Ten Recipes for the Beginner Cook

This blog post is dedicated to my college roommate Brigit, who has been ramping up her cooking efforts.

This week I've been on vacation with my college roommates and we've been having many conversations about how we've come a long way since learning how to boil water--for some of us, a skill acquired post-college. Being someone who likes food but is lazy about cooking, I've developed a repertoire of easy recipes over the years. Here are ten of them.

1. Massaged kale salad. Salads are kind of a loophole to adulthood: as long as you spend the time and money on good ingredients, all you have to do to "cook" a salad is wash some things and maybe chop some things. Massaging kale makes it feel a little less like cheating. (And kale is much better massaged.)
2. Arugula walnut salad. This salad is even less effort. Putting random fruit and random nuts into a salad always makes the salad better, both in terms of nutrition and how fancy it looks. Some weeks when I am really busy I just stock my kitchen with greens, fruit, and nuts. Sprouts (especially flavorful ones) are a nice touch, as well as thinly sliced radish.
3. Baked salmon. Good salmon (or any kind of fish, really) can be quite inexpensive and be really easy to make. (My college roommate Aliza says salmon is expensive in New York, but in Cambridge I usually spent $5-7 on half a pound of quite good salmon at my local Whole Foods.) Once you learn how to do it you can do variations on the different marinades to make it feel like a different dish every time.
4. Skillet-roasted spiced okra. I love okra, but for a long time I did not realize how easy it is to cook for yourself. The recipe I linked to includes lots of spices (and is similar to bhindi masala), but okra can be quite good with only cumin and turmeric, or even only with salt.
5. Quinoa tabouleh. This is a really delicious and nutritious prepare-your-own lunch food. For a while I quit quinoa due to ethical concerns and used couscous instead, but these concerns turned out to be unfounded.
6. Pasta puttanesca. This is a nice emergency hunger recipe because you can make it completely out of backup ingredients that last forever in your kitchen. One time I made pasta puttanesca completely out of found ingredients in the London apartment of my college roommate Marianne's uncle, to which I had been given a key and was instructed to wait for Marianne's post-midnight arrival.
7. Shakshuka. This is a great brunch recipe that seems to impress people. It is one of those recipes that has a lot of ingredients (and there are many variations you can find online), but once you have the ingredients it's not very much work.
8. Lentil soup. This one takes a little more time, but none of the steps are difficult and you can make a batch that lasts a really long time and you can freeze parts of it.
9. Chinese sticky rice cake. Every time I've made this, people have been amazed by both how delicious it is and how easy it was to make. You pretty much just put the ingredients together and stir. I substitute almond or soy milk and the recipe is still fine.
10. Noodles. Those who have spent extended time with me know that they are an important staple of the Jean Yang diet. I wrote this blog post about cooking with noodles in 2009. My college roommate Aliza wrote this essay about how I got her into noodles.

Would be curious to hear yours. Enjoy!

Some Cooking Updates from the Kitchen-Field

I've been making some slow and steady progress in expanding my cooking repertoire. I even got some plants to aid in cooking! Here are some reports from the kitchen-field (because there are plants now, see) covering the main advances. With thanks to Aliza Aufrichtig and Loris D'Antoni for their expertise and consultation.

Here are some things I've started keeping around my kitchen:

