Sweet Pea Journey

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

Tagged: super easy and tasty

Cooking

Super Soup

This soup is super healthy, vegetarian, yet you won’t miss any meat. And it is super easy to put together in a flash. It’s so satisfying.

veggie soup

I literally grabbed whatever I can find in my fridge that sounds good in this soup, let’s count the variety of vegetables, that’s why I am telling ya, this is a super healthy soup.

Ingredients:

  • 1 yellow onion, medium size, diced
  • 1 medium size carrot, diced
  • 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
  • 2 roma tomatoes, diced, don’t worry about taking out any seeds, they never bother nobody
  • 1 bunch kale (I separated the tough stems out, saved them for my home made dog food)
  • 1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
  • 1 chayote, diced
  • 1 russet potato, diced and soaked in water till needed
  • 1 can of chick peas, drained and rinsed
  • 1 handful of green lentils
  • green onions or cilantro for garnish, optional
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp rosemary
  • 2 chicken bullion cubes
  • 1 TBSP tomato paste
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

In a large sauce pot, drizzle about 2 TBSP cooking oil and sautee onions and carrots on medium high heat for about 2 minutes until softened, add garlic and stir.

onions and carrots

Add chili powder, cumin and rosemary and toast the seasoning until fragrant.

added seaoning    seasoning

Squirt in tomato paste and stir. Add the remaining ingredients except for potatoes. Add about 6 cups of water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium, lid on and cook for about 25 minutes or until the lentils are tender.

boiling soup

Add the diced potatoes and cook for another 5 minutes or so, taste for seasoning. Add salt and ground black pepper to taste.

Dish up and garnish with sliced green onions or cilantro as desired. Enjoy!

 

Cooking

Easy Yummy Chicken Salad

This is a slight twist of a cold chicken salad recipe from my home town, which calls for loads of spices and toasted peanuts. Although I love my home town chicken salad dearly, my version is equally good and more kid friendly. Also, this recipe takes about 30 minutes to make, perfect for a week night dinner.

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Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts, doesn’t matter if there is skin or bone
about 6 fresh green onions, divided
about 4 slices of fresh ginger
about 4 cloves of garlic, divided
a handful of Sichuan peppercorn. If you don’t have these, use black peppercorns
outside hard part of lemon grass, if you have some, if not, leave it out
1 small handful of fresh cilantro
2 TBSP oyster sauce
1 TBSP Hoisin sauce
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp powdered chicken bullion
chili oil, optional
2 TBSP soy sauce
1 tsp black Asian vinegar
1 tsp sugar

Method:

Put chicken breasts into a medium size stock pot. Fill cold water to cover chicken. Roughly slice 2 green onions lengthwise to release more flavor, bruise ginger slices and crush 2 garlic cloves. Put sliced green onion, crushed garlic, bruised ginger, Sichuan peppercorn and hard part of lemon grass into the pot. Turn the heat on high to heat up soup, until barely bubbling. Lower heat to low to keep stock from rapid boiling. Poach chicken breasts for about 25 minutes to fully cook them through. This poaching method will keep otherwise dry and bland chicken breasts juicy and tender for the salad.

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In the mean time, thinly slice the rest of the green onions, mince the rest of the garlic cloves, and slice the cilantro leaves.

Fish out chicken breasts, let chicken breasts rest and cool on the cutting board for a good 10 minutes. Remove bone and skin if any and put cooled chicken breasts into large ziploc bags.

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Lightly smash the chicken breasts with a rolling pin to loosen up the meat fibers. This step helps chicken meat to absorb more flavor of the sauce. Remove chicken breast from the bag and shred it into bite size pieces and put into a large mixing bowl.

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Add all the remaining ingredients into the mixing bowl, mix thoroughly and serve.

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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

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

Shrimp Wontons

Another classic dish from my home town. Adding some minced and roughly chopped shrimp into the pork filling gives this dish an elegant upgrade on both flavor and texture. Of course, I served it with my signature spicy sauce. Life is good!

Ingredients:

1 package of store bought thin wonton wrappers. Don’t buy the thick type for this dish. The thin type will be super soft and silky after cooking process and you taste buds will be focused on the filling and the sauce.

1/2 lb ground pork, I prefer the fattier type, if pork is too lean, the filling tends to be a bit tougher after cooking

16 medium sized shrimp, half roughly chopped, half minced.

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1 knob of ginger, about 1/2 inch, minced

1 lemon grass stalk, about 4 inches long rough outer layers removed, ends removed, minced

1 egg

1 TBSP corn starch

1 tsp salt

1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup water

Method:

Put all ingredients except for wonton wrappers into a large bowl.

Stir vigorously with a pair of chopsticks or a fork in one direction for about 5 minutes. The mixture will change texture to be a lot more smoother, but you can still see the chopped shrimp pieces.

Line up the work station with wonton filling, wonton wrappers and a tray. Put a small bowl of water nearby for sealing the wrappers.

Grab a piece of wonton wrappers flat on your left palm, put about 1 tsp filling in the center.

Fold the top half over the bottom half to enclose the filling, slightly offset a bit.

Keep the filling meatball around middle finger area, slightly lift middle finger to push meatball upwards, while use thumb and pinkie to keep the two sides down.

Dab a little bit of water onto the left corner, under the thumb. Bring the right corner over to the left corner and squeeze it on top of the left corner. Retract middle finger while doing that. Viola, you just made a authentic wonton.

Keep repeating the process until you exhaust either the wrappers or the filling. I tend to make slightly more filling than wrappers, just because the fillings can be easily turned into meatballs or be incorporated into some other dishes, while leftover wrappers, you really don’t have much other use for them, and they tend to dry out very fast.

Now it’s time to cook these bad boys and enjoy them.

Boil a large pot of water on high heat. In the mean time, make your sauces in a large bowl. You want to be able to mix the wontons in the spicy sauce when they are done.

Once water is boiling, carefully put in about 15 to 20 wontons per adult serving into the water, don’t over crowd them. Move wontons gently with the back of a slotted spoon. Bring the water back to a boil.

Let fresh wontons boil with lid off for about 5 minutes. They will float up to the surface once they are done.

Spoon the wontons directly into your sauce bowl, mix well and enjoy!