Sally’s Kitchen & Stuff

This keeps well in the fridge for a maximum of THREE days. I generally make it as I roast other things in the oven, since bulbs of garlic take up very little space. This stuff makes a nice aromatic garlic bread without the bite, or serve with your steamed veggies to add a little somethings special.

Ingredients - this was enough to serve 5 at my party, and we had leftovers.
2 Bulbs of Garlic
2 TBSP Garlic butter
Olive oil, salt to taste

Instructions
Preheat oven to 450. Cut the tops of the garlic off with a serrated knife - expect to take about 1/4 to 1/3 of the top off. If you see any cloves that are still completely enclosed, give them a little cut to expose them. Place on a square of aluminum foil, top facing up. Drizzle lightly with live oil and a pinch of salt. Wrap the garlic with the foil, by folding up the corners, and roast for 25 mintues.

Unwrap partway, leaving the tops exposed. Using a washcloth, or anything else that would shield you from the heat, squeeze the roasted garlic into a small bowl. Mixed in chopped garlic butter, and whip with a fork. Mmmmm.

I don’t live near Chinatown, so it was out of the question to get bean paste in a hurry. Instead, I used a mixture of dark and light soya sauce, and a lot of braising, to get the right flavour. You can cook this right in a large skillet.

Ingredients
2 strips of spare ribs - approx 1.5 ft long each, cut into squares
1 bulb garlic, peeled and crushed
1/2 cup dark soya sauce
1/2 cup light soya sauce
1 TBSP spicy garlic sauce (or just hot sauce will do)
Light oil, such as grapeseed

Instructions
Preheat pan to medium heat, add oil, and lightly fry the garlic until JUST golden. Set aside. Brown the squares of ribs on each side to seal in juices. Pour the leftover oil out, and add the rest of the ingredients. Close the lid and lower the heat to medium low. Briase for 30 minutes, tossing a couple of times to ensure even doneness. Chop up the garlic set aside earlier and toss with the pan sauce.

Easy, huh? Serve this over rice, and some steamed broccoli.

I hosted a dinner party on Sunday night, with just a few people over. My plan was to cook for 6 - easy. On the menu:

Chicken & Leeks Soup with Rice
Pan-fried Mixed Vegetables served with Roasted Garlic Butter
Soya Garlic Spareribs on fragrant Rice
Spiced Coconut Tapioca Pudding

There are a few tricks you can use to make dinner parties a breeze:
1) Prep food beforehand. Do the shopping a day ahead, if not two. Before you start putting things in the fridge, sort out the food that you are going to serve. Prep (wash, chop, mince, marinate, etc) and put into tupperware containers.
2) If you are making a soup, do it the day before. Let it cool, then refrigerate.
3) Cook vegetables LAST MINUTE. Meats and sauces can usually wait in the pan and be heated up before serving, but vegetables will wilt and brown if you let it sit.

What do you do if you don’t have an indoor grill? You can always make pan-fried burgers. I serve these with tortillas instead of the usual burger buns.

Ingredients - makes 8 mini burgers
2 lbs lean ground beef (you can use mix of any meat, except lamb - it’s too fatty.)
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup shredded harvati
1/4 cup ground parmasean
1 1/2 TBSP salt
1/2 TBSP paprika
1 TBSP dried basil - you can use fresh, but double the amount
3 cloves chopped garlic - minced if you want a milder taste
Light oil - grape seed oil / peanut oil

Instructions
Combine everything but the meat into a large mixing bowl. Mix in minced meat with your fingers, separating the clumps as you go. Combine with your hands, careful not to PRESS or overmix. (You’d end up with one tough burger.) Separate into 2, then 4, then 8 meat balls. Coat the outside of each with breadcrumbs, flatten to 1/3 inch patties.

Heat pan to medium high, then add the oil - always. If you leave oil to heat with the pan, it would burn before you put anything on it. Fry the burgers, 8 minutes or so on each side, half covered. To check for done-ness, cut one open. If you must, make a few extras, and use those to gauge how cooked the other ones are. It is very important, when cooking ground beef, that everything on the inside is well done. Fish them out onto a paper-towel covered plate, and let it sit for 5 minutes before serving.

I had a bout of homesickness on Saturday. It was wet, it was cold, it was rainy. It was miserable. Stu told me he’d spend the day with me, and then ended up going out with his buddies to play DoD, and left me at home with my piano (well, at least that Waltz Lanna gave me is coming along GREAT) and Bloodlines.

By the time he got home I was a whiny wreck - it was too cold for me to go out, I missed him, I played so much piano my fingers ached. I refused to have dinner, refused to make dinner, and wanted roast duck with rice. Yup. I missed my mommy, I want to go home, and the only way to cheer me up was real Chinese food. Roast duck, white soya chicken, chicken feet, crispy roast pork; any one of them would’ve had me bouncing in my chair. I can be such a pain sometimes.

So we ended up driving out at 9:20 PM, through a snow/rain storm; parking in Chinatown; risking a ticket; braving the cold and the rain walking through Chinatown. Thank goodness the restaurant was still open (I’ve never seen it closed) or I would’ve been really peeved. We bought the duck. Rice was cooked and waiting in the rice cooker when we arrived home. All was well again.

At the end of the night I asked him - since he was complaining a little - whether it was worth the trip. He told me so, "it’s worth the trip because you’re happy."

I’m one lucky little girl.