Spicy Mushroom Larb

This week from Bon Appetit I’ve decided to try Andy Baraghani’s mushroom larb recipe (with some adjustments). Larb is not the type of asian food I grew up with but I have had it at restaurants as a traditional ground meat dish with lettuce or rice noodles. I remember my aunt called it ‘ants on a raft’ which was so odd to me but it makes sense really. I’m not a huge fan of Andy’s videos but he makes great recipes and dishes that I’m truly interested in so it’s worth watching. It’s also a "feel good food plan” recipe so it’s relatively healthy and easy to make so I thought I would give it a shot.

In this recipe, Andy uses shiitake which are kinda pricey so I went with a cheaper baby bella. I missed the scallions in the recipe so I ended up not adding that and I also skipped the chile because I forgot to grab something but compensated by adding a chile powder. Not the same at all but it gave my dish a little kick and I got the spirit of the dish so that’s good enough for me.

This dish is honestly super easy to make, I prepped the mushrooms, shallot, and garlic and got to cooking. The recipe notes to not touch the pan for 5mins to let the mushrooms get really crisp and while I let the mushrooms go closer to 7mins, my pan was quite small for the amount and I didn’t quite get the crispness that I was looking for. The mushrooms did deflate and get very nicely brown but just not that crisp.I added the shallot and garlic and cooked it until they were soft and smelled really good and then I tossed with the fish sauce, peanuts, chile powder, and salt to taste. Now, Andy adds the scallions, not the shallot into the pan to cook off but I’m not a fan of raw shallot so I’m glad I made that decision. It would’ve been nice for a little green to have the scallion and maybe some mint like they say in the recipe but I’m not a huge fan of mint so I didn’t miss it that much. I’ve been scarred by too much raw mint and thai basil as a child I don’t feel that need for it that much in my cooking now. Maybe I’ll outgrow that because the flex of green really do brighten the dish up.

Overall, I loved the smell and taste of this mushroom larb. The fish sauce brought me back and made me quite happy in my apartment. Honestly, i was missing the texture of the meat a little more since the mushroom didn’t quite get crisp. I suppose I could do a smaller cut next time and work in a bigger pan to crisp it up. Or I could just buy some ground meat. It was a simple dish to make and super easy to eat as well. Wrapping the larb in lettuce reminded me of being home and all the wraps in Vietnamese food so that was really really nice. Would make again, maybe more traditionally with meat. Good flavors and simple.

Homemade Pizza Pockets

Saturday was a pizza adventure! It started off because I’ve been very recently into the Try Guys on youtube and I watched a video with one of the Try Guys called “night in, night out”. He and his wife pick a meal and cook it at home, then go out to eat a professionally made version at a restaurant for two dates back to back and compare which date they enjoyed more. I stumbled on their pizza night video and thought their stuffed pizza from Tasty was a really cute and fun idea that Caleb also might like. While he enjoyed the concept of making pizza together, he wasn’t super into THAT much cheese so we decided to make a regular pizza instead. While looking for manageable recipes, Caleb found pizza pockets by one of his favorites Matty Matheson. There were other recipes we found but we didn’t factor in time for the dough to rest overnight so we went with Matty who has a rest/rise time of 20mins. That’s the type of level we’re on.

Caleb recently got a fancy KitchenAid stand mixer for Christmas because his family loves him, so he was pretty excited to get the chance to finally set it up. He was in the charge of the dough and I was in charge of prepping ingredients for the filling. He loved it. The dough came together super fast in the stand mixer and was ready and resting by the time I got half of the ingredients out of the fridge. It had even more time to rest which probably helped it quite a bit. We got very excited about this pizza pocket concept and decided to make a bunch of different types of pizza. Matty’s recipe yields 8 pizza pockets but I wasn’t perfectly precise in cutting the dough so we ended up with 9, some smaller than others but not a big deal to us. We made a couple buffalo chicken pizza pockets, a couple veggie pizza pockets, and classic pepperoni and cheese, a pepperoni and sausage, and a sausage pepper and onion pizza pocket. Of course we had a bunch of fillings leftover and decided to make two large supreme pizzas with everything inside. Caleb went for that one the next day for lunch and said it was actually pretty good. The buffalo chicken was the odd man out but it didn’t ruin the pocket and he was satisfied with that.

