Hi! It’s the weekend again, and I have missed out on posting these Weekend Cooking ones for a bit. So this is a kind of a round up on what we’ve been cooking and eating over the past couple of weeks.

 

One of our local ramen places opened up again last weekend and we were quick to place our order – when my husband went in to pick up, he said the owner looked really happy.

And they had my kids’ favourite – the lychee slush with lychee jelly. I later tried some of that with a shot of gin – delicious!

Another takeout dish that’s becoming a favourite of ours is Indian-style pizza. The last time we tried a tikka paneer one (which has a spicy garlic sauce, lots of coriander, peppers, onions and chilli, along with the paneer). And this time we did a half-tikka paneer and a half-malai chicken. The malai sauce is a kind of curry sauce so it had more spices in it. And both were really tasty. We also ordered a half-combination, half-Hawaiian for the kids. Both the husband and I preferred the Indian-style pizzas.

In terms of cooking, here’s what we recently made.

My kids’ favourite – Japanese curry. I made it with chicken, cabbage, carrots, and broccoli stems.

The kids made a brownie, pretty much by themselves. I helped chop the chocolate, put things in and take them out of the microwave and the oven, but the rest was on them. They declared it the best brownie ever.

I made my usual tangzhong bread – one Hokkaido milk bread and one raisin bread. I wrote about the tangzhong method in a previous post. 

A very veggie risotto – so I have been hesitating about making risotto recently as I haven’t managed to get my hands on Parmesan! And on all previous risotto cooks, I have always used Parmesan. So I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea, Parmesan-free risotto. But I had this craving for it. And we had a big box of mushrooms to eat up, and I decided to mix it up and add more vegetables with a lot of broccoli and carrots too.

I parboiled the broccoli (chopped into small pieces) and carrots in the stock that was simmering on the stove, removing them after a few minutes so it didn’t overcook. And while that was happening, I panfried the sliced mushrooms. Then removed them. After that, I continued with the risotto in the usual risotto fashion – adding in some chopped shallots, garlic, before adding the risotto to the pot. I didn’t have white wine (horrors) but I did have gin. Haha, so I tried adding in a bit of gin, not sure if that did anything to it. The stock I used was a Better than Bouillon chicken stock. And in the end, instead of the Parmesan, I added in some small torn-up pieces of fresh Mozzarella that I did have. It was delicious!

The risotto was served with Asian-style bone-in pork chops (marinated in black bean sauce, honey, soy sauce, five-spice powder, minced garlic, ginger, and shallots).

 

 

 

Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, beer, wine, photographs