Engineer’s Attempt at Writing

I broke my knee skiing and I really don’t go out much these days. So a couple of weekends ago I decided to make dumplings completely from scratch – dough, skin, filling, and everything. I made the fillings out of pork, shiitake mushroom, garlic, and nappa cabbage. I cut the shiitake mushroom, garlic, and nappa cabbage into tiny bits. This makes the texture of the filling better supposedly. I then mix the vegetables with the ground pork with small salt, white pepper, corn starch, and soy sauce together. Unfortunately, I did not add enough salt to the filling and so you will need to dip your dumplings in some sauce.

After I made the fillings, I started to make the dough for the dumpling skin. I followed the instruction on the web, 2 cup of all purpose flour and 1/3 cup of hot water. Slowly mix the water into the flour and start to knead the dough together or so I thought. I think 1/3 cup of water was not enough and the dough seemed very tough. I kneaded and kneaded to no avail. I thought “crap, this will not work”. I was about to give up and just trash the dough. But after talking to my friend, I decided to let the dough rest and try to make the skin.

After the dough rested for about 15 minutes, it still did not look good. I decided to just cut a small piece of the dough and rolled it out on the cutting board hoping to make a perfect circle for the dumpling skin. The dough was pretty hard and it was just a lot of work to use a rolling pin to get the dough into a thin skin. I think the first skin took like 5 minutes to roll out. The skin just did not feel right but I made a dumpling out of it anyways. However, I was still worry that the skin was not correct and I was not about to waste hours making the skin without testing the dumpling out first. I boiled some water and put my first dumpling in the water. After some time, I tried the dumpling and it was not that bad. I went ahead and spent many hours and ended up making quite a few dumplings.

It was a lot of work but I guess it was worth it. My friend thought the dumpling was tasty but she may just have been trying to be nice.

Fillings for the Dumpling

The Dough and the Final Dumpling Skin – not round

The Dumplings

I tore my ACL and MCL, and it is hard to go out to eat because I can’t drive right now – anyone want to go out and eat? I went to one of my favorite market, Zupan, and got myself a game hen, some celery, and carrot. I was planning to make some chicken noodle soup originally but then I change my mind at the last minute. I tend to change my mind a lot.

I remembered the celery salad at the beast and thought that I can do the same. I slice the celery very thinly into small pieces. I then added some salt, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and rooster sauce for dressing. I added the celery to some baby romaine lettuce and avocado to create my salad.

I cut the game hen along the breast and seasoned it with kosher salt, paprika, and garlic powder. I let the seasoning sit for 30 minutes and then I just the chicken on the grill and let it cook until it was done.

The celery salad was actually very good with the rooster sauce adding a little spice to it. The chicken was good but the meat did was not seasoned very well. However, the skin was nice and crispy and slightly burnt.

A super simple recipe that can be served as both main course or appetizer.

First, you need to buy some pork chops. I suggest getting some loin chops because they are good (at least I think they are good). Season the pork chop with a generous amount of black pepper, and pork seasoning that you can get at any grocery store. Let that season for at least 45 minutes.

Next in a small bowl, scramble an egg with some of these double dared red chili pepper jelly. Dip the pork chop in the egg, and then coat it with Italian bread crumbs. Heat up in a pan some oil, and brown both sides of the pork chop.

Although I am not too sure if it is true, but I think if you just directly baked the pork chop, the bread crumb will just remain bread crumbs and therefore, will taste awful. After both side of the pork chop are browned, transfer the pork chop to a small pyrex baking dish.

Let it bake in the oven at 350 until the internal temperature is 125 degree. Once it gets to 125 degree, turn off the oven. But keep the pork chop in the oven, and let the residual heat continue to cook the pork chop.

To serve it as an appetizer, cut the pork chop into thin strips. Then smother generously some of those pepper jelly on top, and you are ready to serve a killer (sweet and spicy) appetizer.

For lunch tomorrow, I have decided to make pasta with 3 types of meat (kinda). I decided I want to have bacon, sausage, and chicken in my pasta. Why did I want these meats/meat substitutes? The reason is very simple, these were meats that I have in my refrigerator.

For dessert, I wanted cookies and so I bought some toll house cookies (breakable cookie).

Ingredients:

Penne Pasta

Red onion

Chicken breast

Turkey sausage

Bacon

Pine nuts

Pesto sausage

Toll house breakable cookies

Directions:

Start a 30 minute timer. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degree, and boil the water in a pan. While the water is boiling, and the oven is heating up. Cut up the onion, then the bacon, then the sausage, and finally the chicken. The reason you do this is because then you don’t need to wash the cutting board. If you had cut the chicken first, then you would’ve had to wash the cutting board afterward.

In about 8 minutes, the water will finish boiling. Add in the pasta and let it cook. Now with 21 minutes left, the oven will be heated. Put in the cookie.

Pour out the pasta, and quickly rinse the pan. Pour in some olive oil, add in the bacon, and onion. Add in the chicken, and sausage. Let it cook for a while, put in the pasta. Add in the pesto sauce.

With 11 minutes left, your cookies are done. Take it out and let it cool off on the stove top. In a tin foil, put some pine nuts in and let it roast in the oven. Just turn off the oven, and use the residual heat. This way, you don’t have to worry about burning the pine nuts.

Add in some Parmesan cheese and mix the pasta together. In about 2 minutes, take the pine nuts out of the oven and put it in the pasta. You are done.

With over 8 minutes left, go wash your cutting board, bowls, and baking sheet.

Lunch + dessert.