St. Patrick’s day celebration: Slow cook brisket with vegetables

A couple of days before St. Patrick’s day, asked around to find out what I should cook to honor the Irish holiday. Corned beef and cabbage was the hands down winner. I was looking all over the internet to see how I can make corned beef from scratch. From Martha Stewart Corned Beef recipe, I would need to cured the meat for about 3-6 days before the day of cooking. I didn’t want to buy store-bought high nitrate cured meat, so I decided to make uncured brisket instead and added some Irish stout to the recipe. The Irish Stout added sweetness into the brisket.

Now that I know I need time to cured the meat, I will plan ahead of time next year to make this Irish tradition on St. Patrick’s day.


Ingredients
*2 pound brisket
*2 tablespoon peppercorn
*2 bay leafs
*10 cloves garlic
*12-14 oz stout(I used Guinness draught)
*2 homemade beef broth
* ½ cabbage
*1/2 pound carrots
*3 cups potatoes
*salt

Directions
1) In a slow cooker, add brisket, peppercorn, bay leafs, garlic, stout and beef broth. Cook in high heat for 3 hours or low heat for 5 hours.
2) Add vegetables, and cook for high heat for 3 more hours or low heat for 4 more hours.
3) Serve hot. Add salt to taste.

The Walrus and the Carpenter restaurant review

Mr. S and I love to try out new restaurants.  He came across this new restaurant located in Ballard called The Walrus and the Carpenter which was featured in the January issue of GQ (Read article here).  If you enter through Ballard Ave, you will walk through a little ally way by the bike shop to get the petit restaurant.  The decor is pain and the staff are very nice.  I really liked their open kitchen which allows you to see the staff cracking the oysters.  This lets you know they are very fresh!

We ordered:
* Half dozen oysters
* Butter and bread
* Steak tartare, farm egg yolk & toast



Yes, steak tartare.  It was our first time trying raw ground beef.  I have had Ahi tuna or Salmon tartare many times, but have never tried steak tartare.  I thought the flavor wasn't as good as tuna tartare, but the texture was similar, so on the whole, I thought it was pretty good.

The oysters tasted fresh and sweet.  They came with 3 different sauces to try the oysters with; garlic vinegar, horseradish, and lemon.  I prefer lemon!

My overall review is 4.5 stars out of 5. The -0.5 is the price of food.

Mr. S weekend special -Dutch baby with Cinnamon-Apple sauce

Mr. S weekend special -Dutch baby with Cinnamon-Apple sauce

A couple of Saturday mornings ago, Mr. S told me he wanted to make breakfast. I was very surprised, because he never wants to cook. Apparently he saw a Dutch baby recipe in GQ where they occasionally list easy recipes for guys. The Dutch baby turned out very good but what made it better was the Cinnamon-Apple sauce. If you don’t want the Cinnamon-Apple sauce, you can add lemon juice with powdered sugar for the original taste.


Dutch baby
Ingredients
* 2 eggs
* 3 tablespoons of butter
* ½ cup flour
*1/2 cup milk
*1 teaspoon sugar
*1/4 teaspoon salt
*apple cinnamon sauce(recipe follows)

Directions
1) Turn the oven to 375F.
2) Melt the butter in a saucepan. At the mean time, mix the rest of the ingredients in a mixing bowl.
3) When butter is melted, pour the batter onto the saucepan and put the saucepan into the oven. Bake for 5 to 10 minutes, add apple cinnamon sauce, put the saucepan back to the oven and back for 5 to 10 minutes more or until brown on the edges.
4) Serve hot.


Cinnamin Apple Sauce
Ingredients
*1/4 cup brown sugar
*1 teaspoon cinnamon
*2 teaspoon corn starch
*2 apple, peeled sliced
*1 teaspoon vanilla
*1 tablespoon butter

Directions
1) Mix brown sugar, cinnamon and corn starch in a small bowl.
2) Heat saucepan in medium heat, add brown sugar mix to heated saucepan then stir for 2 minutes. Add apple, vanilla, butter. Stir well, simmer for about 5 minutes.

Singapore Stir-fry Noodles

I was in the mood for curry, and if you like curry then you will want to try this dish. It is a light curry dish and it is fairly easy to make, but it involves quite a bit of ingredients.


