Sichuan-style Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

Verdict: Win

I've been putting off this recipe for nearly 2 weeks now. I'm not much of a soup baby, but this soup hit the spot. Because I didn't already have roast chicken, I had to divide the recipe into 4 parts and use 3 pots and 1 pan. I substituted roast chicken with home-cooked chicken leg quarters. Instead of leeks, I chopped up a yellow onion. I also added chopped celery and used a little extra Sichuan peppercorns. Below is an adapted version of the recipe, in 4 parts.

Tang Yuan

Verdict: Win

I stopped by Asia Market last week and was pleasantly surprised that a pound of glutinous rice flour only cost a buck, so I picked up 2 1-lb bags with the intent of making sesame balls, tang yuan, mochi, or nian gao.

DY and I made tang yuan tonight just because it was so easy and fast, and we needed something sweet post-dinner. He filled his up with store-bought red bean pasta, whereas I ate mine plain in a homemade ginger-brown sugar syrup. They had a little bit of an adverse rice dough smell/taste, so next time I'm going to use sugar water (with a lot of sugar) instead of plain water, as well as fill more of them with red bean paste. The recipe still did the job and it was rather nostalgic.

***Update 1/29
I stored my leftovers in a container with the syrup, and it looks like not only did the tang yuan double in size after absorbing the syrup, but they also lost that odd dough smell/taste after reheating them in the microwave. Yum!

Baked Tilapia with Montreal Chicken Seasoning and Lemon Shaved Carrots

Dropped by Walmart yesterday night because I was too tired to study, so instead I picked up 10 lbs of chicken for next week's big dinner and some Montreal chicken seasoning. I vaguely remembered Cecil telling me it tasted great with tilapia, so I picked it up since I couldn't find celery seed and other overly priced spices.

Dinner was so basic that I won't include a recipe. Simply thawed and washed tilapia fillets, seasoned with the Montreal chicken seasoning and some cilantro, and stuck them on a pan in the oven for 16 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Then I stir-fried some broccoli with garlic and salt and drizzled with lemon juice. I also had a bag of carrots to use up, so I took one and shaved it. Stuck the shavings, salt, and lemon juice in the wok, put the lid on, and cooked it for a few minutes. I like carrots, but sometimes the big chunky pieces don't bide well with my stomach. These shavings were much easier to digest.

And I love lemons. That's all.