Category Archives: recipes

Cooking With The Kids Ep. (?): Peanut Noodles!

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Sure! We know what we’re doing!

Hello world! It’s been a year and half since my last post but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. In fact, it feels like just yesterday when I was slinging garlic noodles while simultaneously fulfilling a homework assignment for my younger daughter. So yeah, as I’ve said numerous times in these intermittent posts, time is flying by. I’m reminded of that every day when I look at my kids and how fast they’re growing. Don’t believe me? Well, just peruse the catalogue of old posts and vids where I shamelessly injected my kids into the vids (hoping to score more views – didn’t work) and you’ll see them go from being babies and toddlers (chile verde, greenbeans, granola) to young and still adorable -measured completely objectively- kids (fried chicken, chow mein, yogurt, sorbet) to bigger but still objectively cute kids (leftovers, broth, smoothies). As you know doubt noticed, having watched all those vids, from the earlier ones to the later ones, there is noticeable growth and development. I don’t have to point the camera down as much or use step stools. The kids speak more coherently from video to video (shout out, school!). Which brings us to the this current post. Kaya, the older child is now in the eight grade and is now taller than my wife, Shefali (aka the boss) – though not by much and also Shef’s not exactly tall, so it’s a low bar (literally). But Kaya’s on camera persona has also developed and her off the cuff remarks give my witticisms a run for their money! And that is a very high bar because I am witty as fuck! Soon the student will become the master! Mona, the younger one, has also come into her own, but you’ll also see a through line in her personality (spunky and irreverent) that’s obvious whether it’s munching on green beans as a baby or slurping up garlic noodles as an eigh-year-old. Or maybe it’s just me as her sentimental father that sees this. But I also have to give credit to Mona (whose persistence can tread the line to downright annoying – which it often does) for being the driving force behind making this vid. We had some time before the kids started school a few weeks ago and she insisted that we do another cooking video. So, being an amazing father (true fact) I relented. We consulted an old “to do videos” list in our kitchen and settled on peanut noodles.

Out of three ideas (yogurt was already done) peanut noodles was the easiest. Nobody ever accused me of being overly ambitious.

It’s fairly straight forward dish where you can do a lot of the prep beforehand and at meal time, it’s just about assembly. So it’s a great option when you have company and you don’t want to be working your ass off in the kitchen while everyone else is enjoying the fruits of your labor. Also, it’s fantastic for hot days because you can eat everything at room temperature. Those two factors are basically how I came up with this recipe. It was inspired primarily by Vietnamese bun (room temp rice noodle bowls with vegetables, protein and a sauce) and Indonesian gado gado or pecel (room temp cold salads with cooked vegetables, a starch -potatoes in gado gado, rice in pecel – and some sort of protein) drizzled with a sweet and savory peanut sauce. So that’s what these peanut noodles are: a delicious rice noodle salad with prepared vegetables, protein (in this case chicken) all tied together with a homemade peanut sauce. See the ingredients list below.

Et voila! Delicious and nutritious peanut noodles! Please do try this at home!
Ingredients for the salad part:
rice noodles
carrots
cucumbers
cilantro
chicken
Ingredients for the peanut sauce:
peanut butter (chunky or smooth)
hot water
soy sauce
vinegar
sugar (or honey)

My personal philosophy is to treat a recipe more as a guide more than as doctrine. That’s why for this recipe there are no quantities. You’ll figure it out as you cook and things will change based on the number of people you’re cooking for. Also you should feel free to add any other vegetables you think will work. Likewise for the peanut sauce, you can add other ingredients as well (fish sauce, chile oil/crisp, sriracha). Now for more guidance check vid below for how we do it (or at least how we did it on the day of filming):

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Smoothie time! AKA Lazy Parent Meal

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Look at how smooth this smoothie is?!?

Hello people! Yup, it’s been a while. Anything happened since my last post? Oh boy. Needless to say, things have shifted a bit in the outside world as well as on the family front with the Ting fam. More on this later perhaps in a future post – maybe three years from now, given my current track record with this blog. But the main thing is holy shit! The kids are growing so fast! My wife constantly reminds me to do more of these videos while the kids are still (kind of) cute and I’m always like ” yeah, yeah, yeah…” But then Mona my now 7-year old(!) was like, “Baba, can we make a food video?” And I was like ” yeah, yeah yeah…” But here’s the thing: Mona is very persistent and her constant asks and reminders turned my “yeah, yeah, yeah” into an “Ok, fine! What should we make?” We went through the list of things I like to cook and what the family likes to eat. A lot of the dishes we’ve already done for this blog (please peruse after consuming this post) and other dishes seemed needlessly complicated in terms of actually cooking and actually filming. You see, I’m going to break some news here. If it wasn’t absolutely obvious, I’m kind of – no totally – lazy and I just didn’t feel like making a huge effort (God, as I write this I’m realizing what a terrible parent I’ve become or have always been), so I decided to go with what was easiest. The “dish” we settled on was… you guessed it (because you’re a genius and or read the above title of the blog post): a smoothie!

