Tag Archives: Lunch

Garlic Butter Shrimp Pad Thai.

Dinner, In the Kitchen, Lunch May 29, 2020 Leave a comment
This recipe is actually very simple and the result is very delicious. It’s a great dish if you want to impress your guests, or simply want a comforting and satisfying meal.
 time: 15 minutes
cook time: 15 minutes
total time: 30 minutes
serves: 2

INGREDIENTS

  • 4 ounces wide rice noodles
  • 1.5–2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce, using more or less to taste
  • 1 tablespoons fish sauce
  • 1 tablespoons white vinegar
  • 1.5 tablespoons honey or maple
  • 0.13–0.5 teaspoon chili flakes, plus more for serving
  • 0.5 pound raw jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined
  • 1.5 tablespoons peanut oil or extra virgin olive oil
  • 2–3 cloves garlic, finely chopped or grated
  • 1.5 tablespoons salted butter
  • 1–1.5 eggs, beaten
  • 1 cups bean sprouts or chopped baby bok coy (or other greens)
  • 2 green onions, chopped, plus more for serving
  • 0.13 cup roasted peanuts, chopped
  • Thai or regular basil and limes, for serving

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Cook the rice noodles according to packaged directions.

2. To make the sauce. In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce, fish sauce, vinegar, honey, and chili flakes.

3. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When the oil shimmers, add the shrimp and sear on both sides until pink, 2-3 minutes. Add the butter, garlic, a pinch of both chili flakes and black pepper. Continue to cook the shrimp in the butter until the garlic begins to caramelize and turn light golden brown, another 1-2 minutes.

4. Add the noodles and sauce, tossing to combine. Cook until the noodles are warmed through and begin soaking up the sauce, about 1 minute. Push the noodles to one side of the skillet and add the eggs to the other side. Let cook until the edges start to set, 1 minute. Roughly scramble the egg, then toss with the noodles. Remove from the heat. Add the bean sprouts and green onions, toss to combine.

5. Divide the noodles and shrimp between plates. Top with basil, green onions, peanuts, and chili flakes. Add a squeeze of lime juice.

 

 

 

Originally from:halfbakedharvest.com

 

 

Roasted Chicken Thighs with Tomatoes and Garlics

Dinner, In the Kitchen, Lunch April 22, 2020 Leave a comment

Quarantine day number I’ve lost count. We are trying to make something simple, but different and yet delicious. It sounds easy, but with both of us working full time, it’s not as easy as we want it to be. This is one of the recipes I found that’s actually pretty easy, absolutely tasty, and sort of on the healthier side, depending on what you pair it with.

Servies about 4, cook time: 50 minutes.

INGREDIENTS

  • 2 pounds (900 g) bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (I used boneless ones too sometimes, it’s just as good)
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 2 cups of cherry tomatoes or 2 tomatoes on the vine
  • 6 whole cloves garlic, peeled
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 sprigs fresh rosemary (or 1/2 teaspoon dry rosemary)

METHOD

1 Arrange chicken thighs in casserole dish, sprinkle with salt: Place chicken thighs in a baking dish that allows for a little room between the thighs. Sprinkle both sides of the chicken thighs with salt.

2 Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C).

3 Prep tomatoes with garlic, vinegar, oil: Cut the cherry tomatoes in half, or the tomatoes on the vine in wedges. Place in a bowl with the whole garlic cloves. Sprinkle with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

4 Place tomatoes, garlic, rosemary around chicken: Pour the tomatoes over the chicken pieces and arrange so that they are squeezed around the chicken pieces. You want the chicken skins to be exposed so they brown in the oven. Lay sprigs of rosemary over the tomatoes.

(If you are using dry rosemary instead of fresh sprigs, just mix it in with the tomatoes.)

5 Bake: Bake, uncovered for 45 minutes, until the chicken is well browned on the top and cooked through. Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes. Skim the excess chicken fat with a ladle.

Serve with toasted crusty bread, egg noodles, or rice.  We served it with pasta with cream sauce today, just because that’s what we have, and we are not being particularly healthy today….

Homemade Chinese Dumplings And Potstickers

Dinner, In the Kitchen, Lunch September 16, 2012 Leave a comment

Just another beautiful Sunday afternoon and we are sitting in the apartment with nothing planned… such a luxury to have some relaxing time like this after a busy week of work. We randomly watched a video clip my mother sent me, a video introducing traditional Chinese food and the making of some famous dishes. As we watch them make all the doughy delicacies with all different kinds of fillings, we started to crave something similar. We want to make some dough, too!! We didn’t even finish the clip before we decided to take the challenge and make some Chinese dumplings for dinner, from scratch!