• Ginger root. I use this with onion or garlic as a base flavoring in stir-fries. I also use it to make ginger lemon tea, which pretty much cures all ailments. (Lazy person's amendment to the recipe: just cut the ginger coarsely and cook it for a really long time instead of grating it.)
• Dried shrimp. Great for various easy-ish Chinese gourd dishes, for instance bitter gourd and winter melon.
• Sichuan peppercorns. These little numbing things are great for putting in stir-fries (at the beginning is when I do it), broths, and probably other things. You can use them whole or grind up them up to distribute the flavor.
• Parsley. Okay, I was late to the party with this universal garnish. I've started getting it more and I even tried to have a parsley plant for a while. The plant didn't go well; Loris made me feel better about it by saying that parsley plants don't regenerate that much anyway. Loris told me about the trick of freezing parsley into ice trays so you have exactly the right amount to use later. (I am not that fancy; I freeze my parsley all together loosely in a container and then shake out a handful at a time.)
• Basil. Late to the party on this one too obviously. I didn't start using it a lot until I tried having a basil plant, since I had trouble keeping fresh basil around. (This plant didn't go well either.) In preparation in harvesting all those leaves from my basil plant (that actually wilted before anticipated harvest), I bought a lot of basil from the store and practiced using it. I learned how to freeze it--a real innovation! I also invented a great snack: Greek yogurt, blueberries, honey, and BASIL.
• Thyme. I only recently learned how to cook with thyme, but it seems to go great with tomato pasta sauces and meats. Loris tells me thyme is a good herb to have fresh in my kitchen, so I recently acquired a thyme plant. Fingers crossed that this plant lasts longer.
• Turmeric, coriander, cumin, and various other Indian-related spices. (I got a masala dabba to hold them!) They're useful for Indian recipes, obviously. I've also started playing around with putting these spices into stir-fries in small amounts.
• Thai fish sauce. This one is pretty pungent, but I've started using it to put on noodles (along with sesame oil) and also to flavor stir-fries. It look me a couple of days maybe to get used to the taste and smell, but I really like it now.

I've also started keeping around Sauvignon blanc or Gruner Veltiner (white wines) for the purpose of cooking pasta sauce. I've tried using it with vegetables as well (as well as capers with vegetables), but I haven't entirely gotten the hang of that yet.

Here are some favorite recipes that have proven to be easier than I anticipated:

• Pasta puttanesca. Super easy to prepare and always delicious.
• Pasta with artichoke hearts and sundried tomatoes. People always ask me what I'm eating when I have these leftovers for lunch!
• Shakshuka. Make these Middle Eastern eggs poached in tomatoes for a friend and they will probably be impressed!
• Aloo gobi. This cauliflower and potato dish was one of my favorites to order at Indian restaurants until I realized how easy it was to make a super delicious version myself.
• Kale salad with apples, cranberries, and pecans. Who knew that kale is greatly improved by massaging it?
• Chinese sticky rice cake with red bean paste. Pretty hard recipe to mess up and they taste pretty heavenly.

Here are some snacks and other things I've recently invented:

• Well, that snack with Greek yogurt, blueberries, honey, and basil.
• This other snack that involves dicing up a pear or nectarine, heating it with maple syrup, and then adding a couple spoonfuls of Greek yogurt. Optional oatmeal makes it more cobbler-like.
• This sauce for baked salmon with chopped up capers, parsley, basil, vinegar, and olive oil. Salt and pepper the salmon to your liking, bake at 350 degrees for 15ish minutes, and then put the sauce on.

Also food-related: coconut oil is great for maintaining bamboo cutting boards and sesame oil is a great hair and body moisturizer. Who knew? Jump on; it's trendy to use oils for everything now.

Cooking for One

You there. Eating takeout at your kitchen counter, pots and pans clean and neatly stowed. Third time this week. Your taste buds are getting a little bit bored and your stomach a little bit skeptical of that recycled deep-fry oil. Why don't you cook?

What's that? You are waiting for your roommate or partner. Or you are sad because you have no such roommate or partner. Gastronomic pleasure need not be shared, you know. You can cook for one.

I know what it is like. Losing a cooking partner--especially one to whom I played a supporting role in the kitchen--was one of the more devastating aspects of past breakups. With whom was I going to invent dishes like ancho chile risotto? How was I going to have more than one home-cooked dish per meal? Who was going to test the food to make sure we were not going to die?

And I have suffered for years. I have spent more time than I would like to admit calling Tofurkey sausage, noodles, and a sauteed vegetable "dinner." I have spent more money than I would like to admit eating out because I got bored of this "dinner." "I don't cook," I would say. "Who has time for that?" Then, one day while aimlessly clicking through dating profiles of men in Israel*, I had a revelation. I could start cooking for myself. Not just stir-fries, but soups and casseroles and other things involving more than four ingredients.

Brilliant, I thought. There are so many obvious advantages to cooking for one. You can cook whatever you want. You can cook whenever you want. You can listen to whatever music you want while cooking. You don't have to worry about getting stabbed if you turn around too quickly. You don't need two people to chop vegetables! Recipes still work when you are on your own! Also, Google is surprising helpful for mitigating concerns about imminent death. (Just today, I searched "Can you combine raw tomatoes with raw honey?" I am that paranoid.)

