Teriyaki Beef Stir Fry

I was super craving something teriyaki-y today and, since I bought some veggies at the farmer's market on Sunday, thought a stir-fry type thing would be good. I snagged some sauce from Target and some beef fajita strip things from Whole Foods and the rest is history...




1 packaged (1-ish lb's) of fajita cut beef
1/2 bottle of Kikkoman Teriyaki baste and glaze
1 med yellow onion
4 large chard leaves
3 weird orange radish/beet type things (no clue. I bought them at the farmer's market because they're pretty! I'm eating it right now and still have no idea what they are)
1 med green bell pepper
rice



Put 2T of olive oil in a frying pan. Over med heat, cook the beef, flipping once when half done. After you flip it, pour in the teriyaki sauce and simmer until cooked. Maybe 5 mins total. Ish. Take the meat out and set aside on a dish, keeping the sauce in the pan. Add the mystery veggie, bell peppers, onion, and the chopped stem of the chard and cook until slightly soft. When it's almost done, add in the chard leaves. Add the meat back in and serve with rice.

Success!! My meat was a little overcooked (as usual. damn it!), and I put a little too much sauce in mine, but overall it was pretty good. I managed to get the veggies just right. Cooked but still a little crispy.

Coconut Mojito

There's a mojito bar in San Jose that we were obsessed with for a while. They have a coconut mojito that tastes like it was made with the baby jesus's very own hands. SO GOOD. They have rum with giant chunk of fruit marinating in it and the result is fabulous. Rather than continue to spend $10 a drink on this taste of heaven, we decided to try to make them ourselves. After several test rounds, we finally came up with the perfect concoction.

2 teas sugar
8 mint leaves
1 1/2 shots light rum
1/2 shot of Malibu coconut rum
1 shot lime juice
splash of soda water

Smash sugar, mint and lime juice in a cup with one of those..uh...smasher thingies. Pour the booze mixture over it. Add a splash of soda water on top and some ice and you're good to go. The manual labor is worth the result, trust.

Apple Cinnamon Quinoa

The love of my life, quinoa, is not a savory only ingredient! I think I remember my brother Justin mentioning that it could be cooked up and eaten just like oatmeal/hot cereal. Huh...I'm game! So I poked around the interwebs and pulled from a few sources to make this:

2c. rinsed quinoa
4c water
1 peeled, diced apple (just peel with a potato peeler, and type of apple is up to you. I usually use Granny Smith)
2 teas cinnamon
handfull of raisins

Combine the water and quinoa, bring to a boil then cover and simmer. When water level meets quinoa level (ie: it's about half way done), throw in the apples and raisins so that they cook and soften and sweeten up the quinoa. I like my raisins all plump and juicy, but if you want them more chewy then just add them in right before you eat it. When the water is all absorbed, mixed in the cinnamon and voila! Simple as that. Just like any hot cereal, feel free to add a little brown sugar/syrup/whatever and milk if you want. It's really up to you. I like a ton of apple, so I usually throw in a bit extra of that, too.

Quinoa. Again.

This is kind of a cop-out, since I've pretty much made this before but, since I haven't cooked anything in approximately forever, I'm writing about it anyways. Deal. It is, however, the first time that I've used ground meat with quinoa, so it's sorta newish! It's my 'crap I wanna make dinner but don't want to put ANY effort into figuring out what to make or actually making it' meal.

Quinoa:
1 part quinoa to 2 parts chicken stock (it's been a little squishy lately, so maybe a smidge less than 2 parts). I used almost 2 cups of dry quinoa, which might have been a little too much for the amount of meat and veggies that I had.

While that's simmering, covered, I started the meat and veggies.

-splash of water
-1lb (I think. 1 package, anyways) of ground pork (because it was the cheapest and well, ground meat is ground meat to me. My palette is sophisticated like that)
-a sprinkle of Fagundes (sp?)meat seasoning (that stuff is the SHIZ! Especially rubbed on a steak. Drool...I'll put it on pretty much anything)

Saute the meat up over med-ish heat until it's not pink and transfer it onto a plate/bowl with a slatted spoon to drain the liquid. Try not to continuously pick at it and end up eating half of it off the plate because ground meat with seasoning tastes like a dream come true. Oops.

