Baked Tilapia on a Carrot Purée.

Preparing this dish was an interesting experience, as it was so far out of my comfort zone, but I had good guidance, it was fairly simple and once I was done, it was the best thing I'd eaten.

I used tilapia, which is a very old dish, first cooked in ancient egypt. Tilapia is a milder fish which gives more accent to the sauce or preparation. Make sure you thaw your fish.

I decided to use a mixture of lemon, butter, salt, pepper, cilantro and tomato as the sauce. I wanted to make a lighter purée, so that it accented and did not overpower the fish.

The carrots need to boil so we want to start that before preparing our sauce. Do not chop the carrots, cook them whole. You lose a lot of nutritional value if you chop them, you also get a lot of water in the carrots, which leads to a runny purée. Boil some water with a little bit of salt.

We need to cut off the tips of the carrots, before we put them in the boiling water.

While that is cooking we want to dice a tomato for the sauce.

We need to try to cut it as fine as possible.

We add some butter, salt and pepper.

Now we mix in some lemon juice.

We should finely chop some parsley.

We will need to mix all these ingredients.

We need to heat the pan to the desired temperature before we add some butter or olive oil.

We need to cover one side with the sauce, making sure we get the butter on the fish.

We will place this side face down.

Now we want to cover the fish in the sauce.

We want the fish to cook for 6-8 minutes on each side. It should be completely white when it is done, but be careful! it becomes very delicate when cooked and might break.

You might add a little butter if you feel as though there isn't enough of it in the sauce.

For the Purée.

We want to add the food to purée hot, straight from the boiling pan , as it purées better and faster.

Then we will want to finely chop some raisins to add to the purée, add a little nutmeg.

We will use a spatula to scrape the bits off of the walls at various intervals, to ensure an even purée.

Once the purée of carrot, raisin and nutmeg is done, place the purée on the plate.

Place the cooked fish on top.

Beautiful.

Afterthoughts:

This was much simpler than it sounded when I started it, and was very easy to make, especially considering it was honestly better than anything I can remember eating.

I can't wait to try this again with other purées, fish and sauces. The flavors blended better than any I've experienced, many thanks to the chef who recommended this to me.

Steamed Dumplings.

Steamed Dumplings (zhengjiao) are very popular, yet not often made at home. A food from ancient times, the Asian jiaozi variety are often eaten as a breakfast celebration of new years. I've made it often before and decided to revisit the dish, while trying a few new things.

For this recipe we will need:

Packaged wonton wrappers

Filling:

1 Pound ground pork

3 Green onions

1 Egg

3 Garlic cloves

3 Tablespoons of soy sauce

2 Tablespoons of sesame oil

3 Cups of Napa cabbage

4 Mushrooms

1/2 Teaspoon salt

1/2 Teaspoon of pepper

2 Teaspoons of sugar

1.5 Tablespoon ginger

Sauce:

4 Tablespoons soy

2 Tablespoons sesame oil

2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 Teaspoon sugar

1/4 Teaspoon salt

1/4 Teaspoon pepper

1 Tablespoon honey

2 Green onions

1 or 2 Cloves garlic

1/6 Teaspoon chili powder

Slurry:

Corn starch

Water

One of the new things I tried was to salt the cabbage leaves and dry them for 30 minutes prior to making the filling, it seemed to make them easier to work with.

The next step is to lightly fry the mushrooms, garlic and onions for the filling in the pan, to take some of the raw bite out of them.

Now we want to add the egg and the pork to a bowl.

Lets add the 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 3 tablespoons of soy sauce and 2 teaspoons of sugar, I heard that its best to mix the filling with chopsticks, it seems to be true.

We should add and mix in the tablespoon and a half of  ginger.

Mix in the 2 tablespoons of sesame oil

Once the vegetables look slightly bruised and a little tan we should start to dice and add them.

The smaller the better, obviously we don't want to try and make dumplings with large chunks of garlic and onion floating about.

Give that a nice even mix.

Once our cabbage is ready we will shred it finely.

Add 3 cups of this to the filling mix.

Our filling mix is ready!

Now its time to begin making the dumplings!

We will need to seal the dumplings, and for that we will need to create a slurry out of corn starch and water.

