the pre-heated oven the baking sheet goes.

 

In minutes, you will see happy faces!

 

Cooking

Super Greens with Garlic

Doesn’t anything sounds delicious with garlic? Nothing beats this wonderful super power greens with garlic!

I have super green kale and spinach in my fridge. I bought these in bulk. I use these in meals and smoothies too. This is a great way to get some vegetables in my kids. Anyway, smoothie is another blog, another day.

Here we go. First thing first, break out your biggest pan or wok, you will need the big guy this time.

Ingredients:

4 large cloves of garlic roughly chopped, more if you like it more garlicky

1 tablespoon cooking oil

4 cups of baby spinach

4 cups of kale

1/2 cup water

Salt, pepper, 1 tsp chicken bouillon powder

 

Method

Heat oil in a pan or wok on medium high heat. Add garlic and cook till fragrant, about 20 seconds.

Grab kale and dump into pan. It may seem way too much kale, but don’t worry, it will wilt to about a quarter of the size. I filled it all the way to the top of my wok.

Sprinkle half of the salt on top to help kale wilt. Add water into wok, lid on after mixing salt and kale. Leave it for a couple of minutes, and let the direct heat and steam do double the work. Lower the heat to medium to medium low if you are worried about burning the pan. After the lid comes off, this is how much kale will wilt.

 

Go in with the spinach, again, I filled the wok all the way to the top.

Add the rest of the salt. No need for the lid this time. Just stir the green goodness around, spinach wilts in no time.

Add chicken bouillon, and pepper, dish up and enjoy!

 

Cooking

Veggie Goodness

This one essentially is a generic recipe, simply because you can use whatever you have in your fridge, and incorporate any dietary preference. What I made was simply  delicious!

 

 

Ingredients:

1 carrot, peeled and cut into match sticks

about 8 brown button mushrooms, any kind would do really, sliced

a couple handful of kale, hard stems removed

1 small onion, any kind would do, roughly chopped

about 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Optional: 1 tsp of Italian seasoning, or dried basil, or herb province, you get the idea, whatever herb you have in your pantry would do..

 

Method:

Pan on medium high heat, go in with about 2 tbsp cooking oil. After oil is heated up, go in with roughly chopped garlic. Move around the garlic until it’s fragrant, about 10 seconds. Go in with onions, cook until onions are translucent, about 2 minutes. Add mushrooms, cook for another 2, 3 minutes. Once mushroom and onions are softened, add carrots and kale, stir to mix. Add salt and pepper to help vegetables to soften. If pan gets dry, add about 1/4 cup of water. Put the lid on and let the vegetables steam for a minute or so. This will help soften kale quite fast.

Lid off, allow water to evaporate if preferred. Adjust seasoning, add in optional herbs. Dish up and enjoy!

This is a super simply and healthy dish. You can certainly play with the vegetable combination and herb flavors. Dress up with citrus zest and juice if wonderful as well.

 

Cooking

Lamb and Leek

Another amazing and super fast recipe!

You will need literally 4 ingredients:

1 lb of thinly sliced lamb meat, I normally don’t try to slice my own. I buy a box from any Asian super market, the butcher can slice for you, or use the pre-packaged meats for hot pot!

2 stocks of leeks. If you use the giant wrist size American leeks, 2 is enough. If you also pick up the finger thick Asian leeks, please use a small bundle. I have never had enough of leeks in this dish. So to me, the more the merrier.

1 tsp ground cumin, yes, this cumin elevates the flavor and aroma of this dish incredibly.

1 tsp light soy

 

Method:

Thoroughly wash leeks under running water. Leeks tend to hide sand between layers close to the root. I like to cut off the root, and cut along the leek to slice it in half. Then I cut the leek into 1 inch sections, give or take. Using my fingers, I separate the layers and drop them into a large bowl under running water and rinse. Leek layers tend to float on top and sand will sink to the bottom. I do this a couple of times and make sure my leek is all cleaned up and I will dump them into a colander to let dry.

