First blog!

Hello!

Welcome to my blog! My name is Chaitra (Chai) and this is the first blog so a rookie at this kinda stuff. I moved to Korea to teach on 9th March 2012 and I struggled a lot with food because I am vegetarian and was working in the country side where there were no vegetarian restaurants or food available at all and I did not know any foreigners. So I basically ate pasta for like 3 months and got sick of it and decided I need to change my situation. So I figured out how to order groceries from the Indian mart online and get the stuff delivered to your door and slowly started to venture our into the unknown world of cooking. I must say before I came to Korea I was very bad at cooking and had limited knowledge of it. I used to overcook pasta. lol. Now I wouldn't say I am an expert but I know a lot more than what did about a year ago. I have experimented with all kinds of food and all my experiments have been for the first time and mostly I have been the guinea pig. I have not yet tried to come up with my own recipies so all of my cooking have been inspired from a number of cooks on YouTube and I absolutely LOVE pinterest. Its amazing and gives me much inspiration and ideas of what to make next.

I have separate boards for vegetarian, vegan and desserts and vegan desserts and drinks and more so check it out.

http://pinterest.com/cmys001/boards/

I am a newbie at cooking and anything I make is my own variation and adjusted according to my taste. The best thing about cooking is that its very forgiving. You can alter it to how you want it and it will still taste awesome.

So DISCLAIMER: Anything I make and post might not be authentic.

Schezwan rice

Schezwan rice (spicy rice)

I have limited knowledge of the history of this recipe but all I do know is it is a fusion of Indian and Chinese, otherwise known famously in India as indo-chinese. This sauce is very versatile and can be used in many recipes like marinate tofu in this sauce and fry in oil. If you don't like tofu you can replace it with other veggies like cauliflower or broccoli etc. The possibilites are endless. This the first time I made this sauce and I got the idea from this homecook:

http://www.bhavnaskitchen.com/schezwan-sauce/

and the rice:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNQ2SbQOj-U


I have altered the recipe to my own liking. Well what I mean is that I got lazy and didn't read the whole recipe when making the sauce so I pretty much ended up doing what I want. :P

Schezwan Rice 

Ingredients for Schezwan sauce

about 5 whole dried red chillies (change the number according to how spicy you want the sauce to be. Remember that whole dried red chillies are very very very spicy. The ones I bought from homeplus were small so I used about 7. If you have large ones at home use less.)

1 piece of ginger
about 4 garlic cloves (adjust to your taste)
2 ripe tomatoes

sugar
coriander or cilantro stems (coriander stems I usually throw out and don't use them for most of my cooking so I decided to save them and use them in recipes that requiring blending so that it adds flavour, trick I learnt from Jamie Oliver)
2 tablespoons of oil (you can use any I used canola oil because it is odour and tasteless)


Method:

1. Soak the red chillies overnight in cold water (if you are in a hurry you can simmer the red chillies for about 5 to 10 minutes in hot boiling water)

2. In a blender add the red chillies, garlic cloves, ginger (please make sure you clean and peel the ginger and garlic) coriander stems, tomato, and blend till a smooth paste.

3. Add some oil to a pan and fry for about 5 to 7 minutes. 

4. Taste if it is too spicy add sugar according to your taste. I don't like spicy food much so I add sugar about 1 tablespoon.

5. Fry the paste in a pan until you see the oil separating from the sauce. Shouldn't take longer than 5-7 minutes.

You can store this in a airtight container in your fridge for about a week or you can freeze it for ages. Do not throw away the oil leave the oil in the sauce it helps preserve or keep the sauce from going bad.

Schezwan Rice

Ingredients

Cooked rice (make sure you don't over cook the rice needs to be grainy and separate. Left over rice is best for this.)
carrots diced into small pieces
green onions chopped
capsicum diced into small pieces
cabbage chopped into small pieces
onion diced into small pieces
roughly chopped coriander or cilantro
2 table spoons of soy sauce
3-4 table spoons of tomato sauce (ketchup as called in America)
Method:

1. Heat a wok or a pan with about a table spoon of oil.

2. add your chopped veggies and only the white part of the green onion. save the green part for garnishing


3. add a tablespoon of soy sauce and about 3-4 tablespoons of ketchup and add salt. Remember the soy sauce is salty and the ketchup has salt so make sure you taste first before adding more salt.

4. stir fry for about 5 minutes. The veggies should not be mushey they should still have a crunch to them.

5. add the cooked rice. in my picture I used Thai long grain rice. and mix well garnish with the green onions and coriander and enjoy!