Step 1: Cook pasta of your choice, but ensure its not linguine, spaghetti, or spaghettini, use a penne, rigatoni, tortilglioni, or some of the other million different other types of bite sized pasta.
Step 2: Dice tomatoes, celery, onions.
Step 3: Cool pasta, combine vegetables, pasta, salt, and dressing of your choice (I used a Japanese Citron Sesame) into a container.
Step 4: Shake the container and mix it all together.
Step 5: Eat.
So it may not be a poppy seed bun, and it may not have the sport peppers, but here’s my take on a Chicago Style Hot Dog, complimented with some easy to make home-made cole slaw. For this dish you’ll need:
Hot Dogs/Smokies
Buns
White onion (diced)
Red onion (diced)
Green onion (chopped)
Sweet Peppers
Dill Pickles (Sliced)
Tomato (Sliced)
Red Cabbage
White Cabbage
Eggs
Celery Seed
Paprika
Vinegar
Best to start off making your coleslaw first, as this will need to cool in the fridge for some time. Add vinegar, sugar, salt, paprika, celery seed, ground mustard or a heavy spoonful of real mustard in a sauce pan. Separate a few egg yolks and add them in as well, pour a little water in and let the mixture simmer as you mix or whisk it all together. While that’s happening time for the main component in any cole slaw; cabbage. You can now chop up your cabbage, or use a grater and shred it depending on how you like it, I used red and white cabbage, but your free to use what you like. Once ready, you can add your sauce you just made and mix it all together, this is where I added in some green onion as well. And your done, easy right? Make sure to get the coleslaw in the fridge to let it chill.
Now everyone knows how to make a hot dog, but here’s a few key ingredients to get that Chicago style taste. Slice up dill pickles, tomato’s, and prepare your onions as well. Grill the hot dogs on the BBQ, and prepare your buns. If you have poppy seed buns great, if not I used large sesame seed buns. Garnish your bun with sweet peppers, tomato, red and green onion, relish, and the king of all condiments; mustard, and please, refrain from using ketchup! Finish with a small pinch of celery salt and your ready to chow down.
Coupled with your home-made coleslaw, some chips, and a beer, you’ve got a fantastic meal that is sure to please everyone. Enjoy!
If you are thinking of what to make for lunch or supper, why not pick up some corn husks and fire up the BBQ? These are some great summer idea’s that can easily all be done on the BBQ.
For a delicious meal of sweet chili corn, BBQ chicken, and oregano lime seasoned sweet potato grilled fries, try getting these items together:
Corn in the Husk
Chicken
Sweet Potatoes
Butter
Sweet Chili Sauce
Lime Juice
Olive Oil
Oregano
Curry Paste
Mayonaise
The key to using the BBQ to cook your corn is to let the husks soak in cool water well in advance of putting them on the grill. This will prevent dried out corn and husks that instantly go up in flames, so get that corn in the sink with some water right off the bat (preferably hours before you plan to start cooking).
Next prepare the sweet potatoes, start off by setting a large pot on the stove and begin boiling water. Wash the sweet potatoes and cut the pointy ends off, and begin to cut them into wedges or slices, the size will affect the cooking time, but don’t be afraid to cut them a little big.
While you wait for your water to boil you can prepare the seasoning. Mix oil, lime juice, and oregano in a small bowl and mix it. This will be the basting sauce when they are on the BBQ. Once your water is boiling you can toss your sweet potato slices in the water and let them cook for about 10 minutes. The goal here is to get them partially cooked before going on the BBQ, so get them soft, but not too soft that they fall apart.
Now to make some sidekicks that will really set this meal off, start by making a dip for those sweet potato fries. Please leave the ketchup in the fridge, in Europe mayonnaise is the french fries compliment of choice and we’re gonna build of that. Dish some mayo in a mixing bowl, and add lime juice from 1 lime, or squirt in some from the bottle, don’t be shy with this. Next add about a teaspoon of curry paste, this you can be shy with as it really has some kick. Mix together and add more mayo or curry paste to taste. Keep mixing until you get a well blended mixture with nice color.
Next scoop some butter in another mixing dish, now you can make your own chili addition, but I find that sweet chili sauce is just as good. Pour in the sweet chili and really mix it in well with the butter, give it a taste to check the amounts, and keep mixing until you get a whipped butter texture.
