My Return to Cooking: A Quick Dinner

Because of some trouble at home, I hadn't really cooked much in the past two weeks. Yesterday after cleaning I started thinking about it and felt inspired to cook. Cooking is my life, so losing my inspiration and drive to cook was really a signal to me that something was up. Tonight I returned to my kitchen and it felt like home. I made my first piece of blackened fish (courtesy of my cast iron pan I've been working on seasoning since November) and partnered it with red beans and rice and corn on the cob.

Raw tilapia, rubbed with olive oil and seasoned with cajun seasoning.

 Pre-flip.

Post-flip.

The finished product.

I didn't take a picture of the salad, but here is a quick lemon vinaigrette I made. Just olive oil, lemon juice and zest, crushed garlic, salt, and white pepper. Delicious!

First post! Homemade Gyoza

My current obsession is Asian cuisine, most notably Thai, Japanese, and Korean. I got a two-layer bamboo steamer for Christmas, and these Gyoza (more commonly known as potstickers) were the first thing I tried to make in it. The recipe ended up making more than 50, and my family of three had finished them before the end of the night. I would definitely consider that a success.

The ingredients, before prep. Clockwise from left to right: won ton wrappers, ground pork, spring onion (also known as scallion), soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and water chestnuts. 

Post-prep. From left to right: whites of the spring onion, garlic, green tops of the spring onion, ginger, and water chestnuts.

The filling, mixed and ready to go. In addition to the prepped ingredients, I seasoned it with salt, white pepper, and a splash of soy sauce. Very simple.

The first batch of potstickers, ready to be steamed. The process of filling them and pleating the edges took me awhile and was a bit messy, but it was definitely worth it.

Ready to be steamed, and then pan-fried in a 50/50 mixture of olive oil and butter.

The finished product, served with traditional-style Japanese sticky rice (I could write a post dedicated to the process of cooking sticky rice correctly, it was quite a learning experience for me) and a classic sauce used for Gyoza that is just a mixture of garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar.