Hi Umami Readers!

Sorry for neglecting this blog! My thesis took a strange turn these past week. Basically, my thesis is still pretty fucked, but I really want to put this recipe up! It’s a really tasty dish that have gathered a lot of praises from friends and family. I recently made this for my friend Arden, and she took the pictures for this post. Thanks Arden!

Without further ado… My Spicy Sweet & Sour Riblets!

Morsels of spicy, sweet & sour goodness!

Let’s take a look at what you need to make this. 

Ingredients (serves 2)

• Spare ribs: 4 strips, lean. Fairly common in asian supermarkets. Ask your butcher to cut them into strips, 1 inch in width. Rinse and dry off with paper towels, then cut into riblets.
• Garlic: 1/4 to 1/2 a bulb. Finely diced.
• Sugar, salt, white pepper, soy sauce, corn starch.

For the sauce…

•  Ketchup: quite a lot! You need about 1/4 of a cup. Oh, and MAKE SURE YOU USE HEINZ KETCHUP, as the generic brand isn’t sour enough. If you are desperate, get 3-4 ketchup packets from fast food places and mix in equal parts of generic ketchup. Trust me, cheap ketchup can ruin the sauce.
• Chili pepper oil: pick this up in the international/Asian isle in any large supermarkets. They come in jars and usually have dark bits of chili pepper settled in the bottom. 1 teaspoon. Add more if you like it spicier. It doesn’t expire if you keep it in the fridge, and is good for spicing up stir fries.
• sesame oil: 1/2 a teaspoon. Don’t add too much, or it will overpower the rest of the sauce.
• Sugar: quite a lot here also! Think 2 tablespoon or so.

Preparation

For the pork, add a 1/2 a tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 a tablespoon of salt, pinch of white pepper and a dash of soysauce, mix and well and let it sit for 2-3 minutes. Add in 3-4 tablespoons of corn starch, and mix until the riblets are evenly coated.

Don't be afraid to use your hands!

Once even, add in oil to seal the corn starch breading.

For the sauce, add in everything, and taste. Add in more of each until tasty. It should be sour and slightly sweet, with a hint of spice.

Cooking time!

Heat up your pan with a bit of oil on maximum heat. Add in the riblets once the pan is hot, and fry in medium-high heat until golden. Once they’re done, rest them on some paper towels to absorb the extra oil. They should be crunchy to the bite (and REALLY tasty at this point – good enough that you can skip the sauce if you want). Don’t let them rest for too long.

With the pan still hot and back on maximum heat, add in the minced garlic. and stir until golden. Quickly add in the sauce and mix it into the garlic. Once it bubbles (takes no more than 2-3 seconds), add the riblets back into the pan and mix evenly with the sauce. The ribs should absorb ALL the sauce and you would have no sauce left into the pan!

And it’s done! Me and Arden enjoyed the ribs over a big bowl of rice and some chinese veggie stirfry!

A perfectly delicious dinner!

At $5 to $10 bucks, it’s slightly more expensive than the other dishes I’ve showcased on this blog, mainly because spare ribs can be pricey. But it’s well worth it, as this is one of my best dishes to date!

I really hope you will give this one a try!  If you want to skip out on the spare ribs, thick chunks of pork roast should also work.

Hello all!

Today I am going to introduce another quick, simple and cheap recipe, Ginger Pork Chops with Onions. Well actually, to call this a recipe may be a bit of an exaggeration. What I am doing here is simply giving you some great tips on marinating pork chops, as taught by Bonnie and Johnny. A lot of times people find pork too chewy or it has that weird pork taste. This recipe takes care of both those issues.

Ingredients

Ingredients for the chops

 

 

• 3 boneless pork chops: cut out the fatty white parts
• 1 block of ginger, peeled
• 1 Onion – sliced into half rings
• sugar, salt, white pepper, soy sauce, corn starch, oil

PREP

First thing you need to prep  are the pork chops. With the back of your chopping knife, ‘chop’ the meat as if you’re dicing it. This tenderizes the meat quite effectively. Make a crisscross pattern on both sides of the chop, like so:

Tenderize the meat by 'chopping' it with the back of your knife on both sides

Then cut it into smaller pieces.

