Tags
bean sprouts, bell pepper, cabbage, Carrots, chile-garlic paste, cilantro, Garlic, ginger, hoisin sauce, Mushrooms, onion, rice vinegar, Scallions, sesame oil, sesame seeds, Shrimp, snow peas, soy sauce, stock, wonton strips
I was thinking of Chinese food. Truth be told, I’m usually thinking about food, and many times it leans Chinese. I love egg rolls or spring rolls. I was thinking about egg rolls. Dreaming, really. So with the winter chill, I was thinking about tossing together a soup of some sort. And with the Asian New Year around the corner, light bulb moment!!! Why not combine the two? Continue reading
I hope you are familiar with the Asian chef, Ming Tsai. He did a series on PBS and he had a restaurant in the Boston area, Blue Ginger. Anyway, this is based on a recipe from one of his books. They are so good, sloppy and just plain delicious. I think they’re better the next day. 
I’ve been thinking about Indian food recently. Obsessing really. This is what usually sends me off on a recipe search. Picture The Goddess, crawling in camo through her jungle of cookbooks and the Inter”Webs”, in search of ideas. That’s an image, isn’t it? In this case, there wasn’t really a search. It just sort of came together, and I had leftover shrimp and lobster…see how that works? 
Mélange, is defined as “a mixture, a medley”. It’s the perfect description of this “medley”—as this combines, shrimp, scallops, calamari rings, and imitation crabmeat, for the seafood. And the mélange of vegetables—red onion, olives, bell pepper, and recao or culantro. It’s sublime. It’s perfection…a mélange of flavors. 
These Frijoles Negros were the very first thing I cooked in my new toy…a multi-purpose pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker that you can sauté in, so the sofrito, that lovely mixture of garlic, bell pepper and onion, was a breeze. 
Pasta and bean salads are great for summer. Because this doesn’t have any mayonnaise in the dressing, it holds up well when the sun sizzles and you don’t want to. 
I love Three Bean Salad. It always seems to be on the summer dinner tables, but it is truly good all year long. Anyway, I was hungry for it, but I decided to make a slightly different version than the one my mother made, which I have always loved. I added corn and potatoes. It works. It works well. 
