Pumpkin Shrimp Egg Rolls

By now, everyone knows that egg rolls are the most popular foods as an appetizer or snack and are always served at Asian events. I love egg rolls and posted quite a few recipes for making egg rolls. The recipe that I will introduce today is quite intriguing because the pumpkin will be used for part of the filling. I should name this recipe as the brain egg roll because the fillings are very healthy with more vegetables and pumpkin, which are a big boost for a healthy brain. I also use whole shrimp for each of rolls instead of chopping them into small pieces. With its low calorie content , shrimp is a smart addition to calorie and health-conscious diets. According to the U.S Food and Drug Administration, shrimp is very low in Mercury but provides several nutritional advantages as a result of its protein, vitamins, and mineral content.  I will add the fact that shrimp is high quality and provides lean protein. These days people are interested in healthy food, and, if you are one of them, then this recipe is definitely for you.

Ingredients:
30 egg roll wrappers

30 medium shrimp – shelled, leave tail on, and deveined
Filling ingredients:
1 lb. ground turkey
4 oz. fish paste, store-bought (optional)
2 cups shredded pumpkin
2 cups shredded taro
2 cups shredded jicama
1 cup carrots, shredded
3 dried funguses, soaked for 20 minutes and chopped
2 oz. cellophane noodles, soaked and chopped
1 white onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 eggs
3 green onions, sliced
 Salt, soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and black pepper, to taste

2 cups oil for deep frying

Serve with:
Sweet and sour dipping sauce
Lettuce, cumbers, cilantro

To Assemble the egg rolls:
30 egg roll wrappers, such as the Menlo brand

Directions:
Separate the egg roll wrappers and cover with a damp cloth to prevent drying out and set aside.
In a safe microwave heatproof bowl, combine the taro and pumpkin and lightly cook in a microwave for 5 minutes.

 Squeeze out as much water in the jicama as you can and combine with the rest of the ingredients with the partially cooked taro and pumpkin; Break 1 egg and separate the yolk. Save the egg white for "gluing" the skin and mix thoroughly.

 

Place one wrapper on a working surface.

Place about 2 tbs of the filling on the middle of the wrapper, but nearer the bottom of the wrapper facing you.

Use your hand or fingers to fold the filling into a cylinder around 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. Fold the two pointed ends of the wrapper in and place one shrimp (leave the tail protrude before rolling to enclose the shrimp body).

Dab a little egg white along the edges and seal the egg roll. Repeat the above steps to finish the fillings.

To fry the egg rolls:

 

Preheat a large wok and add the oil. When the oil reaches about 350°, carefully place the rolls into the hot oil.

Do not crowd the pan or add the egg rolls on top of each other. Fry them about 5 to 7 minutes (turn them occasionally until they are golden brown).

 Reduce the heat if the oil is too hot. Remove the fried rolls and place on a tray lined with a paper towel to absorb most of the oil. Serve warm.

Singapore Stir-Fried Vegetables with Rice Noodles

Asian stir-fried noodles come from different ways to prepare. Most of them use beef, chicken, and seafood. The Singapore stir-fried noodles is a popular dish sold on the streets of Singapore. I guess this is where the name comes from.  I also know curry powder is part of the sauce and gives this dish a special taste different from other Asian stir-fried noodle dishes. Typically, rice noodles are used to prepare this dish. The dried rice noodles are soaked in warm water until the noodles are soft and pliable to cook. The fresh noodles are soaked in water too, but for less time. I will make these stir-fried noodles without any kind of meat or seafood today. This is the basic stir-fried Singapore noodles dish that I like to prepare in a hurry and use most of the frozen vegetables that available to me. I like to make this dish when I have some left over roasted chicken or grilled fish, but it still tastes wonderful by itself. Let’s make this wonderful stir-fried rice noodles dish now.

Ingredients:
½ lb. fresh rice noodles
3 cups frozen vegetables
Sauce ingredients:
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp honey
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 tbs curry powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
Other ingredients:
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup white onions
2 tbs oil

Directions:
Soak fresh rice noodles in a pot of cold water for 15 minutes and drain.

Bring a pot of water to boil and blanch the frozen vegetables and then drain.

In a wok, heat oil over medium high heat. Add garlic and onions. Stir and cook until fragrant.

 Add noodles and half of the sauce ingredients. Stir quickly to coat the noodles with sauce.