I picked the sausage peppers and onions pizza pocket and it was amazing fresh out of the oven. Our crust got nice and crisp but the filling was really nice and gooey on the inside. We could’ve used a little tiny bit more cheese inside but the ratio wasn’t bad the way it was. We also heated up some regular tomato sauce to dip which made everything even better with that acidic tomato kick. We were really proud of ourselves and the food turned out great. We had a fun time and it took a couple hours of our day but it was nice to have an activity to do together that we could enjoy and that was fruitful. A good use of money and a good time together.

Crispy Smashed Potatoes

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently made Molly Baz’s crispy smashed potatoes but Molly went a step further and made a walnut dressing with it and I got a little too skittish for that. Maybe next time Molly. Maybe next time.

In any case, I made these while I was prepping for Sohla’s red lentil zucchini fritters so they’re super easy to make and there’s a lot of downtime for it which I can appreciate. I love potatoes so any recipe with a crispy potato-y potato is great to me. Molly uses a small yukon gold potato and I tried to look for something similar at the grocery store and ended up with a “baby golden potato”. Vague. My potatoes were similar in texture to a yukon gold but they had a sweeter finish so I’m questioning it a little. It wasn’t bad but it was unexpected for sure.

The first step is to boil the potatoes in saltwater until fork tender. Once they’re ready, you drain them, let them cool, then smash them between two baking sheets. This works so well and it’s pretty fun just laying into a baking sheet of potatoes. I got a great little smash from them and flattened them out then coated them in oil, salt, and pepper. I probably could’ve gone a little flatter with the smash to get a crispier finish but I like my potatoes starchy so that’s fine by me. I let them go for 40mins in a 450F oven then pulled them. I do wish they got a little darker. Like Sohla’s fritters, I got a little skittish but I can always re-toast them in the oven so it’s not a bad way to go.

This is where Molly makes the walnut dressing for the potatoes with anchovies and golden raisins. Clearly, this is where she lost me. She does say that the anchovies aren’t prominent in the dressing and they add more of a salty, umami flavoring but I can’t commit to buying a container of anchovies just for this because I don’t like anchovies. Sitting here now I will say that I’m contemplating it because the anchovy, walnut, raisin, garlic mix might just be crazy enough to work…. If I go through with it I’ll update.

As just smashed salt potatoes go, this wasn’t a bad way to cook them. It was super easy with a lot of downtime and minimal active cooking which is nice while doing other chores around the apartment. I would easily make potatoes this way again. I’ll get back to you guys on the dressing.

UPDATE: So I tried to make the walnut dressing and was a little concerned about the anchovies. I don’t think I cooked it low enough because the anchovy didn’t disintegrate into the oil like Molly’s did but instead got a little crisp. I kept waiting for it to happen and it didn’t really break down as much and I ended up browning the walnuts and anchovy a little too much with the carryover heat. The garlic did better getting thrown in last. Browning it too much might have been part of the problem so maybe it would be better next time with another try. The anchovies really weren’t a big deal and I shouldn’t have been as worried about it as I was so I am happy that I tried it this time and I’ll be less skeptical putting it in dishes in the future for sure. Though I will say I’m not going to just start eating them with everything.

Red Lentil and Zucchini Fritters

Living away from a Wegmans is rough sometimes, especially when you’re searching for not so common ingredients. I book marked this recipe video for red lentil zucchini fritters from Bon Appetit and decided last week that I was going to try this out because I’d be able to find everything without driving 30-40mins to Wegamans. I was almost wrong. I spent an hour or so after work last Wednesday driving to three different grocery stores in town to finally find one bag of red lentils. By the time I made it back to my apartment I was hangry and over it. Which is why it took another few days for me to finally have the time and mental preparedness to actually try this recipe.

