Week 14: Final Meal

Week 14: Final Meal

I am a big fan of Asian foods. For the final project of this class, I would like to try making a full meal with Asian dishes after all the learning in this class. I still aim at making simple things, so I decided to make three simple dishes for this meal: fried rice (side), scrambled egg (appetizer), and a beef stir-dry (main course). This meal contains whole grains (brown rice), vegetables (bell pepper, onion, broccoli), and a number of animal proteins (beef, shrimp, and egg). These ingredients were chosen so that the meal would be nutritionally balanced. For this project, I had a number of the ingredient at home, and I went to Fresh Thyme to get the rest of the ingredients. 

The first two dishes had some rather lengthy preparation. Lots of vegetables were being sliced/diced, and brown rice needed to be cooked. I did find that my knife techniques have progressed a lot since the first day of this course. The ingredient prep took about 40-50 minutes, while the cooking part took another 20 minutes. The beef dish was actually a bit faster than I imagined. The beef was first marinated while I was off doing other things, and the actual preparation and cooking took less than 20 minutes. This meal turned out to be a bit bigger than I think and was enough for 3 separate meals for me. In the end, the dishes looked and tasted good to me, and I will continue to learn how to cook better even after this class ends.

Recipes for Final Meal:

1) Appetizer: Scrambled Egg (Shown on the Left, Fried Rice Shown on the Right)

Ingredient: Eggs (2), Bell Pepper, Onion, Salt, Oil

Steps:

--Slice one bell pepper and half an onion (Some onion was used for the fried rice. Also, the mushroom was for the fried rice).

--Crack two eggs into the bowl. Beat with a whisk until we have a yellow mixture. Add sliced pepper and onion. Add salt for taste.

--Add oil to the skillet and heat it. 

--When the skillet starts to smoke a little bit, add the beaten egg to the skillet. Cook until the egg becomes solid and slightly brown.

2) Side: Fried Rice

Ingredient: Brown Rice, Shrimp, Onion, Bell Pepper, Sesame Oil, Salt, Oil

Steps:

--Cook 8 oz brown rice with 2 cups of water.

--Peel shrimps.

--Add oil to the skillet and heat. 

--Add shrimp to the heated skillet. Cook the shrimps until they turn red. 

--Add onion and bell pepper slices to the skillet. Cook for a minute.

--Add rice the skillet. Add salt and sesame oil. Cook for another three minutes.

3) Main Course: Beef Stir-Fry

Ingredient: Beef strip (about 0.6 lbs), soy sauce, salt, pepper, water, corn starch, broccoli

Steps:

--Mix soy sauce (about 2 tbsp), salt (1 tsp), pepper (1 tsp), and water (1 cup) to make the marinade. One can adjust the ratio for personal taste.

--Marinate the beef strip in a Ziploc bag for 30 minutes.

--Chop broccoli into smaller pieces.

--Add oil to the skillet. Heat until it starts smoking.

--Add broccoli to skillet and stir-fry it for 2 minutes.

--Add marinade to skillet.

--Add marinated beef to skillet, followed by 1 tbsp of corn starch. Cook for 5-6 minutes.