There’s been such great weather lately, and with all the daylight it makes for great pictures. I made a nice simple pasta dish for lunch today, composed of

• onion
• mushrooms
• spicy katamala olives
• Classico sweet basil marinara
• rigatoni
• baby spinach
• cayenne pepper
• table cream

Sauteeing Onion, Mushrooms and Olives

Sauteeing the onions and mushrooms and then adding the olives, sauce and table cream creates a creamy chunky concoction that can be placed on top of some rigatoni and baby spinach.

Spicy Rigatoni

The mid-day lightining makes for wonderful naturally lit pictures that can be taken at a low ISO setting. It’s sad to know that I won’t have this type of lighting once I start working from 9-5… Gotta pick up a flash once I get the income…

Tofu Patty with Black Kale

After a long week of assignments, presentations and an incredibly stressful interview, I decided to kick back and cook up something interesting.

I was planning on just making some boring grilled tofu, but decided I was craving something much more… burgery. So I decided to make some tofu patties with whatever I had in the fridge.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the exact proportions for this recipe, but it can be measured to taste.

• 2 pieces of medium firm tofu
• 3-4 cremini mushrooms
• 1 stalk green onion
• bit of flour (or breadcrumbs, I didn’t have any at the moment) to bind
• bit of kale
• 1 chopped walnut (optional, for texture)
• some cooked rice (that I had leftover,  made with vegetable broth instead of water)
• 1 lightly beaten egg
• salt
• pepper

Doesn't look very appealing uncooked...

Mix all the ingredients together and and form 1/2 inch patties. I found that the patties were fairly fragile so making them smaller than I have here should make them much more manageable when cooking. Pan fry the patties on medium heat until both sides are nice and golden and enjoy =)

Hot off the pan!

]]> http://blog.mlee.ca/2010/03/tofu-patties/feed/ 2 http://blog.mlee.ca/2009/11/day-27-of-28-endive-boats-and-fettucini-alfredo/ http://blog.mlee.ca/2009/11/day-27-of-28-endive-boats-and-fettucini-alfredo/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:16:17 +0000 Mike http://blog.mlee.ca/?p=425 Sorry, now that I don’t have anymore entries in queue, I’ve lost the urgency to finish posting these. Common in presentations for Belgian endives, they can …]]>

Sorry, now that I don’t have anymore entries in queue, I’ve lost the urgency to finish posting these.

Common in presentations for Belgian endives, they can be used as “boats” or little bowls to place food on. As well as steaming the endives, I took a small bundle of enoki mushroom, dipped in egg spiced with some cumin, tumeric and salt. Once the mushrooms have been dipped, I shallow fried them so that the egg cooked, leaving the appearance that the mushrooms were wrapped in an egg blanket.

Endive Boats

Before dinner, on my way home I decided to drop by Whole Foods in Yorkville one of the only two Whole Foods in Ontario. Whole Foods is a large chain of supermarkets from the US, and is always seen on the tv show Top Chef, which is where I heard about the store. I grabbed some Gruyère and Blue Haze cheese as well as some fresh lemon & pepper fettucini.

The second I got home, I set the pot to boil and prepared some fresh alfredo sauce, substituting some of the Parmesan with Gruyère and Blue Haze. Throwing in some sage and portobello mushrooms. It was, the most delicious dish I had ever made.

Fettuccine Alfredo

Fettuccine Alfredo

After the disappointing bowl of Creamy Tomato soup from Panera, I was in the mood for a real cream soup and decided to make some of my own mushroom soup. Since I still had some white asparagus to finish off, I decided to make a cream of white asparagus and mushroom soup. I used a recipe for asparagus cream soup and mushroom soup, combined and modified them by not blending and adding portobello and brown mushrooms and omitting some of the herbs. The soup turned out ok, a little too fatty tasting for me, which tends to be a problem with all the cream soups I make, I’ll need to find some foolproof recipes for cream soup.

Cream of Asparagus and Mushroom Soup

After dinner, it’s not dessert but instead I usually have some fruits. Today, my dad and I had made some almond tofu. Almond tofu, is ground up almond powder that is then mixed with some other ingredients and water which solidifies and creates an almond flavoured jelly. The way we serve almond tofu at home is that the tofu is sliced into large cubes and mixed with a can of mixed fruits. Usually, I add some of my own fruits to top it off or add juice to add more flair to the dessert. My favourite is adding champagne or Sprite which gives the dessert a nice bubbly effect as well.

Almond Tofu

After being served Pan-Seared Polenta for the first time two weeks ago at Le Select Bistro, I was really interested in making some of my own. Polenta is made with cornmeal and mixed with water, a little butter and some salt. When it is freshly made, it is basically a mush of cornmeal, but once it sets it becomes a solid form that you can cut and cook in many other ways.

I used this basic recipe to get the proportions correct, and added a little tumeric for more flavour. Apparently if you replace some of the water with milk, it makes the polenta fluffier and lighter too (I wanted to do that but didn’t have any milk left).

