I’m not sure if it’s obvious yet, but I’m not really a particularly fastidious – or good – cook. However, if you’re throwing pretty good ingredients in together, and you have a general idea of what fire does,  it’s pretty likely that it’ll end up tasting pretty good. (Don’t get me wrong – cooking the Food Network way definitely takes skill. But getting something easy and delicious on your dinner table is still not that hard.)

This is not always true.

Sometimes – my experiments fail, and the word “sometimes” is sometimes an understatement. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m going to document my less successful recipes – so I remember them.

This one is a buttermilk-apple-tart thing. It’s actually not bad quite so much as it’s just…eh.

I had apples. I asked Jason to bring home some pie crust, or flaky flat dough, but I ended up with buttermilk biscuits. Not to worry, I’m the sort to make do with what I have.

I used thin slices of the biscuit dough, and spread it out in a little ramekin. Then I filled it with chunks of apples(Fuji, in this case). I didn’t actually know what went in apple pie filling(and my hands were too sticky to Google), so I just put some cinnamon sugar and sugar in, and stretched more buttermilk biscuit dough on top.

I realized that I had forgotten to put any butter in it, so I went ahead and put a chunk(1tbsp) of butter on top of the entire tart…thing.

I baked it for about 30 minutes, until the biscuit crust was pretty browned.

So, the verdict?

Well, I wasn’t entirely wrong. Good fresh apples still taste pretty good when baked. There wasn’t a lot of juicy “filling” – but the apples really were good.

The buttermilk biscuits never really cooked on the bottom, and they were soggy. The top crust was too thick, and ended up tasting pretty dry and non-flaky(probably because I manhandled them too much). Still, the taste combination of buttermilk biscuits and apples weren’t too bad at all – but next time I’m craving that combination, I’ll bake my apples and biscuits separately and then stuff the apples in the biscuits.

What I’ll do next time – it turns out that apple pie filling recipes are not complicated, at least according to Betty Crocker, so I’ll probably give that shot. I’m not a baker, and don’t have much interest in actually baking, so I’ll buy a premade pie crust instead of sending Jason to the store for “something dough like”.

Either way, Jason did like the apples, and my friend Erik politely told me that it was “okay”, so it wasn’t a complete disaster.

My favourite sick person food is porridge. That’s not really giving it enough credit because it’s also a breakfast food(or lunch…or dinner), a 5 minute prep food, a “I’m really broke this week” food and a “what do I do with the rest of this rotisserie chicken” food.

The nature of my gastronomical upbringing has for the most part, been very rice-centric. When I lived in Malaysia, we ate a lot of rice congee. Simple, slightly chicken flavoured. I remember always picking the green onion bits out. That was probably the Chinese version(one of many Chinese variants). We also ate plenty of the Malay variant, called bubur ayam (Malay vocabulary lesson for the day. “bubur” is porridge. “ayam” is chicken. Woo.)

When we moved to the Philippines, there was arroz caldo and lugau, both fairly similar to each other.  This dish is probably when I fell in love with having ginger in my food.

In college, my first college roommate also made congee, usually with ginseng and fish, and it was the delicious homesick college student food in the world(the next time I went home, my mom sent a ziploc bag of ginseng and a rice cooker back with me).

This recipe below, however, is none of the above. I’ll cook those someday and pass my learned wisdom on, but for now, you’ll have to settle with my five minute cheap and easy porridge. It’s delicious, I swear.

Ready?

• One cup rice.
• Four cups water.
• One can of chicken broth.

Put it all in your rice cooker, on the porridge setting. Cook. If you don’t have a rice cooker, just boil it intil the rice is tender. Yes, it’s really that easy.

Feel free to add things to it like

• sliced ginger
• carrots
• your leftover rotisserie chicken(the oils in it makes it pretty tasty). Also, just chunks of chicken is good too.
• tomatoes
• onions

I like garnishes like

• spring onions/scallions(I like them now)
• sesame seeds
• a tiny bit of sesame oil
• soy sauce
• fried onions.
• hot chili oil
• more sliced fresh ginger

It feeds…eight? If you need to cook less, just use a one part rice, five part liquid rule of thumb.  If you want it soupier, add more water.

If someone would like me to write the book “Cooking the College Student Way”, please feel free to send me an advance. I’ll even take it in the form of gift certificates to classy eating establishments in LA. I can make the perfect microwave ramen (protip : heat the water first).

Okay, pigs in a blanket. Hot dogs are delicious, right? Actually, I don’t like them. But put some dough around them, and some processed cheese, call them “pigs” and I’ve suddenly eaten 4.

Ingredients:

• Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
• Hot dogs.
• Cheese.

Slice the hot dog lengthwise and cram some cheese in. Roll it up in a triangle of dough. Bake according to the crescent roll instructions, or until it looks golden brown.

I spent about 6 of my formative years in the Philippines and didn’t quite “fall in love” with the food quite as much as I merely integrated it into my life. When I moved away, I was saddened to realize that good chicken adobo was just not something that just appeared on the dinner table while visiting friends.

