Easy Dinner ('Cause I'm Lazy)

XO Sauce Noodles （XO 拌麵）

Okay, so my sister, who is also my roommate, didn't do the dishes last night like she was supposed to so I had no space to really work on something for dinner. Such the case, I just decided to make an easy dry noodle thing for the two of us.

Nothing can be simpler than this (of course, exaggerating a little bit since cereal is way easier than this, lol). Fast, easy, and delicious.

So this XO Sauce is this really tasty Cantonese seafood sauce. I'm not talking about fish sauce! You might have seen this before at some dim sum restaurants (the ones that have it) when they have the small plates of soy, mustard, sauce condiments on the table. Its comprised of dried baby shrimp, scallops, and...peppers I'm sure marinated in an oil of some sort. I like Lee Kum Kee's brand of XO sauce (according to my mom, its also the #1 brand for XO sauce, though I'm not sure if thats really true or not ^^;).

The base sauce for the noodles is just a little light soy sauce, light black vinegar, how ever much chili oil you like, diced green onions, minced garlic (I add them when I really don't plan to go out for the rest of the day), a nice tsp or so of XO sauce, some cilantro, and anything else I feel like adding that would, I feel, taste pretty good in the mix (like julienned marinated tofu, you know those darker block type tofus).

I like cilantro so I added some in mine, and since this is supposed to be easy I just ripped them up into the sauce instead of pulling out my cutting board and mincing them. My sister doesn't like the herb as much as me...if fact, I think she detests it, so hers is the white bowl with none in it. Seriously, she is so picky. Sometimes makes me wonder how she ever grew up.

The noodles are just your everyday, regular dried noodles you can get in any Oriental or Asian supermarket. I used oil noodles (油麺) this time, but ramen (拉麵) or any other dried noodle you like works just as well.

Yummy noodles!
Recipe:

This is mostly about ratios, so...the main thing here is

• soy sauce : vinegar --> 1:2 (I sometimes prefer going a little under the 1:2 for the soy and make it 1:2 1/2 since the type of vinegar I use has a nice sweet and sour taste to it. Also, I think the noodles taste better when they have more tang to it)
  

Now, the amounts I usually use for 1 serving is more or less:

• ~2 cups of cooked noodle.
• 2 1/2 tsp of soy/vinegar mix (I usually just use the spoon I have on hand to measure it out into the bowl)
• 1/4~1/2 tsp or chili oil (I find it pleasantly mild which just enough of the chili oil flavor)
• 1 1/2 tbsp of diced green onion
• 1 1/2 tsp (or more) or so of XO sauce (I don't use a lot because this amount, to me, is just enough to flavor the noodles with all its wonderful seafood goodness ^^)
• + Anything else you want.
  

Anyway, these are really just guidelines. You can play around with all the ratios as much as you like.

I'll put the actual ratios of stuff I used later on. Now, it is time to do calculus!

Developing Blueberry Muffins

My mom normally skips breakfast, which irritates me whenever she does this, but since she has been getting busier and busier at her work during lunch hours she felt that it would be best to eat breakfast since some days she misses lunch all together. Thus, I decided to start baking muffins for her to eat on her way to or at work (since she said that these days she just buys a cup of coffee and a donut =_=).

Because she usually eats out a lot during lunch, and I absolutely have no idea what she does for dinner...if she eats dinner...I decided to try and incorporate a few healthy additions to her muffins, like whole wheat flour, oats, a banana now and then, etc., to try and get some dietary fiber into her diet. After doing this for twice (I make a batch every weekend for her to eat during the week) I wanted to develop a muffin recipe that would have less oil in it (I use 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil in my muffins) because, in the end even if it is a better type, oil is still oil and I feel it best not to have too much of it in a day. Therefore, I decided to work applesauce into the mix ^_^.


So, the goal was to make moist muffins that are mildly sweet (I don't have much of a sweet tooth these days and that goes for my mom too) with good blueberry flavor, which is one of her favorite fruits. I also know she likes almonds to I made sure to include those in there too. I also used some whole wheat flour and honey to sweeten, vs having sugar alone. No oats this time though, it would have been a little overwhelming, I feel. I also used low fat yogurt in the recipe too to take the place of some of the 2% milk to impart a different texture and flavor in the finished product...well, at least I felt it would ^_^.
TADA!~ Ready to bake! Don't ya just love the internet~

Out of the oven and almost completely cooled

In the end, the recipe turned out wonderfully moist and pleasantly dense chewy muffins with delicious blueberry aroma and flavor.
It was pretty successful, except for one exception. I did come across a problem which I didn't really think about prior to this. When I tried to take the paper liner off it stuck, a lot, to the muffin; I assume it was because there wasn't a lot of oil in them for release. My solution I guess would probably be to either bake them without paper liners or bake them with a increase from 1 tsp of oil to 1 tbsp. But with a little finesse and slow peeling, it came off without taking much of the muffin with it and leaving the muffin relatively unharmed (see pictures below).

I do love how the wild blueberries are speckled everywhere in the muffin. So tasty!~

Okay, so here is the recipe:














Blueberry and Almond Muffins

• 1 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour, divided
• 1 cup of whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
  
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1/2 tsp of baking soda
• 1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce
• 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
  
• 1/4 cup of honey
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
  
• 1/2 cup of low fat yogurt
• 1/4 cup of 2% milk (or enough so that, when added to the yogurt= 3/4 cup 0f yogurt/milk)
• 1 cup of fresh or frozen wild blueberries (they work better, I feel, because the smaller size makes them easier to distribute while not making it so you bite into a big berry pocket when you eat them)
• 1/2 cup of sliced toasted almonds, unsalted, + more for topping
  

1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Line muffin pan with 12 paper cup liners (or spray muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray).
   
2. Spoon flour into measuring cup and level with a knife. Combine both kinds of flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl. Mix with a whisk or whatever you have on hand until combined.
3. Measure out a cup of fresh or frozen wild blueberries in a separate bowl and add enough of the 1/2 cup of flour until you can coat all of the blueberries. Pour the left over flour into the rest of the flour mixture.
4. Whisk egg in a large bowl. Add the honey into the egg and whisk until well combined. Then, add applesauce, milk/yogurt, extra virgin olive oil, and vanilla extract into the same bowl until everything is well combined.
5. Spoon half of the flour mixture into the wet mixture. Mix with a spatula until it starts to incorporate (it doesn't have to be well mixed). Add the rest of the flour mixture into the large, wet mixture, bowl and mix until it is just all well incorporated. Add the 1/2 cup of almonds and gently fold into the batter until almost combined. Add the 1 cup of flour coated blueberries into the batter and gently mix until just well combined. (It's okay if it the blueberries just start to bleed a little, it shouldn't affect the finished product's color all that much).
6. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups and top each muffin with some of the extra almonds (you can be pretty liberal with how much you put on).
   
7. Place muffin pan into preheated 400F oven and bake for 5 minutes. Then, turn the heat down to 375F and bake for another 5 minutes. After this, rotate the muffin pan (consider checking how done they are by inserting a toothpick and seeing if it comes out clean) and bake at 350F temp for another 10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. The muffins should also spring back when touched lightly.
8. Remove muffin pan and cool for 5 minutes in the pan (if you are doing it without paper liners, consider taking them out earlier since they might start getting a bit soggy on the bottom). Move the muffins to a wire rack and let cool for another 10 minutes (or until the cool completely if you don't care to eat them just yet).

I still don't feel that she gets enough nutrition in her diet, but I guess having her eat a better breakfast is better than nothing.

Enjoy!~

Note: The paper actually came off better after a day in the fridge! Thats good to know, hehe~

My Pizza Experiment

I'm bored, so I might as well just blog about some random stuff that most people would find nonsensical. Oh well, bare with me here.

Let me first start off by saying that this long entry is a random story of how I made a pizza, and it is a review of how my newly purchased Calphalon Pizza Pan worked out.

Okay, so I had decided to make a pizza at home last week (also decided to do it because my mom and sister were asking when I would do it again. Yes, again. I had tried making one before, and I would rather not think about that first experience ever again...yes). Well, anyway, I was thinking that since I had some extra marinara sauce frozen in the freezer from my first attempt I should try using it up.

First step was to get the tools. My last fiasco relied on a few cookie sheets, and I didn't wanna do go through that ordeal again. I therefore did some research on what I should buy for the baking tool. I was considering getting a baking stone, but in the end thought it might be a little excessive and, subsequently, settled on getting a pizza pan/pizza crisper. I visited a lot of websites to read consumer review s and product descriptions and eventually decided to get the Kitchen Essentials Gold Touch 16" Pizza Pas by Calphalon. I bought mine at Target for a pretty good price.

Okay, at this point I have my pan and it just so happened that I had all the ingredients in my fridge already, all that was left was for me to make the pizza dough. For the dough I followed a 2006 Cooking Light pizza dough recipe I had looked up online. I used the recipe before and the finished product's texture was pretty decent, but it did kinda lack strong flavor on its own. So I added some dried oregano into the dough this time and next time I might add a little olive oil into the mix too because, in retrospect, it was a tad dry...ish... Oh, and another thing about the dough, it was kinda difficult to work with. It was very sticky and tacky and I had to use a lot of extra flour to dust my work surface and hand ever time I had to knead it. But it worked out in the end~

When everything was ready to be assembled, I looked at the Calphalon pan product instructions on the back and washed it in warm soapy water before use like it had instructed. For some reason though, the product didn't have a max heat described anywhere on it (I also looked at the website and couldn't find anything about it for the product). So, I just went with their provided pizza recipe that was stamped on the back of the product label cardboard and preheated my oven to 425F. I readied my pizza, assembled and all, on the pan and stuck it in my oven on the lowest rack.

To my surprise, when I checked up on it a few minutes later, I noticed that the pan had warped a little, the noticable kind of little, which made me a little irritated. The pan of course went back to normal when it cooled down a bit, but I did contact Calphalon about it.

Anyway, in the end, I must say that it turned out pretty good, considering I had to keep pulling at the edges and pinching in the thin parts in the center. The base was a good thickness and the crust was nice and crisp with a pleasant chewy texture on the inside. The pan's nonstick surface worked well too and the pizza slide right off. Cleaning the pan afterwards wasn't a bid problem either, since no dough got stuck in the holes (some people had complained about washing pizza pan's in general because of this). MY problem, however, was that after resting a while off the pizza pan, it started to get a bit soft on the bottom since I don't have an appropriate place to put the pizza on for cutting/resting.

All in all the pizza pan did it's job. I was quite happy with the result, minus the whole minor warping thing of course (which I had contacted Calphalon about and am in the middle of getting it resolved). I don't know it if was just a little defective, but Calphalon Consumer Relations had e-mailed me back saying that this is definitely not normal (obviously). I would probably say that this thing works pretty well in baking a pizza if you don't want to get a baking stone...and I would use it again; however, first things first, I'm going to see how this customer help is going to turn out.

New Blogger

Well, I can say that I have never really had a blog before, and I think this will be interesting. My bet is that I will use it for a few weeks and then slowly forget about it...so, I wonder how long I can last ^^?

I guess I will end up making random comments and stuff~