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| There's a white fungus among us - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
Showing posts with label stir fry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stir fry. Show all posts
Monday, September 15, 2014
UnRecipe: White Fungus Can't Jump (but it's a good noodle replacement)
Tis the season for using the stove and oven again. And not doing the mad dance of opening all the windows around 6pm to let some marginally cooler air circulate around the house, and then by morning, shut all the windows and close the drapes, turning your home into a dark Batcave to preserve what little cool air you collected the night before. Tis the season to be easing into that glorious time of year called FALL. That being said, let's talk about mushrooms -- not the typical autumnal chanterelle or earthy morel, but the lesser known white fungus/snow fungus/silver ear fungus/white jelly fungus. Or what I call, the paleo/low-carb noodle replacement fungus.
Monday, May 19, 2014
UnRecipe: Asian Creature of Habit
A friend had mentioned, just based on the endless photos I post on the social media-verse, that I pretty much cook only Asian food. Really? Is that the cuisine profile most people associate me with?? (blog name notwithstanding) I'm sure I've cooked other things! I thought about it for a bit and realized, jeeze, it really has been a while since I've cooked a meat loaf or anything the average American/Western European would consider "dinner." Not that cooking primarily Asian cuisine is a bad thing -- 1.3 billion Chinese can't be wrong -- it's just interesting to get an outsider's perspective of what's cookin', if all you saw was a social media feed of what's on the menu. So the unsurprising truth is OUT: I'm totally an Asian Creature of Habit when it comes to cooking. Apologies to Mr. Wasabi, who probably just wants a grilled cheese sandwich now and then.
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| Even when it's not Asian food, it looks like fried rice or stir fry - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
OMG a Recipe (sort of): I Just Like to Look at the Pictures
You know how it goes... you get the mail, a particular magazine shows up, you thumb through it, ignore all the wordsy articles and just ogle the photos. No... not that magazine, you naughty bugger. What did you think I was talking about, Willis? I am referring to the handy-dandy Martha Stewart/Omnimedia concoction, Everyday Food. Snark if you will, my mom gifted me the subscription and you never want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially if it's from Mom. It leads me to today's post theme, which is similar to my logic behind Ikea furniture -- I often don't even read the instructions, I just look at the picture and throw stuff together. Don't you??
Regardless of the fact that it was a nice gift from Wasabi Mom, I'm not dropping any hatorade on Everyday Food. The magazine title doesn't lie -- these are all dishes you could make every day, with nods to time constraints, availability of ingredients and a fairly even-handed balance on nutrition and budget. I especially like the little grocery checklist they put in every issue, and its small size makes it handy to bring to the store, check things off, and Shazam-wow, you're set for more than a week's worth of meals plus desserts and snacks. It's for the people who want to eat well with home-cooked meals, but not fuss, likely because they're balancing a schedule of a full time job, plus being a taxi for all the kids' activities and playdates. For as many food nerds that are out there, they are outnumbered by Everybody Else, so no, a truffled poached quail's egg on a velvet puree of parsnips probably won't show up in the magazine, but that's okay, there's other magazines for that. As least I hope so. That actually sounds kinda good for being made up on the fly.
And the pictures are great! I rip out so many food photos in all magazines, just to keep a collection of things to inspire me. The signature Martha Stewart minimalism is a clean look I appreciate, and I like seeing the little food props they use, especially for the cookie issues, where it's tissue paper and baker's twine galore. And you can't have too many of those Asian soup spoons -- they make such darn good props for small bites, especially sitting on a stacking of small, completely impractical tasting dishes. Even though no one really eats like that, who cares, it makes the food look real purdy-like for the camera.
Speaking of pictures, it was the shot of the Beef and Pineapple Red Curry dish in the fall issue of Everday Food made me go, "Dag, yo -- I wanna make that!" I think I had an odd craving for tart pineapple. Or perhaps my scurvy was acting up again, compelling me to make something with a large dose of vitamin C. I remember scanning the recipe at one point, putting it aside, then deciding a month later I would make it, and just starting to chop up vegetables and ingredients willy-nilly. It wasn't until I had the wok sizzling away with some sliced pork that I saw, oh, it's a beef recipe. And there's a need for curry paste, which I don't have. About the only two things I had from the recipe were pineapple and green beans, because the picture clearly showed those ingredients. Think of it more as not cooking by recipe, but by inspiration, of a photo showing these luscious chunks of pineapple mixed with shreds of meat and big pieces of green beans. Martha Stewart and the minions you probably brow-beat to come up with this dish, you are my muses.To marinate the pork-that-was-supposed-to-be-beef, I used the seasonings I had on-hand, which included some soy sauce, a splash of fish sauce, chili paste, rice vinegar, and some sugar to balance out the acid. I'm sure red curry would have been a knockout, but I didn't have it and I don't think the dish suffered, because I had my food-heart set on something with beans and pineapple, and I prepared them the way I interpreted the photo, with a bit of savory heat, but not too strong a seasoning so that you can't appreciate the ingredients.
So yes, there's a recipe if you want it -- the link to the beef and pineapple curry recipe is above, but consider just throwing caution and recipes to the wind the next time you see a lovely photo of food that stirs your appetite. Sometimes it's not the dish that's alerting your craving, but an ingredient in it. Follow that desire and see where it leads, you might come up with something even better.
