A delicious family-style Chinese meal with friends

Chinese herbal chicken soup with Shittake mushrooms

Chicken breast stir fried with broccoli and bok choy

Yushang eggplant with ground pork

Our Olin cooking club plus two guests!

Gourmet cupcakes from Cupcakery

Tuna Helper and the simplest cake ever

Tuna helper is a lifesaver when all I want to do is make a one-pot dinner and not have to deal with any raw meat. It's cheap and easy, and makes a lot if you make a few adjustments. They box always says there's 5 servings if you make it according to directions, which is completely a lie. They're five 1-cup servings. Who eats just one cup of tuna helper for dinner? Jeez.

To get more mileage out of my tuna helper, I employ a few tactics:
- double the amount of tuna (2 cans instead of 1)
- double the amount of pasta (I buy a box of rotini/fusilli pasta so that the shape is similar)
- add vegetables (usually broccoli, carrots, and onions)
- increase liquids accordingly, but not the butter

When I make the tuna helper, I usually start stir frying the onions, carrots, and broccoli first in a skillet. Then I set them aside when they're nearly cooked. I proceed to boil the milk, water, seasoning packet and butter as called for in the Tuna helper directions, and throw in the pasta to cook. (Note: through experience, I've discovered that Tuna helper pasta is some sort of fast-cook pasta, so if you've bought regular pasta to add bulk, start boiling that first and then add the packaged pasta later to get the same consistency.) Finally, when the pasta is nearly al dente, I stir all the vegetables back in, and add milk/water to get a nice sauce, which I reduce slightly for thickness. Since the seasoning packet flavors have been diluted in the larger pot of stuff, I generally add some salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese for extra flavor. In this way, you can probably have enough to serve 5 people for dinner without any extra sides. Plus, you have protein, starch, vegetables, and dairy all in one pot, now that's balanced!


Now, for the simplest cake ever...

I was at the supermarket and saw that cake mixes were on sale for $1 a box. I figured it would be nice to have a little something extra to end the meal, since the main course was a one-pot thing which could get boring. Normally you'd have to deal with oil and eggs for a boxed cake mix, but I wasn't planning to buy a whole box of eggs just to make a cake. This simple trick I learned from the blogosphere long ago... just take a can of soda (any flavor, diet or non-diet) and add it to the dry cake mix powder. Stir until smooth, and bake according to directions! Voila, the simplest cake ever! And the result is moist and yummy. I would recommend pairing Sprite with lighter cakes like white, yellow, confetti, strawberry, etc. Pair Coke with darker cakes like chocolate, devil's food, german chocolate. Mix and match to get interesting flavors! Here I only had a can of Diet Coke for my confetti cake, so it came out a little more caramel-colored than normal, but the taste was fine. The big bonus about this method too is that for those of you watching calories, using a can of diet soda cuts down on nearly half the calories of baked boxed cake mix! Now that's news that's fit to eat :)

Chinese pancake wraps with corn and kielbasa chowder

Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup

It was the night before our first midterm this semester, which was biochemistry. Out of the 4 of us, only Edwin, who is an MD/PhD student, isn't in this class and therefore wasn't cramming all weekend like the rest of us. He graciously volunteered to make us dinner that night, and so we had some satisfying and simple grilled cheese sandwiches with Campbell's tomato soup. Sure, it put me in a food coma afterwards, but it was still great :P Thanks Edwin!

Bacon and spinach penne with sweet potato casserole

Japanese chicken curry

One of my favorite Japanese foods, aside from sushi, is Japanese curry over steaming hot white rice. Japanese curry is very different from Indian curry, in that it is not particularly spicy and has a more rounded savory flavor with hints of sweetness. Whereas Indian curry complements vegetables, Japanese curry goes best with meat. In fact, one way that Japanese restaurants often serve this curry is poured over a battered and fried cutlet of meat (pork, chicken, or beef). It is so delicious...

Anyway, it's really easy to make your own Japanese curry at home, because most supermarkets sell these curry roux blocks in their Asian aisle. Popular brands tend to be S&B Curry or Vermont Curry. All you have to do is cook the meat and vegetables for your curry, and then dissolve these curry blocks into boiling water to get a thick and delicious curry that will make the rice fly off your plates. It also makes for lots of leftovers, which is great if you don't have time to cook all the time.

The recipe itself is very flexible, so I'll just describe it generally. First you decide what vegetables and meat goes into the curry. I generally like to do it with chicken thigh meat, as it is very juicy, but chicken breast, pork, and beef all go well with it. In terms of vegetables, I suggest carrots and onions, and optionally potatoes if you would like more bulk in your curry. The box of curry blocks will tell you how much meat and vegetables to use, although you are free to adjust. Chop up all the ingredients into cubes.

Sautee the onions and carrots in a skillet while you boil the potatoes until they are soft. Drain the potatoes, then add the onions and carrots, along with a couple cups of water to the pot with the potatoes, bringing the liquid to a boil. Meanwhile, stir fry the meat in a skillet until 3/4 cooked through. Transfer meat to the pot of vegetables.

When the water comes to a boil and all the vegetables are soft to the bite, break the curry block into cubes and stir into the liquid to dissolve. Add more water as needed to achieve the desired curry consistency, but remember that more liquid means a more dilute curry flavor. This can be ameliorated with more curry blocks, but if you're using up a whole package and have no extras to spare, keep that in mind. When the curry starts to thicken, turn off the heat and ladle on top of rice to serve.