Panko Breaded Pork Chops

We have attempted to bread and pan fry meats before, but we have yet to create the masterpiece of breaded fried dinner meat that we crave.  In our previous attempts, we have used AP flour and egg, and we have found that the flour/egg dredge never truly sticks to the cut of meat, and instead will just fall off of the meat when you flip it in the pan, or when you are cutting it at the table. This is not ideal.

So this time, we decided to try panko breading. Actually, what inspired the panko breading is the sample stand at the Asian supermarket, where they make fried pork cutlet that is panko breaded, and it is so delicious that I loiter around that sample stand, browsing things I have no interest in buying, just to make sure I can get my fair share of piping hot deliciousness when the lady inevitably yells "FRIED PORK CUTLET" as she's cutting up the samples.  I am also a big fan of the dumpling samples, as well as the soup noodles, but that's another story.

This dinner turned out pretty well- the panko did a much better job of sticking to the pork chop, and it also had a much cripser, crunchier texture, which I prefer.  The only downside was that the panko burned easily.  I am assuming that is because we cooked it in our searing-hot cast iron skillet.  This was more of an aesthetic criticism, as the pork chop and breading tasted fine, but just looked a little dark.

We didn't use a recipe, as Melvin's chef just put this together using his incredibly intuitive cooking smarts.

The prep station: scrambled egg wash with pepper and seasonings, de-boned and trimmed marinated pork chops, AP flour, panko

The pork chops were dredged in flour, then egg wash, then panko breading

Left: heating up the cast iron skillet while the yu-choy starts cooking (the block in the center is frozen chicken stock that we add to the veggie); Right: the pork chops are added to the skillet, and garlic is added to the veggie

Before and after: the cooking pork chops- you can see the panko browns very very quickly!!

Dinner is served!

Cluck! Cluck! Flap! Flap!

For Superbowl weekend, we decided to make chicken wings. I found a recipe on Steamy Kitchen that I liked, so we gave it a whirl... and they turned out pretty darn well!

We just bought whole chicken wings at the supermarket and chopped them up at the joints to get the wing tips, drumettes and wingettes (see this site for anatomy of a chicken wing). Served with cucumbers and rice, this made for good eating while watching the game.

Things we learned:

1) Cayenne pepper is pretty expensive.  We didn't have any, so we went to the Giant to find some, but the only kind they had was McCormick's, and it was almost $5 for a tiny 1 oz container. No, thanks!  We just substituted with crushed red pepper flakes, and it was still delicious.

2) Wax paper is not parchment paper. Wax paper will smoke in your oven, although it doesn't light on fire, so that's a plus.

3) Caramelized sauce on wings is tasty.  Wait...I already  knew that.  We'll just call this one an affirmation.

BBQ Chicken Wings

Adapted from: http://steamykitchen.com/7217-bbq-central-smokey-sweet-chicken-wings.html

Serves 2

1.5-2 pounds whole chicken wings, cut into 3 segments (drumette, wingette, wing tip)

Dry Rub
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper

1. Mix all ingredients of the dry rub in a large bowl. Add the wings and toss to coat evenly.

2. Preheat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or tin foil (do this for easy cleanup of the baking sheet afterwards). Lay a baking rack on top of the baking sheet and place the chicken wings on top of the rack. Bake for 20 minutes, flip the wings and bake for another 15-20 minutes.

It snowed... a lot

My favorite part is when they call for 'Thundersnow'

This winter, our area has received a ton of snow!  Much more than I can ever remember. To date, we have had two blizzards that have each dropped at least 15" on us- thanks, El Nino!! The first one (December 19th) got us one day off of work, and was a baby storm compared to the blizzard the week of February 8th, which brought almost 2 feet of snow and closed down the federal government for almost an entire week. This lead to a week of sleeping in, relaxing, making yummy food, and playing endless amounts of wii. SWEET! Oh, yeah, and there was shoveling... a lot of shoveling...

Scenes from digging out the car: 

left: 2/6/10; right: 12/20/09; Getting ready to save the car from snow- AGAIN!

2/6/10: We split up the work between sweeping off the car and shoveling a path around the car

12/20/09: "Help me!" I fell down in the snow!!!

  

left: 2/6/10; right: 12/20/09; The cars look like giant bugs with the windshield wipers protruding out of the snow...

Before and After: 

The evening of 2/5/10 and the morning of 2/6/10: before and after the giant snowfall...

  

2/5/10 and 2/6/10: before and after part II- the poor birdie froze!!

Walking around the Winter Wonderland:

 2/6/10: walking around after the storm

It was very beautiful to see the neighborhood covered in snow.  It was also awkward to navigate the unshoveled sidewalks and snow banks on the side of the road, not to mention mildly dangerous if you walked where it was icy, as we found out when we took walks around to view the new snowfall.  By the time we got back home, we had snow all over us and were freezing and ready for dinner!! 