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| Recipes are overrated, just copy the picture - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
And the pictures are great! I rip out so many food photos in all magazines, just to keep a collection of things to inspire me. The signature Martha Stewart minimalism is a clean look I appreciate, and I like seeing the little food props they use, especially for the cookie issues, where it's tissue paper and baker's twine galore. And you can't have too many of those Asian soup spoons -- they make such darn good props for small bites, especially sitting on a stacking of small, completely impractical tasting dishes. Even though no one really eats like that, who cares, it makes the food look real purdy-like for the camera.
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| Sometimes you just want pineapple and green beans. Apparently, I did - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
So yes, there's a recipe if you want it -- the link to the beef and pineapple curry recipe is above, but consider just throwing caution and recipes to the wind the next time you see a lovely photo of food that stirs your appetite. Sometimes it's not the dish that's alerting your craving, but an ingredient in it. Follow that desire and see where it leads, you might come up with something even better.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
OMG a Recipe: Takeout Cravings Made at Home
Everyone has really specific food cravings. For some, it's a big juicy hamburger, all the fixin's, with a side of crispy fries. For others, maybe it's an ooey-gooey cheese pizza, straight from the oven. Thankfully in our modern delivery-friendly times, we can order almost anything to be sent straight to our door or zip past a drive-thru and receive instant gratification. My cravings are a little different -- I really love the spicy heat of savory beef over a cold pickled salad, or the creamy richness of a peanut sauce. Living in the Seattle area, it's actually not difficult to get any of this -- even in Duvall, where I live, we've got two Asian/Thai places and a few teriyaki places right in town. But what if you're not as lucky, or if this craving hits at an odd time and all the restaurants are closed? Wonder no longer, I'm going to lay some Wasabi Knowledge on you.
It was a dark and stormy night... well, more like a weird weather day, where the sun would be shining, but the rain was pouring down. This kind of weather means Wasabi is as lazy as sin, I don't want to leave the house, even to pick up delicious takeout food, so it's MacGyver Meal Time, and I match food cravings to what we've got on-hand. We had just gotten our latest CSA box of magical mystery fruits and vegetables. Which at this time of year is kale, kale, kale... and oh yeah, more kale! But there's some other things that show up, like broccoli and at the time, a late harvest cucumber or two, with skin as tough as leather. We were also getting other late summer things like eggplant, which people either cheer with joy or look at it with quiet bewilderment, as it's not a vegetable people deal with regularly, given its seasonal particulars. But it's a good thing, and it went so well in a creamy peanut sauce.
I wanted a Korean-style BBQ, kind of similar to kalbi, with the spicy-sweet sauce. I had a steak defrosting in the fridge, and with it still slightly icy, it's easier to slice the beef super-thin. I marinated about a pound of thinly-sliced beef for about a half hour (or more, if you have the time) in a mixture of: 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, 1 teaspoon cornstarch, and 1 teaspoon Sriracha or 1/2 teaspoon of chili flakes. You just mix everything together by hand until it's all coated. For the vegetables, use what you have -- I chopped up broccoli and kale with some thinly sliced onions. In a hot wok, add a little cooking oil, quickly stir-fry the beef until it's browned, then add in the vegetables to finish Use a little watered-down soy sauce to deglaze the wok and help make a sauce. Add more sugar if you like it on the sweet side. If I'm cooking more vegetables, I'll remove the mostly-cooked beef so it doesn't get rubbery, and give the vegetables more time to soften before adding the meat back in. In this case, the kale wilts fast and I like my broccoli with a little crunch, so it just needed minimal cooking time. This is usually how I do a fast beef stir fry at home; no real measuring or fussing with sauces, I just use what's in the fridge. If there's fresh ginger, garlic and/or scallions, I add it. Fish sauce is nice as well. If you have a container of spicy Korean kochujang sauce, which is like a spicy barbecue sauce, I'll add a little spoonful of that to finish, but again, if you don't have any of this stuff handy, the basics listed above will do fine.
The finished stir fry was served over some lightly pickled cucumbers. I partially skinned, sliced and seeded the somewhat tough cucumbers and let them sit in a light brine of a few spoonfuls of sugar and rice wine vinegar. It was more like a cucumber salad, as the vinegar didn't really have time to fully penetrate the slices, but it was fine. The crunchiness of the cold cucumber was nice with the spicy heat of the stir fry. It's a nice alternative to serving the beef over rice. Not that I didn't have rice -- I made a pot of steamed brown rice and saved it for one of my favorite at-home quick meals: spicy peanut sauce simmered with.. well, anything.
Keep plain peanut butter around. Unless you have an allergy, this should just be a rule for households. I rarely have peanut butter sandwiches, given our lack of bread around the house, but I swear we go through a giant jar of Adams u-stir-the-crap-outta-this-thing peanut butter every month. Either that, or we have Peanut Butter Elf Thieves silently attacking our cupboards. Or maybe it's just Indy -- she loves the stuff.
