Marinade for Mushroom Kabobs

Originally I thought about using this marinade for both the brown (cremini) and white mushrooms, but ended up just using the brown mushrooms with red and green bell peppers. I only have aged balsamic vinegar and it seemed a waste to use a tasting vinegar for a marinade so I used half balsamic and half rice vinegar for the vinegar part.

The Foodening Blog - grilled mushroom and vegetable kabobs

Makes: 9 skewers (using 10" bamboo skewers)

Ingredients

8 oz brown cremini mushrooms, stems trimmed
8 oz grape or cherry tomatoes
1 large red bell pepper, sliced into 1" pieces
1 large green bell pepper, sliced into 1" pieces
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 tbsp fresh parsley leaves, chopped
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp dried basil
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

Directions

Combine all items in a resealable container. Shake to coat everything with the marinade. Refrigerate for an hour or until ready to use.

To grill:

Stab vegetables and mushrooms in an alternating order (for variety!). Grill vegetables for 10-15 minutes, rotating at the half way mark until the mushrooms are done. The bell peppers can be slightly charred.

Asian BBQ Pork Spare Ribs

This recipe tasted OK. How the pork gets cooked probably needs some work and/or tweaking as they came out a little tough to eat. Overall, from an aesthetic perspective, they looked great and social media post-worthy. I was looking to do something different than how pork spare ribs are traditionally served up, e.g., as dim sum small plate (steamed with black beans) or as grilled ribs with an Asian-flavored sauce slathered onto it.

The Foodening Blog: Asian BBQ Short Ribs

While I had a jar of hoisin sauce in the pantry, for once, I made hoisin sauce from scratch for this dish. You can get these short ribs at any Asian grocery store butcher counter. These were already cut to 1" - 1.5" size, and if you were going to make the dim sum short ribs recipe, you'd need these cut to the 1" size. Onward.

Ingredients

2-3 lbs pork short ribs

1/4 c white vinegar

2 tsp sea salt

Marinade Ingredients
1 tbsp hoisin sauce
1/2 c light soy sauce
1/2 c unbleached cane sugar
1/2 c ketchup
1/4 c lemon juice, or fresh juice from 1 lemon plus its zest
3 tbsp raw honey
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
1 tbsp fresh garlic, finely chopped

Garnish

2 tbsp white sesame seeds, toasted
green onion, white part (optional)

Directions

Start by bringing a large pot of water to boil with salt and vinegar. Add pork ribs, bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine hoisin sauce, soy sauce, sugar, ketchup, lemon juice, honey, ginger, and garlic. Whisk to combine.

Place cooked ribs in a large ziplock bag (or food storage container with a lid). Pour on the marinade and marinate for up to 6 hours or overnight.

Grill ribs until the ribs are slightly charred. -or- if using an oven broiler, broil meat until slightly charred

Hoisin Sauce (gluten free)

The secret to a good hoisin sauce is to use fermented black beans as one of the main flavor ingredients. Simply using peanut butter and other savory ingredients isn't going to cut it. While you can use a starch (potato starch, cornstarch, or wheat flour) to thicken it up, substituting the starch with peanut butter and using a tamari-based soy sauce makes this sauce gluten free. Also, you should probably use a smooth peanut butter, but alas, all I had on hand was chunky. I've read that if you have a peanut butter allergy, you can also substitute dried prunes (2 prunes per 1 tbsp peanut butter). If you do end up using peanut butter as a thickener, your sauce won't be pasty black at all. It'll be a brown-ish color, like peanut butter.

Hoisin sauce is a sweet and savory sauce, with neither element overpowering the other. And, it certainly does not use Chinese five spice powder. But, you could add it if you like that flavor in your sauce and the accompaniment is a meat-based dish.

At some point I reverse engineered Trader Joe's light soy sauce by experimenting with tamari soy sauce, rice vinegar and water until I got a sodium content that was close to Trader Joe's. You can also find that recipe here.

Makes: ~1/2 cup

Ingredients

1/4 c light soy sauce
2 tbsp organic peanut butter
1 tbsp raw honey
2 tsp rice vinegar
2 tsp sesame oil
1 garlic clove, minced
fresh ground black pepper, a few grinds
1 tbsp black fermented soybeans, rinsed and prepared
1 tsp chili sauce, or more to taste (e.g., Trader Joe's Sriracha or a sweet chili paste)

Directions

In a small bowl, soak fermented soybeans with hot water for about 5 minutes. Drain and then crush the beans with the tines of a fork. Voila. Now you have prepared fermented soy beans.

