In my quest to improve my Japanese reading comprehension, I've started using Cookpad to search for new recipe ideas. One poster came particularly recommended, and this is my first try at one of her recipes (with minor changes - i.e. beef instead of pork and omitting the potatoes). I was impressed by how easy this was to make, as for some reason I always imagined sweet & sour would be difficult to make at home. This is particularly vinegar-y, which I like, but if you don't you may wish to reduce the vinegar in the sauce down to 2 tbsp.
Sweet and Sour Meatballs (serves 2):
200g ground beef
1 tsp sake
1 tbsp corn starch
1 tsp sesame oil
1 section lotus root (renkon), peeled, sliced & rinsed
splash of rice wine vinegar
Sauce
100ml chicken stock
3 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 1/5 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp corn starch
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
Mix the beef, sake, and corn starch together and roll into small meatballs. Heat the sesame oil in a fry pan and roll the meatballs until cooked through. Meanwhile, in a pot with boiling water and a splash of vinegar, cook the lotus root slices for about 5 minutes.
Once the meatballs are cooked, use the pan to make the sauce. Before adding the cornstarch to the mixture ensure you have made a paste with the starch and a little liquid, just to ensure there are no lumps. Reduce until thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. Add the meatballs and lotus root and stir until they are heated up, serve with brown rice.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Sweet and Sour Meatballs
Monday, July 12, 2010
Simple Pork Wrap
Celebration! I have a new computer! My old one crapped out a while ago, and I am finally getting going with my new one, but it will take some time to transfer all my photos and files over. Really it's great though because I have so much spare time to do stuff like that - haha. I have now put that task on my husband's to do list. As seems to be the case all the time now, I have been keeping things simple on the cooking side. The other day I made a pork tenderloin crusted in rosemary, thyme, oregano, and whole grain mustard. I love making little roasts because they leave me with great leftovers for lunches. I made a little variation on an old favourite proscuitto sandwich of mine.
Basically the elements end up being very similar. I used sliced pork instead of proscuitto, a pesto wrap instead of the ciabatta bun, stuck with the apple and sharp cheddar, and added in a mix of spinach and baby kale from my garden. Simple, healthy, and easy to eat with one hand (which is a major bonus for me these days since I can now do most things around my house one handed).
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Pulled Pork
Does everyone get a slow cooker when they get married? I think slow cookers are like fondue pots that way. I seem to use mine in fits and spurts, but at the moment it is back in my regular dinner rotation. Why? Pulled pork! I love getting pulled pork sandwiches at pubs and restaurants. When we were down in Palm Springs this past winter it seemed to be the thing to have on every happy hour menu. There's a good reason for that, it's cheap and delicious!
The hardest part about this is just remembering to take a pork shoulder out of the freezer, and putting the slow cooker on the counter so that when you wake up you remember to pop the roast into it. Pork shoulders are fantastically inexpensive and manage to produce a huge amount of meat. The best part is that left over meat makes excellent sandwiches/wraps/quesadillas etc.
I generally do the pork roast in one of two ways. The first is to pop it in as is, turn it once or twice during the day if I have time, and just leave it cooking on low for 8-12 hours.
If I feel a bit more ambitious, I throw the roast in a freezer bag overnight with a rub of about 1/4 cup sea salt, 3/4 cup brown sugar, a couple of tbsp of cumin and one tbsp of chilli powder. Other than tossing stuff in a bag, it is the same as above in terms of preparation.
When the shoulder is all cooked, you just pull it out and use a couple of forks to "shred" it. It pretty much falls apart as soon as you touch it. I do get rid of a little of the outer fat if I see any big chunks, and I take off the skin. Some people might be a bit put off seeing the skin, but the skin and fat are where all the flavour and moisture come from. If you are a bit more adventurous, you can make crackling with the skin (we did this once, but over did it sadly). Cooked pork skin is tasty, but not exactly diet friendly. Also, if I don't do the rub, I will sometimes make a pan gravy from the drippings. If I use the rub, the drippings are a bit too salty to make a usable gravy.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Vietnamese-style Pork Burgers
I've been playing around with a recipe for Vietnamese meatballs for a few years now, and have only recently gotten close to the flavour I was looking for. For any of you trying this at home, do not think that you will ever get close without fish sauce... even if you hate fish sauce. Yes, it is one of the most rank smelling foods I've had to work with, but the umami it imparts cannot be beaten. I decided to use this to update a standard burger, and served it with sliced chinese cabbage for some crunch and thinned out Thai Peanut Sauce instead of ketchup.
