Archive for the ‘Food’ Category
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Saturday, April 2nd, 2022Ramen 14: The Endless Parade of Chicken
Saturday, March 26th, 2022Its time for more ramen reviews! Yes, the varieties seem to never end 🙂
Nissin ‘Chinese Product‘ (Artificial Chicken Flavor) (470 Calories, 21 g fat, 1980 mg sodium)
This one was a bit of a calorie and sodium bomb, which suggested a robust taste. Everything was fine until the flavor packet was added to the cooking noodles, at which point an unpleasant smell filled the kitchen.
My first reaction to sampling this was that it had a strange seafood taste (which KLS also detected) and tasted strongly of vegetables and nothing at all like chicken. It wasn’t terrible, but I’d never choose to eat it again. An average product: 5/10.
Kasari Kids (Chicken Flavor) (228 Calories, 42 g fat, 492 mg sodium)
This is a cute mini-sized product for kids. I bought this maybe a year ago but it sat in the cupboard all this time since the adult-sized version was awful. I prepared this with trepidation.
Firstly it’s not ramen: the noodles resemble the packet ‘chicken noodle soups’ I used to eat as a kid. Secondly, it had little or no visible flavoring added, with just a smatter of dedicated veggies mixed with the noodles. And thirdly, it had no taste at all. Imagine eating flavorless noodles in hot water and that’s what this was. I have to believe this was a production error since I can’t see how anyone could call this a chicken soup, but regardless my score for this is an easy 0/10!
Nissin Souper Meal (Chicken Flavor) (560 Calories, 23 g fat, 2700 mg sodium)
This mega-sized beast is obviously made for a real man so it was something I should love surely? The noodle brick was bigger, the flavor pack bulging and I chuckled as I poured what seemed like too much water into the massive cup.
Unfortunately, it disappointed. I’ve sampled a few Nissin products so far, and mostly they are average and would be good in a world without Gefen or Maruchan. This one however tasted very different to me: more earthy or even beefier. I found it distasteful, and ultimately this was a product that wouldn’t be to my liking even at half the size. Score: 3/10.
That’s 36 ramens reviewed and I’ve still got some to go, including the most expensive one I have yet purchased. What is it? Stay tuned…
Ramen 13: A New Bowl
Friday, March 11th, 2022Here’s an aside in my enduring ramen series. I got this for my birthday:
It’s a brick ramen bowl! The idea is that instead of cooking the ramen on the stove the usual way, you put the brick and seasoning in the bowl:
Add boiling water:
Until the brick is covered (or in this case, just starts to float):
Then seal the lid and wait a few minutes:
And here’s what I found after I opened and gave a quick stir:
Did it work? Yes it did! Will I use it again? Probably not!
The reason is I like my brick ramen served super hot, and I apparently like the noodles somewhat over cooked. Both of these need stove preparation. KLS loves using the bowl though, so it’s in a good home 🙂
Let’s Cook Tacos!
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022It’s been a while since I shared a recipe, and the pandemic has taught us all that tacos are easy and delicious. So here’s my preferred method of preparation!
Toss about 90 grams of 93% or higher reduced fat mince into a pan on medium to high heat. Cool until there’s no red.
Add water and taco seasoning. The exact quantity of each doesn’t matter; you want it looking like the above. Turn the heat to maximum.
The water will evaporate off leaving just delicious meat. If it looks like the above, you’re golden!
Heat up the shells in your air fryer. Ideally you’ll use stand-and-stuff types, but we were duped by fancy packaging into buying the above which don’t even stand up! The one at the front is slightly smaller as well, although once again the packaging lied and suggested they were even smaller still! Toss a little bit of shredded pizza cheese into the shells: as for how much, remember the mantra ‘less is best‘!
Add the meat, the heat from which should melt the cheese. Finesse is immaterial here; just stuff it in.
Add the pineapple. This is perhaps the most critical step, since tacos are nothing without pineapple. I used the fancy Dole stuff in the black-and-gold cans, but as you know any pineapple is better than no pineapple!
Add the shredded lettuce and you’re finished. All that’s left is the best step: eating!
Why not make these and let me know what you think?
Mozzarella Time!
Monday, January 17th, 2022KLS got a cheese-making kit for Christmas, and already used it to make some halloumi cheese. She did that so quickly I didn’t have time to take photos, so you can bet when it was time for the next cheese I did. Today she made ‘fast mozzarella’!
That’s most of the contents of the kit. It also came with a lengthy manual (you can make over a dozen types of cheese), a thermometer and a cheesecloth. You can also make butter using the kit!
The mozzarella began with a gallon of milk which was heated and then (tiny amounts of) most of the ingredients from the above photo were added periodically.
It started solidifying after the first few items were added, but once the rennet and calcium chloride was put in the process sped up considerably:
All told it was only about an hour on the stove before it was removed for the next step, at which point it looked like this:
If this had been a traditional mozzarella recipe the cheese would now be pressed for about an hour to remove the whey, but the fast version utilized the microwave to do this. In three steps it was microwaved for a minute and each time more of the liquid came out:
It’s almost done! The remaining addition was to stir in a bit of salt, after which it looked like and had the consistency of bread dough:
The penultimate step was to form balls and brine the cheese for 10 minutes. During this step the cheese cooled and solidified:
And then it was done! The three mozzarella balls are now wrapped and in the fridge, waiting to be eaten (by KLS only since I’m not a fan of this type of cheese):
She’s already tried some and says the consistency and taste are both good and she’s looking forward to using it in a recipe! That’s two out of two cheese successes from this kit 🙂