Oriental Sesame Pasta

When you're feeling incredibly lazy or don't have a lot of ingredients at hand, and pasta is your dish of choice, this recipe for oriental sesame pasta is something you should try. It's pretty tasty and reminds me of Yellow Cab's Charlie Chan Chicken (without the chicken or peanuts of course). The lack of green in the picture is brought on by the absence of scallions, which I had substituted with a regular onion.

Creamy Mushroom Sauce

I decided to get rid of the remaining spinach fettuccine so made a mushroom sauce for it using this recipe. Still too lazy to get out the Nikon, so:

Magnolia Pancake Plus

So I usually get a vanilla Pillsbury mix for pancakes (there was a time when I made my own pancake mix and will probably go back to doing that, but right now I'm always in a rush getting breakfast on the table - I spend too much time online, lol), but I thought I'd try this one of Magnolia. I don't think it turned me into a fan. This one requires you to just add water (while other mixes usually call for an egg, oil, and water). Anyway, I don't know what I did wrong, but the pancakes scorched easily (just very slightly - so might be my error somewhere) and the consistency of the batter was a little off (it crumbled a bit when I flipped it - didn't do it too soon either because like I said, the bottom part would already be dark brown, instead of golden brown, each time). It did come with its own syrup (got the strawberry and chocolate ones because we already have maple here) and it did allow for some fun (view pic). Anyway, will try the chocolate one sometime soon and see if I'll get a better hang of cooking this brand then. I'll update re this topic when I do that. Sorry about the pictures again.

Some Other Fish Besides Tuna

So another poor picture from moi. These are fish fillets I made last night. We had some labahita (mustard surgeonfish) in the freezer, so got out the cornstarch, salt and pepper. I managed to come up with this.

Curried Tuna

Really, this blog should have been called "Tuna Recipes" or something. Yes, once again we had tuna last night. I was craving curry, so I googled for a recipe and luckily found this simple one (all the others required ingredients I didn't have on hand). It's good, but doesn't have bite at all. If everybody in your home can eat spicy food, you can put chili peppers in it. If you have a toddler like I do, you can cook it plain and then just sprinkle red pepper flakes to your own serving.

Husband did something to the camera for something artsy-fartsy so I can't take a decent normal picture. Used phone for this.

Tuna Mixed Vegetables Stir Fry

A quick rummage through the cupboard told me that the next meal would have to consist of the ubiquitous tuna. What variation would I do then? I remembered the package of mixed vegetables in the freezer and came up with this experiment.

Ingredients:
1 lb (in my case, it was 3 5.5 oz cans) tuna, drained
3 cloves of garlic, minced
half a medium onion, chopped
1 1/2 T soy sauce
dash of salt
dash of ground black pepper
1/2 C water
1 T cornstarch
1 t brown sugar
dash of sesame oil
1 1/2 C frozen mixed vegetables

Mix water, cornstarch, 1 T soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil well. Set aside.

Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Add tuna and then garlic and onion. Cook until onions are translucent. Add mixed vegetables. Season with salt and pepper, plus the remaining soy sauce. Stir to blend. Pour prepared liquid mixture. Simmer until sauce thickens. Adjust seasonings according to your liking.

Easy Mushroom Adobo

I rose from the disastrous ashes that were the tortilla de patata and got back in the kitchen to come up with the moderate success that was the mushroom adobo. I haven't attempted the adobo on anything but mushrooms (since we eat meat very sparingly anyway) and so far so good.

Ingredients:
1 can (around 200 g net wt) mushrooms, drained
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 T white vinegar
2 T soy sauce
1/4 C olive oil
1 T brown sugar

Heat a pan. Add oil, mushrooms, garlic, vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar. Stir and then turn the heat on low. Simmer covered with a tight-fitting lid for about 20 mins. Remove lid and continue heating until liquid evaporates. Serve as tapas or eat with rice.

How Not to Do the Spanish Tortilla

Had a tortilla de patata fiasco in the kitchen yesterday. Wanna see a disastrous tortilla española? Look.

It was edible, but not very pretty. Anyway, my husband and I ate it. Except for a few negligible (sez I) scorched parts (you can see it in the pic), I'd say it was pretty decent tasting. What actually happened was that I combined two recipes and got confused. Besides the eggs and potatoes, I added cheese and mortadella. I won't post the recipe here until I've done it right, so expect more attempts at the tortilla soon.

