After yesterday’s pasta dish, I was reminded again what fun it is to cook in the kitchen! Aah, it’s been quite a while since I’ve flexed my culinary muscles! Was afraid I’d gotten rusty.

So anyway today I spent almost half the day in the kitchen cooking up a storm! Brace yourselves, I have three recipes to share today!

For lunch today I had fun creating a new dish again. I was in the mood for pizza, but not for the usual tomato sauce base. I was also in the mood for some kind of crepe or wrap, but I really felt like using the oven too. My oven hasn’t been used in six months, so I really needed to burn those cobwebs away!

In the end I decided to do have the best of both worlds and make a flatbread pizza, sans normal pizza toppings. What I came up with was this:

Fig’n Chicken Flatbread Pizza

• 1 piece whole-wheat flatbread
• 2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt
• 1/2 large tomato, sliced
• 2-3 oz grilled chicken pieces
• 3 dried black mission figs, snipped into bite-size pieces
• 1/3 cup tomato-basil white cheddar cheese
• drizzle balsamic vinegar
• drizzle maple syrup
• fresh-ground black pepper

Directions:
~ On a piece of flatbread, spread the Greek yogurt.
~ Top with the tomatoes, then the chicken and figs evenly throughout.
~ Sprinkle with cheese.
~ Drizzle balsamic vinegar and maple syrup, as much or little as you want.
~ Ground black pepper all over.
~ Pop into 425 degree Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes until cheese is melted and bread is golden and crispy.

How great does that look? I don’t know why, but the sight of melted, bubbly cheese just makes me so excited and happy!

I attempted to be gourmet and tried to eat it with a fork, but then abandoned it to dig in with my hands. Yup, that’s the way to eat this!

The figs was a nice, chewy addition, and the balsamic vinegar really livened up the whole dish, contrasting really well with the mild sweetness of the maple syrup. Del-i-cious~

Such a perfect combo of sweet and savory! Try it!

And then, this afternoon, I baked. These days, I’ve been having a mega-corn muffin from Whole Foods for my night snack daily. And yeah, I really do believe they lace their baked goods with crack or something, because I can’t stop buying their damn-good muffins! But they’re pretty pricey for a muffin at $1.45 per piece, so I attempted to bake my own corn muffins today.

Jennifer from Slim-shoppin had sent me a bag of quinoa flour, and I decided to incorporate it into my corn muffin recipe. It’s the first time I’m experimenting with quinoa flour, so I was pretty apprehensive, but it turned out pretty well, I think!

Quinoa-corn muffins

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 whole eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 3/4 cup quinoa flour
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

Directions:
~ Preheat oven to 375 degree Fahrenheit.
~ Combine butter, sugar, and eggs.
~ Blend the rest of the ingredients together until mixed.
~ Add the batter into the butter-sugar-egg mixture.
~ Pour into prepared muffin pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

The quinoa flour was quite distinctive. It gave the muffins a nutty, unique flavor. I liked it, but it’s still no Whole Foods muffin!

For dinner today, in honor of my brother’s arrival from college, I decided to cook a batch of nice, comforting home-cooked one-pot meal.

I’ve always wondered what lentils tasted like. Someone had given my mother a bag of black lentils, but of course being Korean she had no idea how to use it. I looked up several recipes online and finally decided to mix-and-match different ideas together to make my own favorite combination of lentil soup.

Kabocha-Black Lentil with Anduoille Sausage Soup

• 3 links of Anduoille sausages, sliced
• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 3 stalks celery, diced
• 1-2 stalks carrot, diced
• 6 cups beef/chicken stock
• 1 cup black lentils
• ground cumin
• garam marsala
• hot Mexican-style chili powder
• salt and pepper
• 1 cup mashed, roasted Kabocha squash

Directions:
~ Fry up the sausages with the oil in a heavy soup pot until brown on both sides. Slide them off to a dish on the side.
~ Toss in the onion, celery, and carrot and sauté with the remaining oil until soft.
~ Pour in the stock and the lentils, let boil, then simmer for about 30 minutes. Add in the spices and seasonings according to taste.
~ When the lentils become soft, add in the squash and the sausages, let boil again, and simmer until all the flavors have combined.
This was just seriously one of the best soup I had ever had. Actually, it was so thick it was more like a stew.

The taste was both smoky and slightly spicy, made more intricately complex and deep in flavor because of the sausages and kabocha squash. The squash toned down the heat a bit with its sweetness. With all the perfect ratio of protein, carbs, and fat, it made a complete meal in itself, and all I needed on the side was a refreshing salad.

Yup, as you can see, I’ve been in the kitchen for quite a while! But I had all these energy and excitement stored up inside of me, that I felt I would just burst if I did not find a way to release it! Because hallelujah, my brother’s coming back home!!

A lot of my friends have bad relationships with their younger siblings. But my brother and I always had a pretty peaceful relationship. That’s not to say I was a good sister. I was the worst sister in the world.

Since young, I smacked him over the head whenever I felt like it, kicked him when I was moody, made fun of him, told him all sorts of incredulous stories, spitefully revealed to him there was no Santa Claus.

Then he got all big and muscular, so I stopped the physical abuse but kept on with the mocking and teasing. Whenever he came to me asking for help with his essays, I got impatient and scolded him for being a horrible writer. Later, I developed anorexia and the entire mood of the house was dark and depressed because of me. We stopped family meals together, and there was a sudden halt to family vacations.

And yet…he was so gentle and patient to me, to the point that I was ashamed of myself. He never lost his temper. Even as a child he gullibly believed all my tales and tolerated my constant bullying. Who’s the older sibling here? I was supposed to be the one to protect him, to take care of him, but it became the other way round. And for that, I am so touched and grateful for my brother.

I haven’t seen him since I left for Singapore, so he was once again overjoyed to see me looking better than before! Perhaps that’s the greatest gift I can give him for now. To become strong and healthy so I can take care of him in return!

Anyway we all sat down for the first time since forever for dinner and had the most beautiful time together. My father was the most excited to be together like this as one family. He kept talking loudly and excitedly, spitting food all over the place! Ha ha!

Question of the day: Do you have a sibling? How is your relationship with him/her/them?

Related posts:

1. Proud to be a PK
2. Prejudices
3. I’m a walking, talking, eating, and pooping ice-cube
4. I’m a Cow, Hear Me Moo
5. Booty-shake-shake for Kabocha!

Tagged as: baking, cheese, chicken, corn, figs, kabocha, lentils, muffins, pizza, quinoa, sausage, soup, tomato