Non-stick pan on medium high heat, go in with a table spoon of cooking oil, in with the lamb. Move the meat around with a wooden spoon and when about 80% of the meat changed color, go in with the leeks and ground cumin. Stir fry for a few minutes until leeks are softened and cumin is heated up and fragrant. Go in with soy sauce and adjust flavor as needed.

Dish up and enjoy! The whole dish takes literally a few minutes to make. Serve over steamed white rice, guaranteed hit!

 

Cooking

Savory Version Naan – WOW!

If you have read and tried my basic version naan bread recipe, you will know that basic version is quite universal. You can use it for flat breads, pizzas, tortas, dessert breads by spreading jam and fruit on top.  But I made a savory version the other day, because I also made brisket. I wanted to make a savory version, open it up like a pocket and stick sliced tender brisket and some juices inside.. Mmmm!

 

The steps are exactly the same. All I did was adding more savory ingredients into the dough:

1 bunch of green onions, thinly sliced

2 tbsp of ground Sichuan pepper corn (you can get these in any Asian market, but if you don’t have access to these, regular freshly ground pepper will do)

2 tbsp of sesame seeds (I personally prefer black seeds in this recipe, but I only had white on hand, so those did the trick)

1 tsp additional salt than basic naan bread recipe

I mixed these additional ingredients into the dough, and let the mixture do all the work for me. This way, all the additional flavors will be evenly distributed in the dough, and I would not have certain bites have strong flavors and certain bites are bland.

 

 

After cleaning up my mess, and made sure everything I could wash was washed. I really can’t stand the sink is full of dirty dishes.

 

After letting the dough rise, I cooked these breads in the dry pan, same as regular naan recipe. I made these a bit thicker because I was planning to cut a pocket into the middle. WOW. I would eat these just by themselves!

Cooking

Chocolate Cheesecake Pie

I made this one today, totally by accident. But let me tell ya, I am making this Chocolate Cheesecake Pie from now on! Best part? There is no guilt! Notice, I did not add a single granule of sugar! When we tried it, it tasted seriously, restaurant quality. All I needed was some coco powder dusting or shaved chocolate on top for presentation. I may also add some orange zest into the cheesecake mixture.

To tell you the truth, I was making a cheesecake, but after I softened and dumped my cream cheese into the bowl, I realized I was out of one of the key ingredients – sweetened condensed milk. What?! How did this happen? I always have some on hand! But oh well, what can I do at this point? I already leaked out the excitement to the kids that we are having a cheesecake! I was searching my pantry for inspiration, what can I used that may mimic the thick texture of sweetened condensed milk, and gives amazing flavor? Then my eyes gazed on the white mini chocolate chips. I had some left overs from making cake pops for my daughter’s birthday party. That’s it! Here is what I did.  A hint: this is a no bake cheesecake pie! How much easier can that be?

 

Ingredients:

2 packages of cream cheese, softened (either leave the cream cheese on the counter for at least 2 hours in the packaging, or simply follow the instructions printed inside the box, you didn’t know there was instruction there, did you? Took me years to realize that too!)

1 cup of mini white chocolate chips, or  baking chocolate, cut into small pieces (a lot easier to melt)

1/4 cup of unsweetened coco powder

1 store-bought pie crust

 

Method:

I already dumped the 2 packages of cream cheese into a medium size mixing bowl. I melted white mini chocolate chips in another glass bowl in the microwave. 45 seconds on high to start out with, stir, added 30 seconds more, that did all the trick. Or you can melt your chocolate chips in double boiler. Again, I didn’t feel like using the stove and another pot. Now, if I didn’t dump out the cream cheese earlier, I would add my softened cream cheese into my chocolate mixture at this point to save another bowl.

I mixed the cream cheese and chocolate with a large spoon. Don’t use a whisk, the cream cheese will get stick in the middle of the  whisk and that doesn’t really help. Once chocolate and cream cheese is mixed together, I added the coco powder. Slowly press the coco powder into the cream cheese mixture using the back of the spoon. If you try to stir, chances are, you will make a huge mess with the coco powder. The mixture will feel a bit too dry at first, but it will loosen up a bit as the coco powders are incorporated.

