Week 3: Tuesday: Cod Stir Fry

Here is the link to the recipe that I found: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Chunky-Cod-Stir-Fry

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1/3 cup chicken broth (Swanson Organic Broth, 3.59)
• 2 tablespoons sherry or additional chicken broth 1TB broth, 1 TB Sicilia Lemon Juice (2.29) 
• 2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
• 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepepr flakes
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 tablespoon canola oil
• 1 package (16 ounces) A little bit of frozen stir-fry vegetable blend, thawed + a little chopped celery, 1/2 lb bean sprouts (81 cents), and bok choy
• 1 small sweet red pepper, julienned
• 1 pound cod, cut into 1-inch cubes (3 packages of frozen cod from Fish Taco Night)
• 1/4 cup chopped peanuts
• 4 cups hot cooked rice

Directions

• In a bowl, combine the first five ingredients until blended; set aside. Wash vegetables. Boy choy, cut into thumb sized pieces. Chop celery. In a nonstick skillet or wok, stir-fry garlic in oil for 30 seconds. Add mixed vegetables; stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add red pepper; stir-fry for 2 minutes or until crisp-tender. Put vegetables in a drainable bowl and then put into the pan. Use a spatula-type thing and stir around the vegetables for about 2 minutes (I'm not sure if that's stir-frying). Cover with a lid until bok choy and sprouts change color. Remove and set in a bowl.
• Remove and keep warm. I marinated (i.e., put in a bowl with stuff) cod with a few squirts of lemon juice and salt and pepper, which I soaked while cooking the vegetables. Add more oil. Add half of the cod to skillet; gently stir-fry for 3-5 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork. Remove and keep warm. Repeat with remaining cod. 
• Stir reserved broth mixture and add to skillet. I also added the marinade from the cod and a ladle of chicken soup that Mom and I made over the weekend (I might get to that later). Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened (The sauce actually thickens because of the corn starch; it's one thing to know that corn starch is a thickener, and completely another to see it with your own eyes: magic!). Return vegetables and fish to the pan. Add peanuts. Gently stir to coat. Cover and cook for 1 minute or until heated through. Serve over rice. Yield: 4 servings.

Response: The smell was amazing. Mom, Dad, and Brother all liked it, and mom liked the extra lemon flavor, but they all remarked that it was slightly too salty. Maybe it was because I added the marinade to the sauce, or maybe it was the soy sauce, or maybe our family's tastes are more mild. Maybe next time I can add more vegetables, or my dad said I could wash the cod off after I marinated it and before I cooked it. 

And now, something I've never done before: picture!

(Okay, admittedly it looks a bit mushy, but trust me, it's good!)

Note: for dinner, my dad also grilled half a piece of salmon, and I baked puff pastries with some prepackaged puff pastry dough and banana and honey and chocolate and peanut butter for fillings (the filling leaked out a bit while baking. Next time, I'll put tin foil over the baking sheet). 

Stick around - tonight I'm planning a mango-avocado pasta!

Week 2: Thursday: the Quiche

I did consult recipes for pie crusts: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_pie_crust/
And quiches:http://allrecipes.com/recipe/easy-broccoli-quiche/,
but I tried to combine all of the recipes and create a MacGyver-like quiche.

Pie crust: Flour, a little salt, a little sugar, and leftover corn tortilla in a blender. Taken out of the blender, and mixed with about 1/8 cup butter and a little water until it had a doughy consistency. Took a cupcake pan and sprayed the insides with Pam, or butter, or olive oil. Spread the pie crust inside the cups.

Filling: Spicy buffalo wings, toaster-ovened and deboned. Placed one piece of swiss cheese over the meat and poured soymilk over it. Heated until cheese melted, and soymilk boiled down a little.

Pour filling into the pie crust. Bake 350 degrees F, 25 minutes, or until crusts golden.

Pocket cake with remaining filling:
Remove filling. Spread one corn tortilla along bottom of pan. Place filling on top. Cover with another piece of  corn tortilla. Put flour along the edges of the pan, where the corn tortillas come together. Pour soymilk where the flour was poured. Cook until the bottom is solid enough to be flipped without the cake coming apart. Flip. Cook the other side. Done!

(Picture forthcoming)

Week 2: Monday: The Fish Taco Rejection

I'm just going to stop trying to post breakfast and lunches unless I actually make them, because really I tend to miss breakfast and eat out for lunch, and my family doesn't do a sit down breakfast or lunch. We mostly scavenge. (Also, I didn't post on the weekends because my mom only 'hired' me to 'work' on weekdays.)

DINNER: Fish Taco
Last week I'd picked up a few free recipe cards at the supermarket, and my brother saw the fish taco recipe. He picked it out specifically and said that he would eat them if I made them. So Monday afternoon I was extremely excited and I got my dad to go with me to Albertsons to get fish.