This dish is made by Sohla and i’ve been feeling a little iffy with these fried fritters I keep picking from Bon Appetit but she makes it look easy and totally manageable. Sohla does make a lemony yogurt dip to go with them but I opted out and just tried to focus on the fritters. First off, the elusive red lentils. Turns out these are harder to find here than the should be but I’m honestly not THAT surprised and I’m happy I did mange to get a bag and it wasn’t expensive. I’m interested to learn more about lentil use because I have a good amount left. Anyways, I started off soaking the lentils and prepping the zucchini and onion as instructed. While I was waiting for all of this I also made smashed potatoes from Molly Baz but that’ll be coming once I get a solid photo.

Once soaked, I pulverized the lentils and mixed them with the veggies (that I dried with a towel). Sohla says that it will look like a lot of veggies to lentils but to trust the process. She hit the nail on the head because I was quite concerned but I trusted her and honestly, I was SUPER skeptical but she was right. Everything worked out in the end.

So Sohla fries them in a good amount of ghee but I failed to remember I was almost out of a neutral oil so I used less oil to fry than she did. I don’t think it made a substantial difference but i might’ve gotten better frying with more oil with a higher heat.

My fritters came out smelling amazing. I did get a little skittish and didn’t fry them to quite as brown as Sohla instructed so mine weren’t as crisp but they still tasted amazing. The lentils get really nice and crispy but the onions and zucchini get really warm and soft and I love that dual texture. They veggies help hydrate the crisp lentils quite a bit for a perfect balance. Next time I won’t be so worried about the ratio but I may just toss the leftovers into a pan to reheat them and crisp them up a little more in the future. I’ve already recommended this recipe to people and would totally try them again. I do have lentils leftover.

CORT - Wild Ginger Asian Fusion

I should honestly stop watching videos on youtube while at work because I just get hungry and crave random food. Today I was watching a bunch of Try Guys videos involving sushi and of course that just made me want to eat some. I have been wanting to eat sushi lately but I haven’t had the opportunity to go get some in Ithaca so I decided to take a risk and get sushi at the Asian Fusion restaurant right down the street.

LOCATION: 45 MAIN ST., CORTLAND, NY 13045

Caleb and I have been here twice and each time I’ve gotten a bento box so I can have a little of everything and satisfy a bunch of cravings in one go because it’s a rare treat for me. The bento box comes with a California roll which is a super safe choice here in Cortland where we are nowhere near a body of water that would provide fresh fish. I don’t eat raw fish anyway so my risks for sushi are pretty low wherever I am.

I knew Wild Ginger had sushi on their menu and today was a desperate day with my stomach grumbling at work so I knew I had to place the order. The sushi menu looks pretty extensive with a really good selection of choices. Since I don’t eat raw it cuts down on my option a lot but I appreciate when places have choices for me.

My favorite piece is the Ebi Nigiri and I order it wherever I go. It’s honestly super hard to mess up shrimp on rice so I haven’t had too many bad experiences with it. Two pieces cost $4.50 so this is an expensive order but desperate times call for desperate measures and today is a treat yo self moment for the weeks of craving sushi I’ve faced. I also decided to try the Hotategai Nigiri which is the scallop. The riskiest of my choices but I LOVE scallop and have never actually tried this roll before. Four pieces, of course, aren’t enough even though my total was a whopping $10 but I had to get another and decided on a spider roll, fried soft shell crab with avocado, cucumber, and roe. Spider is a classic that I get often because it tends to be on every menu but is totally cooked and has everything I like in it.

I cannot tell you how excited I was to eat this today. Everything looked perfect and I was a little nervous but excited to try the scallop. Overall, everything was great, the ebi and the spider roll were standard and tasted how I wanted them to. They were average sizes and everything was packed well and rolled nicely. The scallop nigiri was a really perfect texture and melted in my mouth though it wasn’t super flavorful. Not worth the price but it was a nice try and I’m glad I did it so now I know.

Wild Ginger, pretty expensive especially since I remember the days of all you can eat Sushi in Chicago where for $20 I could eat 20+ pieces of my choosing with soup. Today my total was $20 for 10 pieces. The sushi was just as good but double the price. It’s a sad time to live in such a remote area but it’s the price I have to pay. Unfortunately, sushi will have to stay a special treat for myself reserved for desperate times with a lot of space in between orders. My stomach and my heart are happy with my choice, though my wallet will give me a stern talking-to later.