There are some basic lessons in cooking for one. A key insight, my roommate says, is to pretend you are cooking for two and have leftovers. As cooking for two is the same amount of effort, this is an easy way to increase variety across meals. Cooking larger portions also helps you avoid the awkward situation where you are only using one quarter of an onion at a time. There are also other, smaller tricks: microwaves and ovens are great for keeping things warm for when you have to cook in sequence. Having small tupperware containers is good for both smaller leftovers and small left-over ingredients.

There are also some fun challenges: how to get variety; how use ingredients before they expire. With no one to watch, you can get creative. Have basil instead of mint? Basil tabbouleh! Don't want to buy cream just for a soup? Use yogurt instead. Want to cook pears with chiles? Go for it. Sometimes you fail--as I did today with a tomato/basil/honey dessert--but hey, no one is around to see. And who knows, you might create something amazing. My favorite creation is a cold spinach dish based on the Japanese ohitashi appetizer that uses soy and chile sauces instead of tahini. I was once told that if I invent four other dishes this good, I could start a campus restaurant.

The leftover problem also yields a nice puzzle. Most recipes seem to be for at least four people, as are the default grocery store sizes of ingredients like celery. Left unsolved, the problem is that you will have leftovers for lunch not just the next day, but the day after, and often the day after that. Choosing dishes that freeze well (for instance, soups) can help with spacing this out. You can also pretend your weeks are extended Top Chef episodes by reducing recipe portion sizes and finding different recipes for the same ingredient. Even still, you should not be surprised if there are weeks when you eat celery every day**.

But of course, cooking for one is not for every dish. It does not make the most sense, for instance, for dishes like risotto that are labor-intensive and do not keep well. These are what restaurants are for! Eating out for one is also fun--far more fun than romantic comedies would have you believe.

Go on, explore the world of solo cooking. But don't forget to come back out for a meal with a friend every now and then. Otherwise we would miss you.

* I have never been to Israel. I do not have plans to go to Israel. In denial of the true depths of my time-wasting problem, I classify this activity as "anthropological research."
** It is not clear why they sell celery in such large bunches when such small amounts are needed for soup. I am certain this is why ants on a log exists as a snack.`

Caramelized Leek Soup

A great dish to try as you brace for colder weather is caramelized leek soup, which requires about an hour of preparation in a heavy kettle. I tried it with ciabatta bread (for dipping) and broiled chicken with roasted green beans for the main course.

Before Grilling Season is Over, Try Watermelon

I was recently made aware of NY Times food columnist Mark Bittman's recipe for grilled watermelon and prepared it for the first time yesterday. Grilled watermelon burgers with cheese are a surprisingly delicious combination of sweet and savory flavors. They are also quite easy to make. I recommend being generous with salt and pepper and also using a milder cheese.

Coming Soon: Goodplates

Wish you had a better way to keep track of your meals out, share them with friends, and organize food outings? Some friends are working on a food/restaurant-sharing website called Goodplates. Sign up here.

Quitting Coffee

It has been four weeks since I quit*; it had been four years since my relationship with coffee began. I am glad to put that period of my life behind me.

After years of looking for more time in my day, I thought I had found the solution by including coffee in my morning routine and decreasing my quantity of sleep. My decision had been backed by some pop scientific research that coffee could be a health drink: the negative correlation between coffee and Alzheimer's, the negative correlation between coffee and gout, etc. (In fact, I have a blog post here about why I started drinking coffee.)

My decision to quit was driven by several reasons. I found that I sleep better (at the right times and more deeply) when I haven't had coffee, coffee is hard on my stomach, and that I had become quite addicted (in that I function significantly more poorly in the absence thereof). I had also developed an awareness of and distaste for how wound up coffee makes me.

Quitting has been difficult for the obvious alertness reasons. In addition, my concentration got worse and I felt hungry more often. My hypothesis is that as a stimulant, caffeine stimulates the part of my brain that helps me focus. The hunger can be explained by the "fact" (checked against the internet) that caffeine can be an appetite suppressant. Not being caffeinated has also made social interactions more difficult, perhaps because it has become more difficult to focus on conversations. The good news is that all of these issues have (slowly) been going away.