Now we will add some corn starch to a bowl then mix in an equal amount of water, mix with a fork, which behaves like a miniature whisk and gives a better consistency faster.

The steps we will be repeating are as follows:

Place a wrapper on a plate and wet 2 adjacent edges with the slurry

Add a bit of the filling to the middle.

Fold it in half and seal.

We can create a large amount of dumplings with this recipe, we also have the option to make some dumplings now, and save the meat filing, wrappers and slurry for use later.

We will need to add as much water to a pan as we can, without touching the bottom of the steamer. It is better to begin boiling and steaming the water before we add anything else.

If you put the dumplings in as it is, the dough will expand into the holes and tear when you remove them, to avoid this we will be placing some of our cabbage leaves down as a shield.

This will allow us to remove our dumplings once they are done.

We will let the dumplings steam for 15-20 minutes.

Its possible to remove them by sliding the leaves off of the steamer. Remember to use fresh leaves with each batch! the leaves tend to degrade as the dumplings cook.

The sauce:

Hoisin sauce

We can use the same trick to mellow the 2 green onion and 1.5 cloves of garlic as we did for the filling.

we will  begin by adding 4 tablespoons of soy sauce to a bowl, mincing and adding the garlic.

Chop and add the green onion, by slicing horizontally, we can get beautiful rings.

we will add and mix the rings, then we will add 2 tablespoons of sesame oil, and 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon of honey, 1/6 teaspoon chili powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon of pepper and 1 teaspoon of sugar. Once we mix these ingredients together, we will have our hoisin sauce

The end product comes out rather well!

The water from steaming can be drunk to dispel some of the ill feelings you might gain from overeating.

Afterthoughts:

The recipe makes a lot of filling, but it is all right because its easy to store and will be really easy to make later, maybe I can experiment with other methods of cooking such as pan frying them.

The actual final result was delicious! Drying the cabbage worked really well, frying the ingredients a little before adding them also seemed to help, and the big change I loved was the cabbage leaves keeping the dumplings from tearing and sticking to the holes in the steamer, as usually happens.

Homemade Lasagna

Homemade Lasagna:

Lasagna comes from the greek lasagnum. Lasagnum was the greek word for dish or plate, and as time wore on became the name of the meal served inside the dish. There are many lasagna recipes out there, as it is an extremely customizable dish. Lasagna has been made for vegetarians, it has been made from seafood, with various types of cheeses, and most popularly with Bechamel and Bolgonese, which is what I will be making.

One of my favorite things to eat, lasagna is fairly simple to make at home.

1 Carrot
Half Onion
2 cloves Garlic
2 Tablespoon Parsley
3 or 4 Mushrooms

3/4 Pound Ground beef
1 Pound Sweet Italian sausage
1/2 Tablespoon Basil
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Pepper
3/4 Tablespoon Italian Seasoning
2 Tablespoon Parsley
1 Teaspoon Fennel Seeds


Tomato Sauce
Tomatoes

Ricotta
1 egg
Mozzarella
Provolone
1/2 Teaspoon of salt.

Milk
Butter
Flour
Nutmeg
Salt
Pepper

Oven ready noodles






The way I make it is done in 3 parts, the Bolognese sauce, The Bechamel sauce, and the Ricotta mix.

The Bolognese will need to chill for at least one hour, preferably a day, so we should start that first.

The first step is chopping up the vegetables.

I'm adding carrot for its health properties as well as its flavor and texture.

We need to chop all of our vegetables as small as possible, I love the flavor of mushrooms, so I will add a lot.

Another crucial ingredient is half of an onion.

Once the vegetables are finely shredded, we need to heat up the pan to a medium heat and drizzle a bit of olive oil in the bottom.

Add the vegetables, and actively mix them until they are mushy and soft. We don't want any crunch in our lasagna.

Once the vegetables are ready, we need to add the pound of Italian sausage and 3/4 pound of ground beef.

Don't forget to thaw the meat for 15-30 minutes before adding it, or it might be difficult to mix.
Once mixed we need to add our seasonings.

3 tablespoons of parsley, I chopped 5 initially because I will need 2 for the ricotta, which I can add to the ricotta bowl now.

