The Salad Diet

On the first note.
Please support my Dance Marathon Fund!!
http://dm.kintera.org/chefjlin
It is for a really really good cause for pediatric AIDS and making kids feel happy about their lives!

Due to the nature of lab reports, midterms, and lots of homework ... I could not go snowboarding today : (, but oh well.. I got parts of every homework assignment finished!

Because I had Korean BBQ yesterday. The only thing I ate today was a large chicken spinach salad made with a balsamic dressing. Something slightly healthier than lots of fat and protein.

Chicken Spinach Salad with Peanuts

Ingredients

1 Chicken breast
2 cup Baby spinach
1/4 cup Peanuts
1/2 Onion
1 Orange

Prepwork
1. Salt and pepper chicken
2. Slice onion into thin thin slices and soak in water
3. Peel the orange and cut away veins leaving only pulpy part (or use can of mandarin oranges)
4. Wash baby spinach

Cooking
1. Preheat oven 425 degrees F
2. Cook the chicken by pan and brown both sides
3. Once the oven is ready put the chicken in the oven for 10-12 minutes

Combination!
1. Cut the chicken into cubes
2. Put everything in a bowl and toss
3. Add favorite dressing or vinaigrette

Balsamic Dressing is below

Ingredients
3/4 cup Extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup Balsamic vinegar
2 Tbs Honey or maple syrup (I used maple syrup and it turned out great!)
2 Tbs Djon mustard
3 cloves of Garlic
1 Tbs Rosemary
salt and pepper

Directions
1. Throw everything but oil into the blender
2. Blend!
3. Add in oil slowly as it is blending to emulsify the oil into everything
4. Taste! Might need some adjustment of sweetness or salt.

Enjoy with the salad ^_^

sorry no pictures today ....

Korean BBQ So fulll rawr

Hello people reading my blog... It's a Saturday, and I woke up feeling much better than yesterday. I didn't get much homework done today because structural analysis class is a pain in the ass. Well, after spending 5 or more hours on 4 problems, I went to eat all you can eat Korean BBQ with ASCE people in K-town.

Every time I go eat Korean BBQ, I go happy and leave gluttoned and feel really terrible : (. I feel like I can never enjoy eating at buffets because I would just eat too much. I think for 20 people we got like 40 some plates of meat.

I'll post my recipe for Korean BBQ marinade. I usually marinade chicken or beef with it. Never tried marinating pork before though.

Korean BBQ marinade



(rawr so much meat ><...)

Ingredients for serving 3lbs of meat
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tbs sesame oil
5 cloves of garlic (mashed)
2 green onions
1 carrot
2 tbs sesame seeds


Directions
1. Julienne carrots
2. Slice the green onions
3. Combine everything together and mix well
4. Throw in the meat and marinate for an hour
5. Take out the meat and grill or pan cook

Sick >< ... Soup for dinner

I woke up with a really bad sore throat and have been eating pretty light today. It's a Friday. Yay! Though it doesn't feel like one because I have so much work to do. Time to research stuff for the concrete canoe!

I guess tonight I am going to make soup with some "healing properties" or just to make myself feel better.

Sorry peoples, no pictures today

Ingredients
1 Quart of chicken stock or broth (I get mine from Trader Joes)
1 Onion
4 carrots
1 chicken breast
4 Tbs ginger-garlic paste mix* (the cure all ingredient)
Thyme powder
Salt (enough to kill the bacteria xD)
Pepper
*Note: see Indian basics section for how to make this


Prepwork (rawr...better be quick)
1. Dice onion
2. Cut carrots to preferred size

Cooking
1. Heat up oil and throw in everything but the broth or stock
2. After the chicken is almost cooked, throw in the stock or broth
3. Boil and serve

This might have a little bit of sharp spicy taste from the ginger and garlic, but it is good for you. Hopefully whoever is also sick can also try this good for you soup.

Alternatively, you could buy a whole chicken, quarter it, and make soup out of the bones, but I'm too tired and sick to do that

Request TBA tmr maybe

My friend Tom requested that I make Kung Pao Chicken.

So.. I guess that's on the menu for tomorrow or sometime next week

Indian Butter Chicken.

Today, there was a civil engineering career fair, and it was quite busy. I talked to a couple recruiters and learned that human resources representatives are harder to talk to than the engineers. Quite tired after that. I hope one of those companies will ask for an interview.

Anyways ..

