Pasta Fagioli

I don’t cook a lot of soup but it is always nice to have a bowl or two during winter. This soup was one of the many Italian dishes that I learned from a friend many years ago but I never thought of making it again until my good friend Shereen tasted it at Olive Garden. I told her I know how to make this soup but it might not be exactly the same as the one she tasted but I will try to replica it. So this here is the recipe and hope it is what she is looking for.

Dried Cherry Shortbread Cookies

We love shortbread but I hardly make any because of the high fat content in it. It is so addictive and you can’t stop just having one or two so the best is not to make any of it but I did make some to be given away for Christmas. This way there won’t be much left for our own consumption so we feel less guilty ha ha.. Anyway instead of making plain shortbread I added some dried cherries to it this time. All my friends love these cookies and some of them even asked for the recipe. So here it is.

 

Chinese Baked BBQ Meat Buns

I made these for Carlos before I left for New York a few months ago. He loves these little BBQ pork buns. When he comes home from work he can just warm it up in the microwave oven and eat it with his salad. These types of buns are very popular at dim sum restaurant or Chinese Bakeries and it is filled with succulent sweet and savory BBQ pork filling. For these buns, I used some leftover BBQ/Char Siew that I made some time ago but you can always buy some BBQ pork from the Asian restaurant here in the US.

For these buns, instead of using my regular Japanese Sweet Bun Dough I used the recipe from Lena’s of Frozen Wings .

Kimchi Fried Rice

I am not familiar with Korean food except for Korean Pancakes or Hoddeok . All I know is kimchi will be on the dining table in most of the Korean meals. Personally I am not a big fan of Kimchi on its own but it is perfectly tasty when added into fried rice or stew. I made a batch of kimchi and I think it taste much better than the one that I bought from the Asian supermarket.

This batch of fried rice was made from multi-grain rice. I am slowly switching to brown rice or multi-grain rice but giving a cold turkey to the white rice and switching to 100% brown rice is rather difficult so I am doing it slowly ha ha. I still used white rice for my Nasi Lemak or Hainanese Chicken Rice . Here is how they look. There are suppose to have 7 different types of grain like brown rice, black rice, rice bran, split peas, oat, barley and millet in it.

Fried rice is one of those dishes that you can customize and make your own. Really, mostly anything goes and it’s a great way to revitalize that day old rice you have sitting in your fridge. Add some proteins or some greens to it and the meal is done within 20 minutes.