Sweet Pea Journey

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Sweet Pea Journey

Cooking

Pickled Pig’s Feet

I know this post will have selected audience. But I am Asian, we eat everything. I know some may share the same appreciation of everything nature has to offer. If you are interested, keep reading. This is actually one amazingly good appetizer.

Ingredients:

1 package of pig’s feet, cut up into chunks.

about 1 TBSP pepper corn, divided, mixed color if you got those, if not, black pepper corn is fine

4 bay leaves

Pickled jalapenos with juice, about 2 TBSP jalapeno slices, and 1 cup juice

3 to 4 slices of fresh ginger

1 cup white vinegar

4 TBSP salt

Method:

Thoroughly clean and pluck hair off pig’s feet. Or, alternatively, burn them off on open flame of your stove with a pair of metal tongs, or using BBQ skewers. Last thing you want is tasty pickled pig’s feet with loads of hair on them, especially between the toes.

After thorough cleaning, put pig’s feet into a medium pot, cover with cold water. Put in 2 bay leaves and all ginger slices and a handful of pepper corns. Bring the water to a gentle boil for about 5 minutes, lid off. The pig’s feet will release all the gunk and foam. Drain the pig’s feet in a colander, save the pepper corn, ginger slices and bay leaves in the colander. Rinse the pig’s feet pieces under running water. Rinse pot and bring another pot of water to a boil. Put in the pig’s feet along with the aromatics into the boiling water. Lid on, lower the heat to medium low after it’s boiling and let it go for about 2 hours to fully cook and tenderize the pig’s feet.

In the mean time, prepare the pickling liquid. In a large jar or container, mix about 4 cups of water, white vinegar, jalapeno juice, jalapeno slices, remaining bay leaves, salt and pepper corns. Mix well to dissolve salt.

Once pig’s feet are done and tender, but still has a bite, rinse off the pig’s feet pieces and let them cool completely. Put pig’s feet into the jar or container and mix well. Refrigerate for about 2 days before serving them as a cold appetizer. They are actually VERY tasty!

Tips: you can always add some vegetables into the pickling juice, such as sliced carrots and onions, even celery.

Cooking

Drumsticks and 40 Cloves – Made in the Oven

Another recipe for the same classic dish. This one was done in the oven, so mainly hands-free cooking of a delicious fall-off-the-bone crowd-pleaser, what’s not to love? All you need is a large oven proof pan and lid.

Ingredients:

Chicken drum sticks, I made a huge batch, a whole family pack, 11 drumsticks in that pack

1 bundle of thyme, I had some nice wilted ones in my flower pot, yep, I haven’t been keeping up with the watering…

1 bundle of Thai basil, not traditional ingredient for this dish but adds a nice mild earthy flavor

A ton of garlic cloves. I honestly did not remember how many cloves I peeled, probably 5 heads worth. I was watching cooking channel and peeling garlic, gotta say, it was kinda therapeutic.

Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Liberally salt and pepper the drumsticks on one side. Oven pre-heating at 400F.

Large oven safe pan with a thin layer of oil on medium high heat.

Carefully put drumsticks into the pan, seasoned side down, and liberally season the other side.

Brown all sides of the drumsticks, take your time, be patient. This golden brown color will carry over to the final cooked drumsticks. Brown them in batches if needed to.

Sprinkle all the garlic cloves, thyme bundle and Thai basil all over the top of the chicken drumsticks.

Drizzle the top of the whole dish with a couple rounds of olive oil. Cover with an oven proof lid.

Bake at 400F for about 20 minutes and lower heat to 350F. Bake for another 40 minutes.

You won’t believe how tender these drumsticks turn out, and how sweet and soft the garlic cloves would be. Enjoy as an appetizer, or over some simple cilantro lime rice and asparagus and bell pepper stir-fry…

Cooking

Sticky Baked Marinated Chicken

Another winner y’all, simple and super tasty. Very kid friendly, my little munchkins loved it. Serve it with some steamed rice and vegetables, quick, simple, healthy and tasty weeknight dinner easily achieved!

