Pork and veggie stir fry

I really feel the need to get a few veggies in my dinner tonight. My recent Dorito and fast food binge has left me spent. So this is an old favorite with some new tweaks that cut down on the chemicals in everything I used to use.

Ingredients:
1 lb pork, chopped into 3/4" pieces (this works with chicken or beef, too)
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 inch ginger, grated
2 garlic cloves, grated
Salt and pepper
Rice wine vinegar
Mirin
1 package stir fry veggies - usually broccoli, carrots and snow peas
1 package (three serving) dry Japanese soba noodles (I used to use Maruchan Yaki-Soba but those seem to be pretty full of stuff I can't pronounce)

Mix the meat with the next five ingredients. Let it hang out for a bit.

Cook the noodles according to directions, mine are two minutes in boiling water.

Get a frying pan (hopefully with rounded edges, a wok would rock) hot and add in peanut oil. Once that gets super hot, throw in the meat, drained from the marinade. Set the marinade aside. Spread the meat out a bit or do it in batches so it doesn't just steam. After a couple minutes, when it starts to brown well pull it out. Strain it but save the juice and throw that in with the marinade.

I'll pause there. Generally, you shouldn't use a marinade in the dish, but as long as you boil it, it should be fine. Feel free to leave it out, I like it in.

Add a little more oil, throw in the veggies. Cook until they get a little tender but not soggy, maybe 4 minutes. Pull those out and throw them on the meat.

Add in the juice from the meat and veggies and boil that a few minutes (dangerous marinade, remember?) Then throw in a splash more soy sauce, sesame oil and maybe some mirin or rice wine vinegar if you've got it. I always forget the mirin so I added some sherry. Throw in the noodles.

Heat the noodles for a few minutes, throw everything else back in and enjoy the party.

Notes: Apparently I am out of sesame oil, so I threw in a spoonful of tahini instead. Wonder how that's going to turn out.
I usually use more garlic and ginger, but it would probably be overwhelming for other people. We're both smokers, we need stronger flavors.

Chicken sammich with sun dried tomatoes and goat cheese

So a happy accident at the grocery store today led to some fun stuff. I'm trying to pack a lunch more often now and I misread a Martha Stewart recipe for a sammich. Hers called for farmer's cheese, I got goat cheese. And of course, I got the garlic herb variety.

I know nothing about goat cheese, but the awesome checker at Sprouts (my local grocery that isn't in the top three chains) was very talkative. I loved that. I bought some lavash bread which started the conversation, we discovered neither of us had tried it. When she saw the goat cheese, she said it was awesome, like super intense feta.

Once I got it home and realized I bought the wrong thing for the MS recipe, I thought: if goat cheese is intense feta, sun dried tomatoes are intense tomatoes. And I went from there.

So here is my happy accident sammich. I sampled everything on the way, so I have high hopes it's going to be yummy. My only concern is making this ahead for work tomorrow and it getting soggy, but I over toasted the bread so I hope that offsets it.

4 oz cut up chicken breasts *
2 slices toasted bread, well done
1-2 oz goat cheese, hopefully the garlic and herb kind
3 pieces sun dried tomatoes, chopped
Baby spinach

I got chicken breast cutlets that cook super fast. I cooked them on the Foreman for about three minutes, you could bake them at 325 for the same or fry them. Let them cool.

I over toasted some bread and let it cool. Top half got well chopped sun dried tomatoes, bottom half got the goat cheese. Throw the chicken on the bottom, give it some pepper, smush some spinach on, add top half and have some yum.

I hope this works without the squishy bread.

* My usual plain chicken rub: equal parts paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper. Update: This was awesome, but came out kind of dry. Next time when I cut up the chicken I'll try mixing it with some of the oil from the sun dried tomatoes. Luckily, no squishy bread!

Chicken Stock

Once I figured out how cheap this is compared to buying cans, and how much better, I never buy store bought anymore. I usually use thighs or legs, but I've also just used a cut up whole one. If I have a carcass from a baked one that makes it even better. I also save the stems from mushrooms when I make them and always have a big bag in the freezer. Same with parsley stems.

2 1/2 pounds chicken pieces

1 large onion, quartered
2 stalks celery, rough chopped
2 carrots, rough chopped
2 leeks, green parts only, chopped
Handful of mushroom stems
Handful of parsley stems
2 bay leaves
1 tsp peppercorns

Throw the chicken in a large soup pot and bring to a boil. Once the nasty white stuff comes up, skim it. Add in everything else, then simmer for a few hours.

Strain the stock and throw it in the pot or a big bowl. Once it cools, the fat will stay on the surface and will be super easy to skim. If it comes out perfect, the stock will be almost jelly like.

Freeze whatever you won't use in the next couple of days.

I love the little plastic freezer jars from Ball to store this in, you can just squeeze it right out when you need some.

Shrimp Scampi with asparagus and orzo

I had a craving for scampi today and a bigger craving for a veggie to counteract my teenage style eating habits of late. I'm only halfway through this and it already smells aaaaamazing.

Can you tell I love asparagus with seafood? Yeah...

Olive oil
3 cloves garlic
1 large shallot
1 tbs dried oregano
Salt and white pepper
About 30 medium shrimp
1 large lemon

Heat a good amount of olive oil in a pan and saute the garlic and shallot for a bit. DON'T let it brown or else you have to start over. Once it's getting near done, add the oregano and season with salt and white pepper. Let it cool, then add that, the lemon juice, a bit of lemon zest and the shrimp in a bowl to hang out for a while.

When you're ready to cook, you can either bake it, broil it, or saute it. Either way, it'll be done in about five minutes.

Throw a bit of lemon on some asparagus, season with salt and white pepper, and throw it in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Cook up some orzo in chicken stock, drain, add butter or olive oil, salt, pepper and some feta.

Perfection.

A couple of notes:
This feeds two in my house, but we are shrimp fanatics. We will throw down over the last shrimp, so I always make way more than I think I need. Still never enough. This would probably feed four in a non-insane household.
Also, and this should be fairly obvious even though I led with the shrimp, you'll want to start the orzo, then the asparagus, then the shrimp to have everything done at the same time.

Whoops

Apparently everything I have written in the last year or so didn't post, and all my pictures got screwed up. Whoops. I smell a catch up project coming on!