Vietnamese-style Pork Burgers (makes 6)
500g lean ground pork
1/2 onion, diced
2 stalks lemongrass
3 cloves garlic
1/2 tbsp szechuan pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
Blitz lemongrass and garlic in the food processor until nearly a puree, then toss in the diced onion to chop a bit more finely. Mix thoroughly with the pork, fish sauce, and breadcrumbs, adding the pepper and salt to taste. (To check the flavour, pinch off a small bit and cook in a fry pan. This may seem like a waste of time, but I find I never quite achieve the taste I'm looking for without doing this.)
Grabbing small handfuls, shape into patties. I stack my leftovers between layers of parchment paper and wrap for freezing. The remaining can be pan cooked over medium-low heat or done on the barbecue. Serve with sliced chinese cabbage and peanut sauce on hamburger buns.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Herb Roast
A couple of days ago it snowed here. We were all primed up for spring, and then winter returned. There is nothing that I like better on a cold day than staying in and popping a roast in the oven. Seeing as last year I froze all of my remaining herbs at the end of the gardening season, all I had to do was pull them out of the freezer and wiz them through my mini food processor with some olive oil, salt and pepper and smear it all on. For this one I used chives, rosemary, thyme and parsley. Smear the roast with the herb paste, and pop it in a roasting pan on top of some chopped onion, carrots and celery. I cook it uncovered at 450 F for the first half hour to brown it up, and then cover it and finish it at 350 F (a total cook time of 1 hour per kilo). The juices left at the end make an amazing pan gravy!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Prosciutto & Fig Crostini
I don't recall where I first read about someone combining fig jam and butter, but whoever it was is a genius. These appetizers have been a hit every time, and have even resulted in a marriage proposal. The sweet fig butter and salty prosciutto are a perfect contrast to each other. The first time I made these I went down to the Italian Centre to get Parma ham and kofylitiri cheese, and I recommend splurging on a good quality prosciutto. Subsequent attempts with supermarket prosciutto didn't have the same saltiness and bite.
Prosciutto & Fig Crostini:
1 loaf skinny french bread
olive oil
1/2 cup butter, softened
5-6 tbsp fig jam
salty firm cheese
prosciutto or Parma ham
For the crostini, I like them a little crispy and a little soft so I only toast one side. Slice the bread and lay out on a baking sheet, then brush the slices with olive oil. Heat under a broiler until just browning, then lay out to cool. These can be done a day or two in advance and kept in ziploc.
Mix the butter and fig jam together very well (this takes some doing). Spread generously on the crostini, top with a thin slice of cheese and then prosciutto. These appetizers were very easy to assemble on site, which is a lot more convenient than worrying about how to transport them as a finished product.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Fall Salad
I know frequently fall arrives and all thoughts turn away from fresh salads and towards pasta and roasts, but it is actually a great time to incorporate some of the last findings from your garden into a nice salad, and it can even be a warm one if you feel the need. I went for lunch at Earl's the other day with a friend, and they had an arugula, beet and pear salad on the menu, and I used that as an inspiration for this salad. For mine though I tried to crank up the iron (last three weeks of pregnancy!) and use up some of my second batch of spinach.
Fall Salad:
A good batch of spinach
Half a ripe pear
A sprinkling of pecans
One large beet, cut into chunks and boiled until soft
Half a steak, pan fried and sliced to top
Dress with a bit of lemon juice and oil, and goat cheese coulis (which I just made by microwaving a bit of goat cheese with a bit of milk so that it could be drizzled like a dressing).
With the beets and steak being served warm, as well as the goat cheese coulis, this made a really satisfying lunch on a chilly day. I will definitely be bringing it back as a lunch choice through the winter.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Summer Roast Lamb
Oh summer! So lovely! Hot weather, fresh produce, eating things prepared in the simplest way possible! Well, this week we have had a little dip in the temperature, and while I am disappointed to be robbed of any of our short summer, it did provide a little reprieve in which I could think about cooking and baking again without the consequence of turning my entire home into a giant oven. As I have mentioned in the past, my husband and I bought a lamb last fall, and have been having excellent adventures in learning to cook different cuts of meat. This time around, we wanted to do a bone in leg of lamb roast, and after sourcing a lot of advice on how to do it, we finally made it happen, and the results were sublime!
