Over the weekend, I had another craving for pasta. Other than fried rice and pizza, pasta is probably ranked third in my weekly cravings. When I lived in New York, I would pick up some baked ziti on my walk back home after school whenever I craved pasta. Almost every corner of every other street in New York had a fantastic Italian restaurant. The neighborhood I grew up in had about four pizzerias and two Italian restaurants within a 15-block radius. I’m not sure if all of the restaurants are still in operation today, but I sure do miss the convenience and access to good Italian food. When I moved to Ohio, I have to drive quite a distance to get to a good Italian restaurant. Thankfully, Ohio does have some really good Italian restaurants. The downside is the restaurants are fairly pricey. The upside with living in Ohio is I get to make my own variations of pasta whenever I craved pasta. Yes, I do consider this an upside since I get to control the ingredients in my food and have been pretty innovative with testing out different flavor combinations for pasta in the kitchen. When I want a quick pasta, I typically make my lemon cacio e pepe pasta. I would say I make lemon cacio e pepe pasta at least once a week. When I want a heartier pasta, I make a batch of my broccoli and sausage baked penne. I make a version of baked penne almost once a month. My intense craving for baked ziti this weekend led me to make my peppers and sausage baked cavatappi.
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Vegetable Egg Rolls with Spicy Fig Dipping Sauce
When I woke up this morning, I had an intense craving for egg rolls. I had bought a package of egg roll wrappers a couple weeks earlier hoping to make egg rolls. A couple weeks later, the egg roll wrappers were still sitting in my fridge. Sundays are usually when I stop by the gym for a morning run. To decrease the amount of time I will need to spend cooking when I got back from the gym, I prepped all of the vegetables to use in my egg rolls ahead of time. I grated some carrots using my box grater, finely chopped up some Napa cabbage, thinly sliced some baby bok choy, cut up some scallions, and finely minced some garlic and ginger. After prepping the vegetables, I headed over to the gym to get in some exercise. Running for me is the ultimate Sunday workout. I tend to be busier during the week. In between work, classes, homework, and studying, I often don’t have enough time to stop by the gym. Thus, I made a resolution to squeeze in at least one cardio workout during the week. Sundays just work out best for my cardio workout. When I got back from the gym, I was ready to cook down the filling, fill my egg rolls, and fry up all of the egg rolls. I love eggs rolls. I often make my vegetable and chicken egg rolls as an appetizer to serve alongside some fried rice and noodles. In an effort to incorporate more vegetables into Kevin and my diet, I only used vegetables for my egg rolls. My vegetable egg rolls are delicious on their own, but I like to dip my egg rolls in a sweet and spicy sauce.
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Minty Matcha Chocolate Milkshakes
March is quickly approaching. The months after February tend to be tougher for me as there aren’t any holidays off from work in March or April. Towards the end of May is when I get to have another long weekend. While there aren’t days off from now until May, there are still some wonderful holidays to celebrate in between. Earlier this week, I started brainstorming ideas for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration in March. I always see advertisements for Shamrock shakes around this time of the year. I’ve only had a Shamrock shake once many years ago, so I don’t have a very good memory of all of the flavors within the shake. Instead of picking up a shake from a fast food restaurant, I decided to make my own. I wanted to create a version of a green milkshake without using food coloring. I thought about which ingredients will give food a nice green color and realized matcha powder could do the trick. I use matcha a lot in baking and thought it would be a good addition to a milkshake. I started brainstorming different flavor combinations and decided to make a minty matcha chocolate milkshake using mint extract, matcha powder, and chocolate syrup.
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Cobb Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing
Some days, I just crave a big bowl of fresh salad mixed with some hearty protein and salad dressing. This week, I had one of those days where I really wanted a Cobb salad with my favorite salad dressing, honey mustard dressing. I didn’t eat Cobb salads a lot growing up. In fact, my favorite salad growing up was usually the classic chicken Caesar salad, which I almost always ordered whenever I wanted a salad at a restaurant. Occasionally, I would order a Cobb salad when I want a heartier, more filling salad. Cobb salads are packed with tons of protein and fresh vegetables. Kevin typically doesn’t crave salads, but this salad had everything he wanted in a salad. It has crispy grilled chicken, smoky bacon, hearty hard-boiled eggs, creamy avocado, crunchy onions, and sweet and tangy tomatoes. All of these hearty ingredients are arranged over a bed of salad greens. Traditional Cobb salad also has Roquefort cheese, but I decided to omit the cheese since Kevin isn’t a huge fan of blue cheese tossed into his salad. Cobb salads are a good compromise for both Kevin and I when it comes to a dinner both of us would want to eat. He gets to have a variety of meats. I get to mix in some healthy greens.
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Mushroom and Miso Fried Rice
Today, I’m sharing a recipe in honor of my grandma. She passed away earlier this week and I wanted to take some time to honor her memory. One of the dishes my grandma made all of the time for my brothers and I growing up was fried rice. She always ensured we had food to eat when we returned home from school each day. Fried rice is very nostalgic for me and is a dish I associate with my grandma. It is the one dish she and my family made whenever they wanted to use up any leftover meats and vegetables from the refrigerator. Fried rice itself is also a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. It is as much science as it is art to create the perfect fried rice. Even though it is very difficult to achieve good fried rice at home, I still vividly remember the fried rice my grandma used to make. She would always add lap cheong, scallions, onions, carrots, and green peas to her fried rice. Overtime, I began to add my own spin to her fried rice by changing up the protein and the ingredients within the fried rice.
