Fried Rice Adventure

Fried rice is something that I, and I'm sure many others, find delicious, but somewhat intimidating to attempt to create. The other night I noticed the weather was horrible and I had 0 desire to leave my nice warm house, but I had yet to eat dinner and didn't have many prospects around the house. I thought about reverting to a childlike state just making a peanut butter sandwich, but that didn't sound appealing at all.

I thought about what food would give me excitement as I prepared it, the anticipation of it being exactly what I wanted, and just not being able to stand having to wait. Christmas as a child all over again. Then I realized a batch of fried rice with vegetables and chicken was what I wanted to make me act like the dog from the "Beggin Strips" commercial; just stupid with my want of food.

I started rummaging through the pantry, looking for long neglected items that could be the delicious attendees to my fried rice party. I became worried that my fried rice would not be, unless I braved the weather, due to my inability to find anything that would be worth a damn in fried rice. After shoving cans out of the way, it was meant to be. I found a can of water chestnuts and bean sprouts hiding in the corner, and took them as my jumping off point. I didn't find hardly anything else though, so my fried rice would be water chestnuts, bean sprouts, onions, and chicken. However, with what I didn't have in ingredient variety I would make up with flavors and spices.

Ingredients:

All of these are the amounts I used in my experimental run at this, feel free to add or take away

About 4 cups cooked rice
2 cups of onion, chopped
1/2 14.5 oz can of bean sprouts
1/2 can of water chestnuts
1 large chicken breast, sliced thin
Safflower Oil
Sesame Oil
1/4 cup soy sauce adding it a bit at a time
3 cloves garlic, minced
Ground ginger to taste (i just sprinkled a bit in until it smelled right)
1/4 cup Sizzling Salads Sesame Ginger Salad Dressing(comes in a pack with a dressing for salad and a dressing for meat. I actually used the salad dressing for this)

Cooking Directions:

I started by cooking my chicken and seasoning it to be added to the rice when it had finished cooking. I used safflower oil since it's better for cooking at high temperatures and added the chicken, Sesame ginger sauce, and a little extra bit of soy sauce. I simply cooked this until the chicken was cooked through and set it off to the side to wait. (Smelled delicious and I had to keep myself from saying "screw the rice, i''ll just eat this chicken")

Moving on to the rice bit, we start by cooking the onions over high until they were about half done. For this I used a mix of safflower and sesame oil and busted out the wok! If you don't have a wok or similarly stupid huge pan to put 4 cups of cooked rice in, then I would suggest halving the recipe or cooking it in separate batches. Once cooked halfway, I added the water chestnuts so they could have a chance to soften just a bit (a few minutes). Now time for the rice to join the party! Dump it in and begin to fry, remember this is on high heat! Make sure you have enough oil in the pan, but not too much that it's all over the place in a bad way.

This will take patience...I kinda failed at this point, lol. My rice still tasted delicious, but it definitely could've gone longer during this stage to make it feel more like fried rice. I kept thinking "is it done now? I don't think so....damn...should I just eat the stupid chicken and forget it? NO, keep cooking damn your eyes!" Anyways, fry the rice, onion, and water chestnuts until a lot of the water has left the rice and it looks more crumbly (you know how fried rice looks when you get it at a restaurant) At this point we're ready to add in about 1.5 Tbsp of sesame oil and the minced garlic. Make a clearing in the rice and put the oil and garlic in the middle, just to let the garlic cook a  little, then begin mixing everything together. You also add the soy sauce and bean sprouts at this time (make sure to add the soy sauce a little at a time to make sure you like the flavor and that the rice needs more. I added mine and then ended up adding a bit more of the sesame ginger dressing and soy sauce at the end to make the flavor really come out) Also make sure to add your cooked chicken and mix it in.

I did notice when i was finished that it wasn't very colorful, and looked rather pale, so I definitely know I should have cooked my rice longer, so I'll know that for next time, but I also thought a way to make it better would be to add scallions and cabbage. I think about 1.5-2 cups of cabbage would work really well. If you want to add it in, put it in and cook it a few minutes to get everything the same temperature. Voila!

