Fake Empanadas

Cooking adventure #3: empanadas

These are so faked. Any Latino would probably balk at the idea, but they were fun. The recipe? Meat, seasoning, onion, some mexican cheese, and dumpling skins!

I took as much of the cooking time out as I could by using dumpling skins and pan-frying the dish. My roommate had told me before of Giada using dumpling skins as a substitute for ravioli making. The result was delicious, if not actually empanadas. Next time I will try to bake instead of pan-fry.

Pan-Fried Curry Rice Balls

Food adventure #2.

Dinner tonight was leftover curry from a few weeks back (don't worry, it was frozen in a tupperware container and recooked on the stove). I still managed to have leftovers, so got in to an experimental mood with the remains.

Pan-fried rice balls.

I got the idea from seeing instructions awhile back for yaki onigiri. This was kind of the same, except it was curry and rice mixed together.

The consistency was thick, but I was worried about it falling apart in the oil, so I added some flour to the mixture. I used my roommate's Venezuelan corn meal, which had a consistency of white flour but made of, obviously, corn (I couldn't find our bag of all-purpose flour, so had to substitute).

To make sure there was an outer "crust", I coated each ball in more of that Venezuelan corn meal. Then into the pan it went.

I pan-fried (as opposed to deep frying) it in order to attempt SOME level of healthiness, rotating it every now and then to make sure every side was getting cooked (the nice thing about the flour I found out was that the white color made it easy to tell which side hadn't touched the oil yet). I'm pretty sure this is probably still just as unhealthy, but still. Yum.

This may end up being a way I get rid of extra curries from now on! Although, next time, I may add peas or corn or some small-cut-up vegetables.

These are going in my lunchboxes for the next few days. ^_^

Chinese Bakery-Style Cake

Whew. Been awhile, hasn't it?

The thing is, with having a 40hr/wk (minimum) job and a 2nd project and dealing with daily life (insurance? taxes? car maintenance? how does the average joe do it all and still have time for the more adventurous things?), and then the NDAs preventing me from talking about what I do with most of my time, having anything to write about is difficult.

So let me interest you in one of my hobbies: cooking!

This was an impulsive decision. I don't usually bake and I've never done something like this before. I made a cake yesterday, which tasted a lot better than it looked. It was one of those Chinese bakery cakes, light, fluffy, and moist with lots of fruit. I don't have an electric beater, so to make this cake, I had to whip everything... by HAND. Never EVER make meringue by hand. You'll get there, but omg it hurts after awhile. A lot of love went in to this....

I got the recipe for this cake from Lucy Zhang's blog. She makes a lot of delicious-looking things, but this one got me especially excited. I don't have a huge love of American-style cakes because they seem so heavy and too sweet. Asian-bakery cakes feel light and just the right amount of sweet to feel refreshing. It was surprising to learn how little was actually in this cake (it's not healthy, but not terrible for you either)! I mean... 1 cake that fed 8 people (small slices, mind you) had only 3/4 cup of flour and a little less than 1 cup of sugar. I suppose the big count was the eggs, which was 6, but if you think about it, each person ate less than 1. For a cake, this is awesome, but oh so much work! I think I understand when Asian Bakeries charge $20-$30 for a standard-sized cake now. Much respect to bakers.

The frosting was whipped cream. Since this was my first cake, I didn't know better but now I do. Whipped cream does not equal whipped cream frosting. Hence the melted look.

As for fruit, I added peaches, nectarines, blackberries, and strawberries. Next time, I may go a little more traditional and use melon and strawberries (no kiwi for me...).