Despite the challenges, I have been enjoying my coffee-free existence. My quality of sleep has improved, which has helped me to be more naturally alert and focused. It has been a relief not to have to look for sources of caffeine on weekends and when out of town. In general, I have been feeling less wound up and more well.

For those of you thinking about quitting: don't be afraid to do it!

* Somewhat ironic is that it happened the day I arrived in Seattle. I have since had decaf twice, but that is it.

Spotlight on ginger

Many know of my obsessions with coconuts, yogurt, fruit, and soy chorizo. One of my lesser-known (but equally strong) obsessions is with ginger snacks. I usually get crystallized ginger (made by cooking ginger with sugar), which is supposedly good for colds and indigestion. Today I came upon naked ginger, which is uncrystallized but still involves sugar. (I prefer naked ginger to crystallized ginger.) I always feel good about eating ginger because it tastes like candy but makes me feel like I am doing positive things for my body*.

* This is kind of like my previous 5-day-long fling with Viactiv, but healthier**.
** I would like to think...

Vegan/vegetarian food shopping note

If you subsist mostly on almond milk, organic yogurt, and vegan fake meat products, you are better off (on average $1/per item) shopping at places like Harvard Organic Co-op than Star Market, which kind of rips you off on these things (and has far worse selection). The fruit is actually comparably priced as well.

The skinny on (Asian) noodles

The most notable thing about my (temporary summer) kitchen cabinet right now is that despite the depth of my inventory, I have quite a breadth of noodle and hot sauce varieties. I thought I'd write about some different kinds of Asian noodles and what they are good for, along with some notes about how to have my noodle lifestyle*. (You may e-mail me for questions about non-Asian noodles various hot sauces; I am very into them.)

Basic kitchen ingredients:

• Garlic (good for non-broth noodle preparations).
• Scallions (these don't keep as well as garlic, but they are good for topping a dish).
• Sesame oil and soy sauce.
  
• Hot sauces: I try to have a chili garlic sauce for flavoring, a black bean sauce for flavoring, and Lao Gan Ma chili sauce in oil for spiciness.
• Having dry Sichuan peppers around is also good for flavoring broths and stir-fries. (Since they are dry, you are responsible for spreading the flavor.)
  

Basic preparations:

• Broth. You can make a vegan broth by quartering an onion, cutting a carrot into small pieces, and boiling with water for 20-30 minutes. It is very easy to make a chicken broth by putting pieces of chicken (frozen or fresh) into the broth in the beginning. The broth is pretty robust to overcooking; cook until everything looks done and the soup tastes flavored. Adding salt is a good idea; I also like to add some dry Sichuan chili peppers. You could cook the noodles in the broth, but keep in mind that noodles may absorb a lot of water, so it is usually best to cook the noodles separately. A cool thing you can do to flavor broth is to stir-fry some shallots and put them in the top/bottom of the bowl.
  
• "Dry." I usually just throw together a basic noodle sauce using sesame oil and some hot sauces. I usually use a combination of chili garlic sauce and chillies in oil. It is sometimes also fun to grind up some dry peppers to make the sauce spicier. You may also use soy sauce for flavoring. With the right repertoire of hot sauces and some experimentation, it becomes very easy to get the flavor to suit your mood very quickly.
• Stir-fried. I'm not a pro at this, but you can get pan-friable noodles and stir-fry them with a little bit of water in the pan. One idea for topping the noodles is with scallions and chicken or seitan; you should cook the noodles separate from the other stuff.
  