 

2/6/10: the trees were weighted down with the snow, and several lost branches...

The February storm was a very heavy snow that stuck to the trees.  Several trees lost large branches, especially the pine trees. 

12/20/09: Digging out from the blizzard, Part I

12/20/09: venturing out into the storm to measure the snowfall- 15" and counting

Snow Day = Brunch Time

As a result of our epic snowstorm last weekend, we had off work for 4 days (Monday through Thursday). On the typical weekday, or even weekend, our breakfasts aren't usually exciting (toast, cereal, etc), so this was the perfect opportunity for eating brunches! On Tuesday we made french toast and bacon, and on Wednesday, we made waffles and sausage. It was a great way to start our snowy day, and good fuel for all the shoveling that followed!

I used the Pioneer Woman's Perfect Pancake recipe, and it worked really well. The waffle maker is a belgian waffle maker, so our waffles were thick, yet very light and fluffy (probably from the high amount of baking powder in the recipe), and had a light buttery-vanilla taste. The recipe made enough for 5 full-sized waffles, so there were no skimpy servings here. We even had enough left over for another brunch/lunch/dinner serving for one.

The only complicating factor was that the recipe calls for (and strongly suggests/recommends) the use of cake flour. Considering the storm and all, I was not about to venture out to a store (which may or may not be open) to find cake flour, so I googled coversion factors between cake flour and all purpose flour, and found that 1 cup 2 Tbsp cake flour is equivalent to 1 cup AP flour (see Joy of Baking for more info). Alternatively, I could have made my own cake flour by combing 3/4 cup AP flour with 2 tbsp cornstartch to make 1 cup cake flour. The main difference between the two is that cake flour has a lower protein content and is used to make more delicate baked goods. I weighed out my flour to make sure I used the amount called for.

We ate the waffles with Bob Evan's maple syrup flavored sausage. Pan fried, they were juicy and delicious!! We also had some tea: orange pekoe tea with some sweetened condensed milk stirred in- yum!! The maple syrup was the last of the containers we brought back home from our Maine vacation in October, 2009.

Melvin's Waffles

(adapted from: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/05/perfect-pancakes/)

388.9 grams (approx 2 3/4) cups AP flour

½ tsp Salt
3 Tbsp Baking Powder
2 Tbsp Sugar
2 cups Milk
2 whole Large Eggs
3 tspVanilla
4 Tbsp Butter

Maple Syrup and Powdered sugar for topping

Mix together dry ingredients in large bowl. Add milk, eggs, vanilla and melted butter. Stir gently until just combined.

Place batter in waffle maker and cook according to waffle maker instructions, or until waffles are golden brown. Our belgian waffle maker used ~1 cup batter per round of waffles, and each waffle took about 7-8 minutes to cook fully (but I kept on opening up the waffle maker to check the waffles, as the waffle maker doesn't have a 'done' light or timer). Note that the batter puffs up quite a bit during cooking, so don't overfill the waffle maker, or it will overflow or puff up so that the waffle maker doesn't fully close (the latter happened to us).

Serve with maple syrup, butter and powdered sugar

Roll cake is a glorious confection

Due to the dire warnings of impending blizzard doom (or 'Snowmageddon', as I heard it referenced as on the news multiple times) this past weekend, we did a large grocery shopping trip last Thursday to make sure we wouldn't starve during the storm. One of the stores we went to was the Kam Sam supermarket in Rockville. Our originial purpose in going there was to replenish our stash of pork ribs, but (somewhat predictably), I was purusing the bakery section when I saw the perfect breakfast for the weekend- roll cake! And not just any roll cake, but tiger roll cake!! I have always been a fan of roll cake, which is a sponge cake that is formed into a swiss roll, with a cream filling (commonly buttercream) holding the swiss roll together. It can be either baked or steamed. Both are good, but I prefer baked, as the cake will get a light crust and golden brown coloring on the outside, which is both aesthetically pleasing and tasty. It is light, not too sweet, and delicious in the morning with tea. Sometimes the roll cake is chocolate, or even matcha flavored, but we have always been traditionalists and gone with good old vanilla. That is, until this particular supermarket visit, where I saw a roll cake that had some sort of covering that looked like an egg dough that had been seared or something similar to get the dark 'tiger' pattern on it (I have been unable to find instructions on how to get the tiger roll skin so far online). In truth, the pattern was more leopard than tiger, but that is irrelevant, as it was pure awesome! Inside, the cake wasn't a swiss roll, but a combination of a variety of different sponge cakes, all held together with the ubiquitous and delicious cream filling. This particular tiger cake was made up of vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and orange cakes. I like to pick it apart and eat all the flavors separately, but that's just my preference.

