Jessica's Dinner Party

Archive for August, 2009

Stir Fried Potato Side

Continuing with my love of side dishes, here is one that is good for both summer and winter. It is stir fried potatoes with onions and green peppers. Many potato dishes are heavy and unhealthy (ex. french fries, hash browns, baked potato with the works) but this one is light, nutritious, and deceptively delicious. A little salt and heat brings out the great natural flavors of this starchy vegetable. Whenever my mom set this out before dinner, my sister and I would slowly sneak a few chopsticks-ful until none of it was left when we actually sat down to eat!

I had a hankering for stir fried potatoes the other day so I went to my second best resource, this Korean cookbook, for the recipe. A red light should’ve gone off in my head when I copied down five green bell peppers, but I guess my mind was not functioning very well because I didn’t think twice about it. So, I went to the grocery store and bought two yellow potatoes and five green bell peppers. Once I started cooking, I began to feel like there were one too many green pepper slices but I just kept on cutting away. Seriously, I was like a robot, strictly following illogical directions! I blame it on the heat.

August 22 2009 | asian and korean and recipe and side dish and thoughts and vegetarian | 9 Comments »

Sweet and Spicy Cucumbers

A traditional Korean meal has a lot of side dishes. Some appear at the table all year round like kimchee, spicy fermented cabbage, while others are more seasonal. I love the site of a Korean dinner table because it is always crowded with so many plates of food. It looks like a mini food festival.

August 21 2009 | asian and korean and recipe and side dish and thoughts and vegetarian | 8 Comments »

Blueberry Crumb Bar Cake

There was dessert! How could a picnic end without something sweet? Before planning the picnic, I read an article in Martha Stewart’s Living magazine about how to prepare a picnic. By chance I have a subscription to the magazine. I think it came as a package deal with something else I ordered or it was a secret friend who thought I would enjoy it, but in any case, I was surprised when I kept on receiving an issue month after month. There were a lot of cute ideas there, including the tomato hand pies that inspired my roasted tomato sandwiches and sour cherry crumb cakes for dessert. I decided to follow the article and make a crumb cake because it’s easy to transport, and the picture looked so scrumptious.

From the time I read the article to the time I went to the grocery store something in my mind changed and I believed that the article talked about raspberry crumb bars instead of sour cherry crumb cakes. I set out to find raspberries and didn’t even look at the cherries. However, when I found the raspberries I was totally shocked at how expensive they were. Half a pint was $4 and since I would have to buy at least three of them to make the bars I would be spending a grand total of $12! It might not sound like a lot to some people, but for a recent college graduate, it’s quite a sum. So, after a good ten minutes in front of the berry stand, I decided to buy blueberries, two pints for $5, instead.

I was really happy about my choice of fruit and could not wait to start baking. When I opened the magazine to read the recipe, I realized that I the whole time I was thinking about crumb bars and that I couldn’t make the crumb cakes anyway because I didn’t have any buttermilk or an acceptable substitute on hand. I quickly scanned the indexes of all the cookbooks I had and searched online for a blueberry crumb bar recipe and found one at AllRecipes.com written about by Smitten Kitchen that was easy and simple. Yay!

August 18 2009 | cake and cookies & bars and dessert and fruit and recipe and thoughts | 15 Comments »

Crudite and Dips

I love getting fresh local produce at the farmer’s market or local grocery store. The fruits and vegetable are always so beautiful, colorful, and very fragrant. It makes me feel really good that I’m eating healthy and being friendly to the environment. However, I don’t know why, but I don’t like to cook with the fresh produce. I feel guilty, as if I was tainting the pure flavors with my amateur cooking skills. I’m slowly changing my mentality, but I tend to eat a lot of my fruits and vegetables raw. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but sometimes it can get a little boring.

So, for the picnic I decided to bring crudite and dip! It’s a mix between enjoying the fresh flavors of summer and adding a little extra flavor. As usual, since I couldn’t narrow it down to just one, I made two. I made a hummus from a recipe that I had tagged in a Food and Wine magazine and a dip called Peacamole from the popular food blog, Chocolate and Zucchini.

August 17 2009 | dips and recipe and side dish and thoughts and vegetarian | 1 Comment »

Mom’s Chicken Salad Sandwich

Throughout high school my mom packed my lunch everyday. I went to the same school for ten years, so after awhile the food gets a little old. I have to admit though, my school had a pretty good cafeteria. We had a selection of both Western and Korean food, and there was rarely anything we would call “mystery meat.” Most people just bought food from the cafeteria, but I liked bringing food from home. My mom usually packed me a sandwich and a sliced apple. The sandwiches were always simple and clean on a soft bread, but very good. My friends would always ask for bites and I would end up eating only about half the sandwich. But it was fine, it always made me happy to share my food with them. One of the sandwiches my mom made was a chicken salad sandwich. So, when the idea of the summer picnic came up I thought I should ask my mom for the recipe.

Chicken salad is almost a must at picnics. It’s easy to make, easy to bring, and easy to eat. However, I rarely find a chicken salad that I like. Most often the chicken is drenched in mayo and everything tastes slimy and goopy. I’m not a huge fan of mayonnaise but don’t mind it when it’s used in moderation. This is a very healthy chicken salad and uses only a little bit of mayo as a binder rather than a main ingredient. If you like a heavily mayo-fied version, then this sandwich will not be what you expect. However, I think you should give it a try anyways because it really is good.