Yes, I know, it looked different, sliced cucumbers weren’t my first choice, I had to admit. I wanted thinly sliced green onions on top, but of course, life happens, I didn’t have any green onions on hand, so cute little Persian cucumber slices did the job.

Ingredients:

8 chicken pieces, I used 4 drumsticks and 4 thighs, you can use wings or even breast if you prefer, but please choose the skin on bone in option. The skin is the star of this dish.

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

1/4 cup oyster sauce

2 TBSP dark soysauce

2 TBSP honey, no need to measure, just eyeball the amount, really doesn’t matter for this large amount of meat

6 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp of ground black pepper

1 green onion thinly sliced for garnish at the very end

Method:

Mix all ingredients together except for the green onions in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and leave in fridge to marinate over night, or 4 hours before baking. This allows the flavor to penetrate the meat.

Pre-heat the oven to 400F. Line a baking dish with foil, for easy clean up, since the marinate has honey, it will burn in the oven. Put a rack on top of the foil. Line the chicken on the rack, skin side up for the thighs, and bake for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, pour the rest of the marinate into a small sauce pan and reduce on the stove for a couple of minutes to thicken.

After 10 minutes, remove chicken from the oven, reduce to 350F. Brush chicken pieces with reduced sauce to glaze. The color of the chicken pieces are amazing at this point and you could already smell dinner.

Chicken pieces go back into the oven for another 25 minutes to bake all the way through. Remove chicken from oven, dish up and garnish with green onion slices, enjoy with some rice and vegetables, what can I say, winner winner, chicken dinner!

Cooking

Hometown Sauce

This sauce really isn’t called my hometown sauce. But my hometown is famous for hotpot, and this sauce typically is made for hotpots. I made this sauce one time when we ate at a hotpot restaurant, and it was requested to be some sort of dipping sauce. What else is a better option than some poached chicken breast to showcase this amazing sauce? So I made the sauce and called the dish Hometown Chicken.

Ingredients:

10 cloves of garlic, minced

3 green onions, thinly sliced

1/4 bundle of cilantro, stems and leaves chopped

1/4 cup oyster sauce

1/8 cup black vinegar – I know this sounds weird, but trust me on this

1/2 cup toasted sesame oil – no, it is not a typo.

1/4 tsp salt – optional

Method:

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl, that is it! Taste the sauce for seasoning, if you like it saltier, add the salt at the very end, but normally the oyster sauce is salty enough for most people.

I know you are thinking that’s too much sesame oil and every single chef under the sun had said it is very potent, a drop or two goes a long way. This is true, but in this sauce, the sesame oil is the carrier of all strong flavors, the garlic, cilantro, green onions, you will be amazed when you actually taste the sauce, the garlic loses the pungent smell and slightly spicy taste, and becomes pleasantly fragrant.

Give it a try, you may want this sauce on more of the simply steamed meats and vegetables from now on.

Cooking

Hometown Chicken – The Best E.V.E.R

I know you are sick and tired of bland and tough skinless boneless chicken breast as your protein. But you don’t really know what to do with this healthy option besides pan fry and baked.

It is your lucky day today, because this recipe really will change your view of this lean cut of chicken.

Ingredient:

3 chicken breasts, skinless, boneless

Amazing hometown sauce

Method:

The chicken breast will stay juicy and tender, thanks to the method of poaching.

Poaching is nothing fancy, but low heat slow cook. All you need to do is to put 3 pieces of chicken breasts into a pot of cold water, bring it to just shy of a boil, and lower heat to low. Make sure there is barely any visible bubbles from the pot, water is barely to the boiling point. 20 minutes later, kill the heat, let the chicken breasts slightly cool in the water before slicing. That’s all to the secret. I had some asparagus stem left over from another dish, so I threw these into the pot as well for the hint of freshness taste. Also I poached 5 breasts, only used 3 for this dish, the other 2 were saved for another fabulous recipe.

