I get homesick every now and then, or get a touch of culture shock that has me swearing off this island for good, but not really meaning it. Usually when this happens, I like to have a dish that would have been typical or boring at home. If I can find all the ingredients, everyday dishes that are exotic here can make me feel a lot better and help me to get over whatever’s bugging me at the moment. And I did the same thing in reverse when I was in Arkansas for five years and missing this rock. I’d make some Jiaozi, usually, or a big pot of local style curry. It really helped!
Here, I like to make biscuits and gravy, like I’ve posted before, or some home made Mac and Cheese.
The thing with the Mac and Cheese is that I like to bake it. If you cook the noodles first, they often turn out soggy and just a big mess.
But if you make a cheese sauce (start with a flour and butter (bacon grease is better) roux, like for the gravy, but keep it thin–LOTS of milk, then add shredded cheese of your choice to make the sauce) and keep it thin enough, you can pour this over uncooked noodles and bake to perfection! It’s creamy and wonderful. You can top with large bread crumbs and more cheese, too, to make a kind of crust.
Ahh. That’s nice!
What about you? What do you cook when you’re looking for a taste of home? Please your own recipe here to share with us!
My son loves macaroni and cheese. I also make a tuna pasta bake, adding canned tuna and veggies like brocolli and cauliflower with the pasta and cheese.
Do you have an oven? Bacon and egg pie is a good basic family meal from home we love. Pastry, bacon, eggs, and tomato sauce.
Omeletes also make he happy.
Roast chicken. We have every few months when I miss my mum and our weekly roast chicken dinners.
[quote=“asiababy”]My son loves macaroni and cheese. I also make a tuna pasta bake, adding canned tuna and veggies like brocolli and cauliflower with the pasta and cheese.
Do you have an oven? Bacon and egg pie is a good basic family meal from home we love. Pastry, bacon, eggs, and tomato sauce.
Omeletes also make he happy.
Roast chicken. We have every few months when I miss my mum and our weekly roast chicken dinners.[/quote]
Thanks, asiababy! That bacon and egg pie sounds great, but I’m not sure I get it. You mean to cook bacon and eggs INTO A PIE, like an apple pie, but with bacon and eggs? Could you post a recipe to make it clearer?
Oh, I have just a small toaster oven, but it works for small dishes!
Use 1 sheet pastry to line 20cm square shallow cake tin. Sprinkle onion, bacon, and mixed vegetables evenly over pastry. Dot chutney on top. Break eggs evenly over, pricking yolks so they run slightly. Carefully lift 2nd sheet of pastry over filling. Brush top with milk. Bake at 200 celsius for 40 mins or until golden. Serves 6.
My “Picky Kid On Deck, Mum Not in Mood to Argue” Version
No onion, no mixed vegetables, tomato sauce instead of chutney, add some salt and pepper. (Sometimes I add onion, but fry it first so it’s a bit softer and harder for the kids to find.)
My “Mini Pie for Taking Out and Avoiding 7-11” Version
Mix eggs lightly. Line muffin tins (or small pie tins that fit in your toaster oven) with pastry. Put bacon (and other ingredients if you like) into the muffin tins, pour some egg over the top, and top with pastry.
“Watching My Weight” Version
Same as 7-11 one but only put pastry on the top.
Um… is there an affordable source of that in Taiwan? I had the impression it was a) hard to find, and b) really expensive. But maybe I’m wrong. (Is phyllo pastry something different?)
Mango chutney: available in most of the more western supermarkets, like Jason’s and City Super, as well as in Trinity’s, an Indian grocery store near 101 - but I don’t think that’s very helpful to Housecat.
I love a Cook’s Illustrated macaroni and cheese recipe that uses evaporated milk (no, not sweetened condensed milk), with a mix of cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese. But unfortunately, it doesn’t reheat all that well, and my wife doesn’t like creamy sauces, so I always have one delicious dinner and then three meals of middling leftovers.
Omigad, I was just craving some baked mac 'n cheesie today, housecat. I don’t care for the local restaurant style, so guess I’ll have to make it myself and bake with tater tots on top. Willie’s Deli has a pretty good mac 'n cheese but it has beef, and not baked with cheese. The kids devour it.
What’s the best gooeyest cheese to use on top? Gruyere?
Asiababy, I like the muffin tin idea for the bacon/egg bake. Sounds quite easy to make. I’ll try experimenting with pureed zucchini and cauliflower for the vegie hit. Can I use egg whites instead of all the whole eggs? Can you freeze the extras?
I believe phyllo is a very thinly rolled pastry sheet, and if you brush it with butter as you layer it many times you’ll get a stack of fragile crunchy sheets (flaky pastry) as in baklava. It was available frozen (not that cheap) at the former G&G in Tianmu about a month ago. Flaky pastry is generally, I believe, thin pastry brushed with butter then folded, over and over and over. So my impression is that you can make phyllo into flaky pastry by doing the brushing and layering. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
You can get sheets of pastry dough at the DIY baking supply centers like the one near the Minquan bridge, and you can get it preformed into pie and tart shells there as well, and in pie shells at places like Wellman’s. Whether it’s flaky or not, I don’t know, as I (of course) make my own pastry dough instead of buying it, on the rare occasions when I use it.
OK, language difference here I guess. It’s just the puff pastry you can pick up at Carrefour or at baking places. It’s just over 100NT for maybe 20 pre-rolled, pre-cut pieces and you can freeze them and use as needed. It comes in small squares for putting on top of small individual pies (about 15cm square I guess), or you can buy larger round pieces. It puffs up and they use it here to put on top of corn soup in restaurants like Ponderosa. I never cook anything using things too hard to find, I’m too lazy to drive around to get them, and I’m a cheapskate.
Not sure about using just egg whites, I don’t see why not, but I’m not much of a cook. Mixed veggies at home have frozen corn, peas, carrots, and sometimes small bits of cauliflower. Over summer, I had the kids in school in NZ and I had to make lunches everyday, so I baked up a bunch and froze them, then put them in the kids’ lunchboxes.
BTW, housecat, when I went back home this summer, I stole a book from my mum. I then found it’s free online. It’s a cookbook put out by NZ Ministry of Social Development, to help families enjoy cooking at home and save money. I’ve cooked a few things from it in Taiwan and they’ve been really appreciated by the kids. Most of the recipes are really flexible. I put a link on my “Frugal In Taipei” blog (must update that blog!). I’m a bit of a hopeless cook but I do cook all of our meals, so I’m always looking for things that have a low risk of failure.