AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Yeah, pretty much anything that doesn't come in a Tillamook block over here is considered specialty.

That's because Gouda is produced just over the border for you, in a little Dutch place named Gouda, which is legally the only place in the world that is allowed to produce cheese named... Gouda.

I was not aware of that

I didn't know that either.
Thank you Netherlands, France and Switzerland for bordering on us for the best possible cheese experience.

Also all bourbon has to come from the United states.

Hey, AZ. Welcome to my tiny-ass kitchen, where everything's made up and the calories don't matter.


Today we'll be making BETTER GRILLED CHEESE. You might be thinking, "well, grilled cheese sandwiches are pretty much the bomb already. How could you possibly make them better?"
Well the answer to that, is by 1) adding all the creaminess of those kraft singles in the commercials, without actually having to deal with the grossness of kraft singles. 2) making it so that it's got vegetables in it without tasting like "blech" for those of you who aren't so fond of the greenery.


SHOPPING TIPS:
A good time to make this is whenever you can find the cheese on sale. Especially with cheddar cheese, don't be afraid to buy the big 32oz block. It goes a long way, and as long as you keep it in an airtight container, it will last for over a month in the fridge. Carrots and green onions are always inexpensive. But the bread is probably where some people will run into a problem. Unless you have special dietary needs that can only be met with that super special "23-grain whole wheat berry free-range half-fat with whipped cream and sprinkles" bread, you're just as good off with not spending the ridiculous $5-7 a loaf, and going with just some nice store brand white or wheat, which will usually run you from $1-$1.50 per loaf.


ESTIMATED COST PER BATCH: $5

ESTIMATD COST PER SANDWICH: $0.75 - $1 (depending on how much filling you like to use)


All costs are estimated with the idea that you look for specials, with the realistic consideration that not everything will be on sale all the time. Try to not just plan your shopping around your cooking plan, but have a few ideas, and select your cooking plan based off of what you see shopping (still bring a list, though. Just keep in mind that you can opt out of some things and get them later)




INGREDIENTS:


8oz Cream Cheese (I don't know what it's called in other countries. It's a fairly mild, spreadable white cheese)
8oz Medium Cheddar Cheese
1 large Carrot
3 scallions/green onions
Salt, Pepper
Paprika

Bread (I prefer white bread for this, but you could use a coarser bread too)
Olive Oil or Butter




RECOMMENDED EQUIPMENT

Frying Pan
Mixing bowl
Fork
Cheese Grater





TIP: You can also use the filling for a topping or dip with other things.



FILLING:

The filling is super simple. the hardest part of this whole thing is grating the carrots, and that's more of a coordination thing than anything else


So first, take your scallions and chop them up fairly finely.





Then, grate up the carrot and start shoving it all into the mixing bowl.





Drop the cream cheese in





Grate and add the cheddar cheese





Stick it in the microwave for about 45 seconds just to soften the cream cheese, and start stirring and smashing it all together.





At this point, taste test it to see about how much you want to season it. Salt in particular. Add heaps of pepper and paprika, but try a bit before you add any salt. Some people will want craploads of it, others will be like "nah, dude, totally don't need any."








Sandwich:

Pour a little oil (or if you don't have any olive oil on hand, butter is okay) into your frying pan and turn it to medium to heat up.





Once the oil is hot, put a piece of bread into the pan, and start adding your filling.




As soon as that side is nice and brown, plop the other piece of bread on and flip it over.





make the sandwich as dark or light as you like, and put that thing on a plate. Cut it if you so desire, and eat it at whatever temperature you like. Yummmm. I recommend making some tomato soup to go along with it, but if for some odd reason, you are opposed to the red goodness, then you can just do whatever you want.

What if I dont want green onion, auntie riku?
Is there another vegetable I could substitute in, like celery or something?

Um, I guess you could, although you'll want to cut it up pretty fine to keep it from screwing with the texture. I'm not sure how well celery's flavor would blend with the cheese, since I've never tried it.

That is a tasty looking grilled cheese.