Noodle varieties:

• Wheat (udon) noodles are medium thickness and good for either the broth or dry preparations.
• Buckwheat (soba) noodles can be served cold/dry or hot in broth. They are quite good with some sesame oil/miso, but since I am Chinese (Hunanese) and not Japanese I opine that everything can be improved by hot sauce. :)
  
• Mung bean starch noodles come in various thicknesses. They are okay for broth, but I find they serve the best purpose for "holding" flavor since they themselves don't have too interesting of a flavor. These are a good substrate for a spicy chili/oil sauce.
• Somen are very thin wheat noodles that can be served cold with some sort of sauce or hot in broth. I love somen in broth; somen has a good enough flavor that it is good with some hot sauce, but it is always fairly clear to me that it was not meant to be eaten that way.
• Egg noodles come in either thick or thin varieties. Both kinds are great in soup; thin egg noodles often come in a pan-friable variety--but you have to read the label to make sure.
• Fresh Shanghai noodles are thicker and absolutely great for making dan dan noodles or variations thereof. It is fairly easy to make some approximation of dan dan noodles with some dan dan sauce (or combination of chili garlic/chili oil/black bean sauce) and garlic.
• Rice noodles in Chinese cuisine usually come in thick and thicker and are great both in soups, as a substrate for spice, and in stir fry. (For the thicker variety, look for fresh noodles.)
  

Some notes on cooking noodles:

• Noodles will often overcook if you let them stay hot for too long; if you are concerned about this you should drain them and rinse them with cool water before proceeding to the post-cooking step.
• Noodle varieties have very high variance in how long they take to cook and how much they tend to expand. Once you get the hang of things, it tends to be pretty consistent.
  

* Most of what I say is calibrated for cooking for one to two people. With noodles I'll usually make a vegetable and then have either a couple of poached eggs, some chicken or tofu sausage, some seitan, or some chicken (which I prepare with black bean sauce, sesame oil, and chili sauce).

An awesome snack

I just concocted the best snack ever: I diced a nectarine, added brown sugar and Life cereal, microwaved this for one minute, and added three tablespoons of plain lowfat yogurt. This was the healthiest and quickest way to approximate a peach cobbler a la mode with the ingredients in my kitchen! :)

Also awesome:

• Strawberries dipped in plain 2% Greek yogurt and brown sugar.
• Blueberries and any plain yogurt and brown sugar.
• Raspberries and any plain yogurt and brown sugar.
• Plain yogurt with jam.
  

Yogurt recommendations: for Greek, I prefer Fage 2%; for regular, I like the Whole Foods brand 2% or Nancy's Organic Yogurt 2%. Greek yogurt is thicker than "regular" yogurt and is good for dipping fruits.

Jam recommendations: Bonne Maman has a pretty good flavor/texture--it is best to get something that is not too gelatinous.)

If you are into yogurt you may also want to try kefir, another fermented milk product that is more liquid and has different properties from yogurt.

Merits of young coconuts

I have recently discovered the amazing joy of eating young coconuts. You can buy them at grocery stores (as un-fancy as the Redmond Safeway) and you can eat them by hacking off the top, drinking the coconut juice, and scraping the insides to get at the coconut jelly. Coconut juice is supposed to be an amazing post-workout beverage because of its electrolytes. It is also supposedly very nutritious: full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, so it can't hurt to drink it in general either. Since first discovering the joys of eating young coconuts last Saturday, I have had a total of 4. ;) This must be love.

The food situation in Seattle

I haven't yet extensively explored the Seattle food situation, but a cursory investigation reveals that it is pretty good. In particular, the quality of the "bar food" and the diversity of their menus has been impressive. Some places I've been:

• Barolo - a nice place to get a drink and eat some really good food. (Check out the menu on the site!) They supposedly have multiple happy hours where things are half-priced; when I took advantage of this it was pretty great.
• Feierabend - a great German restaurant. You know how I'm a sucker for a nice German meal with beer. (Unfortunately I no longer eat red meat, so the German food experience is significantly less enjoyable.)
  
• Table 219 - a great, well-priced place to eat and people-watch. I had a really good special: red snapper over cucumber salad with some sort of curry.
  
• Elysian Brewery - a nice place to get a beer with some good (healthy!) bar food. I had a great mushroom reuben sandwich with a good chicken lemon grass soup; my friend had a great tofu salad on soba noodles.
  
• Random Asian in Redmond - there are a lot of pho places and random Japanese/Korean places are here. I've been to a couple and they are pretty good.