Whirl all the ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Put it into a lidded jar and refrigerate until ready to use.

Beef and Bean Burritos

I will probably not be making this as a lunch week batch any time soon, or maybe if I do, I certainly won't be eating them every day for lunch.. again. Filling but boring. My burrito wrapping skills, like most recipes that call for wrapping food in something else (e.g., tamales, zongzhi, dumplings, etc.) needs a lot of work. The biggest difference in taste, besides my inept wrapping skill, is that restaurant-quality burritos are typically served warm. You just can't slap together cold ingredients, wrap it up, and call it a burrito. I suppose you could, but it doesn't taste like effort went into it. Anyhow, I ended up making a week's worth of lunch burritos with this attempt.

The Foodening Blog: behold! a burrito in the making

Ingredients

12" flour tortillas
1 lb ground beef, seasoned and prepared
tomato-based salsa, any style
16 oz can of refried beans or salsa-style refried beans
1 to 1.5 c cheddar cheese, grated
sour cream, to taste
shredded lettuce, optional

Directions

If you're making this for lunch, toast the tortilla before assembling the burrito. If not, skip the toasting step.

Lightly toast a flour tortilla on a griddle, or otherwise flat-enough frying pan surface so that your 12" tortilla can lie flat and be heated up. Flip and toast the other side before it burns.

Preparing the ground beef

There are two ways to do this, the quick way (use a taco seasoning packet) with the ground beef before frying it up and draining out the oil. Or, the more authentic way and mix in spices (minced garlic cloves, chili powder, ground cumin) and taco sauce with the ground beef before frying and draining out the oil. Yes, for this step I cheated and used Trader Joe's taco seasoning packet. Aside from what's in the packet, you'll probably also note that a lot of my adapted Mexican recipes do not contain onions. This is on purpose. If you like onions with your beef, go ahead and use it. You'll need one cup of chopped onion per pound of ground beef.

On a plate, begin your assembly.

In the lower 1/3 of the flour tortilla, add the refried beans. This will be your liquid barrier between the tortilla and the rest of the ingredients. Spread the beans like the paste it is across the bottom third, leaving a 1" space to the edge of the tortilla.

Next, add 1/3 cup of prepared ground beef. Spread it around on top of the beans.

Top the meat with 1/4 c grated cheddar cheese, salsa, and garnish with 1 tbsp of sour cream.

You could add shredded lettuce to this step, but not if you intend to freeze the burritos. Lettuce freezes poorly and it'll be a soggy, terrible mess if you include it for not-eaten-same-day burritos.

Folding the burrito

If only I had read this before both writing and doing the recipe. 

Start rolling from the bottom-up, once you pass the filling part, fold in the right and left sides and continue folding up.

Not eating today? Wrap for later.

For each burrito, wrap it up in a sheet of foil large enough to house it. Use a marker on the foil to label what it is and when it was made. Put it in a resealable plastic bag, and freeze.

To reheat

This was interesting since I don't own a microwave, and it seems like a waste of energy to use the oven for one burrito. Let your burrito(s) thaw in the refrigerator. Pan fry on low heat in a covered pan. Make sure to check your burrito so that the tortilla does not burn. Burnt tortillas taste awful.

Baked Sesame Chicken

I envisioned something different. But alas, this is the best that it gets when it's baked and not deep fried. Visually, not terribly appealing. It tasted okay, but I don't think I'll be making this again any time soon. It does not even come close to the sesame chicken you'd get at a Chinese restaurant.

TheFoodeningBlog - Baked Sesame Chicken

Ingredients

2-3 lbs chicken body parts (drumsticks, thighs, wings, etc.)
1/4 c white sesame seeds, toasted
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/4 tsp sea salt
pinch of fresh ground black pepper
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsp soy sauce 

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 F.

1. In a 9 x 11 x 3 baking dish, add soy sauce and tilt the dish so that the soy sauce covers the bottom evenly.

2. In a shallow dish, combine sesame seeds, flour, salt, and black pepper together. Dredge each chicken piece in the dry ingredients. Lay chicken in a single layer in the baking dish.

3. Bake for 40 minutes, or until the thickest part of the chicken measures 160 F on a meat thermometer. Remove from oven and serve hot.