I was in the mood for Indian food, so I asked my co-worker Shaan for an Indian dish to cook. He told me that butter chicken is a really delicious dish. Despite the amount of calories and fat in it, I've decided to make it. After reading several recipes, I have decided to experiment and invent my own "butter chicken" suited for the Chinese taste... meaning something my dad would eat.

Butter Chicken



Ingredients for the chicken of many smells

Part1: The Chicken!

2 Chicken breasts
30g ginger garlic paste (About 3 Tablespoons)
1 Tbs cayenne chilli pepper powder (add more if you like spicy)
1 Tbs coriander powder
2 Tsp garam masala (see my basics tab)
1/3 cup Yogurt
1/4 Lemon
Salt (to your own high blood pressure's desertion)

Prep your station!

1. Cube the chicken into 1 cm blocks
2. Put all the ingredients in a bowl
3. Mix well with the chicken
4. Marinate for an hour

While the chicken is being marinated, time to prep the sauce.

Part 2

Ingredients for the sauce

6 Tomatoes (I used 4 and decided needs 2 more)
1 Onion
2 Tbs cumin
1 Tbs coriander powder
1 Tbs cayenne chilli pepper powder
2 Tbs fennel seeds
3 Tbs rice wine
30g ginger garlic paste (About 3 tablespoons)
1/4c cream
4 Tbs of butter
2 Tbs garam masala
1 Tbs ketchup
2 Tsp sugar
Salt (til yum tastes good)

Prep the gillion ingredients
1. Dice onion
2. Dice tomatoes

Cooking the spicy chicken

1. Oil up the pan on high
2. Cook the chicken until almost done
3. Set the chicken aside in a container and leave the juices inside the pan
4. (code mode)

If pan not burnt Then
go to step 5
Else
Rawr FAIL ERROR ... wash up or continue
End If

5. Reduce any excess liquid until it almost reaches the bottom of the pan
6. Add in onion, cumin, ginger garlic, rice wine, coriander powder, red chilli powder, fennel seeds, tomatoes
7. Simmer until tomatoes are super cooked and mushy
8. Transfer everything into a blender
9. Blend until everything is well blended

Now putting it all together!

1. Put the 4 tbs of butter in the pan
2. Add the sauce and whisk
3. Add ketchup, sugar, and garam masala
4. Add the cream and simmer until hot
5. Add in the chicken and whatever juices that have come out while the chicken was resting
6. Cook until the chicken is done
7. DONE and ready to eat with rice

Man that took awhile to post... Enjoy!

Indian Basic Ingredients

Garam Masala

This is a must have in making Indian food. During my research about Indian food, I have often encountered this ingredient.

Here is my variation of it:

Ingredients

3g Cardamon powder
3g Corriander powder
3g Cumin powder
3g Cloves
3g Cinnamon
1 tsp Black pepper

Note: I did the spices by weight because volume is so hard to determine the proportions. Invest in a scale!

Instructions of awesomeness

1. In a skillet dry roast the mix on medium low heat
2. Turn off heat when you smell an aroma of goodness

Note: There should never be any smoke coming out and be careful about heat control. Burning this will cause it to taste really bitter >< .

Ginger-Garlic Paste

Another ingredient that I found useful is garlic-ginger paste. According to my friends, it can cure any sickness because of the natural properties of ginger and garlic. Reminds me of when my mother makes this Chinese soup when I get sick that has a ton of ginger and garlic.

Ingredients
Equal weight of garlic and ginger
Salt
Water

Easy instructables

1. Chop the ginger into small pieces
2. Add ginger and garlic into a blender
3. Add some salt and enough water to get the blender going
4. Blend into a paste

Alternative method
1. Use a mortar and pestle to mash it up

Avacado smoothies and Chinese Zha Jian Mian 炸酱面 "Fried Sauce Noodles"

Ok... What another long ass day! 8am to 8pm! Bit disastrous in lab today when my group messed up on calibration curves, and even though I only had 2 hours of work today, it felt like forever.

Though I did hear a funny story from my friend, who's apartmentmates can not cook at all.
Apparently they tried to open an egg with a knife xD Yea that sounds like they really can't cook at all.

Anyways....

I went to Ralphs to buy condensed milk, broccoli (gotta have those greens!), and some morning doughnuts (so fattening -_-..)