Simply remove the plastic cover from the pie crust, pour the chocolate cream cheese mixture into the pie crust. Using the back of the same spoon, even out the top of the cheese mixture. I don’t know any kid doesn’t like chocolate, or cheesecake, or pie… I had a little helper, really a little taster. She was also playing with a spatula, and had tons of fun tasting the cheesecake pie.

 

After smoothing out the top, doesn’t have to be perfect. I didn’t fee like adding extra bells and whistles to this one, I put the lid back on and stuck the pie in the fridge to let it set  a bit.

 

If you want to go fancy, shave some chocolate shavings and sprinkle on top, or you can arrange marsh mellows on top, and quickly torch it before serving, it would be a s’more version! The alteration is endless!

Have fun making this one! Everyone would love it!

 

 

 

Cooking

Naan Bread

If you know me, I am a giant carb sucker. I really can’t say no to any kind of carbs, rice, noodles, pasta, breads, you name it, I love it. I also have this passion for cooking. Except for growing my own rice, I have made pasta, baked my own breads, pizza dough and all. Today I tackled naan bread. I have to say this first, I really haven’t learned how to make naan bread from my Indian friends, so I can’t really claim this is authentic. If you have constructive criticism or suggestion, please leave a comment below or contact me, I’d love to hear from you.

It’s been a while since I used my trusty Kitchen Aid mixture. I immediately wondered how did I let this happen. Fast forward to after I tasted this naan bread, I told myself, this mixture is staying on my counter tonight, cause I am gonna make more tomorrow.

Here is how I made it:

 

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons of active dry yeast

1 teaspoon of sugar

1/2 cup of luke warm water

1/4 cup of vegetable oil

1 egg

1/3 cup of plain yogurt

3 cups of flour, may need up to 1/2 cup more depends on your location

1/2 teaspoon of salt

Tomorrow, I am going to throw in 1/4 cup of finely chopped green onion, and additional 1/4 cup of vegetable oil for brushing

I made 7 naan breads out of all the above today, but only the 5th one started staying on the plate. The first 4 never really made it to the plate for more than 1 minute. It’s not just me, I promise.

Method:

Add sugar and active dry yeast into luke warm water in a large bowl, mix and set aside. Attach dough hook on the mixer. Put about 2 1/2 cups of flour into mixer bowl, add in salt, turn on the mixer to combine flour and salt. Yeast does not like salt. Once the yeast water is bubbly, crack in the egg, add in oil and yogurt. Mix until it’s combined. Slowly add liquid mixture into flour mixture, with the mixer on low speed. My kids loved watching the dough come together and being pulled away from the sides of the bowl. This takes a few minutes. You can walk away, or clean up the yeast water bowl. If the dough seems too wet and the bottom of the mixing bowl never really gets clean, gradually add in some more flour. Don’t worry, the dough hook will be able to thoroughly mix the dough.

Once the dough ball is able to pull from the sides and bottom of the bowl, your dough is ready. Turn off the mixer, clean the dough off hook. quickly knead the dough on a lightly floured surface to shape a smooth ball. I threw mine back into the mixing bowl, covered the top of the bowl with a dry clean kitchen towel and left it next to the stove. I had something cooking at that time, so this is the warm place in my kitchen at that time. I moved on to play with the kids, clean up the kitchen, made iced tea, and who knows what else.. about an hour later, I came back to check on my dough, it puffed up and doubled in size. Kids went crazy wanting to punch the dough for me. The dough was soft but not sticky, exactly how I wanted it. I took the dough out kneaded it quickly on the lightly floured surface to shape it into a ball again.

Heat up a dry pan on the stove on medium heat. I teared off a piece of dough, about fist size. My daughter – my sous chef for the hour – was in charge of rolling the dough into about 1/2 inch disc. She also poked some dough, after it was rolled out, made her focaccia version.

Lay the flattened out dough into the center of the dry pan. You should hear instant sizzle from the pan. Leave the dough alone for a couple minutes. You will see some bubbles forming on the top of the dough, sort of like heating up a tortilla. Flip the dough when the bottom if golden and cook the other side. The bread will puff up a bit during the cooking process. This means the inside of the bread is soft and fluffy!