My first thought was to touch base with a fellow local food blogger that is often cooking up some sort of wild game. I figured Kevin Kossowan might have some experience with a leg of lamb (or anything else) and BBQing (this is when it was still hot out). He did, but only butterflied, and I was not at the point where I wanted to work on my butchering skills, so that was a no go. Many weeks later I succumbed to Googling "How to cook leg of lamb" and found a wonderful thread on Chowhound giving me all the info I needed.
Here is what I did:
1. Sliced little openings throughout the leg of lamb and stuffed the openings with rosemary and garlic.
2. Chopped up some oregano and thyme to rub on the outside of the roast with some coarse salt and pepper.
3. Put the lamb in a roaster at 450 F for 15 minutes.
4. Turn the oven down to 350 F and cook for a further two hours.
Easy peasy. The lamb was delish - excellent texture and nice and moist. When not pregnant I would maybe do it a little more rare, but my husband and I ate a really obscene amount of meat all in one sitting seeing as this roast was so nicely done. 
If only he would have let me take more time to actually get some decent photos instead of these blurry, poorly lit ones!
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Camping Dinner #2
Really, cooking on the road is a lot like cooking at home, it just takes a bit more advance planning. We decided that we wanted to take one of our favourite dinners (Apple Pork Chops), change it up a bit by breading the pork chops, serve it with a side of herb and mushroom pasta, and do it all over the campfire. No problem right? Well, for the most part no problem, you just need to work on timing everything to finish about the same time without knowing what kind of temperatures you are working with.
We figured the pork chops would take the longest to cook, so we did all our prep, put the chops on, and then worked everything else around that. Breading the pork chops in panko bread crumbs was easy, we just dipped them in an egg wash and then shook them around in the bag.
While we started the chops in the frying pan on the fire, we also started the water for the pasta going, and had a pot of mushrooms and onions sauteing. When the water was boiling, and the veggies were ready, we just moved them a bit off to the side to keep warm until it was go time. The pasta that Brooke picked up from the Italian Center was dry, but still had a cook time of only three minutes since it was extra skinny spaghetti.
Once the pork chops were finished cooking, we put them off to the side to rest, and sauteed the apples in the pan. At the same time, we popped the pasta in to cook, and threw some cream and chopped herbs from the garden in with the sauteed veggies to create a nice mushroom cream sauce.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Better Camping Lunches
While camping, we made all portable lunches so that we could take them with us for the day and not have to return to the campsite and interrupt our hiking/walking day trips. This is somewhat limiting in that you need to have food that works well cold, and also doesn't bring with it the risk of melting. Brooke's trail mix made the cut, even with the risky smarties included, as did the usual assortment of raw fruit and veg. We went with sandwiches and wraps for the main portions of the meals, but shook things up a bit with our fillings.
For sandwich day, we decided to bring along some dried mango slices. Ham and/or poultry (we had some ham and some chicken) paired with the sweetness of the mangos nicely, and we kept the cheese on the subtle side - havarti - so that it didn't overwhelm the dried fruit flavour. Just to make sure things didn't get overly sweet, we had some whole grain mustard spread just lightly to give a bit of contrast. The mango really made the sandwich pop, and I looked forward to it a lot more than a plain old bag lunch.
On day two, wrap day, we decided to make use of some of our dinner leftovers. Herb spiced lamb from the lamb burgers got paired with sautéed mushrooms from evening two's pasta side dish, and were then topped up with spinach to fill out the wrap. Using up leftovers also helped us in that we packed a bit less, but used what we brought, even if it hadn't been packaged to the size we needed just for dinner. The only thing that might have made the wrap a bit better in my opinion would be some feta or goat cheese. Yum!
Monday, July 13, 2009
Cooking on the Road
Brooke and I did our version of Chef at Large this weekend and packed up our kitchens for the great outdoors. Prior to leaving we planned out some meals we wanted to make, groceries were purchased, and we were very excited about the challenge this would be for us. Little did we know how much challenge though.... My husband volunteered to be in charge of packing for the trip, since it was his idea and Brooke and I had book club the night before leaving. Thinking that my husband is perfectly capable of ensuring everything on the list (yes, we even made him a LIST!) made it to Banff, I happily agreed.
Upon arriving in Banff, the discovery was made that all the non perishables and freezer ingredients had come with us, but that everything from the fridge had stayed in Edmonton - d'oh! To add to that, the additional realization was made that the connection from the camping stove to the mini propane tanks didn't match up, so we were going to have to cook 100% over the fire with zero temperature control. Needless to say, Brooke and I were annoyed after all of our planning, and my husband, in an effort to try and make it seem like a good thing said "it's like Iron Chef, but with the secret ingredient being fire! Oh, and missing a bunch of the ingredients you thought you had." Dinner on evening #1 was our first meal, and we made herbed lamb burgers (no cheese as planned), and sautéed potatoes (no roast veggies).