I seared the polenta and placed it ontop of some tomato paste (should be sauce, but was too lazy to make some) and then added some grilled portobello, fresh yellow tomatoes and some dill on top.

With the exception of the tomato paste, the rest of the meal tasted great, although I made a small portion, it was quite filling. The yellow tomatoes taste really good, they’re flavourful and much less acidic than regular tomatoes so it tastes much mush refreshing.

For breakfast today, I made omurice which is a portmanteau of the words omelette and rice. It’s a Japanese dish that is basically fried rice wrapped in a thin sheet of egg.

Omurice

Here’s (roughly) how I made mine:

• 1/2 cup steamed rice, cooled off
• 2 button mushrooms, chopped
• tablespoon green onions, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• tablespoon ketchup
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup milk
• salt
• pepper
• vegetable oil

At medium heat, add the oil and garlic, sautee until slightly brown. Add rice and stir until the rice is heated up again (cooling it off first prevents it from getting all mushy in the stir-frying process). Finally, add mushrooms, green onions, salt, pepper, ketchup and whatever other spices you want to add to the rice. Once all the ingredients are cooked, set the rice aside. Whisk the egg and milk together and pour it into the pan so that it makes a nice thin layer of egg. Once the egg is solidified throughout (flipping is optional), add the rice on one side and fold the other half of the egg over.

Serves one.

More Omurice

After browsing the net and coming across this wonderful picture of kimchi fried rice, I had the biggest craving to make some of my own. Combining tofu, soy sauce, mushrooms and kimchi, here’s what I came up with. It turned out pretty well.

Kimchi Fried Rice

After heading out for the day and doing some groceries, after visiting Michael-Angelos, Loblaws and T&T, I finally have some fresh ingredients to work with. For dinner, I boiled some white asparagus, tied with green onion, seared a portobello mushroom and arranged it all on top of some herbed couscous with some bechamel sauce. Unfortunately I forgot to buy regular milk and only had whipping cream, which I watered down for the bechamel sauce, resulting in a somewhat unsightly translucent sauce :(

White Asparagus and Grilled Portobello on Couscous

So my mother usually cooks all 3 meals for me, but she just left this morning on a vacation around asia: A cruise in Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong and probably a few more places inbetween. Since usually, the only chance I get to cook for myself is when I’m on residence, when I’m far too stressed out to cook anything nice I figured this was a great opportunity for me to do some cooking!

Today’s after work ritual included a visit to the gym, so I wanted a quick dinner and this was the first thing I thought of, a three mushroom risotto.  I checked the fridge and grabbed the 3 different types of mushroom we had in the fridge: button, king trumpet and enoki (we also had shiitake, but it was in leftovers).  I also threw in some yellow pepper’s from my mom’s garden just for some colour.  Following my standard risotto recipe, I made this in under half an hour and had just enough left over for tomorrow’s lunch!

Mushroom and Sweet Pepper Risotto

Thinking of making some pumpkin gnocchi tomorrow…

After settling back into the university residence, I felt that I should take up the challenge of making some of my own risotto.  Apparently it’s quite hard to get right so I just wanted to see just how hard.

Here’s the modified recipe that I used, based on a Lemon Asparagus recipe I found.  I find that this fills 2 people.

Asparagus and Mushroom

• 7 stalks of asparagus
• 1 portobello mushroom
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp butter
• 2 garlic cloves

Risotto

• vegetable stock (or chicken stock if you’re not a vegetarian)
• 3 tbsp butter
• 1 cup arborio rice
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/3 cup shredded parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Bring stock to a simmer and set aside
2. heat oil and butter in a pan
3. sauté garlic until almost golden and add asparagus
4. once the asparagus is almost ready, add the mushrooms
5. once the mushrooms have cooked, set aside
6. for the risotto, heat 2 tbsps butter in another pan on medium
7. add the arborio rice and stir until translucent
8. add the wine and reduce until almost dry, continuously stirring
9. add half a cup of stock and reduce until almost dry, continuously stirring
10. repeat step 9 until rice is tender and creamy, this takes about 20 minutes
11. stir in the asparagus, mushroom, remaining butter and half the cheese
12. scoop in bowls and sprinkle remaining cheese on top
    

Asparagus & Portobello Mushroom Risotto

Since I was the one cooking it, it was pretty easy to match the consistency of how I liked the rice.  Using vegetable stock instead of the usual chicken stock may have reduced some of the flavour, so perhaps a little salt or more butter could have been added to enhance the taste.  I sautéed the asparagus and mushrooms before I even started cooking the risotto, which was an obvious mistake that left the asparagus slightly dry.  Overall though, I think this was a pretty successful first attempt at making risotto.  There are creamier recipes that require table cream and more cheese that I’ll probably try next.  Also, I understand the effort that is spent looking over the pot and constantly stirring for almost half an hour, really gives a lot to think about the value of the dish the next time I order it somewhere.

And I have  few restaurant reviews I still have yet to write about which I’ll get to soon =).