ALRIGHT, I CAN'T DECIDE SO I'M PUTTING IT TO A VOTE:

For this Friday's recipe, do you guys want me to post:
A: potstickers (chinese version of gyoza),
OR
B:spinach and ricotta pasta stuff?

Make potstickers.

potstickers.

I think I've made them before or something similar, but I'd love a refresher.

Pot sticklers.

Because I like the sounds of those better than anything combining spinach and ricotta.

Welp, I guess potstickers win. Spinach and ricotta pasta stuff next week.

Hey, AZ, my name is Riku Bippinboppinbaddlebobsirkopolis the Third, and welcome to my tiny-ass kitchen.

(This would have been posted way earlier this morning, but the internet at the college was being dumb)


Today (and quite possibly tomorow) we'll be making potstickers and miso! Yay! The recipe that I've put together makes a solid 200 dumplings, but it can easily be quartered or halved. They freeze really well, though, so make the full batch if you have time!
Potstickers are super good and easy to make, they can just take a long time to fill if you make the full 200ct batch. For anyone who isn't familiar with the term potsticker, this is the internet full of japanese food, so I'm sure you're familiar with gyoza. Potstickers are the chinese version.
To accompany our potstickers, I decided to show you how to make some pretty good miso soup. It's super simple and only takes about 15-20 minutes from the time you put the cold water on the stove, but you should make it in small batches to avoid reheating, since cooking miso for extended periods of time affects the flavor, texture, and nutritional value.



SHOPPING TIPS: A good time to make this is a weekend where you have absolutely nothing going on for a couple of days. Obviously if you see the wrappers or ground pork on a really good special, that's always good, but pretty much everything else in here is very inexpensive.
===When buying cabbage, keep in mind that it is very compact when in a whole head. you can pretty much count on it taking up 2 to 3 times the volume once you've chopped it up.
===If you do happen to see ginger on sale, you like it, and feel like getting it, go ahead and buy a large amount of it, and just freeze it. It doesn't ruin the texture or flavor of the ginger, and can actually make it easier to grate.
===If your grocery store only carries miso in large packages (like mine), go ahead and buy it. It's rarely expensive for how much soup you'll get out of it (a little goes a long way), and as long as you keep it from drying out, you can stick it in your fridge and it will just about never go bad.


ESTIMATED COST PER BATCH: ps=$16.00 USD / miso=$2.00 USD


ESTIMATED COST PER SERVING: $0.08 per dumpling (x8 dumplings=$0.64) / $0.50 per bowl


All costs are estimated with the idea that you look for specials, with the realistic consideration that not everything will be on sale all the time. Try to not just plan your shopping around your cooking plan, but have a few ideas, and select your cooking plan based off of what you see shopping (still bring a list, though. Just keep in mind that you can opt out of some things and get them later)




INGREDIENTS:




POTSTICKERS (200)

Gyoza wrappers OR enough egg roll wrappers to cut 200 3.5in (8-9cm) circles
1 small to medium Green Cabbage
5 Carrots (grated)
5 cloves Garlic (minced)
6 in. (15 cm) Ginger (grated)
4 Scallions/Green Onions (Finely chopped)
1 lb tofu OR ground pork
6 eggs
salt and pepper
Soy sauce

oil for cookin (optional)

Potsticker sauce: soy sauce, oyster sauce, white or rice vinegar




MISO SOUP (~4 bowls)

dashi grains ~OR~ 1 cube vegetable boullion and some oyster sauce
water
2-3 tbs miso paste
2 oz tofu
2 scallions
1 seaweed/nori sheet



RECOMMENDED MATERIALS:
Large mixing bowl
Cookie Sheets
Steamer Tray OR stuff to make a ghetto steamer tray
Large cooking pot
bowl
spoon

medium saucepan



LAST CHANCE TO CUT THE RECIPE! if you decide to make the whole batch, keep in mind that 200 frozen potstickers will fill 3 gallon-sized ziploc bags.


POTSTICKERS:

Alright! so first you get your cabbage all nice and chopped up. get it as fine as you can, so that it will fit more easily into the dumplings.







Toss it into a bowl along with your grated carrots, grated ginger, minced garlic, chopped up scallions.







