Asian Honey Glazed Sauteed Tofu

Eating healthy doesn't mean you have to sacrifice flavor. This tofu dish is infused with flavors that you want but at the same time easy on your waist line. A very simple recipe to prepare and doesn't involve many steps like my other recipes. Most important is the tofu you pick out at the 99 Ranch Market. It has to be the right firmness or else it will break once it is in the frying pan. When you are stir-frying tofu, make sure you dont buy the tofu in those rectangular plastic containers indicated by levels of firmness on the packaging. Go for the ones that are usually packaged in a white styrafoam packaging, those seams to be very very firm.

To make the glaze sauce, in a frying pan add in hoison sauce, honey, salt, sugar (2-3x more than the amount of salt), black peper, and rice vinegar, cooking oil. On medium heat, let the sauce sizzle and stir the sauce mixture well. With the tofu, cut into even squares or rectangular portions then add it to the frying pan. Toss and stir the tofu around gently, let a couple of sides on the tofu face down on the pan a little bit longer to give that brownish burnt look (just for presentation purposes). When tofu is brown and take up the glaze from the sauce, turn off heat and let it sit for about 5 minutes. It is then topped with dried onions, fresh green onions and a couple shakes of the soy sauce. Bon appetite!!!!

The Birthday Dumplings

The night before my 27th birthday (8/31/2009), I decided to prepare for the very first time pork & herbs dumplings with my own personal dipping sauce. I saw a show on TV about making dumplings and I thought it would be a great a idea to make it for the first time and bring it into my workplace for people to try on my birthday. That's what I did and it was well worth the time and effort just to hear people compliment. People at Genesee Scientific are very happy to taste any of my cooking that I bring in.

This recipe took me about 3hrs to complete as I was preparing the meat filling and folding the dumplings to make three full trays. Instead of spending 3hrs doing my admin work at night I decided to give it up and make these dumplings. I used the ingredients mentioned on the TV show but to make it my own specialty, I added several other ingredients for more flavors. Preparation was the longest process but luckily I found that I had a steamer that I used to speed up the steaming process. Unlike what I saw where they fried the bottom of the dumplings to a golden brown color and add water later and steam it in the same frying pan. I made it a two step where first I fried the bottom of the dumplings first then removed it from the frying pan into the steamer. This way it removes a lot of the flour starch outside of the wraps by them falling into the bottom of the steamer.

For the meat filling I used 2lbs of ground pork, 1 red sweet onion(chopped), lots of green onions(chopped), garlic (chopped), and a few other ingredients I want to keep it as a secret. I first sauteed the sweet onions, green onions, and garlic in a pan to release their flavors then add it into the pork along with other herbs and spices. Mixed them very well and evenly and let it sit for about 15mins. To make the dumplings, instead of making my own dough (due to time), I used the pre-cut dumpling wraps from 99 Ranch Market. With one beatened egg, apply the yolk around the edges of the wraps and place about a table spoon of the meet filling into the center of the wrap. Then fold the wrap, if you wanted to make it look nice you can do the fold and pinch method to give the dumplings it's traditional look.

For the sauce, I used dark soysauce as the base of the sauce and add in the rice vinegar for the tart taste. I also added in some finely chopped green onions, sugar, sirachi chilli sauce, and fresh lemon juice to give it of a soury spice tart taste to compliment the dumplings. I couldn't wait to eat them but when i was finished it was heaven! OMFG!!! bon appetite!