Sweet'n Sour Stir Fry: Take 1

Looks like I'm a bit late on this post with the Mon, Wed, Fri schedule. I was making food last night and I had the blog open, but I just couldn't bring myself to upload the pictures or type up my post.

Today, I'm just doing the Shake'n Bake thing again with Teriyaki chicken drumsticks, Lipton Chicken and Broccoli pasta and straight out boiled veggies: so it's nothing really to write home about. Tomorrow, I'm thinking of making a chicken fettucini alfredo pasta, but I'll figure that out later. On to the post!

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I had gotten two packs of stir fry cut pork from the local grocer's. Two, since one of their packs was too small on it's own. Since the butcher was still there, I asked him how long I should cook them for. I found out that it would be about ten to fifteen minutes on a medium heat in a frying pan, but however long the pork took to cook, it should be white completely through. I had been cooking pork for a while now, ( Yay Shake'n Bake ) so I can tell when pork's properly cooked.

Before I started anything, I should say that I also picked up a green pepper, a package of Sweet and Sour stir fry seasoning/sauce, and a bag of pre-sliced California mixed vegetables: the same kind I got for the all veggie stir fry I did. There was also white rice I had laying around the apartment already, so I didn't have to buy anymore of that. Another thing I had laying around was a bowl of chopped onion, green pepper, jalapeño pepper, and black olives. I had made a nice tray of nachos a while back and so I just stuck the left over toppings in a bowl knowing I could use them soon.

When I got home and summoned the will to cook, I started off by chopping up the green pepper. Normally, I chop it into small pieces, lengthwise than crosswise. This time, I cut it lengthwise as normally, but then only cut those strips in half, instead of chopping them into little pieces. I would have the green pepper copped up small from my leftover bowl, after all. After that, I cleared my working space and scooped out the amount of rice I wanted and set it to boil. Then I took out the pork and individually separated the pieces placing them right into the pan that I had coated in oil. I'm very liberal with oil: both to preserve what left I have of my frying pan, and to have the pork cooking somewhat evenly. The pork actually took the better side of the fifteen, almost twenty minutes to cook thoroughly and I had also squirted Soy Sauce onto it as well to cook which turned it a nice light brown amber colour as well as acquiring a very nice taste. I think I've fallen in love with soy sauce!

Once the pork was cooked, I tossed on half the package of veggies I bought. It was enough to fill the pan and turning/stirring them was a constant chore. After tossing them on and stirring up the mixture a bit, I added the sweet and sour mix I had gotten and added a cup and a half of water, some white sugar, and a bit more soy sauce. I mixed that up very well to spread evenly, and noticed a lot of the sauce just collected at the bottom in the water. Eventually, after heating and mixing and adding more soy sauce, the sauce started to thicken a little and spread over the whole dish. At this point, I added the fresh peppers I had chopped, stirred it, added the pre-chopped veggies from the leftover bowl, and stirred some more!

By this time, the rice was done already but it kept heat well by staying covered so I just set it aside. The stir-fry wasn't going as well, however. The sauce was fairly weak and wasn't thickening as much as I hoped. I also only bought one package, this dish clearly needed extra seasoning.

I rummaged around in the fridge for anything Asian ( Aside from teriyaki, that was too strong of a familiar flavour ) and found a bottle of sweet and sour barbecue sauce! I dabbed about three tablespoons of it into the mix, more soy sauce and stirred it up. After another ten or so minutes it started shaping up a bit, so I added yet even more soy sauce. Please, keep in mind that when I add soy sauce, it's only in amounts of about three quirts, a teaspoon or two, so I don't really go overboard with it.

After cooking the pork and from adding the veggies, it took almost an hour to cook. The veggies were still crisp, and I was actually disappointed about that. They felt like they didn't cook enough to me. The flavour was all right, though I would consider getting two packages of seasoning/sauce for next time. Also, probably won't get sweet and sour either, as the sauce didn't have the consistency I was looking for. I also didn't follow the directions for preparing the meat and stir-fry as it suggested, too, so that's probably why it didn't turn out as well as I hoped.

Another thing I did put too much salt in the rice, deciding to eyeball the amount instead of measuring and it was quite noticeable, but still very edible. Together, it was an all right dish: just little parts of it bugged me and I'll be sure to do better to correct it for it next time. Maybe what I can do is even boil the veggies for a little bit before frying them to soften them up.

Joan's Casserole

Today at work I was sitting with my podmate and between taking calls, discussed that I was interested in trying new foods for dinner. Now, my usual food preperation involves ground beef, pork, chicken, and bone-in chicken, but I'm willing to evolve beyond that for the sake of making something tasty. What she suggested was a casserole that she makes every now and than and is always a hit! I got her to jot down the recipe and asked a few questions and so that's what I tried making tonight.

Since I had gotten ground beef already, I just had to run to the grocery to get a bag of potatoes, a can of kernel corn and a can of mushroom soup. Too bad when I got there, there was a sale on store brand cream of mushroom soup so there weren't any left! I got Campbell's fancy kind instead.

When I got home, I took about six potatoes, peeled them and sliced them cross wise into many thin discs: about a couple coin's width thickness. That was all the prep work I had to do, aside from draining the corn and mashing up the can of soup so it would pour better. Oh right, and preheat the oven to 350°F .

In my 9x9x2 baking pan, I lined the bottom and sides with ground beef that I broke up and than mashed together. It ended up to be about a centimeter thick from the bottom and away from the sides. I left a good gap between that and the top of the pan.

