Fried Rice and Tofu Egg Drop Soup

We're still a good looooong way from hitting Asia on our culinary world tour, but we also like to change up our weekly meal plans with cuisine from different parts of the world on a fairly regular basis. Recently we've been making Chinese classics or dishes inspired by Asian cooking, including an awesome meal consisting of egg drop soup and fried rice.

This one starts out by cooking up a few cups of white rice, which are allowed to cool and actually put into the fridge so they become more firm and dry, which helps while "frying" the rice later. Along with our cooked and cooling rice, we've got diced extra firm tofu, carrots, and green onions.

There will also be roma tomato in our soup, and this time we're going to actually peel it ahead of time, which is something we don't normally bother with. To easily peel a tomato, boil it in water for a few minutes and then remove from the pot with tongs. Slide your fingernail or the edge of a knife underneath the skin and it should slide right off.

After being peeled, the tomato is diced up along with the rest of the vegetables.

For our fried rice we weren't going to use any meat, so instead we added in eggs. Here Megan is gently folding eggs on a hot skillet to get what is essentially scrambled eggs without any of the milk or cheese. After the eggs are at the scrambled consistency they are removed from the heat and set with the other ingredients to be added to the rice later.

To get the fried rice started we begin cooking the carrots in a skillet coated with a few teaspoons of oil.

Next the cooled rice is thrown in with the carrots.

The rice and carrots are then joined by those beautiful green onions and stirred up.

Finally the scrambled eggs are tossed in as well.

The rice is nearing completion after sprinkling in some chives and seasonings. Meanwhile though, we've been starting the soup...

...here we're boiling the base, which was water with Swanson chicken flavor boost and green onions. You could also do your own homemade stock however if you have some handy (check out our guide to making stock right here). To thicken this up, throw in a bit of corn starch, and we recommend seasoning with ginger.

For the "egg drop" part of the soup, whisk together a few eggs in a bowl. Dredge a fork into the eggs and then twirl the fork over the boiling stock so that long, thin strings of egg flow down.

The egg will begin to solidify quickly in the boiling stock and create that iconic consistency of egg drop soup.

To make our soup more exciting, we're throwing in diced tomato and tofu to compliment the eggs.

Here's our soup nearing completion with all the ingredients added in.

The delicious fried rice is spooned out first on a plate...

...and then we ladle the egg drop soup into a bowl.

Have some spicy scriracha sauce on hand and you've got an excellent, filling meal that also happens to be meatless (you could of course also do beef, pork, or shrimp in either the rice or soup).

Thanks for checking in, and see you again soon as we return to our culinary world tour, create more interesting meals with beans and pasta, and continue our obsession with one-pot dinners!

Huevos Rancheros

Somehow, despite our undying love for both breakfast foods and Mexican meals, Megan and I had never made huevos rancheros. We finally rectified that unfortunate oversight a few weeks back, and the results were predictably amazing since it combines one of our favorite ways to cook - throwing in every pepper we can find - and our newfound love of poached eggs.

In case you've missed our previous love letters to the most important meal of the day, you can check out some of our breakfast greatest hits:

Breakfast Skillet
Breakfast Burritos
Breakfast Sandwiches
Breakfast Revisited
Breakfast Revisited Again!

Our heuvos rancheros breakfast starts by dicing up red bell pepper, poblanos, anaheims, jalapenos, onions, and garlic. Instead of fresh tomatoes, we decided to go with canned, since they have more liquid and are much easier to use in a dish like this without sacrificing flavor.

All the main ingredients - minus the tomatoes - are first heated up in a skillet to soften and let the flavors develop a bit.

Next goes in the canned tomatoes once the peppers have softened.

Mix it through and allow to cook for a few minutes so the peppers soak up the liquid.

In addition to the canned tomatoes, we're also going to use thick slices of fresh roma tomatoes.

The tomatoes are set down on the top layer, and then we push aside part of the pepper filling mixture to create small wells. Crack a few eggs and drop them into the wells so they'll heat up in the liquid at the bottom of the skillet - sort of halfway between poached eggs and fried eggs.

Throw a cover over the skillet so the eggs cook through properly and are flavored by all the wonderful spicy ingredients.

Like a breakfast burrito, this "filling" of vegetables and eggs goes into a flour tortilla. You may want to coat your tortilla with sour cream, but honestly this is moist enough that it isn't necessary with all the tomatoes.

Be sure to get at least one egg in each tortilla, along with a generous helping of tomatoes and peppers, and then top with some shredded cheese. Wrap it up and dig in!

Novel Noodles: Pesto Chicken And Lemon Spinach Skillets

While Six-Seven-Eight covers a wide range of cooking styles for just about any meal of the day, pasta has been a part of our regular cuisine since I made fettuccine alfredo for Megan when we first started dating and couldn't afford to go out.

There's a whole world beyond spaghetti with tomato sauce, however, which is why we've been running our "Novel Noodles" series exploring interesting and unique takes on pasta meals. To get caught up, check out the previous noodle excursions with our awesome bean-based "Rustica Sausage and Fusilli" or the impromptu "Cheeseball Bake."

Today we'll look at two twists on pasta dinners that are not only a little different form the norm, they are also very easy and won't leave you with quite as many dishes after the meal. First up is our pesto chicken pasta, which we make with store bought ingredients (a departure from the norm for us, as we generally make our own sauces).

To get this started, you just need a small jar of basil pesto and some chili pepper blend - you can usually find a tube of this stuff near the fresh herbs at the supermarket.