Next, we prepare the marinade for the pork. First, with a grater, grate the peeled piece of ginger into a bowl. Once all the ginger ’shreds’ are in the bowl, squeeze the juices out. I find this works best by pressing the shreds into the side of the bowl.

Ginger juice!

Now dip your chops into the juice and mix it around. The ginger juice is used to remove any weird metallicky taste that you sometimes get in pork.

Next, add in a pinch of salt, sugar, white pepper, and a dash of soy sauce. Mix until even. let the meat soak in the juices for about 5-10 minutes.

Lastly, evenly sprinkle 2-4 tablespoons of corn starch onto a medium/large sized plate. Bread your chops evenly on both sides. Then place the breaded chops back into the bowl, add a bit of oil, and mix. The oil seals in the corn starch breading so it doesn’t come off when you’re frying them.

Now heat up the pan to maximum heat, and add a bit of oil on the pan. Once your Pan heats up, add the pork chops and fry them on both sides until golden.

Nicely breaded chops!

Take them out and rest them on a piece of paper towel to absorb all the extra oil. With the pan still hot, add in the onions. They’ll instantly pick up the colour and flavour from the pork chops, stir, and add a pinch of sugar and a small pinch of salt, stir the chops back in until hot, then take them out!

 

Served!

The sweetness of the onion works really well against the pork chops. Serve with rice!

Bah! I got lazy after the last post and I haven’t updated for a while. I promise this won’t happen again! I have quite a few posts ready to be posted for the future so I can assure you this blog will get updated regularly.

Digressions aside, today I want to tell you about an awesome lunch/dinner opportunity right at the University of Guelph! Every Fall and Winter semesters, the students of the School of Hospitality and Tourist Management (HTM for short) puts out a weekly lunches (and sometimes fine dining events) at PJ’s restaurant on the north end of campus.

Location of PJ's Restaurant on North Campus

Recently, me and my friend Maxine went to a really great lunch there. The restaurant of the week was called ‘With A Twist’, featuring a lot of asian flavours [See menu here]. As you can see here, all the items are relatively cheap. Maxine and I took this chance to sample a full range of dishes.

Drinks and Appetizers

First up, I ordered a Virgin Bellini and we shared a plate of Chipotle Shrimp Cups.

Bellini sans the good stuff

Great presentation and colour, with a bit of fizziness that adds a bit of kick. However, it doesn’t even come close the famous slushy bellini at Milestones.

VERY tasty Chipotle Shrimp Cups

The Shrimp cups were AMAZING! Very spicy, and the shell was really crunchy. I’m generally not a big fan of the type of shrimp they use (the tiny frozen ones), but the chipotle and the salsa really helped the flavour along.

Mains

Next up, we shared 2 mains: a Root Beer Pulled Pork Sandwich, and a Japanese Styled Baked Salmon.

The Pulled Pork Sandwich

The sandwich was very delicious. The pulled pork was very juicy and tender, and the fries were very well spiced (some of the best I’ve had). Although, the pork was a little too juicy, which created a bit of a mess. Would’ve been great if they were able to thicken the sauce a little so it sticks to the meat more.

The Japanese Style Baked Salmon

The baked salmon was excellent as well. The teriyaki and honey glaze gave it a very crunchy crust, and left the inside very tender still. What’s more, the salmon tasted fresh (which is surprisingly rare when ordering salmon at restaurants in this price range)! The rice was a little too wet and the beans were slightly undercooked and underseason, but all in all, it was very good and well put together.

Dessert

We ordered the Banana-Nut Spring Rolls, which me and Maxine both agreed is our favourite of the afternoon.

Banana-Nut Spring Rolls

The spring rolls are filled with banana, served over chocolate ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce. The combination worked great together, and I hope to find this in restaurants some point in the future! The best part is that the spring rolls were quite crispy and still warm, which worked well against the ice cream. I just wish there were more!

The Damage

The lunch only set us back $14 each (including tax). The best part is you don’t have to tip at PJ’s, since none of the tip make it to the students who put the lunches and dinners together. We’s also done dinner at PJ’s, with fancy food which costs about $35+tax each (with the option to add a wine package for about $10 each). Lunches are definitely a better deal though.