If you are making vegetable potstickers, follow the next few steps. if you're making pork potstickers, skip until you see meat.
Take your pound of tofu and chop it up.







Add 2 eggs into the bowl along with the tofu.







Dig your hands in and mix the shizz out of it.






Okay, if you're making pork potstickers, start paying attention again.
drop a pound of meat into the cabbage mix.







Get it all good and mixed up with tus manos. You don't need the eggs when using the pork, because the meat already provides the cohesiveness that the eggs provide for the vegetables.







Back to both versions being relevant: Add as much salt and pepper as you like, although I'd recommend going light on the salt, considering the soy sauce bath most of you are inevitably going to give these things.



Cover your filling and let it sit for a while while you prepare the wrappers. If you were able to find ready-cut gyoza wrappers, then just open the package and BAM you're done. If, like me, your store decided to suddenly stop carrying them, and you can only find egg roll wrappers, then just take a drinking glass with a wide mouth, and use it as a stencil for cutting out circles. You can make your own dough for the wrappers and knock about $6 off of the total cost, but four more hours of work? Heck with that noise.







Set up a bowl of water in your little work station, and a baking sheet.






Wet the wrapper so that it'll stick together when you go to close it






Spoon about 1 tablespoon of mixture into each wrapper, maybe a little less. you don't want to overfill them, or else the wrappers break.





Now that you have your filling arranged inside of the wrapper, kind of fold it in two, and pinch together the center of the edge.






Work toward the ends (but not pinching the end shut yet) to make a little tube,






Then fold the bottom of the edges up to make an inverted Y shape at the opening, and pinch the sides shut over the folded up bottom.





Set your dumplings out on the baking sheet so that none of them are touching, like this. This makes it so that a) they don't stick to each other while wet from filling, and b) it's easier to freeze them separately so that you don't wind up with a massive smashed conglomerate of potsticker in your freezer bags when you store them.






Hooray, now it's time to steam them! Ideally, you'd have one of these little guys here:



But if you're like me and you're just too lazy to get one, what you can do instead, is get a plate that will fit inside of your cooking pot, and set it on top of a bowl.







Fill the cooking pot partway up with water, and stick your dumplings inside. make sure that the water is below the tray.





While these are steaming is actually a good time to put together your miso, but I'm listing it in its own non-intrusive section.
Your potstickers are done steaming when the wrappers are no longer white, and they look all wrinkly when you pull the lid off. The vegetable ones can pretty much be done whenever, but with the pork potstickers, I would recommend actually setting them to a 25 minute cook time from frozen, and 18 from fresh.




If you want, now is also when you can fry them (just pour a light coat of oil into a pan, turn it onto high, and brown the dumplings). You can also make a potsticker sauce with a couple tablespoons of water, a tablespoon of soy sauce, and a half tablespoon each of rice vinegar and oyster sauce.





MISO: (Sorry about no snappy remarks on the miso; she's just not a very funny soup. Like that cool Asian kid who doesn't have a sense of humor)

If you have a lot of leftover dough from potstickers, you can slice it up into noodles for the miso to fill it out a bit more.


Start with about 3 cups of water in a pot. If your store sells dashi grains, add those according to the instructions on the package. if not, make a half-strength vegetable boullion, and boil a splash of oyster sauce and shredded nori into it.





Cut up your scallions (and if you want them, noodles) and add them to the boil.






Cut up your tofu, and add it after a few mintues.


Once your broth has been boiling for about 10 minutes, turn the heat all the way down, and pour a cup of cool water in to immediately bring the temperature down from the boil. You do not want the miso paste anywhere near that kind of heat.






Dump your tofu in, and add your miso paste, 2-3 tablespoons depending on taste. I'm using red miso (it'll say "aka" somewhere on it) because I like the bolder flavor, but there's also white (shiro) miso, which is a lighter, creamier paste.




Stir it all together, and let it just sit on low for the last few minutes to get all nice and integrated. Don't freak out if your soup is cloudy. The miso paste never really dissolves, it's more of a suspension.





And omnomnom, your delicious dinner is done!