Category Archives: Vegetables

American, Lamb, Vegetables

Braised Lamb Shanks with Garlic and Vermouth

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You’ll swoon over these lamb shanks in buttery braised garlic sauce.

Braised Lamb Shank

For some reason, it’s really hard to find good beef here in Kuching. Last year when Nate was hankering for some steak for his birthday, I went to the store and got some ribeyes to grill up for him.

They were not good.

They were tough and did not have enough marbling. I had bought a big hunk of ribeye frozen and when we thawed them out, we had a feeling they weren’t going to be good. So, we’ve pretty much given up on getting good steaks here. The rest of that hunk ended up being sliced up and used for Niku-jaga which was a better application of that quality beef.

Anyway, why am I going on about beef when the title of this post says lamb shanks? Well, it’s because I want to let you know that even though we can’t get good beef here, we can certainly find good lamb!

The same place I got my beef, I also found some vacuum-packed lamb shanks that were super meaty. I got myself two shanks the first time; made this recipe and regretted not buying more. So the second time around, I made sure to get four shanks.

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American, Poultry, Vegetables

Chicken and Kale Soup

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An easy, tasty, and healthy soup for a weekday meal.

Chicken and Kale Soup 1

Growing up, I don’t recall eating a lot of greens for dinner at home. I would say that, overall, my mom’s cooking tended to be heavy on the meat and carbs, and light on the fresh vegetables. So, I was glad to hear that, after my mom went through a battle with breast cancer, she had changed her diet to include more greens.

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Korean, Noodles, Vegetables

Korean Jap Chae Recipe

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Personally, this was one of the first dishes that I LOVED in Korean food.

korean jap chae and bulgogi

I promised that I would write this recipe down for you last time when I posted on how to make Bulgogi. This recipe calls for a bit more work in terms of prep but the pay-off is really delicious so I think it’s worth it. And if you have spent enough time in the kitchen cutting veggies, then this should not be too hard for you.

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Indian, Vegetables

Masala Vadai

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Recipe for how to make this tasty, South Indian fried lentil snack called vada or vadai.

Masala Vadai

A few days ago, Nate and I were walking in Kuching’s version of a strip mall (more like a row of shop lots) looking for Christmas presents for our kids and we bumped into an Indian lady selling snacks outside a store. She spoke to me in Hokkien (a Chinese dialect) which surprised me. I guess she must have lived here a good long time and have interacted with enough Chinese here to pick up the language. I bet her Hokkien is better than mine!

Anyway, she was selling vadai and some steamed chickpeas. Nate had been craving vadai for a long time so we happily snapped up some to munch on as we walked around shopping. Though they were tasty, they lacked the curry leaves that Nate loves dearly and they just didn’t have any heat to them. That is one problem with living here in Kuching—people don’t enjoy their food too spicy. My heat tolerance has probably gone down a lot since getting here. And being that this lady was local to Kuching, she has also tempered her food to match the local tastebuds.

Feeling somewhat deprived of good vadai, I decided it was time to try to make some of my own. I’ve had a Southern Indian cookbook that I bought many years ago that I’ve never gotten around to cooking from and I decided that it was time to look at the recipes again. True enough, there was a section on snacks and there was not just one recipe for vadai but several recipes.

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