Random "Chinese" Food

Decided to make some Chinese-style dishes, although I don't think any of cooking really qualifies as bona fide Chinese food.

Spicy stir-fried/sauteed green beans with red peppers and onions (left). Fermented black-bean sauce with tofu, okra, and a little ground beef. I put too much black-bean sauce in this dish so it came out a little too spicy. Okra isn't very typical in Chinese food from my experience, but I think the texture and flavor works well.

Blanched Gai Lan with oyster sauce (left) and diced chicken with corn.

Low-Country Boil; BBQ Ribs

Went to the "welcome to the neighborhood" event for the Cyprus Street Pint and Plate. Free "Low Country Boil" and cheap beer specials.

The aforementioned boil. Mostly shrimp and taters, plus some corn on the cob. Not bad for free.

That night, decided that it was time to break out the BBQ and do some smokin'.

Mesquite-smoked ribs; probably about 3.5 hours in the smoke. I'm out of practice... didn't get a good strong smoke going so the penetration was a little weak despite the good external color. Ribs coated with some old dry rub that KB had given me over a year ago.

Also made some BBQ sauce from scratch. Made it slightly spicy by adding sriracha sauce to it.

Accompaniments. Green beans, baked beans, and some bad biscuits.

Pasta Effort Saver!

After having gone through several iterations of making pasta completely by hand, I decided that I liked this idea of fresh pasta enough to warrant sinking a little bit of cash into making this easier. I had been rolling out all of my dough with nothing more than our counter, a rolling pin, and a knife.

The kitchen-aid pasta roller attachment. The kitchen-aid is pretty cool; it is really just a multi-purpose motor packaged as a mixer.

Fresh pasta.

Final result! This was a lot easier than doing it all manually!