Cause it's prepared the Chinese way (delicious). And it's perfectly acceptable to make loud sucking and slurping noises to force them out of their shells. They're fun.
I made a prosciutto, ham, lettuce, spinach, mayonnaise, and lots of pepper sandwich on garlic onion sourdough. It was DELICIOUS.
The image was way too big so just go here.
EDIT: I should have taken pictures of the sushi Eric made last Friday. He always makes wonderful meals when I visit, and the sushi turned out AWESOME. He made 10 rolls I think, 1 for each person who was there to eat. The various rolls had salmon, crab meat, fried shrimp, carrots, squash, avocado, and cream cheese. We could mix and match what we wanted and he'd put it all together and roll it. It was SO GOOD.
I think I may have taken one picture of the beginning process, but the camera is at his house so I wouldn't be able to upload it anyway.
And Zlam, I can't cook worth shit, so you've already one-up'd me. Weren't you the one who posted pictures of your attempts at making sushi once before? Don't mind me saying it looks gross. I would still eat it and enjoy it!
So what did you eat that mole with? Was it just on its own? We always make enchiladas with mole sauce.... but your recipe looks good. Share?
Also, today we made a special dish. Usually we make our macaroni and cheese very poor man's. We use Velveeta, milk, and onion powder.
Today we decided to go super fancy and make this:
It's mac and cheese made with flour, heavy cream, milk, butter, and nutmeg. In the sauce, we used blue cheese and cheddar and topped the whole thing with Gruyere before broiling it for about 6 minutes. The result was WORLDS different than our usual mac and cheese.
If I made it again I would halve the blue cheese and fill in the gap with more cheddar, but the blue gave it a very interesting and yummy taste. It was a good experiment.
That sure does sound fancy! I don't think I have ever had blue cheese in my macaroni.
Chicken Mole - Serves 4
Ingredients This delicious, spicy chicken will be perfect any time for you chocolate lovers out there.
2 1/2 pounds chicken breast tenders (I used 1 ½)
Salt
Ground black pepper
1 large onion, chopped
1 large green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoon chili powder (I used one tablespoon of cayenne and it turned out hot an tasty, not sure if two tablespoons of chili powder would be hotter or more mild)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 can (7 1/4 ounces) diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons unsweetened natural peanut butter
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 scallions, chopped
Instructions
Sprinkle the chicken with salt and black pepper. Heat a large nonstick skillet coated with olive oil cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook for 8 minutes, turning once, or until browned on both sides. Remove the chicken to a large plate.
Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic to the skillet and cook for 3 minutes, or until the onion becomes translucent. Stir in the chili powder, cinnamon, and cloves and cook for 1 minute. Return the chicken to the skillet. Add the tomatoes (with juice), peanut butter, and cocoa powder and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer, stirring every few minutes, for 25 minutes, turning once, or until the chicken is no longer pink. Garnish with the scallions.
So today we decided to make quiche for lunch! It's our first attempt at quiche and our second attempt at pastry. We used green and red peppers and onions for filling. Here's the result:
It was mostly a success... the texture of the filling was a bit too much like tofu to be considered true quiche, but it didn't bother me.. I like tofu. The flavor was good, and the crust was EXCELLENT. Flaky and delicious.
I have recently found that there are pockets of street vendors making food for people in neighboring business parks during lunchtime. These little areas have several different pushcart vendors of varieties of fried noodles, rice, vegetables, and dumplings, all with spices and oils from various areas of China.
And they're all about 60-70 cents for a giant bowl of food. Hooray! If it doesn't rain tomorrow I will try to take pictures.
I kept forgetting to post this! This is from my trip to Chengdu in central China last month:
Those of you who eat at Chinese restaurants may know that Szechuan is their spicy food. Chengdu is the heart of Szechuan (though it is now officially spelt Sichuan). In China, Sichuan food is synonymous with spicy.
The giant bowl of red oil and peppers sits atop a giant flame to keep the oil hot, to accentuate the spiciness of the oils already in there. Then you order a bunch of plates of different vegetables, meats, and other ingredients. You dump them all in so they cook in the spices, then you take them out, dip them in other spicy oils, and eat them.
This isn't a great picture, I took it before they gave us all the food, but I was too hungry to wait, and I wanted to start eating. Not pictured are a few plates of various meats that were added later. The whole meal was very hot, which I kept dousing out with beer. My girlfriend lives in the adjacent province and is very capable with spicy food, and she can eat a lot more of it than I can. I think it's sexy.
No, the tomatoes are part of it. You can add the tomatoes to the pot just like everything else. Or, if the food is getting too hot you can eat the tomatoes cold so you can cool off.
This is a closeup of one of the carts. You can pick out your noodles and mix up your bowl as you want. Behind the metal guard is a wok over a stove top for making the noodles. Behind the cart are green vegetables and bean sprouts to add too, and off to the side are eggs too.
And here's what it looks like in the end. It's nice and spicy, I have them add lots of lajiang, or crushed peppers. Altogether it costs about 59 cents.
A cart like that on this side of the globe would be selling hot dogs or hamburgers or something.
