Takeout with the Tos #17

This week's blog is going to talk about two dishes which are relatively "new" to my cooking rotation. The first is shrimp toast and the second is eggs and tofu. I didn't make these within the same week, but they'll be posted together.

Shrimp Toast

When Culinary Class Wars came out on Netflix, people got excited because it was a cooking show with intensity. The restaurant wars episode brought back a renewed interest in the fried shrimp balls typically ordered with dim sum. Lots of influencers were making videos of their own DIY version of the shrimp ball with air fryer recipes, shortcuts on how to make it, etc. With the rising interest in shrimp, it was around this time when I came across a recipe for shrimp toast. 

I'd actually never heard of shrimp toast before, but it's apparently a southern China/Hong Kong dish. One afternoon, I decided to try it. We had extra bread and always have shrimp in our freezer. The adults loved it the first time I made it. The kids had mixed feelings. 

The second time I made it, I was driven by a surplus of green onions. Costco had introduced a new product: 2.5 pounds of green onion. When I was perusing the vegetable cooler, I saw them. Normally, I wouldn't think of buying 2.5 pounds of green onion at once, but these actually intrigued me. They were cleaned, washed, and actually looked more tender than the ones I see at the Asian grocery stores. So I bought a pack. The price was comparable to not-on-sale green onions at the Asian grocery store. I figured it would be nice to have some on hand.

I used these green onions in the following ways over the next 8-10 days:

- cut raw into noodle dishes or instant ramen

- shrimp toast

- Mongolian beef 

- cut small and put into the freezer to save for later

I follow the recipe from Woks of Life for shrimp toast. After I made it this time, the kids came around and told me they really enjoyed it.

A few notes on what I did and didn't follow in the recipe. I doubled the recipe. I added way more green onions/scallions than the recipe called for. Probably at least 4x if not more. I didn't add cilantro into this mixture because I didn't have any. I had actually bought it at the grocery store just that week, but I used it all in a different recipe and didn't have any left. So I just left out the cilantro. I used an entire egg instead of just the white. I know I could have saved the yolk and used it in something else, but the mental capacity that takes was too much for me this time so I didn't. I was also doubling the recipe so my yolk just served as volume for the second egg white. I realize this breaks a lot of cooking rules, but hey, this is how I cook at home. I know I'd never get away with this in a restaurant...which is why I'm not cooking in one. 😆 

I also didn't pull out the food processor and chopped/mixed by hand. Sometimes, I am willing to pull out the food processor to do all my work and then suck it up for the cleaning part. Other times, I'd rather chop by hand and not deal with cleaning my food processor. It just depends on how I'm feeling or what I remember. 

Overall, this recipe is a good one to keep because it's simple, relatively easy, and quite tasty. 

Eggs and Tofu

I saw this recipe right after Woks of Life posted it. I already make something similar with my teriyaki tofu so it wouldn't be that hard to follow this recipe and take it a step further with the addition of a few more ingredients. 

It wasn't bad at all. Besides the sauce measurements, I could see myself making this recipe from memory and just winging it. The green onions I used here were from my freezer stash I'd saved earlier. It really wasn't much different than making my old teriyaki tofu. I like how the egg adds extra protein to the dish. Will be adding this recipe to my collection for future weekly meals.

I'm glad to be able to add some new recipes to my rotation and expanding our weekly menu. It's amazing how different just changing some sauce flavors or textures can do to food. 

Shrimp Toast: $1.50/pc * 9 pieces = $13.50

Egg and Tofu: $16.99

Total: $30.49

Tax: $2.52

Grand Total: $33.01

Stiff Peaks

We might've just had the strangest weather for a Texas winter. This morning was on the warmer side, potentially shorts and t-shirt weather for some, and now, merely 6:50pm, it is 30 degrees and dropping. After going out and running errands during the early afternoon hours, we came home and prepared to bunker down for the cold winter night it was going to be. Tomorrow's temperature around 7am is projected to be about 20 degrees with winds estimated at 17 mph. That means after the windchill, the "feels like" temperature will be drastically low. Now, that's my kind of weather. If you've known me at least 4 years, you will know that I walked on ice for six months of the year living in a city nicknamed the "Ice City."

After coming home, I decided to make meringue cookies. I've always liked meringue cookies but not in the same way as I like fried chicken, strawberries or dark chocolate. There's something mysteriously appealing about a meringue that comes more from its texture and less from the flavor. A well made meringue cookie is flaky on the outside, light and airy on the inside, and slowly dissolves in your mouth. I can't really describe the flavor to you besides its sweetness because it's simply egg whites and sugar. Egg whites really don't taste like much and sugar is just sugar.

