Home Cooking and Monopoly!

I know.  This title goes against everything we tend to do in modern day society. Home cooking? Really? When it's just as easy to go out and eat something that's already cooked FOR us?  And Monopoly?  Hmm.... NOT on the Xbox you say.... or the Wii?  You actually have to manually roll the dice and move the pieces?
What a concept!! I'm in!!

Actually, my friend and I have gotten together before and cooked at home rather than going out somewhere.  It's fun and social and definitely a lot healthier than eating the corresponding food at a restaurant.
Tonight's menu was a combination of Mexican/Peruvian and Asian!  The jump between the two is perhaps not as big as you would think.  Our Peruvian dish of the night was Ceviche, which is raw fish and certainly, raw fish is a fairly common ingredient in Asian dishes, so there you go :) It tied together somehow.

I've included the calorie count on each dish at the end of each recipe. Please note that in all the recipes, I've used the "spray oil" to fry everything instead of actual oil, so if you do use oil to fry the chicken & veggies in, please make sure to add calories for the oil.

CEVICHE

Despite the raw fish in the Ceviche, the ingredient we were the most afraid of was the Habanero pepper.
Let me just tell you, I'm Norwegian born and bred and in Norway, the spiciest food mostly involves salt & pepper. (Although spicier dishes have been making its way in and Norwegians are slowly but surely getting introduced to spicier peppers....).   Jalapeno pepper is as spicy as I'll go, and even some jalapenos are too spicy for my taste.  Not in my wildest dreams would I touch a Habanero, and yet here I was, Habanero pepper in hand and ready to go.  To my surprise, while eating the Ceviche, I couldn't even detect that there was Habanero in there.... if I hadn't handled it myself, I wouldn't have known it was even in there. 
The ceviche turned out really amazingly good.  I'm not a big fan of fish (if you'll go back to my Baked Swai blog, you'll see what my relationship with fish is...), but I loved it in the ceviche.  Probably because it was cooked in lime, so the fish taste was pretty much non existent. 

Here is the recipe for the ceviche that we made:

2 Filets of Fish (super fresh/never frozen. Use tilapia, sole or snapper or even shrimp)
Remove spine on fish.
Cut into rounds or strips, as preferred.
Add lime juice and one crushed garlic clove, marinate the fish for 1 hour or more. (Until "cooked")
Slice 1/2 red onions transparently thin.
Chop cilantro and add to onions.
Use 1/4 of a habanero pepper, de-seeded

(Calorie count: About 360 for the entire bowl & 130 for 8 triscuits)

We ate our ceviche with triscuits, but I've also had it served on crispy corn tortillas and my friend had previously eaten it without any type of cracker/bread at all, so do as you prefer.  The triscuits actually went very well with the ceviche, it was a good combination.

Here's the ceviche, ready to go.  We used red snapper for the fish.
Also, the cilantro is very sparse as I'm not too crazy about cilantro, but

we added some on the side if anybody wanted more.

Here's the ceviche on the triscuit crackers.  They went together very well,
but it's also good when paired with a crisp corn tortilla ("flat taco shell")

EGGROLLS

Our second course of the night was homemade eggrolls.  We were both excited about this as neither of us had ever made eggrolls before.  In fact, I'm such a novice when it comes to home made Asian foods that I had no idea I could get bamboo shoots and water chestnuts in the regular grocery store.... but they have it! In fact, there's an entire section devoted to Asian foods.  Who knew!

Anyway, we were also going to bake the eggrolls, not fry them, to make them healthier.  We had no idea how this would turn out, as our recipe was made for frying.

The ingredients we mixed together smelled SO good, I'm actually surprised they made it to teh eggroll wrappers at all! We were both getting hungry while making them, so eating the eggroll stuffing straight from the bowl was something that wasn't an impossibility.  But we restrained ourselves....

Rolling the eggrolls was also fun, it's actually a very social food to make.  I've seen people make their own sushi and that always looks fun, but eggrolls are a better idea I think ... (This again relates back to my bad relationship with fish.... I have yet to meet a sushi I liked, so making my own sushi would be a gigantic waste for me...).

Here is the recipe we used for the eggrolls:

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 bag of coleslaw mix
1/2 (8 ounce) can shredded bamboo shoots (I actually got whole bamboo shoots and we just sliced them up into thin slices)

1/2 cup mushrooms, finely sliced

1/2 pound chicken (boneless, skinless)

1 green onions, thinly sliced

1-1/4 teaspoons soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon splenda

1/2 (14 ounce) package egg roll wrappers

1/2 egg white, beaten

(Calorie count: About 90 calories per egg roll)

1. Spray pan with nonstick spray (I used Safeway cooking spray with olive oil). Pour in the beaten eggs and let cook without stirring, until firmed (like an omelet). Flip the eggs over and cook for an additional 20 seconds to firm the other side. Set egg pancake aside to cool, then slice into thin strips.

