Polenta is my new fave

I've been obsessing over polenta. My mom bought me a roll of it at Sunflower Market (my favorite grocery store) and I've been eating so much of it!



For those none foodies, polenta is basically Italian grits. It's hominy that's been stirred for hours and hours. But don't fret! The texture is different than grits; it's a much more solid texture and less grainy or gritty. (Puns!) The store bought kind usually comes in a roll, like a sausage. It's worth buying because making polenta is just too time consuming for those of us with lives. It's also very very healthy, as it's gluten-free, full of vitamins, and a great substitute for carb-tastic grains.

Here's my favorite recipe thus far: Southwestern Polenta!

Ingredients:
- Polenta (however much you feel like eating)
- Green Chile Sauce (I mean Hatch Chile, people! Greatest sauce known to man! Ever! But I'm sure that tomatillo sauce or Old El Paso will serve just as well!)
- Cheese! (Cheddar would probably be best)
- optional: I added an egg to this once, and it was good.

Instructions:
1- Saute Polenta (you can also microwave, fry, or bake it)
2- Add chile, cheese, etc
3- EAT!!!!

I know this is stupid, but I seriously just ate a piece of polenta while writing this. Trust me, there'll be more of this to come!

It's My Rice in a Pot

Please sing the title to the tune of “Dick in a Box.” Which was my mother’s idea. Love it!

Up until last year I didn’t understand cooking Japanese rice in a pot. I was just born with rice cooker on hand. Honestly. So when I moved to London for semester and accepted that I wouldn’t have my rice cooker, I realized it was time to learn to cope without it. After three times of awful experimenting, me and my Sansei mother finally had to resort to the Internet for a real recipe. So here’s the recipe, written by a Chinese girl who totally understands my plight.

1-Clean the rice. Swish it around in the pot a few times.

2- Put water in the pot, until it is about 3/4 of an inch above the top of the rice. A good way to measure this is to stick your thumb in -- the water should be about 1 joint of your thumb above the rice.(I use a one to two ratio. One cup of rice to two cups of water)

3-Put pot on stove, turn heat on high, and wait until it starts boiling. Like, actually boiling.

4-When it starts boiling, cover the pot with a lid and turn the heat down as LOW AS IT CAN POSSIBLY GO.

5-DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT TAKE OFF THE LID for at least 12 minutes. In fact, just walk away from the stove for 12 minutes. Just walk away!

6-After 12 minutes, if you're super impatient like me, you can take off the lid and look at the rice. It's not totally cooked! Surprise! Alright, put the lid back on (quickly!) and let it sit there for another 2 minutes on low heat. Then turn off the heat. And do not take off the lid. And let it sit there for about 10 minutes.

7-After 12, and then 2, and then 10 (that's 24) minutes, you can take the lid off, your rice will be perfect, and you can fluff it with chopsticks and serve!


NB: Japanese rice is short grain white rice. Not long grain Thai sweet rice, not long grain Chinese rice, not long grain anything! I don’t know why people have a hard time understanding the concept of short grain rice (which some people sushi rice, though that’s a totally different thing). But whenever I talk about this, people think I mean something that’s easy to cook, like brown rice. I’m not bitching, this is serious biz-nass!

Psuedo-Japanese Food

I’m half Japanese. And yes, I grew up eating with chop sticks and I ate rice at least 3 times a week. I have a rice cooker in college and when I studied in London I learned how to cook rice in a pot (which is hard, people!) Anyway, the point is I crave/need Japanese food about once a week. So I have been experimenting with easy ways to make my fave Japanese foods.

Katsu-don (yes, that’s a real word. It’s basically fried pork cutlets with rice)

Ingredients:
-2 pork cutlets
-Panko bread crumbs (you can use regular bread crumbs, but these are the best!)
-1 egg (I use the egg white, but you can use the whole egg)
-½ cup of flour
-Oil for frying
-Rice

Instructions:
1.Make Rice! Put it in a rice cooker. Or look at my instructions for rice in a pot.
2.Heat up oil in a skillet.
3.Set up your dredging station: Place the egg, flour, and Panko on individual plates. Then dredge: cover the pork in flour, then egg, then Panko.
4.Fry those suckers up! They should be crisp and golden. Yum!
5.This is the ghetto part: Put the rice in a bowl, then place the pork on top. Use soy sauce for flavor. You can add Rice Sprinkles (Furikake), miso soup, seaweed salad, whatever. That’s it!

Fake Oyako-don (Oyako is the characters for parent and child, in this case referring to the pairings of egg and chicken)

Ingredients:
-Chicken (I used rotisserie chicken, but you can use leftover chicken or bother to make your own)
-1 egg (or 2 if you want)
-Onions
-Soy sauce
-Oil
-Rice

Instructions:
1.Once again, make rice!
2.Heat up oil in a skillet.
3.Slice however many onions you want (the onions are traditionally in slivers).
4.Sauté the onions, then add the egg (I personally scramble it in a separate skillet, but you can cook it in the same pan), and add the chicken (this is mainly to heat it up). Add soy sauce for flavor.
5.Add on top of the rice. That’s it!

NB: Both these donburis (Japanese for rice bowls) have their own special sauce, like oh so many Japanese dishes. So by just using soy sauce it’s still the idea without taking up much time.

The Scramble

Hello World! Long time no blog!

So my life has been insanely, grossly busy. I’ve been cast as Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And between classes, work, homework, and rehearsal I have essentially no time to eat. So these next few posts will be completely dedicated to my new favorite “fast” foods.

First up, The Scramble.
I found out this summer I’m hypo-glycemic. Which doesn’t really mean much or change much about my diet. But it does mean that I have to eat more protein! So I’ve been eating a lot of eggs in order to maintain my energy level. I also love this dish because I get a full serving of vegetables in.

Ingredients:
-1 or 2 eggs (and use the full egg. Egg whites are less fatty, but they also contain less protein)
- any vegetables you like: spinach, tomatoes, onions, garlic, artichokes (I’ve been obsessed with artichokes since I started eating them this summer), etc. I also add tofu sometimes, for fun!
- Cheese!

1) I just sauté the veggies together. I do the onions first as they take longer, then tomatoes, spinach, artichokes, etc. Garlic is always last because if it burns, your meal is dead.
2) I usually just make scrambled eggs like normal, then add the veggies on top. And finally, cheese!!!

Enjoy!