Asian Themed Dinner

It has been a while since my brother came over to eat. When I invited Jaime over, I asked him what he preferred to eat. Giving him a few choices, he quickly asked me to make an Asian themed dinner. I set everything up perfectly, with chop sticks and all. I was so excited to make this one! It's also a great thing when I have a boyfriend acting as my sous chef - prepping all my ingredients that needed to be chopped.


We started out with miso tofu soup. I love my new spoons that I bought from Pier 1 Imports.

One of our favorite things to make is crab rangoons. I have a perfect recipe that you cannot mess up - and they are so quick and easy to make. I used to use real lump crab meat... I decided to make them with imitation crab meat this time. SO much better! We bought long strips of the imitation crab meat in our local grocery store. Kevin diced them up small, as you can see pictured below. They take only one minute to fry in a deep fryer at 375 degrees. For an easy dipping sauce, we picked up dumpling sauce from our local Chinese restaurant. They are a great appetizer when having company over since this small batch recipe makes about 20 rangoons!

I served the crab rangoons with chicken fried rice. I always make homemade fried rice, but have never tried it with chicken. I kind of combined two recipes.. I make a chicken in hoisin sauce stir fry, and I love the way the chicken browns in that recipe. So I prepped the chicken the same way: marinated in 1 egg white, 1 tbs sherry, 1 tbs corn starch, and a 1/2 tsp of salt. Kevin cut the breast tenderloins up in bite size pieces, making them longer and thinner.. like you would find in your chinese restaurants chicken fried rice. I marinated the chicken for a good 20 minutes in the fridge. I browned the chicken in the wok for about 3-4 minutes on each side, making sure they were cooked thru. Once you remove the chicken from the wok and place it on the side, you continue with my original homemade fried rice recipe. Just add the chicken in before pouring in the soy sauce. It came out so great - my brother Jaime was raving the entire meal!

For dessert, I had to spoil everyone. My co-worker Holly bought me this great gift for Christmas that I was so excited to try. It was a brownie cast iron skillet for baking in. It even came with brownie mix! First, I seasoned the pan by coating with vegetable oil and placing on low heat in the oven for a half hour. I followed the directions for the brownie mix - once done, I topped the brownie skillet with a scoop of peanut butter ice cream, peanut butter chips and chocolate syrup. There was not one crumb left. Looking forward to trying some chocolate chip cookie mix in this skillet as well!