2.Use the same pan, add more spray if needed. Add the coleslaw mix and cook for 2 minutes until wilted. Add bamboo shoots, mushroom, pork, green onions, soy sauce and splenda and continue cooking until the vegetables are soft. Stir in sliced egg, then scoop the mixture into a bowl and refrigerate until cold.
(We actually put ours in the freezer for a short amount of time and it cooled off almost immediately)

 3. ASSEMBLY OF EGGROLLS:
To assemble the egg rolls, place an eggroll wrapper onto your work surface with one corner pointing towards you. Place about 3 tablespoons of cooled filling in a heap onto the bottom third of the wrapper. Brush a little beaten egg white onto the top two edges of the wrapper (I actually put eggwhite all the way down on both sides), then fold the bottom corner over the filling and roll firmly to the halfway point. Fold the left and right sides snugly over the egg roll, then continue rolling until the top corners seal the egg roll with the egg white. Place the eggroll, seam down, on to a baking sheet (make sure baking sheet has been sprayed with PAM or a similar spray) and cover with a plastic wrap while making the rest of the eggrolls.
Repeat with remaining egg roll wrappers, covering the finished egg rolls with plastic wrap to keep from drying out.

Do one eggroll at a time and keep the remaining eggroll wrappers in plastic, so that they don't dry out.

4. When all eggrolls have been made, spray the top of each eggroll with PAM (or whichever spray you use).  Place in the middle of the oven on 400 F and bake for about 20 minutes.

Let cool for a few minutes, and enjoy, either by themselves or you can use additional dipping sauces, like teriyaki or sweet and sour.

The eggrolls turned out really good, I will definitely be making these again!

Here's the eggroll filling on the wrapper, ready to be rolled up!

Our finished eggrolls, sprayed with PAM and ready to go in the oven

Eggrolls, baked and ready to eat!

Eggroll on the plate with a drizzle of teriyaki sauce on top.

KUNG PAO CHICKEN



After we'd devoured the eggrolls, it was time for Kung Pao Chicken!  Kung Pao Chicken is one of the more calorie rich Chinese entrees usually, because of the sauce, so it was exciting to find a good recipe for a home made one, where we are more in charge of the calories.
Here is the recipe we followed for the kung pao chicken:

1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into chunks

1 table spoon white wine (we didn't have any so we used a little white wine vinegar instead, worked great)

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

2 tablespoons cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tablespoons water

1 ounce hot chile paste

1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar

2 teaspoons brown sugar (we actually used Splenda)

4 green onions, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts

4 ounces peanuts

1. Make a marinade for the chicken: Combine 1 tablespoon wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, a table spoon of sesame seeds and 1 tablespoon of the cornstarch/water mixture. Place chicken pieces in a glass dish or bowl and add the marinade. Toss to coat. Cover dish and place in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

2. Making the Kung Pao Sauce: In a small bowl combine 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 tablespoon of the cornstarch/water mixture, chili paste, vinegar and sugar. Mix together and add green onion, garlic, water chestnuts and peanuts. Let the sauce simmer on low heat until aromatic.

3. Meanwhile, remove chicken from marinade and saute in a large skillet until meat is white and juices run clear. When the kung pao sauce is aromatic, add the sauteed chicken to the sauce and let simmer until sauce thickens

(Calorie count: About 220 per serving + rice ... we used a brown rice, it was 150 calories per serving so the total count for this dish endedu p being 370.)

The Kung Pao turned out great! In fact, as we sat at the table, we all kept scooping a little more on our plates while we were talking, even though we were full and should have stopped eating.... lol. 

I will definitely make this again as well.  At 370 a serving, it is definitely doable as a diet food.

Kung Pao chicken in the pan, ready for consumption.

Kung Pao on the plate, with brown rice.

Kung Pao, Eggroll & Rice... yum.

(I'm getting hungry for more as I see these photos lol....)

 Hm... what's missing... oh yes! Dessert!! Well, there is no need for us to make dessert on our own because we have the world's best frozen yogurt only a few blocks away from where we live.. 21 Choices!   So after dinner, we headed out there and got our frozen yogurt, then we went home and played Monopoly.

I got this really cool Monopoly for Christmas, it's a "Nightmare before Christmas" Monopoly, where all streetnames and "railroads" etc has been converted to match the movie.  It's cool, it puts a different spin on the game.  It had been a long time since I played Monopoly and I had to brush up on the rules again. It was really fun! Who would've thought non-console or non-computer games could still be fun. :-)

Great night, a great time was had by all and I can't wait to repeat it sometime soon.