I tried to make this without much of a clue so I thought I should share my findings so the next time you try it you’ll have a clue.

The filling I made with a little onion, hot peppers, garlic. I let that fry a bit so it got soft. I used the spray oil stuff. To that I added shrimp, mushrooms and bean sprouts. Quickly thereafter I added soy sauce, oyster sauce, a little salt and whatever hot sauce I could find.

I also cut some fresh vegetables into long thin strips. I used carrots, cucumbers, sweet peas, spring onion, hot peppers and cilantro.

These are the dry rice papers that I used. I didn’t know anything about them really but I saw them at the store and decided to give them a try. I actually thought they were similar to wonton wrappers. I was wrong.

I assumed that the rice paper had to be put into warm water. I think I was very wrong about that. Putting them in warm water made them very difficult to work with. They would rip easily and they absorbed too much water. I also think I left it in the water too long. So if you ever try it, use room temperature water and leave it in only as long as to make the paper not stiff. I think that’ll be like 20 seconds or something. Also the rice paper itself is a little salty so make sure your fillings are salt deficient to balance it all out.

Then spoon a little of the cooked filling with the sliced vegetables and wrap like a burrito.

Following is one of my favourite recipes. It’s couscous with shrimp. What is couscous? Good question. It’s wheat. Couscous is a staple food in North Africa.

You start with couscous in a bowl.

Then you add equal portion stock (vegetable, chicken, etc) or water. I think it’s best if the liquid is hot. After pouring the liquid into the bowl of couscous you let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes. After, you scratch the surface with a fork to make it fluffy and separate as shown below.

To that I added diced tomato, green onion, cilantro, olive oil and lots of oregano. Couscous has a very neutral flavour. You need to add stuff to it. Try whatever.

You can stop there or you can add some shrimp (or other protein). Below is shrimp washed and patted dry with freshly ground black pepper, lemon juice and salt.

You melt some butter/margerine and wait until it’s done frothing. Then you add the shrimp and let sit. After a minute you can add garlic paste or minced garlic. Then toss it a bit until shrimp is pink. Do not overcook shrimp, it gets weird.

After, take the shrimp out of the pan. There will be shrimp bits and seasoning left. You then add apple juice and lemon juice to unstick the bits (deglaze the pan).

After the liquid comes to a boil and thickens a bit pour it over the shrimp. Add a little cilantro and grated lemon peel.

Then incorporate the shrimp and juices into the couscous. Couscous can get really dry so liquids are a necessary addition.

Here is another recipe. I used to do this kind of thing for lunch but now I’ll only do this kind of thing for dinner. It’s basicly seasoned ground beef in puff pastry.

First you need ground beef, lamb, chicken, turkey… tofu? Don’t know, haven’t tried tofu. Try it and let me know.

Then you need all of this:

Basicly you throw however much you want of whatever you have in the meat. I use various hot sauces, dijon mustard, ginger and garlic paste, soy sauce, worchestire sauce, brown sugar, cornstarch, salt and a little oil. Missing in this picture is baking soda and freshly ground black pepper which I forgot to include into the picture. Your aim should be to include hot, sour and sweet flavours. You can emphasize whichever taste you prefer (I prefer hot) but it’s important to have all three. If you add soy sauce go easy on the salt. Cornstarch gives the meat some stiffness and baking soda makes fun fizzing noises and helps with the whole marinating process.

Once mixed it should look something like this: (sorry, think it’s out of focus)

Then you saran wrap the bowl and leave it in the fridge overnight.

The next day you fry the meat. You should not need to add oil. You added a bit to the meat mix and that should carry you through. Should look something like this:

Then you use puff pastry like the one seen below.

Then you cut the pastry into squares, put the meat in the middle and fold over to form triangles. Then you bake them and get the final product as seen below.

New year and thus new blog topic category entitled “Cooking”. I begin with my meat sauce. Below are the vegetables I use. Onions, celery and carrots are standard, add hot chillies if you like spice.

Wash and dice vegetables. Heat oil. I try to cook as light as I can, add enough oil so that you can swirl the pot once and the floor of the pot will be covered with a uniform thin layer. Also, add salt and pepper to the vegetables. I try to go light on the salt too. This all goes on at medium to high heat.

Once the vegetables our soft. Add ground meat. You can use chicken, veal, beef, whatever… no fish. I think that would be nasty.

Keep meat and vegetables at medium to high heat. Let the meat brown in the vegetable mix. Once it’s pretty well cooked through it should look something like this:

Then add canned tomatoes and tomato paste. If you use whole tomatoes like I did then while the sauce is cooking you have to press it with a potato smasher every now then.

After adding the tomato stuff you’re basicly done. All that’s left is the seasoning. Add as much basil, oregano, salt, pepper, parsley as you desire. You can cut up and add more hot chillies if you like. Leave the sauce on medium to low heat for atleast a half an hour. The longer the better.

Final product:

Ok, so the last pic wasn’t actually the final pic. There was some potato smasher action in the pot afterwards to get the meat sauce less tomato-chunked. If you don’t add meat you can make a really good smooth tomato sauce by putting it through the blender after it’s cooked but still warm. You can use diced tomatoes and save yourself some hassle. This sauce takes a while to make but you can use it for many things.