Posts Tagged 'cooking'

Bunapi mushrooms wrapped with sirloin, delicious!

I was out taking my mom grocery shopping at her favourite local organic market (Organic Garage) one Saturday aftertoon, and we came upon this cute package of mushrooms labeled as ‘bunapi’ mushrooms. They looked to be similar to enokis but a bit bigger, and a brief iPhone googling lead me to believe they would be delicious, so into the shopping cart they went. They grow in clusters and like enokis you discard the tough flavourless base and eat the stocks and heads.

One of my favourite recipes is enoki mushrooms wrapped in beef, so I set out to replicate this using these slightly larger, more flavoursome mushrooms. I hit up the supermarket in the morning and perused the beef section. There are lots of different types of thinly sliced beef readily available, but I chose sirloin for its extremely tender texture instead of a more flavoursome but potentially tougher cut.  I also picked up purple asparagus and fresh yellow potatoes. Had I not had fresh baby garlic and chives (optional) from the garden I would have picked these up too. Regular garlic would work too, but don’t go overboard, you don’t want to overpower the rather delicate mushrooms.

An epic combination in the making

I began by boiling my quartered potatoes, and steaming my purple asparagus in the same pot. This is a technique I like mostly to save stove space, and thankfully unlike many purple vegetables, purple asparagus is color-fast and doesn’t stain the potatoes below it. Purple asparagus does not need as much cooking time as regular asparagus as it is already more tender to begin with, and excessive cooking will remove the purple color. As an aside, white asparagus requires special preparation and almost 2x the cooking of green asparagus, where as purple is the exact opposite. Definitely the best asparagus if you can get it when it’s in season! The asparagus will be done before the potatoes, just test it with a fork, but both will be done before everything else.

Sautéing our bunapis

We begin by cutting away the base of the mushroom cluster off and throwing it away. Separate all the little mushrooms and put them in our pan. Next we can start sautéing our bunapis in a bit of cooking oil like canola or sunflower, nothing too flavoursome though. Medium-high heat (6/10) but not too long, just a couple minutes. We don’t want to over cook them, they should wilt a bit without destroying their texture. Add in your garlic and chives and continue to sauté for another couple minutes. Again you want the mushrooms soft but not overcooked, eat one and test :) Take them off the heat and put them in a bowl to cool for later.

Fryin' steaks... many steaks...

Next I fried my sirloins on the stove, and I think that this is the weak point of this recipe. Had I had access to a barbecue, or better yet a hibachi grill, I think the crispy texture of the meat would have aided the overall dish. (That’s high rise living for ya) Either way you cook them, high heat (8/10 on the stove) and just a minute on each side, you don’t want to dry the meat out. I rubbed them down with paper towel when they were done to remove any excess oil, the sirloin is a pretty lean meat on its own. It wont be pleasant to eat (since it is finger food!) if the outside is too greasy after all… I didn’t season the meat at all, again we don’t want to overpower our delicate filling.

Roll one up homie!

Once our steaks are cook enough to touch, we can begin rolling our wraps. Put a decent amount of the filling inside, and arrange some mushroom heads to point out at least one (if not both) of the sides. Roll the meat tightly and then tooth pick them closed and you’re done! Put a couple on a plate with some potatoes and asparagus and serve while its all still warm.

It’s delicious, easy and quick! The bunapis are sweet and delicate, you don’t want to over season them. I would definitely recommend using a grill instead of a frying pan, but either way it was a hit. Roll some up today, you’ll love ‘em!

Epic win!

I was pretty worried 3/4 through cooking, but this turned out delicious!

Tonights dinner started when I saw some really gorgeous eggplant onsale and picked a giant one up. One of my favourite dishes as a kid was a spicy eggplant and pork stir fry, I’ve attempted it before but never been happy with the results. However recently I’ve learned some new techniques for Chinese cooking and try my hand at this classic again.

I began by slicing the eggplant into broad slices and soaking it in salt water for a solid 10 hours. Generally I’d have even done this even longer, over night in fact, but I was too tired from a busy night of Yakuza 3 the night before. This technique removes the bitterness, and is generally key to doing many eggplant dishes.

Marinating our delicious meats

We took a pound of lean ground pork, put it in a large mixing bowl, added 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce (as in table soy sauce, not the low sodium stuff), 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of canola oil, a teaspoon of cornstarch (key in getting that nice texture Chinese meats enjoy), 2 tablespoons of water and then a few cranks from a pepper grinder. We stirred that mix thoroughly and left it to sit for 20 minutes. While that was marinating we began cooking calrose rice on the stove. Specifically we did 1 cup of rice, and a cup and a half of water, simmering for 20 minutes.