I still get some adobo, of course, although my current source for delicious, homemade chicken adobo happens to live in DC.

I don’t quite have the patience to prepare it the correct way, which I think involves dousing your kitchen in oil, but I was more than willing to give the crockpot version a shot.

The recipe is based on this one at “A Year of Slow Cooking”, but I ended up using a 1/2 cup of soy sauce and threw some carrots and potatoes and ginger in.

• about 4 pounds of chicken. I used a chicken breast, and four legs and thighs.
• 1/2 cups soy sauce
• 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 large carrot – chopped in chunks.
• 4-5 large cloves of garlic.
• 1tbsp salt
• 1tbsp pepper
• 1 yellow onion, sliced in rings.
• 3-4 bay leaves.
• about an inch of ginger root, sliced thinly
• a potato, cut in chunks.

I threw everything in my crockpot to marinade overnight. “Throw it in” is a technical term in crockpotting. Or it should be. I set my crockpot on “low” before leaving to work the next day. It cooked for approximately 9 hours.

The chicken breast ended up tasting kind of grainy and overcooked, but the thighs and legs were fall-off-the-bone-tender and delicious. I’d probably suggest sticking to the dark meat parts of the chicken.

The “sauce” is amazing on rice.

It’s still not chicken adobo done the “right” way, but it does approximate the flavour enough to satisfy my yearning.

Oh, it can feed about 8.

In case it might not be obvious – I’m not that great a cook. I love food, and I love eating it, but I’m not really the kind to spend hours slaving over a stove. That’s why I’m all about delicious food that takes next to no time to prepare.

It just so happens that sugared strawberries are delicious. They are an integral part of strawberry shortcake, and are great for instantly classing up a scoop of ice cream.

Thankfully, the instructions for them are:

• Strawberries.
• Sugar.

Add sugar to strawberries(er, just estimate). Wait until they get glisteney and syrupy.

The picture above is sugared strawberries with sweet cream and honey ice cream(from Haagen Daz Select).

It was delicious.

I baked peaches for dessert. Just some sugar, and then icecream on top. It was delicious and ridiculously easy. Jason thought it was too sweet, so maybe the sugar isn’t even necessary.

• One peach.
• 2 tablespoons of sugar(preferably brown)
• One scoop of ice cream.
• 1 tsp of butter.

Put peaches in a tiny ramekin. Put sugar on top. Put butter on top. Bake until fruit is squishy soft. When still warm, spoon ice cream on top.

Directions:

Put a couple scoops of Häagen-Dazs Reserve’s Pomegranate Chip into a tea cup. Add a couple broken pieces of Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookies. Eat in two minutes.

I realize that this is a simple dinner if, like me and other pretentious bohemian hipsters, you live in a city that has easy access to Trader Joe’s and Asian markets. Still, most chain grocery stores have an asian food aisle, where the ingredients for this incredibly simple meal can be sourced.

Ingredients:

1. bag of Udon noodles.

2. Udon soup concentrate. It’s pretty much a sweet-ish soy sauce. I sometimes just use chicken broth(no, the flavour is not similar, but I like chicken broth).

3. Bok choy.

4. Canned corn.

5. Chicken dumplings.

In my case, the chicken dumplings are from Trader Joe’s($3.00 for 20+), as is the corn(.99 cents a can). The bok choy is from Ralphs, and the udon and udon soup is from an Asian market.

Directions:

1. Boil soup.

2. Separately, boil the dumplings, udon, and bok choy (how separately is up to you. In this case, I boiled each separately, but using the same pot, and just put them aside). The udon is precooked, so it mainly just needs to be heated up.

3. Microwave the corn. I like adding a little butter, but if you don’t like butter getting into your soup, i wouldn’t suggest it.

4. Pour it all into a bowl and make it look nice.

]]> http://shingcancook.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/udon-soup-1/feed/ 0 sawdustbear Udon Soup #1 http://shingcancook.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/slightly-stirfried-scallops/ http://shingcancook.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/slightly-stirfried-scallops/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:11:55 +0000 sawdustbear http://shingcancook.wordpress.com/?p=3 ]]>

I’ve been wearing this hoboish peter pan green sweater from a vintage store near my place, but it is cashmere, which is one of those fabrics that just make me feel indulgent.So, feeling indulgent, I stopped by Whole Foods today to pick up some fresh scallops for dinner. At about $15 for six large, beautiful scallops($19.99 a pound), it’ll be a very occasional indulgence, especially when I’m cooking and the potential for failure is looming.

Fortunately, the scallops were yummy enough to stand alone without many cooking-type additives, and I didn’t overcook them.

Directions:

1. Marinate scallops in some sweet soy sauce and mirin.

2. Dump ginger in pan. Stirfry until the pan begins to smell a bit like browning, frying ginger.

2. Dump butter in pan.

3. When butter is good and melted, dump scallops in pan.

4. Saute scallops until lightly browned on each side. Keep the stove on medium heat.

5. Occasionally, pick out burnt pieces of ginger.

I had the scallops with white rice and they were definitely worth it and helped to temper my current seafood craving for a while.