Sesame Chicken

I order sesame chicken whenever I get Chinese take-out. But, I'm an economical girl and I like to eat what I like to eat, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and get this puppy in the saucepan.

There are a few things going on in this recipe. You have to make the sauce and chicken separately. The chicken is marinated in a batter in which it is fried before the sauce is added at the very end. So I'll divide up the ingredients according to which bowls they were in.

CHICKEN MARINADE
chicken - cut it up
2 tsp all-purpose flour
2 tsp corn starch
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs orange juice
2 Tbs water
1 tsp vegetable oil

SAUCE
1/4 C corn starch
1 C water
2 Tbs sesame oil
1 Tbs red curry paste
1 packet Brouillon powder
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp Sriracha hot chili sauce

For the marinade - mix it all up, put the chicken in it, let sit. Then, put the chicken in a saucepan with hot vegetable oil to fry. The marinade ends up as a batter and the chicken has a light coating around it. Catch the chicken in a paper towel to rid it of any excess oil from frying.


For the sauce - heat it in a saucepan and let it cook. Much of the water will steam out and the sauce will reduce to the more sticky sesame chicken sauce that we all know and love.


When both are done, put the sauce on the chicken with some toasted sesame seeds to finish the job.

Turkey dumplings

Nom.

This is the first dumpling I tried by boiling instead of frying. It was delicious!

I used ground turkey, but you can really use anything for the filling. Mine had

Sriracha hot chili sauce
red chili powder
parsley
garlic powder
hoisin sauce
oyster sauce
also, some EVOO to keep things moist.

Mix 'em all up in a bowl.



This mush will be the inside of your dumplings. Can really be anything. I just happened to have some left-over ground turkey from making turkey burgers a few days earlier. The only thing you actually need for this recipe is wanton wrappers. I'm sure you could use square ones, but I used circular, and they were kind of old and crusty at the edges so please ignore the cracked white floury parts of the dumpling. Still tasted fine, it just looks kinda ugly.

You can also fold them any way you like... this is how I did it!

Steps 1, 2, and 3 are shown from left to right at the bottom of this image.



Boil some water with salt and EVOO. Then, put your dumplings in. When they rise, they are done, and should be taken out and put on a paper towel to absorb any excess moisture.



The final product! Isn't it fabulous?

Yay poor image quality.

Rice pudding

Oh hello! It has been so long. I have been cooking lots since my last post, though I've evidently been very lazy about posting photos and recipes. And, since I find that this blog has been my first go-to place to decide what to eat, I'm going to try to revive it just a bit.

I've done rice pudding in many ways... vegan, non-vegan, healthy, not really healthy, etc.

The take away for this recipe is to ensure that the final liquid to rice ratio works such that the completed product is a pudding texture. Chyeah. Anyway, first you cook your rice separately in boiling water. I think that sticky white rice works best, but I always have basmati so I use that, and I have done it with brown rice as well (though this is the most challenging due to its crunchy texture). So, do that. But don't completely cook it. You want it to finish cooking with the rest of the rice pudding liquid ingredients so it can absorb some of the flavor.

Separately, boil your liquid ingredients. This can be any combination of the following:

Coconut milk
Milk - any kind, 1%, whole, etc.
Almond milk
Skim milk
Whole cream
Half and half
Coffee creamer - all kinds of flavors can be all kinds of fun! Vanilla, amaretto, hazelnut, etc.

Then, add your rice!



Then, kind of just leave it in there. Chyeah. You'll need some spices. I like to use

Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Pure vanilla extract
Sugar



Then, let it cook. It will take a while.

Then, eat.

Voila.