Weekend of Asian cuisine

For some reason when I was grocery shopping on Friday I decided that this weekend I was going to make some Asian dishes I've been wanting. So we had a weekend of Asian Delights. It started on Friday night with Thai Chicken pasta with peanut sauce and vegetables. It was very rich and quite an indulgence. We especially enjoyed the bean sprouts. They have a great crunch.

On Saturday I made Egg Drop soup and egg rolls with sweet and sour sauce to dip. I am really enjoying using tofu more in our meals. I don't use it that often, but enough to appreciate it. There was some in the egg rolls. I remember my mom used to hide tofu in some of the dinners she made and I would get so mad. Now I use it willingly. I was also excited to use my set of dishes I bought a while ago. I've been waiting for an occasion and this was it. Otherwise they are just a decoration in my apartment.

And to finish off this ethnic weekend, I made the very popular Asia cabbage chicken salad or whatever you want to call it, complete with ramen noodles and everything. I think they are just a replacement for real wontons, which I could've made with the leftover egg roll wrappers, but I thought the traditional recipe would suffice it being fast Sunday and all. It was much quicker this way. Really authentic I know. But, we had leftover egg rolls anyway. I like them too much I think. KC put his finger in the picture of the salad because he said I needed to spruce up the pictures a little besides just the food. Does that look spruced to you? I have taken many pictures of food over the years as a reminder of what I liked or want to make again. Sometimes I forget. I tried to get one of him with the food, but he kept making weird faces (on purpose) so he didn't make the cut. Oh, and when I was re-heating the egg rolls in the oven, they got a little dark as you can see. Whenever I make something a little darker than planned, KC just says "that's not burned, that's flavor." He's sweet. I'm sure there's a point where that flavor is a little overpowering. Luckily these egg rolls didn't get to that point.

Anyhow, I think I've been wanting this type of cuisine because we have yet to find good Chinese food around our house. Not just the regular hunan whatever I see on every ghetto strip mall, but a great Chinese restaurant that I wouldn't be embarrassed to refer people to if they asked us. I really want to know more about this type of food. I would like to make it in its original form, how they would be made in their homeland. I made the simplest and most well know recipes out there, so I have a long way to go. But it's a start, and we got our Chinese fix for a while. I hope it's for a while because I could eat egg rolls for breakfast lunch and dinner if I allowed myself to. I know I always blog about food, but I can't really help it. One of these days I'll find another hobby I like just as much as cooking, but until then, I'll continue to blog about my culinary adventures.