Fish Ball with Roe Filling

On one of my recent asian grocery shopping trips, I spent some extra time browsing through the frozen dumplings section.  I discovered these little gems.

I usually buy the regular fish balls, which are fish meatballs made from cod or haddock. They are great additions to asian noodle soups.  They are usually boiled in a spicy curry sauce and sold on skewers in Hong Kong.  In Sweden, they are called fiskbullar and usually sold in cans.

I keep a constant supply of homemade chicken stock in the freezer.  There are always  either egg or rice noodles in my cupboards for those lazy meal days.  Add some green onions, fried shallots, protein and veggies.  Voilà.  Instant meal. 

I cooked the fish ball with roe in the stock for my noodle soup.  The roe imparted a slight sweetness into the soup.  The fish ball had a mild flavor with a firm texture that is nice to bite into.  

I was back at the store the very next day to get more.  That's when I discovered these:

Cubicle Cuisine: Brats!

Lunch during the work week doesn't always have to be confined to frozen meals, reheated leftovers or eating out.  The office break room can become a pretty decent kitchen if you just modify some recipes just a little bit.  In this post, we will be having brats.  There was a lone survivor leftover from the weekend and I decided to bring that in for lunch the following Monday.  Not a dried out precooked brat to be heated up mind you.  I cooked it at work with the handy dandy microwave. 

I'm cheating a little on this post because there were already microwave instructions on the back of the packaging.  As per the instructions, I placed the brat in a container and filled it with hot water, loosely cover,  1 min and 45 secs, flip and repeat.  DO NOT try to nuke your brat without water.  Best case scenario, you'll be munching on dried out brat jerky.  Worst case scenario, you'll spend the rest of the day scraping off dried out pieces of brat that exploded all over the microwave.

After cooking in the microwave, place the brat link next to the bun in the toaster oven if you have one in your office kitchen. The surface of the link should sizzle up nicely as the bun toasts up.  Almost like it's fresh off the grill :o)  Remember, NEVER leave the toaster oven unattended while in use.  Nothing like subjecting the rest of your office to the smells of your burnt lunch experiments for the rest of the workday...

Costco Wontons

My co-worker introduced me to these frozen wonton soups a couple of weeks ago. She gave me a bowl to try and I've been hooked ever since. Costco sells these for $9.99 for a 6-pack. Each bowl contains frozen broth and 5 individually frozen shrimp wontons. The flavorful broth is seasoned with scallions, ginger and garlic. The wonton wrappers withstood being cooked, frozen and reheated. They did not fall apart, yet were silky soft. There is simply a whole shrimp inside each wonton. I got a wonderfully firm and toothful feeling when I bit into the shrimp. No mushy frozen shrimp for me! The portion size is just perfect for a light breakfast, but when you also want to feel like having something substantial at the same time. Add some ramen noodles for a nice slurpy lunch?
Oh, where were these when I was in college? I really think I could live on these and never get tired of them.
Ghetto Fab Tip: One of my other co-workers whom we've lured into our Wonton Soup Cult has discovered that these containers are the perfect size to be reused as parfait containers. Just make sure to wash it out really well. I like to reuse the containers for freezing individual servings of homemade stock.

Store Bought Potstickers

Got some frozen potstickers at Thuan Phat a couple of weeks ago. Pork, scallop and shrimp are a pretty good combination. I pan fried some of these bad boys for a potluck style dinner party that I went to and they were a big hit. There were a consistent amount of sweet baby scallops in each dumpling. I would get a baby shrimp in every third potsticker or so, but the scallops made up for that shortfall.
I would still prefer homemade, but these are great when I don't feel like spending an entire day making dumplings. I ate an entire bag for dinner one night.