Cooking thread

New recipe: Cebollitas.

http://kathyscookingcorner.blogspot.mx/2013/03/cebollitas.html

Quote: Nareed

This morning, though, I did a breakfast sandwich thus:
One egg scrambled with two strips of turkey bacon, topped with sauteed onions and mushrooms. Cooked a long time, until the onions turn really soft and the mushrooms go brown. All on a sesame burger bun, lightly toasted. With mustard on the top part of the bun, ketchup and fresh ground pepper on top of the egg topped with onions and mushrooms.

I ripped open the carton and the little plastic envelope and put TWO breakfast sandwiches into the microwave for 95 seconds. None of this half-power "defrost" nonsense first. Just zap the whole thing on high. Who is awake enough to fiddle with buttons before breakfast anyway.

I had four days off, so I tried a few new things. They didn't come out quite right, but I learned something:

1) Any recipe for an entree using honey probably should be baked.

2) I'm done with pancakes. I used to love them, until around 2006. I've no idea what happened. Since then I've just never enjoyed them. I had the bright idea of substituting yogurt for milk. The result was mushy and doughy, with a decent flavor, but still not good enough for my tastes.

3) You can do fried rice without frying much of anything! My recipe for "fried" rice is still in progress, though. I think next time will be the charm.

4) Broccoli changes little when stir-fried or grilled. It's hard to say whether it's done or not.

5) Blending cottage cheese and milk together works wonders for creamy, low-fat sauces and soups.

6) Turkey ham is closer to ham than turkey bacon is to bacon.

7) Chicken is a nightmare to work with. You should, therefore, buy the cut you'll use exactly as you'll use it. And I'm DONE with ground chicken breast. D-O-N-E. From now on Kathy's Italian Chicken will be made with flattened chicken breasts.

I'm in the mood for wild experimentation in the kitchen this week. I found a very odd recipe for a cottage cheese-based dessert. That's all I'll say until I find out whether it works or not.

On milder things, I'll be trying to do Kathy's Italian Chicken 100% from scratch, a twist on the onion soup recipe, and the final draft, I hope, for "fried" rice.

More long term, I'm looking to see if I can make low-fat equivalents of popular desserts. What recipes I've found for low-fat desserts are either too different, or simple variations of not much at all (sliced fruit with Splenda!). I've nothing against odd or different dishes 8see my blog), but I woulnd't mind low-fat brownies, cake, pie, etc either.

I did the cottage cheese experiment (so so). I did get to the final draft of un-fried rice (good). But instead of attempting my Italian Chicken from scratch, I made tangerine chicken. Why? because for a change there were good tangerines at the store. Not the variety usually available (which has been awful this season), but they were tasty enough. I also made onoin soup using beef broth (not much difference).

The downside is I spent all day Sunday cooking and I missed my workout (sure, "missed" it).

I'll be posting something on the blog between now and next Sunday.

Something really awful happened, maybe.

At lunch time yesterday, I uncovered the onion soup and it looked as though bacteria were growing on it. That is, there were cream-white colored circles all over the surface. It smelled ok, but that proves nothing. If we could smell bacterial contamination food poisoning would be next to impossible. SO I threw it away. When I got home I looked at the big container, and it too was populated with little white circles all over.

There's a chance it could be something peculair to the beef broth cubes I used, but why take the chance? Seriously, the surface of the soup looked like the bacterial cultures we used to grow in the biology lab in high school.

So no soup at all for the whole week...

Finally a new recipe, Cottage Cheesecake (really!)

Read all about it here: http://kathyscookingcorner.blogspot.com/2013/04/cottage-cheesecake.html

I'll be posting as time permits recipes for Tangerine Chicken, Unfired Rice and Paprika Potatoes. I expect that will be all between now and mid-June. Against my preferences, I've come to realize that a full electrolysis session and a full day of complicated cooking is too much on top of a long work week. So I'm cutting back on both. This should also allow me the energy to work out on weekends (and I need that mroe, so...), and perhaps even time to write.

I've been doing relatively well. I made a cottage cheesecake witha chocolate topping. It wasn't quite good enough, but I learned how to melt chocoalte and what I can add to it. next on that sideline: cottage cheesecake with a mint-chocolate-peanut butter topping.

Also I made "loose lasagna." I used a kind of bow pasta shape and laid layers of sauce (bottled, alas!), pasta, sausage and cottage cheese, sauteed mushroom with onions and green pepper, and a bit of parmesan on top. Stick that in the oven for 45 minute sat 180 C and it comes out really well. It even holds it's shape long enough to serve on a plate.

The problem with cooking on the spur of the moment is that I don't take note of quantities. anwyay, here goes:

Kathy's Chop Suey

About 250 gr. soybean sprouts
5-7 mushrooms, sliced
1/3 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 stalks celery, sliced
About 150 gr jicama, diced
1 1/2 carrots, diced into small bits
About 1/5 head of green cabbage, coarsely chopped
1 Cup chicken broth
3 Tbsp soy sauce
1 1/2 Tbsp teriyaki sauce
1 1/2 Tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp. corn starch.
1 Tbsp sesame oil

Heat the oil in a wok, the stir-fry the vegetables. I add them in this order: 1) onion, garlic and bell pepper, 2) sprouts and celery, 3) mushrooms, 4) jicama and carrot, 5) cabbage. That is, I begin with 1, stir-fry a few minutes, then add, 2 and keep cooking, end so on until the cabbage is a bit soft. Naturally there's quite a bit of stirring, but it is stir-drying, right?

While this is going on, mix in a heat resistant bowl or cup the chicken broth (hot), soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, vinegar and corn starch. The end result looks a bit like coffee and cream, perhaps a bit darker. Make sure the corn starch is all dissolved, then reduce the heat and add the sauce to the wok. Stir occasionally and let the sauce bubble.