Arrange the sliced chicken breast nice and neat onto a platter, top with amazing hometown sauce. I promise you, everyone will be so amazed and asking for the recipe! Only you and I know how easy this dish really is.

A little ninja tip: when you take the chicken slices, grab as much of the topping as you could, you will LOVE it!

Cooking

Amazing Burdock Tea

The other day, I came across the amazing burdock root at an Asian market. This fresh produce had a green sign right next to it, outlining the awesome benefits of the weirdly looking sticks.

The benefit card was literally full:

  • Blood purifying
  • Cancer fighting
  • Treat cold
  • Soothe joint pain
  • Improve skin condition
  • Lower blood pressure
  • Fight diabetes
  • Ease stomach and intestinal complaints
  • Treat gout and bladder infection…

The list goes on and on… me being me, this immediately caught my attention. I started my little research tast rigth away. At the end of the day, these 2 roughly 4 ft long sticks cost less than 2 dollars, so I got them anyways.

After I got home, I researched more, compared the benefits and potential risks, and was convinced I shall give it a try. After all, burdock is one of the Chinese medicine ingredients, well known for the medical benefits.

Most of my little research touched on burdock tea one way or the other, and seems like a quite feasible and simple way to try burdock at home without purchasing supplements. So this is what I decided to do.

I snapped the burdock roots into manageable lengths, about 1 ft long each. I scrubbed it thoroughly under cold running water. The root would be visibly lighter in color.

I thinly sliced the root at an diagonal to gain more surface area on the cuts, because I feel this way it would help release all the goodness inside burdock roots. Of course, I didn’t have a mandoline slicer on hand, so I showed off my knife skills a little. Side note, the mannual slicing session gave me enough reason to invest in a small mandoline, which really is just the single slot on the box grater.

Being a newbie, I couldn’t wait. I boiled a small pot of water on the stove. Cut off the heat once the water came to a rapid boil. I threw a bunch of burdock slices into the hot water and put the lid back on to let it steep.

Now, for the rest of the burdock slices, I laid them onto 2 of my largest baking sheets in 1 single layer, as much as I could. I popped the baking sheets into a 200F oven for 3 hours, to slowly dehydrate them for storage.

Of course, I went on this journey to look for a mandoline slicer. I initially had the fancy triangle slicer in mind. Something like this:

It’s so funny, when you know exactly what you want, but are convinced that some cheaper stores would have it, you could never find it, just because you wanted to save a few dollars. So I ended up getting one of these for next time.

When I got back from the store, the burdock tea was completely cooled. I couldn’t wait to serve myself a cup.

The tea is slightly brown in color, very light in my case since I used fresh burdock root slices. However, the subtle sweet flavor and amazing aroma makes it hard to believe I was enjoying something good for my health! A lot of people suggest adding honey or agave as sweetener, I personally think the tea as is, is perfection, nothing else is needed. Unless you want to add some other ingredients that is beneficial for something else and needed some sweetener to offset the strong taste.

When the rest of the burdock slices were done dehydrating in the oven, I took them out and let them completely cool. Into a large plastic bag they go, I will enjoy these amazing burdock root slices for a little while and see if they really have a noticeable impact on my health.

Cooking

Leftover Dumplings Do-Over

I know it’s hard to believe, but we had about 30 home made dumplings left over from last night. So, this morning, I pan fried these and turned them into another awesome breakfast dish.

These are what we had from last night, simple boiled chives, eggs and shrimpdumplings.

Ignore that chili sauce… I think someone was savoring a few for mid night snack..So these dumplings were in the fridge over night, nice and cool, and they won’t stick to each other.

In a medium size cast iron pan, oil the bottom generously and heat on medium high heat for a few minutes to make sure the pan is nice and hot.

Carefully put the dumplings into the pan without crowding them.

Leave them alone for 2 to 3 minutes to allow the golden crust to form at the bottom of each dumpling. Don’t worry about which face these dumplings fall onto at first, they will get browned on all sides anyway.

Once the first side is browned, the dumplings will naturally release themselves from the bottom of the pan, just to be extra safe, go in with a thin flat spatula to scrape them off the pan carefully and flip them to another side.

