Bites and Finds, Dining

Charleston Cheesecake

I didn’t get to sample much of the local cuisine on my trip to SC this weekend, but I did manage to consume something that had “Charleston” in its name. Apparently it’s a signature dessert on many a Charleston menu…so it must be decidedly very “Charleston-ish”. Charleston cheesecake seemed to be largely caramel-based, something apparently found in great abundance in South Carolina. The cheesy creaminess had a dark brown sugar cast to it, caramel pervades the entire dish. Something I was pleased to find out: Charleston cheesecake pairs wonderfully with strawberries.
Technical

Import into WordPress 2.7.1

I’m in awe of the newly redesigned WordPress 2.7.1. The import of old posts went smoothly. Installing plugins is now such a breeze! The mass ‘port of the old blog into the new site is largely complete. Thanks to the following MySQL snippet that I used quite heavily, I’ve cleaned up most of the links referring back to the old host and old domain. Gotta love MySQL.

UPDATE table_name SET column_name = REPLACE(column_name,"original_text","replace_text")

Next on the to-do list: galleries!

Dining, Recipes

Signature Fried Rice

For Shun:

2-2.5 cups of day-old steamed jasmine rice
4 lop cheong sausages (Chinese sausage) bias sliced
3 whole cloves peeled/chopped garlic
1.5 yellow onion, fine chopped
1 package of dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked overnight and sliced into strips OR
1 15oz can of WHOLE straw mushrooms, peeled
4 jumbo eggs
1 small piece of fresh ginger root, julienned or thick shaved
1 8oz bag of frozen peas/carrots
1 15oz can of sweet baby corn spears
1 8oz can of sliced water chestnuts
1 crown of chopped broccoli (or 8oz bag frozen broccoli)
2-3 green onions, fine sliced
peanut oil
medium sweet soy sauce
powdered garlic
crushed pepper

Heat pan to medium-high heat and sear sausages until they sweat in the pan. Remove sausages from the pan when they are heated through, lightly browned. Add a tablespoon of peanut oil to the pan. Scramble 4 eggs in the peanut oil then remove.

Add more peanut oil to the pan and saute the julienned ginger root. Once they are golden brown, add the chopped garlic. When the garlic is light golden brown, add the onions and saute until translucent. Add the mushrooms and chopped broccoli to soak up some of the flavor. When the broccoli is tender crisp, add the baby corn and water chestnuts; cook until tender. If out of peanut oil, add some more at this stage.

Add the peas and carrots until heated through. Then add the rice. Make sure the rice isn’t cold or it will take forever to separate and stir. Drizzle medium sweet soy sauce throughout the mixture until it is lightly colored. Turn off the heat and continue to stir fry, season with powdered garlic and crushed pepper.

Toss in the scrambled eggs and sausages. Sprinkle green onions over the mixture and stir lightly. Remove from pan and serve warm. You can serve it by itself or with any meat or vegetable dish.