That title is not a a mistake. I am making fried garlic…fried rice. I love the taste of fried garlic and decided to play it up with fried rice one day. I’ve come to the conclusion as of late that simple fried rice is the best. Enough with throwing everything you have into the fried rice. One of my favorite fried rice dishes is just egg and rice tossed together and seasoned with some salt. That’s it. Anyway, this isn’t much of a recipe. I don’t have detailed notes but if there is interest, I can try to type some instructions up.
Garlic is always the star of the show
Spam (optional)
Scrambled 4 eggs until about 80% done
Fry up the spam until crispy
Here comes the best part. Make sure the heat is on medium low, add oil and the garlic. It will take a while to get there but you have to make sure the heat remains low so the garlic fries up not burns up.
Golden morsels of goodness
Add the rice! Look at it…just look at it!!
Add the eggs and begin the breakdown…
Mm hmm mm hmm!
Oh yes. I learned from another recipe that if you want to add sheen to the fried rice, you add just a bit of oil at the end and fry it together. Oh this fried rice was delicious, if you enjoy garlic. It reminded me of the garlic served with the garlic shrimp plates from the North Shore. No need shrimp for me, I could have done without the spam myself but it’s good either way!
I think I have mentioned this before, I have a vegan worker in my office and it has helped me to push my limits in cooking! I really enjoy feeding people and always try to make dishes that everyone can eat. Well, here is a recipe that was totally sparked through curiosity. I can make choke vegan baked goods but I wanted to serve up a savory dish. So I got the idea for this dip and served it up with crackers/ruffles chips.
How did it go? Surprisingly well, the office folks certainly ate it up. What did I think? Ehhh…I gotta say, I am not a fan of the “fake” bacon bits and to me, that taste overpowers in this dish. I think if I tinkered around with this recipe, I could find a dip I like. Minus the bacon bits…and minus the french onion soup mix. I know I know, that’s not selling this huh? I think the recipe for the sour cream is solid so that’s a good start. Heck, I even give you the recipe for two different vegan sour creams! See below…
First recipe uses raw cashews, gotta be raw!
Gotta soak the cashews at least 4 hours so it’s soft enough for the blender
2nd sour cream uses silken tofu as a base…
Vegan Sour Cream (Silken Tofu Base)
Vegan Sour Cream (Raw Cashew Base)
Ugh!
Started with the cashew sour cream and one mix packet
Added a cup of cooked spinach, water squeezed out
Then I got loopy because it was late at night and didn’t know what I would do with a whole thing of silken tofu sour cream and threw it in…oops
Which then led me to adding another soup packet since I had so much sour cream now…
French Onion Bac’n Spinach Dip (Vegan!)
Ingredients:
32 oz. Vegan Sour Cream (Two recipe versions following this recipe)
1 C chopped spinach and squeezed (heaping cup).
2.2 ounces McCormick Bac’n Bits (bottle sold is 4.4 ounces, I used half a bottle)
2 packets Lipton Recipe Secrets Soup & Dip Mix Onion (usually two packets come in a box)
Directions:
Mix the sour cream and soup mixes together until blended (by hand). Add spinach and bacon to mix. Best served chilled.
Notes:
Spinach – I used fresh but one package of frozen chopped spinach would be fine. Thaw out the spinach and squeeze out additional water!
Vegan Sour Cream Recipe 1
1.5 c raw cashews (soaked 4 hours)
3/4 c water
1.5 T lemon juice
1.5 t apple cider vinegar
1/2 t salt
1/2 t Dijon mustard
Blend all ingredients in blender until creamy, scraping down sides of blender as needed. Produced about 2 cups of sour cream (16 oz.)
Note: My taste preference is for the cashew sour cream.
Vegan Sour Cream Recipe 2
1 package 12 oz. Silken Tofu (soft)
1.5 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1-2 Tbsp. water to get to the desired consistency
Blend all ingredients in blender until creamy, scraping down sides of blender as needed. Use in recipes such as Creamy Mushroom Stroganoff, or serve on baked potatoes, tacos, or enchiladas. Produced about 2 cups of sour cream (16 oz.)
I should really post my recipes closer to when I make them. I made this back on New Years Day. Oh boy, thinking about that, feels like years ago huh? I hope you folks are holding on together alright during this pandemic. I am grateful that I am able to currently work from home. It’s been a tough few months for me and sometimes it’s not that easy to really reach deep in and be grateful for what I do have.
I have been following the orders to stay home pretty well. If I go out, I am going out to buy groceries (I am trying to stock up as much as I can so the trips are less). Still have TP and hand soap (knocks on wood). Hope you are all doing well.
