Sweet Pea Journey

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Category: Cooking

Cooking

Best Roasted Veggies – Another Super Versatile Recipe

I love this recipe so much, I really don’t mind eating it every day. It’s such a versatile recipe, you can change it up anyway you want, as long as you follow a couple of simple rules. This recipe is like a canvas, you can let your imagination and creativity go wild!

Rule 1: Don’t use too much high water content vegetables, such as cucumbers, large tomatoes (a handful of small cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes add a ton of flavor, FYI)

Rule 2: Lay out vegetables in a single layer on the baking dish, don’t pile them up high. Use 2 trays if needed, otherwise you are ending up steaming the vegetables, rather than roasting them. Vegetables will come out soggy, since the water content is not lowered during the process of roasting. Therefore, the taste of the vegetables are not concentrated like roasting does.

Anyway, today I gathered these vegetables:

Vegetables:

2 carrots

2 Mexican squash

1 white onion

1 red onion

about 1 lb brussel sprouts

2 small heads of broccoli

 

Dressing:

2 tsp salt

1 tsp freshly grounded tri-color pepper (black pepper works just fine, I like the color combo my tri-colored pepper grinder set gives)

2 tsp red wine vinegar (believe me, this will make a whole world of difference in your roasted vegetables!)

1 tbsp olive oil

 

Process:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Clean and cut up vegetables to bite sizes and throw into a large mixing bowl. Or if you are not using a lot of vegetables, just lay them out on the baking dish. Put dressing ingredients on vegetables. I normally mix up the vegetables using my hands, but today, while cutting the onion, I somehow sliced my left pinkie with the tip of the knife. Another reason why I prefer shorter knives than long knives. Why having such a long blade, if you think about it, how often do you cut something using the tip of the knife 1 foot away from the handle? Anyway, bandaged up, I used a tool today to mix the vegetables.

 

Spread vegetables in a single layer on baking dish. Use 2 baking dishes if needed. Into the oven it goes, and bake for about 25 to 28 minutes.

Serve hot, room temperature or cold!

 

Cooking

Awesome Chopped Salad

One super versatile recipe to keep on hand. Great time to search your fridge and experiment new flavors.

Enough said, what I have below was about 3 very generous servings or 4 normal servings.

 

Salad:

1/2 head of iceberg lettuce, roughly chopped

1 8 oz bag of baby arugula and spinach mix

1 cucumber, peeled and diced

1/2 red onion, diced

1 tomato, diced

1 ear of corn, boiled and kernel cut off

4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

1 pre-marinated chicken breast, grilled and chopped

1 lb large shrimp, peeled, de-veined, grilled with salt, pepper and paprika

 

Dressing:

1 clove of garlic, smashed

juice of 1/2 lemon

2 tsp of Dijon mustard

2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp white wine vinegar

4 tbsp avocado oil

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

 

Topping:

1 tbsp Mexican cheese blend

 

Method:

Mix all salad ingredients together. I heated up my trusty cast iron pan on medium heat for a couple of minutes, added some vegetable oil, threw the chicken breast into the pan and moved on to tons of chopping and peeling.

I pulled out the largest mixing bowl, and if you make a lot of salads at home, you will know this. I have made way too many mistakes thinking the smaller bowl would do, and had to change it out half way through, or during mixing process. Keep piling the ingredients into the bowl, no specific order. Flip chicken after 5 minutes, and keep on cutting and peeling. Once chicken is done, pull it out and leave it on the cutting board to rest.

Into the same cast iron pan (no washing required!) goes the shrimps. One single layer would be crucial. Use a pair of tongs to spread out the shrimp. Flip them over after 2 minutes. Turn off the heat, the residual heat of cast iron pan would cook the shrimp through.

All ingredients go into the bowl. Put all dressing ingredients into your blender, blend until thoroughly emulsified. The dressing would be thick yellow liquid gold.

Pour about 4 tbsp of dressing into the salad bowl and mix with 2 wooden spoons. I like my salad lightly dressed, but do keep the extra dressing on the table for others. Top with cheese and enjoy!

 

 

Cooking

Twice Cooked Pork Belly

This is a delicacy, I tell ya. It’s super addicting. A little disclaimer, eat at your own risk – pair with rice, or a nice piece of naan bread, you will not be able to stop…

Ingredients:

1 lb pork belly, skin on, raw

1 red bell pepper

1 green bell pepper

2 yellow onions

1 tsp honey

2 tsbp soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

1tbsp cooking oil

1 tsp of chicken or mushroom bullion

2 tbsp Pixian spicy bean paste, this is something you need to get online or in Asian markets

 

Method:

Clean pork belly, boil on medium heat until pork belly is cooked through.

In the mean time, seed bell peppers and cut into chunks. Cut onions into chunks.

Once pork belly is cooked through, take it out of the pot, cool on the cutting board until easy to handle. Thinly slice pork belly, skin side down so it doesn’t slide.

Wok on medium high heat, drizzle in about 1 tbsp cooking oil and spoon in the spicy bean paste. Make sure your kitchen is well ventilated. Once the spicy bean paste hits the hot wok, it can be quite strong, you may experience sneezing and coughing.. it’s all good! I promise! Stir around the bean paste and wake up the flavor.

Into the wok goes the vegetables, all of it. Stir vegetables around until cooked, about 5 minutes.

In with the sliced pork belly, stir around until bean paste is well mixed with everything. Drizzle in honey, soy sauce, sesame oil and mushroom or chicken bullion. Stir well for about 2 minutes.