Leaving a little of the liquid behind, toss in your veggies and cook those suckers up over med-high heat until soft-ish. This time I had green beans, mixed potatoes (which I bought at the farmer's market. I love the purple ones. Because they're pretty.), and yellow squash. Oh-I put the potatoes in first for a few minutes because they take longer to cook than the other veggies. I'm a dumbass and sprinkled more seasoning on the veggies, because I'm obsessed with it. Let me tell you something- chicken stock (or any stock)+salty seasoning on meat AND veggies=OMG I NEED WATER. Way too much salty. Oops. It was still super tasty though, and made enough for probably about 4-6 people. (read: I'll be eating leftovers every meal for a week)

Side note: I go to the farmer's market every Sunday to load up on produce, but didn't have any veggies other than the potatoes on hand because I went all apple and orange crazy at the market last week. I went to Whole Foods, the only place with decent organic veggies, prepared to get raped by their outrageous prices (I've paid $4 there on accident for ONE red pepper before. Wtf.). For once, they weren't bad though! I try to stick to the farmer's market because I like knowing that it's fresh and local, but Whole Foods is a decent fall-back. Sometimes.

Chicken and Rice Soup

From Isabel's Cantina (link to the right)

It's been a bit on the chilly side and, judging by my last post date on here, I was due to make something. Soup sounded like a good choice, so I had my parents over for dinner at my new place. Since my social circle now consists of...well...them. I picked this recipe because it seemed like the most simple and I wasn't trying to blow up my new kitchen, ya know?

2Tb olive oil
1 lg yellow onion
4 garlic cloves minced
2 md diced carrots
2 diced celery stalks
6c chicken broth
2 bay leaves (mom failed and brought me basil! oh well ;) )
pinch of saffron
3-8oz boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, cut into 1in pieces (oops I used 3 whole halves)
8oz asparagus, cut into 2in pieces
salt
pepper
6c cooked rice
1 jarred roasted red pepper, cut into strips (bought this and totally forgot to use it)

Dad's tip: hold the asparagus on each end and bend it. Wherever it breaks is where you should cut it to cut off the ends.

heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed (HA! like me!!) pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion is soft and translucent, about 3 mins. Add the carrots and celery. Continue cooking for a few mins more, stirring to coat the veggies with the oil. Add the chicken broth, bay leaves, and saffron. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat so the broth simmers. Cook for 20mins, skimming off any foam that rises to the surface.

Add the chicken and asparagus, season with salt and pepper, and cook until the chicken is just cooked through and the asparagus is tender, about 5 mins. Discard the bay leaves.

To serve, ladle the soup into the bowls and add a scoop of rice to the center of each bowl (I used that frozen rice from Trader Joes, so I just threw it in with the soup to thaw out). Top the rice with strips of bell pepper and serve hot.

It was pretty good. Not great, but good. It tasted like chicken noodle. But with rice. It definitely needed more salt and pepper than what I put in it and some other seasonings. Perhaps the missing bay leaves? I think my mom suggested oregano, too. I bought a par-baked loaf of crusty bread at Trader Joe's and stuck in the oven for a few and served it nice and warm. That bread was awesome. So good! Super crunchy on the outside and really soft on the inside. The soup was pretty quick and easy to make and really good the next day when the rice soaks up a bunch of the broth.

My roommate came home just before dinner so I invited her to join us, as my parents hadn't met her yet and I know she works a lot and is pretty beat when she gets home. She was excited for food and some fresh ears to talk off. I definitely learned a lot more about her and my dad kept asking her the questions that he and I were talking about that I hadn't asked her yet. Good job, dad!

Stir Fry Question

Ok. This is going to make me look like even more of an idiot than I already am (do?)...so I got this for Christmas, to my utter joy and delight (oh wow I accidentally spent like an hour on that site...hoping...dreaming...wishing...). I don't cook a whole lot, but I like cooking toys and nice pots and such. One nice big knife? Sweet. One nice pot/wok? Awesome. Add a flat wooden spoon and I'm basically set. Don't ask me why Calphalon is a major turn on to me, but I loooove it way more than the cheap-o pots I had throughout college. Even though I don't think I've ever noticed any actual difference as far as cooking goes.

I use that stupid wok for everything now, appropriate or not. Do my roommates have a full set of Calphalon pots and pans? Yes. Do I still use mine every chance I can get even if it's TOTALLY the wrong type/size out of sheer delight in owning my own single piece of Calphalon goodness? Yes. Who uses a giant wok on an electric stovetop even though the point of it is to heat up the sides which, I would imagine, is 1000x more effective on a gas stove? Me. I even used it to make ginger/carrot/potato soup in. Who makes freakin SOUP in a giant wok?! Me. And, no, I didn't post that recipe because I think I put like 45x more ginger in it than I was supposed to and, well, it wasn't very good. Good thing I made like 3 gallons of it. Damn it. Oh wow, kinda got way off topic there. Wasn't planning on this being a "wok this way" post (HAHAHAHA!! I'm hilarious...right?...no?...damn). Oops.

