More tuna, less eggs for breakfast

[afuna]

So it was pointed out to me that what I was thinking of as an omelette was actually scrambled eggs (pictures on the other end. Look very yummy). My definition of scrambled eggs was eggs + only liquid ingredients. My definition of an omelette was eggs + solid ingredients.

So this means that I know I have finally made scrambled eggs! \o/ (Now to figure out the omelette thing)

Cooked eggs again for breakfast three days ago. I have been trying to add one new thing every day. That day, it was vegetables, chopped fine. We call them pechay baguio, similar to pechay tagalog (which I believe you guys will know as bok choy?). I don't know any other names for it, though.


Egg:


Pechay baguio:


Pechay baguio chopped up (slices are apparently still too big, but my wrists were still sore afterwards):


Skip skip skip the rest. Too busy cooking so I could eat, to take pictures. Rest is as you'd expect though (milk, cheese, crushed garlic).

Scrambled eggs:




That day, I learned some important things:

• chopping up vegetables(anything!) into thin strips is hard! Tends to be too thick most of the time, and uneven


• Peeling garlic before crushing it is tedious. I learned the next day to crush before peeling. That went much better


• Chopping onions ;_;


• Your cooking spoon/spatula thing should not be wet! Got stung by hot oil (just little pinpricks) because I didn't realize it shouldn't be sizzling like that. I thought it was one of the hazards of cooking, and I was terrified but I had to go on because I was stubborn I thought it was normal. Turns out it isn't. Oops


• Getting stung by pinpricks of hot oil? Not the end of the world. Startling, annoying, still makes me jumpy, but not permanent, not earth-shattering

Then the past two days, I was getting bored with cooking eggs, so I looked through our pantry, discovered we have something like two dozen(!!!) cans of tuna in there, and started experimenting.

First experiment with tuna, just frying with some oil + some garlic (what do you call that? It's gisa in Filipino, emphasis on the second syllable, but I can't think of the equivalent in English), until the garlic was browned, then putting in the tuna to make it smell good + heat it up + just play (with fire. hah).

Then once the tuna was removed, and since the pan was still hot, I decided to play about a bit by cooking some pear slices on the pan. I got the idea that you could cook pear from pauamma's descriptions of what he sometimes cooks... though I am certain that how I cooked it is not what he had in mind :-)

It looked boring, so I drizzled some honey on! Bad idea, left a burnt smell, though surprisingly not much of a burnt taste. I have since gotten more ideas for cooking pear from #dw. Also other ideas for cooking tuna (tuna melt, mmm). Thanks guys!

I then chopped up the pear into my tuna. Tuna was dry, pear was moist. In hindsight, I maybe should have tried cooking the pear with the tuna, but overall it was, hm, interesting at least. Bearable. Not something I'd inflict on someone else, but it satisfied my hunger.

Also helped out with lunch and dinner! Did maybe half of the work, with a lot of handholding (chicken with potato carrots for lunch, salmon for dinner!)

So then yesterday, I got out the tuna again, but this time I chopped up a huge Fuji apple and cooked three quarters of it with the tuna, to make it moist. That part worked, but the Fuji apple tasted too much like tuna, and the tuna didn't taste enough like apple, so as an experiment it's only about a 7 or so (a 5, with +2 factor added for experimentation that didn't actually blow up in my face). Maybe I could have mixed the remaining quarter of the apple in with the rest post-cooking, to make things sweeter/apple-r tasting?

I also used a wok, instead of a frying pan to minimize splatter (this wasn't my idea, it was suggested to me. It was a great suggestion!). Other ingredients -- garlic, uhhh and I guess that's it.

That was the day I burned my finger. Applied this amazing balm (I don't know the name, but it felt like it leeched all the heat out of the burn). It's healed quite well now. Spent half a day typing funny, until I could put pressure back on my finger. Now my index finger feels strangely numb, and I think that's a blister, but it's not painful or tender.

And today, I want to code too much to do any cooking, so I'm eating whatever I can find in the refrigerator.

Comments

[ursamajor]

Re veggie thin strips: ITA, that's why I bought a mandoline ;) And some of the hard veggies are still really tough to make it go through (carrots, parsnips, etc)

Re pechay, I thought it was bok choy until I looked at the picture - it just looks so much bigger than the bok choy I usually get over here.

Re gisa, saute? (Or as pauamma would spell, sauté; either way, pronounced sɔ-ˈteɪ). Depends on the amount of oil you used, too; if it was just like a couple of tablespoons, saute. If more, it's pan-fry; if significantly more (like, tall-sided pot and enough oil that your food is floating or submerged in it), deep-fry.

[richestgrave.livejournal.com]

chopping up vegetables(anything!) into thin strips is hard! Tends to be too thick most of the time, and uneven

This is apparently an art form! AHAHAHA. Experience is the only way to get better at it, my brother tells me. Vegetables are hard to cook, I find, they're so, hm, what's the word? Delicate? XD

I was gonna suggest saute for "gisa" rin. And oooh, garlic. I love it on almost anything. *mind wanders* Just the smell of it... *is gone*

[damned_colonial]

I love your food experiments! And hey, you have a wok. And you're Filipino? Want me to throw Asian-flavoured ideas your way?