My go-to peanut sauce, which is generally pretty easy to make if you keep certain things handy in the pantry is this: 1 can of coconut milk (full-fat or low-fat, doesn't matter), 1/2 cup of plain/unsweetened well-stirred peanut butter, 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 cloves of chopped garlic, 1 teaspoon (or more) of Sriracha or a sprinkle of chili flakes. 1 teaspoon of chopped ginger if you have it. This is my pantry peanut sauce, when I have a Thai food craving and am too lazy to go out. I realize not everyone keeps coconut milk around, but it's a canned good, it'll keep for a while, so when you see it on sale, buy a couple and keep 'em on hand. You'll be thankful you did. Personally I really like the Trader Joe brand -- it just tastes more fragrant. It's somewhat Thai-inspired, just with less ingredients, but easy to make at home without buying the premade jarred stuff.
I usually brown and soften the vegetables I'm going to have with this sauce first -- in this case, it was eggplant and some onions. Oh yeah, and big surprise - KALE! When the pan is still hot, I put in the peanut butter, as the heat will help melt it down. It's still sticky as all get-out, so I start adding in the other liquid ingredients and sprinkle in garlic and Sriracha as I mix, getting everything incorporated. I add the coconut milk in last. It really brings everything together, will deglaze the pan and helps completely melt the peanut butter down.When it's all incorporated, I add in small cubes of extra firm tofu -- again, optional, but since this is a vegetarian dish, the added protein can't hurt. I could add it earlier, but mixing the sauce would just pulverize the tofu into mush, so I wait until the sauce is combined, so it can fully simmer in the mix of flavors. I also throw in handfuls of unsalted peanuts for extra crunch. Not a requirement, but it's a nice textural thing. Take heaping spoonfuls of this stuff and pour it over rice and enjoy. Spicy, creamy, crunchy and stick-to-your-ribs good -- and it's fast. By the time the rice is done steaming, the sauce and vegetables are done.
Remember the weird, day-glo orange chicken that's offered in the super-Americanized Chinese food places that haunt most food courts? Of course you do. It's alarmingly orange and oddly addictive, if you've spent any amount of your teenage life mall-ratting and perusing tapes at Sam Goody. It's orange in description-only, as an orange off the tree would not recognize this sauce as being a second cousin, once-removed, from his uncle's cousin's side of the citrus family. I found myself thinking of this mall-food when we had a bit of leftover orange juice from a brunch at our house. I know it's for drinking, but I thought, let's make a sauce out of it! Good idea? Meh, it's not like I was drinking bleach.
Consider this one a work in progress: I put about a cup and a half's worth of orange juice in a small pot and let it simmer until reduced by about a third. I added some soy sauce and sesame oil, then a few dashes of rice wine vinegar. It was a lot of "bit of this, bit of that," pushing and pulling the flavors in this orange juice concoction. I was trying to avoid adding more sugar, as the juice has plenty on its own. There's just no way to get it to the syrupy-sweet flavor of the mall food version, nor should you want to. The final result was just a savory orange-flavored sauce, but kind of ho-hum, to be honest. It went into a stir fry of chicken, onions and... say it with me now: kale. Let no one say we don't eat our greens at the Wasabi household. The final dish wasn't alarmingly orange, which is probably a good thing. I just wanted to see if I could make a sauce from orange juice. I think if I do this again, I'm using fresh pineapple, letting it simmer with the orange juice and letting it break down during the reduction, since it's got quite a bit of liquid if you use fresh chunks. You can't beat its sweetness and while I'll have to balance out the double whammy of acidity with oranges and pineapple, I think it will give me a more zippy, bright-tasting sauce. Revisiting this UnRecipe will have to wait until we're saddled with a surplus of orange juice, as it's another thing we tend not to keep around the house. Maybe it's a weird thing to want to make -- bad Americanized Chinese food -- but we're all products/victims of our upbringing, and we've all put our time in a mall food court or three. I just try to find a way to make a slightly less scary version at home.
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| Spicy beef over cucumber salad - restaurant meal, quickly made at home - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
It was a dark and stormy night... well, more like a weird weather day, where the sun would be shining, but the rain was pouring down. This kind of weather means Wasabi is as lazy as sin, I don't want to leave the house, even to pick up delicious takeout food, so it's MacGyver Meal Time, and I match food cravings to what we've got on-hand. We had just gotten our latest CSA box of magical mystery fruits and vegetables. Which at this time of year is kale, kale, kale... and oh yeah, more kale! But there's some other things that show up, like broccoli and at the time, a late harvest cucumber or two, with skin as tough as leather. We were also getting other late summer things like eggplant, which people either cheer with joy or look at it with quiet bewilderment, as it's not a vegetable people deal with regularly, given its seasonal particulars. But it's a good thing, and it went so well in a creamy peanut sauce.
 |
| Putting together all the favorite flavors to answer my food cravings - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
I wanted a Korean-style BBQ, kind of similar to kalbi, with the spicy-sweet sauce. I had a steak defrosting in the fridge, and with it still slightly icy, it's easier to slice the beef super-thin. I marinated about a pound of thinly-sliced beef for about a half hour (or more, if you have the time) in a mixture of: 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, 1 teaspoon cornstarch, and 1 teaspoon Sriracha or 1/2 teaspoon of chili flakes. You just mix everything together by hand until it's all coated. For the vegetables, use what you have -- I chopped up broccoli and kale with some thinly sliced onions. In a hot wok, add a little cooking oil, quickly stir-fry the beef until it's browned, then add in the vegetables to finish Use a little watered-down soy sauce to deglaze the wok and help make a sauce. Add more sugar if you like it on the sweet side. If I'm cooking more vegetables, I'll remove the mostly-cooked beef so it doesn't get rubbery, and give the vegetables more time to soften before adding the meat back in. In this case, the kale wilts fast and I like my broccoli with a little crunch, so it just needed minimal cooking time. This is usually how I do a fast beef stir fry at home; no real measuring or fussing with sauces, I just use what's in the fridge. If there's fresh ginger, garlic and/or scallions, I add it. Fish sauce is nice as well. If you have a container of spicy Korean kochujang sauce, which is like a spicy barbecue sauce, I'll add a little spoonful of that to finish, but again, if you don't have any of this stuff handy, the basics listed above will do fine.
