March 9th, 2010- Gyoza with Sriracha Dipping Sauce

Even includes an artistic sauce line!

This is one of those no-brainers. Of course Sriracha is going to be good with Gyoza, so I decided to mix it up.

I just got married recently, and one of my friends gave us a gift of Asian foodstuffs, including some fermented duck eggs, fish sauce, and a Sweet Thai Chili Sauce. If you’ve been to Buffalo Wild Wings, and sampled their Asian Zing sauce, it’s essentially the same thing, only it tastes way better.  Like a spicy sweet & sour, light on the sour.

Anyways, I quickly steamed the shrimp Gyoza(store bought, but from an Asian market) and built a sauce out of some of this chili sauce, sriracha, and some soy sauce, and I must say, I have created a much better sauce than your traditional Gyoza sauce. And no, I don’t have measurements, just eyeball it. I would suggest going easy on the soy though, seeing that soy sauce can easily overtake any flavor. The end result was a sweet, but not too sweet spicy dip, that covered the gyoza without overtaking the natural flavor of the dumpling. Very, very tasty, and worked extremely well. .

And this marks the 4th meal I’ve had with Sriracha sauce, tonight, I will be making Portabello Mushroom Burgers, and I will top mine with our favorite sauce.

Stay tuned!

March 9th, 2010-Sriracha & Beans!

Sriracha & home-made refried beans!

So recently my wife has been reading some books that talk about plastic #7, or BPA, which is apparently one of the big causes of obesity in Americans. BPA lines all of our canned goods, so we decided to make our own refried beans.

First off, now I’m spoiled to home-made beans, these particular ones have jalapeno, onion, & garlic in them, and second off, I decided to see if Sriracha would improve the flavors.

It did, in a way. I think the reason why hot sauces generally taste amazing on beans is because of the tomato base (depending on your sauce, I’m thinking more of a Salsa kind), which in our delicious chili paste, there is none, and sadly, didn’t do much to improve on the already delicious flavors.

It’s not bad, but it’s not great. Onto the next meal!

March 5th, 2010- Cheese & Sriracha Quesadilla

Cheese & Sriracha Quesadilla!

So, for my first post, I’d love to highlight something that I have made twice, and mainly out of the fact that I just got married, and our food was mexican food from Valle Luna, a local sonoran-mexican chain. Needless to say, we were left with a TON of tortillas.

So I started making quesadillas. First off, I made them with some of the leftover fajitas that we had from the party, but once those ran out, I found myself wondering what else to put in them. I tried out other veggies, different fillings, and eventually, I was holding the iconic clear bottle, wondering what it would taste like.

I was raised on mexican hot sauces, like the expected Tabasco, but also Bufalo, Choula( my personal favorite), and your usual hot wing sauces, like Frank’s, or Red Devil.

But I held the bottle, and wondered what it would be like. “Salsa? Hot Sauce?”  So I went for it.

I took 2 tortillas, filling the middle with cheese, along with the red chili paste. After nuking it for a minute ( I know, a crime, but I’m lazy when it comes to quesadillas.), I cut it into several pieces, and topping each piece with some more Sriracha.

The result? Delicious. The first bite exploded with flavor, and it was a little overwhelming at first, but still delicious. The garlic mixed with the sugar/spice, which paired extremely well with the slight sweetness of the tortilla and the saltiness of the cheese. However, I did discover one thing, and I’ll leave you with that.

Make absolutely sure you don’t put too much on one piece. In retrospect, a bit of an error.

What this blog is all about.

I’m a graphic designer, located in Phoenix, Arizona, but that is for a different blog.

I’m going to be frank.

I. Love. Sriracha.

Sriracha! Photo from Wikipedia.

The delicious Thai chili sauce made from sugar, salt, garlic, vinegar, & delicious “sun ripened” chili peppers, that most famously sits at asian restaurants all over our country.

Recently, I have discovered that I have a bit of a love obsession with the stuff. Not only do I love it on my chinese/thai/viet food, I’m starting to love it on everything, which is where I have discovered the inspiration for this project. I will create & consume food objects, with Sriracha added to it, and hopefully, they taste really good.

Obviously, I won’t do something silly like put it on Ice Cream, but I will put it on quesadillas, soups, rice, just about anything & everything, and on here I will review what I consume.

And, I will post some history about the food/culture that goes along with the subject at hand, along with guest commentaries/posts from people that are in Asia, consuming the deliciousness of their food.

And with this next post, I’ll do a quick review about a cheese Quesadilla!

choc tee ka!