Cucumber Shake, Tilapia Mushroom Dinner

I had a cucumber that would start rotting away if I didn't make something out of it (and we can't have that; wasting food is tantamount to a mortal sin around here), so I ended up making a cucumber shake. Peeled and cut up the cucumber. Tossed it in the blender which already had 1/4 C brown sugar and 1 C fresh milk. Added a tray and a half of ice cubes, covered the blender and pressed the button. LOL. No wonder I didn't get that gig writing recipes!

For dinner, thawed frozen tilapia and cooked it with mushrooms, tomato, and olives.

2 two teaspoons of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 can (about 200 g) mushrooms, drained
1/4 cup pitted green olives with juice, quartered
1 green tomato (other types would work, but this is what I had)
a sprinkling of dried Italian herbs
a sprinkling of dried basil
tilapia (it was probably 4 filets, but I ended up tearing the things up)
salt and black pepper

Heat 2 teaspoons olive oil in skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and mushrooms. Cook about 5 minutes. Add olives (plus juice), tomato and
herbs and cook until juice evaporates. Remove from heat.

In another pan, heat remaining 2 teaspoons olive oil. Rub the tilapia with the salt and pepper seasoning. Cook tilapia for about five minutes, turning halfway. Add fish to the vegetables and warm the entire thing before serving with rice.

Tuna Pasta

We always have canned tuna in our cupboard. Since we're not feeding our daughter meat other than fish and the occasional chicken (I conceded on this one since Marguerite is such a picky eater and I want to beef up her nutrient intake), tuna, canned or fresh, figures a lot in our diet. Last night, upon rooting through our supplies, I came up with a package of spinach fettuccine, the ever present tuna, tomato sauce, and other ingredients that indicate the makings of some pasta dish. I ended up making this one (2 biggish servings?):

Ingredients:
1 can tuna (155 g/ 5.5 oz)
1/4 C olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
half a medium onion
1 package tomato sauce (forgot to check size, but it's probably 250 g)
1 T brown sugar
chopped olives (optional)
a fistful of fettuccine
some grated cheese

Cook the pasta. How? Well, um, boil water, add pasta (don't break; bend gently with a wooden spoon), a drop of olive oil, a dash of salt. Stir to get rid of clumps, then wait until it's as you like it. I usually get a piece to do a bite test on. When done, drain and dump into a serving bowl.

For the tuna sauce, sauté garlic and onion in olive oil over medium heat. Add drained tuna and stir well. Add tomato sauce. Stir in the brown sugar. Cook over low heat for about 30 mins. Toss in olives. Pour mess over cooked pasta. Must have cheese, so:

Eggs? Bread? How About Egg-in-the-Hole?

I wanted to try something new for breakfast involving eggs and bread. This is how I remembered "egg in the basket", also called "egg in the hole", from some distant memory.

It was simple enough and quick to make (was running late this morning on account of other chores I had put off doing this weekend). Found several recipes, but decided to go for this one. I added cooked strips of salami for my husband, the meat guy. Didn't waste the cut out circles of bread either. Buttered and jammed them for my daughter, but I ended up eating most of them while she had my egg-in-the-hole.

No Need to Fret When You Can Fritter Leftover Bananas

So we're off to our church camp today. Had five bananas left that would definitely not keep until we get back and would probably not stand the trip without turning into mush (it's not the bananas, it's me), so decided to turn them into fritters. Followed this recipe. Results weren't very attractive (probably messed up somewhere) but they were still yummy all the same.

Idgie Threadgoode's Influence

One of my favorite authors ever is Fannie Flagg and one of my favorite movies ever is "Fried Green Tomatoes" (my favorite Fannie Flagg book however is "Standing in the Rainbow". No, wait. I like "Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man" the most. No, wait! I think it's really "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café". No, wait... well, you get the idea.). Anyway, my copy of "Fried Green Tomatoes" (the novel) has recipes included in it. My sister has done the recipe for fried green tomatoes and okra pops in the past and, again, they're a good alternative to potato chips. Anyway, last night I had a few green tomatoes here so I decided to fry a couple. Sadly my book is in my parents' house, so I had to google instructions. I chose this one because it's the simplest and also because I don't have cornmeal here. I think they turned out okay. They're probably better with cornmeal though.