The finished stir fry was served over some lightly pickled cucumbers. I partially skinned, sliced and seeded the somewhat tough cucumbers and let them sit in a light brine of a few spoonfuls of sugar and rice wine vinegar. It was more like a cucumber salad, as the vinegar didn't really have time to fully penetrate the slices, but it was fine. The crunchiness of the cold cucumber was nice with the spicy heat of the stir fry. It's a nice alternative to serving the beef over rice. Not that I didn't have rice -- I made a pot of steamed brown rice and saved it for one of my favorite at-home quick meals: spicy peanut sauce simmered with.. well, anything.
 |
| Pantry peanut sauce, at your service - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
Keep plain peanut butter around. Unless you have an allergy, this should just be a rule for households. I rarely have peanut butter sandwiches, given our lack of bread around the house, but I swear we go through a giant jar of Adams u-stir-the-crap-outta-this-thing peanut butter every month. Either that, or we have Peanut Butter Elf Thieves silently attacking our cupboards. Or maybe it's just Indy -- she loves the stuff.
My go-to peanut sauce, which is generally pretty easy to make if you keep certain things handy in the pantry is this: 1 can of coconut milk (full-fat or low-fat, doesn't matter), 1/2 cup of plain/unsweetened well-stirred peanut butter, 3 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 cloves of chopped garlic, 1 teaspoon (or more) of Sriracha or a sprinkle of chili flakes. 1 teaspoon of chopped ginger if you have it. This is my pantry peanut sauce, when I have a Thai food craving and am too lazy to go out. I realize not everyone keeps coconut milk around, but it's a canned good, it'll keep for a while, so when you see it on sale, buy a couple and keep 'em on hand. You'll be thankful you did. Personally I really like the Trader Joe brand -- it just tastes more fragrant. It's somewhat Thai-inspired, just with less ingredients, but easy to make at home without buying the premade jarred stuff.
I usually brown and soften the vegetables I'm going to have with this sauce first -- in this case, it was eggplant and some onions. Oh yeah, and big surprise - KALE! When the pan is still hot, I put in the peanut butter, as the heat will help melt it down. It's still sticky as all get-out, so I start adding in the other liquid ingredients and sprinkle in garlic and Sriracha as I mix, getting everything incorporated. I add the coconut milk in last. It really brings everything together, will deglaze the pan and helps completely melt the peanut butter down.When it's all incorporated, I add in small cubes of extra firm tofu -- again, optional, but since this is a vegetarian dish, the added protein can't hurt. I could add it earlier, but mixing the sauce would just pulverize the tofu into mush, so I wait until the sauce is combined, so it can fully simmer in the mix of flavors. I also throw in handfuls of unsalted peanuts for extra crunch. Not a requirement, but it's a nice textural thing. Take heaping spoonfuls of this stuff and pour it over rice and enjoy. Spicy, creamy, crunchy and stick-to-your-ribs good -- and it's fast. By the time the rice is done steaming, the sauce and vegetables are done.
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| Orange chicken, inspired by... mall food court! - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
Remember the weird, day-glo orange chicken that's offered in the super-Americanized Chinese food places that haunt most food courts? Of course you do. It's alarmingly orange and oddly addictive, if you've spent any amount of your teenage life mall-ratting and perusing tapes at Sam Goody. It's orange in description-only, as an orange off the tree would not recognize this sauce as being a second cousin, once-removed, from his uncle's cousin's side of the citrus family. I found myself thinking of this mall-food when we had a bit of leftover orange juice from a brunch at our house. I know it's for drinking, but I thought, let's make a sauce out of it! Good idea? Meh, it's not like I was drinking bleach.
Consider this one a work in progress: I put about a cup and a half's worth of orange juice in a small pot and let it simmer until reduced by about a third. I added some soy sauce and sesame oil, then a few dashes of rice wine vinegar. It was a lot of "bit of this, bit of that," pushing and pulling the flavors in this orange juice concoction. I was trying to avoid adding more sugar, as the juice has plenty on its own. There's just no way to get it to the syrupy-sweet flavor of the mall food version, nor should you want to. The final result was just a savory orange-flavored sauce, but kind of ho-hum, to be honest. It went into a stir fry of chicken, onions and... say it with me now: kale. Let no one say we don't eat our greens at the Wasabi household. The final dish wasn't alarmingly orange, which is probably a good thing. I just wanted to see if I could make a sauce from orange juice. I think if I do this again, I'm using fresh pineapple, letting it simmer with the orange juice and letting it break down during the reduction, since it's got quite a bit of liquid if you use fresh chunks. You can't beat its sweetness and while I'll have to balance out the double whammy of acidity with oranges and pineapple, I think it will give me a more zippy, bright-tasting sauce. Revisiting this UnRecipe will have to wait until we're saddled with a surplus of orange juice, as it's another thing we tend not to keep around the house. Maybe it's a weird thing to want to make -- bad Americanized Chinese food -- but we're all products/victims of our upbringing, and we've all put our time in a mall food court or three. I just try to find a way to make a slightly less scary version at home.
