yesterday I made an amazing Indonesian chicken, noodle and potato soup called soto ayam. I got the recipe from a wonderful soup book called Book of Soups, put out by the Culinary Institute of America. I've made many soups from this book to great success, and someday I will write about the soup that is now celebrated on our Soup Day.
however, I needed ginger for the soto ayam. fresh ginger. I went to the Asian market down the block (jealous I'm so close to one? you should be!) and got some ginger. the smallest package. of three giant roots. for those of you familiar with cooking with ginger, you know that you only need a tiny piece per recipe, usually. but since it is used in just about every Asian dish around, it follows that Asian markets sell it in bulk only. and it was $1. awesomely cheap.
the point of this incredibly long story: I have a TON of ginger I need to use.
any ideas?
another quandary: in making the soup, I needed a couple hard-boiled eggs. so I boiled some eggs. and peeling them is impossible. this has been happening to me forever. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. all the instructions I have are: cover eggs with cold water; bring to boil; remove from heat, cover, and let sit 10 minutes; rinse with cold water.
am I doing something wrong?
I heard somewhere that if the shell doesn't come off easily, the eggs are not cooked correctly. true? I love hard-boiled eggs but am really close to giving up on them forever. this is becoming too troublesome.
help please?
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I am jealous about the market. When Ada was an infant I used to go to our local asian market almost daily for this or that little thing. The owner closed up shop and now the property is half-sold condos. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteWe use a lot of ginger in stir-fries. It is also good with squash. Then there are ginger cookies... Not sure about the eggs, as what you are doing is how I do it, to good effect.
When I have too much ginger than I need, I grate it then measure by the tablespoon into ice-cube trays. Fill (carefully) with water and freeze. After they are frozen pop them out and put in a freezer bag and place back in the freezer. These keep for about six months.
ReplyDeleteAs for the eggs- fresh eggs are a bear to peel. Use older eggs for boiled eggs. Use eggs that you have had for a week and a half to two weeks. While peeling try to submerge the egg in water. It has nothing to do with how long you have cooked your egg. HTH!
Nonlinear: definitely lots of stir fry in our future, but I would've never thought of squash, and tis the season!
ReplyDeleteAnne: freezing the ginger is an AWESOME idea. it's interesting that didn't occur to me since I freeze so much baby food in ice cube trays. and I will try your suggestions about the eggs. I hope it helps too!
thanks for the advice!
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/307900 has some ideas about keeping ginger...
ReplyDeletei find eggs mysterious - sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.
I'm glad you found my ginger pork recipe! You can also keep it in the freezer and use a bit of it whenever you need. Just don't forget it's in there like I did :)
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