Capitol Hill seems good in general for food; along Broadway (where Table 219 is) I saw many other restaurants that looked like they could be good. :)

This past weekend I attended Bite of Seattle, an annual food festival where local restaurants have booths. There was a really cool alley where you paid $10 and got to try samples from 7 different fairly nice restaurants (Salty's, Cellars, etc.); I am glad I saved room for that but the samples were not big enough to determine whether the restaurant was actually good. I also got to eat a coconut, which was really great.

Some notes on cooking

Presentation makes a huge difference. Eating a meal that looks beautiful will leave you much more satisfied and much less inclined to over-eat. things that matter a lot for presentation are good knifework (cut things consistently), good stove skills (most people have these--just don't mash up the food while cooking it), and good serving skills. Having a set of nice bowls that are interesting shapes (I like square bowls and plates) makes the food look way nicer. Food should have enough room to breathe in its bowl or plate; there should be some room on the outside of it, uncontaminated by the sauce. You can be creative with presentation in simple ways. For instance, I acquired a set of frosted colored bowls that are great for serving fruit. Mango looks particularly nice with the blue bowl; strawberries look very good with the light green bowl.

In a similar vein, the bowls you choose determine how you eat. I like serving the food in larger bowls and plates and having small (some would say tiny) bowls and plates for each person: this helps me eat slowly and eat a reasonable amount of food while feeling like I've had a feast.

Of course, the cooking matters a lot, too. :) I have found it important to be attentive to detail (wash vegetables thoroughly; throw out parts of things that are less fresh; be careful with knifework) and to err on the side of too few ingredients rather than too many when uncertain about a recipe.

Cooking with vegetables

Here is the much-promised post about my top 8 vegetarian dishes. Some of these involve optional bonito flakes, which are not strictly vegetarian because they involve fish product.

Some useful ingredients to have around the kitchen:

• garlic (I keep both garlic cloves and minced garlic; I prefer using cloves but it is faster to just used the stuff in the jar)
• hot sauces--I have chilli sauce (which is somewhat sweet), chilli sauce with black bean, and various other sauces
• various peppers: we keep around various peppercorns, whole chillis (which we sometimes grind using a coffee grinder), and ground chillis
  
• vinegar and rice vinegar
• scallions (fresh--you cut them up with scissors when you need them)
• packages of seitan/tofu for when you run out of fresh ingredients
  

Recipe sketches:

1. Stir-fried greens. You can do this with bok choy, yu choy, spinach, brocolli rabe, watercress, and more. Peel apart vegetable leaves and wash thoroughly. If the leaves are large, chop them as necessary. Put oil into a shallow pan and stir fry on high heat until done. Hold off on salting until almost done; this optimizes the texture. For flavor, add some chopped garlic to the oil before adding the vegetables. For fun, I've also tried adding things like ground mustard, cayenne pepper, and anchovies. The only thing I really recommend against is adding acidic things (lemon, vinegar, etc.) because this wilts the vegetables and turns them yellow.
   
2. Pickled radish. Prepare a sauce by putting in some amount of rice vinegar, soy sauce, and hot sauces into a bowl such that the total amount of resulting sauce is at least 1 inch deep. The vinegar and hot sauce should dominate the taste. Cut radishes into small pieces and brine in the sauce. Take them out when you've achieved a desirable flavor and serve.
   
3. Stir-fried seitan. Prepare a sauce by adding a tablespoon of sweet potato or potato starch, 1/4 cup water, a dash of soy sauce, and optional hot sauce into a pan and bringing the sauce to a boil on low to medium heat. Cut scallions into pieces that are 2-3 inches long and cut seitan into pieces about 1/4 inch thick. Stir-fry seitan and scallions together for 2-3 minutes on medium high heat; add sauce on top when done.
   
4. Cucumber salad. Soften cucumbers by beating them with the side of a knife. Quarter cucumbes and cut into small pieces. Prepare a sauce of vinegar, soy sauce, and hot sauces. (Make enough sauce so that the bottom layer of cucumbers can be suitable coated by sitting in the sauce.) Put sauce onto cucumbers, mix, and serve.
   
5. Bonito spinach. Stir-fry spinach, let cool. Prepare a sauce with soy sauce, hot sauce, and bonito flakes. (If you use bonito flakes, use enough to soak up the sauce.) Once spinach has cooled sufficiently, pour sauce over spinach. (The spinach absorbs sauce surprisingly well. Don't over-flavor it!)
   