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| Asian-inspired dinner at Casa de Wasabi, on a sunny/stormy day - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
Monday, September 26, 2011
UnRecipe: Three Easy Peasies
The oddball summer we enjoyed/griped about has at least given us one good thing at Casa de Wasabi -- a bumper crop of snow and sugar snap peas. I did a post a little while back about using the greens when I was thinning some of the rows, but for the last couple of months, we've been eating our veggies and then some.
There's been some weeks where I've been able to collect several pounds' worth of peas. It's more than I know what to do with them, but luckily they last for a while in the fridge before Wilty and Slimy take over. They make for great snacks, dipped in hummus, and when sliced into matchsticks, I like to sprinkle a handful over salads for a nice, fresh crunch. My favorite way to use them is tossing into a stir fry. I know that's kind of a de facto move, but I really do like tossing together whatever vegetables I have on-hand into a hot wok and making an ad hoc spicy finishing sauce. It's fast, but it's also very comforting to me. Especially when along with the peas from our garden, we still get our big ol' box of mystery veggies from our CSA delivery. How's that for roughage?
When I cook with the peas, I prefer the flat snowpeas, saving the sweeter sugar peas for snacking. Not to be Captain Obvious, but if you've never really noticed the difference between sugar and snow peas, just take a gander above to see how the shorter, more rounded sugar snap peas differ from the flat, wide snow peas. You'll notice the flavor as the season moves along and the sugar snaps have a heightened sweetness. They're one of the easier things to grow in a garden, especially for lazy gardeners like myself -- once you have the pea plants going and preferably climbing upwards on some sort of trellis (I'm super lazy, and just had them scrambling up stakes), they'll flower with these delicate white blooms and before you know it, the plants will be awash with peas. They grow quickly and you'll be surprised how fast your crisper drawer will fill with peas. It'll go from a handful here and there to bagfuls of a pound or two a week, depending on how many plants you've got. I've seen people puree the peas to make a smooth hummus-type dip, but I really like them whole and crunchy. If you throw them into a stir fry as the last ingredient, they'll keep their crispness.
As I blah-blah-blah about how great they are in a stir fry, you're probably wondering, what kind of sauce are you making for these mystical magical stir frys, Wasabi? I've mixed things up -- I like using jarred tamarind paste and making a sour, savory Pad Thai-like sauce, mixing a bunch of vegetables with scrambled egg and finishing with crushed peanuts. I also enjoy using black bean paste -- really rich, deep flavor, and you don't need to use a lot of it to mix up a fast sauce that holds up nicely with sliced beef and green onions to go with the peas. The latest bag of peas went into a vegetarian stir fry with a ton of cremini mushrooms, tofu and chili sauce; kind of a Szechwan inspired stir fry that tasted extra good on one of the oddball rainy, cool days we had in between the heat spells. I'd recommend getting tamarind or black bean paste from your local Asian market -- you can usually find these in the sauces/flavorings aisle. These are ingredients that are probably added into other sauces you've had before, but it's nice to have them at your disposal, and not already mixed into a pre-bottled sauce, as you can control the flavors. I would say you could control the salt, but these are packed full of sodium, so just keep an eye on the labels and you can water them down as needed. I use sodium/sugar-free rice wine vinegar to loosen a sauce as well as add a tart, sharp flavor. Use a corn starch slurry to thicken, since ingredients like fresh vegetables and tofu can give off quite a bit of liquid.
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| Eat your greens -- we've got a garden full of 'em! - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
There's been some weeks where I've been able to collect several pounds' worth of peas. It's more than I know what to do with them, but luckily they last for a while in the fridge before Wilty and Slimy take over. They make for great snacks, dipped in hummus, and when sliced into matchsticks, I like to sprinkle a handful over salads for a nice, fresh crunch. My favorite way to use them is tossing into a stir fry. I know that's kind of a de facto move, but I really do like tossing together whatever vegetables I have on-hand into a hot wok and making an ad hoc spicy finishing sauce. It's fast, but it's also very comforting to me. Especially when along with the peas from our garden, we still get our big ol' box of mystery veggies from our CSA delivery. How's that for roughage?
 |
| Mind your Peas and Qs - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
When I cook with the peas, I prefer the flat snowpeas, saving the sweeter sugar peas for snacking. Not to be Captain Obvious, but if you've never really noticed the difference between sugar and snow peas, just take a gander above to see how the shorter, more rounded sugar snap peas differ from the flat, wide snow peas. You'll notice the flavor as the season moves along and the sugar snaps have a heightened sweetness. They're one of the easier things to grow in a garden, especially for lazy gardeners like myself -- once you have the pea plants going and preferably climbing upwards on some sort of trellis (I'm super lazy, and just had them scrambling up stakes), they'll flower with these delicate white blooms and before you know it, the plants will be awash with peas. They grow quickly and you'll be surprised how fast your crisper drawer will fill with peas. It'll go from a handful here and there to bagfuls of a pound or two a week, depending on how many plants you've got. I've seen people puree the peas to make a smooth hummus-type dip, but I really like them whole and crunchy. If you throw them into a stir fry as the last ingredient, they'll keep their crispness.