Then I took the slices of potato and covered over the beef, layered on more slices of potatoes and covered over the beef completely. That made a thick layer of potato and still left a little bit of space on top to pour the corn. After spreading the corn evenly over the top, I poured the mushroom soup over and than spread it out.

The next step was to cover it. Now, since I'm not making it in a casserole dish or anything fancy like that, I used some aluminum foil to cover the pan and toss it in the oven. Not sure what difference it made but I poked two holes in foil for vents. I let it cook for an hour, than took off the covering and cooked it for another half hour. After that long, it still wasn't cooked thoroughly, so I took some shredded cheese I had, coated over the top, and let it cook for another half hour, and voi la! My co worker had tole me that cooking should take an hour to an hour and a half, and was done when a fork could easily slide through the layer of potato.

Overall, it came out quite well! I wish the beef would have stayed with the potato more easily, but it was quite tasty.

Oh! And I made Jell-o!

Teriyaki Pork Chops

Tonight I'm trying to put together something a bit Chinese. I got a package of boneless pork chops like I usually do, but instead of shake'n baking it up, I coated them with Teriyaki and Soy and tossed them in the oven. I'm also going to be making a vegetable stir fry, and tomato and basil pasta dish, but let's look at how I put it together!

First step: Preheat the oven to 350°F. For the pork, I got a sandwich sized zip lock bag I had and put in a swig of Soy Sauce.. about.. two table spoons. On top of that, I put in a couple good squeezes of Teriyaki Sauce I had, about.. 30 mL, maybe a bit more, and squished the two up. After rinsing the pork chops off, I tossed them one at a time into the bag and coated them with the mixture. Than I took them out and immediately put them on my foil lined cookie sheet. They were well covered, as seen in the picture, and thanks to all the Shake'n Bake I've done I know I can cook them for 45 mins.

At about twenty minutes in, I noticed that the coating for the pork was running off a bit. What I did was spread some more Teriyaki sauce over them and put it back in the oven.

The Tomato Basil Sauce pasta dish was really easy. I used Lipton's Side Kicks for them, so it's pretty much all done for me. Yes, that is a lazy way to make pasta, but I'm not used to making sauces yet from scratch and I didn't want to go through the hassle of it. I did use two packages, though. Something I've noticed with Side Kicks dishes is that since I'm making two packages at once, I need to decrease the overall water used. Since these call for two and a quarter cups of water each, I only used about three and a half cups of water total.

The Stir-Fry! That was fun to make. I had left over chopped green peppers and onion from when I made tacos last night and started frying them in some oil on medium in my fry-pan. What I sneakily did was buy some pre-sliced stir-fry vegetables with carrot, green beens and broccoli. I also cut up some fresh green bell pepper into slices and threw them in half way through so they would stay more crisp. Throughout cooking the stir fry, I added about half a cup of water, about 30 mL, or roughly an eighth of a cup of soy sauce, and a generic stir fry seasoning mix I picked up from the grocery store. Overall, cooking time for the stir fry was at least ten minutes, probably more like fifteen. The vegetables were all cooked. The chopped onion was browning, and the carrots, green beans, and broccoli were all crisp yet soft.

So in the end, the pork was a bit of experiment in that I was coating them by my custom design. I could have used a more 'stick to' kind of sauce, or something.. maybe even add flour to the mix and than coat them.. not MUCH mind you.. it will have to be something for me to try out. The pasta dish was straight-forward enough, my only change was to decrease the water, and the selection was a nice tasting change of flavour. The stir-fry, mostly my concoction, was really fun to make! I'd like to try a teriyaki flavoured stir fry. Maybe I could even make a meal out of it and get stir-fry cut strips of beef with it, too!

Another Lax Day

Today was another fairly lax day for me, with the exception of a few little ideas. I decided to use the ground beef I had gotten for that box of Hamburger Helper Four Cheese Lasagna in the cupboard. It'd been a while since I made that particular flavour, and is pretty good. This time, though, I minced some garlic I had left over and added that in along with some Oregano leaves. It was a subtle change, but just noticeable, I think. It definitely could have used more garlic! Yum!

Also made some standard boiled vegges, put in some butter... but I got them from the local IGA rather than the Safeway, and there was quite a noticeable difference! Wow! Either way, it was a simple meal... tomorrow, I'm thinking of doing something with potatoes and a vegetable dish with glaze.. but that's highly prospective at this point. I might not have the opportunity when it comes along, but we'll find out!

Fajitas!

Well, after sitting around for a few hours, going out to take care of some business, and coming back, one of my room mates suggested Fajita's since they had picked up a kit from the store. I though, hey! Great idea! Of course, I've never done it before, so let's see what I need...

• Onion, okay..
• Green or Red Bell Pepper, that's fine, I'll get both!
• Chicken or Beef sliced into strips; Oh no!

I had gotten ground beef at the store as it's one of my usual items to pick up. We're always having food with ground beef, so it doesn't hurt to have it around.. but in this case, I'd like to have a change and try chicken. Unfortunately, I had only cooked chicken twice before, for mixed results. When I looked at the box this time, all the instructions for cooking the chicken was 'Cook Chicken or Beef in the skillet on medium-high heat for 3 - 5 minutes, or until no longer pink.' Well, that gives me some guidelines: heat setting, and minimum time.

After cutting the boneless chicken breasts into thin ( relatively :P ) strips, I put some oil in the pan and tossed in the chicken. It started lightening after about a minute, but really took about eight to ten minutes to fully cook, and after that, I tossed in the onion and peppers I sliced to the pan.

Well, it came out all right, I overloaded the frying pan with all the onion and peppers I chopped but it was still able to cook all right. Tasted good, and I got some more experience with chicken!