bringing the cooking class home, day one

I have grown up cooking and baking because my mother is truly an amazing chef. From being that little kid with an easy-bake oven (and eating the strange things that came out of it) to nowadays cooking with my mom and making her teach me the nuances of cooking, such as getting “stiff peaks” out of egg whites, I have always been trying to be emulate her. Last year I gave her a “coupon” for a cooking class in Seattle as a birthday present (coupon giving is family tradition- side note: I once got a “coupon” for a radio-controlled airplane as a kid for Christmas. Luckily for my parents I lost interest in the endeavor and never “cashed it in”. Given the deep frugality of my father, I’d like to think that coupons were his idea as some sort of an insurance policy against my changing interests as a child… smart). Since getting my parents to leave their lake house and come to Seattle is similar to pulling teeth, and combining that with my awful graduate school schedule for the past year, the coupon for the cooking class in Seattle has gone unused. So this year I wanted to bring the cooking class to my mom for her birthday. My goal: make some of my mother’s favorite food that she does not traditionally make herself.


First night: Asian Food

So I know that these recipes are not from AW or the other books that I have mentioned before but they are inspired from a few restaurant recipes we love, as well as our favorite cooking magazine: Cuisine, which my mom has every published issue. Of course I have taken a few liberties with the food we made since I am quasi-vegetarian (more on this in a future blog) and even made up one of my own, but everything seemed to be a hit with the guests we had over, as evident with little to no leftovers. I am aimed for all local & chemical-free food, but there were a few things that I wasn’t willing to make from scratch right-away, like the wonton wrappers I used. Anyway, here comes the spread, get ready to salivate…

Spinach & Shitake Mushroom Wontons

This was the recipe I basically made up. I wanted to make little Wonton appetizers but because I didn’t have a definite plan on what to stuff them with, I went into my mother’s refrigerator in search of inspiration. There I found a bunch of spinach that would happily serve as my base. I then looked around in the pantry and found some dried shiitake mushrooms which I thought would complement the spinach well and have an interesting textural difference from the spinach. Here are the steps that I went through:

1. Take out wonton wrappers from fridge so that they can get to room temperature. I bought the Sunluck brand and they seemed to be just fine. Don’t open package yet or they will dry out.
2. Sauté the spinach (around a bunch) in a little extra virgin olive oil (about a T.), some garlic (2-3 cloves) and red chili flakes (roughly less than ½ teaspoon) for just a few minutes, or until cooked down.
3. Transfer to a colander to cool.
4. Rehydrated the dried shitake mushrooms (I used about 10 medium-large mushrooms) in a pan of boiling water for about 5 min, or until plump again. (Or even better if you have fresh shitakes, use those instead and no need to boil.)
5. Once those have cooled, sliced them up and put them in a bowl.
6. Then wring out the spinach/garlic mixture to it and combine with the mushrooms.
7. Preheat the oven to 325.
8. Foil and oil a baking sheet for the finished wontons.

9. Set yourself up with a little wonton-making-station with a nice working surface including a small bowl of water and pastry brush to moisten wraps (think about it as if you are moving the moistened brush around an inch border of the wrapper), a knife to lift wontons up from working surface, and of course the bowl of wonton filling.
10. Once you have everything set, the process is easy. Just put a spoonful of the spinach/mushroom filling in the middle of the wrap, moisten all the sides with the brush and then flip over diagonally (using the knife to lift it up) to create a three dimensional triangle. Then press down with your fingers to seal the wonton and transfer to the baking sheet.
11. When all the wontons are complete, bake for roughly 15-20 min or until lightly golden brown.

For a dipping sauce, we made a little apricot sauce (but you could make an orange one too like the wonton wrapper package says) by bringing the following ingredients to boil, simmering for a minute, then cooling.
• 3/4 c. of broth (either chicken or vegetable)
• 1/3 c. of apricot or orange marmalade
• 3 T. of apple cider vinegar
• 1 T. of cornstarch, (which admittedly, I am little ashamed of using, but I am sure flour or another thickening agent could have been used here instead)

When you serve these, just make sure that they are warm.

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Wontons: 5 min for the sauce + 30 min prep + 15 min cook = 60 min total
Total Cost: $10-$15 depending on what you already have in your fridge

Next up…….

