Lately, I’ve been sticking to rice and dishes (veggie stir-fries, braised meats, soups, steamed fish, and the like) for dinner. I guess it’s been a while since I made a more Western-type meal (not counting pasta which I make often enough). Last night, however, I took a couple of pork tenderloin out of the freezer for tonight’s dinner.
I needed a recipe that I could whip up without any fuss.
I looked around for some recipes and saw one on Epicurious for this Ginger-Marinated Pork Tenderloin. The picture on the recipe showed it served with some mashed sweet potatoes. That got my attention as I had a couple of sweet potatoes lying around at home waiting to be used. And when I perused the recipe, I saw that I had all the ingredients available at home as well. Bingo! That was going to be dinner.
I’ve been making breakfast strata for several years now but I’ve never blogged about it. The first time I made them was for Nate’s birthday brunch party. It became a staple in our house after that.
Anytime we had leftover bread, it was either breakfast strata or bread pudding. The beauty of this dish is that you can put it all together the night before, then the next morning, all you need to do is preheat the oven and pop it in. This is especially useful when you’re planning a brunch party (a tradition in this house for Nate’s birthday).
This will be the first year that I’m not planning to throw Nate a brunch for his birthday. Yup, his birthday is coming around again soon. Can you guess when it is? I’ll give you a hint: He came home from the hospital in a stocking the year he was born.
I recently found out that what I called a strata can also be called a casserole. Oh well…to me a strata sounds more appealing than a casserole. Anywho… casserole, strata…what does it matta? All I know is that this is good eats.
Delicious Thai flavors infuse this dish of long beans and pork.
We’ve been eating a lot of yard-long beans at house of Annie lately. They are a hardy bean and are full of protein and vitamins. We eat them almost once a week in this house.
One of the reasons I love them is that they keep very well in the fridge. I find that now that I live in very hot, humid Kuching, a lot of my green leafy vegetables spoil faster than when we lived in California. And now that I’m working, I have less time to shop for groceries—this means I have to buy most of my veggies on the weekend when I have time to market. Being hardy, the long beans are my go-to vegetable near the end of the week when I’ve cooked up all the leafy vegetables.
Updated 31 August 2010 Originally posted 28 September 2008
Popiah (also spelled poh piah, poh pia, baobing (薄饼)), is an Asian dish popular in Malaysia and Singapore that’s like a fat spring roll, only not fried. Think of it as kind of an Asian burrito. Except that the popiah filling itself is much more complicated and contains so many more ingredients than a regular burrito.
Mum’s popiah are the best. It’s a perfect combination of sweetness from the flour sauce, the savoriness of pork and prawns, the spiciness of chili and garlic, and the crunch of cooling vegetables. It’s so yummy, you will gobble it down and hurriedly make another without even thinking about it. I have had popiah from hawker stalls in Singapore and Malaysia, even in Penang, where you will find the best food in the world. Mum’s popiah beats them all.