Pechay baguio is "chinese cabbage" where I come from. If I had that and eggs and garlic, I'd make a sort of fried rice thing. I mean, if I had rice too.

Break an egg into a bowl. Add a tiny drizzle of water -- about a teaspoonful -- and whisk them together. The water helps the egg thin out and whisk into a more consistent liquid; without it, the yolk and white tend to stay separate.

Heat some oil in your wok and make sure it covers the bottom well. Tip the egg in and swoosh it around to make a very thin layer. It should cook/solidify almost immediately into a sort of crepe-like thing. Use a spatula to scrape it up, and dump it on a plate. It'll continue to cook for a minute more just with its own heat. Cut it into strips.

A little more oil and crushed garlic in the pan. Chilli too if you like it. Saute a little til it smells good, but don't brown the garlic.

Throw in some chopped chinese cabbage (how you have it chopped in your picture looks ideal). Toss briefly so it wilts a little.

Throw in about 2 cups of leftover rice. Toss it around the wok so it well mixed with the other stuff and heats through.

Toss the egg strips back in. Continue to mix everything through. I'm sure you've seen people using a wok before, so you know what I mean -- toss and flip, get the stuff from under up on top and vice versa.

Dump it out on a plate. Eat it. NOM.

Also, just thinking... there's a variant of fried rice, kedgeree, which is an Anglo-Indian sort of thing and uses rice and fish. You could do it with tuna if you wanted! (I usually use salmon, if using tinned fish, or some kind of smoked fish if I have my shit together enough to actually go shopping for it.)

[afuna]

I love your food experiments! And hey, you have a wok. And you're Filipino? Want me to throw Asian-flavoured ideas your way?

I am Chinese-Filipino (Chinese by blood, Filipino by nationality, a good mix of both for culture) and I would love having some more Asian-flavoured ideas my way. Much easier to get local ingredients too, I hope.

Pechay baguio is "chinese cabbage" where I come from. If I had that and eggs and garlic, I'd make a sort of fried rice thing. I mean, if I had rice too.

Hmm, interesting. We make fried rice with pechay tagalog (the darker green veggies linked above), but I don't think I've done it with pechay baguio (the lighter green stuff).

(snip recipe)
Dump it out on a plate. Eat it. NOM.

OMG. Yes, I need to try that, if I don't forget. It sounds simple enough to do, but also very rewarding.

Also, just thinking... there's a variant of fried rice, kedgeree, which is an Anglo-Indian sort of thing and uses rice and fish. You could do it with tuna if you wanted! (I usually use salmon, if using tinned fish, or some kind of smoked fish if I have my shit together enough to actually go shopping for it.)

Is it just rice and fish, no egg or veggies? Or do I do similar to what you described above, but then add the fish?

[damned_colonial]

The way I do it:

Start with butter in the wok (not oil). Saute some onions until just a little bit brown/caramelised. Add rice and a teaspoon or two of curry powder. I use "Keen's" brand for this, which is the sort of curry powder that is meant when English recipes say curry powder, if you know what I mean. Add to the rice mixture: a couple of hard boiled eggs, chopped up; fish, broken into small chunks; green peas and/or parsley.

If you google for kedgeree recipes, you'll find all kinds of variations, but the general idea is that it's curry-flavoured rice with fish. Hard boiled eggs are a very common addition. Everything else varies.

[damned_colonial]

Oh and for burns: as soon as it happens, run it under cold water for 5-10 minutes. One of the best things to put on a burn is aloe vera gel. And, on the bright side, once any burn heals you'll be tougher than before, and won't burn so easily next time. Pro cooks have hands of iron!

[afuna]

I couldn't find any aloe vera gel, but we did have this white Chinese balm (nameless to me).

That is a good bright side! It means that things will gradually get better. Hopefully.

But I have a question about the running it under cold water -- I was told not to do it, because that would increase the likelihood of water under the skin (I think they mean blisters). Do you know anything about that? Is that just bad science/superstition/misunderstanding of cause-and-effect?

[damned_colonial]

Misunderstanding, I think. Running under water is what you learn in actual first aid courses. The goal is to cool the area so that your flesh doesn't keep cooking.

[afuna]

Aha, that makes sense. Thank you. Will definitely keep that in mind!

[exor674]

... ... Those eggs look nommy. WANT!

[janinedog]

Either you have small hands or huge eggs...that egg looks really big! :o

[afuna]

Small hands! (The egg was pretty small *g*)

[nova]

That's not bok choy. It's some cabbage... I know the name of it in Chinese (but uh, not right now) but no idea of the English name either. But I can recognize it from your pics!

I don't think I've ever thought to cook canned tuna before, that's interesting! I always just mixed it with mayo and threw in some diced celery.

Onions make me cry. Even just peeling them. I always leave that to someone else :) Even doing it under running water doesn't help for me.