Sweet Pea Journey

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

Tagged: simple and easy

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

Salt and Pepper Squid

If you like Chinese style salt and pepper anything, you will love this one too. And, it is amazingly simple to make at home, and it sure will impress!

Ingredients:

3 large fresh squids, cleaned

2 green onions

1 TBSP salt

1 TBSP freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup corn starch

3 Thai chili pepper thinly sliced

4 cups of vegetable oil

Method:

Lightly score the inside of the cleaned squid body in a criss-cross pattern. Try not to cut all the way through.

Then cut the squid body into bite size pieces, about 1 inch x 2 inch pieces.

Cut squid tentacles into roughly 2 inch long pieces, or as desired. Lay all squid pieces on a paper towel to dry the moisture. Mix salt and pepper in a small bowl and generously sprinkle the squid pieces with salt and pepper mixture.

In another small bowl, put corn starch for coating each squid piece. In a medium pot, heat up vegetable oil to a gentle roll. Test the oil with a small piece of squid.

Coat each piece of squid generously with corn starch, shake off excess and fry until golden brown, about 3 minutes.

Lay fried squid on a wire rack lined with paper towel. Sprinkle with salt and pepper again.

It would be great as is, but if you really want to kick it up a notch, in a large pan, with about 1 tsp oil, fry the green onions and Thai chili peppers till fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add all the fried squid pieces toss to coat and add another sprinkle of salt and pepper mixture. Dish up and serve!

Cooking

Caribbean Oxtail

Frankly, I wasn’t sure which one was better, my red wine braised oxtail, or this one. They are literally equally fabulous, definitely both worth keeping! No kidding, this melt-in-your-mouth super flavorful oxtail will be requested over and over.

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Ingredients:

Oxtail pieces, 3lb ish, I bought giant oxtail pieces, so I used 5 of them, wash in salted vinegar water and rinse clean.

1 tomato, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

small bunch of parsley, leaves roughly chopped, save stem for later

1 jalapeno, sliced, seeds and all, in the end, you only taste very very mild warmth, don’t worry too much about the spice

1 green bell pepper, seeds removed and chopped

1 inch of fresh ginger, grated or finely chopped

about 2 TBSP of Worcestershire sauce

2 green onions, sliced

1 TBSP ketchup

2 TBSP packed brown sugar, white sugar will do too, if you don’t have brown sugar on hand

2 pieces of beef bullion cubes

2 bay leaves

1 can of coconut milk

Method:

Combine first 10 ingredients in a large bowl or ziploc bag, mix well to combine. Marinate in the fridge over night, or at least a few hours. I did 6 hours, worked wonderful.

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In a large heavy bottom pot, heat up about 1 TBSP vegetable oil on medium high heat, sprinkle in brown sugar. Be patient, let it bubble up and become deeply golden brown. This step is crucial, keep a close eye on your sugar oil mixture, don’t let sugar burn. Otherwise you will have to restart. The deep caramelized color will give the final dish a rich color and deep flavor.

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Carefully put in oxtail pieces to brown on all sides, shake off excess juices and vegetable pieces. If there are a few pieces of vegetable pieces stuck on the oxtail, no biggie, reserve all vegetables and juices.

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Patiently let oxtail pieces brown on all sides, roughly 5 minutes per side. Don’t stress about sugar burning a bit at the bottom, it will come right off once the vegetables are added. Don’t crowd the pan, brown oxtail pieces in batches if needed to.

Once all oxtail pieces are browned, put all pieces back into the pot, add in all the vegetables along with the marinate juices into the pot. Stir to combine. Hand crush the beef bullion cubes and sprinkle all over the oxtail mixture. Add coconut milk and enough water to submerge oxtail pieces, add bay leaves. Throw in the reserved parsley stem and bring the pot to a boil.

Lower the heat to low and simmer with lid on for 3 to 4 hours. Stir and scrape the bottom bits of goodness once in a while and move oxtail pieces around to ensure every bit of the oxtail gets some loving.

Last 30 minutes, take lid off, raise heat to medium. At this point, the liquid in the pot shall have evaporated some, and becomes thicker. Keep the gravy boiling and keep reducing until desired thickness and taste for salt.

Serve over humble steamed rice, along side some cooling salad, you will be in heaven!