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

Although the possibilities are endless with the types of spring rolls you can make, I have come to like wrappers made from rice paper instead of wheat flour, and prefer them served “fresh” instead of fried like egg rolls. As far as ingredients, I think it’s good to have some elements each for 1)crunch, 2)substance & 3) texture. For ours, we used carrots and jicama for crunch, noodles, leeks and shiitake mushrooms for substance and wild uncooked shrimp for texture. This is a SUPER easy thing to make, since it just takes time to chop everything up… so setting up a good assembly station is key. I like to have everything in a line so that I don’t forget any element (which I did several times during this endeavor until I rearranged my setup) This is what I did:

1. Cook your (hopefully wild) shrimp or whatever texture-type element you want. You can use pork, tofu or maybe even a steamed vegetable.
2. We prepared ours by plunging them into boiling water for a minute or two, followed by cooling and peeling them, removing the veins and slicing them in half.
3. Next we submerged some small diameter dried rice noodles into water and set aside. We didn't even use 1/3 of a pkg.
4. Then the chopping began. Everything needs to be roughly about 4 inches (or smaller, but think about trying to julienne the vegetables into slender sticks). We chopped: carrots, jicama, leeks, shiitake mushrooms and pulled off a couple dozen cilantro leaves. You roughly want about a 1/2 cereal bowl size amout of each minus the cilantro. (We also peeled the carrots and jicama before chopping.)

5. Once that is done, grab a large bowl and fill it with warm water & some cider vinegar (about two tablespoons for each cup of water), as that will be your rice paper soaking bowl. The thought is that as you pull one out, you want to put another one in there so that it will be moistened by the time you are done assembling that roll.

6. Also grab damp towel to assemble the rolls on and place it in the center of your station.
7. You start the process by taking the rice paper skins and soaking one at a time in the water/vinegar mixture for a couple minutes, or until soft. Then take out the soft paper, place on the damp cloth, and start adding the veggies: a couple sticks of carrots, jicama, leeks, shitake and mushrooms. Then roll rice paper once over and add the shrimp in the middle alongside two leaves of cilantro. Fold in the ends and the roll the rest up. The first one may not be beautiful (and might in fact fall apart or be totally ugly), but you will get the hang of it after a couple tries.

8. I just kept rolling until I ran out of vegetables.

For the dipping sauce, and being as obsessed about the thai-peanut sauce as both my mom and I are, we made quite a delicious one to accompany the rolls (and actually used the same sauce for the spring rolls below). I would say too that most of the ingredients are Asian-cooking staples (like: hoisin, oyster, sweet chili, Sriracha etc.), but I would advise that if you are picking anything up for the first time watch out for varieties with HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) and excessive corn by-products. You gotta look around, but at your better stores (and specialty Asian stores) you can find mostly natural products, though your mainstream grocers will often carry the chemical-laden, hfcs-type varieties. Stay away from those if you can.

Semi-Spicy Peanut Dressing
• ½ c. smooth peanut butter
• ½ c. hoisin sauce
• 2 T. water
• 1 T. oyster sauce
• 2 ts. Red wine vinegar
• 1 ts. Sriracha sauce
• 2 ts. minced or grated fresh ginger (be careful not to grate your finger like I did)
• 2 ts. toasted sesame oil
• 2 ts. soy sauce
• 1 ts. sweet chili sauce

You simply combine all these things in a small saucepan, bring up to a boil, simmer for a minute, then remove from heat, stirring constantly so there is no burning etc.
These were absolutely amazing. I think these will be my go-to easy/crowd-pleasing appetizer. So YUM! (and healthy!)

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Vietnamese Fresh Rolls: 15 min for the sauce + 45 min prep = 60 min total
Total Cost: $25-$35 depending on how deep your oil, vinegar and Asian food pantry is (sauce is the critical piece)

For the last appetizer…

Thai Tortilla Spring Rolls

These are absolutely delicious and a version with chicken is actually served at California Pizza Kitchen, which is where we found the recipe. Back when I was a mainstream-meat-eater, no matter where my mom and I were living around the country (Hawaii, San Diego, Ft. Lauderdale, Phoenix, Seattle etc.) we always had mom/daughter dates at CPK and ordered these, because did I mention that these were amazing?

Steps:
1. Preheat the oven to 500
2. Use a pastry brush to lightly & evenly coat one side of each tortilla (preferably large ones around 8in and you will need about 6 in total) with softened butter
3. Turn tortillas over and evenly distribute the following ingredients over a 1-2 inch wide strip on the unbuttered side, starting about an two inches from one side of the tortilla:
• spicy peanut sauce (same as above. new batch needed for this recipe)
• ½ c shredded mozzarella
• ¾ c. shredded carrots
• ¼ c. sliced green onions
• ½ c. fresh bean sprouts
• 2 T. finely chopped roasted peanuts
• 2 T. minced fresh cilantro
4. When finished with each roll, roll it up and place on a baking sheet, about 1 inch apart.
5. Sprinkle with 2 T. of freshly grated parmesan and bake 5-6 min and let cool for a few after
6. Slice diagonally into 3 equal pieces and garish with 1 T. of freshly chopped Italian parsley

Serve these with the leftover peanut sauce not used in the assembly process and they will be sure to be a hit! Although I am a Thai-food convert now and could eat it all day long, embarrassingly I think these were my first glimpse into Thai food... in other words, if you are trying to convince your friend/sig o/dog to go eat Thai food with you more often, I would make these as a lovely segway to get them excited about the fabulous Thai cuisine (and you can make what’s next as a sequel to boot!)

