More Cooking

I made the variation of the beef and triple-mushroom hot pot dish I had seen on a cooking show awhile back.    I heated up some broth as base, added three types of mushroom (this time I added oyster, enoki, and shitake mushrooms), green onion, soy-sauce marinated beef, shredded daikon radish, and spinach.    This was served with udon noodles, like a noodle soup.

Overall, the beef definitely needed more time to simmer, so that it would become soft.   And, it might help to sear the meat first to seal the flavors.  But other than that, the soup was very flavorful and tasty.   It turns out that the spinach went well with it; and the daikon, not as much.

Since some other variations may need to be made with this dish, I tried just the mushrooms, and added tofu, and some chinese canned mixed vegetables and gluten.   Though, without the beef, it has less deep flavor; but, it really felt like a much lighter dish and may even be preferable.

I also came across another recipe on the internet that might be interesting to try.  It was a coca-cola chicken (and my friend said that she recently learned a variation that used cider instead of coca-cola).     Basically, it is just marinating the chicken in soy sauce.  Pan fry the chicken till they are brown on both sides.  Pour in the coca-cola and simmer until the liquid is reduced.   Sounds easy, and probably would be pretty good.

I bought almond milk this week.   The vanilla flavor makes having cereal taste more like a dessert; along with the thicker creamier texture.  It may be because I've been so used to non-fat milk, that this seems so rich; but, according to the carton, there are a lot of health benefits.  I used it with banana oatmeal and it complemented well with the cinnamon and nutmeg.   It kind of reminded me of  a banana and cream dish.  I also used the almond milk when making my sausage macaroni and cheese potluck dish.  I prepared the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (2 pkgs) according to directions, just using the almond milk instead of regular; and I also added some sliced browned smoked sausages (pkg of 8 hot dog-sized links).   Then, I put them all in a baking dish and topped with grated cheese; and baked till melted.   This is kind of a "comfort food"-type dish that went over fairly well and still tasted pretty good when cooled off; and the vanilla flavor from the almond milk made it interestingly different slightly.

For a Chinese fish fillet dish, it did not work well with the cornstarch and panko - when pan frying, it came out looking like a gooey paste.  Although, taste-wise, it was not bad, with the green onion, ginger, garlic, and soy sauce.

A simple pasta almost Asian-fusion pasta dish was made by heating up pasta (any kind should work) with sesame oil, soy sauce, and green onion; then sprinkled with some Japanese mixture of sesame seed and sea weed.  Maybe adding in some tofu would be good as well.