I remember making dumplings with my aunties and grandma in Taiwan when I was still a little kid. The adults would prepare the meat filling and dough wrappers and I would help filling, pinching and, of course, eating! It was easy, fun, and satisfying!

Well, nobody is around to prepare the fillings and wrappers for me but I crave for that old experience, so I am stepping up to recreate this fun and delicious recipe. Base on some memories and some research, this is our Eat.F.G. recipe.

Chinese Pork Dumplings

Makes about 40 dumplings / prep: about an hour, cook time: 10 min

Ingredients:

For the dumpling wrappers:

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup cold water
  • pinch of salt

For the filling:

  • 1 lb ground pork (pork is what they use for traditional chinese dumplings, and we like to honor that!)
  • 1/4 head (about 1 pound) of  cabbage
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 green onions, minced (both white and green parts)
  • 1 tb fresh ginger root, grated
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced or grated
  • 3 tb soy sauce
  • 1 tb Chinese rice wine or sake
  • 1 tb toasted sesame oil
  • salt and pepper to taste

For the dipping sauce:

  • 3 tb soy sauce
  • 1 tsp white wine vinegar ( or Chinese black vinegar if you can find it)
  • 2 tsp sesame oil
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced (optional)
  • 2 tsp hot chili oil (optional, but have I mentioned that we like it spicy?!)

Instructions:

To make the dumpling wrappers: put the flour in a mixing bowl, add 1/2 cup of water and a pinch of salt into the flour. Slowly mix it with your hands, add the remaining water if it gets too dry. Knead the mixture until it forms a soft dough, place the dough on a lightly floured counter and knead nut ill smooth. Set the dough on the side and let it stand for 10 minutes, (perfect time to prep the filling here). Roll the dough into a long baton-like roll and cut it into 40 small pieces. Use a rolling pin to roll each piece to a thin circle, about 3 to 4 inches in diameter.

Flour + Water, pre-kneading!

Roll the dough into a baton-like roll, and cut into small pieces

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into small circles

To make the filling: finely chop the cabbage into very small pieces, sprinkle the 1 tsp salt and mix well to dehydrate the cabbage. Give it a few minutes and then squeeze out the excess water (it should look like the picture below). Combine the cabbage with ground pork, green onion and the rest of the seasoning and mix well.

Fresh cabbage, finely chopped and squeezed!!

Filling with all ingredients mixed in.

To make the dumplings: get a small dish with water. Place about a tablespoonful of filling in the center of a dough circle. Dip your finger in the water and moist the edge of the dough, fold the circle in half, and use index finger and thumb to pinch the edges of the dough on one side of the dumpling into “pleats”, pressing each pleat against the flat side of the dough to seal the dumpling as you go. I usually start from the center to the corner and make about 3 pleats on each side, but any direction would work. Firmly pressed the pleaded side of the of the wrapper against the flat side and make sure the dumpling is completely sealed (we don’t want the dumpling to burst open or have any leakage during cooking). Line up the finished dumplings on a floured surface to prevent them from sticking together.

There are so many ways to cook the dumplings. Most of the time they are either steamed, boiled or  pan fried. Pan fried dumplings are also known as pot stickers, it is definitely the most popular kind. Tonight, we are having dumplings, TWO ways!! For the first kind, we’ve decided to make some pot stickers, and for the second kind, instead of boiling the dumplings in plain water, we are making some Chinese Dumpling Soup as we like to take things to the next level!

To make the pot stickers, drizzle about 1 tb oil in a pan and heat it up. Place the desired amount of dumplings flat-side-down in the pan, turn the heat low and fry the dumplings for about a minute, or until golden brown. Add 1/2 a cup of hot water and cover, let it steam for about 6 minutes or until all water has evaporated. Remove the dumplings, now pot stickers, serve hot with dipping sauce!

Dumplings sitting flat-side-down in the hot pan!

I know it looks very complicated with the long lists of ingredients and instructions, but it really is not hard. The first few dumplings we made looked a bit funny, but they soon started to look better and almost professional as we got into the rhythm.  I must say it is VERY rewarding when we finished and had a whole army of fresh dumplings lined up in front of us.  All we needed to do was to decide which way to cook them so we could eat them all up. The dumplings store very well too if you’er not planning on eating all of them immediately. Just separate the dumplings with wax paper so they don’t stick together in the container and tuck it in the freezer. The dumplings should store up to a month or so.