In the end, I've learned that fried rice really isn't that hard to make, it's just a game of patience and fighting your laziness of not wanting to go get ingredients and instead rummaging around until you scrape together things that you forgot you owned and decided would make an ok fried rice. I know my second run at fried rice will be less spur of the moment and probably better planned out and I won't be as hungry as a pack of wolves while I make it.


Now go eat it like you're a kid getting home from Halloween and get to eat as much candy as you can in the next 5 minutes.

Not a super great pic, but damn was it delicious!

-Culinary Mage

Awesome craft project 00

So with the holidays everything got crazy busy, but I wanted to post a picture of the present I made for a friend this holiday season. I made 6 pokeballs out of pearler beads and put cork on the back to make them into coasters. I found 8-bit pokeball guides online, and dug through a crazy amount of beads to find all the colors i needed. The end result was totally worth it though!

For those who have never worked with pearler  beads before the process is very simple and you can make a lot of neat projects!

Great ball, pokeball, heavy ball, master ball, nest ball, & friend ball.

You need the plastic pegboard that is sold in craft stores with the pearler beads. I find the best way to do it, is to figure out what your making (either rough plan in your head, a sketch, or pictures online) and start pulling out the specific colors you'll need. Once you have enough of each, I used a pair of tweezers to pick up and place the little beads onto the pegboard.

Once you have your design set, put a piece of parchment paper over the beads and take a preheated iron(set to a lower setting, so you don't melt the beads too much) and set it on the parchment paper and glide it around over the design. Once you start to see the circles of the beads get darker (as if they're sweating) check to see how well everything is melted. If some beads aren't melted together as much as others, put more heat on that area. All the beads must be slightly melted to each other otherwise it all falls apart ( Kind of like making a grilled cheese or a quesadilla, if the cheese isn't melted to  both sides or one another it'll fall apart when you try to eat it)

Once all the beads have slightly melted to one another you can let it cool and take it off the pegboard. This is a great project if you have friends that like 8-bit style! You can make all sorts of projects like video game character magnets to coasters!

Enjoy!
-CulinaryMage

Baklava

Baklava is something that I have had many times but never attempted to make myself. Oddly enough, for how much I like Baklava, I'm not a huge fan of nuts. Therefore I decided to make apple baklava in an attempt to have less nuts and a spin on the traditional form. 

I found this recipe through an app on my phone, which if you like to cook and try new recipes, and also have a smartphone, you should probably get. I believe it is simply titled "recipes" and the icon is a green square with a measuring cup inside it. After picking this recipe I set out gathering the ingredients and my culinary partner in crime, Danielle. 

We followed the instructions of the recipe to the T, but quickly found out that a few things were off. The recipe called for 6 each of 2 different kinds of apples, which took copious amounts of time to peel, core, and slice. We used maybe 1/3 of this mixture and found ourselves with a large bowl of apples left over with no purpose in the recipe.  We hit no further snags in the creation of the baklava until it came to cooking time. We finished assembly and popped the pan in the oven to wait for it to transform into delicious sweet baklava. However, like a fool I forgot to take into account the fact that my oven, like all other appliances in my apartment, is a beast at it's job. The recipe called for 35-40 minutes in the oven, and I probably only needed about 30-35 minutes so the edges of our baklava came out a little extra flaky and crunchy.

Once we allowed it to cool and tasted it, the end result was fairly delicious, despite the extra time in the oven. We also discovered that once it had sat for a day in it's container, the moisture had softened it a bit, making it even better. The time that was required to assemble this particular recipe was a bit of a deterrent to want to make it often, but definitely a good special occasion treat for something a little out of the ordinary.

Apple Baklava Rating: 8/10

With the holidays coming up, I'm not sure what i'll be trying next. When I find something awesome, I'll be sure to post it.


Below is the recipe and instructions for Apple Baklava:
*note the apple quantity necessary has been edited by me to avoid the superfluous amount of apples that I ended up with. 

