Something I always miss from home is Chinese food. You are probably thinking 'Wow you are so rural you don't even have Chinese?' Actually we have two Chinese food restaurants nearby and one just a town over. The two in my town are terrible. Just absolutely horrible. I usually give in about once a year because I miss it so bad and I am once again disappointed and forget about ordering Chinese for a while. I don't understand how they can mess it up so bad, they are even Chinese people running the restaurants. I have a feeling there is food they serve their fat customers and food they eat at home.
So like most international food, I have been trying to learn to make it at home so that I don't have to go without. I love my fried rice, it is probably the only Chinese food I make at home right now that I am happy with.
Ingredients:
Sesame oil
Skinless, boneless chicken breast
Minced Garlic
Minced Ginger
Jasmine Rice
Eggs
Onion Powder
Salt and Pepper
Soy Sauce
Cook your rice according to the directions on the box. I make however much 1 cup of Jasmine rice makes (around 3 cups). You can use any rice, I just really like the flavor of Jasmine rice so it is usually what I have around the house. Slice your chicken into thin slices.
Once your rice is finished cooking set it aside to cool. Heat a wok or a large frying pan to a medium-high heat. Drizzle the pan with sesame oil (I'd say around 2 or 3 tablespoons to coat the pan, you can also use peanut or vegetable oil). Add Garlic, Ginger, and onion (these will be better with freshly minced but I do use the kind that is already prepped and in the jar) and cook, stirring constantly for around 1 minute. Add your chicken and pan fry until cooked through. Set aside on a paper towel covered plate.
Drizzle your pan again with oil and pour in your already mixed eggs. I like to use 4 because my husband likes a lot of eggs but 2 is fine. Scramble until almost cooked through then place in a bowl for later.
Lower your heat to medium drizzle your pan again with oil and add more Garlic, Ginger and onion. Cook for 1 minute. Add your rice breaking up clumps with your fingers. Add chicken. Cook, stirring constantly for 8 minutes. Add your eggs and cook until cooked through, stirring it into the rice and chicken. Add 2 Tablespoons of soy sauce. Stir sauce through and you are ready to serve! Season with salt and pepper as needed.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Old Mother Hubbard
Last winter my husband's uncle gave us a slew of butternut, delicata, and hubbard squashes. Somehow I managed to use most of the butternut in yummy soups and stews but due to my lack of experience with the other two they just began to rot. Then like all things in our home at the time that is plant matter we don't want, the squashes went to our chickens. See one of the major benefits of having chickens that you don't usually hear about is that they are like little garbage disposals. They got to eat all the potatoe peels, leftover spaghetti, carrot tops, apple cores etc which left us with less nasty bags of trash and better tasting eggs. So they ate most of the squash in their little pink chicken tractor that at the time was on top of our old garden.
At the beginning of the summer we noticed some squash plants growing which was odd because these little self starters were where our tomatoes had been planted the year before. It ended up being one giant hubbard plant and one delicata squash plant. Like most of our crops this year both were eventually destroyed by grazing deer but we were able to salvage 2 hubbard squashes. Once again I am faced with the task of finding something to do with them. So today I decided to try soup.
I rather like butternut squash soup, that was something I learned last winter, but I had never had hubbard squash soup. My husband told me flavor wise they were similar so I thought I couldn't go wrong. The recipe I went from was found at http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/roasted-hubbard-squash-soup.aspx. I did have to make a few adjustments (I dislike fennel and didn't have hazelnuts). So my recipe ended up more like this:
Hubbard Squash Soup:
3 T olive oil
4 T minced garlic (I cheat and use the preminced kind)
1 T corriander seeds
1 t of poultry seasoning (in my giant cabinet of spices I could not find any sage!)
1 small hubbard (5-6lbs), halved lengthwise and seeded
1 large leek halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
2 med carrots, peeled and diced
salt
5 cups chicken stock
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 400 with rack in the middle.
