Thursday, September 29, 2011

Thank you for reading my blog!

So, just for fun today, I checked out the stats of my blog on blogger. I found the results to be quite amusing and want to share them with you.

The most astonishing is the number of countries that people have viewed my blog from:

United States

1,260

Netherlands

344

Russia

107

France

72

Latvia

58

Iran

54

Germany

51

United Kingdom

26

Hungary

19

Japan

19


I thought this was very cool because I was beginning to think I only had at most three readers, my sister and maybe two other friends who also have blogs.

Most visited post: Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Number of all-time page views: 2183 (though I do wonder how many of those views were me just testing out the site)

In the last week, the following search keywords led to my blog:
Andrajos stew
albondigas for crockpot
albondigas for crockpot frozen meatbalss
albondigas soup recipe for crockpot
bittman japanese eggplant
college quick and easy mac and cheese
crockpot albondigas soup recipe
crockpot albondigas
crusted chicken teriyaki
how to make a simple chicken tostada

And most interestingly enough, #3 the most frequent referring site (after google and facebook) is my blog is on the list of 10,000+ food blogs at Very Good Recipes. I did not do anything to be put on this website, and my blog is #9694!

I had no idea my blog reached out to so many people from so many different places. So I'm quite excited to know that I have more readers than just my sister, two friends, and now, at least one robot =)

Thursday, September 22, 2011

White Bean Hummus


Last night, I tried to cook dried cannellini (white) beans in the slow-cooker, using this method. I've done this before with black beans and it worked quite well for me. But this time, I ended up with falling apart, mushy white beans. I am not sure what went wrong. Maybe I soaked the beans for too long beforehand, maybe I let them sit in the crock for too long after they were done cooking. Maybe white beans just weren't meant to be cooked this way. No matter what the culprit was, though, now I have to make a lot of white bean dip.

White Bean Hummus
Adapted from the Food Network

Ingredients:
1 2/3 cups cooked white beans or 1 can, drained and rinsed
2 Tbs tahini
2 Tbs fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp dried oregano, crushed
1/4 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
salt and pepper to taste

Method:
The original recipe calls for blending all the ingredients in a food processor. But all I have is a mini-food processor, which would have made it a huge pain to blend all the ingredients in batches. So first I mashed the beans, tahini, and lemon juice with a potato masher, which worked quite well, especially since the beans were already mushy. Then I stirred the spices in with a fork, tasted it and adjusted the spices to my taste. Blending by hand makes a more "rustic" dip, which is fine by me. But if you have a regular-sized food processor, and want a smoother dip, then by all means, pulse it in the food processor until smooth.

Serve with raw vegetables or pita bread.
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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Pork and Apples in Bulgogi sauce


This may seem like just a riff off of the last post. But there’s a moral at the end of this story, I promise.

So a few weeks ago, when Hurricane Irene was allegedly rampaging through the Northeast, Boyfriend and I and another couple decided to escape the torrential rains, flooding, the Apocalypse, etc. for drier pastures inland to State College, PA. Which actually turned out to be a very entertaining getaway, even if it turned out the world did not end when the hurricane hit New Jersey.  While our friends in New Jersey were huddled inside their homes, conserving bottled water and unperishables, we were exploring Penn State's campus, walking to bars and swimming in the hotel swimming pool.  On the last night our “hurrication” we drove to a neighboring town for Korean food at a restaurant called, “Kimchi.” Yes, we had kimchi at Kimchi, you know that just had to be said. Among the other dishes we had though, was a classic Korean dish, beef bulgogi, which I very much enjoyed. The next day, we left early in the morning to make our way home.  The trip home started out smoothly but came to a standstill shortly after we crossed the state border into New Jersey where we sat in traffic.  Apparently the storm had eroded away pieces of 287!  We eventually made it home and to find that my apartment was fortunately left unscathed by Irene.  Everything inside my apartment was as it was before; I didn't even come home to the flashing red digits on my alarm clock, a tell-tale sign of power outage.  I did, however, come home with a craving for bulgogi.  Luckily, since the power never went out, the contents of my fridge remained unspoiled,  including a bottle of bulgogi sauce. (Which I most likely purchased the last time I went out for Korean food.)

So that is the inspiration for this week’s post. After the impromptu teriyaki stir-fry from the last post, I wanted to improve upon it, because the meat turned out to be overcooked and tough. So this time, I marinated the pork in the bulgogi sauce in the morning and went off to work.

When I got home, I had to decide what to do with it. I had a green apple, which I had saved for the purpose of cooking it with pork. Boyfriend makes a pork and apple stir-fry that comes out quite nice, and Rachael Ray has her own pork and apple dish, so I knew that pork and apples go well together. So I chopped the apple up along with the other vegetables I had in the fridge.

But what to do with the meat, so it would not be so tough? This time, I cut the pork into bigger chunks. I then sprinkled about a teaspoon of corn starch and mixed it around the meat and let it sit while I chopped the vegetables.

It turned out this method worked out really well. The pork was not tough and overcooked, but plump and juicy. I will definitely stick to this method in the future. And the apples let out a little bit of sweetness to the pork and the sauce, to make a sort of East meets West all blended together into one dish.

So as promised, there is a moral to this story, in fact there is more than moral to this story:

1. Marinate your meat with cornstarch
2. When there is a hurricane, take a “hurrication” if you can, you’ll have a blast.

Pork and Apple Stir-Fry in Bulgogi Sauce

Ingredients:
1 pork tenderloin, chopped into 1-2 inch chunks
1 green apple, chopped
1 yellow squash, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
½ onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
About 3 Tbs of bottled bulgogi sauce for marinade, and another 2 Tbs for adding at the end
1 tsp cornstarch
Toasted sesame seeds for garnish
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Pinch of cayenne pepper

Method:

Prep:
Marinate pork in 3 Tbs of bulgogi sauce. (I did it for about 10 hours in the fridge since I did it just before I left for work. You can probably get away with 1-2 hours). Sprinkle with cornstarch and set aside while you chop the vegetables.

Cook:
Heat some oil in a large skillet. Brown the meat first for about two minutes on each side. Set aside on a plate. Add some more oil to pan and heat it a little bit on medium heat. Cook the onions first. Then add pepper, apples, and squash and cook for about 3 minutes. Create a “well” for the garlic by pushing the vegetables to the rim of the pan. Add the garlic with a little more oil to center of the pan. Allow to cook for about 30 seconds before incorporating with the rest of the mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Cook the mixture for a few more minutes until you can easily pierce a fork into one of the chunks. (You may need to cover it to speed up the cooking). Add cooked pork, and stir in 2 Tbs of bulgogi sauce, heat for about another minute. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper. Garnish with some toasted sesame seeds.
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