Ingredients:
2 Golden delicious apples
2 Granny smith apples
2 Tbsp. Unsalted butter
6 Tbsp. Sugar
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
Nut Mixture:
2 1/2 C Walnuts, chopped
1/2 C Sugar
1/2 tsp. Grated lemon peel
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
20 Sheets phyllo dough
6 Tbsp Unsalted butter, melted
2 Tbsp. Plain dry bread crumbs (optional)
2 Tbsp. Honey

Assembly:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
2. Peel & slice apples
3. Melt butter in pan, then add apples, sugar & cinnamon. Cook until tender (about 10-15 minutes) Let cool.
4.  Combine ingredients for nut mixture (walnuts, sugar, lemon peel, & cinnamon)
5. Brush jelly roll pan with butter, place 1 phyllo sheet on pan and brush it with butter
6. Repeat layering 4 phyllo sheets, brushing each with butter
7. Spread 2 C nut mixture on top of phyllo, then repeat layering with 5 more phyllo sheets, buttering each.
8. Spread apple mixture over phyllo, repeat layering with 5 more phyllo sheets
9. Sprinkle remaining nut mixture on top, and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Top with 5 remaining phyllo sheets, buttering each.
10. Cut baklava into diamonds or squares
11. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until slightly golden (make sure it's not too well done at this point, since it will be baking an additional 5 minutes)
12. Drizzle with honey and bake an additional 5 minutes
13. Cool on wire rack, and serve warm with additional honey if desired.

Final Product:

Finished baklava fresh from the oven!

Shooter Sandwich a.k.a Sandwich of Awesome

I tried to determine what would be the best recipe to start off my cooking quest and with help from a good friend, it was decided that a shooter sandwich would be a great starting point.

I feel a little background on this epic sandwich is in order for those who have not yet come across it. I discovered the shooter sandwich on the website Reddit, I was browsing through the pictures tab and came across this photo album showing the steps in creating this glorious piece of edible art. From that point I wanted to make one, but couldn't find the right time or person to make it. Enter Danielle. I told her about the sandwich that starts out normally and transforms given time. It essentially boils down to a giant bread bowl with a steak in the bottom, a filling of sauteed vegetables on top, another steak and then the bread bowl lid. Seal it up and wait 8 agonizing hours until you unwrap it and are finally able to eat it.

So here's what we did:

• Determined that this sandwich needed to be created right that moment despite the fact that it was 1am
• Went to the store to procure the few items we didn't have in stock
• Gathered our ingredients and got busy making our sandwich

 To make a shooter sandwich, you start with a large round loaf of bread, cut off a lid,  and hollow it out like a giant soup bowl. Then you cook 2 steaks (or in our case 1 large steak) in whatever seasonings you find appealing, depending on what kind of flavor you're hoping the sandwich to have. While the steak is cooking make a filling of whatever strikes your fancy, we chose red pepper, onion, and garlic.  Chop them pretty finely and cook until tender (we cooked them in some of the dripping of the steak, which I highly recommend) We determined about 3-4 cups of filling is needed, depending on how thick you want the layer to be. Once everything is to your desired level of doneness it's time to start the assembly. Put a steak (or half of a large one) into the bottom, fill around the sides and on top of the steak with a god thick layer of the filling, top with the remaining steak, and put the lid back on. Have butcher's paper on hand or parchment paper to wrap the sandwich in and tie with a string (or if you don't have string we discovered duct tape works nicely in a pinch) Wrap the whole thing in 2 layers of tin foil, then set out finding a lot of weight. We used a marble chessboard with a large bowl on top and then we filled the bowl with an assortment of heavy items from textbooks to hand weights. We even used a level to ensure that our sandwich would come out flat and not lopsided. Then you wait.

After about 8 hours, the sandwich has sat what I consider the minimum amount of time. Unwrap the sandwich and cut it into how many pieces you want (depending on if you want to share a lot of it or not) It doesn't really need any condiments, as it is particularly flavorful on it's own, and moist. We discovered that it does however go pretty fantastically with homemade french fries!


The shooter sandwich was a great success and made a perfect Endeavor 00, Pictures below show the process. Next up: Apple Baklava

Shooter Sandwich Rating: 10/10