Bubble Tea Recipe

There are different styles of bubble tea, each features a little twist in taste, level of bitterness, softness of bubbles within. It all depends on your preferences. Here is my own recipe for the classic hong-kong style bubble tea, you can try it and change the ratios of tea to milk according to your liking. Here we go:

Ingredients:

- half and half cream (you can replace with milk if you are going for low calorie)
- A bag of Lipton black tea
- honey
- instant bubbles (you can get those from Korean or Chinese supermarkets)

Recipe:

- boil water until it steams
- sip tea bag in water for 15 minutes
- mix half and half cream with black tea in a 1:1 ratio, throw in a few drops of honey, shake the mixture in a closed container like it's the end of the world to make milk tea
- cook instant bubbles according to given instruction (instant bubbles is normally nice and tender in 5 minutes in boiling water, to make bubbles sweeter, soak the bubbles in warm honey water)
- use strainer to strain out bubbles from liquid, then add into milk tea

Cucumbers in Chili Oil Mix

This recipe was created by an inspiration or a knockoff from one of the dishes I tried in a Chinese restaurant called Panda Gourmet. It quickly became one of my favorite dish, hence my desire to reproduce it in my own time. There is nothing hard about the cucumber itself. The success of this dish really solely depends on the sauce.

Ingredients:

5 tablespoons of Soy sauce

3 tablespoons of Olive Oil

1 tablespoon of Chili Oil

1 tablespoon of Red pepper flakes

1 clove of Garlic

2 Cucumbers

Instruction:

Get rid of skin on cucumbers and cut it to bite size. Leave the cucumbers in a bowl size good for tossing. Peel off skin on garlic, dice it up. In a skillet, pour in olive oil and diced garlic, heat on high heat until oil starts to sizzle. Throw in red pepper flakes and soy sauce, let heat for 1 minute on medium. Turn off heat, pour mixture onto cucumber. Pour Chili oil onto cucumber as well. Toss well and serve.

Vanilla and Chocolate Cake with Cream Cheese Icing and Grape Jelly

I have always wanted to make a finer, more complicated cake as dessert, so there I go:

Vanilla cake base

Ingredients:

3 eggs

1.5 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 cup of butter

1 cup of powdered sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 cup of all purpose flour

Preheat over to 350F, grease pan of choice. Mix melted butter, sugar, and eggs together first, then add baking powder, salt, and purpose flour. After it turns into homogeneous mixture, add vanilla extract. Pour mixture into greased pan and place in oven for 30 minutes. Take a tooth pick, stick into the raised cake base. If the bottom of tooth pick appear liquid-like, place cake base back into oven and bake for 5-10 minutes.

Chocolate cake base

I used Hershey's Kitchen's "Perfectly Chocolate" recipe.

Cream Cheese Icing

Ingredients:

8 tablespoon of butter

1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar

4 oz cream cheese

3 drops of lemon juice

3 drops of vanilla extract

Do not melt butter prior to mixing, melting butter will ruin the texture of icing. In a pan, mix butter, powdered sugar, and cream cheese until mixture turned smooth and creamy. If mixture seem to hard to mix, leave mixture in room temperature for a longer period of time for it to turn softer. Finally, add lemon juice and vanilla extract and mix well.

To make the cake in picture above

Ingredients:

All of the above plus commercially available grape jelly

Cut chocolate cake base and vanilla cake base into small squares of desire size. Stack alternating layers one on top of another, add grape jelly in between layers for stabilizing and taste. With some extra cream cheese icing, coat them outside of cake until the entirety are covered with icing. If you want, you can create different patterns with forks or spoons. The patterns of icing shown in picture are created by the tip of a small fork. Lastly, for appearance, dap some grape jelly on the plate around the cake. Depending on the size of the cake you want to make, you are going to have some extra. With those, you can make another cake just like these, or you can use it for other purposes.

A home cooked meal

The other day I had a couple of friends over for dinner without planning ahead of time at all. With 15 minutes of mental preparation, I whooped out dinner for four people in less than 15 minutes (patting myself on the back).

Appetizer: Mozzarella Cheese dipped in olive oil and basil

Vege Platter: Carrots, Celery, and chopped cucumbers

Entree: Red Bell Pepper, Onions, Baked Chicken in Mozzarella cheese sauce

Bread: Garlic Naan Bread

Drink: Mixed Berry Smoothie

Soy sauce and red wine steak

This recipe is super easy to make, you don't need fancy topper ware to make this possible, just a fresh piece of steak from the supermarket.

Ingredients:

- Steak

- Salt and pepper

- Oil

- Soysauce

- Any kind of red wine

- Butter

Instructions:

Sprinkle small amount of salt and pepper on both side of the steak. In a skillet, spray olive oil to cover whole pan. Turn on medium to high heat to warm up skillet for 1 minute. Place steak on skillet, do not move the steak. Place lid on skillet for faster cooking. After 2 minutes, flip the steak, again, do not move the steak after it has been flipped. Place lid on skillet and cook for 5 minutes. By this time the steak should be rare. Transfer steak onto a presenting plate. With the leftover juice remained in the skillet, mix in 3 tablespoonful of soysauce, 3 tablespoonful of red wine, and 1 tablespoon of butter. Let it melt together in the skillet, then pour sauce over steak.