ANYWAYS, my lovely wok was part of an "Asian set" and came with stir fry sauce. Random, but ok. Here's my probably stupid question: do you cook things in stir fry sauce or do you put the sauce on after it's fried and stirred? Let's discuss, my 1.5 readers!

Brussel Sprouts and Tofu and Pomelo, oh my!

Ok. The dinner that I made myself last night might forever strip me of my title as a fat ass. For real. I had wanted to make the two things separately and only when I said it out loud did I realize how horrifyingly healthy/hippy it sounds. Damn it. As I was cooking it I was thinking "WTF am I doing?! Eating this stupid bird food is only going to leave me starving in about a half hour!". Much to my amazement, though, it was TOTALLY filling. Weird. Maybe those stupid hippies are onto something...

BRUSSEL SPROUTS
On a recent trip to Nevada City with my best friend Susannah and her parents, her mom made brussel sprouts. I hadn't had them in forever and forgot how much I like them! When I saw a pile of them at the farmer's market this weekend, I decided to attempt to make them myself. The ones I got were a smidge pricey, but I didn't really look around for the cheapest, so I might have just jipped myself.

-Olive oil (couple tablespoons-ish)
-3-ish cloves of crushed garlic
-some brussel sprouts (doing great with the measurements with this one, huh?)
-S&P

Peel a couple layers off each brussel sprout (the dirty yucky looking layers), cut the stems off and cut them in half. I was told that cutting them in half is optional but that they cook better that way.

Heat up a frying pan with the oil with medium heat, add the garlic. Saute the garlic until it's soft but not brown (I failed at this step. Stupid garlic is tough to get right!). Add the brussel sprouts and saute until nice and browned (hey I did that! "browning" or "cook until a nice crust is formed" never seems to work for me, as evidenced below).

When they're nice and brown, but still undercooked, add in enough water to cover the bottom of the dish and come up to maybe half the height of the brussel sprouts. Don't want to drown them OR burn your pan up when you run out of water. Throw in a sprinkle of salt too, to taste. Cover the pan and steam for about 10 mins. In Nevada City it took a bit longer, and 10 mins seemed a bit much for mine, so just keep an eye on them. When a fork can go through the biggest easily, they're done! Drain the excess water and voila!


Grilled Tofu
Next up: tofu! Typically speaking, I'm not a fan. It tastes like NOTHING. I add it to soups and smoothies because it's good for you and tasteless, but I rarely eat it as it's own dish. I was flipping through Isabel's Cantina, though, and it seemed like a super fast super cheap dish so I decided to go for it. This is kind of a bastardized version of the recipe in the book though, so keep that in mind.

Olive oil
1 container of super firm tofu, cut into 1in cubes (I'd go a little smaller to decrease the plain to spiced tofu ratio)
1/2 teas cumin
1/2 teas ground red pepper (or chili pepper or whatever that red stuff is)

After the tofu is cut, dry it out some with a paper towel. Toss it in a bowl with the spices so that all the pieces are evenly coated (Note: don't absentmindedly lick your fingers while handling ground chili covered things unless you want to scrub your tongue with a paper towel and cough for a half hour. I've heard it sucks). Heat a couple Tablespoons of olive oil over pretty high heat and throw the tofu in. The recipe says to turn as needed, cooking until each side is nice and crusty. Umm...mine didn't really get crusty. Heat might not have been high enough or something. The end result was edible, but I'm gonna try to find something a little more convincing next time. The 'crusty-ness' probably would've helped. I'll have to work on that...I feel like tofu needs to be marinated in beef fat or something to make it actually good...you know?

Pomelo
One of my roommates in San Diego introduced me to Pomelo's. It's like a giant sweet grapefruit. So good! Usually giant versions of regular sized things (ie: koi fish) totally freak me out because they look all steroided and crap, but not these. They're kind of a pain in the ass to eat, but totally worth it. The outside looks like a huge green grapefruit. There is a ton of rind, so I'd avoid paying per pound because only about half of it is actually fruit.

Cut both ends off until you see the pink fruit part. Then cut it in wedges. It's easier to eat if you try to cut close to wedges/skin. When you pull each side of the wedge down, like you would an orange, the fruit part just kind of pops out. The skin is SUPER tough, so I wouldn't recommend trying to eat it.