The Verdict: Excellent 

I strongly encourage everyone to give PJ’s a chance at least once before they graduate. It can be hit and miss sometimes, since quality of food differs between the groups of students organizing the lunches. However, the end of this semester is the perfect time to give it a go, since they will be putting together the ‘Best Of’ menus out for 3 days (March 31 to April 2nd) [see menus here]. Be sure to make reservations online with OpenTable (requires free registration), and reservation a table for the earliest time possible: some times they sell out the best dishes very quickly.

Anyway that was my first restaurant posts. I hope to do more of these in the future. Let me know what you liked, and what you want to see in these posts! Also, if there’s a restaurant you would like me to feature in the blog leave me a comment!

So last week I promised the next blog post will be posted on the coming saturday, and that I’ll be blogging about a restaurant in Guelph soon. That’ll still happen, but I just made an awesome dish tonight and I can’t wait to share it with you.

I made a chicken and veggies stir fry with a spicy peanut butter sauce.  This didn’t start out as a stir fry recipe actually, as I adopted it from an italian pasta cookbook.

The original recipe. I can scan/transcribe this for you if you're interested

I’ve tried the recipe a couple times and decided that it was too heavy a dish when combined with pasta. So I adopted it into a stir fry to be served alone side with plain rice.

Ingredients

Ingredients for the spicy peanut butter stir fry - for 1-2 servings

From left to right

• Grape Tomatoes (or cherry tomatoes) – 1 small box, halved widthwise (use a serrated knife and a ’sawing’ motion, it will cut through the skin a lot easier without squishing the tomatoes)
• 1 onion – cut into quarters, then sliced (this gives quarter-rings instead of half-rings)
• Peanut butter (Crunchy) – 2 (heaping, large) teaspoons, crunchy because you want those peanut pieces in the sauce!
• Coconut milk – 1/3 small can (freeze the rest for other dishes)
• Tomato paste – 1/2 small can (freeze the rest for other dishes)
• Cayenne red pepper flakes – a pinch to a handful, depending on how spicy you like it
• Green beans – 1/4 of a pound, trim the ends and chop into 1-inch pieces
• Skinless boneless chicken breast – 1 piece per serving, half it lengthwise then sliced thin (slice diagonally to get bigger slices). Marinate with a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt, a sprinkle of WHITE pepper, and a small splash of soy sauce

NOTE on chopping: The instructions to chopping the ingredients are pretty specific. This is to make all pieces in the stir fry approximately the same size, so you get a bit of everything within every bite.

NOTE on marinate: Always use white pepper when you marinate white meats (chicken, pork), and only marinate when you’re about to cook the meat. Chinese marinates are meat to support the flavour (or ‘umami’) of the meat, not overpower it. Marinating overnight breaks down that flavour, making it tasteless.

With all the ingredients prepped, It’s cooking time!

1. Preparing the spicy peanut butter sauce by mixing the coconut milk, the tomato paste, and the peanut butter. Mix well (best with a fork), then add in the desired amount of cayenne pepper flakes and mix again till even. Set aside. The sauce should look something like this: 
   

   The spicy peanut butter sauce. Don't worry that it looks/feels thick. It'll loosen up once you add it in the stirfry

2. Heat up the pan in with a small amount of oil at max heat. Once the pan is hot, add in the onion slices, sprinkle in a pinch of sugar to bring out the sweetness of the onion.
3. Add chicken slices. Once you don’t see pink on the chicken, add in the green beans, and sprinkle in a pinch of sugar again. stir for a minute or so, add the tomato havles and stir.
4. Add in half the spicy peanut sauce, reduce heat to medium, and stir. If you don’t think it’s enough, add the rest (I haven’t portioned out the sauce well enough so the recipe i posted may be too much). Stir till sauce is even, then serve!

 

 

It's done! This is supposed to be 2 servings, but I ate it all in one go...

 

So there you have it! I’ve made this for a few friends before and they all really like it.

You can also go with the pasta option (set the veggies and chicken aside after step 3, add pasta and stir fry it a little, add the veggies and chicken back in, add sauce). See which one’s best!