Blanching our bok choy

Next we took an entire giant head of bok choy and blanched it, though slightly differently than our nappa cabbage. We boiled a giant pot of water with a tablespoon of canola oil, a pinch of salt AND a pinch of sugar. We dunked the bok choy in for about 30-60 seconds and took it out and put it in a strainer. Also unlike our dumpling cabbage, we did not flush it with cold water, to let the insides keep cooking further. I took the time to slice our eggplant pieces up into strips.

At this point we had a pretty full kitchen! We began frying our marinated pork in a bit of canola oil at medium high heat (6-8/10 depending on your stove). When 80% of the pink color was gone, I tossed in the eggplant. The rice should have finished cooking a little while ago, so we can begin making fried rice. The trick to making restaurant style fried rice is two fold. First pour some canola oil into a big pan, then take our entire pot of rice and dump it on top. Scramble two eggs and pour it on top evenly.

Our fried rice is coming together

Now mix the entire mix of rice and raw eggs up, and turn the stove up to a high temperature 6-8/10. By mixing it thoroughly first you won’t get any egg chunks. This will require quick hands and a decent amount of attention, stir/flip the rice around constantly. Thankfully Eva took care of this pan whilst I tended to the pork. Once the egg is pretty much cooked onto the rice, add a tablespoon of dark soy sauce (the thick stuff!) to the mix. This will give it that restaurant color and flavour. Continue mixing it continuously while keeping the heat high. When it becomes crispy but before it becomes dried out (taste a bit!) take it off the heat and leave it aside, you now have perfect fried rice!

Bok choy enters the mix!

In our skillet with the pork, our eggplant and pork should be cooked, and there shouldn’t be too much liquid in the bottom. Add our blanched bok choy in and keep stirring it rapidly and two teaspoons of crushed garlic from a jar. Increase the heat (8-10/10 depending on your stove) and keep it moving quickly, make sure all the liquid leaves the mix. Keep cooking until the water comes out of the bok choy and evaporates, we don’t want a watery pan. Once the liquid level is down, add a tablespoon of sesame oil (pure flavour) and two tablespoons of sriracha (rooster sauce!) and keep mixing quickly. Chop some green onion (to taste) into strips (vertical) and toss it in too. Once everything is mixed in and theres no large amounts of liquid bubbling away in the bottom, pour the skilet into your pan of fried rice. Mix everything up and serve it while its HOT! The flavour is rich but not overpowering, and the textures of everything should be perfect (the fried rice won’t be soggy). An awesome experiment, and a delicious meal, next time I would probably use baby bok choy instead, as its easier to plate and eat :)

Our finished product!

I love cooking, and nowadays unless we are eating at our local grocery store, one of us is cooking. I don’t document all of my experiments, and nor do most deserve their own blog posts. I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile, just like a collection of some of the better random dinners in the past two months. Hopefully I’ll remember the overall details, though the recipes were all pretty much just winged in the first place…

Delicious and healthy leftovers

First up was a vegetable bake. I 8-hour marinated some peppers, big shiitakes, LOTS of garlic and yukon gold potatoes in high quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar with lots of oregano. I added asparagus then baked the entire thing for like an hour. (You don’t wanna marinate the asparagus with the vinegar, it’ll get tough) I served it with some very crispy-fried Beretta organic thick cut bacon on top. Was an ok dinner, the flavours were great, all the ingredients were cooked perfectly but it missed a certain something, not a great meal. The following morning I fried up a Beretta spicy beef sausage and put that on top and took it to work for lunch. It was exactly the flavour the dish was missing, and the extra night of sitting made the vegies even more flavourful. A fantastic couple days of leftovers. Very pleased in the end.

The first version was vegetarian, the second attempt with sausage was much better

Next up is really a lazy meal, but still honestly fantastic. Our Longos carries a great selection of premium pasta (dried) and a line of Tiberino pasta+seasoning packs. Basically you take everything out, the pasta and the herbs, fry them dry in high quality olive oil (good oil is key) at high heat for a bit, add water, cook the water away, add cheese (I used a very nice Grana Padano) and serve. There is no ‘sauce’ just an olive oil + herb blend, and frankly its fantastic. The spicing is very good and it really lets through the quality of your oil. We liked it so much we did it a few weeks later, this time adding my favourite Beretta spicy beef sausage, it was even better. Made fantastic left overs the day after too! As far as lazy (20-minutes, no prep time) dinners go, you can’t really do any better in terms of flavour, just make sure to use good quality oil and cheese, its totally key.

