An Afternoon with a Fungi (Mushroom Sliders)

Like the title of my post? I always try to be as lame as possible.

ANYWAYS. I’m getting a little better at shopping for produce, if I do say so myself. I didn’t get lost in the labyrinth this time!

Once again, here is the recipe I used. And here is how the magic happened.

First, I tore off the stem of the portobello (aka Frankenstein’s mushroom). Pop! Easy and clean.

Then, I suffocated the poor thing in sandwich baggie. Don’t worry he had about 1/4 cup of balsamic vinaigrette to keep him company. I let that sit for about 30 minutes.

Prepped the veggies. One slice of red onions made enough for my two sliders. One or two slices of roma tomato per slider is probably a better idea than cutting five like I did.

…

Watch TV for 28 minutes.

…

Tossed my shroom in the pan on high heat for 10 minutes, turning it over halfway through.

 

Meanwhile, I put some garlic spread on both sides of my slider buns.

After the mushroom was done, I cut it into fours and put all the ingredients together! Pretty simple right? You’ll see the result tomorrow! As for me, I’m going to take a nap in the middle of the day like a bum.

Little Bun, Big Mushroom

Today’s recipe for mushroom sliders comes from Mr. Food!

Our little recipe serves about four people with two sliders per serving. That comes to eight! Eight sliders! That’s about as far as I got into the math curriculum at school.

Pretty, isn’t it?

Here’s our list of ingredients:

• 2 large portobello mushrooms, stems removed
• 1/4 cup of balsamic vinaigrette
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper
• 1/2 cup of garlic herb spread
• 8 slider buns
• 8 tomato slices
• 8 red onion slices

I did modify it a bit, since I don’t really feel like eating eight sliders. Ended up just lowering it to one serving (two sliders). I also decided to use roma tomatoes since they’re pretty small. I’m not really sure what the difference is between roma and regular tomatoes are, but hey, my palate probably isn’t refined enough to taste any varying significance anyway.

Nothing too fancy or too difficult to prepare. I say this’ll be an easy one (cross my fingers)!

Oopsie!

Sorry! I flubbed up the schedule.

I had barely any time this week to cook and post! Finals and celebrations and such. I’ll definitely have some time to start posting this upcoming week, though. So sorry again for running off course. See you guys soon! I promise those mushroom sliders will be coming right up.

Catch you soon!

Portable Portabella (Mushroom Sliders)

 

HOORAH! Mushroom sliders!

Yeah, that’s what I’m making this week. Mushrooms are a pretty meaty vegetable… well fungus, I guess. So, it’d be perfect to substitute the beef in a slider with a mushroom right? Probably easier to cook too.

Why the hell do they call them sliders anyway? Is it easier to slide down your throat? Hmm… Dirty thoughts. And that’ll be all for this post. I hope you guys look forward to this week!

P.S. After this week, my finals will be done! Gone! Conquered! So expect the utmost quality of posts coming up. I know, I know. I’m setting myself up for failure.

Week 3: Mushroom

Hey Everyone!

I see that Eric did not post a video for the eggplant challenge (Lame, am I right?) Just kidding, as I haven’t posted ANYTHING. I know, and I apologize. I actually want to thank Eric for an amazing job in keeping everyone informed of our unfortunate, current life obstacle (some strange institution called school), and for actually keeping up with the promised cooking schedule. I’ll be sure to post everything (videos, included) once I have more time, and Ryan will do the same.

ANYWAY, no more excuses and explanations. This week’s secret ingredient: MUSHROOM. That’s right, every Californian has experience with ‘shrooms, and we wish to embrace the culture this week… legally. So, join us on this magical journey, as we try to add our fungi friends to our culinary repertoire.

Measure Twice, Cut Once… (Eggplant Stir-fry)

Now that I’ve tasted my own eggplant dish, here are my impressions.

Meh. Nothing bad, but nothing good. Very average. I ended up eating it all though. Not too bad though, considering this is my second dish for this blog and my first time stir-frying something. Hell, I wasn’t even quite sure what stir-frying exactly was….

First, we’ll start with my eggplant. I cut most of my pieces waaaaaay too thick! As a result it took much longer than it should have to cook all the way through. Some were even a tad bit raw on the inside still. The thinner pieces tasted pretty decent however. My proportions were way off too. I decided to not follow through with the recipe religiously. I used one eggplant instead of four… I should’ve probably either used four or cut down my other ingredients to one-fourth of what they should’ve been. Oh well. Live and learn.

I think I did a good job with the peppers, to say the least. They were a little thicker than what the recipe called for, but it didn’t really affect the stir-fry method. They also gave my dish that little extra kick that it needed. Besides the sauce, at least.

