Ellie Krieger's Sesame Chicken & Mini Cheese Cake

Using this book again, I made Sesame Chicken and Mini Cheese Cake! Sesame Chicken is my husbands' favorite dish when we order in Chinese food. Normally, it is battered and fried and coated with sweet and sour sauce with lots of sesame. This Ellie Krieger's version is not deep fried but more like stir fried which makes this dish little bit healthier and lighter.

I cooked broccoli too long so the color of broccoli is not great but this sesame chicken was great. It is not exactly like the sesame chicken we order from Chinese restaurant but this one is good substitute when you make it at home. You don't have to deep fry your chicken and it was quite tasty. The sauce has quite strong taste so I end up eating lots of rice....

I like it with lots of sesame and lots of green onions. 

 Also, I tried making this mini cheese cake. It is cupcake size and perfect for little dessert. 

However, when I dissolved gelatine powder, I guess I didn't dissolve it well so when we ate the cheesecake, there were chunks of gelatine in it. It was not pleasant texture and we couldn't eat it. 

It tasted pretty good so if you follow the recipe well and if you dissolve gelatine well, the result must have been much much better. Oh well, I will be more careful next time.....

Even though it did not come out well I think it is a great idea to have such a small cupcake size mini cheese cakes. It looked really cute. I think I should try this again.....

Guy Fieri's Hong Kong Noodle

I made this dish using one of the cookbooks which I borrowed from the library the other day.
This is called Hong Kong Noodle.

The book I used for this dish was Guy Fieri's cookbook. This one.

He is a very popular chef on FoodNetwork. He won a show called "The Next Foodnetwork star" and start having his own cooking show. He also start hosting this show called "Diners, Drive-in and Dives".

His food always looked good in the show but I never actually used his recipe before so this was my first time trying his recipe. 

In this cook book, there are some dishes which was Asian inspired dish and this one called "Hong Kong Noodle" looked really good to me so I tried this one. 

It came out really good! I loved it. It took a while for me to prepare everything but the result was well worth the effort. 

You can look at this recipe from FoodNetwork's website. Click here for Guy Fieri's Hong Kong Noodle recipe. 

I followed the recipe and I guess it was for 4~6 people so when it was finished, I ended up with huge plate of Hong Kong Noodle. It was a bit too much for just two people so we ate this noodle for next few days but even as a leftover, it still tasted really good!

The chicken is marinated with ginger, garlic and stuff and it is very tasty. Plus, you can eat lots of vegetable this way.

There are some other things which I would like to try from his cookbook but I had to return the book so I cook one more thing from this book and returned the book. The other dish I made was coleslaw salad with fried wonton. This one was also really good. I will post it next time.

Sweet & Sour Pork

I had a ripe pineapple at home and I wanted to use it for some cooking. I used to not like having fruit in salty food but lately I like some of them. One of the salty dish I think about when I think about pineapple is "Sweet & Sour Pork". I have never made this at home but after looking at some recipes on the Internet, I figured that it shouldn't be too difficult to make. So I gave it a try.

Sweet & Sour Pork

Ingredients
Pork   about 1lb
Onion       1 and 1/2 (medium size)
Carrots     2~3
Bell Pepper  1
Pineapple     about 1/2 cup
Garlic          2 cloves
Corn Starch   2 table spoons
Vegetable Oil    3 table spoons

*sweet & sour sauce
Vinegar          3 table spoons
Soy Sauce      1table spoons
Sugar              3 table spoons
Sake               2 table spoons
Chicken Stock  about 2/3 cup
Ketchup          3 table spoons

+ Marinade for pork
Sake              2 table spoons
Soy Sauce     1 table spoon
Salt & Pepper   a pinch


1, First of all, cut all the vegetables/Pineapple and pork into bite size pieces. Chop garlic.

2, Marinade pork with the +marinade sauce. (I marinade it for about two hours but if you don't have time, you can just marinade them for about 30mins or so)


3, Mix all the ingredients for sweet and sour sauce in a bowl and set aside.

4,  Add corn starch in the the marinated pork from 2 and coat the pork with corn starch.

5, Add vegetable oil into frying pan and fry the pork with chopped garlic.

6, When the pork is cooked and crispy, add carrots. (Actually, I would take the pork out at this point if I make this again and add the pork again at the end so the pork stays crispy)

7, When carrots gets little soft, add onions.

8, When onions are cooked, add bell peppers.

9, Then, add pineapples.

10, Add the sweet & sour sauce which you mixed in step 3.

11, Bring to boil and when it started to thicken, turn the heat off.

12, Serve with rice.

I was surprised how good it was considering that I made this for the first time. I didn't know that you can make sweet & sour pork.

One thing I will change next time is that I will take the pork out before adding the vegetables and add back the pork at the very end. This way, the pork will stay crispy and will be better.