Man I am tired and having a late dinner, but oh wellz! For starters, my friend Bryce, gave me some fresh avocados picked off his tree, and they have ripened over the past week. I decided to make avocado smoothies.

Avocado Smoothie



Ingredients:
1 cup of ice
2 avocados
1/3 cup of condensed milk
1/2-3/4 cup of milk

Directions:
1. Blend everything and serve (easy for newblets)
2. Enjoy the fats haha

Now onto the main dish: Zha Jian Mian



I made Chinese zha jian mian, which the Koreans made for their own as jajanmyeon. Though similar, the Chinese version mainly uses pork. My friend Steven mentioned that zha jian mian varies from different regions in Asia and depends on the black bean sauce too. There can also be a lot of stuff like beef, vegetables in it too.

Ingredients of goodness

1 lb of hand pulled noodles or dried Chinese noodles (I get Wu-Mu Dried Noodles brand)
1 whole pork tenderloin (I bought one that's 1 lb)
1 package of baked tofu*
1 whole zucchini
1 whole, humongously large, white onion
5 cloves of garlic
8 oz jar of sweet bean sauce or tian mian jian (甜面酱)
8 oz jar of broad bean sauce or dou ban jiang(豆瓣酱)
1 tablespoon of rice wine
2 tablespoon of soy sauce
some corn starch... (an ingredient I always have in my kitchen)
*Note 1: Should be able to find this in Asian stores and should come in square blocks of 4)
Note 2: Not to be bias or anything, but I buy my bean sauces that are made in Taiwan or USA

Prep work

Vegetables first!
1. Cube onion into .5 cm squares
2. Cube zucchini
3. Cube fried tofu into .5 cm pieces
4. Mash the garlic with the flat of the knife.

Meat section rawr sanitation...
1. Mince the pork tenderloin into tiny cubes
2. Use about 3 tablespoons of cornstarch and mix the pork around by massaging the corn starch into the pork
3. Add in the soy sauce and rice wine and massage some more.

Cooking Time!

1. In a pan (wok preferred) add a sh*t ton of oil like 1/4 cup.
2. Once the oil is really hot ... add the pork
3. Stir around for 5 to 7 minutes on medium-high heat (until it is almost done cooking)
4. Take out the pork and place into a bowl or plate
5. Add in the onions and zucchini
6. Stir around until translucent
7. Empty both sauces into the pan and add the meat back into the pan
8. Cook until simmering and add garlic and baked tofu
9. Cook for additional 2 minutes until the tofu gets soft and cooked.
10. Serve with noodles

Noodles:

Well I will teach you how to make hand pulled noodles in another blog, but noodles are simple

1. Boil water
2. Add noodles
3. Test to see if it is done by tasting it.
4. Remove noodles and plop sauce onto it

Another note....
So for the Chinese version, it is better to have julienne cucumbers

Well enjoy!

Pancakes! Midnight Civil Engineering Snack! ^_^

So.... my fellow suffering, civil engineering students are strenuously working on water resources and intermediate structural analysis homework using our best friend. Matlab to solve everything ... xD.

Enough of me being a nerd and geeky. I shall solve my hunger by displacing myself to the kitchen away from forces from homework loads.

Mini-pancakes



Ingredients

Dry Ingredients:
1/2 cup cake flour
1/2 cup bread flour
1 tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tbs. sugar (adjust depending on sweetness, I think this is just right)

Wet Ingredients
1 large egg
3/4 cup milk
3 tbs. melted butter

Mixing Process

1. Sift and mix dry ingredients together
2. Beat first two wet ingredients
3. While whisking the liquid slowly add in the butter
4. Dump the wet into the dry and mix until it is incorporated with little clumps
*NOTE:
DO NOT OVERMIX!

Cooking
1. Add a little bit of oil into the skillet
2. Use a ring cutter to make shape of mini sized pancakes
3. Put 1/4 cup of batter inside a 4 inch ring (this is the size I used)
4. Cook well on each side (should take about 1 minute each side)
5. Serve with cinnamon and powdered sugar / syrup on the side

Steak... sort of

So... Today I came back from my meeting and super long day on campus, 8am to 7 pm (I guess this is what the real world feels like). To treat myself, I decided to defrost and cook steak that has been "properly" stored in the freezer for the past 3 months. After cooking it and trying to multitask, I left the steak in the oven for too long ... so thus it overcooked : ( bleh ...