1/2 lb flaky fish, such as mahi mahi or grouper used fish sticks and packages of frozen cod
cumin, salt, and pepper to taste
6 inch corn tortillas
chopped lettuce
chopped tomato
Sauce: 4TBsp mayonaise : 1 TBsp salsa

Putting together a taco should be pretty self-explanatory. The main issue is cooking the fish. The fish sticks are easy, because you can just microwave them or put them into a toaster oven. The frozen cod requires cooking.

1. Defrost in sink
2. Season with salt, pepper, and cumin
3. The directions on the card said just to cook it 3-5 minutes on each side. I figured it was just a few drops of oil on a pan, and the fish on the pan. I thought that's what my dad meant when he asked me if I knew how to fry things.

How to fry things:
1. Get a pot tall enough to contain most of the spitting oil.
2. Pour half an inch to an inch of oil in the pot. Heat oil until it starts to bubble.
3. Beat eggs in a bowl, spread corn starch on a plate.
4. Cut fish into strips, dip into eggs, then cornstarch and lower slowly into the pot of oil.
5. Let cook for about 3 minutes, until the fish changes color.
6. Use chopsticks or a spoon with holes to fish out the fish and place on paper towel lined bowl.

The fish tacos turned out pretty well, even though ordinarily I wouldn't have eaten fish tacos. Dad said they were good too. Mom and Brother ate some fish sticks, then made Ramen.

Slacking Off: Day 4: Blue Chicken and Sketchy Root

DAY 4: BREAKFAST
Again, I was not awake.

DAY 4: LUNCH
Thai food: Hawaiian (pineapple) fried rice. Note to self: Make it. Ingredients: Rice, pineapple, green onions, cashews, shrimp, chicken, soy sauce(?).

DAY 4: DINNER
Dad just sort of took over dinner. Since I didn't do any of the shopping or cooking, I don't know how much anything cost, and I have to just relate what I think happened.

Soup
Mom wanted to use a chicken for a soup. Guess what color the chicken was? Indigo-colored. It was really really small, small as in slightly larger than a large mango. And the chicken that we used wasn't just a thigh or a leg or a breast. It was the entire chicken: body, wings, head, feet, talons.  The only thing that was missing was the guts. Dad took a big pot full of water, put the entire chicken in (after partially defrosting, washing the chicken to fully defrost it), put the lid on, and started heating it. He said: "With soups, you first put the water and the meat in first, wait for the water to boil and the meat to cook, and then you add vegetables and other things in and cook it again, because vegetables cook really quickly."

The 'vegetable' was white and tuber-like, cylindrical, about a foot in length and two inches in diameter. I'm not sure how long it had been living in our refrigerator. My dad didn't know what it was either, though mom possibly did, because she told Dad to treat it like a potato. He used a peeler and peeled it, then cut it into little wheels about an inch thick, and discarded the ends. I watched him chop it. It sounded crispy, like cutting an apple (or uncooked potato) and it also had this weird starchy liquid that would follow the knife. I don't know.

Leftover Pineapple Fried Rice
Microwaved on a microwave-safe plate.


Peas and Eggs
I didn't actually watch him make this, but it's related to one of the few things I knew how to make before all this started (fried rice), so this is how I would make it:
Buy package of frozen peas.
Put a little oil on pan. (Or, use non-stick pan?)
Turn on fire.
Crack eggs into the pan.
Stir eggs around until half cooked.
Pour peas into eggs.
Stir until eggs fully cooked. (Peas should be unfrozen by now.)
Serve.


Shrimp and Cucumbers
These were cocktail-size shrimp, and they were probably made about the same way as the peas and eggs, except you had to un-shell the shrimp first, and wash and cut the cucumbers into wedge-shapes.

This all seems really simple, but it's a really satisfying dinner, and simple is ideal for the academic year. You can skip the soup and the leftovers, and unless seafood makes you swoon, even the shrimp and the cucumbers. I highly highly recommend that you try peas and eggs, if you can.

A Day Filler

I was milling in front of the television one day when my mother said: You need something to do. How about you cook meals for family?

Me: Really?

Mom: Yes.

Me: YES!!!!!!

Mom: I'll give you a budget of $40 a day, and you figure out what to cook for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Me: $40? That's kind of a lot.

Mom: Well...seafood can be expensive.

Me: Okay. I GET TO CONTROL THE FOOD!!!

So this is how, a few days ago, I came to be in charge of cooking for my family. I'm not saying this pridefully, as if an eighteen year old cooking for a four person household is some kind of revolutionary genius. In fact, for a summer-after-freshman-year-in-college, friends-all-having-jobs-or-activities, jobless me, this is really the main motivating factor for doing something productive. That, and chauffeuring my brother (but classifying that as 'productive' is a bit of a stretch).

I figure that with me being marginally productive, I should try to double it and type up the scribbled/copied (from the internet) recipes, how I altered them, and any problems I came across. Just in case any of my peers (or anyone else) gets a budget and a cooking mandate from their mother.