Asian | vmac+cheese

MacGyver Me This: Easy Weeknight Stir Fry

Posted on July 1, 2010 by vmacandcheese

Two days before I left for Europe, I got this email from Susannah:

Here’s your challenge for the week!

I want to make Andy [her gentleman friend] a delicious stir fry – brown rice bowls are one of his favorite things on earth. I would love some suggestions as to how to make a delicious marinade, how best to cook the meat, and then how to properly cook the veggies/meat together. What goes in first, etc. It seems simple but I am confused!

This was a challenging MMT question for me. Asian cuisine is admittedly my weakest discipline, simply because growing up, we hardly ever cooked it at home (which is pretty ironic, if you know what I look like…I don’t remember if I ever mentioned it on this site before, but I am adopted. From Korea. And I have an Irish last name. Family portraits are hilarious.). As a kid, we had a stovetop wok, but rarely used it, and when we did, the sauce was usually made from some McCormick’s spice packet. I somehow doubt that that Irishman knew much more about authentic Asian food than we did. (more…)

Filed under: Asian, MacGyver Me This, Recipes | Tagged: asian food, easy stir fry, Recipes, stir fry | 1 Comment »

Pho meets egg

Posted on August 31, 2009 by vmacandcheese

That buffalo roast from the last post? Here’s another use for it: a ridiculously delicious, super flavorful, surprisingly nutritious Sunday night soup. Observe:

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Behold the power of my latest cleaning-out-the-fridge invention! Egg flower soup with a pho like twist: the addition of very rare, thinly shaved red meat, which is cooked to perfection in the hot broth.

Here’s how it went down: It was Sunday night. On hand, I had several quarts of frozen homemade chicken stock, a huge clamshell of spinach, a bunch of eggs, and a leftover nib of that buffalo roast. Since I had to run out anyway to get some snacks for a Monday morning work party (which is another story), I picked up a bunch of green onions, a nob of ginger, and some cremini mushrooms. With a little guidance from Martin Yan (I needed some ratios for the egg flower soup base), the makings of an epic soup were born.

To start, I gathered up my mise en place. I sliced the buffalo paper thin, grabbed two handfuls of spinach, lightly beat two eggs with a bit of soy sauce, and chopped three scallions. I pulled mirin and sesame oil out of the pantry (said it once, and it must be said again: if you have a well stocked pantry, you can cook almost anything), and mixed together a cornstarch slurry. I de-stemmed the mushrooms, then chopped the caps and soaked the stems in hot water. Ginger, peeled, cut into a 2″ nubbin.

1 010 Pretty simple, yeah? It gets better: (more…)