 Add vegetables and the rest of the sauce ingredients. Mix them well together.

Remove from heat and, if you like, sprinkle with chopped green onions and cilantro. Serve. 

 

 

 

Chicken Legs with Black Bean Sauce

I am not a fan of chicken legs, but most of my family members love them. The recipe I will introduce today is similar to the chicken legs that is served in Chinese dim sum restaurants. I think most Asian people love the dim sum chicken legs. I can see that when my family orders dim sum, almost every table in the restaurant also orders this dish. And old tale told by my mom states that chicken legs have a lot of collagen and tendons that will help to make stronger bones. Even now, my mom, who is 88 years of age, still has most of her teeth and still eats dim sum chicken legs every chance she gets. The chicken legs dim sum is very tasty, so, after doing some searching for this recipe over the Internet, I learned how to make this dish the last time when mom visited me. It is not hard to re-create this restaurant dish at home, and the cost is just a fraction of the cost to order it in the restaurant. When you master this dish, the shock and wow effect on the faces of those whom you serve this dish is enjoyable. I receive many compliments every time because people always have the perception that only restaurants can create this dish. Now, we have this easy and tasty chicken dim sum in our own kitchens.

Ingredients:
1 ½ to 2 lbs chicken legs
2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sake
3 quarts of water
1 cup oil
Sauce ingredients:
2 tbs black bean sauce

1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp white pepper
1 tbs blackstrap Molasses
1 tbs honey
1 tbs sesame oil
Other ingredients:
4 star Anise
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 piece fresh ginger, Julienned
2 cups chicken broth or water
Garnishes:
4 green onions, sliced
Chili flakes

Directions:
Cut off the chicken leg talons and soak chicken legs with water, vinegar, and salt for 20 minutes.

Wash and drain well.

Bring a 3 quart of water in a pot to boil. Add sake and salt. Drop in the chicken legs and cook for 7 to 8 minutes.

 Drain well (I let them sit for 1 hour because it is easier if the chicken is dried out when you deep-fry the chicken legs). The oil will not splash all over kitchen.

 

I use a Fry Daddy, a small deep fryer, to fry the chicken. Add oil and start frying the chicken until golden brown. Remove.
While the chicken is frying, mix all the sauce ingredient in a bowl.

Heat a large sauté pan or wok over medium high heat. Add 2 tbs of vegetable oil and stir in garlic and ginger. Stir and cook until fragrant. Add sauce and chicken broth.

 

 

 Bring to boil. Taste the sauce and add more soy or salt, if needed. Add fried chicken legs and bring back to boil. Cover pan partly and simmer until all the sauce is absorbed or thickened (about 1 to 2
 hour). Sprinkle with green onions and chili flakes on top and serve.

Note: I use blackstrap molasses and honey to replace the sugar part for the sweetness of this recipe for my own health purposes. You can use the same amount sugar for this recipe. You can use the wok to fry the chicken legs if a Fry Daddy is not available to you.

Apple Sauce Cake

This recipe is easy to prepare for a quick breakfast or afternoon tea.  I suggest that self-rising flour and cake mix should always be available in the kitchen. I like easy cake and here is one.

Ingredients:
Dry ingredients:
2 cups self-rising flour or cake mix
1 tsp ground cinnamon
Wet ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 cup melted coconut oil or vegetable oil
1 cup apple sauce, homemade or store-what
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sliced or chopped peeled apple
Strudel topping ingredients:
1/3 cup ground oatmeal
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup chopped nuts (your choice)
2 tbs butter, cube
1/2 tsp pumpkin spice

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.
Mix the strudel ingredients with a fork or by hand until resembling course crumbs .

Butter and flour a 9” x 10” cake pan
Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
Combine the wet ingredients, except the sliced apples, in bowl. Use a handheld mixer to beat the wet mixture until blended (about 1 minute).
Pour the beaten wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and beat for a two seconds or until well combined (do not ovenbeat the mixture). Stir in the sliced apples and mix well.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan. Top with the strudel.

Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
After baking, remove from oven and let cool before serving.

 

Zucchini Bread

I had been busy with my family visiting me in the last few weeks. The last family members left yesterday. I missed my blog since my daily schedule had changed with a different routine. Even though I cooked every day for my family, I did not have time for my blog. However, I will now post the easy zucchini bread today using a Vitamix blender. My family loved this bread, and now here it is..

