Friday, April 03, 2009

Stir Crazy

Tonight I made a simple pork-mushroom-snow pea stir fry. Of course I got the recipe out of my magazine, I'm maximizing my subscription fee, but I would not say that it is authentic anything. There's really no point in writing this up as stir fry is quite simple and like I said, it's not like this was an authentic dish of any type, but I thought I'd relate a few notes I made along the way.

I haven't made any stir fry in over ten years. I debated about getting my wok out for this or not. Maybe I'd use the electric wok? I got that from my parents. They were going to throw it out. I bet they got it as a wedding gift. No. Maybe I'd just use a big skillet. My low sided non-stick pan actually works pretty good for this. No. I'll get the wok out. I mean, I bought a real hammered steel wok all those years ago for a reason.

I used a little more than a pound of pork. This is either the third or fourth recipe I've gotten out of that big pork loin that I bought, capitalizing in buying when things are on sale. I trimmed the fat of with my petty knife, saving it for something else. Man I NEED to sharpen my knives. I have a super-duper salmon slicer so I sliced the pork down very, very thin with ease.

The recipe called for a 1/2 pound of snow peas. No problem they come in an 8 ounce bag. I buy them all the time because I snack on them like other people eat chips or popcorn. The recipe called to remove the strings from the snow peas. Hmmm, never heard of that with snow peas. OK. I ended up doing about half. It doesn't work very well, especially not like string beans. Sometimes the strings came off, sometimes not. Like I said, I eat snow peas all the time and the strings have never bothered me. And as I said, I left half of the peas with strings intact. I couldn't tell a difference when cooked.

I don't think I had enough oil for the garlic and I should have added it after the peas not before. I think I burned some of it though I never noticed any bitterness in the dish from burnt garlic. What I did notice was that the three cloves of garlic seemed to be about six cloves too few. I couldn't taste any.

Same with the teriyaki sauce. When it comes to Asian food I do prefer to buy from Asian groceries rather than from the regular grocery store because I want something authentic and I'm not always sure that the Kikkoman brand or La Choy brand are really the real thing or Americanized. Besides there's the extra excitement of buying something with a label you can't read. I avoided the two popular brand and bought the one other one that Ingles had, a Korean teriyaki. It was good but the two tablespoons seemed like I should have at least tripled it.

Also any recipe that calls for crimini mushrooms I just buy baby portobello mushrooms. I'm pretty sure they are the same thing. That and I can buy an 8 ounce container of baby bellas already sliced, just what the recipe calls for. Perfect. Done!

Maybe this recipe was written for the wusses out there who don't like much flavor, are afraid of anything ethnic or need the "intro" version to get started. It was really a great dish, just a little on the bland side. Didn't stop me from eating until I was full though.

One other note, I certainly didn't use an appropriate rice. I used Texas basmati rice, a brown rice because it is a healthier option. I've been using it for awhile now for any dish that calls for rice. It is interesting because it has a very creamy texture. Not correct but it was tasty.

Rose threw a temper tantrum of grand proportions this evening unlike any we have seen before. It started during dinner and continued well past until we said enough, you're going to bed. That's when she took it to another level. Then she tantrumed until she puked. Now THAT'S a temper tantrum!

2 comments:

Brook said...

Yeah, I had to go to China to learn to cook authentic chinese food. And I found a cookbook with real recipes translated. And the temper tantrum-the Kid has fallen asleep in the middle of one and woken up the next morning still going strong from the second her eyes opened. I thought one of us was gonna die. D's big brother used had the tantrums that ended in puking. It will get better. Slowly. But it will. We read Mercer meyer's "I Was So Mad" a lot and it seems to have helped-and trying to teach different ways to express frustration and anger. Don't think I'm saying E doesn't still have her moments-omg does she-but they are fewer and mostly not outrageous. Mostly. I still sometimes have to leave a store but not in a couple of months(she prefers a large audience for her dramas) Oh well, it's frickin late and I need some sleep.

Huff Daddy said...

Had some leftovers today. Added some shakes of teriyaki to it. It was really good. Forget the two tablespoons the recipe calls for. Just shake enough in until everything is mostly coated in brown sauce. Then it works.