Straight up streak... (sorry there's no picture, but it will come later when I make it better)

Ingredients

1 lb sirloin steak
1/4 stick of butter (2 tablspoons, 1/8 cup, 1 oz for the picky people who don't do conversions)
1/2 white onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of rice wine
salt and pepper (enough so you don't make your mouth like a salt mine)

Prep

1. Preheat oven to 375F
2. Dice the onions and garlic
3. Salt and pepper the steak
4. Pound steak if needed to tenderize
5. Split butter into two equal parts

Cooking

1. Put one piece of the butter in an oven-safe skillet
2. Sear the steak about 30-45 seconds on each side on medium-high heat
3. Remove steak add in onions and garlic for about 20 seconds
4. Place steak back on the skillet and put the other piece of butter on top of the steak
5. Add rice wine
6. Place skillet in the oven for 10-15 minutes for medium-rare to medium.

Usually when I make this steak it would turn out just right and taste great... but...
Because I was doing homework and cooking at the same time.... I left the steak in the oven for 20 minutes, which caused the steak to turn into a well done disgusting dry piece of shit.

Experimental Content !
So.. to revive the taste and not make my mouth so dry...

I removed the steak and kept it in the warm oven on a plate.
With the skillet, I decided to experiment with a sauce.
Here's what I used

3 tablespoons of ketchup
1 tablespoon of brown sugar
1 tablespoon of worcheshire suace
A dash of Dejon mustard
Paprika
enough rice wine to deglaze the pan
salt and pepper to adjust

1. Basically deglaze the pan with the wine
2. Dump all that in with the onion and garlic mix
3. Reduce until thickened
4. Strain the sauce
5. Serve with thinly sliced pieces of the steak

I guess the sauce experiment turned out so-so without doing any prior research, I sort of made a bbq sauce to go with the steak slices.

Well hopefully someone can improvise more on this and tell me what they think.
Some advice would be nice too : ).

Eat with broccoli and rice or bread.

Chicken and Tomato Corn Sauce

I doubt anyone will read whatever I write on this tiny part of the internet, but I'll do it anyways because it is a good way to share my thoughts with you netizens (is that how you spell it?) whatever.



For the first dish.

As a poor college student ...
I bought some chicken, tomatoes, canned corn, that was on sale at Ralphs. Yay sales!
This dish should only take about 30 minutes with prep work.

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
2 Tablespoons butter
1/2 of a shallots
1/2 of a brown onions
2 Roma Tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic
1 cup chicken or beef stock (depends on which one you make or have ready)
1 green onion
1 can of corn - drained
2 tablespoons of miju (chinese rice wine)
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce (optional)
dash of cayenne pepper
salt and pepper (moderate to your own judgment ...)
a little flour or cornstarch (thickener)

Prep work (keep your station clean!):
Non-meat - I like to prep meat and vegetables separate
1. mince shallots and onions
2. Mash garlic with blade of the knife (basically peels it automatically when you do that)
3. Dice tomatoes
4. Slice green onion into thin pieces

Meats
1. Quarter chicken - easy I don't get why people don't do it and it's cheaper too to buy the whole chicken
If you don't know here's a link
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-quarter-a-chicken
2. Salt and pepper chicken

Cooking process:

Chicken
1. Preheat oven for 450 F°
2. In an ovenproof skillet, heat on high and put in butter
3. Throw in quartered parts of the chicken (breasts, and legs/thighs) skin side down
4. Brown the skin and turn over and put it into the oven
5. Cook for about 10-15 minutes in the oven. Check the meat with meat thermometer if you have to.

Sauce

1. Heat skillet and put butter
2. Throw in shallots, onion, and garlic until translucent
3. Throw in corn and cook until no liquid left or aroma of the corn comes out
4. Add tomatoes, stock, cayenne pepper, Tabasco sauce, rice wine, and sugar
5. Reduce liquid until thickened
6. Add flour or cornstarch a little bit at a time if sauce is not thickened.
7. Salt and pepper to taste



Voila there you have it!

I really need to get a better camera or stop using my cell phone camera to take pictures xD.

Enjoy! Eat with long grain rice, bok choy or cauliflower. Drink with chicken soup listed below.

What to do with the leftover bones from the quartered chicken?
With the discarded chicken bones after you have quartered it...
Make chicken soup by throwing it in a big pot of boiling water and add in onions, garlic and ginger and simmer for a couple hours.

Salt and pepper
This is good for when you are sick.