Experiments in the Kitchen

So, I've decided that I'm bored with my cooking, so I've been trying new recipes these days. I found a good recipe for pot stickers (gyoza) - http://japanesefood.about.com/od/tempuraappetizer/r/gyoza.htm

Today, I had to figure out something to do with the eggplant I had bought with the high hopes of making shaak... but since that never happened, I made baba Ghanoush. I started with this base recipe - http://www.aubergines.org/recipes.php?eggplant=47. Then, since I don't know what all spice is, and didn't want to go buy it, I improvised a bit. (eh, word of advice, don't take "all spice" to mean that you need a lot of spices - the 2 or 3 things I had other than salt worked just fine).

For dinner today, I made stir fry with tofu - it was pretty good, so I'm going to branch out into some other tofu recipes. I should look for Quorn/mycoprotein here... :)

Oh, the other thing that I've been experimenting with is making sushi. It's not too difficult, except I can't figure out how not to over cook the sticky rice... will keep trying :) Over cooked rice aside, it's pretty easy to make, and you can fill it with anything you want. I don't like the fish thing, so I usually put cucumber, avocado, imitation crab meat, and/or cream cheese (or, as it's called here, a "Seattle Roll" - seriously!) Plus, can't go wrong with the wasabi - makes for a fun evening! Oh cool - I was looking for a picture of sushi, and found this recipe - http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cucumber-and-Avocado-Sushi/Detail.aspx. I'll have to try the 1:1.5 ratio of rice:water to see if that will result in perfectly cooked rice.

Ok, I'll keep posting here if I have recipe ideas for you guys to try. Don't forget, asparagus and cantaloupe are back in season and tasty as ever! :)