HELLO BEAUTIFUL
I had my doubts when I first saw this recipe. You “cook” it for a very short time and then let is sit in the oven with the residual heat for 2 hours. The way I calculated it, it would only cook for 25 minutes. That’s nuts! That’s how long it takes to heat up like frozen fries…! Well I held onto my patience and followed through on the directions and behold…it worked! Isn’t it beautiful?
I don’t have a roasting rack so I made a “rack” of vegetables. I was all excited to eat the vegetables after but ummm…they didn’t work. I feel like my carrot was already junk but since the actual cooking time was short…the carrots were still hard. I never like recook them so I just let it go…
I pierce many holes into the meat and stuff each hole with a clove of garlic. Oh…I just love garlic.
Mix that soft butter with all the herbs and spices you want to create a lovely crust on your prime rib!
Can any dish ever go wrong with that much butter? No, I don’t think so. Do I need to remind you to scroll back up to see the first picture? I am tempted to repost it…
Prime Rib With Garlic Herb Butter
Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
7 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, finely chopped (I don’t think I had this so I used dried Italian seasoning)
2 tablespoons fresh thyme, finely chopped (I used dried)
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon pepper
5 lb boneless ribeye roast, trimmed
Preparation:
Preheat oven to 500°F (260°C).
Mix together the butter, garlic, herbs, salt, and pepper in a bowl until evenly combined.
Rub the herb butter all over the rib roast, then place on a roasting tray with a rack.
Bake for 5 minutes per pound (10 minutes per kilo) of meat, so a 5-pound (2.2 kg) roast would bake for 25 minutes.
Turn off the heat and let the rib roast sit in the oven for 2 hours, making sure you do not open the oven door or else the residual heat will escape.
Once the 2 hours are up, remove the roast from the pan.
Carve the prime rib into ¾-inch (20 mm) slices.
Enjoy!
Notes:
This was the main recipe I used but I really just used whatever dried herbs I had, italian seasoning and thyme worked great!
I deviated from the recipe by piercing holes into the meat and adding cloves of garlic. How many did I do? Maybe about 15? It’s up to you how much you want to add in!
If you’re from Hawaii, you love Zippy’s Chili. There’s no if’s, and’s or but’s about it. And if you don’t like Zippy’s Chili, what is wrong with you? Just kidding, sort of. Well, while I love the chili…I certainly don’t love the price tag. It’s pricey at the restaurant and pricey in frozen form at the grocery store.
I found a copycat recipe the other day and decided to try it out during this whole Covid-19 hysteria. I went to Target to shop for some ingredients…and eureka! They had all the ingredients. Well all but one…pinto beans. No pinto beans. I guess in an emergency, people stock up on beans. So what did I find? Garbanzo beans. Uh oh, how will this go? Well let me tell you, it went quite well! Can I say it tastes exactly like Zippy’s, I don’t think so but I can’t pinpoint what is different (maybe because I didn’t have pinto beans). The kids loved the chili and it tastes even better after sitting a day. Mmm…I really enjoyed it and will totally make this again. No need Zippy’s when you can make it at home!
I hope you can make it and let me know how it goes for you! I included pictures of the actual products I used in the recipe, click the linked ingredients for pictures of what I used. I doubled the original recipe which is reflected in the recipe I shared below, feel free to cut it in half to still have a good portion!
Fry up that ground beef! No need oil, it’s plenty greasy.
Remove the ground beef and fry up the onions in the leftover grease (plenty grease, what did I tell you?)
Tomato sauce and pureed garbanzo beans in the pot!
Beef base, garlic salt, chili powder, the kitchen sink, etc.
Looks like Zippy’s Chili yeah??
That’s a lot of mayo…
I asked IG to guess if this was mayo and sour cream, the winner was sour cream but the winning answer was the losing one! It’s mayo!!!
Directions: In a large pot, break up and fry up ground beef. Remove ground beef, set aside. Fry up onions in leftover oil on medium heat until limp and golden, add the two teaspoons of vegetable oil if there is not enough grease (honestly, there will be).
Transfer beef back to pot along with tomato sauce, pureed garbanzo beans, light red kidney beans, chili powder, beef base, brown sugar and garlic salt. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down to medium or medium-low and simmer 15 minutes. Stir in mayonnaise and heat through. Taste and correct seasonings.
