Sweet Pea Journey

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

Tagged: healthy

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

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!

 

Cooking

Tomato Soup

I don’t really know why I never made tomato soup before. I love tomatoes, and it’s really just summery goodness in a liquid form, what’s not to love? So I tried to make it the other night, turned out, it is blog worthy. So here it is.

 

Ingredients:

About 4 large or 6 small plump ripe juicy tomatoes, any kind would do really, but apparently the juicier, the more tomatoy, the better. Or you can use a couple large cans of good peeled whole tomatoes.

1/2 of a loaf of good crusty bread, roughly cubed to about 1 inch cubes. White bread or even left over bread would be fine too. I personally prefer plain bread in this case, something that has milder flavor.

Chicken stock, about 2 cups, or 2 cups of vegetable stock, or water and bullion, or even plain water, no biggie.

A few basil leaves, for flavor and garnish. Of course, I had to have some fresh basil in my garden, so that’s easy for me.

1 whole onion roughly chopped, again, any kind would do. But I’d prefer yellow, white or sweet, purple onion may turn the soup a bit darker in color? If you tried it, please leave a comment and let me know!

4 cloves of garlic, smashed and roughly chopped.

1+1 tbsp olive / avocado / vegetable oil, something mild flavor would do

Salt and pepper to taste, and you will need a blender, either a stick blender (which I love and less mess to clean up), or a good counter top blender

Any kind of cheese for garnish, if you prefer. Hint: mozzarella, tomato and basil is ultimate combo

 

Method:

In a large soup pot (larger ones are easier to stir vegetables around, and when blending, less soup splatters outside the pot), drizzle in 1 table spoon oil, heat on medium high. Sweat onions for about 3 minutes or until onions are soften and translucent. During this time, rough chop tomatoes and smash and rough chop garlic, move the onions around every now and then to ensure they don’t burn. Add in garlic and stir around veggies for about 30 seconds. Add in tomatoes, juices and all. If you are using canned tomatoes, use a wooden spoon to break up the tomatoes a bit. I know a lot of major chefs like to squeeze tomatoes through fingers in a separate bowl and dump into the pot, I am not a huge fan of doing that, simply because I can’t seem to ever be able to maintain the cleanliness of the counter or my clothes.

Stir all veggies together, add in the stock. I don’t really fuss about buying boxed stock, or making my own. I am sure it tastes wonderful, but I only do that for special occasion. I like to use water and bullion. Nowadays you can use powder form, cubes, or even refrigerated paste type. They are a lot easier to handle and store. I like to throw in about half of my basil leaves at this point. Once the mixture comes to a boil, reduce the heat to medium low, lid on and let it go for about 35, 40 minutes. Cube your bread and set it aside. Hint, good time to start cleaning up the mess on the counter, or pour yourself a drink and enjoy the amazing smell of the house.

Check your soup, stir it around from time to time, make sure nothing burns at the bottom. Add in bread cubes, and use the spoon to push the bread down and soak up all the goodness. Lid on again and let it go for another 5 minutes or until the bread cubes are all softened. Notice, I still have not put in any salt or pepper. Depends on what kind of tomato you use, you may not even need ANY salt at the end, amazing, right?

Break out your stick blender, or counter top blender. Blend the soup to desired consistency. Now is the time to try a little soup and adjust seasoning, if needed. Be careful not to burn your lips, it’s HOT! Dish up, stick some pretty basil leaves and sprinkle the cheese on top. You will be glad you made this super simple, healthy and delicious soup!

Cooking

Chinese Wontons

Yes, these are the authentic Chinese wontons. Nope, they are not the fried tortilla strips in a bag you get from a fast food chain restaurant. And guess what, they are super easy to make, you should try it too!

Ingredients:

1 lb ground pork (you can use super lean, lean, regular, any type you like)

1 inch worth of ginger root, don’t worry about peeling, freeze ahead of time if you can

2 green onions, green part and white part

2 eggs

salt, pepper and chicken bullion powder to taste

1 package of store bought wonton wrappers (I like super thin type, it will say on the packaging, can be found in refrigerated area or frozen area, better yet, check out your local Asian market!)