6. Brats and onions. You might think German cuisine is out-of-bounds, but you can almost have your cake and eat it too! Cut vegetarian brats (teehee) into 2-inch pieces and cut onions into rings. Heat a pan on medium heat and add plenty of oil (the onions absorb a ton of oil!) Add black peppercorns if you desire. One onions are almost all-the-way cooked, add brats. You may also enjoy heating sauerkraut in a different pan and serving it on the side.
   
7. Noodle soup. Boil water. To prepare a broth, cut up an onion and a carrot (if you have one--if not, you can take the stems of bok choy or yu choy and use those) and put into the water. Add bonito flakes or dried shrimp if you want. When this had been boiling for a while, add your desired kind of noodles. I particularly enjoy soba noodles, thin egg noodles (which I buy fresh), and Shanghai fresh noodles. If you want, flavor the broth with chilli sauce. The noodle soup is good with stir-fried vegetables. If you eat eggs, you may also want to add a poached egg on top. (Ramen places also like to fry diced shallots in a deep-fry kind of way and put them in the bottom of soup to flavor them.)
   
8. Stir-fried smoked tofu. Cut smoked tofu (xiang gan), Chinese leek (jiu cai), and Chinese preserved mustard plant (za cai) into strips about 2 inches long and 1/4 inch thick. Stir-fry on high heat, adding the ingredients in the following order: za cai, tofu, leek (at end). (If you are not vegetarian, you may also enjoy this with strips of chicken. Chicken tip: pre-cook the chicken in boiling water for 1-2 minutes before cutting so you can cut smaller strips.)
   

Upon request I can follow up any of these recipes with more detailed information and photographs.

Other fast, easy, and tasty things to eat that are vegetarian are Tofurkey sausages (which require microwaving/heating in a pan--I enjoy the chorizo ones for breakfast) and sliced Tofurkey sandwiches. I am also very into yogurt: I enjoy eating plain yogurt with fruit or jam, Greek yogurt, and kefir, a cultured milk product.

When I went home for winter break my dad showed me his method of making both scallion pancakes and scallion rolls. It is quite delicious; I will post that (with pictures) sometime soon!

Cooking with fruit: it's sweet

As part of my new year's resolutions, I have been trying to cut down on my red meat consumption and eat less crap. While eating the foods I haven't been eating and restocking my kitchen, I managed to find a spare hand and mouth to discover the joys of cooking fruit.

I've learned that you can basically cook any kind of fruit you've seen in a dessert with any kind of sweetener and it'll taste good. Some ideas below:

1. Caramelized bananas. Chop the desired amount of banana into one-to-two-inch pieces. Mix a small amount of butter (enough to coat the bottom of the pan) with brown sugar on medium to medium-high heat. Once the sugar melts into the butter, add bananas and cook for a few minutes until they are brown and have the desired level of softness. Make sure to stir during the process.
2. Cinnamon apples. Cut peeled apples either into slices or small chunks. Add 3/4 cup of wine of your choice to a shallow pan. Add one to two tablespoons of honey. To enhance the taste, add a stick of cinnamon and a few cloves and remove them before adding apples. I also experimented by adding a Thai chili for a few minutes while making the syrup. This changed the aftertaste in an interesting way. Cook until the wine is reduced to a small amount (the amount of syrup you would add to cook the apples). Add apples and cook on high heat until the liquid is almost gone and the apples are soft. Stir apples, sprinkle cinnamon. I enjoyed eating this with Greek yogurt. (Instead of a wine and honey syrup, you can use butter and sugar or olive oil and honey.)
3. Poached pears. Peel pears, cut into halves and scoop out the core. Make a syrup as you would for the apples. (I used Calvados, an apple brandy, and added candied ginger, cardamom, and dried cranberries for additional punch. Since the pears tend to be very sweet, something sour like cranberries is good to balance out the sweetness. Alternatively, you could make a syrup from wine or port.) Add pears to the syrup and cook, covered, on low heat until they are soft and flavored. I ate this with kefir, a cultured milk product.

Since I have developed a sudden and extreme interest in cooking, this is not the last you will hear. Up next: my favorite vegetarian dishes.