Like, I didn’t even remember to take a picture of the finished product so you can look to the left of this picture for a slight view. How did it go? Really well. The people I fed enjoyed it! It’s a nice recipe and it’s basically mochiko chicken with some nori on top. Can’t go wrong there. Would I make it again? Perhaps for a party, it’s best eaten fresh out of the oil.
Nori Chicken
Marinade: – 1/4 cup mochiko (sweet rice flour) – 1/4 cup cornstarch – 1/4 cup sugar – 1/2 tsp salt – 6 cloves garlic, grated or chopped – 2 eggs – 1/3 cup shoyu (Soy Sauce – I used Yamasa)
– 2 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite sized pieces – Oil for frying – Nori (Japanese dried seaweed ) – cut into strips
Mix marinade ingredients with chicken and soak for at least 4 hours, the longer you soak chicken the better. Wrap a small piece of nori around each piece of chicken and deep fry.
I know what you’re thinking, a recipe for spam musubi? Is that really needed? And guess what? This is not even a real recipe, it’s a total lazy day/cheat recipe. However, I am always curious about how people make their spam musubi! I found this new way to make it and wanted to share! Please feel free to share any recipes you are willing to in the comments!
Yup, the secret ingredient.
Boil up and down, get that sauce nice and thick!
Pretty generous with the rice…(nice photobomb from Hurricane Popcorn in the back)
Generous with the slices of spam too. Makes you want to be my friend and have a picnic right? A picnic for me to bring the spam musubi!
Spam Musubi
1 12 oz. jar of Halm’s Hawaiian Bar-B-Que Sauce
2 cans of Spam
5 Cups of Cooked White Rice
6 full sheets of Nori, cut in half (vertical, long way)
Spam musubi maker
Makes: 12 Musubi
Cut 8 slices of spam per can, you should have 16 slices at the end. Pan fry each slice of spam both sides in batches (if it doesn’t all fit in the pan you have). Place all the spam slices back into pan (it’s okay if they are stacked on each other), pour entire jar of Hawaiian Bar-B-Que sauce, lower heat to medium and allow sauce to thicken. Occasionally turn over spam slices to make sure each slice gets nicely sauced up.
Use your spam musubi maker and layer rice and spam slice according to your taste! Wrap with nori and EAT!
Note: 5 cups of rice made 12 musubis perfectly! Eat the leftover spam slices as a side dish for another meal! Delish and kids love it!
MEAT LOAF. I know this is considered whatever kine food for people but I really enjoy it and find it comforting. I also like the making of the meat loaf. I love putting all the ingredients together in the bowl in a pretty way and then mixing it. Looks good ah? Well not delicious good, just good good.
Meat Loaf, Rice and…can you guess what the yellow and red thing is? It’s a bit shameful actually…
I found a recipe online for a quick elote corn. Um, don’t do that. First off, I didn’t have lime, only lemon so that was a big mistake on my part. And crushed up flaming hot cheetos on top? What was I thinking? Don’t follow any kine recipe okay? Next time I will leave out the cheetos, find some limes…and make it GOOD.
Okay let’s move to something I am proud of. Look at this refreshing and absolutely delicious watermelon dessert I made! I drew inspiration from this video, he made it look so good. I had to improvise. I found mini seedless watermelons from Costco. Bought some strawberry popping boba from Don Q and the scene was set! Balled up some melon, crushed up the leftover flesh to create watermelon juice. Poured the juice back into the melon shell, added the balled melon on top…topped it with condensed milk and then the popping boba. Sugar bomb? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely yes!
Do you folks follow Maangchi on YouTube? I have been following her channel for years and have made a few recipes which have all been successes! My biggest challenge to come…homemade kimchee. It’s time to up my game and make some good kimchee myself. I’m stressed just thinking about it! But excited as well.
I learned from her how to make some of the BEST Korean soups. The golden base of Korean soups are pretty basic: daikon, seaweed, and dried anchovies. Sounds simple but it makes all the difference in the world. Here are some pictures of a soon dubu I made before, recipe can be found here.
GOLDEN BROTH!!!!!
Did you know there is a special tofu to use to make the best soon dubu? Yes, it comes in this packaging at the Korean supermarkets! Yummmm…
Frying up some pork belly. So this recipe was a play on her recipe, I had some old kimchee that goes really well with pork belly so I made a soup out of it.
Ooooh…that looks sooo good.
Just get me a bowl of that purple rice they serve up and I’ll just be in heaven…
I got a super good question last week about how mochi would come out in different pans. Once that question was posted, I knew I had to do an experiment of my own! Baking mochi in a cupcake pan would yield single servings of mochi…and with that…plenty massive crust pieces. A lot of my coworkers enjoy the edge pieces so I had to give this a try.