In a couple of minutes, the bread is ready to be plated. Like I said, the first 4 pieces were gone instantly. I didn’t get to try it till the 5th piece. Even though it was the first time I made it, and really effortlessly, my kids were impressed, so were my parents! I am making these again tomorrow with my awesome brisket. Can’t wait!

 

Cooking

Chicken and 40 Cloves – my way

If you have never tried this recipe, you are missing out, unless you are a hard-core vegetarian. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this recipe, and gave it a twist, well, pretty much every time I made it. Chances are, I would never really duplicate any of the times I made it, but, surprisingly, every twist I threw in, made the dish tasted equally amazing.  Hint, that’s my way of saying, you really can’t mess it up!

Ingredients:

40 cloves of garlic, peeled. Honestly, I never really counted, but a good 4, 5 handful of garlic. If you don’t feel like sitting at dinner table peeling garlic for an hour (which is quite therapeutic by the way), most grocery stores sell these already peeled in a bag, this cuts your prep time drastically.

1 whole chicken, cut into pieces. Or, you do what I do, buy a package of drum sticks, or skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs. You can ask your butcher to cut these into smaller chunks, like 1-inch pieces, or use them whole. Either way it works beautifully. If you use whole thigh, or drum sticks, you can always score the skin and meat a bit, using a sharp pairing knife. This allows the flavor to penetrate into the meat and also speeds up the cooking process. If you are using drum sticks or thighs, I’d estimate 3 drum sticks per person, or 2 thighs per person. It may sound like a lot, but you will be surprised how delicious this dish is, and wish you made more.

1 cup low sodium soy sauce, for flavor. You can use dark soy sauce, but your chicken will come out much darker, and be sure to lower your heat for cooking. Dark soy tends to burn a bit quicker.

1 cup fresh basil leaves. I used sweet Italian basil, Thai basil, a mixture of both, all works. Depends on what you have on hand – this is one of my twist, and I LOVE the aroma basil leaves add to the dish.

1 inch of ginger root, no need to peel, you won’t eat it anyway. Just slice the root, don’t even need to be paper-thin, the cooking process will release all the goodness of ginger.

1 cup chicken stock. Or, do what I do, use a cup of water and a chicken bouillon cube and call it a day. Seriously, what am I going to do with the rest of the stock? And nowadays, who has the time and patience to freeze stock in ice-cube trays?

You will need a heavy bottom pan with lid, the best is a dutch oven. They are my favorite in my kitchen. I swear I have like 5 of these, different sizes and colors, and I use them all. I think they help me feel better on the days I don’t do any exercise just by taking these out, washing them and putting them away. That, my friend, is intensive upper body workout!

2 green onions, thinly sliced, for garnish, optional. Highly depends on if I have them on hand, and if I totally forget about it at the end. Yes, I do that all the time.

 

Method:

Prepare chicken pieces. Either cut them into smaller chunks, or score the skin and meat with a sharp knife. Put chicken pieces into a large bowl. I use about 1/4 cup of the soy sauce and a couple turns of freshly ground pepper to marinate the chicken. Mix and set aside.

While the chicken is marinating, set aside garlic cloves, slice ginger root, pick and rinse basil leaves, slice green onions. Once you have everything good to go, the rest of the cooking will be a breeze. Heavy bottom pan on medium high heat, go in with a couple of table spoons of mild flavored cooking oil. Let the oil heat up and add ginger. Give it a few seconds and let the ginger smell infuse the oil, go in with chicken pieces. Don’t over crowd the pan. If you really have the patience, put chicken in skin side down to let the chicken get some color and let the skin crisp up. Or, you can go with the lazy way, like I always do, dump the chicken into the pot, spread it out a bit with a spatula and leave it alone for a few minutes. Once the chicken / skin is ready, the chicken will be very easy to be flipped. If you have to really scrape the pan, or pull the skin off the bottom, it’s not ready yet. Be patient.