Heat both in a skillet, while simultaneously cooking your pasta in boiling water in another pan. This particular dish works best with shorter, fatter pastas like bowties, rotini, or penne.

If you like meat in your pasta, cook a chicken breast underneath the broiler until it's just cooked through and turning golden brown on the outside. Season with standard Italian favorites like oregano, basil, and pepper.

After your pasta is al dente, throw it into the skillet with the basil and chile pepper blend and mix thoroughly, adding more pesto as needed to coat.

Cut the chicken into thin strips and toss them in with the pasta. If chicken isn't your thing, this would be great with slices of sausage or even shrimp.

Keep mixing until everything is coated in delicious flavor and heated through.

Scoop up the pasta and sliced chicken and serve in a bowl for a one-stop meal (you'll probably want some shredded Parmesan on top) or on a plate with a side salad.

Another fairly quick and easy meal we like to make with a store bought sauce is our lemon-spinach pasta. This one uses a lot more veggies, however. For both color, flavor, and texture we're slicing up red and orange bell pepper, mushrooms, and fresh spinach.

Toss it all in a skillet along with two or three large Italian sausages. We recommend the kind served up at the butcher block rather than pre-packaged or frozen, and you can frequently find these on manager's special for  a dollar or even 50 cents a piece if you go on the weekend or just before they get in a new shipment of meat.

To make this incredibly easy our sauce is just going to be the "Savory Lemon and Herb" flavored Philadelphia cooking creme. If you want to make your own sauce, a simple Alfredo with heavy cream, Parmesan, and fresh squeezed lemon would do nicely.

Slice up the sausage after it's heated through, and then return it to the skillet and mix together so everything is coated in sauce. Once again, serve this one in a bowl for a one-stop meal or on a plate with a side salad. Top with ground pepper and some shredded cheese.

Roast Beef Rollups

Experimentation and trying new things is a major part of our regular cooking, but it doesn't always involve huge dinners or complicated meals with tons of ingredients. Recently while thinking about pigs in a blanket (hot dogs baked inside rolls) we thought of trying some different variations that don't involve hot dogs.

Here we've unwrapped refrigerated crescent rolls (usually found near the butter or cookie dough at the grocery store) and we're squirting some dijon mustard on them. Of course you can go with anything else instead - honey mustard, spicy brown, standard yellow, or any other condiment that you prefer.

For the meat we're using thinly sliced roast beef from the grocery store's deli, which is layered over the mustard spread.

Along with the meat, we're also putting on some shredded Swiss cheese. Again any possible meat and cheese combination can work here, but this is the one we enjoyed the most.

For a fun little twist I put sliced pickles on one of mine. Jarred jalapenos or stuffed olives would also be exciting choices.

For a variation using standard flavors I love we also did some with chicken and buffalo sauce instead of mustard and beef.

After all the ingredients are in place, roll up the crescent rolls into these cute little shapes.

Here we've used a full package of crescent roll dough and put together eight different roll ups.

They only need to bake for about 10 or 15 minutes and they're ready to go!

These are delicious eaten as is, or with a dipping sauce like ketchup, ranch, buffalo sauce, thousand island, etc.

See you again soon as we look into more innovative pastas, an amazing twist on pizza done in a bread pan, and our first try at huevos rancheros!

One Pot Mania!

For the sake of time and simplicity our dinners lately have been of a "one pot" nature, where everything literally goes into a single pot and bakes together. Presto - instant dinner and far less dishes to deal with afterwards. We were lucky enough to get a Dutch oven for Christmas, so this has significantly streamlined the process, since anything that needs to be browned on the skillet first can go straight into the oven without having to switch pans.

Back in our Christmas Wellington blog I mentioned how we cut a pork loin in half. The other half recently became a one-pot meal started off by browning the loin in chile oil and seasonings in the Dutch oven.

Each side is cooked for a few minutes until it's sufficiently browned on the outsides but hasn't cooked through to the center yet.

Next we begin throwing in the vegetable ingredients to round out the one-pot, starting with onions...

...then some diced potatoes...

...and finally carrots, broccoli, and red bell peppers. You can really do any kind of veggie that you like though, such as mushrooms, zucchini, squash, different kinds of peppers, or even beans.

For extra flavor and to prevent everything from getting dry we're pouring in a can of sauce. In this case we're using one of the new "Meal Starter" sauces from Progresso. Here we're using the mushroom variety, or you could use condensed cream of mushroom or golden mushroom soup, but that's not quite as good.

After baking in the oven we slice up the meat and dish out this complete one-package meal into a bowl for serving.

If you don't have a Dutch oven, of course you can still make delicious one-pot style meals using a skillet and a baking dish. Back in our chile pork blog we also mentioned using half a pork shoulder and saving the other half for a different meal. Here's the second half of the pork getting ready for browning.

Cover it in whatever seasonings you prefer (garlic, pepper, and salt is a good starting point) and brown each side in vegetable oil.

After browning, place the meat into a large and deep baking dish so there's enough room for all the vegetables and sauce.

For this one we're doing baby carrots, red potatoes, and sliced mushrooms.

This time we're using the "creamy roasted garlic" Progresso Meal Starter for our sauce.

Here it is straight from the oven with all the meat and veggies cooked together.

Spoon out some tender meat and vegetables onto a plate or bowl and you're ready to go! While this has everything you need for a meal, you could also do a side salad or some rice.

Although we used pork both times here, these one-pot meals are excellent with chicken thighs, chicken leg quarters, split chicken breasts, or any number of beef cuts.