This dish took about 10 minutes to prep and about 15 minutes to cook. Serves 1-2 depending on how hungry you are! All the ingredients combined are about $3-5 bucks per serving (depending on how much chicken and grape tomatoes you use)

I’ll make sure the next blog is restaurant-related! I think I’ll be writing about my favourite Sunday brunch restaurant. Come back this saturday to find out more!

Hello Umami readers!

Thanks for reading Umami, my food blog. I’ll be putting up weekly postings about food that I’ve had in restaurants across the GTA/Tri-City area, or recipes that I would like to share with you! Come back weekly for more ideas on where and what to eat!

To start off this blog, I’m going to share with you how to make fried-rice, Hong Kong style. You’ll find this dish in a lot of older chinese cafes all across the GTA. It’s cheap and easy to make, but there are a few tricks to making good fried rice.

Fried Rice - Hong Kong Style!

Ingredients

Ingredients for HongKongese Fried Rice

What you’ll need for this dish (serves 3) (left to right):

• Seasoning: white pepper, salt and sugar (not shown)
• Ketchup
• Rice! – 2 to 3 cups
• 2-3 eggs – scrambled. Add in the seasoning as you scramble: dash of white pepper and salt, and a larger dash of sugar
• 1 onion – chopped
• frozen vegetable mix- thawed (run it in a sieve through warm water, then drain). Avoid mixes with the giant green beans
• Hot dogs – 5-7 pieces, sliced into discs (I used all beef in this one, you can also use veggie dogs)
• Ginger – finely chopped, optional

TRICK #1:  Use rice left in the fridge over night! This draws a lot of moisture out of the rice, which prevents your fried rice from being too soggy. Make sure you cover the rice with saran wrap! The alternative is to cook the rice with slightly less water than recommended to get drier grains.

After all the prep’s done, it’s cooking time!

1. Heat up your pan with some oil. after it’s hot enough, add in the hot dog slices. once they take on some colour, add in the thawed frozen veggies. Sprinkle a dash of sugar (<1 teaspoon) to bring out the sweetness in the veggies.
   

   Pretty!

2. Set aside the hot dogs and the veggies. With the pan still hot, add in the onions and the ginger (if you are putting ginger in your rice). When you smell the sweet aroma from the onion, add the rice. Make sure you mix the onions and the gingers evenly into the rice to avoid burnt bits. 
3. TRICK #2: To stir fry the rice, two motions are important in addition to stirring. ‘Cut‘ the rice with the edge of your spatula to break up lumps, and use the back of your spatula to press the rice into the pan. This makes your rice slightly crispier and picks up more flavour from the pan.
4. TRICK #3: After you stir the rice for a while, make a hole in the rice to make way for the seasoned scrambled eggs, like so!   
   

   Make way for the eggs!

   This way, you get to cook the eggs a little before adding them to the rice, which will make the fried rice less soggy. make sure to stir the eggs with the spatula, and scrape the bottom of the pan to avoid burnt bits. Slowly push the rice towards the semi-solid egg, and stir. This way, the eggs get mixed in really evenly with the rice!

5. Cut, press, and stir the rice again to get an even mix.
6. Add the hot dog slices and veggies back into the mix, and STIR!
7. ADD KETCHUP! Ketchup gives the main flavour for the rice, so be liberal with it. Try to use avoid the generic brands (they’re bland compared to Heinz), as you can really tell the difference when you cook.   
   

   Don't be afraid to cook with Ketchup!

8. Stir, till ketchup is even. Taste. I find that if you don’t put enough sugar in the scrambled eggs, don’t use enough veggies, or have too much rice, the dish can taste a little bland. So adjust accordingly!
9. Serve and enjoy!

So there you have it! total cost is probably about $4 for 3 servings, and it takes 10 minute to prep and  1/2 an hour to cook!  Fried rice refrigerates really well, so save from for leftovers for the next day or two!

I hope you find this useful, or at least enjoyable to read! I look forward to telling you more about the dish I’ve made and food I’ve eaten, so stay tuned! Please let me know what you think! I look forward to your comments so I can provide you a more pleasurable reading experience!