Cucumber, cilantro and vermicelli salad

In continuing with the Asian food theme....I made this cucumber salad. My parents eat it all the time. The julienned cucumber is key...haha maybe not, but it makes it look very Asian IMHO! The vermicelli is average, I could do without it. It takes away from the vibrant green freshness of the whole thing. 
Oh and I'd like to just declare my love for cilantro..is there a more fragrant, refreshing herb? Too bad it is so pungent that I rarely cook with it but it sure is fantabulous when I do get to. I would love to start growing it on my windowsill but have yet to find a baby cilantro plant to buy.


Oh the recipe is just cucumber, cilantro and vermicelli mixed with a little bit of my spicy soy sauce mix. Any kind of sour + salt mix will do. 

Braised Bok Choy

I've always find Bok Choy to be kind of BLAH-watery, difficult and not tasty. 
But I saw this recipe, and thought to give it another go. They turned out pretty ugly...(both pictures were equally ugly so I put up both). I may have left it braise for too long but it was quite tasty. I like this way of cooking it either halved or quartered (although it makes it kind of hard to clean all the grimy little bits around the root). Nonetheless, it was very flavorful. The separately fried garlic is a nice technique, I think i'll do that again for other dishes-delish!

Chinese Tea Eggs

The incredible edible egg-they are so easy, cheap and versatile!
My mom would often make a batch of tea eggs when we had road trips since they were portable and I actually preferred them cold. This is my first attempt to make them myself and it was incredibly easy. I was horribly hung-over, and kept falling asleep while it was simmering but they turned out fine-great in fact. 
Here's how I made them: 
1) Boil eggs in water until they are cooked. I just let them cook for about 12 minutes. 
2) Pour out most of the water.
3) Smash the eggshells but don't let the eggshell break off. I think the more you can smash up the eggshell, the more flavorful they will be. Kind of like this:

4) Add tea. (I just added loose leaf green tea, I'm not sure where I got it from. My mom said you can use "any, ol tea" is fine but I think most people use black.) Add soy sauce. The eggs were about half submerged in liquid. 

Voila!

I've been eating them every morning..gobble gobble. Makes for a really really fast breakfast which is perfect coz I am not a morning person!

Roasted bone marrow

The things you can find at grocery stores these days...
Bone marrow!

I think I have a high tolerance for eating weird things because when I was a kid, my parents would feed me bizarre things before I realized what they were. Bone marrow was among the many things that were supposed to make me smarter (others being baby fish-like fetuses in whole fish and crab eggs). From what I remember, bone marrow was this delish, gooey mess and it was sort of a fun challenge to get it out of the bone. So I thought I'd get it and maybe put it in some soup but honestly, I never have time to make soup. After some googling, I found out that you can roast it and eat it on toast. It is also apparently Anthony Bourdain's choice for his last meal. (A LOT of food bloggers worship Anthony Bourdain.)
So here it is...vegetarians, look away!

Here's the thing. Everything was good up til this point. It was freaking disgusting! I should have known from hematology, bone marrow is at least 50% fat! When I poked it out of the bone, the whole thing was just a congealed, fat blob with yellow fat dripping everywhere. I ate 50 baby carrots afterwards to wash out the taste. 

Gross. 

Well, I will not give up on bone marrow and will try it in a broth but I doubt that will happen before June, (USMLE Step 1!!!). 

Blackened Mahi Mahi

Mahi Mahi makes me think of this line from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. 

Darald: What's the state fish of Hawaii?
Dwayne the Bartender: The Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. Yeah, bitch! 

Hahahaha love it. 

So this recipe was inspired by a wonderful blackened Mahi-Mahi salad I had in Miami. I am not sure what they used...but I decided to go with a cumin, paprika rub because I know that paprika burns on the grill, so I figured my fish would turn out blackened! 

Because I accidentally poured almost half my little bottle of cumin into the recipe, cumin turned out to be the main flavor in this, but that actually worked out. I cooked a random bed of vegetables in the same pan so everything had a smoky, grilled sort of flavor. Next time I think I'll make a corn salsa for some tangy contrast. Anyway, I loved it....even more than the fish I had in Miami!

According to another food blog that I checked out, the key to a good picture isn't a good camera but lighting! So I tried that and took this pic with my iPhone and I like the way it turned out!

[Side note: Cumin and I go way back. In fact, I loved cumin before I even knew what it was! When I was a little girl in China, they had these street vendors that sold lots of random snacks but my favorite were these skewers of grilled lamb. In retrospect, they were probably entirely unsanitary and I don't think they have these vendors anymore but I lovvvvved them. My four year old self could eat several skewers at once. I found out years later that the lamb was flavored with cumin and I still probably have a Pavlovian response to the smell of cumin. I've never cooked lamb but have used cumin with other meats and it's always delicious.]

Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

This is a recipe I've wanted to make for a while because it looked so cute in my cookbook and I had some fancy whole grain/flaxseed cous cous. So I finally got some portabella mushrooms but the recipe was a p-a-i-n in the ass. Things that went wrong

1) I am never buying unwashed mushrooms again. I hate washing them because, to be honest, I'm not really sure how. Rachel Ray says to wipe them with a damp paper towel but I think it's a waste of paper towel AND doesn't really clean them IMHO. 

2) The mushrooms were really delicate and I deformed them many times.

3) I burned the cous cous and I burned the chopped onions. 

4) The mushrooms are flat and soggy after they are cooked so not really "stuffable". 

Nonetheless..this is what I ended up with. I decided to just eat the mess and move on buttttt...to my surprise.....it was freaking delicious! I looooove portabellas!!

Here is a side view..see it is a mushroom under there!

Lindacake!

Linda turns 24!
Here is the cake Grace and I made. 
It looks just like a big Oreo at first, doesn't it. 

Linda cake

Linda below..I think the resemblance is uncanny..hahahaha. Happy bday Linda!

Engagement party cupcakes

Our classmates Matt + Maggie got engaged! 
Here were the muffins Grace L. and I made for their engagement party. And by us I mean mostly Grace who knew all the stuff about piping and decorating. I made the rings which is why they are all different in size, and look like spaghetti-o's. Nonetheless, they were muchos fun to make, and they were all eaten.