We will also need to add 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1/2 tablespoon of basil, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 3/4 tablespoon Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon fennel seeds. Keep mixing at appropriate intervals. After the meat is nice and browned, I continue to mix and simmer for 30 minutes stirring regularly. Then its time to drain some of the fat out, leave a little fat so the meat isn't completely dry but you don't want a really watery texture at the end. When making the Bolognese sauce, remember that the more concentrated the better. You will wind up with a really runny lasagna in the end if you leave too much water in.

Whatever tomato sauce you are going for, homemade or from a jar, use the best you can, it is very important as the sauce defines much of the flavor, try to get a good jar if you decide to go that route.

Mix the tomato sauce into the meat, and continue to simmer, stir and dehydrate the Bolognese.

at this stage we want to add 2 diced tomatoes.

once those are added we can begin to stir every 5-10 minutes and simmer the sauce on a low heat, making sure it is covered, for 45 minutes.

We should get some nice bubbles, telling us where all that water is going.

Once we have it set, we will need to cover and refrigerate the sauce for at least one hour, preferably a day.

When the Bolognese is about 20 minutes from coming out of the fridge, we will start the Bechamel. I never knew what Bechamel was, until my friend brad suggested I make Lasagna with it, ever since  then I've been using it whenever I need a sauce in a pinch, on Lasagna, for Chicken Alfredo. It is extremely handy to know how to make a nice bechamel.

First we need to melt some butter, do not be afraid of making too much bechamel, it will be much more frustrating to come short, than to have extra sauce.Add an equal amount of flour to the now liquid butter.

The sauce takes a live effort of constant stirring to make sure it comes out right. When it becomes very thick we will need to switch to the whisk before adding the other ingrediants.

We want to get it nice and thick before we add our milk.

(I realized at this stage I was out of milk, covered the sauce, left it on the counter and went on a long walk to the store to pick up a half gallon and return an hour later.)

Once we have our milk we need to add it in small amounts before going back to whisking.

add a little bit, whisk it to a nice consistency, add a little bit, whisk, repeat.

As we work at it, it will be more and more like a nice creamy sauce, and less like a brown goop.

Once it becomes somewhat runny and isn't really whiskable we will add our seasonings and cheese. Add 1/2 to a teaspoon of salt and pepper each, as well as a teaspoon and a half of nutmeg.

Mix them in and stir a bit, test and season until you like the flavor.

Shred in the mozzarella and provolone, mix until you get a really nice thick creamy consistency with your sauce.

Now that that is done we can do the quick work on the ricotta mix.

add a pound of ricotta to the parsley in the bowl.

Mix these ingredients together with an egg, a half teaspoon of salt,  a tablespoon and a half of sour cream and some more shredded mozzarella.

It's time to take the Bolognese out, it looks nice and we have all of our ingredients ready.

We will use this for the bottom layer after we prepare our pan.

Everything should be ready, we will layer in the ricotta mix next.

As we have 2 types of cheese, I chose to use all of the ricotta on one layer.

After the ricotta mix we will add a layer of oven ready noodles. Oven ready noodles differ from boiled noodles in that they were rolled, instead of made with an extruder, this makes them more like handmade noodles in that it is porous, absorbing more moisture than extruded noodles.

On top of that we will spread the remainder of the Bolognese (or continue to layer in the order, meat, cheese, noodles until we run out.)

Don't have enough to make a new layer, so we should even it out and add the bechamel.

Top it off with a layer of noodle and the remainder of any cheese.

Now we need to cover it with tinfoil, we will need to use cooking spray or butter to ensure the tin foil does not stick to the top of the lasagna, this is extremely important.

Bake at (preheated) 375 for 30 minutes before removing the tin foil.

Cook for another 30 minutes without the foil. This helps cook it evenly, most people I know seem to have an issue with making an evenly cooked lasagna.

Leave it on the stovetop to cool down for 25 minutes.


Afterthoughts:

I really loved this one, dehydrating the Bolognese, and thinking about the texture of the end result throughout the whole preparation really made a nice difference from the tasty yet runny dishes I usually tend to make. The nutmeg was an amazing addition to the bechamel and really helped the overall flavor. This is one of the best lasagnas I've made, and is a dish I am still interested in learning more about. I don't feel like I've achieved perfection in this dish, but I still feel I did a very good job.

I made the bechamel much too thick and added too much, it rose to a much larger height than intended.