Month: October 2018

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Experiment: Stewed pears

What do you do with a box of green, underripe pears? Ablotsii pears oo, not avocado pears. Ei wait, where do you even get such a box in Accra? As for that one, you’ll have to thank a generous uncle for that. If you don’t have a generous uncle, sorry oo. Or you can just buy pears. A few of them were ripe or almost ripe, and it’s likely that the rest would have ripened with time. But what if you want to eat them now? Or you just want to try your hand at stewing some fruit?

And that’s how we got Exhibit #25 in the “Chief Foodian need a new camera and much better plating skills” series. I really should start taking photos expressly for the purpose of this blog so that I show the whole process from start to finish. Most stewed pear recipes call for a little wine or other alcohol, which I imagine improves the taste, but I didn’t have any wine on hand and most of the people in my house can’t have alcohol anyway (too young/on medication) so it’s just as well.

Here’s how I did it:

  1. Wash the pears, cut in quarters, remove the cores.
  2. Put them in a small saucepan with a little water (enough to come about 1/2 way up the pears), a spoonful or two of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon and a handful of cloves.
  3. Cover and bring to a boil.
  4. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for another 15 minutes until pears are soften. If a toothpick goes through easily, that’s enough.
  5. Remove from the heat. Serve hot or cold. You can also cover them and keep them in the fridge for up to 5 days. Stewed pears probably don’t freeze well unless you intend to blend them into smoothies or drinks.

That’s it, pretty simple. I kept mine in the fridge and had them with oats or yogurt every morning for the next couple of days. Pretty tasty and a good way to get a sweetish kick without adding sugar to the rest of the meal. You don’t even have to stew the pears with sugar if they’re sweet enough for your tastes. In that case just add spices and water and cook.

Enjoy!

 

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Easy breakfast – rice and egg drop soup

Still clearing up old photos I have on my hard drive for some reason. The disadvantage of that is that sometimes I can’t remember exactly how I cooked something. Or even why. I think in the case of the egg drop soup I had some leftover tofu I wanted to use up. I tossed in some other stuff as well. It’s a very simple breakfast to make when you don’t feel like the usual bread and tea or porridge. You just need:

Ingredients
Eggs – as many as you want
Stock/broth. Powdered is fine, and in a pinch you can dissolve a maggi cube in some water
Thinly sliced or precooked vegetables, meat or tofu as needed
A little light soy sauce for extra salt and flavour
A pinch of powdered pepper or curry powder

1. Bring the stock to a boil. No quantity given because it’s a very versatile recipe that’s hard to mess up.
2. Throw in your veggies and any meat if you’re using it. In this case I added some grated carrots, glass noodles and tofu. It would have been nice to get some green veggies in there for added colour.
3. Beat the eggs in a separate container until frothy.
4. Take the soup off the heat, stir the soup till you get a good circulating motion going then pour the beaten eggs in in a thin stream.
5. Wait a minute or two for the eggs to set then return the soup to the heat.
6. Bring it to a simmer again. Stir gently and add pepper, soy sauce and other spices to taste.
7. Serve immediately with rice or plain noodles.

There, that was simple enough, wasn’t it? It’s too late now, but I think it would have looked great if I could have stirred some chopped green onions in at the end. Or if I served it with a leafy salad on the side. I like a mix of colors in my dishes, though you wouldn’t know it to look at the stuff I’ve posted so far. We have a lot of dandelions growing in our backyard because of the rainy season, so they would be a good addition.

So that’s it! One day I’ll do a proper recipe with quantities and everything, but that day is not today. Enjoy!

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Experiment: Scrambled eggs with onions and tomatoes

Another day, another experiment gone wrong. This is a photo I took last year, so I don’t remember exactly what I was trying to make or why, I just remember it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. I think I was aiming to make a big omelette filled with tomatoes and onions? No… Or yes… Actually I seriously don’t remember. But looking at the photo triggers memories of too dry, too-finely scrambled eggs, all boring and grainy in my mouth.

It would have been better if I had just fried the eggs separately and the veggies separately and eaten them with my rice for a tasty breakfast or light lunch. The thing is, I make Chinese-style egg and tomatoes all the time so what went wrong here? The onions? It was the onions, wasn’t it? Anyway, I’m just clearing out old photos of stuff I’ve made in the past and came across this one. I have about a 7:3 ratio of success to failure when I cook stuff, so you can expect more stuff like this in the future. See ya!