Char Siu Marinade Recipe

First off...I'm not exactly sure how to make char siu marinade or if there's a more correct way etc. of doing it. However, I have used a packet char siu marinade mix before and thus tried to recreate the mix with the ingredients that it said were in it along with a few additional things and such. Anywhooo... I made this recipe and it came out fairly decent so, I used it to marinade some chopped up Spam Lite for 30 minutes. If you're unsure about adding the red food coloring in this than you don't have to but it is generally the traditional color of the marinade as the meat should turn red in color. My Chinese friend and I always say or think something along the lines of "if it isn't red, than it isn't good char siu", haha.

1/2 Cup - Water, hot
1/4 Cup - Soy Sauce (I used Kikkoman Low Sodium Soy Sauce)
1 tbsp - White Sugar
1 tbsp - Honey
1/2 tbsp - Chinese Five Spice (contains: star anise, anise, ground ginger, cinnamon, and cloves)
1/2 tsp - Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp - Onion Powder
10 drops - Red Food Dye/Coloring *Optional*

Combine ingredients into a container and stir until sugar dissolves. Place meat of choice into the container (pork, chicken, duck, hotdog, spam, ribs, etc) and close container with a lid. Marinade for at least 30 minutes or overnight, be sure to move your container around to insure the meat inside gets covered in the marinade as this will more than likely turn your meat a red color (if you used the food coloring). Once the meat has been marinated cook appropriately and enjoy.

Char Siu Spam over white rice

Char Siu hotdogs with toasted sesame seeds

*When I fried up my marinated chopped spam pieces I poured out everything in the container into my frying pan and cooked on medium heat for 7-12 minutes until all the excess marinade had basically evaporated. I generally serve this with white rice but you can serve it with whatever you like. You can also add in some diced spring onion to add a bit of color to the dish. You could also try adding in or all of the following additional ingredients to this recipe... Hoisin sauce, black pepper, ground cumin, garlic salt, sherry or rice wine, or even toasted sesame seeds (as seen above). I'm not sure I have perfected this recipe as of yet but I do enjoy eating it!

Share Time

Let me start by saying WOW, checkout this Halloween popcorn one of my co-workers brought in to work, SUPER cute, colorful and tasty...just like me!! har-har :P

Those of you that don't follow me on Twitter I was in 2 car accidents over a month ago, one of which I barely rear-ended someone so no damage what-so-ever and the 2nd one that week which resulted in my car hydro-planning in the rain, spinning around and flipping upside down into an embankment on the side of the highway. Unfortunately my car AKA "Made in Japan" (RIP Toyo!) as I often called my car was totalled and thus had to get replaced.

I'm now the owner of this gorgeous new 2011 Mazda which I love dearly thus far as it is my "Zoom-Zoom", hehe. I'm now back in the poor house though due to having car payments for the next few years to work off the new loan. I'm a lucky girl for only coming out of my upside down car with a few minor cuts and bruises.

So happy to learn my dad owned a cam tripod, I got to use it during this pic!

I figured it was getting that time of year that no matter how broke I may be at the moment I am still willing to donate what I do have to a better cause. So I recently donated money to WorldVision and received this lovely handmade Thai bracelet to support exploited women in Africa. Now I just have to keep my mom from stealing my bracelet :P

Dad and I made chilli a few weeks back for a competetion his work had going on. We came in 7th out of 20 people...eh, not bad for our first time right?!

I spent my Thanksgiving week out in So-Cal with my fam, it was definately nice to get away from work and school for awhile and I feel soo refreshed. I def enjoyed eatting those ripe avocado's my mom saved for me out there, hah. Unfortunately I did not take a single photo during my stay in Cali this time :( So I'll leave you with an updated photo of my current bedroom setup and a pic of the roses the new BF bought me during our first date ;D

Checkout my new damask sheets from TJMaxx!

Hell's Kitchen

This is the first time I've watched an entire season of Hell's Kitchen...oh man do I heart Chef Gordon Ramsay, jahaa... okay I def wouldn't want to be the one he refers to as a "Donkey" but he does make for entertaining TV. I also like playing his Wii game which I believe may be similar to Cooking Mama but the game also gives you recipes that you can do outside of just the hustling and bustling game-play around a kitchen.

For those of you that didn't watch this season it seemed hard for them to complete an entire dinner service, the first guy to leave was totally "BP" as my friend and I would say, people having trouble cooking lamb, halibut and just getting along in general esp. on the ladies team, Chef Ramsay even got sooo upset during one dinner service that he walked out of the kitchen and shockingly Kevin didn't win this season. Instead the winner of Hell's Kitchen this season was none other than an expression-less "one armed bandit" named Dave Levey, who's more of a cook with one arm then any other contestant could have possibly been this season. I don't even think he won any challenges except the one at his final cook-off with contestant Kevin.

After watching the show their were a few things I wouldn't mind learning to cook... risotto, scallops and a few other popular food items that I've never made before. So...stay tuned and perhaps when I'm not procrastinating I will get around to sharing a bit more as I've been meaning to do.