As for the garlic… I should’ve put way less! It was overpowering but not enough to completely destroy the dish, you know?

Then we have the sauce which was a mixture of oyster sauce, sesame oil, and sugar, which was pretty damn good. I could probably put that on other Chinese cuisines…. Salty and little sweet!

Though it was nothing too special, it at least looked like eggplant stir-fry, and I’m pretty happy about that.

Gotta go! Still got essays and essays to write.

Egg(plant) On My Face (Eggplant Stir-fry)

Ta-da! A red and brownish vegetable medley. What do you guys think? I don’t think it looks too bad!

It wasn’t inedible either. I certainly stuffed my face with it for dinner, although I was pretty hungry. That’s not to say it tasted it was the best eggplant I’ve ever had, though. Honestly, the presentation was probably better than my execution, but you’ll hear more about that tomorrow!

Oh yeah, no video this week. Sorry! Didn’t bother taking it, as I didn’t want to spend time editing. I’m going to be crazy busy until the end of next week. I’ll start taking video again soon, though!

For now, I’ve got essays to write. Later!

Putting All My Eggplants in One Basket (Eggplant Stir-fry)

Let’s do this, shall we? I got this recipe from the Food Network site, contributed by Katie Chin.

I murdered one whole Asian eggplant by cutting it in half length-wise and then slicing into it diagonally into half-inch pieces. As you can see, I’ve got the eyes of a mole and cannot cut a vegetable properly to save my life. That’s why you see all those fatty pieces in there.

Then I discarded the bits into a bowl filled with water and two teaspoons of salt, letting it sit for five minutes until that sodium goodness dissolved.

Then I committed another act against humanity by disemboweling a tomatillo pepper, effectively deseeding it. Actually, I just cut it in half like the eggplant.

Chop! Chop! Chop! Thin slices, please. Thank you.

On the side, I whipped up a little somethin’ somethin’ with one teaspoon of sesame oil, one teaspoon of sugar, and one tablespoon of oyster sauce.

Put my veggies in a bowl along with a couple teaspoons of minced garlic.

Then I splashed two tablespoons of vegetable oil in my wok-like pan on high heat…

… and dumped those suckers in! Some oil splashed on me. It was as if the food were spitting on me for doing something horrible… oh well.

Stir-fried for a good two minutes!

Threw in two tablespoons of water and stir-fried again for another two minutes!

Then I added the ooey-gooey oyster sauce concoction and stirred it around for a bit.

Buuuuuuut a problem arose. Remember how I didn’t cut the eggplants properly? Yup, my eggplants were not fully cooked, so I had to stir-fry it some more for a good… oh… three to four minutes? Yeah.

Anyway, you’ll see the final product tomorrow! Ciao.

Adventures in Market (Eggplant Stir-fry)

I didn’t know eggplants could get so ginormous. The original recipe called for four Asian eggplants, but holy crap, I could barely even fit one through my door. So I only used one…

Here’s the ingredients:

• 1 Asian eggplant
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons of minced garlic
• 1 tomatillo pepper

Actually there were also supposed to be two peppers, but I cut that down to just one.

Let me tell you, it was pretty awkward shopping at Sprouts the other day. I felt like everyone was staring at me, judging me with their veteran eyes. They all seemed so experienced in the art of grabbing-vegetables-and-getting-the-hell-out. Meanwhile I was standing there, looking dumbfounded, not knowing what in the world to get.

Here’s a story for you. I saw a small tub of pre-cut garlic for five bucks. “Eh, I don’t really need that much, but I don’t see garlic anywhere else.” So I took it. Of course, two minutes later, I found a pack of five cloves for four bucks. Awesome. Dropped the tub and gathered the cloves. THEN, I spied on the other side a bunch of individual cloves. Couple bucks. Great. Dropped the bushel (is that the right counter?) cloves and grabbed the single piece of garlic. Fast forward five minutes. I’m in the Asian aisle and I see a jar of minced garlic. Three dollars. Worth it. Dropped the clove, picked up the jar. And that was the pointless tale of my garlic adventure.

Also, holy crap. It took me forever to find the right oils and oyster sauce. I could’ve asked for help, but my pride blocked my view of any grocery store attendants.

I’ll be posting the steps and process tonight (hopefully).

Eggplant: To Stir or Fry (or Both)?

 

They’ve spoken! And my challenge for the week is eggplant stir-fry.

I like eggplants. I do. That’s why it’s a shame I never really get many chances to eat the stuff. Now that I get to make a meal based around the vegetable, I’m pretty excited!

And what is a stir-fry exactly? Just stirring a medley of veggies in a pan while I fry them up? Seems easy enough…. Okay after looking it up, it looks like I might have to toss the ingredients. Great. Get ready for greasy ceilings, everyone.