Ages ago we purchased a full lamb, and with it came a few pounds of ground lamb. We had been saving it for BBQ season, and there hasn't been a lot of that happening this year to date. It went into the cooler frozen, and didn't take that long to thaw once we arrived. I had brought rosemary, oregano and thyme from the garden and we chopped it up and combined the lamb with bread crumbs, an egg and the herbs and formed patties. We "fried" the patties until they were cooked through, and reserved some of the fat to use for later.
At the same time, we had chopped up some potatoes nice and thin so that we could boil them while the burgers were cooking. Once the burgers were done, we threw some garlic and the potatoes into the pan with the lamb fat, to give them some additional flavour and crisp up the outsides a bit.
Not bad considering what we had to work with!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Pork Dumplings
Although I have not yet had any cravings that seem to be consistent (other than for Glosette peanuts), like many pregnant ladies, I am very susceptible to food suggestions at the moment. Especially early on (before the sad nauseous bit), I craved meat like a mad woman. I decided I needed a meat based snack that I could nibble on when the cravings struck, and as I often do, I roped Brooke into coming over and helping me invent something. I had dumplings on the brain, and so we looked at a variety of recipes, and then put the computer down and forged ahead with a recipe of our own making based on what was around the house.
Pork Dumpling Filling:
one small tenderloin pork (these are surprisingly inexpensive right now thanks to the swine flu scare, even though you don't get swine flu from eating pork - take advantage of the deal and stock your freezer!)
8 large shrimp peeled and uncooked
1/2 cup green onions
1 tsp ginger
1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp mirin
Wrap using wonton wrappers
We didn't bother with much chopping, and instead just tossed everything in the Kitchenaid food processor and whirred it around until it had an even consistency. It is very strange to do this with uncooked meat.
We took the meat mixture and sat in front of the TV watching mindless chick shows on Slice, as we dropped a small spoon of meat into the middle of the wonton wrappers, and tried to fashion them into pretty looking envelopes. There were a lot of imperfect parcels, but by the end we had made almost 100 and were getting the hang of it. I popped most of them in the freezer, but to prepare them, we pan fried them in oil to brown the outside (2-3 minutes per side), and then steamed them after for about 8 minutes. This was enough to cook the meat through, and give them a nice texture, although a few of the wrappers tore a bit, making them not look as nice. They tasted fantastic though, and that is what matters most right? 
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Local Pork Sausage
Irving Farms allows their pigs to roam and forage outdoors, which essentially means that you are getting free range pork (why is that not as common as free range chicken?). The result is a darker more heavily marbled pork, and with that comes extra flavour. The whole sausage is natural, including the casings. I picked mine up at the City Center Farmer's market, but they are available at all the big markets around the city (including St. Albert).
I have not tried all of their flavours because my husband loves the intense sage flavour of the Lincolnshire, and freaks out if I deviate from that now. If you don't love sage, I have also had the pork and leek sausages, which were significantly milder. In the next couple of weeks I will be trying out their pork belly roast, after seeing that they featured pork belly as part of the Indulgence event put on by Slow Food Edmonton . It made a nice meat and cheese plate with the Sylvan Star Gouda I picked up downtown as well. Sylvan Star is a great local cheese producer that has consistently had cheeses placing first in various categories at the Canadian Gran Prix of Cheese - did you even know such a thing existed?!?!
The whole grain mustard I served it all with was not local in any way.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Beef & Leek Udon Soup
This soup is so quick and easy to make that I seriously made it before work this morning. It's about 15 minutes from start to finish, and that's including boiling and chopping time. The only thing that needs to be made in advance is the kaeshi, but that can also be purchased at most asian grocery stores - I usually have it on hand all summer, as soba is one of my favourite quick summer meals. I am looking forward to a tasty and healthy lunch today!
Beef & Leek Udon Soup (serves 2):
200g dried udon noodles
1 tbsp vegetable oil
150g beef, sliced thinly
1 leek, thinly sliced diagonally
1 inch chopped fresh ginger
50 ml kaeshi
600 ml water
2 tbsp miso
pepper
Bring a pot of water to the boil then add the udon noodles and cook for 6 minutes. Empty the noodles into a sieve and run through cold water, then set aside. In the same pot, heat the oil and saute the beef and leek for a couple of minutes, then add the ginger, kaeshi, and water. Slowly mix in the miso, ensuring there are no lumps, then add the noodles and heat for another 2 minutes. Once the miso is in, make sure the soup does not come to a boil.
