Sheu Can Cook

For all of our friends and family who might have found it hard to picture him actually cooking, here is an action shot of Master J. Sheu cooking up some beef and frying up some noodles for Beef Stir-Fry Over Golden Pancake, a recipe from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking. Finished results below.

Cool Website: Charm City Cakes

A few nights ago, Sheu and I watched the Food Network show "Ace of Cakes" for the first time. I had no idea that the shop featured in the show, Charm City Cakes, is right here in Baltimore! (Ok, we actually live between Baltimore and DC -- but I used to live in Baltimore, and I still work in Baltimore, and Sheu works north of Baltimore, so close enough!)

Anyway, the Charm City Cakes website is fun to explore. Their cakes are truly amazing! They have an extensive photo gallery. Here's the website address -- pretty self-explanatory, heh heh.
www.charmcitycakes.com

I recommend the show "Ace of Cakes", too. It's currently running on Thursday nights on Food Network. It's fun to see how they make these crazy cakes!

Tiny Veggie Patties

I've been experimenting with the Veggie and Bean Burgers recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook. The recipe can be made into burgers, or formed into balls and baked to make "meatballs". Today I used the recipe to make little patties using Wilton mini muffin pans. These particular pans are shallow, so they are perfect for making little flat circles. (I also made balls with the leftover mix.) These will be going into my next bento! I finally got a real bento box, so I'm looking forward to using it.

The main ingredients are: rice, mushrooms, garbanzo beans, brocolli, breadcrumbs, garlic, various spices, and an egg. I ommitted the red bell pepper that the recipe calls for, and added spinach (which explains why the patties are that wonky shade of green!). I've been experimenting with the spices called for in the cookbook, because I found their version to be a bit bland. Maybe I'll post the recipe after I make another batch...I haven't hit on the perfect flavor combination yet.

Sorry for the blurry photo of the patties...our camera is on loan, so I used Sheu's webcam. :)

Here's a photo of the shallow mini muffin pans from the Wilton website. I bought them at Michael's craft store. You can't tell in the photo, but they are quite small (about half as big as a regular muffin pan).

Update: These turned out to be a great freezer item! I froze them on a cookie sheet, then put them in freezer bags (the same method as gyoza). It was easy to use them in a bento -- I just popped a few from the freezer into the microwave for 30 seconds. They were perfect for lunch (with some A-1 sauce, yum!).

My First Bento

Here is my first attempt at making bento lunches for myself and my boyfriend. I don't have real bento boxes yet, so I used tupperware for him and an old Quizno's salad container for me. I've been collecting bento supplies such as rice molds, mini cookie cutters, sauce containers, etc. The bento boxes are still in the mail. :)

Contents of his bento (above): Three vegetarian gyoza, two onigiri with a little bit of pork inside (one is stacked under the other), blanched brocolli, cucumber slices, strawberries, and a clementine. Not pictured are two tiny sauce containers filled with spicy ginger dipping sauce. They are really cute, shaped like fish -- I forgot to put them in until after the photo!

Contents of my bento (below): Three vegetarian gyoza, boiled egg, blanched brocolli, cucumber slices, strawberries, and a clementine. And the spicy ginger dipping sauce, not pictured. The sauce recipe is from MY'sCC.


The egg was supposed to go in Sheu's bento, but I couldn't figure out how to fit it. That's why it's a bit smashed -- I was clumsy transferring it to my container! I like the shape of the Quizno's salad bowl. Unfortunately it is flimsy and only lasted two days (two lunches) before cracking in various places.

I didn't have time to cut the cucumber & egg in shapes, but I'm hoping to practice that in the future. I just need to get up earlier. :)

The Wrong Miso

Last night, Sheu and I decided to make a miso-based soup. We sort of made it up, going by a mish-mash of three different recipes we found online and whatever ingredients we had on hand. Boy, did our soup have potential! Check out our ingredients list:

Brocolli, julienned carrots, silken tofu, baby bella mushrooms, Taiwanese bokchoy, some kind of seaweed, scallions, rice noodles, and miso broth. We put sliced boiled eggs in our bowls of soup, and Sheu also added fish cakes to his.

