Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #48: Crab and Egg Chinese Style

 Grab a crab and cregg an egg its time for foo yung!

Chop up!

Finding shiitake is kinda hard but ive hastily defrosted some mixed mushrooms that include shiitake out the freezer and chopped those.

Slice up!

Don't need to prep the crab like a pro because its also hard to find whole crab but easier to find tinned crab.

Remove crab meat!

Splitting it in half so i can save some for another recipe. Plus it'd be a lot for one omelette. Omelet. damn it! still dont know.

Break an egg!

Nice local farm eggs, tough shells amber yolks.

Beat an egg!

All beat and got everything ready to go in.

Add the ingredients!

So it's just 3 eggs with half a tin of crab meat, a handful of mushrooms and handful of peas.

Pan-fry!

In spite of adding plenty of oil to the pan, i can already tell these eggs have chosen violence today. They are sticking FAST to the pan. I don't know why. But I guess personally i woulda put the eggs in first and the fillings a bit after to prevent the shredded crab from sinking to the bottom and sticking, might be that. 

Finish!

**

Decent, bit foamy (my bad). Peas added a nice burst of flavour and the mushrooms and crab inoffensive. I added a bit of soy sauce and shichimi togarashi spices and that went really nicely with it.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #47: Hand-rolled sushi

aka. Temaki. I went and sneakily did this recipe way ahead of its time so that I could use up the open bag of seaweed nori before it went stale. Or soggy. Stogi.

Measure and add!

Had about 1/3 bag of sushi rice to use up, so I measure "tip it all in"

Measure and add!

Some water lol I just fill it up till it looks right in my steamer bowl

Wash some rice!

ummm swish swish??

Set the timer!

Our MVP steamer machine and the only one who does any real work around here.

Make sushi rice!

Some recipes have sugar and salt but this just has a splash of rice vinegar and fluff it around a bunch.

Roll the sushi!

Western style sushi haters avert your eyes!!! In the game they had tuna sashimi and fish roe, but thats super hard to get so instead I opted for smoked scottish trout, seafood sticks, avocado slices, and a bit of mayo with the seafood sticks.

Finish

****

Well I'm pleased! My hand rolling skills were fairly adequate. And it makes for a really enjoyable lunch food. It's not my absolute favourite way to eat sushi and I definitely wish it was easier to get sashimi in this... prosperous island country... but I think my "California style" adaptation was a good use of the recipe and I'm pretty into it.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #46: Udon

 Another pretty simple one, udon wanna mess it up ;-|

Make stock!

We've got dried konbu kelp and water!

Separate the stock!

I mean i can literally just... pick these out... Also seems cooked konbu is edible but its very high in iodine so you shouldn't eat a lot at once. This recipe throws the used seaweed out but im adding back a few pieces chopped up smaller and im going to chop the rest up and save it to make a seaweed salad.

Chop up!

already chopped from my ridiculous supply of frozen spring onions

Stew!

So we cook some udon in the konbu broth and add soy sauce and salt. Soy sauce is already salty enough for me so i don't add much salt.

Finish!

***

This flavours simple and subtle but really well balanced! it feels like a proper recipe with just those few simple ingredients. The umami flavour from the konbu broth is really effective.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #45: Cabbage Roll

 Getting kinda tired of stuffing mince into things at this point but here goes.

Weigh the meat!

I've got a weight for you... says it on the packet. 

Add the ingredients!

About half the mince, then we mix it with egg, oil, milk, salt, pepper, and breadcrumbs. Milks an interesting twist for this one but makes sense.

Knead!

mixed it all together until we get smooth beef paste

Tear cabbage!

Oh god i think maybe I bought the wrong type of cabbage for this? This shits more brittle than masculinity. I cant see the next steps being easy but here goes...

Boil some cabbage!

Boiled it up in water with a pinch of salt, here's it cooling down. Still seems like the wrong cabbage really.

Stuff the cabbage!

Ok we are doing it we are making this work. Some are a lot better than others. The leaves are still dummy thicc and quite hard. Will they stay together when cooked? ...maybe..

Stew!