Ingredients:
Dry ingredients:
2 cups cake mix *
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup shredded zucchini
Wet ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 cup apple sauce
1/3 cup melted coconut oil or vegetable oil
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.
Coat a 9” x 5” loaf pan with coconut oil and dust with flour.
In the Vitamix or another blender container, combine all the wet ingredients. Secure the lid. Select variable speed 1. Turn the machine on and slowly turn the machine to variable speed 10. Blend for 15 seconds.
Place cake mix in a mixing bowl. Fold in the egg mixture, and then the zucchini and nuts.
Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cook the bread in the cake pan for 10 minutes, remove and cool the bread completely on a wire rack

*If you do not have the cake mix, combine the following ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Chicken and Mushrooms Stew with Ginger

The Asian cuisine or my country, Vietnam, has many recipes for stewing meat or fish. The stewing method is slow and cooked until the meats fall off the bone. Usually, chicken legs and thighs are used for this recipe. My cooking is more into the healthy and quick. Therefore, I will introduce this recipe with boneless, skinless chicken thighs, and the mushrooms added into this recipe give it another choice of ingredients, which is very healthy. To make this recipe into a vegan dish, simply replace the chicken with tofu. Give this recipe a try. It is quick and yummy!

Ingredients:
1/2 lb. chicken thighs, cut into cubes
1/2 lb. mushrooms, leave whole
1 knob of fresh ginger, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 shallots, chopped
2 tbs peanut oil
2 green onions, cut into 2 inch lengths
1 jalapeno sliced
Stew sauce ingredients:
1 tsp blackstrap molasses
1 tsp honey
1 tsp sugar
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

Directions:
Combine the stew sauce ingredients in a bowl and set a side
Heat oil in cast-iron pan.  Stir in chicken and brown the meat. Add garlic, shallots, and ginger.  Stir and cook until fragrant. Add mushrooms. Mix chicken and mushroom with all the spices.  Stir in the stew sauce.  Bring to boil. Cover and turn heat to simmer. Simmer the chicken for 40 minutes. Uncover the pot and add green onions and jalapeno. Adjust the seasoning with more salt or a little fish sauce. Serve with hot rice.

 

What Will Meditation Do For Me?

Even as little as ten minutes meditation every day will make a noticeable difference to your life. Meditation is a form of training, so the more you do, and the more consistently you do it, the more you’ll see progress. What progress can you expect? You’ll find that things that used to “push your buttons,” you can now face with calmness. You will experience more confidence. Your relationships with others will become more harmonious. You’ll feel happier. You may well sleep better. You’ll start to have more psychological insights and better understand why things happen they way they do in your life. You’ll feel more at peace with yourself. You’ll start to get more of a sense of your life having a purpose. You’ll accomplish all these things by learning more about the way your mind works. You’ll learn to recognize unhelpful patterns of thought, feeling, and action that tend to make you less effective. These unhelpful patterns include getting unnecessarily angry, or feeling despondent. You’ll learn how to let go of these patterns. You’ll also learn how to choose to respond more creatively, in ways that allow you to remain calm and aware of the effects of your actions on yourself and others. You’ll learn, for example, how to calm your mind and how to develop more empathy for others. You’ll learn to have more patience with yourself and others. But… I’ve often joked that we just say that meditation makes you happier in order to get people to come to beginners’ classes. It’s only half a joke; meditation does make you happier. But it also makes you aware of problems you didn’t know you had. Now if you see that as a bad thing - good luck! To my mind starting to learn the ways in which you unconsciously cause suffering for yourself and other people is an excellent thing, even if the process is at times very painful. You’ll still experience the suffering you’re unconsciously creating for yourself even if you’re not conscious that you’re unconsciously creating it (if you know what I mean). If you don’t know what I mean then all will become clear in practice. At times you’ll wish that you could return to an “ignorance is bliss” way of being, but you’ll most likely realize that actually ignorance is the opposite of bliss. In fact awareness is bliss - once you’ve gotten past the state of cringing at realizing what you’re really like. But, hey, that’s what the development of lovingkindness practice is for! Awareness on its own can make us depressed, but lovingkindness and awareness combined make for great happiness.

   Source: www.wildmind.org from DaoPhatngaynay