Rice Pudding and Baozi

I went on a little Asian food spree here (and I'm not done yet) but here's what it's produced so far:

First off, my own tropical Asian-inspired creation.  I cooked jasmine rice in coconut milk and cinnamon.  Then, while that was cooling, I made a sweet sauce with white sugar, vanilla, and more coconut milk.  Serve by topping a scoop of rice with fresh mango, then pour the vanilla coconut sauce to taste.

Next, I made some doushabaozi, which are basically steamed white buns filled with sweet adzuki bean paste.   The dough was simple, using only flour, sugar, canola oil, yeast, and baking powder.  I used half cake flour and half all purpose to make a dough with less gluten, which steamed into a lovely puffy bao.  I shaped half of them like this:

And the other half like this:

Because I just couldn't decide what was prettier.  I added the red dot after steaming with a chopstick dipped in red food coloring, and I kept them from sticking to the steamer by sticking the buns to little squares of wax paper.

Mmmmmm.  Delicious.

Samosas!

I decided to attempt to make Indian food and I succeeded! Kind of. I made a simpler April version of samosas. I didn't have time to make the dough so I used puff pastry sheets instead. The filling is a traditional meat & potato mix but the flakey pastry outside is a little twist. I think puff pastry is the perfect substitute when you are in a hurry or when you want to make things a little simpler. The samosas taste amazing, even if they aren't exactly what you are used to.

Sliders :)

I like sliders more than regular burgers because you can eat so many different kinds without getting too full. I used lean angus meat, montreal seasoning, cheese, mayo & indian ketchup for this burger. My George Foreman came in handy because it drained most of the fat from the meat.
I decided to dress the second slider up a bit and added bone marrow butter, bone marrow & caramelized onions as toppings.Aren't they adorable?

Black Bean Patties and Marinara Sauce

The black bean patty was easy, because I made it before (and blogged about it before) but this time I made it a little differently- without a recipe.  Long story short, I mashed two cans of black beans (after rinsing them of course) and mixed in some corn, orange and yellow bell pepper, onion, Thai chili sauce, two eggs, two slices of bread (crumbled up), cooked rice, Santa-Fe style salsa, and garlic salt.  Mmmmm it tasted so good.

I winged the marinara sauce, as well.  This one was a little harder though, because 1. I made it completely from scratch and 2. I've only made it once before, a long long time ago.  I started out by caramelizing two large white onions, which took about 25 minutes, give or take.  After I took the onions off the heat (because I'm terrible at multitasking), I peeled 9 tomatoes using the ol' boiling water technique, quartered and seeded them, and threw them in a pot with orange and yellow bell pepper (I was out of green), the caramelized onion, about two tablespoons of dried basil, a few pinches of dried thyme, three cloves of garlic, and a liberal smattering of salt.  I then covered it and let it simmer for the next three hours and voila!  Instant marinara!

Crab Dip & Tri tip

So this dip is easy, cheesy and perfect for a night with the girls. First mix lump crab, cream cheese, mozzarella, crab bisque, and scallions. Next add a dash of Worcestershire, Soy sauce & lemon juice and bake for 10 minutes. Serve it with fresh fried tortilla chips. If you really want it to taste good, make some cocktails too.

Tri Tip Roast! Marinated with herbs and spices and cooked in the oven for about an hour. Tender, juicy, and a little rare. This dish ranks mega high on the instant pleasure list.

Cinnamon-Sugar Muffins!

For the first time in my life, I have followed a recipe without any alteration.  None at all.  Still, my cinnamon sugar muffins were not nearly as pretty as the ones here.  :(  However, the taste was...wow.  They're so moist and dense and delicious...I just can't stop eating them.  I will be making these again and again and again.  The recipe is easy to follow and the method is foolproof.  Next time, I'll be making one change, though.  I'm doubling the recipe.

Hot and Sour Soup and Kidney Bean Relish/Salad/Dip

 Okay, so I learned two things today.  First, even though I'm mostly Chinese, I can't cook Chinese food for my life.  Second, the number of servings listed on a recipe is relative, and by no means should you assume that they are normal, human-sized portions.  I poached the recipe from here, and stuck to it for the most part (a first for me).  Since the recipe was supposed to yield two servings, I doubled it, seeing as I have to feed four people.  That was big mistake #1.  I ended up with a HUGE pot of mediocre-weirdly-flavored-fake-tasting-Cantonese soup.  Big mistake #2: so maybe I altered the recipe a little bit.  As in, I might have omitted most of the soy sauce, substituted chicken broth, passed over the mushrooms, and added some Sriracha because it wasn't spicy enough.  At the end of the day, I'm still not sure whether or not the weird flavor can be attributed to a bad recipe, or just me.  Either way, I'm not going to make this again.  Ever.

Recipe taken from here.  I'm still not sure what bean relish is, even after making it.  All I know is that it tastes pretty damn good.  The recipe said it yielded a mere 10 portions, but with 7 cans of beans and 2 cups of mayo, I'm pretty sure these portions are massive.  I opted to use one lonely can of beans, because that's all I had on hand, and added the rest of the ingredients to taste.  It was delicious.  So delicious that I'm running out to the store tomorrow and buying more beans.  Not delicious enough to make "10 servings" of it, though.