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| Several dinners, thanks to the backyard produce supply - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
As I blah-blah-blah about how great they are in a stir fry, you're probably wondering, what kind of sauce are you making for these mystical magical stir frys, Wasabi? I've mixed things up -- I like using jarred tamarind paste and making a sour, savory Pad Thai-like sauce, mixing a bunch of vegetables with scrambled egg and finishing with crushed peanuts. I also enjoy using black bean paste -- really rich, deep flavor, and you don't need to use a lot of it to mix up a fast sauce that holds up nicely with sliced beef and green onions to go with the peas. The latest bag of peas went into a vegetarian stir fry with a ton of cremini mushrooms, tofu and chili sauce; kind of a Szechwan inspired stir fry that tasted extra good on one of the oddball rainy, cool days we had in between the heat spells. I'd recommend getting tamarind or black bean paste from your local Asian market -- you can usually find these in the sauces/flavorings aisle. These are ingredients that are probably added into other sauces you've had before, but it's nice to have them at your disposal, and not already mixed into a pre-bottled sauce, as you can control the flavors. I would say you could control the salt, but these are packed full of sodium, so just keep an eye on the labels and you can water them down as needed. I use sodium/sugar-free rice wine vinegar to loosen a sauce as well as add a tart, sharp flavor. Use a corn starch slurry to thicken, since ingredients like fresh vegetables and tofu can give off quite a bit of liquid.
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| Mushrooms, tofu, bok choy and peas, perfect for Meatless Mondays - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
Monday, February 1, 2010
OMG a Recipe: Asian Invasion
Being a person of the Asian persuasion, aside from being able to make bad jokes like that, one's notion of comfort foods can be a little different from the usual meat n' potatoes variety. After months of buttery holiday dishes, I start to crave the familiar spicy/sweet/sour triple-header of Asian flavors. Usually I end up going on a sodium-addled miso soup binge for two weeks, but this time, the Wasabi Prime kitchen turned towards a Thai-inspired direction, making a variety of peanut sauce stir-fry dishes using leftover meat and vegetables, and trying my hand at a pot of tom yum gai, a coconut chicken soup.
One of the reasons I particularly enjoy Thai food is the mix of strong ingredients -- there's no messing about with this cuisine; be prepared to run wild in Flavor Country. Without knowing exactly what to cook, as long as I have some basics like fresh garlic, ginger, cilantro, limes, soy sauce, coconut milk, and fish sauce, it's relatively easy to throw something Thai-inspired together. A crisper drawer of broccoli, root vegetables like carrots and parsnips, and a pantry always stocked with onions was a good vegetable base for a stir-fry. We still had a large hunk of roasted pork tenderloin leftover from the holidays, and since its seasoning was mild, it could be sliced thin and thrown into a different cuisine without any flavor funk. To accompany the stir-fry dishes, a simple tofu pad thai was made using the remainder of a leftover store-bought sauce by Por Kwan that I get at Uwajimaya, and then a pot of the tom yum soup. For a week, we had a combination of about four different dishes where a lot of the same flavors and ingredients were used.
From the wide range of vegetables and leftover meat, two leftover stir-fry dishes were created for separate meals, using a similar sauce. For one stir-fry, it was a spicy and sour sauce cooked with root vegetables and the leftover pork. For the second stir-fry, it was long strips of broccoli, peanuts, and leftover pork tossed with a spicy peanut sauce. I added ingredients like tofu and water chestnuts between the two stir-fry dishes, but really, this is an "anything goes" way of cooking, and you can make whatever mixture of vegetables and meat you prefer.
The base of this flexible sauce is as follows:
1/4 cup chicken, beef broth or water
1/4 cup reduced sodium soy sauce
Juice from 1/2 of a lime, about a tablespoon's worth
1/2 teaspoon/barely a splash of fish sauce
1 tsp finely-chopped ginger
1 tsp finely-chopped garlic
1 tsp sriracha -- more if you like it extra-spicy
For a spicy, sour sauce, add an extra teaspoon of rice wine vinegar and pour over a mixture of sizzling vegetables and meat in a wok or pan. Make a slurry of corn starch to thicken, and serve with fresh bean sprouts, chopped cilantro, and sesame seeds.
For a creamy peanut sauce, add a 1/2 cup of unsweetened peanut butter to the base sauce, microwave to soften, so the peanut butter can incorporate with the wet ingredients, and pour over the cooking vegetables and meat in the wok or pan. The peanut butter will act like a thickener and keep the sauce from being too watery. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and cilantro before serving.
Making up a pot of tom yum gai is a more flavorful alternative to chicken noodle soup on a cold day. I happened to have made a recent pot of chicken broth, so this pot of tom yum gai had that little extra bit of homemade love, along with chicken bits scraped off the simmered bones. The combination of creamy coconut milk and the savory, sour broth both warms the belly and is an especially nice kick if you're struggling through a head cold. I would never claim that this is the ultimate traditional way of making tom yum gai; this recipe was put together based on seeing what others have done and making adjustments for a soup designed for weeknight cooking.