For this one, I went with what we had in the freezer/ fridge, so I didn’t have to go grocery shopping. In this case it was:

Ingredients List

Almond Milk Beverage
Strawberries
Bananas
Mangos
Honey
Peanut Butter

Often, to make the smoothie “healthier” I’ll add kale but we didn’t have any.  So here’s how we do it.  Although honestly, if you need instructions on how to make a smoothie, well then you might need more help than I can offer you here.  Really this video is for savoring that magical dynamic between two charismatic kids and their tired and jaded father.  But don’t thank me, thank Mona.  Please enjoy.

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Back to basics: broth

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chicken bones + water + heat + time = broth

Hi all, I can’t believe it’s been over six months since my last post. Actually I can because that’s been my normal blog schedule more often then not, because you know, life). What I have a harder time believing is that here we are in December (the tail end of 2020) and we’re still in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. If you’re remotely aware of current events, you’ll have some idea of why we’re still in this position, so I’m not going to get into it here and talk about how there’s been a total lack of national leadership in dealing with this pandemic, etc. What I will get into is how much I appreciate what I consider another one of the basics that any home cook should have in his/her/their repertoire: broth.

Why broth? Well, by making your own broth you can save money (always a positive in my book) AND thumb your nose at dumb ass foodie trends and bullshit marketing. I hope you weren’t reading that last sentence aloud at work, on zoom or with your kids present. I guess you can say I have some strong feelings when it comes to the way certain things in the food world become fads and crass commercialism kicks in. Case in point: “bone broth”. People have been making broth for as long as food scraps and bones have existed but it’s only been in the last few years with cross-fit and the keto diet gaining traction that you have the rise of bespoke, hipster, artisanal bone broth which will often run you anywhere from $5-$8 for a 16 oz. container. Listen, I get it. If you don’t have the time nor the bones to actually make it yourself, then by all means, go ahead and buy it. But, if you cook at home, eat meat and have time, then there’s really no excuse. You should make your own broth – not “bone broth” just broth. It’s so easy. All you need are bones that you will have saved from your meat, an oven and time to roast those bones, water and a pot and stove to boil those bones. That’s it. You can also add vegetables if you want. I usually, don’t because I use my broth as a base for other soups or I add it to sauces or gravies. Alright, here’s how I do it.

Broth with an assist from the kids.

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Back to basics: yogurt

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Fresh homemade yogurt

I’ll keep this short and sweet. We’ve been in lock down (shelter in place/ social distance mode) for at least a month and a half.  So, I thought I would make videos of really simple things that I never really thought warranted videos.  But given a lot of time to reflect – like, a lot of time during this pandemic – I realized that sometimes it’s the simple things that we take for granted.  Case in point: yogurt.  It’s probably the easiest thing to make provided you have milk, a yogurt starter (any plain yogurt should work provided it has live yogurt cultures), a way to keep it warm (110°F) and time (a few hours).  People have been making yogurt for millenia, so it’s literally not rocket science, because rockets did not exist 5000 years ago.  Unless aliens were actually the ones who… oh never mind.  Check out the video for how I do it. As yogurt making is so simple and easy, it’s inherently calming, because you’re doing nothing but waiting.  And so, inspired by my niece and her first foray into ASMR, I decided to try my hand at making a calm and soothing video. Let’s just say, at least the yogurt turned out.  I’ll let you be the judge. Please watch with volume up or headphones for the full calming effect.

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Leftovers: What Am I Going To Do?! Ep. 1

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Let me just put this out there: I love leftovers like a fat kid loves cake!  Shout out to 50 Cent.  Now what I don’t love are global pandemics like COVID-19. However, as we are all trying our best to shelter in place in order to flatten the curve (it’s real, let’s all do our part), like others I find myself cooking a whole lot more out of necessity and also to keep sane. That means a whole lot more leftovers, which because I Iove them – as I mentioned at the top – is “a good thing”. Oh my God, I just quoted Martha Stewart! Fuck you, Coronavirus!

But sometimes, instead of the actual meal – like actual, say, lasagna leftovers – I’m left with just the extra flat sheets of egg pasta (homemade because the grocery stores were completely out of all pastas! #panicbuying #humblebrag) I used for the lasagna. What do I do then? Well, coincidentally, that theoretical was based on true life events.   And I’ll tell you what I did.  I cut that pasta up into noodles and found other ingredients in my fridge that went well with egg noodles:  sausage, zucchini, garlic, lemon, capers. And then I threw it all together and made another delicious meal! Because that’s what I do: I make leftovers more delicious.

Fortunately for you, I also I made video with my 4 year-old iphoneSE (with a dirty front lens I can’t clean – thank you Apple!) and my 4 year-old daughter (with a mostly clean front face)  because I’m kind of going crazy and just wanted to make something without thinking about it too much.  So, give a watch and hopefully it inspires you to do something creative and delicious with your leftovers.

 

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