Mini Cupcake Pan – I tried to not fill each too full in case the mochi rises.
Finished Product – Mini Cupcake Pan
350 Degree Oven – 35 Minutes (this was with a cupcake pan and a 9 x 9 pan as well)
Look at how brown and crusty each piece was! I made it the night before and served it up to the office guinea pigs…and guess what? All the crust loving folks loved the mini cupcake version of the mochi! To me…it’s like all crust but still has a bit of softness inside.
Caveats: Even though it’s butter mochi, the mochi pieces definitely stuck onto the pan. I had to really scrape each piece out…and then I had to let the pan soak before I could get out all the crust residue. Was it worth the trouble? I wouldn’t say so….
Cupcake Pan – I filled this one up a bit more than the mini cupcake pan. It worked out okay!
Finished Product – Cupcake Pan
350 Degree Oven – 43 Minutes (this was with a mini cupcake pan and a 9 x 9 pan as well)
I enjoyed this version a bit more. It has the nice brown edges but still remains nice and soft inside…and it’s a bigger piece! The mini cupcake pan has too small servings…haha
9 x 9 Pan: Leftover Mochi Batter after Cupcake and Mini Cupcake Pan
Finished Product – 9 x 9 Pan
350 Degree Oven – 43 Minutes (this was with a mini cupcake pan and a cupcake pan as well)
That’s another caveat to this recipe, I had leftover batter so I had to use another pan. Thankfully I have this smaller pan, the pieces came out good but a bit thin for my taste.
Another picture of the mochi pieces. Do you see how the mini cupcake mochi is separated? I feel like it gets a bit dry so as I tried to take the mochi pieces out of the pan, the top crust separated from the bottom piece. If I had to make this mini cupcake version again, I would start checking the doneness earlier. I would probably start checking at 20 minutes with a toothpick.
So what do you think? Do you think you would try any of these options? I wish I had more than one cupcake pan, then I would make this recipe again. I don’t want to wait 40 minutes each batch to make it then have to wash the pan and start it over again!
Earlier this week, I had this sudden craving for something lemon-y. Then I thought, gotta make something lemon with blueberry because they complement each other so well! I found a recipe for Lemon Pudding Mochi from the Honolulu Advertiser and it got started from there! The recipe by itself sounds and looks great already but I just had to play around with it to include the in-season blueberries (and Times had ’em on sale)! So I made adjustments to the recipe and created my own, no coconut (not a fan of shredded coconut) and pile on the blueberries! I was a bit scared of how it would turn out, baking is such a science and you just never know what will come out of the oven. Well, I made ’em, brought ’em to work, and everyone loved them! Including me. 🙂 The original recipe calls for lemon extract which I didn’t have so I used lemon zest…which I think actually makes the recipe better! First some pics…then the recipe!
Check it out guys…the mochi texture was PERFECT. Smooth and soft…with a wonderful brown crust on the sides. Wish I could have had this right out of the oven! The lemon flavor comes through perfectly.
Plump blueberries ready to eat! Much better than the canned kine, this recipe is already so sweet…it’s good to use fresh blueberries so you don’t make it sickly sweet.
I actually mixed the blueberries into the batter and was a bit afraid they would sink to the bottom. To my surprise, the blueberries floated all to the top! The batter of this is pretty thick so I think that’s why the blueberries went up to the top. Ahh…this recipe worked out so well! I almost wanted to keep it all to myself. 🙂
Lemon Pudding Mochi with Fresh Blueberries
Ingredients 16 ounces mochiko sweet rice flour (1 box)
2 ¼ cups sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 (3 ounce) box instant lemon pudding
2 cups coconut milk
1 cup 2% milk
1 (1/2 cup) package unsalted butter, melted
5 eggs, lightly beaten
3 lemons worth of finely grated lemon zest
9 oz. fresh blueberries (I used 1 ½ of those 6 oz. blueberry clamshells from the supermarket)
Directions Heat oven to 350 degrees. Get a 13 x 9 glass pan.
In a large bowl, stir together sweet rice flour, sugar, baking powder, grated lemon and pudding.
With a balloon whisk, gradually whisk in coconut milk and dairy milk to beat out lumps.
One at a time, stir in melted butter, then the beaten eggs.
Gently stir in the blueberries.
Pour into baking dish.
Bake 1 hour or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
No real notes on this recipes, I put my ingredients and instructions as is! I hope you folks get to make it, let me know how it comes out if you do! Enjoy!
