1.28.2009

Happy New Year!


Welcome Year of the Ox



For this week's menu, we decided to celebrate the Asian New Year (especially since SH was born in the year of the Ox)!. Our new ingredients this week were dried mushrooms and tofu. Both of these ingredients were incorporated into the Asian Primavera that was our main dish.

We started the evening with a quick and easy miso soup. This was just a simple miso broth with added tofu and soba noodles.

The soup turned out to be very tasty and enjoyable. It was a nice starter that curbed our hunger, yet was not too filling.

The main dish was an "Asian Primavera". This was an udon noodle dish topped with a stir fry of mushrooms, bok choy, zucchini and herbs.

The dish was beautiful, one of the most stunning dishes I have made. As far as the overall taste, I was a bit disappointed. I felt the dish lacked flavor and added quite a bit of soy sauce just to give it a kick. I am not sure I would make it again, but it was fun to try and I enjoyed using the dried mushrooms and the tofu.
Of course we had dessert - and this one was very easy and simple. We cut wonton wrappers into circles and triangles then brushed them with a sweetened egg wash. We sprinkled on some cinnamon and poppy seeds. We baked them for about 5 minutes and then enjoyed. I must admit they were quite tasty and I wished we had made more!



SB- We definitely had an adventurous menu this week! I really enjoyed the soup-it was warm, satisfying, and slightly spicy. I will be making the soup again quite often, it was cheap, simple, quickly, and very good.

The main dish, while beautiful, was lacking in flavor. I enjoyed the noodles, but the sauce definitely needed much more soy sauce and other flavor to give it some pep. I will not make this recipe again, but I will probably use it for an idea to start another recipe from. I am glad we tried it though, I enjoyed the tofu and mushrooms!!

The dessert was fun, and easy! We were going to make animal crackers-but we didn't have any cookie cutters. Therefore, we just ended up with circles and triangles, but they were yummy circles and triangles! I think some honey would make them a little sweeter and more enjoyable.

We had a fun evening, with some hits and misses. But even the best can't always be perfect!

Next week we will be taking it easy with comfort foods, but will have a very special surprise dessert!


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