You can now place those corn husks on the BBQ, pull the sweet potatoes out of the water and get them on the grill as well. These items will take longer to cook so get them on while you get your chicken ready. You can begin brushing the basting sauce on your fries continually as they cook (Tip: You can lather the fries in egg to ensure they are crispy). Turn the corn a few times, as well. For this dish, the features were the corn and the fries, so just simple boned chicken on the grill with some BBQ sauce was an easy addition to round out the meal.
Pull everything off the grill, pull the husks off the corn, and start eating! Make sure your friends get some mayonnaise mix for their fries, and lather that corn on the cob with your sweet chili butter. Yum!
So if you’re in a situation like me, and you have some left over bok choy from a recent dish you made, you might be scratching your head on what to do with the left over greens. Fortunately you still have options, and one of those options is to prepare a delicious salad with it. Unlike lettuce, bok choy has a very distinct taste, which gives it a little bit of kick. So the key to using it in a salad is to mix it in with a variety of other greens so that kick isn’t a little too strong.
I tossed mine together using the following:
Bok Choy
Tomatoes (Diced)
Red Onion (Diced)
Green Onion (Chopped)
Cucumber (Sliced and Halved)
Grated Gouda Cheese
Sweet Onion Dressing
After I tossed the vegetables together I grated the gouda over the top, and finished things off with the sweet onion dressing. It made for a delicious and different salad than the norm, and is a great way to use that left over bok choy. Enjoy.
After whipping up a delicious dish the other night, I thought I’d share what it was all about. This is a pretty quick dish which only takes about 15 mins to make.
Here is what I used in this stirfry:
Shrimp, Cashews, Celery, Romain Lettuce, Ginger, Garlic, Honey, Canola Oil, Soy Sauce, Ketchup, Chili Peppers, Rice.
First things first, I cut up all my veggies into decent portions, remember that if your cooking lettuce it shrinks alot, so dont break it up too small. I then thinly sliced up the ginger and pressed the garlic, and put them both in the pan with some oil. You can start to slowly simmer your ginger and garlic while you prepare the sauce.
For the sauce, I read online about the use of ketchup, so I gave it a try. But before starting, you can put your shrimp and cashews in the pan and let them start to warm up. As thats going, I put a little bit of ketchup in a bowl, added, soy sauce, honey, canola oil, some water, and some chili peppers. I mixed this all together with a little bit of cornstarch to thicken it up.
I was using precooked shrimp so I didnt need to wait long to start adding everything together. I added the lettuce and celery, and then poured all the sauce into the pan. Keep your heat on medium and keep stirring it all together, and after about 5 more minutes, your done!
Served it all over some rice, but you could also serve this over noodles if you like. Time to eat!
I just finished watching a documentary called ‘Home’. It’s a film about our home, not the roof over your head but the planet you live in, earth. I sat in my dark living room learning about our planets extraordinary beginnings, and its progression through its own life. Then came humans, you and I, and as the music and images build tension, you start to lose faith in the role of mankind. The film paints a gloomy picture of the effects of humans on the planet, and it builds up to a climax where you think the film couldn’t get any more depressing. But luckily there is a turning point in this film, as the good things that mankind has done, and can do are outlined, leaving you with a spark of hope in a dreary mind.
Here is some of the good and the bad, according to the film:
Over 50% of the grain traded around the world is used as livestock feed or biofuels.
13 million hectares of forest disappear every year.
100L of water produces 1kg of potatoes, 4000L produces 1kg of rice, 13000L produced 1kg of beef.
Since 1950, fishing catches have increased from 18 million to 100 million metric tonnes per year.
The average global temperature in the last 15 years is the highest on record.
1 in 10 rivers in the world no longer reach their delta’s for months at a time due to heavy irrigation.
95% of soybeans produced in Brazil are used to feed livestock and poultry in Europe and Asia.
3/4 of the varieties of crop developed through mankind’s history have been wiped out.
Antarctica has immense natural resources which no country can use for themselves.
2% of the worlds territorial waters are protected, not much, but thats 2 times more than 10 years ago.
13% of the continents of the world are covered in natural parks.
South Korea restored 65% of its depleted forests through reforestation.
