culinary

Fried Tofu with Teriyaki Sauce

For this dish it is suggested that you have some cooked rice to pair it with. For this you will need the following ingredients.
Serves 5-7 with rice

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Flour for dusting and Oil for frying
A block of Extra Firm Tofu (16 oz)
1/4 C Dark Brown Sugar
1/4 C Soy Sauce
1/4 C Rice Wine Vinegar
Shredded sushi seaweed for garnish

Pour your oil in the narrowest pot you have as to save on the amount of oil needed put it on medium heat. It will take a couple moments to get to frying temperature. Next put a cup of flour in a wide bowl, and set aside. Press your tofu lightly with a paper towel so it will remove as much of the moisture as possible before cutting in to cubes at an inch squared. After cutting, check the oil by pinching a small amount of flour in to the oil if you get a fair reaction that looks just like a soup on a low simmer then you can begin. Dredge them in the flower in batches before dropping them in to the oil you don’t want to do it all at once because that will drop the temperature of the oil and for most stove top burners you will not be able to hold temp without splitting them in to at least two batches. I did mine in four batches total, but I wasn’t in a hurry. Let them fry until golden brown or a light manilla color for those who know their around an office better.

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The bubbles don’t have to be big you just want to make sure that when they come out they can drain. rinse and repeat with all batches until all the tofu is drying off. For the teriyaki sauce take a small pot and put your sugar, vinegar and soy in it before bringing it up to a simmer making sure to stir until the sugar has been dissolved and let simmer for a couple minutes until all the flavors meld together or about three or four minutes.

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I got a little impatient and cranked up to high which you can do if you want to watch it for a minute or two. You do not want the sugar to burn or else you will need to try again. After your tofu has dried appropriately you can use your sauce to dip into or pour over depending on how you like your sauces to be done. Some people are picky, no judging here.

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I got my tofu placed on cooked white rice and seaweed around it and from here I just poured the sauce over the top and dug in. The picture didn’t come so clear as I had hoped but its tofu blocks on rice. So I hope you enjoy this recipe and if you liked what you saw give some of my other dishes a chance their in the cooking category on my blog.

Have a good day everyone, oh and before I forget starting in December their will hopefully be more posts I am getting a little bit more comfortable doing this as well as the youtube videos if you watch those link is to the side. I am going to try to up my game to do two a week I feel like it can be done. Wish me luck.

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Fried Rice –

Hey everyone, time for another simple recipe this time to use up any rice you may have this works best after the rice has cooled. You will need the following.

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3 large eggs
1/4 C chopped green onions
2 qt of long grain white rice

Of course you want to have your seasonings of choice on hand. In a non stick pan on medium high heat start by cracking your eggs in to the pan until they begin to get opaque. Next is to toss your rice mixing the two together until the eggs are almost completely cooked. Picture below for example. Make sure to keep your rice moving as to not get over cooked in places this dish from start to finish takes less then five minutes if the rice is already cooked.

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Last is to add your green onion as well as any seasonings you prefer, making sure to mix everything up with your spat of choice.From there just plate up Mine in the pic has a little bit of chili powder for color and a touch of heat. Shredded seaweed works well, and of course you can always just grab a spoon and dig in.

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If you do not want to use or do not have a non stick pan then just a drop of oil is needed before putting the eggs in. From there just go for it.

Next, two recipes on this blog will be a tofu dish fried and with sauce over rice once again. Rice was on sale so I got a big bag to last me for a while. The other recipe will be a dish I actually took as a challenge / idea from someone on twitter. Breakfast cupcakes. Me being a stickler for things got to be a problem there, but over all the dish tasted good and was actually very good for breakfast. If you

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Game Day Quesadillas

I am more of a sunny day or in the Oregonian case the rainy day sports fan. However, one must have some game day grub that is easy to eat so let’s go with a good quesadilla. I make quesadillas full size with two tortillas each so a full one can get you eight pieces of a good size. In these pictures I am using an eight inch tortilla here.

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Ingredients:

2 tortillas per quesadilla
2 pieces of bacon or 1/4 C of refried beans
2 slices golden cheddar
2 T chopped green onions

The secret comes in the cooking we will be doing this in pan and it take close to five minutes on medium heat. Cooking it in pan is closest to the flattop stove that most restaurants. You want to have your bottom layer with the cheese in their first so that everything melts together. Doing it this way also allows the tortilla to crisp up a little before cutting in to it and that means less on you when your team is fighting for the win.

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Flip it over when it looks like this.

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Finish it up.

For the bean and cheese quesadilla I like adding some green onion to it to give it just a little more aroma. Make sure to spread it as evenly as possible without having an O.C.D panic attack.

When your food is done cut it up and use the green onions to garnish. It adds just a little bit of aroma to the overall dish and aroma is the one sense that can make you hungry better then your taste buds. Cut in to eight pieces like a pizza or four if you know some of the hungrier guys are coming around. For twelve inch tortillas you want to go to three basic slices of golden cheddar. If you don’t get the sliced stuff then you want about 1/3 C shredded or diced small.