Unfortunately the soup didn't taste as good as it looks. We used 1/3 cup miso paste (in 6 cups water) to make the broth, and after tasting it, we decided to put in MORE miso paste, because it just wasn't flavorful enough. It still didn't seem quite right...why didn't it taste like the miso I've had in Sheu's parents' house and restaurants?

Today in the Asian grocery, we looked more closely at the containers of miso in the refrigerated section. Oops, it turns out there are many kinds of miso! Last week was the first time I'd ever bought miso, and I just grabbed a container without paying attention to the type. It turns out that we bought shiro miso (white miso). This is a lighter, sweeter miso. What we probably should have bought is aka miso (red miso). After reading up on it tonight, I found that aka miso is the darker, saltier type. It probably would have been better for our soup. :(

We did the noble thing and decided to finish the shiro miso before buying a new container of aka miso. Sheu said we can just add twice as much shiro miso to our soups (to give it a stronger flavor and use it up quicker, hee hee).

Another thing about the soup is that we overcooked the rice noodles a bit. Today we bought udon noodles, which should be better for soups, I think...? We'll find out the next time!

Uh...Muffins?

Late last night, I got the urge to whip up a batch of easy muffins from my new Betty Crocker cookbook. I used the Cinnamon Apple Muffins recipe (which is actually listed as a variant of their blueberry muffin recipe). They are definitely fast and easy to make, but something went terribly wrong, as you can see in the photo!

I kept checking the recipe, afraid that I might have left something out. The batter was very, very dry -- about the same consistancy as Playdough. Eh? I'm pretty sure I followed the instructions and ingredients carefully, but these "muffins" turned out more like biscuits. The apple pieces cooked up very well, and the inside of each muffin was fairly moist. The outside is crunchy, though. Oh, well! Apple biscuits taste fine.

Vegetarian Gyoza and Kung Pao Chicken

This is my first attempt at making gyoza. It was easier than I expected! Yes, it was a little time consuming to create the dumplings, but well worth it. The cool thing is, these can be frozen and cooked later. I followed the great step-by-step instructions on the Cooking Cute website. You might notice some inconsistent sizes in the photo above. They became more uniform as I went along. :)

For the filling I used what we had on hand: cabbage, tofu, asparagus, zucchini, and garlic, with some asian flavorings (soy sauce, rice wine, five spice powder). I cooked half of the dumplings and froze the other half. Here they are after freezing for about two hours -- ready to go in freezer bags!


We ate the gyoza dumplings with Spicy Ginger Dipping Sauce from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking. Sheu made Kung Pao Chicken for himself (see below), also from MY'sCC (we really have been using that cookbook a lot!). A dish of rice from our rice cooker, and our meal was complete!

Mushrooms and Bok Choy With Fried Garlic

Sheu made this for dinner last night. :) I helped with the garlic frying part.

This is another recipe from Martin Yan's Chinatown Cooking. We've been using that cookbook almost exclusively lately! There are lots of good recipes to try. This recipe actually calls for baby bok choy, but Sheu used Shanghai bok choy because that's what we had on hand. The flavor of this dish was great, but the Shanghai bok choy has some tough fibers in it that made it hard to chew. Sheu said he wants to try the dish again, but with baby bok choy.

I did some reading on Martin Yan -- I didn't realize he's a very well known chef with a long-running cooking show! D'oh! We bought the cookbook in a used bookstore about a year ago, and although we've been using it, I hadn't paid much attention to the dude on the cover, until now. Sheesh!

I found this video of Martin Yan chopping vegetables. Fun to watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9lKA5_bPI

The Sketch Blog of Richard Case

I was delighted to find out that Richard Case has a sketch blog! Rich is a terrific illustrator (and a super nice guy to boot). I've enjoyed looking at the sketches and art he's shared on his blog. I hope he'll post often!

I especially like these sketches of kids ice skating.
http://rhomblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/ice-skating-in-august.html

You can click on the sketches to see large versions. Very nice!