The U.S, China, India, Germany and Spain are the biggest investors in renewable energy.
Although the dialogue and text may be a little rough around the edges, the imagery is stunning, and the message is important and clear. We must change.
If you havent had the chance to taste this refreshing and delicious drink, you have definetly been missing out. Milk Tea dates back to the british colonial days in Hong Kong, where afternoon tea was modified into the present day beverage. Milk Tea, and its Iced Milk Tea sister are widely popular through-out asia, but have yet to grab hold in western culture. As such, I have always had trouble finding it whenever I returned home, which brings me to today’s blog entry, ‘How to Make Milk Tea!’. I had some much needed help from my friend Joey in HK when first making it, so much props go out to her!
Luckily Milk Tea is really easy to make, and needs only a few ingredients. There are two items you need to pick up from the grocery store, the first is Liptions Yellow Label Black Tea, I find this tea gives me the best taste that reminds me of Hong Kong, although you can use any black tea. The second ingredient is either condensed milk, or evaporated milk, you can find these in the baking section usually.
Making it is easy, start out by putting a pot of water on the stove, then add at least 2 tea bags, and let the water boil. You need the tea to be strong, so leave the bags in for a long time, getting a rich tea smell.
Once the tea is ready, I use condensed milk, and add a few spoonfuls to the pot, slowly stirring it up until its a light creamy color. Condesnsed milk is sweet already, but if your using evaporated milk you will need to add sugar. I add a little sugar to mine regardless.
You have now just made hot milk tea, you could pour yourself a cup, but I prefer iced milk tea, so you have a couple options, you can fill a glass with ice, and pour the tea into the glass, or you can chill the entire pot of tea. I usually chose to chill it all, as icecubes tend to dilute the flavour.
Once cold, pour yourself a smooth creamy glass of iced milk tea, and enjoy!
The health benefits of eating fish is not breaking news. White flesh fish contains less fat than any other animal protein, and oily fish is especially good for you as it contains that key component; omega-3 fatty acids, a nutrient which is essential for our health.
With that in mind, I thought it was a good time to do a blog about a recent bbq meal I did. I recently brought back a lake trout from the great slave lake when I was last in Yelloknife, Canada for work. And this fresh fish was just begging to be cooked up with a delicious meal.
Since it really feels like summer these days I thought what better way to cook it than on the BBQ, and so along with a friend, we prepared a fast tasty meal all on the BBQ again. Heres what we did:
For this meal I cooked the fish whole, head, tail you name it. I started out by gutting the fish, you do this by slicing the belly open from the anus up to the head, and removing the inside ‘unwanted’ parts. I then rinsed the fish inside and out with cold running water, dont forget this step. After the fish was rinsed, I prepared a double layer of tinfoil on the counter, and poured some olive oil on it, spreading it around evenly to accomadate the size of the fish. I then layed the trout down on the foil, and begin using olive oil to coat the inside of the fish and a little on the outside as well. Once oiled, fresh lemon slices were places evenly inside the cavity of the fish. Sprinkle parsley, salt, and pepper, and a squeeze of more lemon juice over the whole fish, and you my friend are pretty much done. Wrap the whole fish up with tinfoil and place in the fridge while you prepare the other components of your meal.
For us we decided to cook stuffed peppers, a really easy and tasty sidekick to any meal. For these I simply use half red peppers, and fill them with preseasoned goat cheese, setting them aside, we prepared our potatoes. Slicing up the potatoes, adding parsley, pepper, and onions we then sealed up the potatoes in foil as well. You should now have the BBQ warming up.
Place your potatoes on the grill first, these will take the longest. Next is the fish, pull it out of the fridge and carefully set it onto the grill. Cooking time for the fish all depends on the size and heat, I used medium heat and it took roughly 25 minutes to cook the trout.
Check your potatoes, and if they are close to being cooked, you can now put your stuffed peppers on the grill, simply lay them all on face up and let them cook until the cheese begins to melt. Start pulling all your food off the BBQ, and open up that fish, it should really be smelling good now. Serving the fish is easy, if cooked right the flesh will just fall off the bones, start dishing out peices of fish, potatoes, and your stuffed peppers, serve with a fresh garden salad and thats it, another tasty and healthy meal!