Supposed to cook this in "consomme" so I thought I'd use the rest of an open packet of dashi and a beef stock cube.

Finish!

****

Yo wtf, these were really tasty! Wasn't really expecting anything from tough twice-boiled cabbage in beef juice but now I know better. And I'd definitely do it with the dashi again, that stuffs nice.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #44: Omelet

back 2 basics with a simple omelet... omelette? wtf how you spell... well this game spells it "omelet"

Break an egg!

apparently i slam my eggs a bit hard

Beat an egg!

kicked its ass

Melt the butter!

feels like a crime that i got that lovely square pan from my mum and now im just making a round omelet in my round pan.. thats how it be tho!! ill make some squomelets later

Pan-fry!

Apparently you fold the sides in and flip it, useful for doing a filled omelet which i think we are practising for...

Draw freely!

yo i dont think my ketchup is gonna allow for drawing at all its one of those spray it everywhere motherfuckers, how about i draw freely by freely adding some actual seasoning as well

Finish!

**

oh god sorry this is ugly as hell again, but whatever its an omelet its in one piece and it tastes like egg. Not as good as that tamagoyaki and not as good as an omelet with cheese.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #43: Sweet Tofu Sushi

Inari sushi!

Slice up!

Aburaage isn't exactly an easy ingredient to come by in the UK, but I managed to find some online at a reasonable price. These come pre-seasoned, sliced and ready to use however so we're skipping a few steps.

Stew!

So you CAN still stew/blanch these in more seasoned water to get rid of any extra oil and stuff... but these already come pre-seasoned in liquid so it kind of feels like a waste to leech that seasoning out and add more you know? So i'm just gonna use them as-is.

Remove fried tofu!

Yep these look good! Draining the excess syrup in a colander.

Measure and add!

I actually started the rice first because it takes longer.

Measure and add!

here's warder.

Wash some rice!

gave it some swooshes and now its clearer

Set the timer!

30 mins in the ol' wetifier

Make sushi rice!

Adding mirin and fluffing the rice dry. Then i left it to cool for a little bit.

Stuff with rice!

After working with all manner of wraps and pastries, these were a delight to fill really. They're kinda slimy but very well defined flexible pockets that are easy to- hey get your mind out of the gutter!!

Finish

***

These get VERY SICKLY very quickly, I kinda don't want to eat more than about 3 at a time really (even though i ate 5 for dinner, live and learn). But they're so strong flavoured, unique and simple to make that they're a great addition to a larger sushi platter, bento lunch or party spread. Perfect for a burst of sweetness between savoury sashimi or vegetable dishes.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #42: Chili Sauce Shrimp

Ebi Chiri, a japanese take on chinese szechuan stir fry.

Peel the shrimp!

Cheating at it once again, got some frozen pre-cooked prawns. These look pretty good. Wonder if we can do em justice?

Coat!

I kinda forgot to plan ahead so these are still hella wet. Here's my pathetic attempt to dust them with flour.

Chop up!

Last of the frozen spring onion! Not much here this will have to do.

Add the ingredients!

So this sauce is made from ketchup, sugar, soy sauce, cooking sake, consomme... and critically... uh... no chilli?? No chillies are in this recipe. Still ive got the sauces to do my own variation to make me feel better. I'm going to use half organic ketchup and half indian hot & sweet sauce, which is like a spiced up sweet chilli/ketchup combo. Will forgo the extra sugar, as this is going to be plenty sweet enough. As for the consomme? It appears to be... powdered in the game graphics? so im using half a stock cube, dissolving it in the sake and soysauce before adding the ketchup.

Mix!

This smells really good.

Saute!

We fry up the prawns, spring onion, (in chilli oil to make me feel better!) and then add the sauce, and it says to add potato starch to thicken up the sauce, but i think with all the clumpy flour "dusting" ive succeeded in thickening it up enough as it is.

Finish!

****

Between the hot sauce and the chilli oil, I've managed to spice this up quite a bit! Cooked some rice noodles to go with. Really nice sauce. Definitely think it could have some garlic, cashews/peanuts, and fried rice instead of a crappy lettuce.