Turn the chicken to let it cook evenly. Once the chicken is browned on all sides, go in with all the garlic. It may seem awful lot of garlic, but just bear with it. Stir the chicken and garlic around, lower heat to medium. Add remaining soy sauce, chicken stock and basil leaves. Lid on, lower heat to medium low once the liquid is boiling. Let it go for about 10 minutes. Lid off, stir around the chicken a bit. At this point, garlic cloves are soft, but still hold their shape. Some smaller pieces may have melted, that is what makes this dish incredible. If you like the sauce a bit thicker, leave the lid off and cook for a couple more minutes, the sauce will thicken up.

This dish goes beautifully with some roasted vegetables, or a nice crisp mixed green salad. Or, you can add potatoes into this dish, it would be amazing. Serve over steamed white rice, or pasta, or pull the chicken off the bone, serve in a warm tortilla, or eat it as is, mop the sauces with naan bread…

I have not read the recipe since the first time I made it, which was about 2 years ago. That’s why every time I made it, something was different. But I have never messed it up. If you got a bunch garlic cloves and chicken, soy sauce you are good to go.

Give it a try, and let me know what’s your twist.

Life and random things

What makes you happy?

This seems like an easy question to some, but a lot of us are so lost in our daily routine, getting or already got so numb about the agenda. Especially if you are like me, have kids, pets, and have something major going on in life. Quite often, we are used to eliminate ourselves from the priority list. It’s like we are here to please others, others we love and care about, or have to at least pretend that we do (you know you can think of a few too).

For a long time, I knew I would be OK, I could survive. I was willing to sacrifice myself for everyone else around me. I was willingly putting myself at the bottom of the never ending list, and I wasn’t complaining. I never realized that 80% of the chit chat I had with my besties were about kids, 20% was to air out. Some of my besties are the same way. We talked about kids, husbands, fights, tiffs, and rarely sweet moments. I knew this but refused to believe it, those chit chats are my outs a lot of the times, we vented to each other, we cried at restaurants during lunch breaks, we laughed so hard I swear I peed my pants a little a couple times. But none of that happiness was about ourselves, about what makes us happy, about what WE want to do. Our emotion was completely surrendered to the people around us.

It’s funny, it took a lot longer for me to adjust to having extra time on hand. I was told by a few good friends, I look so much happier than I was for a long time, for years, they said. I was shocked at first. But I have to agree. I was never on my own agenda for over a decade. But now, with this extra time, I started taking care of myself. I am finally able to do things I always day dreamed about doing, or kept telling myself, one day, when I have time…

I like where I am now, simply by doing some things I wanted to do, feeling free, finally hanging out with people I always wanted to, and doing things for the first time. I feel like I am 25 again!

Happiness is taking care of yourself, look out for what makes you feel you. If someone doesn’t care to make you happy, move on. Don’t keep bending backwards and hope one day people will appreciate you sacrificing yourself. Sadly, a lot of us are walking this route, but it doesn’t really lead us anywhere. Pave your own path, find your own happiness, and I am sure you will be wonderfully surprised that your path will cross so many amazing people’s.

Cooking

Easy Snow Peas with Garlic Sauce

This is a keeper, I promise. Even my 5-year-old gave me a two thumbs up! It’s a super easy and nutritious dish.

Ingredients:

1 lb snow pea, trimmed and veins on the edges pulled. Snow peas are tenderer than snap peas, they seem slightly sweeter to me as well. This is a great choice for kids. For some reason, kids love to bite into slightly crunchy, sweet snow peas and from time to time, find the smallest and cutest little peas inside.

4 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced.

Salt, powdered chicken bullion to taste

2 tbsp of corn starch

1/2 cup of water or stock

 

Method:

Pan on medium high heat, add in 1 tbsp mild flavored oil, throw in garlic and move around for 30 seconds. Immediately, your house is going to smell amazing! Add snow peas into pan and about half of the water or chicken stock, lid on lower heat to medium. This allows the liquid to evaporate, hit the lid and comes back down to steam the snow peas gently for about 3 minutes. In the mean time, dissolve corn starch in the remaining liquid, keep the liquid moving just before adding into the pan, otherwise the starch will sink to the bottom. Move the snow peas around, and let the sauces thicken up. It only takes about 20 to 30 seconds. Add salt to taste, and it’s DONE!