Make yourself a ceasar to go with, and eat out in the backyard, bliss…
That age old classic; Stir Fry is still a popular dish to make. Why? Its easy to make, healthy, and delicious! Last night I made a quick stirfry so I thought I’d share it with you. I had some pointers from my friend Ling in Australia with this one so credit goes out to her as well. Ok listen up!
Ingredients? For me I used beef, fresh ginger root, bok choy, red onions, bean sprouts, garlic black bean paste, also corn starch and various spices. But this is stirfry, you can use any variety of vegetables and meat, use what you have!
For starters, get your wok or frying pan warmed up with a little oil in there. Take your ginger, and thinly slice up some of that carefully. You can toss that in the pan first thing, keep your heat medium to low for this whole process.
For beef, I use cheaper cuts of beef that I buy in bulk from the store, you dont need to use the most expensive steak for stir frys, all though you can if you like! I had taken my beef out the night before, I precut beef slices in 1 or 2 person portions in ziplocs before I freeze them, this makes it really easy and fast to make dishes such as stir fry on the go. Think about it! So with my sliced up beef in the ziploc bag, I threw in some corn starch, and shook the bag up to lightly coat the pieces of beef, you can do this in a bowl as well. The corn starch coating will help lock in the juices and help the beef stay tender when cooking, so dont miss this step!
As soon as you can smell that tangy ginger cooking in the pan, its time to throw in the beef. The beef wont take long to cook, so you can either quickly chop up your vegetables, or have this already done if you had time. Im pretty fast so I quickly washed and chopped up my bok choy and red onion, and got my sprouts ready. When your beef is nearly cooked, you can throw in all your veggies, mixing it all up in the pan.
Now theres a million different things you can do for sauces, but this time I used garlic black bean sauce. You can find this in most grocery stores, maybe in the ethnic food aisle. I like Lee Kum Kee brand, its quite good. You can pour some in the pan, careful not to use too much as it can be quite salty. You can add sugar to the pan to help sweeten the taste as well.
Your stirfry should almost be done by the time you get the sauce in, mix it all up well, make sure the beef is cooked but not overdone, and your done! Some steamed rice in a bowl, dish your stirfry on top, serve with an ice cold glass of milk tea, and you’ve got a delicous meal. Enjoy!
Resting my head back, I gaze out through the rain drizzled window, a hazy landscape rushes by as our train makes its way from Shanghai to Nanjing, a city a few hours northwest of Shanghai.
Arriving at the Nanjing Railway Station, I soon realized we were in a little bit of dilemma. Nanjing had a subway, but subways are only effective if you can figure out where to get on, and exactly where to get off, then you have to know how to get to this hostel you’ve never been to before which sometimes is a far cry from the nearest station, add to that you are fully loaded with whatever you have in your bag, and its sometimes a lot easier just to take a Taxi, to at least orientate yourself initially. In this case, the nearest station was quite far away, so we ruled it out.
Taxi’s themselves are no walk in the park in a place like China either, with my lack of chinese skills and no english spoken on behalf of most taxi drivers it can be a challenge to complete such a task that we take for granted at home. As we made our way outside of the train station I realized a big mistake on my part, I had forgotten to get the chinese address of the hostel we were staying at in Nanjing; a critical component for a successful taxi ride. Regardless of this fact, I headed out to talk to some drivers upfront of the massive station, I made good headway with one driver, and he seemed to understand where we needed to go, but the deal fell through when he refused to use the meter, writing down a hugely inflated price. I was stubborn, I turned him down, and we rethought our next move.
As we were sitting thinking about what to do, I noticed to girls sitting next to us, I asked them if they spoke english, and they did. I then asked them if they would be so kind as to write down the chinese address to our hostel. The girls managed to write down a bus stop near our hostel, and we thanked them for their help, you can’t be shy in China, and being polite can go a long way. Armed with our new weapon we laid siege on the taxi armada at the front of the station. We found a taxi who was able to take us where we needed to go, and on the meter, success!
Wandering through the streets of Nanjing in the pouring sleet rain and snow, we eventually located the hostel, and were happy to have a place to call home for a few days. Over the next few days we would explore this city, its drum tower, university, ming palace ruins, eating tasty noodles and sipping my first delicious glass of iced milk tea since I was last in asia as we looked onwards to Xi’an, our next stop.
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