Shiitake Mushrooms in Lulu's Special Sauce!

This dish came about, because my mom had a grilled mushroom dish at a Japanese restaurant one time. She brought home some fresh mushrooms to experiment with. I decided to ask her what it tasted like. She told me that it was salty, sweet, and it had garlic. So, from her description I came up with this recipe! We usually use the dried ones in soups/porridge/sauteed with bamboo. I think the dried ones are a lot more flavorful, and are meatier. The fresh ones are a little more similar in taste to crimini mushrooms, but softer.

Here goes the directions:

1. Wash your mushrooms, clean off excess dirt.

2. Dry off your mushrooms. I placed them on one side of a CLEAN kitchen towel, let air dry.

3. I folded over the other side of the towel, over the mushrooms to soak off any excess water. You can use another towel to dry if you used more mushrooms than me.Let it dry for 30-60 minutes.

4. While the mushrooms are drying, it's time to start the sauce! In the measuring cup is about 1/2 cup of light soy sauce, 1/4 cup of rice wine. In the spoons starting from front to back: finely minced ginger, brown sugar, heaping spoonful of garlic, and add a little sesame seed oil. (Make sure to mince the ginger very finely. Ginger is very spicy if you bite into a large piece, so try and cut it up as small as possible.)

5. Mix all the above ingredients together, and whisk to dissolve sugar.

6. Now put the mushrooms into a large bowl, and pour the sauce over the mushrooms. Mix it very well so that the sauce will get into the gills of the mushroom.

7. Heat up a large non-stick pan with a little oil. Put the mushrooms in gill side up. Making sure that each mushroom is touching the pan. I had too many mushrooms to fit the pan, so I cooked them in 2 separate batches.

8. After you have them all in the pan, put a lid on it for about 3-5 minutes. Some juices may come out from cooking the mushrooms. Now is the point to start flipping the mushrooms over.

 9. After you flip them, cover the pan again. Cook it uncovered, so that the juices will evaporate.  It should look like the picture below when it's ready!

10. Dish it up!

11. Now this is a very important step! I actually poured all the sauce in with the mushrooms when I cooked the second batch. But you can do it this way too.

Pour the extra sauce into the pan, and let it simmer down. The sugar in the sauce will caramelize, and thicken the sauce a little bit. After you simmer down the sauce, pour it over the mushrooms. The sauce is amazing to eat with the mushrooms and rice!!!

Hugs and Kisses <3
Lulu

Celery Salad (Chinese Style)

This is actually another dish I made today. All the pictures were taking everything way too long to load....So as a short cut I decided to do another post today. I know most of my post's so far are food related....it's easier for me to do food blogs because I cook almost every day.... My next post will be about art! I promise :)

Celery Salad (Chinese Style)

 To start off, I'm not sure if this is a traditional Chinese dish. But we do eat a different variation with cucumbers. I remember my grandma and mom making this dish growing up as well. So let's just say it is Chinese! haha :) 

1. Take about 5 ribs of Celery and wash!

 

2. Now cut the celery in thin diagonal slices. I cut them diagonal slices, that way the sauce will be able marinate better through the cut edges of the celery. My slices were about 1/4 inch thickness.

3. Below are the ingredients to the sauce. The first spoon closest to you is the hot sauce, the second spoon from the front is rice vinegar, and the last 2 spoons are light soy sauce.

* I am biased because I grew up eating this brand but the picture below is the hot sauce I used. It isn't really hot, it just adds flavor.

4. Combine all ingredients with the celery. At this point you can taste it. If it is salty at this point don't worry, because the celery will lose it's natural juices so it will thin out the sauce. I personally, would've added a little sriracha, and more vinegar. But my mom doesn't eat really spicy or sour foods. I enjoy the salty, sour, spicy flavors.

5. So I would let it sit in the fridge for about 2-3 hours before serving. It is also really good the next day too, because the marinade will totally soak into celery. I really enjoy this dish in the Summer because it's a cold dish, and it's really healthy! you can eat the whole thing if you want to! It's basically like the Chinese version of pickles!

Enjoy!

<3
Hugs and Kisses Lulu

Tomatoes and Eggs

As usual...I had to make dinner again tonight. I wanted to start blogging more and decided to take some pics of what I made tonight! I've been feeling down the last few days...but I'll blog about that later on. Tomatoes and Eggs were a pretty traditional dish, I ate growing up.

Tomatoes and Eggs
     This is a fairly simple dish. The main ingredients are shown below. TOMATOES AND EGGS! You can use more or less of each ingredient...whatever you have on hand is good too! This is a go to dish when I realize we don't have any veggies in the fridge.

1. Dice the tomatoes into large 1 inch cubes

2. Crack the eggs in a separate bowl, and whisk until the whites and yolks are combined. Add a small dash of salt.

3. Heat up a non-stick pan with some oil, and fry the eggs. Constantly stir the eggs while they are still runny, so they will come out to be tender. 

 4. I usually only cook the eggs until they start clumping together. Be careful not to overcook it, because it will be cooked with the tomatoes later on. Place the eggs in a separate dish.

 5. Using the same pan add a little oil and add in the tomatoes to cook. Add a dash of salt to taste.

6. Cook for about 5 minutes over medium heat. The tomatoes should start looking like the picture below. You want there to be juices from the tomatoes in the pan. Don't cook it on high heat or else the juice from the tomatoes will evaporate!

7. Add the eggs back into the pan.

8. Stir in the eggs and tomatoes. In the picture above my scrambled eggs were still in fairly large pieces, so break them into some smaller pieces if you like. At this point I added some fresh cracked black pepper. You can also add in some finely sliced green onions into it now too! We usually don't add that, but I think it would be yummy!

9. This is really good with rice. Now it's ready to serve!

Enjoy!