Tom Yum Gai (making it the Wasabi Prime weeknight way)
(6-8 main servings or 10-12 side servings)
For the soup:
48 oz chicken broth (homemade if you got it, but store-bought is fine)
2 cans of 13.5 oz coconut milk
4 tblsp fresh-squeezed lime juice (about 1 1/2 limes' worth)
3 tblsp fish sauce
2 lemongrass stalks, split/crushed
1 tsp fresh ginger root, finely grated
Soup ingredients:
14 oz of firm tofu, drained and cut into small cubes
2 cups cleaned/quartered button mushrooms
1 cup shredded precooked chicken
8 oz canned sliced bamboo shoots
2 whole serrano chiles, thinly sliced (optional if you want extra spice)
Chopped cilantro
Bring the chicken stock, coconut milk and fish sauce to a simmer in a large pot. Add the ginger, lemongrass and lime juice once soup is simmering. Stir to combine ingredients and taste soup periodically to see if it needs more fish sauce to deepen flavor. Can fish out the lemongrass stalks or leave in to continue flavoring the soup -- just don't eat it! Add the solid ingredients -- tofu, chicken, bamboo and mushrooms. These just need to simmer with the soup for a few minutes, to get to temperature. Add the chiles and the cilantro last, right before serving, so they keep their color and fresh flavor.
 |
| Putting the "yum" in tom yum gai - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
One of the reasons I particularly enjoy Thai food is the mix of strong ingredients -- there's no messing about with this cuisine; be prepared to run wild in Flavor Country. Without knowing exactly what to cook, as long as I have some basics like fresh garlic, ginger, cilantro, limes, soy sauce, coconut milk, and fish sauce, it's relatively easy to throw something Thai-inspired together. A crisper drawer of broccoli, root vegetables like carrots and parsnips, and a pantry always stocked with onions was a good vegetable base for a stir-fry. We still had a large hunk of roasted pork tenderloin leftover from the holidays, and since its seasoning was mild, it could be sliced thin and thrown into a different cuisine without any flavor funk. To accompany the stir-fry dishes, a simple tofu pad thai was made using the remainder of a leftover store-bought sauce by Por Kwan that I get at Uwajimaya, and then a pot of the tom yum soup. For a week, we had a combination of about four different dishes where a lot of the same flavors and ingredients were used.
 |
| When Pad Thai Met Stir Fry - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
From the wide range of vegetables and leftover meat, two leftover stir-fry dishes were created for separate meals, using a similar sauce. For one stir-fry, it was a spicy and sour sauce cooked with root vegetables and the leftover pork. For the second stir-fry, it was long strips of broccoli, peanuts, and leftover pork tossed with a spicy peanut sauce. I added ingredients like tofu and water chestnuts between the two stir-fry dishes, but really, this is an "anything goes" way of cooking, and you can make whatever mixture of vegetables and meat you prefer.
The base of this flexible sauce is as follows:
1/4 cup chicken, beef broth or water
1/4 cup reduced sodium soy sauce
Juice from 1/2 of a lime, about a tablespoon's worth
1/2 teaspoon/barely a splash of fish sauce
1 tsp finely-chopped ginger
1 tsp finely-chopped garlic
1 tsp sriracha -- more if you like it extra-spicy
 |
| Behind Door Number 1: Spicy/Sour - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
For a spicy, sour sauce, add an extra teaspoon of rice wine vinegar and pour over a mixture of sizzling vegetables and meat in a wok or pan. Make a slurry of corn starch to thicken, and serve with fresh bean sprouts, chopped cilantro, and sesame seeds.
 |
| Behind Door Number 2: Spicy/Creamy - Photo by Wasabi Prime |
For a creamy peanut sauce, add a 1/2 cup of unsweetened peanut butter to the base sauce, microwave to soften, so the peanut butter can incorporate with the wet ingredients, and pour over the cooking vegetables and meat in the wok or pan. The peanut butter will act like a thickener and keep the sauce from being too watery. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and cilantro before serving.
Making up a pot of tom yum gai is a more flavorful alternative to chicken noodle soup on a cold day. I happened to have made a recent pot of chicken broth, so this pot of tom yum gai had that little extra bit of homemade love, along with chicken bits scraped off the simmered bones. The combination of creamy coconut milk and the savory, sour broth both warms the belly and is an especially nice kick if you're struggling through a head cold. I would never claim that this is the ultimate traditional way of making tom yum gai; this recipe was put together based on seeing what others have done and making adjustments for a soup designed for weeknight cooking.