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Maple Bacon Biscuits
The ultimate breakfast carb for long weekends is maple bacon biscuits. I had a long week of work and classes last week, but was thrilled to be able to have a long weekend this past weekend. Long weekends mean more time in the kitchen cooking up delicious foods especially breakfast foods. I typically only have leisurely breakfasts on Saturdays and Sundays, but because we had a long weekend, I was able to whip up another leisurely breakfast on Monday. When it comes to breakfast, I prefer savory just a tad more than sweet. Most days though, I prefer a breakfast with a balance of sweet and savory notes. When I woke up this morning, I was especially craving a biscuit for breakfast. I wanted to incorporate some of my favorite American breakfast flavors into the biscuit dough and decided to make maple bacon biscuits. To enhance the maple flavor, I folded in some maple syrup into the biscuits. I also served the biscuits with a side of maple syrup. If you want even more maple flavor, you can pick up maple smoked bacon. The maple syrup adds a nutty sweetness to the biscuits. The bacon adds a salty savory crunch. When swirled together, these biscuits are definitely too good to pass up.
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Pepperoni and Peppers Pizza Pockets
Today is Sunday, but it feels like Saturday due to the long weekend. I started my day by going to the gym for a morning run. When I got home, just over an hour later, I started testing new recipes in the kitchen. I love spending long weekends testing out new recipes. I’ve been experimenting with recreating some of my favorite dim sum dishes and improving upon some of my go-to recipes. Weekends always mean pizza for at least one or two meals. I wanted to put a spin on my usual pizza topped with my favorite ingredients this weekend and ended up making pizza pockets for Kevin and I to enjoy for an early dinner. Pizza pockets are an extension of my love for pizza. When I lived in New York, I would pick up pizza, garlic knots, calzones, strombolis, Italian heroes, and baked ziti from local pizza shops when I want something tasty and quick to eat. I love the portability of pizza pockets. You stuff the pizza dough pockets with your favorite ingredients and bake the pockets to perfection in the oven. I stuffed my pizza pockets with pepperoni and peppers because I love the sweet and savory flavors of these ingredients.
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Sweet and Sticky Spare Ribs
My mom made the absolute best simple, sweet, and sticky spareribs. For every major holiday celebration with family, she would make spareribs using her signature sauce. Everyone goes straight for her spareribs without hesitation. She uses the same all-purpose sauce to stir fry or bake pretty much all meats. She has used this sauce for chicken wings, beef cubes, and pork chops. These ribs are so good, I always end up eating one too many during the holidays. Earlier this week, I had a sudden craving for spareribs. I picked up a rack of spareribs on Friday night, called my mom to confirm the instructions for making her version of spareribs, and then started on the preparation. My mom’s instructions always sound like a little bit of this, dash of that, scoop of this, and so on. Since I’ve watched my mom make ribs so many times, I can pretty much remember most of the steps, but I wanted to call my mom to confirm. I followed my mom’s method of rubbing the ribs in a cornstarch rub, rinsing off the cornstarch rub, and marinating the spareribs in sugar, soy sauce, and oyster sauce the evening before. The next day, I preheated the oven to 375°F, brushed on some additional sauce, and then baked up the delicious ribs in the oven. In the final stage of baking, I brushed on some barbecue sauce, and then let the ribs finish browning in the oven.
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Chocolate Cupcakes with Raspberry Frosting
February has been a pretty festive month so far. Kevin and I celebrated Chinese New Year just last week and now we are celebrating Valentine’s Day. Today, I wanted to share a first date story and one more sweet treat for Valentine’s Day. I’ve been sharing Valentine’s Day celebration recipes all week, but this one takes the cake. The inspiration for my chocolate cupcakes with raspberry frosting came about as I reminisced about one of my first dates with Kevin many years ago. Back when I was still a student at Michigan, Kevin brought me to The Melting Pot in Ann Arbor to celebrate one of our very first Valentine’s Day holidays as a couple. He had made reservations ahead of time, met up with me after one of my classes, and walked with me down to Main Street to surprise me with a romantic dinner. We ordered a cheese fondue with assorted meats, and a chocolate fondue with assorted fruits. We spent the entire night chatting and connecting over good food. While we enjoyed the cheese fondue, we both loved the chocolate fondue with fresh fruit. Mostly, I loved the combination of chocolate with fruit. This combination inspired me to make chocolate cupcakes with raspberry frosting mainly because chocolate pairs very well with raspberries.
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Hearty Pepperoni and Arugula Cast Iron Pizza
I typically crave pizza at least once a week. Over the weekend, Kevin and I celebrated Valentine’s Day early with a simple dinner. My hearty pepperoni and arugula cast iron pizza was the star of our dinner. I cut up pieces of pepperoni into little heart shapes and added them to my pizza. Pizza is one of my favorite foods in the world. When I lived in New York, I ate pizza at least once each week. I didn’t start making my own pizza from scratch until I moved to the Midwest. When I make my pizza, I usually bake my pizza in the oven on top of a pizza stone or directly on a sheet pan. This time around, I decided to make pizza directly in a cast iron skillet. I preheated the oven with the cast iron skillet in the oven. When the oven reached 500°F, I carefully removed the cast iron skillet from the oven, drizzled on some olive oil, pressed the pizza dough into the skillet, topped the pizza with my favorite ingredients, and baked the pizza in the oven until it turned golden brown. The best part about a cast iron pizza is the dough develops a nice browning at the bottom.
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