This makes 2 generous servings, and you can top with pepper to serve.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Almost Pepperoni & Mushroom Pizza
My fridge is pretty much empty tonight, and I was way, way too tired to walk the the 2 (long) blocks to Sobey's. To give you an idea of just how empty my fridge is: the fruit drawer contains 1 granny smith apple, 1 lemon, and 1 wrinkled pomegranate. So, when I got home from work I did some raiding around and found in the freezer half of a sausage. Yay~ dinner!
This was pretty delicious for being made up of scraps in my refrigerator. I had one greek style pitta left in the freezer, so I used that and topped it with tomato paste - I use the squeeze kind from the Italian Centre Shop so I'm not constantly opening the little tins just to have them go to waste. I sliced the frozen sausage and cooked it on the hob, then added that to the pizza with the mushrooms. I decided to go with brie as it's pretty mild, as the only cheese I had was that or chèvre. It was then topped off with chopped parsley for colour and cooked in a 350F/180C oven for 10 minutes. Once it was cooked, my unrefined palate couldn't tell that I'd used French cheese on an "Italian" meal.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Pork and Asparagus Stir Fry
I bought a giant bunch of asparagus when it was on sale, and now I feel like it's all I've been eating for the past week. In attempting to do something a bit different from what I normally have (either roasted or Norm's Jamies's version), I threw this together last night. If you wanted to do a spicy version of this, you could replace the sesame oil & sesame seeds with chili oil & crushed dried chilis. Or, presumably, it would be just as good with green beans or broccoli.
Pork & Asparagus Stir Fry (serves 4 as a side):
3 tbsp vegetable oil
450 g asparagus
200 g finely chopped pork
2 garlic cloves, squashed
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp cornstarch
ground pepper
1 tbsp sake
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sesame seeds
In a bowl, mix the pork, soy sauce, cornstarch, and pepper and let marinate while you prepare the asparagus (break off the woody ends and cut in 5cm/2" lengths). Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wok and add the asparagus. Cook for around 3 minutes, until done but still firm. Remove the asparagus, add the remaining oil to the hot wok and then add the marinated pork and whole garlic cloves. Stir fry for 3 minutes until the pork browns, then fish out the garlic. Add the asparagus back to the wok, pour over the sake, sesame oil, and sesame seeds and stir to combine.
This also makes a great addition to a bento (I'm going to have a good lunch today!). The one pictured below has 1 serving of the stir fry, 2/3 cup rice, 2 hard boiled quail eggs (with sesame seeds & salt in a furikake shaker), and 2 small chocolate chip cookies.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Sausage and Feta Pasta
Yup, still in the cooking slump. Pasta is right up there with stir-frys in terms of being an easy and flexible alternative for a week night dinner. It is even easier when you have made homemade pasta recently, as it cooks even faster than the dried stuff (even from frozen, you are only looking at about 4 minutes). I hit up the farmers market this Sat in an attempt to get something that I knew would be relatively fresh and locally produced so that I could get rid of some of my winter flavour blahs. Although buying meat this way can be a bit more pricey than the store, I kept it very affordable by opting for sausage. I have never made my own sausage (I don't have the stuff to do it, and honestly there are so many good ones at the local farmer's market that I don't see the need to). As the star of tonight's dish, I had some sundried tomato and chive sausage. I wish I had noted which farmer it was from, but I didn't. It was just over $6 for 10-12 breakfast sized sausage, so not bad for meat.
To start with, I get a big pot of water boiling so that it is all ready for the pasta when I hit the T -4 minute mark. Next, I grabbed a big frying pan and started to pan fry six of the sausages. When they were fully cooked, I got the pasta going, and removed the sausage from the pan to cut into smaller chunks. Cutting after cooking is the easiest in my opinion seeing as the sausage stays together, but sometimes I opt to cut off the casing and make little meatballs with the sausage filling. Once cut up, I returned the sausage chunks to the pan with some plain tomato and basil sauce (just grabbed from the pantry). I like to add the sauce to the pan because it kind of deglazes the pan a bit while warming, so that all the flavor the sausages would have left behind becomes part of the sauce. By this time, the pasta is ready to be drained, and tossed into the pan to get mixed around with the sauce and sausage. Finally, it gets plated and topped with crumbled feta (as much as you like).