Ingredients
*2 tablespoon of oil
*2 cloves garlic, minced
*1 tablespoon minced ginger
*2 stalks celery, sliced thin
*1 medium yellow onion, sliced thin
*4 jalapeno peppers, seeded and sliced thin
*1 cup bean sprouts, rinsed and drained
*8 green onions, root end trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
*8 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked, sliced
*1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
*1 pound Chinese barbecue pork cut into matchsticks
*12 ounces of fine dry rice vermicelli, soaked for 10-20mins in hot water
*3 tablespoons oyster sauce

Sauce:
*1 tablespoon oil
*3 tablespoons curry powder
*1 tablespoon minced ginger
*2 cloves garlic, minced
*1 cup chicken broth
*4 tablespoons soy sauce
*4 teaspoons sugar
*2 teaspoons hot chili paste


Directions
3) To make the sauce, heat up 1 tablespoons of oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the curry powder, the ginger, and the minced garlic, and saute until fragrant. Add the chicken broth, soy sauce, sugar, and chili paste. Stir to combine and then cover and cook for 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and set aside.
4) Heat 1 tablespoons of oil in a large wok over high heat. Add in garlic and ginger, and stir-fry until the garlic starts to become golden. Add in the celery, onion, pepper, sprouts, green onions, and mushrooms. Stir-fry for 3 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften. Set the vegetables aside in a bowl.
5) Heat 1 tablespoons of oil in the wok over high heat. Add in the shrimp and stir-fry until they start to turn pink on both sides. Add the barbecue pork and toss to combine.
6) Add in the noodles and the vegetables. Pour on the sauce and also add the oyster sauce. Mix the ingredients thoroughly to coat all the noodles and incorporate all the vegetables.
7) Serve hot.

3 Cups Chicken

QFC had a whole organic chicken on sale so I got one and wanted to try de-boning a chicken! I saw a couple of YouTube videos to how to de-bone a chicken, and it looked a lot harder than I thought it would be. But still, it only took me about 10 mins to get all of the bones out and I used the leftover bones to make chicken broth.

I use the meat of the chicken on this recipe. If you’ve had Taiwanese food, then you would have heard of 3 Cups Chicken. It’s probably one of the most popular dishes from Taiwan. The ‘3 cups’ means 1 cup of soy sauce, 1cup of rice wine and 1 cup of sesame oil. In this recipe, I used less soy sauce because I didn’t want the food to be too salty. I also reduced oil and added water for a more contemporary taste.



Ingredients
*2 cups water
*1 cup Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
*1/3 cup regular soy sauce
*1/3 cup dark soy sauce
*2 tablespoons Warcestershire sauce
* 4 oz rock sugar or ½ cup granulated sugar
*3 green onion, cut in half
*1 whole star anise
*½ teaspoon Chinese five spice
*1 tablespoon cooking oil
*1 whole chicken, de-boned, cubed
*6 slices ginger
*4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
*3 small dried red chilies

Directions
1)Combine first 9 ingredients from water to five spice in a bowl to make the braising sauce.
2)Place a deep frying pan over medium heat until hot. Add oil, swirling to coat side. Place chicken in pan and brown lightly on all sides, 4 to 5 mins total. Remove chicken from pan.
3)Increase heat to high. Add ginger, garlic, and chilis; cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 20 seconds. Return chicken to pan and add braising sauce. Bring to a boil; reduce heat, cover and simmer until meat near bone is not longer pint when cut, 25 to 30mins.
4)Lift chicken from sauce and arrange on a serving platter. Strain sauce. Pass a bowl of sauce at the table. Reserve remaining sauce from other uses.

Honey Balsamic Green Beans

I was never a big fan of green beans but I got a bag of organic green beans from a friend so I had to come up with some way to make them tasty. I opened up my pantry and found honey and balsamic that I could use to make a sauce to cook the green beans in. The green beans ended up tasting very good and I would recommend you to try this recipe if you’re a green bean first timer, or just don't like green beans.


Ingredients
* 16 ounces green beans
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 1 clove garlic, minced
* 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
* 1 teaspoon honey
* 1 teaspoon onion powder
* Salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Directions

1) Bring a large pot of water to a boil over medium heat. Add the beans and blanch them for 2 minutes. Immediately remove the beans from the water and add them to an ice bath to stop the cooking process. Drain.

2) In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and green beans. Cover, and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover, then stir in the vinegar, honey, onion powder, and salt and pepper, to taste. Cook to desired degree of doneness, about 4 to 6 minutes.

Potato Croquettes

A couple days ago, I went to a Japanese restaurant and saw potato croquettes on their menu. I thought that I could easily make these at home so I got some organic potatoes and some curry powder for this recipe.




Ingredients
*2 tablespoons milk
*Salt
*1/2 teaspoon pepper
*1/2 teaspoon chopped green onion
*2 egg yolks, beaten
*3 tablespoons organic whole wheat flour
*4 cups mashed potatoes
*1 egg, beaten
*Panko bread crumbs

Directions
1) Pre-heat oven at 375F

2) Add milk, salt, pepper, chopped onion, beaten egg yolks and flour to mashed potatoes. Chill and then shape using an ice cream scoop. Dip in the beaten egg, then roll through bread crumbs.

3) Spray oil on baking sheet. Put potato patties on baking sheet and bake for 15mins or until brown.