As I followed the recipe and carefully watched my egg whites turn fluffy through the electric beater, I retold stories of China to Jonathan and how my teammates made meringue cookies for my birthday WITHOUT an electric beater. Unfortunately, I was not there to witness their delirious jokes or the tired arm muscles because they planned everything without my knowing, but I remember their dedication, love, and thoughtfulness in putting together my 22nd birthday.

I am very grateful that we have an electric beater as a gift from our wedding registry to bake meringue cookies. The recipe I followed was from Emeril Lagasse and can be found here. I liked this recipe because it added chocolate chips, which enhances the overall flavor of the cookie, because like I mentioned before, egg whites and sugar really don't taste like much. The difficulty is listed at intermediate, and considering my meringue turned out well (because there were two empty spaces before I managed to remember to take a picture), I think it's safe to say I qualify as an intermediate chef ;).

(I also made the mistake of dropping my meringues larger than the recipe had asked for, so I kind of made up some more baking rules using prior knowledge to get them to bake right, hence why there are 23 and not 40.)

Clearly I am not an engineer or mathematician or physicist. Somehow I managed to put
a prime number of cookies on this baking sheet in the most ambiguously random way possible.

Meringue also don't have to be in the prettiest of formations. The stiff
peaks give it more character than a perfectly piped shape.

With successful meringue cookies in the books, I will now bundle up, crawl into bed, and hide myself in a book for a while. :)

The Perfect Hard-Boiled Eggs

I can't remember anymore how I discovered this or who did it for the first time, but it was in China where I realized the secret to a perfect hard-boiled egg. Let's first define the perfect hard-boiled egg.

1. The shell has to peel easily. If the thin membrane underneath sticks even the slightest bit, you're going to lose part of your precious egg white. Or a lot of it.
2. There has to be no gray ring on the very edge of the egg yolk on the inside. If there is, you've overcooked it. Now, I know, for us Asians, there are many wonderful recipes out there for tea eggs and seasoned hard boiled eggs in stews, and you will see the gray ring in it. And that's just due to an extended amount of cooking time that the recipe calls for. And that's fine. But that's not what I'm talking about here.
3. The egg yolk is completely cooked through and opaque, not translucent. So we're not soft-boiling here. 

If you do a Google search or ask chefs or well-seasoned mothers, they'll tell you the tricks of timing it perfectly. They'll tell you to add vinegar to the water to make the shells peel easier. They'll tell you to dunk the eggs into ice as soon as you're done to stop the cooking immediately. They'll tell you to remove the pot off the stove and let it sit for x amount of time. But see, all these things require a very precise timing. Nobody tells you how to cook an egg in a kettle unless you ask them specifically about using a kettle.

When I was living in China, I discovered hard-boiling my eggs in my tea kettle. Here's the secret.
First, put however many eggs you want or can fit into a tea kettle with the automatic shut-off feature. This is key that it has the automatic shut-off feature.
Second, fill the kettle with enough water that all the eggs are submerged.
Third, flip the switch and boil the water.
Fourth, after the water boils (which is about 2-3 minutes), let the eggs sit in the water for at least 10 minutes. Anything longer than that is fine, AND, you will not develop the gray ring.

My five little eggs nesting after the boil.

You see, the reason why cooking hard-boiled eggs in the tea kettle is so much easier in my opinion than other techniques is that

a. you don't need to add vinegar to make it peel easily
b. you don't need to do any special timing methods. Once it's in, it's in.
c. If you have at least 13 minutes to wait, you're golden. If you have more than 13 minutes to wait, it won't ruin them either.

This came in handy last Sunday because Jonathan and I woke up earlier than normal for church. We had a good 30 - 40 minutes before we had to leave the house. So I suggested going out on a walk to enjoy the cooler weather. However, I also wanted to eat something decent for once in the morning instead of going to church on an empty stomach like we normally do. Conveniently enough, I popped three eggs into our kettle, filled it with water, and flipped the switch. We went out and took a stroll around our neighborhood for about 15-20 minutes. After coming back, I scooped the eggs out of the kettle, rinsed them under cold tap water to cool so I could eat it, and we had breakfast.

I will say, the one risk to doing this is that every now and then, I would say probably less than 10% of the time, you may end up having an egg explode in the kettle during the boiling process. This is more likely to happen if the egg already has signs of cracks along the shell (not actually cracked though). In my time in China, this happened once. The fortunate part is everything is cooked, so you just have to wash your kettle out.

Yolks cooked all the way through. No gray ring.

There really is no gray ring.

That's my secret to perfect hard-boiled eggs. :)