Since my husband liked this also, I will definitely making this dish again sometimes.

A few things which I made at the end of last year

There are a few things which I made at the end of last year and didn't have a chance to post so I would like to share them with you here today.

First, I made Bulgogi which is a Korean beef dish.

I marinade thinly sliced beef with some soy sauce, sesame oil, sake, chili paste, garlic and ginger.

Then, cut some vegetables. I used garlic chives and onion and bean sprouts.

Then, just saute them all in a pan. Easy and tasty.

With bulgogi, I also made Banbanji which is kind of like a salad. Steamed chicken with vegetables and sesame sauce.

First, I microwaved chicken thigh with green onion and garlic. Then also microwave some bean sprout. Also, I cut some cucumber into think slices. For the sauce, I mixed garlic, white sesame paste, sake, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar and stuff. Pour them over and serve cold.

On some other day, I was craving for crepe so I made crepes with my husband. In the beginning, the crepe dough was too thick and the crepe came out thinker than I like so I added some more milk into the dough and made it perfect consistency. The second crepe came out perfectly. Maybe I can open a crepe store :-) My favorite crepe is with banana, whipped cream, chocolate syrup and almond slices.

My husband was adding a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of this. Crepes were much easier than I thought. This is a great and elegant looking snack. You can also make crepe with some savory ingredients and make it as lunch.

Some other day, I made Japanese hamburg. This is a very popular dish in Japan. It is like a hamburger patty but you don't eat it with buns. We add some vegetables such as onions and stuff and eat it with rice. For this one, I added onion, Japanese basil and tofu. I steam fried in a pan and it came out really juicy and tasty. For sauce, I mixed butter and mirin and soy sauce in the frying pan after I made hamburg and pour it over with some grated daikon radish.

My husband also cooked for me during the holiday. He made this wonderful curry chicken salad. He sautéed chicken with curry powder and added on top of salad. It was very tasty and satisfying salad.

This holiday season was wonderful for both my husband and I. We didn't travel anywhere this time but we were able to relax, cook together, go shopping together, go to movies and stuff like that. We really had a great alone times together.

Manhattan Soup Dumpling Lunch & Indian Feast dinner with great friends

On Weekend, my husband and I went to Manhattan to see a Play called "Elling". There are famous actors in this show such as Brendan Fraser, Denis O'Hare and Jennifer Coolidge. It was a quite small theater and our seat was great!

The play was pretty funny and heart warming. The actors were great. I think their timing is just wonderful. I never had a chance to see those famous actors act right in front of you so this was a great experience for me. I feel blessed to live close to Manhattan at the moment like this.

Anyhow, our play was Matinee so we decided to have lunch before the show. We went to a Chinese place called "Joe's Shanghai. This is a famous soup dumpling place and I have been to their downtown location a few times and I liked it so I wanted to try their Midtown location also.

We ordered two different kinds of soup dumplings.

It has super hot soup and meat inside so we have to be very careful to eat those things.

The dumplings are really good. We had crab dumpling and pork dumpling. I think crab ones were a bit too crabby for me so I preferred pork ones.

The other thing I always order at this restaurant is Shanghai Fried Rice. This fried rice is my favorite. It is so good. It is just simple egg and scallion fried rice but the rice is always very shiny and it is so good. I wonder what kind of rice they use for this. It is just amazing in my opinion.

After the show, we walked around a little bit since it was such a nice day. Some people were wearing short sleeves and everybody was enjoying nice weather.

Then, we went to our friend's apartment since we were invited for a dinner at their place. They prepared wonderful Indian food for us.

Chick Pea dish and Cauliflower dish.

Cucumber, Red Radish, Pomegranate.

Lamb Keema.

Everything was so good and I had to go back for more after I finished my first plate. Lamb Keema reminded me of the lady who I used to like with when I was in California because she used to make this quite often. I missed this dish! I should try to make this at home. I wish I could eat something like this everyday. I love Indian food!

After the dinner, we had dessert.

We had cake and ice cream.

Cup cakes.

Banana Pudding.

And they made us great milk tea with tea leaves from Assam area. It was also really good.

We ate so much and we had a great time. We also had a friend of theirs from Cypress and all of us had a great time. I really enjoyed spending time with them. I wish we live much closer so we can do this more often.

Next time, I would love to invite them over and make something special for them. We are so lucky to have such great friends everywhere we go. Anyway, we had another great weekend!!!

Chikuzenni & Banbanji

Since I bought lots of Japanese vegetables from Mitsuwa, I made "Chikuzen-ni" which is very traditional Japanese dish with lots of vegetables.

I used lotus roots, gobo, carrots, konnyaku, shiitake mushroom and chicken. I but them into small pieces and cook with sake, soy sauce, sugar and mirin.