The whole thing takes my under 10 minutes to make. Even on days when I am so hungry I have a bad case of grouchiness I can usually manage that much time before eating.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Sesame Tonkatsu - Breaded Pork Cutlet
I am trying to get out of my February rut... but I am still feeling pretty lazy about cooking lately. Most of the meals I make are of the quick and easy variety, but I suppose anything is better than making no effort at all. Hopefully the warmer weather (and better produce!) will bring back my inspiration.
With the sesame and pepper, this makes a nice change from a regular breaded pork chop. I normally use a mixture of black and white sesame seeds just to up the prettiness factor. Not so healthy, but super tasty!
Tonkatsu:
2 pieces boneless pork
1 egg, beaten
cayenne or sansho pepper
3/4 cup panko
3 tbsp sesame seeds
peanut oil
I normally use pork shoulder because it is well marbled, but pork chops would work fine too. In a bowl, beat the egg and add a bit of cayenne pepper for flavour. On a plate next to it, mix together the panko & sesame seeds. Dip the meat in the egg, then roll in the panko to coat fully. Heat the oil (if you don't have peanut you can use another flavourless oil - not olive) over medium heat, then add the meat and cook for around 4 minutes on each side until browned and cooked through.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Simple Stir-fry
We all have those days. Those days when you feel like you have no energy to make a decent dinner, no ideas for something different, and no good left overs to toss in the microwave. I seem to have more of those days through Feb/March. I think it is just plain old fatigue that sets in. How can you get jazzed about cooking when you live somewhere like Edmonton where at this time of year fresh produce seems like a distant memory? Not only are there few fresh local ingredients to work with, but even going to the store seems like a huge endeavor, requiring car pre-heating, and then dashing through cold parking lots just to get in. It is times like this that people all catch colds and/or the flu, and times like this that I fall back on the basic stir-fry.
Stir-frys of all sorts were a staple when I was back in school. You can make noodles or rice once, and then use the left overs for days, and that leaves you with one pot a day for cooking something to put on top. The elements are always the same: a meat (sometimes that gets skipped), whatever veg happens to be in your crisper, and a sauce so that it is all pulled together somehow. Today I was lucky enough to have left over coconut rice, so I didn't even have to make that.
I started by chopping up a pork tenderloin. Pork tenderloin is such a great lean protein. It is still really inexpensive compared to other meats, and my favorite part is that one small tenderloin is perfect for a meal for two and leftovers. Next, I rummage around for the veg. I have some baby corn, broccoli, mushrooms, red pepper, and onions - not too bad really - stir-frys can be really great nutritionally, which helps with the above mentioned cold/flu problem. The key to a good stir-fry in my opinion is a hot pan. I sometimes use a wok, but other times just use a really large frying pan. Add a bit of oil, and toss the meat in until it starts to brown a bit. Once browned, add the veg one at a time, starting with the one that will require the most cooking. I allow enough time in between to allow the pan to get nice and hot again. At some point a whole pile of garlic and grated ginger go in as well. Finally, right at the end, I throw in the sauce. If the pan isn't hot, the sauce will stay watery instead of getting that nice stickiness that makes it like the take out you get.
Sauce:
Garlic and ginger to be added with veg (I used 6 garlic cloves and about a teaspoon of finely grated ginger)
1/4 chicken broth
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp corn starch
The last three ingredients should be mixed in advance so that the cornstarch is all dissolved, and not in little clumps that will otherwise turn into dumplings. The sauce is very flexible in being altered to your own personal taste, but these proportions will give everything a nice coating of flavor. I also like to throw some sesame seeds or cashews into the pan at the very end for a second.
Who could ask for a meal that is faster? It's a great fridge cleaning meal that incorporates a lot of veggies - the food group we probably skimp the most on through the winter.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Lamb Shoulder Steak
Recently my husband and I bought a lamb. Not a living adorable lamb, but a lamb in pieces for our freezer and many suppers. We were completely familiar with the lamb chops and what to do with them, but have been pleasantly surprised since then with discoveries we have been making with other cuts of the meat.
Last night we had our second round of shoulder steaks, and I have to rave. What a great cut of meat! It has fantastic marbling so that all you have to do is give the steaks a little pat with a paper towel, hit them with some salt and pepper and then pan fry them on high for a few minutes a side to turn out a beautiful, tender piece of meat. I would say it is a bit easier to gnaw the meat off the bones than a standard chop, and the meat comes off so nicely that we were left with a small pile of perfectly clean bones (not shown to save the appetite of those that would be turned off by that kind of thing). I am a lamb lover, and this cut may have just risen to be my new favorite cut! 