See that right there brings me right back to memories of a dream I once described in the crazy dream thread. I'm sure it was very good, but I'm not adventurous enough in my eating habits to even think about food like that.
The adventure is so worth it. Sure, you'll occasionally eat something that wasn't prepared right and over the course of the next 24 hours you'll be shitting out everything you ate over the last six months, but that's fairly rare. My stomach has long since built up a tolerance to foreign foods, so I can eat whatever I wish without fear of digestive reprisal.
Though these noodles are good, my favorite food is Chinese barbecue lamb kebobs sold by street vendors who have better things to do at night than sleep. They taste particularly great when you are wandering around downtown at 2 am drunk off your ass. They're meaty, salty, and go down great with another beer to keep your buzz going. When I go bar hopping it is now a necessity to find some lamb, or else the night just won't feel complete. And like everything else in China, I can buy a giant handful of kebobs for whatever change I have rattling in my pocket.
This may or may not be part of the reason why I've gained weight since coming here over 18 months ago.
Lol, I'm all for food adventures. I'd consider myself an extremely realistic, rational person, but when it comes to eating unfamiliar food and catching some disease, I generally assume that my immune system will just take care of it. I mean, I'm not going to try eating raw meat anytime soon to test the theory, but for stuff that people claim has been cooked? Eh. I'll eat it.
Comments
The image was way too big so just go here.
It was very tasty and easy to make, though turned out way to hot for my mother or sister to eat.
I'm sure it tasted wonderful though!
EDIT: I should have taken pictures of the sushi Eric made last Friday. He always makes wonderful meals when I visit, and the sushi turned out AWESOME. He made 10 rolls I think, 1 for each person who was there to eat. The various rolls had salmon, crab meat, fried shrimp, carrots, squash, avocado, and cream cheese. We could mix and match what we wanted and he'd put it all together and roll it. It was SO GOOD.
I think I may have taken one picture of the beginning process, but the camera is at his house so I wouldn't be able to upload it anyway.
And Zlam, I can't cook worth shit, so you've already one-up'd me. Weren't you the one who posted pictures of your attempts at making sushi once before? Don't mind me saying it looks gross. I would still eat it and enjoy it!
And yes it does look sort of gross haha, but I assure you if you like spicy food this is a wonderful dish.
Also, today we made a special dish. Usually we make our macaroni and cheese very poor man's. We use Velveeta, milk, and onion powder.
Today we decided to go super fancy and make this:
It's mac and cheese made with flour, heavy cream, milk, butter, and nutmeg. In the sauce, we used blue cheese and cheddar and topped the whole thing with Gruyere before broiling it for about 6 minutes. The result was WORLDS different than our usual mac and cheese.
If I made it again I would halve the blue cheese and fill in the gap with more cheddar, but the blue gave it a very interesting and yummy taste. It was a good experiment.
It was mostly a success... the texture of the filling was a bit too much like tofu to be considered true quiche, but it didn't bother me.. I like tofu. The flavor was good, and the crust was EXCELLENT. Flaky and delicious.
And they're all about 60-70 cents for a giant bowl of food. Hooray! If it doesn't rain tomorrow I will try to take pictures.
Those of you who eat at Chinese restaurants may know that Szechuan is their spicy food. Chengdu is the heart of Szechuan (though it is now officially spelt Sichuan). In China, Sichuan food is synonymous with spicy.
The giant bowl of red oil and peppers sits atop a giant flame to keep the oil hot, to accentuate the spiciness of the oils already in there. Then you order a bunch of plates of different vegetables, meats, and other ingredients. You dump them all in so they cook in the spices, then you take them out, dip them in other spicy oils, and eat them.
This isn't a great picture, I took it before they gave us all the food, but I was too hungry to wait, and I wanted to start eating. Not pictured are a few plates of various meats that were added later. The whole meal was very hot, which I kept dousing out with beer. My girlfriend lives in the adjacent province and is very capable with spicy food, and she can eat a lot more of it than I can. I think it's sexy.
Here's what the carts look like:
This is a closeup of one of the carts. You can pick out your noodles and mix up your bowl as you want. Behind the metal guard is a wok over a stove top for making the noodles. Behind the cart are green vegetables and bean sprouts to add too, and off to the side are eggs too.
And here's what it looks like in the end. It's nice and spicy, I have them add lots of lajiang, or crushed peppers. Altogether it costs about 59 cents.
See that right there brings me right back to memories of a dream I once described in the crazy dream thread. I'm sure it was very good, but I'm not adventurous enough in my eating habits to even think about food like that.
Though these noodles are good, my favorite food is Chinese barbecue lamb kebobs sold by street vendors who have better things to do at night than sleep. They taste particularly great when you are wandering around downtown at 2 am drunk off your ass. They're meaty, salty, and go down great with another beer to keep your buzz going. When I go bar hopping it is now a necessity to find some lamb, or else the night just won't feel complete. And like everything else in China, I can buy a giant handful of kebobs for whatever change I have rattling in my pocket.
This may or may not be part of the reason why I've gained weight since coming here over 18 months ago.
Adventure time!