Dish up and enjoy!

 

 

Cooking

Best Carrot Cake

I have to confess, this is not the healthiest cake you ever had. The truth is, it is probably one of the worst, sugar and fat content wise. But, it got 4 giant carrots in it, so I am good. Also, this recipe is easy, doesn’t require tons of bowls and tools.

 

 

Wet Ingredients:

4 eggs

1 1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

 

Dry Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 tsp ground cinnamon

4 large carrots, grated

1 cup chopped walnuts

 

Frosting:

1 box (8 oz) cream cheese

1 stick butter

2 cups powdered sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

 

Method:

 

Pre-heat oven to 350 deg F. Spray and flour a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.

In a large mixing bowl, mix all wet ingredients together. I still have not found my handy dandy hand mixer, so I did this cake by hand. If you have a hand mixer, definitely go for that!

Peel and grate carrots. This will take some time and muscle. I think I got my right arm work out for the day. I did not really measure the carrots, just eyeballed it, probably a good 3 cups.

Add all dry ingredients into wet, leave carrots and walnuts to later. Mix the batter until no more lumps. Stir in grated carrots and chopped walnuts.

Pour batter into the prepared 9 x 13 baking dish. Bake at 350 deg F for 50 minutes. Let cool completely.

 

For frosting, soften cream cheese and butter, mix thoroughly. Add vanilla extract and mix. Add powdered sugar, 1 cup at a time, using a spoon, carefully mix powdered sugar into cream cheese and butter mixture. Frost cake and serve!

 

Cooking

Ultimate Blueberry Cake with Lemon Syrup

Fresh blueberries are in season y’all!

Go pick some fresh blueberries with your little ones and make some killer dessert with them! I take my kids pick blueberries every year, since my oldest was one and a half years old. Let me tell ya, every year, we pick 30-40 lbs of fresh blueberries, come home, sort out the biggest and juiciest and freeze them in sandwich or quart size Ziploc bags and freeze. These berries last a whole year of desserts, smoothies or just as a simple super healthy frozen treat!

For now, I will focus on the Ultimate Blueberry cake with Lemon Syrup. It’s a huge hit every time it’s made.

Wet Ingredients:

3 large eggs
1/2 cup canola oil 1 tsp vanilla extract (please buy a bottle of the real stuff, makes a huge difference in your dessert)
1 cup Greek yogurt

1/2 cup sugar (with 1 additional TBSP sugar for syrup)

Dry Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour (and additional 1 TBSP flour if you are using frozen berries)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Star Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of fresh or frozen blueberries
2 large lemons

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 350 deg F.

Grease, flour and parchment paper your loaf pan. I used a 9x5x3 loaf pan, even though it’s non-stick, I still did this step. I had a loaf stuck in my pan before, so, don’t skip this step!

In a medium bowl, whisk all dry ingredients together.

Add all wet ingredients into a larger bowl. Zest your lemons at this time, zest goes into wet ingredients bowl. Save your lemons, you will need the juice later.

Whisk wet ingredients together with the same whisk (I really don’t like introducing more tools to wash, unless I absolutely have to.) The lemon zest and vanilla extract smells so good at this point, you know you will have an amazing cake in the end already!

Slowly add all dry ingredient mixture into wet mixture, that’s why you want to mix the wet ingredients in a larger bowl. You have no idea how many times I used the wrong size bowl, and ended up with a mess when I bake. Ha, lessons learned, pay attention before dirty up a dish, figure out which bowl will end up having all the ingredients together in the end.

The mixture will be a sticky mess, but kinda cool looking.

In a smaller bowl, mix your blueberries and that 1 additional TBSP of flour, this prevents the berries to bleed too much into the batter, and helps them stay afloat during the baking process and don’t sink to the bottom.

Gently fold berries into the batter. I recommend using a rubber spatula for this, scrap the sides of the bowl as you go, try not to poke the berries.

Pour the batter with berries into your prepared loaf pan, and smooth it out a tiny bit.

Into the oven it goes. Now it’s the time to wash all the dirty dishes and tools and walk away.

Come back in about 50 minutes and check on your cake. If a clean tooth pick comes out clean from your cake, leave it in the loaf pan to cool at least 10 minutes. If the toothpick doesn’t come out clean, stick the cake back into the oven and bake for 10 minutes more.

While the cake is cooling in the loaf pan, juice your naked lemons into a small pot, add 1 TBSP sugar and stir on medium heat until sugar is dissolved.

Transfer cake onto a plate, poke some more holes on the cake with the tooth pick, this will help the cake to absolve the lovely lemony flavor of the syrup. You guessed it, slowly pour syrup on the cake while cake is still warm.

Slice up and enjoy!

Cooking

Easy as 2-Ingredient Pie

How much easier can it be than a 2-ingredient pie? OK, there are total of 3 ingredients, including a store-bought pie crust. But, as far as the filling goes, there are only 2 ingredients, and nope, sugar is not one of them. So, go ahead, indulge a little, because you can!

 

I LOVE this recipe, because it really got all the goodness of a pie, but none of the bad stuff – no added sugar, no extensive baking, or water bath, super fast, kid friendly, and you can lick off the spoon since there is no raw egg!

Ingredients:

1 store-bought pie crust

2 packages of cream cheese

1/2 cup of Nutella

 

Method:

 

You probably already figured it out. It’s really that simple. Soften the cream cheese, add in Nutella, mix, dump into pie crust and smooth the top. Leave pie in the fridge to set. DONE!

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!