You will also need a large clean surface to store the wontons. I normally use my cutting board, baking sheet or pizza pan. And I normally make a large quantity, so I choose the pans that fit my freezer. I freeze my wontons on the pans over night, and bag them the next day for a quick and easy wonton meal any time.

How to make wontons:

Take out the frozen wonton wrappers from the freezer, leave them in the packaging, on the counter to defrost, or leave them in the fridge over night to defrost. Do not microwave or heat it up, the wrappers will stick together and you might as well make meatball soup instead.

Dump all ingredients into a mixing bowl, doesn’t matter the sequence, just dump them all in. Please don’t mind my not so clean bowl in the picture, I only remembered to take pictures after I ran out of fillings, so the picture was second batch fillings.

Use a spoon, a fork or a pair of chopsticks (if you feel extra Asian today), mix the filling mixture vigorously in either clockwise or counter-clockwise direction for a good 5 minutes. This is the workout session for me for the day. Normally I would be able to feel the upper body muscles that I didn’t know I had. Take breaks if you need to, I certainly took a bunch breaks. Use a standup mixture if you have one, especially if you are making a large portion of wontons. One thing to keep in mind, when mixing the filling, keep it in one direction. This one directional thing is quite serious, if you ask people selling wontons in my hometown farmer’s market. They say it helps the filling to be soft and it will melt in your mouth.

This is the time to take the wrappers out of the packaging. Use your thumb and index finger to grab the entire stack of wrappers in the middle, shake it to loosen up the stack of wrappers over the sink, you will have some loose flour falling off, that’s fine. Notice in the picture below, I have the stack of wrappers fanned out all pretty on the cutting board. This is easy to do, and it helps when you need to grab one wrapper at a time, because most wrappers would be offset a tiny bit and already separated, but not exposed with a large surface to dry out. What I did was after shaking the stack, I put them on the cutting board, firmly pressing down the stack with the palm of my hand and turned my hand clockwise. You can use either hand, turn either direction. It may take a bit practice to feel the right pressure to apply. If too firm, you can press the wrappers together more, and they won’t fan out, if not firm enough, only the top layer of wrappers will fan out. Another essential for wonton making, a glass of your favorite drink. I got one there shown in the picture too!

Making the wonton is actually quite easy, probably a lot easier than you think. There are multiple ways of making wontons. I do not mean any method is better than others, but I am showing you how wontons are made in my home town. They look like sailor hats.

Grab a wrapper and lay in one hand, grab roughly 1/2 tbsp of filling and put in the center of wrapper. Fold wrapper over towards yourself, offset a bit, so it’s not a perfect rectangle, it will make the wonton look prettier in the end. Dab some water at one corner on the fold, lift middle finger up a bit and push the “meatball center” up a tiny bit, bring the 2 corners on the fold together, with the corner with water on the bottom, pinch the corners together, water will act like glue. Viola! Your first wonton is done! Now based on how your wonton turned out, you can adjust filling portion, add a bit more water on the corner or put on less.

Here is a video of how I made my wontons.

 

Common things to adjust:

Filling portion. Always start with less filling, you really can’t mess up with tiny bit of filling. It’s a good practice. Worst case, you can consider your first ever wonton a cross between flat noodle and wontons. There really is no right or wrong on the filling portion.

Wonton wrapper cracks, this is because the wrappers are dried out. The cracked wrapper you might as well toss it out, not much you could do to fix that. But the rest of the wrappers, you can lay a damp piece of paper towel over the stack for a while, or keep it on until you need another wrapper. I work pretty fast, so I don’t do this. If you are practicing making wontons, you can do this to your wrapper stacks, so you are not under pressure and feel like you are on a timed cooking show.