Mix together oil, garlic, corriander and poultry seasoning until it forms a sort of paste. Brush this onto the flesh of the squash halves. Place cut side down in casserole dish (I just used a large glass one) and cook until tender when pierced with fork (about 1 hour). Let cool cut side up. When cool enough to handle scrap flesh from the rind.
Melt butter in a 5-6quart dutch oven (I just used a large sauce pan like I use for pasta) at a medium heat. Add carrots, leeks, and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the leek is softened (8-10 minutes). Add squash, broth, bay leaf and about a tsp of salt. Bring to a boil at high. Reduce heat to low and cover, simmering for 30 minutes.
Remove bay leaf and let soup slightly cool. Puree' in batches in blender (I used my handy dandy food processor). Season with salt and pepper to taste.
When the soup came out it was good. My husband liked it quite a bit. I found myself wanting butternut squash. In the future I will make a few changes. For one I will use corriander powder instead of the seeds. I don't have the best mortar and pestle so try as I did my paste was never really a paste. My food processor did some good work on the seeds but there were still a few missed. Another thing I will try is adding the lemon, I forgot to get one at the store which was the only reason I left it out.
This was also my first experience with leeks and I have to say the smell of it cooking in the butter was heavenly. In a good way it reminded me of the smell when you open a fresh box of dumplings from my favorite chinese food restaurant at home. Which makes me wonder, are they using leeks?
At the beginning of the summer we noticed some squash plants growing which was odd because these little self starters were where our tomatoes had been planted the year before. It ended up being one giant hubbard plant and one delicata squash plant. Like most of our crops this year both were eventually destroyed by grazing deer but we were able to salvage 2 hubbard squashes. Once again I am faced with the task of finding something to do with them. So today I decided to try soup.
I rather like butternut squash soup, that was something I learned last winter, but I had never had hubbard squash soup. My husband told me flavor wise they were similar so I thought I couldn't go wrong. The recipe I went from was found at http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/roasted-hubbard-squash-soup.aspx. I did have to make a few adjustments (I dislike fennel and didn't have hazelnuts). So my recipe ended up more like this:
Hubbard Squash Soup:
3 T olive oil
4 T minced garlic (I cheat and use the preminced kind)
1 T corriander seeds
1 t of poultry seasoning (in my giant cabinet of spices I could not find any sage!)
1 small hubbard (5-6lbs), halved lengthwise and seeded
1 large leek halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
2 med carrots, peeled and diced
salt
5 cups chicken stock
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 400 with rack in the middle.
Mix together oil, garlic, corriander and poultry seasoning until it forms a sort of paste. Brush this onto the flesh of the squash halves. Place cut side down in casserole dish (I just used a large glass one) and cook until tender when pierced with fork (about 1 hour). Let cool cut side up. When cool enough to handle scrap flesh from the rind.
Melt butter in a 5-6quart dutch oven (I just used a large sauce pan like I use for pasta) at a medium heat. Add carrots, leeks, and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the leek is softened (8-10 minutes). Add squash, broth, bay leaf and about a tsp of salt. Bring to a boil at high. Reduce heat to low and cover, simmering for 30 minutes.
Remove bay leaf and let soup slightly cool. Puree' in batches in blender (I used my handy dandy food processor). Season with salt and pepper to taste.
When the soup came out it was good. My husband liked it quite a bit. I found myself wanting butternut squash. In the future I will make a few changes. For one I will use corriander powder instead of the seeds. I don't have the best mortar and pestle so try as I did my paste was never really a paste. My food processor did some good work on the seeds but there were still a few missed. Another thing I will try is adding the lemon, I forgot to get one at the store which was the only reason I left it out.
This was also my first experience with leeks and I have to say the smell of it cooking in the butter was heavenly. In a good way it reminded me of the smell when you open a fresh box of dumplings from my favorite chinese food restaurant at home. Which makes me wonder, are they using leeks?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)