Easy Fried Rice

For the past two weeks, I’ve been making Fried Rice. I’m always scared of cooking as most of the time the food I cook doesn’t look and taste like what I’ve imagined. While scrolling through Facebook videos, there was a video by emmymade on how to cook fried rice. So, I muster up my nerve and followed the steps. I didn’t have spring onions so I omitted it from the ingredient list.

The verdict: my husband loves it and I liked it too. There are a lot of variations to fried rice. For proteins, you could use fish, chicken, pork, beef. You can make it vegetarian. You can use just egg white. You can add those tuna in cans. You can add salted fish. Whatever you want your fried rice to be, you can do it. Common ingredients in fried rice are eggs, rice, and vegetables. I tried the frozen vegetables with broccoli, baby carrot, peas and potato, it didn’t jive with the rice.

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Jalapeño and Cilantro Sauce

Two weeks ago, our department hosted a potluck burrito bar.  My colleague, who’s Mexican-American, is famous for her sauces.  She made several types of sauce for this event, the cilantro jalapeno sauce, members only sauce and a burrito sauce.  Of the three sauces, the cilantro jalapeno sauce caught my eye due to it’s lime green color.  It has a mild jalapeno kick and a rich cilantro goodness.  A lot of people asked for the recipe and she graciously shared it with us.  She mentioned getting the recipe from the America’s Test Kitchen show.

Jalapeño and Cilantro Sauce

Ingredients:  (makes 1 cup)

• 1 cup fresh cilantro leaves, and stems, trimmed and chopped coarse
• 3 jalapeño chiles, stemmed, seeded, and minced
• ½ cup mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Procedure:

1.  In a blender, put the cilantro, jalapeño, mayonnaise, lime juice, garlic and salt.  Blend it for 1 minute.
2.  Scrape down sides of blender jar and continue to process it until smooth, about another minute.
3.  With blender running, slowly add oil until incorporated.
4.  Transfer to a bowl for serving or jar for storage.  

For a mild spicy sauce, add chile seeds of one chile.  For an ultra spicy sauce, add all chile seeds from all 3 chiles.

Walnut Fudge Brownies

With my current work, I’m usually off on Thursday. That means I get to bake or make desserts. Today, I decided to try a brownies recipe from The Bailiwick Academy. As brownies are considered entry-level baking, I imagine it will work out fine. Looking at the recipe, I noticed that it would be too sweet for my guinea pigs. I tweaked the measurement and the ingredients and came out with this delectable walnut fudge brownies which passed my guinea pigs sweet tooth.

Verdict: After 25 minutes in the oven, the top part got burnt while the inside was still a bit soft and gooey.  I added 10 minutes baking time at 325F.  I’m not sure if the temperature in my smaller oven is correct or I really need to get an oven thermometer to check temp.  It’s not the first time I baked there where the outside got burnt and the inside is not yet cook.  In any case, it still taste yummy and it is best serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for Brownie ala mode.