A little bit of ketchup or your favorite salsa on the side and this makes a good snack to watch a game, play a game, even make a game of your trying to be or already are an indie developer.

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Now when your cooking for yourself you’re not going to be so finicky in the exact placement of garnishes. That will be for another blog post. Have a good one.

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Thoughts in the culinary world – Bobby Flay and James Beard

Now it seems that everyone worth their knives has something to say. The world of professional cooking is sometimes akin to the world of professional wrestling when larger then life personalities clash. Everyone has their own thing to say and everyone makes mistakes. When you do something you love so much, and someone makes you feel subpar some people are going to shoot off their mouths. From Top Chef to Paula Deen everyone seems to have their hand halfway in a boiling soup pot which is sad.

Bobby Flay is the most hated person in cooking. Which I can see as he seems very abrasive, almost disrespectful of other cultures and just sometimes acts like an ass. Seeing the food he makes and listening to him talk as well I really would not want to go to his restaurants. One thing no one can take away is he knows the business side enough that he has put himself in position on cooking shows for many years. Releasing books and through all the mistakes he has made one must give credit that he has used his business to back up where his cooking fails.

It is kinda sad he will be the most well known chef of the era because one of my cooking heroes is an Oregon born man by the name of James Beard. Cooking wise his recipes were never the absolute best, but across the board there was not a man who could boast the skill set he did. On top of that you would have to search to have someone say a bad word about him he always seemed to have a love of food that was only matched by the size of the man himself. The only thing you may find if you actually looked was how nearing the end of this life he decided to take endorsement deals to open more cooking schools. Which he even said made him feel like a “gastronomic whore”.

Sometimes we forget that the measure of a person is not just by popularity. A man can be the best without being the most well known. For the most part we as a culture bring much more infamy for all of our bad before allowing some to spotlight the good. Just some thoughts

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Portland – Unnoticed in Tv food competition?

So I want to get some more experience in culinary competition. At first I thought I would try to toss my hat in on Chopped or Top Chef and give it a try. While doing this I thought I would look up some notable competitors to try and talk to, and get some tips or at least talk strategy. Doing my little research I looked up the past contestant list of both shows ( Chopped and Top Chef ). Not masters or teen of something or other until I realized something.

Between the two shows from their inception to the end of 2013 there has not been one single winner from Portland, Oregon. Now I have also found out the reason for this. Between the start of both seasons to the end of 2013 there has not been a single competitor from my fair little slice of the world. More then seven hundred people have tried between the two shows without a single one being from Oregon.

If I seem to be mistaken then please let me know. When every other state is represented by at least a half dozen only for one state to not have one seems a bit odd and a mistake by people who have to pick the people to go on their shows. I cannot say whether it is on purpose or on accident. It does not really matter to me, but where it does is that you cannot really say that it is truly in the spirit of competition.

Just something to think about.

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Eggs Magda: Start by gathering the following ingredients. 2 Jumbo Eggs, 1/4 cup Green Onions, 1/4 cup grated Gruyere cheese, and 1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard. At the end of this recipe you should have a very smooth cheesy set of scrambled eggs that is very nice on a slice of toasted wheat bread.

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Start by cracking your eggs in a pan over medium low heat and whisk in your dijon mustard.Image

You will want to break up curds with a small whisk scraping gently from the bottom of the pan as it cooksImage.

After the color has changed you want to add the cheese and turn off the heat. Whisk it all together until it melts before finishing with the green onions. Whisk together and serve.

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Simple but delicious. Serve with toast and bacon for a breakfast of champions.This recipe was for one portion. When making multiple portions though there is not much change in the process to make it.

 

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To be a cook in portland

One of the problems cooking in Portland is how deep the competitive pool is. Just taking the culinary schools you have AI, WCI, and OCI. From there you have groups of three hundred per program times two to three for each separate program looking for a free externship close by. Just from that there is a pool of about 2500 hundred people who are asking to work for free in most cases. Add on top all the smaller schools and you can easily add another 2000 people on top of that.

So in Portland there is a minimum of four thousand people every six months looking for experience and are able to not be paid for that time versus actually hiring people. Because after those externship times are done they enter another pool constantly growing of people who can cook to order but nowhere for them to do so. True, after some externships some people will be offered work no doubt.

It’s not like I’m new in a kitchen myself. I have done a large bit and a short amount of time and nearly have a decade of experience around the pacific northwest all before my twenty-fifth birthday. It is just I love to cook. I love to make food because food is something all cultures around the world had. Everyone had to eat and through food you can learn a lot about the past as well as the future.
There just seems to be so much wrong with what I love that sometimes I ask is it worth it. It is of course ( it always is).

Long story short. In food, in portland we should either get ready to change with the times or be ready to be passed by it.

If you agree or disagree let me know. I would love to hear your opinion. If you think i need to take another cup of coffee before typing because I may be out of my mind then go ahead and message me too 🙂 Happy holidays.

 

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