After having this roll cake, I am in love! Why buy a single flavor roll cake, when you can have 4 different flavors in one cake? And because it has more pieces of cake in it, it requires more frosting- it's a win all around! Plus, this cake is slightly larger than the normal roll cake, presumably because so much more cake is crammed into it, but that just means more for us to eat! Yay! I can't say anything for how long this cake will stay good, because it only lasted the weekend (that would be 3 breakfasts for 2 people, or 12 slices, since we each ate two slices per morning), but we stored it in the fridge and it wasn't any worse for wear by Sunday morning. The roll cake was $7, compared to their 'normal' roll cakes, which run at $6. This always seems expensive to me when I buy them, but it is the normal price- I can't find quality roll cakes of similar size much cheaper in the DC area. The best I can get is $5, so really $7 isn't that extravagent.

We also bought two pieces of cake from their bakery- one coffee and one chocolate (not pictured because I smushed them in their baggies on the way home by accident- oops!). The cakes were sponge cake with flavored icings and chocolate shavings on top. They were pretty good, though small. Each cake was $1.50.

Yay for bakeries!

Beef Noodle Stir Fry

If we were marooned on a desert island with only one carb choice, we'd be sitting under a palm tree eating rice for the rest of eternity. Not to say that we don't love noodles (and I have much love for some quality pad see ew), but the only time we eat noodles in a dinner we make at home is probably for wonton noodle soup, or the occasional spaghetti and meatballs. We've tried stir frying noodles before, and we ended up with a gummy ball of noodles that had congealed together and were not easy at all to cook. So as a general rule, we try to leave the whole noodle thing to the pros, and stick with our trusty and reliable rice cooker. However, we saw this recipe posted on the Steamy Kitchen blog, and decided to give stir fried noodles another go.

With our last noodle dish (read: the godzilla sized ball of cemented together noodles with some meat and veggies stuck on the outside), we used dried rice noodles- vermicelli- and had boiled them briefly, then stuck them in the wok to finish cooking. To minimize the chances of this happening again, we used frozen cooked egg noodles this time, which we could just thaw and dump into the wok.

There are a few things we will do differently next time. First, the recipe does not have you chop up the gai lan (chinese broccoli), but rather has you cook it whole. I would prefer to chop up my gai lan into 3" segments (like we do with yu choy), which are easier to pick up, a lot easier and less messy to eat, and also make the dish seem to have more veggie in it. While we did put a full pound of gai lan in this dish, it is only 10 or so stalks, so it is impossible to get portions of veggie in every bite. And each stalk is on the large size, so it is kind of like eating a never ending spaghetti noodle, except 10 times as big and dripping with sauce. Also, it takes longer to have the intact gai lan steam in the wok due to the size of the stalks. All these issues would be eliminated by chopping up the veggie. Second, the sauce did not have much flavor to it- it fell flat. We punched it up by adding some chilli garlic sauce, and that gave it some kick. Third, we felt that this stir fry would benefit from some other additions, like scramble egg, or mushrooms. Perhaps it was from the fact that the gai lan wasn't chopped up, but there were a lot of bites of just noodle, where you wished there was something else in there.

This recipe makes enough for two generous dinner servings. We had enough for a dinner for two, plus a small amount left over for a lunch for one the next day. Overall, we thought this dish was pretty tasty.

Beef Noodle Stir Fry
(adapted from: http://steamykitchen.com/4997-broccoli-beef-noodle-stir-fry.html)



3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
3 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1/2 pound beef sirloin, thinly sliced
1 pound fresh noodles
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 large garlic cloves finely chopped
1 1/4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 pound gai lan
Ground black pepper
Chilli Garlic sauce (we used Lee Kum Kee brand) to taste (a few tsp)

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1 tablespoon each soy sauce, oyster sauce and rice wine. Add the sugar and continue to whisk until completely dissolved. Stir in the corn starch and continue stirring until smooth. Add the sesame oil and beef, and mix well. Marinate for 20 minutes. Drain and discard the excess marinade.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the vegetable oil in a skillet or wok over high heat and stir-fry the garlic until fragrant, about 1o seconds. Add the beef and stir-fry until tender, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil and when hot, add the Chinese broccoli, stir frying so that the oil coats the Chinese broccoli. Pour in the 1/4 cup of the stock, turn the heat to medium-low and cover with a tight fitting lid. Cook the Chinese broccoli until tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer the Chinese broccoli to the same plate.



Add the remaining cup of stock and the remaining 2 tablespoons each of soy sauce, oyster sauce, and rice wine to the same skillet and bring to a boil overhigh heat.

Add the noodles and cook until the liquid has almost completely evaporated, leaving the noodles lightly moistened,2 to 3 minutes. Return the beef and broccoli to the skillet and toss to mix the ingredients thoroughly. Season with pepper to taste and serve.