12345 Spare Ribs

This is how my mom cooks sweet and sour spare ribs. I am using InstantPot to make it even easier. 12345 is the proportion of the ingredients. Depends on how much ribs to be cooked, you can increase the ingredients. 

Ingredients

Cooking Wine - 2 TBSP
Sugar - 4 TBSP
Dark Vinegar - 6 TBSP
Soy Sauce - 8 TBSP
Water - 10 TBSP

Spare ribs - about 1 lb chops

Steps

1. Put all ingredients in InstantPot.

2. Cook in InstantPot for 40 minutes with high pressure.

3. Fish out the ribs and serve.

Baked Donut

Old-fashioned doughnuts were deep-fried in hot fat; new-fashioned doughnuts are baked in a hot oven! 

Ingredients

Butter - 4 TBSP
Vegetable oil - 1/4 cup
Granulated sugar - 1/2 cup
Brown sugar - 1/3 cup, packed

Eggs - 2 large (replace with 1/2 cup apple sauce for egg-free)

Baking powder - 1 1/2 tsp

Baking soda - 1/4 tsp
Nutmeg - 1/2 to 1 tsp, to taste

Salt - 3/4 tsp
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp
Milk - 1 cup
All-Purpose Flour - 2 2/3 cups

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F. Lightly grease standard or mini doughnut pans.
2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, beat together the butter, vegetable oil, and sugars until smooth.
3. Add the eggs (or egg replacement), beating to combine.
4. Stir in the baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla.
5. Stir the flour into the butter mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the flour and making sure everything is thoroughly combined. The batter will be fairly thick; when you draw your spatula through the batter, it will leave a furrow.

6. Use a Ziploc bag with a corner cut at the bottom as piping bag to pipe batter into the lightly greased doughnut pans, filling the wells to about 1/4" shy of the rim.

7. Bake the doughnuts for 5-10 minutes. Remove them from the oven, and wait 5 to 7 minutes before turning them out of the pans onto a rack.

Cinnamon Sugar Doughnuts

Shake warm doughnuts in a plastic bag with about 1/4 to 1/3 cup cinnamon-sugar. 

Vanilla Glazed Doughnuts

Confectioners' sugar - 1.25 cup

Light corn syrup - 1 TBSP

Melted butter - 1 TBSP

Milk - 1 to 2 TBSP

Vanilla extract - 1/2 tsp

Mix all ingredients together and use to glaze the doughnuts.

Honey Garlic Shrimp

A quick dinner dish from Sally's. 

Ingredients

Honey - 1/3 cup
Soy sauce - 1/4 cup
Jarred minced garlic - 1 TBSP, or 2 teaspoons fresh
Minced fresh ginger - 1 tsp, optional
Medium uncooked shrimp - 1 lb, peeled & deveined
Olive oil - 2 tsp
optional garnish: chopped green onion

Steps

1. Whisk the honey, soy sauce, garlic, and ginger (if using) together in a medium bowl.
2. Place shrimp in a large zipped-top bag. Pour 1/2 of the marinade mixture on top, stir and then allow shrimp to marinate in the refrigerator for 15 minutes or for up to 8-12 hours. Cover and refrigerate the rest of the marinade for step 3. 
3. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Place shrimp in the skillet. (Discard used marinade.) Cook shrimp on one side until pink– about 45 seconds– then flip shrimp over. Pour in remaining marinade and cook it all until shrimp is cooked through, about 1 minute more.
4. Serve shrimp with cooked marinade sauce and a garnish of green onion. The sauce is excellent on brown rice and steamed veggies on the side.

Matcha (Green Tea) Frappuccino

Ingredients

Ice cubes - about 10
Whole milk - 1 cup
Vanilla extract - 1tsp
Powdered sugar - 3 TBSP or to taste
Premium Japanese matcha-green tea powder - 1.5 TBSP

Whipped cream for topping (optional)

Steps

1. Blend all ingredients in Vitamix until smooth, creamy and even in color.

2. Serve with whipped cream topping

Apple Sauce

Homemade apple sauce is a great way to consume my backyard apples that is not sweet.

Ingredients

Apples - 4 lbs (about 8 to 10 apples, depending on the size), peeled, cored, and quartered
Lemon juice or apple cider vinegar - 3 tablespoons (or to taste)

Lemon peels - 2 strips (optional)
Sugar - Up to 1/2 cup, can sub half with brown sugar
Ground cinnamon - 1/2 tsp

Water - 1 cup
Salt - 1/2 tsp

Steps

1. Place the peeled, cored, and quartered apples into a large pot. Add the strips of lemon peel, the lemon juice or vinegar, cinnamon, sugar, water and salt. (You might want to start with half the sugar at this point and add more to taste later.)
2. Bring to a boil on high heat, then lower the temperature, cover the pot, and maintain a low simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the apples are completely tender and cooked through.
3. Remove lemon peels, purée cooked apple using blender.

Note: 

If the applesauce is too thick, add more water to thin it out. If not sweet enough, add more sugar to taste. If too sweet, add more lemon juice.

This applesauce recipe is perfect for canning. If using a water-bath canner, process pint jars for 15 minutes and quarts for 20 minutes at sea level.
Freezes well and will last at least 1 year in a cold freezer. If you freeze it, make sure to allow enough headroom (at least 1 inch) in your jar for expansion.

Strawberry Frappuccino

Real strawberries are always better than strawberry flavor!

Ingredients

Ice cubes - 10

Whole milk - 1 cup

Vanilla extract - 1 tsp

Powdered sugar - 3 TBSP

Strawberries - 8 to 10, fresh or frozen and defrosted

Steps

1. Add all ingredients to Vita-mix and blend.

2. Pour in glass and top with whipped cream.