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Thai Tortilla Spring Rolls: 15 min for the sauce + 15 min prep + 10 min cook = 40 min total
Total Cost: $20-$30 depending on how deep your oil, vinegar and Asian food pantry since we used the same sauce

Finally for the main course…

Phad Thai

I have to say, I love Phad Thai, but have definitely had some bad Phai Thai in my life, usually because somehow it is too creamy (which I am not sure where that comes from) and/or too peanutty. However, this recipe somehow ended up just riiiight (insert bad goldilocks and the three bears joke here). I would suggest following the steps below and then just adjusting the amount of red chili flakes you put in for later iterations. Being the notorious non-recipe follower (because clearly I am a seriously cool-rebel-chick type), I accidently added too many red pepper flakes, so our main course was a bit warm. However, I did stumble on an amazing remedy: pairing white wine with the dish. I am sure Tracy could comment more on this but I drank a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, but had I been in possession of a Riesling it would have been opened in a second. I also left out any meat or tofu as I find it unnecessary, but if you wanted to add this to your dish, I would simply add them to the “Thai-sauce” I mention below for a quick marinade and cook separately, then set aside. Onward:

1. Soften ½ lb. of dry rice noodles in boiling water for 10-15 min. I would get wide ones if you can find them. Also, this might be the only time you will ever hear me say this but, don’t buy the fresh ones. I mistakenly bought them and boy was that a mistake! They were impossible to separate (even in hot water) and just ended up breaking… talk about a headache. Buy dry ones, let them soak for a bit, drain and set aside.
2. Slice about 2-4 peeled carrots to yield somewhere around 1 c. of julienned carrots. I also added the leftover leeks and jicama from the fresh rolls in this mix too.
3. In a small separate bowl, combine the garish ingredients:
• ½ c. unsalted, dry roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
• ¼ c. green onions
• ¼ c. coarsely chopped cilantro
4. Combine in a separate bowl and mix the Thai sauce together:
• ¼ c. broth (vegetable or chicken)
• ¼ c. fish sauce
• ¼ c. ketchup (don’t you dare use anything with HFCS, but if you don’t have ketchup on hand like me, you can just combine a tomato, a lil flour and a dash of sugar together if needed)
• ¼ c. fresh lime juice (preferably from fresh limes and not from that “Real Lime” lime juice sold in stores, which is actually just chemicals and lime juice concentrate)
• 2 T. brown sugar
• 1 T. Sriracha sauce, which in moderation, is actually not as bad for you and loaded with chemicals like I had thought before
5. In another separate bowl combine the aromatics:
• ¼ c. minced garlic (I think I might have used 10 cloves?)
• 2 T. fresh ginger, minced or grated
• ¼ t. red pepper flakes (I might have used closer to ½ ts or even a full ts, and I would rate it as edible, but a bit hotter than my taste. Even my father, who normally adds a spoonful of Tabasco to his eggs said it was warm.)

6. In a wok (if you got one), or any large sauté pan, add 1 T. canola oil and the aromatics. Let that mix together over medium-high heat until sizzling then add another T. of oil and the carrots/vegetables. Let cook for about 2 min.
7. Now add the noodles and Thai sauce to the wok. (This is where you would add some cooked meat or tofu in that you marinated in the Thai sauce, sautéed and then set aside).
8. Toss all together for a few minutes, then turn off the heat and add a couple cups of bean sprouts.
9. Transfer the Phad Thai to a serving platter and garish with mixture in step 3.

Now I apologize, but I forgot to take a picture of the final product, but I’d like to think that it looked/smelled/tasted so delicious that food-blog-picture-taking was not really on my mind at the time. 

This recipe was enough for 5 people post-excessive apps (we had all three above), and I was left with only a little bit for a lunch snack the following day.

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Phad Thai: 30 min prep + 15 min cook = 45 min total
Total Cost: $20 (mostly because I already had some of the essentials like fish sauce & Sriracha)

There you have it, Food-Fest, Day One, check! Make it all again? Phad Thai, Thai Tortilla Spring Rolls, & Vietnamese Fresh Rolls – Definitely yes. Won-tons – Probably yes, but I think I will make my own wrapper from scratch next time. Also, I think I want to experiment a bit with finding another sauce for the fresh rolls, maybe something with coconut milk in it… I will brainstorm, so check back if you are interested.

Any questions or comments?? Let me know!