Fun experiment, I love plaintains

Next up was an amusing experiment. I was having coffee with my mom who had come into the city for a visit one morning. We were both debating what to cook for dinner, both of us had defrosted beef and neither had decided what to do. I was leaning towards something with bok choy, but when we saw the plantains at Longos we both changed our minds. The dish was simple, I fried up some red and green peppers, cooking onions and the thinly sliced ribeye beef, seasoned with half a packet of fajita seasoning we had left over. The plantain was lightly fried just to crisp the outside without drying it out, served with Balderson’s 6 year cheddar, Garden Fresh salsa and corn chips. I really need to cook with plantains more often, its really a great starch to work with, flavour-wise.

Ugly but delicious

Next we have an ugly but tasty dish that was basically use of random leftovers. First I started by boiling then frying some potato and cheese perogies we’d purchased at a little local shop. I tossed them with some olive oil, spinach, collard greens, kale, cilantro, parsley and basil. At the last minute I added some leftover hotdogs, I had wanted to use sausage but we didn’t have any as I’d thought. It was served with rot kohl and picadilly chow-chow. The fish plates help the aesthetics of the dish.

Beautiful sandwich

I had a craving for steak sandwiches one night, so I bought a value-pack (i.e. a good kilo or two) of these thinly sliced rib eyes. I sauteed 4 cooking onions and some brown mushrooms, then added cider vinegar, ketchup, a chipotle honey rub and worestershire sauce. While this simmered and flavoured up, I began frying perfect medium-rare steaks. This is a quick process per steak (you don’t wanna lose the pink center, despite only being millimeters thick) but a dozen steaks is still a lot of steaks to cook :) We smothered them in the onions and mushrooms with their delicious BBQ sauce on. As leftovers, I just ate the onion/mushroom/steak blend a la carte, delicious!

I <3 MSG

Last up is a basic breakfast-for-dinner. While not an impressive meal, there were two little things I did that really make it special. First of all, I cooked the eggs with sesame oil, which really adds a nice Korean/Chinese flavour. Sesame oil is really an awesome spice, and definitely use it as a spice, cooking it reduces the flavour significantly. Secondly I added a good shake of MSG on top of the eggs when it was almost cooked. MSG gives it an awesome Japanese flavour, and gives me great memories of okonomiyaki restaurants in Tokyo, where you’ll always find an MSG shaker at the table. Finally, my current addiction is Longo’s own “cured pork backs in cornmeal”, which is what we often call peameal bacon and American’s often call “Canadian bacon”, though the later can refer to almost anything from the top half of the pig. I love this pork so much, I’ve purchased four packs this week, and heck even had a sandwich of it for lunch yesterday! At 130 calories/100 grams, it’s not even particularly unhealthy as meat goes, and is full of wonderful flavour. I have an awesome idea involving this delicious meat, which hopefully I will attempt next week :)

Happy eating, happy cooking!

A simple and delicious Japanese Tuna recipe

A pretty basic and simple recipe this time around. This all started because Eva wanted something light for dinner and my mom suggested I try these new “sashimi grade” frozen tuna filets that Costco has begun to carry.

They are Albacore filets, which is not my favourite tuna (I prefer yellow fin, blue fin, big eye, the fish they often mistakenly call bonito in North America, etc), but it’s still a delicious fish. The Costco filets are quite cheap (less than $2.50 each!), individually freezer packed for long storage life, and have a great texture, it really is a quality cut. You just take it out the morning of, or better yet the night before, and cook it as desired.

Fantastic ingredients tonight!

I started by cooking up some fresh asparagus and shiitakes. I put 100ml of sake (Hakatsuru, a common ‘hot sake’ in Japanese restaurants, is pretty terrible cold but great for cooking, not to be confused with Hakatsuru Draft sake, a common ‘cold sake’ in Japanese restaurants) and 2 tablespoons of milk-product-free margarin in a pan. The margarin was meant to save our lactose intolerant stomachs, though I think it was a mistake as the recipe was missing that richness that only real butter offers. I threw in a tablespoon of granulated garlic. Another regret, I should have used fresh garlic.

I put the asparagus in first, and cooked it for about 5 minutes covered (once the sake/’butter’ reached temperature). I spent that time cleaning the delicate little shiitake caps and then tossed those in, and cooked both of them for another 5 minutes. This was all done at about 4/8 on my stove.

The veggies are ready!

In parallel I began preparing white rice. It actually takes about 17 minutes on my stove for perfect Japanese-esque consistency for calrose rice, so it’s good to time everything around this.

Once my veggies were done, I put them aside and left them covered to stay warm. I got ready to cook my tuna. This takes very little time. We start with the same 100ml of Hakatsuru sake and 2 table spoons of ‘butter’. I left off the garlic this time as the tuna is so delicate. I let the butter and the oil heat completely on the stove, mixing them rapidly. I cooked this at a relatively high temperature, 6/8 on my stove. Once they were ready I put the tuna down and let it cook for about 3 minutes, then flipping it and cooking the other side for about 2 minutes. As soon as it’s done, removing it from the hot oil is critical.

