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.