 

Cooking

Wing-it Pizza and Arugula Salad

Pizza and Salad anyone? We made this super simple and restaurant quality pizza and arugula salad the other night. It looked stunning, smelled amazing and made us feel like a million bucks eating super yummy yet healthy dinner!

Here is how we made it.

At the super market, we felt like home made pizza for dinner. So, without searching for a recipe, we just winged it. We grabbed some assorted olives from the olive bar (majority was for snack, shhh), a chunk of fresh mozzarella cheese, an heirloom tomato, a bag of arugula and a can of whole tomatoes (I followed experts’ advice, bought a 28 oz can of San Marzano tomatoes) and we went fancy, bought 4 slices of prosciutto, and a ball of fresh pizza dough (this is a true life saver, I didn’t have to slave myself kneading the dough and spending quite some time letting it rise, and store bought fresh pizza dough is always spot on). I know I have onions, shaved Parmesan cheese, fresh lemon, shallot, garlic, fresh basil from my garden, we are good to go!

After we got home, first thing first, the pizza sauce needs to be made (or you can cut corners even more, and get a good jar of pizza sauce). I diced a small onion, smashed 3 cloves of garlic, and threw them into a heavy bottom sauce pan with a table spoon olive oil heating on medium high heat. Then I moved onto opening the can of tomatoes. I let the onions and garlic sweat in the sauce pan for a couple minutes, I dumped the can of tomatoes, juices and all, into the pot. I was too lazy to squeeze the tomatoes through my fingers and didn’t feel like making a mess. So, I poked them with a wooden spoon and broke them up in the pan. Don’t worry, at the end of the cooking process, the tomatoes will break down beautifully anyway. Immediately, I filled the tomato can with tap water and dumped that into the pan too. I didn’t want to waste any flavor of the tomatoes. Once the sauce came to a boil, I lowered the heat to medium low. I added a pinch of chicken bullion (or instead of the water and bullion, you can add chicken broth, or even good white wine). I loosely put the lid on, and let it go.

I took out the pizza dough, stretched it out to fit the nonstick pizza pan I have, sliced up the onions, mushrooms, pitted black olives, heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella cheese. I gathered my fresh basil leaves. Music was on, a glass of wine was served, life was good! I had a few more minutes to spare while waiting on the tomato sauce, I pulled out the baby arugula and dumped the whole bag into a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, I mixed 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice (about half a fresh lemon), 2 tbsp avocado oil (figured it’s a nice alternative to good old extra virgin olive oil, and it turned out I was right!), I put in a finely diced shallot, a pinch of salt and some freshly ground multi color pepper (black is good too, multi color pepper corn was what I had on hand, it does give any dish a nice little color boost, it’s fun). I whisked the dressing until it is emulsified. Here is a mistake I made, I dumped the dressing into the arugula bowl at this point, and mixed it up. The baby arugula wilted a little by the time the pizza was finally done. Even though I had a good time sampling the salad along the way, because the slightly peppery salad was really good, next time, I would leave the dressing separate until the last minute just before plating.

By now, the tomato sauce was done. I turned on the oven to a piping 450 degrees Fahrenheit,  I added in just a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. I ladled some sauce in the middle of the stretched out pizza dough, mirroring exactly what I see on TV from pizza restaurant commercial, spreading the sauce from center outwards, in a circular motion, using the bottom of the ladle. We had fun laying out the mozzarella slices, vegetables, and half of the basil onto the pizza. Can’t forget the prosciutto slices. We hand torn those and laid those pieces loosely on top of everything else.  Into the oven it goes. One thing to pay attention, don’t over load the pizza with veges, it will be too watery and makes it soggy.

We turned on the oven light, acted like little kids, sticking our faces on the oven door, waiting for the pizza to be done. 20 minutes and a facial tanning session later, the pizza is finally done!

A slice of pizza heaven, a handful of simple yet scrumptious baby arugula salad, some fresh basil and shaved Parmesan, dinner is served.