That’s the project of our Sunday, and I’m pretty proud of our end product. And I am also very happy to announce that after all these years, the experience of making dumpling remains the same: it’s easy, fun and very satisfying!

Tuna Niçoise Tartine at Bouchon Bakery

In the Kitchen, Lunch, New York Eats July 14, 2012 Leave a comment

Tuna Nicoise Tartine

Happy Bastille Day!! What a perfect occasion for some Parian style cuisine. well, actually, we didn’t realize it’s Bastille Day until we walked into Bouchon Bakery.  Bouchon Bakery in Timer Warner Center is definitely one of our favorite restaurants in the city. Whenever we come to Columbus Circle, even though there are many other restaurants in the area, Bouchon Bakery is always our go-to place for a nice and simple sit-down lunch.

As we sat down at the bar, we were presented with the Bastille Day Special Pre-fixe Menu – A three course lunch with dishes like moules au saffron, poulet roti with polenta, and peach melba for 38 dollars, not a bad deal at all. I can’t say we weren’t tempted, but we both went for the Tuna Niçoise Tartine on the regular menu instead. There’s something magical about this Tuna Niçoise here, we (or at least me) can never manage to turn it down. The tartine is basically an open-faced sandwich– with a big generous mountain of tuna salad on a slice of fresh pain de campagne (which is a round French country-style loaf similar to sourdough), topped with thinly sliced radishes, eggs and sprinkles of sweet paprika and fresh chives. The tartine is served with a side of field green salad and baby pickles, just enough to round out a perfect meal. Instead of drowning the tuna in heavy mayonnaise, Bouchon Bakery’s chef, Tomas Keller, blends the tuna with shallots, capers and other herbs for a flavorful mix, and finishes it with Garlic Aioli to give it the sweet and creamy sensation. This is a tuna niçoise sandwich that bursts with flavors, yet nothing overwhelms the freshness tastes of the tuna,  it’s creamy but light,… ahhh…. it’s just extremely satisfying and yet healthy. How I want to give the chef an award for this wonderful creation. Even the bartender told us that this dish has changed  a lot of people’s impression on tuna salad. It is no doubt one of the best sandwiches on our lists.

We walked out of the bakery feeling all nourished and happy, wondering how great if we could get the recipe for this yumminess…..AND, guess what I found in one of my magazine teared pages, THE RECIPE!! It’s unfortunate that name of the magazine was torn off, but i’m glad the recipe was kept untouched. We haven’t had a chance to test it out yet, but here it is…. and we sure will have another post once we get our hands on it..

Tomas Keller’s Tuna Niçoise Tartine

Adapted by Bouchon Bakery

Serves 2 /  Prep time 30 mins; Cooking time 20 mins (plus cooling)

Ingredients

For Sandwich

  • 2   Thick slices pain de campagne (or sourdough if not available)
  • 2   Leaves of butter lettuce
  • 2   Hard boiled eggs, thinly sliced
  • 8   Niçoise olives
  • Finely chopped chives, sweet paprika, extra virgin online oil to serve

Confit Garlic Aioli

  • 3 Garlic, peeled
  • 3/4 Cup Extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 Cup Canola oil
  • 1 Egg
  • 1 tbsp Lemon Juice

For Tuna Salad

  • 2 tsp flat-leave parsley, finely chopped
  • 2 tsp chervil (or celery if not available), finely chopped
  • 1 tsp chives, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp golden shallot, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp capers, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp lemon juice
  • 5 oz drained canned tuna in oil

Method:

  1. For confit garlic aïoli, combine garlic and half the olive oil in a small saucepan, cook over low hear until garlic is soft (20-30 minutes). Strain (reserve garlic), combine garlic oil with canola oil and remaining olive oil, set aside. process egg, lemon juice, and reserved garlic in a small food processor until smooth. Add combined oils and process until thick and emulsified. season to taste, adjust consistency with a little water if necessary.
  2. For tuna salad, combine 1/4 cup of garlic aïoli, herbs, shallot, capers and lemon juice in a bowl. Add tuna and mix until just combined, season to taste.
  3. To serve, spread the bread slices with a little garlic aïoli, top each with lettuce leaves, layer with tuna salad, egg and radish slices. Garnish with lives, chives and paprika, drizzle with olive oil, if desired, and serve immediately.
  4. Bon Appétit!!
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