Tom Yum Gai (making it the Wasabi Prime weeknight way)
(6-8 main servings or 10-12 side servings)
For the soup:
48 oz chicken broth (homemade if you got it, but store-bought is fine)
2 cans of 13.5 oz coconut milk
4 tblsp fresh-squeezed lime juice (about 1 1/2 limes' worth)
3 tblsp fish sauce
2 lemongrass stalks, split/crushed
1 tsp fresh ginger root, finely grated
Soup ingredients:
14 oz of firm tofu, drained and cut into small cubes
2 cups cleaned/quartered button mushrooms
1 cup shredded precooked chicken
8 oz canned sliced bamboo shoots
2 whole serrano chiles, thinly sliced (optional if you want extra spice)
Chopped cilantro
Bring the chicken stock, coconut milk and fish sauce to a simmer in a large pot. Add the ginger, lemongrass and lime juice once soup is simmering. Stir to combine ingredients and taste soup periodically to see if it needs more fish sauce to deepen flavor. Can fish out the lemongrass stalks or leave in to continue flavoring the soup -- just don't eat it! Add the solid ingredients -- tofu, chicken, bamboo and mushrooms. These just need to simmer with the soup for a few minutes, to get to temperature. Add the chiles and the cilantro last, right before serving, so they keep their color and fresh flavor.
 |
| Gettin' freshy-fresh with Thai-inspired dishes - Photos by Wasabi Prime |
Thursday, July 23, 2009
UnRecipe: Pad Thai Stir Fry
I discovered two things today: our laundry room makes for a halfway decent photo studio, and Pad Thai is just as delicious without the rice noodles!
The Puget Soundians were given a day of respite from the summer heat, so efforts were quickly mobilized to use the stove and play around with the digital camera to actually take some halfway decent photos of ingredients and the plated food. I notice when it's hot, I tend not to feel the Epic Hunger that I normally do, so maybe that's what allowed me the virtue of patience to make a better effort towards food photography. At the risk of sounding like the star of the I'm Awesome Show, I'm quite pleased with the efforts, and it's encouraged me to put forth more effort in future posts!
The motivation behind this dish was a major jonesin' for pad thai. I have the exact opposite effect with food -- I had Thai food recently and instead of feeling satisfied, I felt like the Audrey II, hungry for seconds. Feed me, Seymour! Sadly, as I write this entry, I just realized I totally forgot to add peanuts into the dish. Crap. And I made the extra trip to the store to make sure I had them! The little Homer Simpson that lives in my head is yelling DOH! right now. What... no one else has a little Homer Simpson living in their head...? No...? Well, moving on...
In lieu of the traditional rice noodles, I was able to use half of the bountiful harvest of snowpeas that are taking over our garden. We went from a small handful of peas to a green pod invasion within the last month. Thankfully the bugs and backyard wildlife have not seen fit to feast upon them, so with any luck, we will be blessed with an abundance of green pea-ness. *giggle*
Along with the snowpeas, I snipped some garlic chives and some of the heartier scallion greens from our veggie garden. A few defrosted chicken breasts sliced thin, stir-fried in a wok with diced tofu, scrambled eggs, and then a healthy dose of the premade Por Kwan pad thai sauce from Uwajimaya, and it was a picture-perfect dinner made for the om-nomming.
* Post Script - Big thanks to Tastespotting for posting the pad thai photo on their site today. Merci Buttercups!!!
** Post-Post Script - Delicious thanks to Photograzing at Serious Eats for posting one of the pad thai photos on their site!
*** Post-Post-Post Script - Third Thanks to Food Photo Blog for posting a closeup shot of the pad thai. Cheers!!
*** Quadruple Post Script - Thanks to the fourth power to Foodie View for the pad thai post!
 |
| From wasabiprime-july photos |
The Puget Soundians were given a day of respite from the summer heat, so efforts were quickly mobilized to use the stove and play around with the digital camera to actually take some halfway decent photos of ingredients and the plated food. I notice when it's hot, I tend not to feel the Epic Hunger that I normally do, so maybe that's what allowed me the virtue of patience to make a better effort towards food photography. At the risk of sounding like the star of the I'm Awesome Show, I'm quite pleased with the efforts, and it's encouraged me to put forth more effort in future posts!
The motivation behind this dish was a major jonesin' for pad thai. I have the exact opposite effect with food -- I had Thai food recently and instead of feeling satisfied, I felt like the Audrey II, hungry for seconds. Feed me, Seymour! Sadly, as I write this entry, I just realized I totally forgot to add peanuts into the dish. Crap. And I made the extra trip to the store to make sure I had them! The little Homer Simpson that lives in my head is yelling DOH! right now. What... no one else has a little Homer Simpson living in their head...? No...? Well, moving on...
In lieu of the traditional rice noodles, I was able to use half of the bountiful harvest of snowpeas that are taking over our garden. We went from a small handful of peas to a green pod invasion within the last month. Thankfully the bugs and backyard wildlife have not seen fit to feast upon them, so with any luck, we will be blessed with an abundance of green pea-ness. *giggle*
Along with the snowpeas, I snipped some garlic chives and some of the heartier scallion greens from our veggie garden. A few defrosted chicken breasts sliced thin, stir-fried in a wok with diced tofu, scrambled eggs, and then a healthy dose of the premade Por Kwan pad thai sauce from Uwajimaya, and it was a picture-perfect dinner made for the om-nomming.
 |
| From wasabiprime-july photos |
* Post Script - Big thanks to Tastespotting for posting the pad thai photo on their site today. Merci Buttercups!!!
** Post-Post Script - Delicious thanks to Photograzing at Serious Eats for posting one of the pad thai photos on their site!
*** Post-Post-Post Script - Third Thanks to Food Photo Blog for posting a closeup shot of the pad thai. Cheers!!
*** Quadruple Post Script - Thanks to the fourth power to Foodie View for the pad thai post!
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