The total process making this steak should be less than 10 minutes, and it tastes great!

Crabstick Sushi

I made this yesterday when I was half awake. It came out pretty tasty, but might be due to the fact that I was half awake.

Ingredients:
- Crabstick
- Jasmine Rice
- Sushi Vinegar
- White pepper powder
- Seaweed

Instructions:
In cooked jasmine rice, pour in sushi vinegar and white pepper powder depending on your own likings. I added 4 table spoons of sushi vinegar and 1 tea spoon of white pepper powder for 1 cup of rice. Lay a piece of seaweed onto sushi roller. Lay and spread rice onto seaweed so that the rice covers one half of the seaweed's surface. Place crabstick right in the middle of the rice field. Then roll it up! I usually place a few pieces of rice at the end of the seaweed just so that the seaweed can stick on and remain as a roll. Let me know if you have any questions.

Mushroom Congee

Ingredients:
- Dried Shitake mushrooms
- Jasmine Rice
- Scallions
- Salt for seasoning

Instructions:
In 6 cups of water, add 1 cup of jasmine rice. Boil rice with water under medium heat, occusionally stir to prevent rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot. This process is long and brutal, so make sure you have patience. Place Shitake mushrooms in water in a seperate container to rehydrate. After 15 minutes, take out mushrooms, rinse with water, and cut into fine pieces. After 30-40 minutes of boiling, the rice should be broken down and water should appear white and gooey. Add salt depending on your likings. Add shitake mushrooms into the rice and continue boiling for 10 more minutes under medium heat. Add scallions at the end, mix, and serve.

Tip:
If you want the congee to be more flavorful, you can add chicken pieces or pork for seasoning. Add at the same time as the mushrooms. The miscellaneous orange object in the photo below is fried dough, it is a common breakfast in China, and goes very well in congee.

Power Breakfast Smoothie

Power Breakfast Smoothie

- 3 strawberries

- 1/2 banana

- 10 blueberries

- a few raspberries

- 1 cup of milk

- 1 teaspoon full of honey

- 3 ice cubes

- whey protein if possible

Put all ingredients in a blender and grind them up, now you have a healthy breakfast smoothie filled with fiber and protein!

Cold Tofu

Ingredients needed:

- Silken Tofu

- Scallions/Green Onions

- Hot pepper oil or Sesame Oil

- Soy Sauce

- Garlic

Take silken tofu out of the box, cut into thin pieces, transfer onto a dish. Chop up garlic and scallions into small pieces. In a separate skillet, heat up soy sauce and hot pepper oil (replaceable with sesame oil), add garlic and scallions, toss for 1 minute under medium heat. Pour sauce over silken tofu.

You can add red pepper flakes on it too if you are really into spicy food.

Scrumtious!

I encountered this delicious dessert when I was volunteering at Sibley. At first I just wanted a slice of the pound cake that were overflowing with pleasant esters of vanilla. Soft and spongy, easily digestable cake reminded me of that famous phase from Marie Antoinette: Qu’ils mangent de la brioche (Let them eat cake). Unfortunately I don't have the recipe for the pound cake, it seemed commercially available. As I started stuffing my face with pound cake, Ms. Nice Nurse came by and demanded me to try Scrumtious! that was located in the freezer. At first I declined, because 1) I do not want to take in additional fats, and 2) I was too lazy to do all of these things. Due to persistent requests, I finally took this miscellaneous cream out of the freezer, and added to my pound cake -- it was heaven in my mouth. And I cannot stop eating. Good thing I got the recipe, you can try to make it to see if you can stop eating or not.

The commercially available pound cake.

The so called Scrumtious! with recipe below:

- 1 can of condensed milk

- 3 containers of heavy wipe cream

- 3 can of fruit cocktail (drained)

- 2 table spoons of lemon juice

Instruction: Add the items above and mix well in a large bow with listed order. Stick in the freezer until it solidifies. Enjoy!

Easy Pissy Pizza

As a recent graduate, I do not know how to make complicated dishes, nor do I have the energy to make complicated dishes. Occasionally I like to try out different cuisines after getting tired of my everyday grandma foods. Aside from the New York style pizza, there is the neapolitan pizza that sticks out often. According to wikipedia, neapolitan pizza uses fancy dough and ingredients. My definition of neapolitan pizza is just a small, highly individualized, oven baked thin pizza.

Today for dinner, I made a personalized neapolitan pizza with the last peppers I have. A good reason to read about this recipe: you can make this pizza with any ingredients you have: spinach, peppers, olives, or anything you can think of within a reasonable range.

What you will need:

baking pan (or anything you can support the pizza in the oven)

Tandoor flat bread (I got some garlic flavored tandoori from WholeFoods, works great.)

Topings: Cheese, tomato sauce, mushrooms, spinach, ham, etc. (anything you can think of)

Directions:

-Take out flad bread, place it on baking pan.

-Spread tomato sauce, then cheese, then other toppings.

-Place it in oven, 400°C for 20 minutes. (I never pre-heat the oven when making this, but maybe pre-heating will make it taste better.)

For the example in picture above, it was just mozzarella cheese with orange and yellow bell peppers. Super easy!