Allow 2 to 3 minutes each side to brown, dish up and serve with my Signature Spicy Sauce.

Cooking

2-Ingredient Pancakes

Yep, only 2 ingredients. And it’s so good, you and your kids would love this one.

What are the 2 secret ingredients?

1 box of Jiffy corn muffin mix

1 can of cream style corn

Method:

In a medium bowl, mix the 2 ingredients together until there is no visible dry lumps.

Heat up a nonstick pan or a cast iron pan on medium heat, use butter or oil of your choice to coat the bottom of the pan. I used a ladle to drop about 1/2 cup of batter onto the pan. My pan fits 3 pancakes at a time.

Let the pancakes cook for about a minute until the edges are ever so slightly crisping up. Don’t wait for bubbles to form on the top of the pancakes like you would normally do. This pancake batter is quite thick, if you wait for bubbles to form, the bottom would be over cooked.

Flip the pancakes one by one when the bottom is nicely golden brown.

Love how you can see the corn kernels peaking through the pancakes. Give the 2nd side about 30 seconds to cook.

Dish up and serve warm. Everyone would love it! With this recipe, it makes exactly 6 pancakes, perfect amount for a family, along with some other fixings.

Cooking

Incredible Leches Pancakes

This one is extremely easy, that it can hardly be called a recipe. But I promise you, you will fall in love, and change your pancake eating experience towards healthier direction – you won’t miss the syrup. Don’t believe it? Give it a try!

Ingredients:

However you prefer to make your basic pancake recipe. In this particular case, I used store bought pancake mix.

1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk. I had leftovers from my amazing Almond Flour Chocolate Leches Cake, so I used the leftover sweetened condensed milk in this recipe.

1 knob of butter for frying.

Method:

Prepare your pancake batter as you normally would, or per the instruction on the pancake mix packaging. Add the sweetened condensed milk into the batter. No need to alter the pancake mix to liquid ratio because the texture of sweetened condensed milk is quite thick and similar to pancake batter. Hence it is such an easy recipe. Mix the batter well to evenly distribute the milk.

Make your pancake as your normally would. Serve and savor the subtle but unmistakable sweetness! You won’t miss your syrup!

Cooking

Healthy Brown Rice and Spinach

This dish will change your view about healthy brown rice. I know you are aware that you should probably eat more brown rice and ditch white rice, but you don’t like the toughness and slightly interesting smell brown rice comes with. But give this recipe a try, you will not only start loving brown rice, you are also consuming spinach without even noticing you are eating extra healthy. Win-win!

Method:

2 cups of uncooked brown rice

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 TBSP vegetable oil

1 pinch of salt

3 cups of stock, whatever you had on hand. I had leftover soup from my Simple Tum Yum Pork Ribs, so I happily used that for flavor. If you don’t have any stock on hand, don’t worry, just dissolve a chicken bullion cube into 4 cups of water, that will do just fine.

1 cup of water, liquid should add up to 4 cups. So you can play with the math here between water and stock, another level of freedom!

1 small bundle of fresh spinach, thoroughly washed and thinly sliced, stalk and leaves.

Method:

Heat up the oil in a medium soup pot on medium heat, the pot should be large enough to comfortably hold the 4 cups of liquid and rice. Another pro tip is, if your soup pot has a glass lid, that’s ideal, that way you can see how done is your rice and if the liquid is evaporated enough without burning the rice.

Add garlic and brown rice. Stir gently until the rice is fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add all the liquid and salt, combine well, bring it to a boil.

Lid on, lower heat to low right away, and let the rice simmer for about 45 minutes to 50 minutes.

Keep the lid on, absolutely no peeking at this point. Kill the heat and let rice steam for another 10 minutes.

Once rice is done steaming, open the lid and mix in all the spinach, the residual heat from the rice will cook the spinach instantly.

Give this amazing way to cook brown rice and boost your vegetable intake. The brown rice is so soft and tender, it may just pass as white rice!