Thursday, June 11, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Garlic Ginger Paste
If you're looking for good food and you're unfamiliar with the area, just look for a tiny hole-in-wall restaurant that's jam packed with locals. Such is the case with a personal favorite of mine, a Chinese take-out extravaganza called Bento Express. When I'm not satiating my craving f0r wonton soup, I'm trying to deconstruct the relatively simple ginger garlic paste that I have fallen in love with. Now for those of you saying, "Whats in a GARLIC and GINGER paste? Don't strain yourself, sweetheart." I'd like to say shut up, smart ass, I'm getting to that. The paste is a bright green color, so I'm considering wether that means they use the stocks of the garlic? It's unclear. I have acquired a sample to bring home and I believe that it's most likely put through a food processor since the peices are all a generally uniform size, which is extremely fine. It could be hand chopped if the maker was some sort of super cyborg chef robot from the future... which is a possiblity that has not been ruled out as of yet.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Homemade Granola Bars
I was recently at Safeway when I reached for a box of Granola bars...
*You see I belong to the group of people who like to sleep until the absolute last minute; afterward having planned out the exact amount of time it takes to get ready before I have to go to work. So a easy accessible breakfast is essential to my scheme. But the granola bar breakfast has always been a begrudging one for me. The basic brand name tend to have a acidic and almost chemically aftertaste where the natural organic types are tasty but very expensive. *
I stopped myself and thought, "what exactly am I buying?", oatmeal, granola, usually some sort of sweet fruit or chocolate, and something to bind them all together. Well screw that, I usually have most of that stuff at home. And Hell, at that point I had ALL that stuff at home.
Granola Bar base:
Oatmeal
Granola
melted butter (approximately 1/2 a stick)
melted honey - 2 Tbsp.
1 Egg - whisked (for adhesive)
mix together until all the dry ingredients are coated with the butter/honey mixture. At this point you can add any other ingredients you like. I had a few things on hands from making cookies recently so I added...
Chocolate chips
Coconut shavings
Brown sugar to taste
Pack the ingredients tightly into a round cake pan as if you were making a crust layer (oatmeal pie crust, I must remember this for later.) I baked this at 350 degrees until... uh.. until it smelled good. 10-15 minutes? I don't know. I have found that this recipe sticks heavily to even nonstick cake pans but I believe that parchment paper will fix this problem. Refrigerating them or even freeing them overnight allows the bars to be cut into squares and individually wrapped, however, they rarely make it to that stage.
*You see I belong to the group of people who like to sleep until the absolute last minute; afterward having planned out the exact amount of time it takes to get ready before I have to go to work. So a easy accessible breakfast is essential to my scheme. But the granola bar breakfast has always been a begrudging one for me. The basic brand name tend to have a acidic and almost chemically aftertaste where the natural organic types are tasty but very expensive. *
I stopped myself and thought, "what exactly am I buying?", oatmeal, granola, usually some sort of sweet fruit or chocolate, and something to bind them all together. Well screw that, I usually have most of that stuff at home. And Hell, at that point I had ALL that stuff at home.
Granola Bar base:
Oatmeal
Granola
melted butter (approximately 1/2 a stick)
melted honey - 2 Tbsp.
1 Egg - whisked (for adhesive)
mix together until all the dry ingredients are coated with the butter/honey mixture. At this point you can add any other ingredients you like. I had a few things on hands from making cookies recently so I added...
Chocolate chips
Coconut shavings
Brown sugar to taste
Pack the ingredients tightly into a round cake pan as if you were making a crust layer (oatmeal pie crust, I must remember this for later.) I baked this at 350 degrees until... uh.. until it smelled good. 10-15 minutes? I don't know. I have found that this recipe sticks heavily to even nonstick cake pans but I believe that parchment paper will fix this problem. Refrigerating them or even freeing them overnight allows the bars to be cut into squares and individually wrapped, however, they rarely make it to that stage.
A Brief Introduction
I wont dwell on irrelevant details of my life, because frankly you don't care and it's not interesting anyway. I'm hoping this blog can become a kind of open journal for me to share what recipes I'm attempting and at some times inventing in my kitchen, and I'd be very interested to read what others have concocted as well. It will most likely be pockmarked with ramblings about my views on diet and nutrition, and anything else I feel is crushing my soul at the moment, but I hope you'll bear with me.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
