Asian Feast

I took a little break for a while from blogging...my camera broke so I couldn't get all of my tasty creations up...I started cooking again a few weeks ago and I have been slow to get pictures up. I will be posting a lot in the next few day to catch up!



It's been a while since I have cooked some Asian food so I thought I would really cook it up last night: I made a version of Filipino lumpia that they serve in a restaurant close to my house, some Japanese chicken katsu with tonkatsu sauce over white rice with some yaki udon on the side.




It's all pretty easy to make and if you cook alot or cook any asian food you will probably have a lot of the ingredients lying around.

Lumpia:
*depending on how many you want to make you need to increase the amount of ingredients - I just wanted to test it so I only made two Lumpia (wish I made more)


Ingredients:

spring roll wrappers (2)
ground beef (1 cup)
1 carrot chopped into small pieces
green peas (1/4 cup)
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon soy sauce
a couple of dashes of hot sauce
(I also threw in a dash of powdered ginger)
*thai sweet chili sauce for dipping

Directions:
1. Brown beef in skillet or wok...while you are browning beef boil water and add carrots and green peas. Continue to boil until they are soft. When vegetables and beef are cooked through add to bowl and mix with the rest of the ingredients


2. Take one spring roll wrapper with point facing you and begin to fill by spooning mixture 2 inches from point of wrapper facing you. Begin to wrap, folding corners into the inside of the spring roll as you wrap. close spring roll by pressing firmly or sealing with water



3. Heat oil in a non-stick wok and add spring rolls one at a time - they cook fast so watch them!



4. Take spring rolls out of wok when brown and crispy and drain on a paper towel. Enjoy with thai sweet chili on the side.



Yaki Udon:
I just made veggie yaki soba but you can really add anything to yaki udon: meat, chicken, scallops, pork...


Ingredients:
dry udon noodles
2 cloves of garlic (chopped)
1 inch of ginger (shreeded)
shreeded cabbage to your liking
shreeded carrot to your liking
1 packet of yaki udon/soba sauce


Directions:
1. boil water and add udon noodles (do not add salt to water as udon is very salty already)

2. while udon noodles are cooking add garlic and ginger to a heated and oiled wok - note that they will brown fast so be ready with veggies to throw into the wok

3. add any desired vegetables - like carrots and cabbage

4. drain noodles and add to wok

5. after noodles have cooked for a few mintues add powdered yaki udon sauce

6. you may need to add a little water to the wok at this point to evenly distribute sauce and make it more...well....saucey..mix well and cook for another minute or two and then you are ready to enjoy



Chicken Katsu:


Ingredients:
chicken cutlet
white flour
salt
oil
egg
panko (japanese bread crumbs)


Directions:
set out four plates:
On plate one: mix flour with salt to taste
on plate 2: one beaten egg
on plate 3: panko
plate 4 leave empty for breaded cutlets


Dredge cutlets in flour, coat with egg and then cover with panko. Press panko into cutlets and then place on empty plate and repeat.


Heat oil in a non-stick frying pan and fry cutlets until golden brown on both sides.


Slice and serve over white rice. Traditionally Chicken Katsu Don is the cutlet sliced served over fried egg and white rice. Drizzle tonkatsu sauce over chicken.

Enjoy!!

Mrs. Nomura's Japanese Curry

I’m so lucky to have friends from other countries and occasionally they share their family’s recipes with me. The following is a recipe shared by my friend Togo. It's the one recipe that his mother sent him off to college with. It calls for a package curry roux. This can be found in any asian store and they are even starting to sell the milder version in Publix here in Florida. This is the kind my friend recommends :

S&B Golden Curry – I recommend the hot version as it is not very spicy and the milder versions don’t have much taste to me.


Ingredients:

-one block curry roux (usually there are two in a box)
-carrots sliced into long, thin, bite size pieces
-one yellow onion sliced in long strips
-one or two bell peppers of any color sliced in long pieces
-one whole head of garlic peeled
-one cube of either chicken or beef stock
-meat of your choice: chicken, beef or pork will do (I love chicken so that’s what I usually use) chopped into bite sized pieces
-olive oil to fry

1. Fry meat of choice in olive oil until cooked medium (you are going to simmer this meat so it doesn’t/should be cooked all the way through)


2. Add veggies and garlic and fry for about 2 minutes


3. Fill frying pan with water – only enough to cover contents of frying pan and no more. Crush cube of chicken or beef stock into water and cover. Let simmer on low for 20 minutes.

This is what it should look like before you simmer it....mmmm....chocolate peppers, my fav!

4. After 20 minutes take off cover and look at amount of water in pan…it should have reduced to about ¾ the amount of water…if not you may want to disgard some of the water.


5. Crumble block of curry roux into water and stir well…if not you will have chunks of curry in your meal.

6. Let simmer for 5 minutes and remove from heat. Let stand only a few minutes…Sauce will thicken as it stands.

Mmmm...finished product!

You can serve this meal with either rice or Japanese Udon noodles (I love the noodles personally, they are pretty salty though). If you were eating this dish in Japan a main dish of the curry would be placed in the center of the table and everyone would be given a bowl of rice. You would just grab what you wanted with chop sticks and add to rice as you go. I personally love the sauce and ladle it over my rice or noodles….

If you have any leftovers I recommend making curry bread…so delicious!
You can stop by closetcooking.blogspot.com they have a great recipe for curry bread.