The rice should be done now, so we begin by mixing in 50ml of black sesame seeds and 1 teaspoon of MSG. Mix thoroughly and be prepared for an excellent side dish. Take a tuna cutlet, heap of vegetables and the rice and serve right away. This type of cooking is relatively simple, the only difficulty being the parallel timing of everything, as nothing should be overcooked or undercooked. As noted I wasn’t totally pleased with my usage of margarine instead of butter, and I think real garlic and more of it would have been nice on the veggies. But otherwise it was delicious. Served with a 300ml bottle of Hakatsuru Draft, ice cold.

Rich, savoury, a bit spicy: truly delicious!

Whether its a home cooked meal in India, pub fare in England, currywurst from a cafe in Germany or small restaurant in Thailand: everyone in the world loves curry, and everyone has their own take on it. Japan is no exception, in fact I’d say second only to ramen, curry is the fast food of choice in Tokyo. Its rather incredible really, every corner has a little shop that will make a rich curry, and it’ll only set you back 300-500 yen (3-5 bucks). The meat of choice is anything from beef to chicken to a fried pork cutlet and it usually features nothing more than potatoes, carrots and onions. Japanese curry has a unique richness, usually fairly mild spice and a special flavour that is unique from any of the other regional curries.

The ingredients! (I didn't use all the cooking onions)

There are many packaged curry sauces on the market exported from Japan. My curry of choice is Glico’s “Hot” curry, which is certainly not hot despite selling a Mild and Medium as well. Glico is one of Japans largest food conglomerates, famous in the west for Pocky among other snacks. I have used it many times with great success, though never rivalling even the cheapest Tokyo street fare. Finally however, I succeeded.

I decided to put the new crock pot to use, and slow cook the curry to richen the sauce. The meat I chose was veal, and not just any veal but white veal. It’s important to use a rich meat, lean beef or a lean steak just won’t do. We bought about a pound of stewing white veal, and a half pound of white veal shank. My goal there was that the bone and marrow would really richen the curry. I’ve used a rib-eye before with good results, but this surpassed it in every way.

The meat, the cooking onion and Glico curry cubes

I began by filling the Crock Pot with 6 cups of water. Note my recipe differs than what the boxes say. Next we take two of the 110 gram boxes of Glico hot and breaking them into their 1/10th cubes and add them. Dump all the meat in too, I put the shank right in the center. Next I chopped up a cooking onion (not very finely) and added it in. I followed that with a giant white onion, but this could easily be two cooking onions instead. White onions are painful to cut apart anyway. Finally I peeled and halved four fresh yukon gold potatoes and tossed them in. I followed that with the other two packages of Glico hot, cubed up again. Thats four packages total. Now just put the lid on the pot and set it to low for eight hours, you can goto work or something like that.

When I returned home, some 8 and a half hours of cooking later, the curry was thick and rich. I gave it a quick stir and discovered the shank had completely fallen off its bone and fallen into chunks all on its own. I removed the bone and tossed it away, sadly we lack a dog to gift it to but it would certainly make a good treat. I did some tasting and added one teaspoon of the secret ingredient of all Japanese food, MSG. Some (most) Japanese curry bases include MSG, but at least the Glico they export does not. A teaspoon is really not much, but its just there to add a bit of a pop and authenticity.

I put a pot of calrose rice on the stove and began to boil it. Next I peeled and sliced up two large carrots, and quickly sauteed them with a tiny bit of cooking oil and a reasonably high heat (6/8). When the carrots were soft but still reasonably firm, I tossed them into the curry pot and mixed it all up. All thats left is to glob some rice onto a plate, smother it with the thick curry and consume.

Ready to eat!

The end product is very thick and rich. Their own recipe suggests adding an extra 2 cups of water, but I’ve found the directions never result in a curry as thick as what you’d get in a restaurant in Japan.  The richness exceeds what you’d get in Japan, certainly due to the rather decadent beef used. We also tend to get (and use) better potatoes here than they do in Japan as well.

Really, its a pretty simple recipe since the curry base eliminates the need to blend spices and thickener together, prep time was less than an hour. The Crock-Pot once again proves itself an indispensable tool for the meat lover who wants to cook while they work, and once again I have bested previous similar endeavours. It’s surely not healthy if you eat a lot in a sitting, both high in fat and salt, but hey, good food is good food. All together,  we were very pleased. (and it made a weeks worth of lunches!)

Eating time!