Cooking: For novice home cooks – part 11

In part 8, I introduced stir fried rice noodles, and mentioned that they appear in numerous cuisines throughout asia and southeast asia. Today, we’re making, what is likely the most famous rice noodle dish, pad thai. So pad thai is a stir fried rice noodle dish from Thailand that is, surprisingly, not part of any…

Cooking: For novice home cooks – part 10b

So this was supposed to be part of the previous blog entry about grilling, but I wasn’t happy with the photos, so I remade the dish, and recaptured photos for it. This is a grilled chicken recipe that was kinduva an accident.  It  was years ago, I came home for a weekend family barbeque, and…

Cooking: For novice home cooks – part 10

As the weather warms up, I get the urge to fire up the grill and sear a hunk of meat. I don’t know what it is, but even guys that hate cooking, if you give them a piece of red meat and a charcoal grill, they will happily don an apron and happily start cooking…

Cooking: For novice home cooks – part 9

Japanese Katsu Curry over Rice (カレーライス). I was aimlessly browsing the internet and came across a video blog from a restaurant chef demonstrating a chicken katsu curry recipe.  I don’t know how authentic the recipe was, but it looked pretty good, and I noted that I had all the ingredients he listed, so I decided…

Cooking: For novice home cooks – part 8

One of my favorite ingredients is rice noodles.  Rice noodles originate in southern China, but are used in cuisines throughout Southeast Asia. For this blog entry, I’m making stir fried rice noodles with beef and vegetables.  And again, because I have the ingredients, I will do a cantonese version of rice noodles.  Coincidentally, this dish…

Cooking: For novice home cooks – part 7

Up until now, these cooking posts have focused on dishes with very accessible ingredients.    Most were written from memory using ingredients and recipes that I use frequently.  Now I’m going to venture overseas and start using slightly more exotic ingredients (i.e. your local supermarket may not have these ingredients, you may need to find…