Lentil Soup

I've had lentil soup before and I made lentil soup once with one of those packaged lentil soup box. But since I don't really like beans and peas, I never really thought about making lentil soup.

What made me motivate to make lentil soup was my son. My son has been picky about eating vegetables lately. I want him to eat lots of vegetables but he only wants to eat carbs and meat. But I realized when I make soup with vegetables, he would eat vegetables. One time, I used packaged lentil soup mix and made lentil soup for him. He loved it. So I decided to make lentil soup from scratch hoping that my son would eat it.

Since I have never made lentil soup, I looked up recipes online and found a one which I liked. It is from All Recipe. If you are interested in the recipe, please click here to go to Allrecipes website. 

This is how it turned out!

Since my son doesn't want to eat big pieces of vegetable, I chopped the vegetable pretty small. It came out beautifully and tasted wonderful! Even I liked it!!!

I made a big portion so I can freeze some of them for later days. Of course I used my favorite Le Creuset pot for this!! This pot is perfect for making big portion of soup.

I am really happy with the result and my son and my husband liked it also. If I (who don't like beans and peas) liked it, I am sure everyone who love beans and peas love this soup!

Lentil soup is pretty filling and it feels healthy eating this soup. I am for sure making this soup again and again!!!!

Head on Shrimp Pasta and Special Pasta Fork

There is a Korean Supermarket about 15mins away from our new place by driving. I was checking their weekly circular the other day and saw head on shrimps are on sale.

A few days before this weekly circular, I saw a TV show on Cooking Channel called "Extra Virgin" and they were making a tomato sauce pasta with head-on prawns. It looked so good and as soon as I saw the sale on head-on shrimp, I knew that I was going to try this recipe. Click here to go to Cooking Channel website for the recipe I used.

The recipe called for Santa Barbara Spot Prawns but I think any kind of head on Shrimp or Prawn will do.

This was really good! Cooking shrimp with the shell and head makes the dish a lot more tasty. The only problem is that it is so messy to eat the shrimp when it has shells and head. So we ate the pasta first (well, the pasta had some shrimp meat with it) and ate those shrimps at the end.

On the day I made this pasta, a gift from my mother in law has arrived by postal mail. One of the gift was special pasta fork which she found in Germany. This is how it looks. See the picture below.

Isn't it look funny? When I saw this fork for the first time, I was like "This is a funny looking fork!"
Then, I talked to my mother in-law and she told me that this is a special fork for eating pasta. Then, I was like "Oh! now that make sense!"

And I really liked it when I used it. You know how sometimes it is difficult to get perfect portion of pasta on your fork? It is easier with this fork to portion the amount of pasta you take.

We also think this is perfect for our two year old son since he tend to take too much pasta on his fork and only 1/3 of it end up in his mouth.

I don't know if you can find these fork and spoon in the U.S. but it is great utensils to have if you love pasta and would like to look elegant when you eat :-)

Argentinian Empanadas

I have made Empanada a few time already with my friends from Latin America. We made the dough from scratch twice. One time it was flour dough(Click here for the post) , another time it was corn flour dough(Click here for that post).

And another time, we made them with already made dough disk. And this time, since I was making it for the first time by myself, I decided to use already made frozen dough disk.

I can find those frozen Empanada disk at my local supermarket frozen food section. There is this brand called "Goya" and that is what I bought.

I love those frozen disks because I am not good with making dough and especially bad at rolling them out.

Anyhow, I made Argentinian style Empanada which has green olives, boiled eggs and ground beef.

I think normally you would put the ingredients separately into the dough and close them but my friend mix them all together and it is much easier and faster and in my opinion it blends the flavor better that way so that is what I did.

I sauteed onion and browned ground beef in it then added chopped green olives and boiled eggs.

I used fork to help seal the empanada edge. Then before baking, brushed some egg to make it shiny when it is baked.

Baked in the oven for about 20mins.

I forgot to take a picture of inside. I am sure that I will be making this again so I will try to take picture of each process next time and post it here :-)

I bought two package of frozen disks and one package has 12 disks. I used all of them and froze half of them in the freezer. This way, I can just take them out whenever I want to eat empanadas and bake in the oven and have my empanada fix.

I think Empanada is also great for kids. The other day, I had this palydate at a place which is like an indoor play ground and we all decided to bring lunch and have it there. I didn't know what to bring and I didn't have anything to make sandwiches so I took these Empanadas out from the freeze and baked it and brought them as lunch. It was great since you don't need utensils and doesn't make too much mess.

I think this is also good for afternoon snack :-)

I love them. My husband love them and my son love them also (except the olive. He spit out olives...)

I also made two apple Empanadas since I ran out of beef mixture and still had two disks left. It was great also.

Pioneer Woman's Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork

Pulled Pork is one of my husband's favorite dish to order when we go to BBQ joint. I tried to make it at home once but the result was not what I hoped for.

The other day, one of my friend got huge piece of pork shoulder and gave me some of it since they can not eat them all by themselves so I decided to try making pulled pork again.

I think I didn't cook enough last time so I decided to cook as long as it need this time.

And this time, I used this recipe which I had been very curious about.

Pioneer Woman's Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork. Here is the link to her recipe. 

I love Dr. Pepper. I try not to drink it normally since sodas are not good for you but if you ask me what kind of soda I like, the answer will be Dr. Pepper. And, I drink them occasionally. Especially in summer when it is really hot and you are super thirsty, cold glass of Dr. Pepper with lots of ice taste super delicious!

Anyways, so I was curious about this pork recipe using Chipotle Chili and Dr. Pepper.

I like Chipotle Chili in Adobo Sauce but I know it is quite spicy for me so I decided to use half of what recipe called for.

And, I used my Le Creuset for this dish. After 4 hours in the oven, the pork was already fork tender.

After shredding the pork, put them back in the cooking liquid.

This pulled pork came out really good. The first night, we ate it with cole slaw and hamberger buns and the next day we ate with corn tortilla with salsa and chopped cilantro.

Since this recipe has Chipotle Chili with Adobo sauce in it, I tasted better when I ate with tortilla and cilantro. It was super good.

Since it is quite a big portion, I froze some of them. Now, I have pulled pork in my freezer anytime I want it!