This is something which is not special at all in Japan but when you live in the U.S. like me, it feels very special since I don't get to eat this too often.

It is very healthy and goes well with rice. I was not sure if my husband likes it or not. It is not his favorite dish but he was eating so I guess it was OK.

I also made something called "banbanji". I think this dish comes originally from China. Basically, it is with steamed chicken with sesame sauce. I cooked bean sprout in microwave, then cut cucumber and add cooked chicken on top with sesame sauce.

This came out really good and my husband loved it. I cooked chicken in microwave with sake and green onion and grated ginger with a saran warp for 4 mins and left it until it gets cold. For the sesame sauce, I used white part of green onion, grated ginger, grated garlic, white sesame paste, vinegar and sugar and some fried garlic chili oil.

My husband and I love this sauce. It was a bit too garlicky so I have to use less garlic next time but it tasted great!

US OPEN & Delicious Dumpling

On Sunday, we spent all day at beach playing beach volleyball (not me... I am horrible with any kind of sports. My husband and our friends were playing). After the beach day, we went to a shopping mall but we didn't know mall close early on Sunday. When we arrived, almost everything was already closed...

Well, on Monday we went to U.S. Open. This year, we didn't have ticket but we heard that we will be able to get some outer court ticket at the box office so we went there. Unfortunately, it was sold out. So we walked around the flushing meadow park and have a nice picnic.

Some people might remember this from the movie "Man In Black". The park was full of families and everybody was having a great day. It was a perfect day to walk around the park. Perfect temperature, Perfect weather.

After the park, we were hungry so we went to Flushing which is an area where there are so many Chinese and Korean stores. There were one dumpling restaurant which I wanted to go so we went there. I heard that this place is popular and normally you have to wait for a while to get seats but when we got there, it was already around 3:00pm so we didn't have to wait. However the restaurant was almost full at this time. This place is called "Nan Shian Dumpling House". They are famous for their handmade dumplings.

We ordered crab dumpling and seafood crispy noodle.

Both of them were really really good! We were so happy that we came here. The dumplings were excellent. You have to be careful eating this kind of dumpling because there are some soup inside and it is extremely hot! But this soup is very tasty and yummy!!

We have to go there again! I love these dumplings. Plus, it is very affordable.

After late lunch, we head to Manhattan and had fun. I will write about that tomorrow!

Popular in Japan right now! Fried Garlic Spicy Oil.

I read lots of Japanese blogs everyday and I realized this fried garlic oil product is really popular in Japan right now. I read that it has been sold out in many places. And now many different companies are making similar products. In July, my sister came to visit me so I asked her to get me one of those. This is it.

These spicy oil is normally called "Ra-yu" in Japan. And these new product has some fried garlic chips and some other stuff in it and it is not as spicy as the original ra-yu. So you can use this for many different dishes. Many people used this for ramen noodle, pasta, fried rice or just add in on top of rice, tofu etc. The possibility is unlimited.

I used it in a most common way by adding it to ramen noodle. I sauteed bean sprout, corn and bacon with this spicy oil and added this on top of miso ramen.

When I was sauteing it it looks really red and spicy and my husband was looking right next to me. He was bit worried if this will be too spicy. So I tried the oil itself just a little bit and found out that it is not spicy at all. I assured my husband that it will be fine and add little more.

It came out really good. Both of us liked it a lot. I thinks this will be a great spices to use for many different dishes. I would love to make fried rice with this oil.

Japanese love ramen noodle and there are so many ramen noodle shops in Japan. Luckily, there are some good Japanese ramen noodle shops in NY so if I really want to have good ramen, I can have them in the city. I think Ramen noodle is a comfort food for Japanese people.

Vegetable and Pork bowl

This bowl is pretty popular in Japan and we call it "Chuuka Don" which mean Chinese bowl. You can find this dish in Chinese restaurants in Japan. I am not sure if this dish is really originated from China or not but that is how we call it.

I was looking at this famous Japanese cooking blog and this lady was making this bowl and I really wanted to make it. This was my first time making it and my mom never made this for us at home so I was not sure if I can make it right but it came out really great!

We use lots of vegetables in this dish. This time, I used cabbage, carrots, onion, bean sprout, shiitake mushroom and kikurage mushroom.

This also require some pork to make it more flavorful. You don't need to use too much.

All the vegetables in.

Then, add water and other ingredients such as soy sauce, sake, oyster sauce and so on.

I was so surprised how good it was. Plus, you can eat lots of vegetables this way. I poured over the rice but you can also pour this over some noodle. My husband loved it also!

In Japan, we use quail egg for this dish but I don't find quail egg in the supermarket near us so I just used regular egg :-)

I never made this before so I just assumed that it will be difficult but it was so easy and tasted great! Now I know that I can make this at home! Great!